PLANET IN PERIL

 [8 March 2011] GENEVA   Organic garden. l.p. photo Today, the Special Rapporteur presented his new report “Agro-ecology and the right to food” before the UN Human Rights Council. Based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature, the report demonstrates that agroecology, if sufficiently supported, can double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty. Full story here.

AlterNet/By Tara Lohan Mar 15'11 Freston's new book makes 10 bold promises about ditching dairy and meat products. Full story here. Salad photo by l.p.

14 Mar '11 – UN News Centre Photo courtesy of PRLog Free Press Release . One of the rarest mammals on earth.  The dugong, the reputed mermaid of seafarers’ lore, was today thrown a lifeline by a United Nations pilot project. Full story here.

  Honey bee hive. l.p. photo 10 March 2011 – The potentially disastrous decline in bees, a vital pollinating element in food production for the growing global population, is likely to continue unless humans profoundly change their ways, from the use of insecticides to air pollution, according to a United Nations report released today.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives  Mar 11-'11 Sustainable development and the precautionary principle must not be forgotten in this debate. Full story here.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Please read an updated vesion of my earlier article, "How Ethical Are Ethical Funds,"   here, on the online magazine, The Dominion. OBSERVATION: If anything, this latest version affords an insight into how some can rationalize that how they invest is "really OK," because they can somehow make change from within - sort of like defending the indefensible. l.p.

March 11, 2011 · By Robert Alvarez - IPS The devastating Japanese quake and its outcome could generate a political tsunami here in the United States. Full story here. Footnote: An explosion has now destroyed the building housing the reactor. l.p.

Dahr Jamail - Al Jazeera 09 Mar'11 Nearly a year after the oil disaster began, Gulf Coast residents are sick, and dying from BP's toxic chemicals. Full story here.

NEW YORK, New York, March 7, 2011 (Environment News Service)   Crude oil in a Chevron oil waste pit in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.  (Rainforest Action Network photo)    In a New York courtroom today, oil giant Chevron Corp. won a halt to enforcement of an $18 billion judgment for oil pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon imposed by a court in Ecuador. Full story here. PUBLISHER'S COMMENT: To the US judge who made this ruling - "do da word 'sovereignty' ring a bell to ya?" l.p.

by Jaymi Heimbuch,  Treehugger - San Francisco - 02.28.11 In the Central Valley of California cows generate the same amount of fecal waste as a city of 21  million people, much of which goes untreated and pollutes waterways. Full story here.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2011)    A pioneering program by one of the world's largest cities to switch its vehicle fleet to clean fuel has, in some cases, actually made things worse. Full story here.                          Courtesy of Panoramio

Richard Ingham & Laurent Banguet AFP News 3 Mar Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction   in Earth's history, according to a paper released on Wednesday by the science journal Nature. Full story here.

•Suzanne Goldenberg• guardian.co.uk 2 Mar'11 US landowners along the proposed route – from Alberta to the Gulf coast – accuse oil firm TransCanada of bullying. Full story here.      Pipeline about to be installed in Manitoba, presumably to link to Alberta Tar Sands . Photo Credit: Loozrboy  

Feb 25'11 - By MARY CLARE JALONICK - Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- You may not want to eat genetically engineered foods. Chances are, you are eating them anyway. Full story here. PUBLISHER'S COMMENT: This may be a US story. Unfortunately, Canada is no better! l.p.

Michael Ricciardi - Planetsave - Mar 3 '11 Over the past decade, the Arctic’s annual “bloom” of phytoplankton has been arriving earlier each year. Full story here.      wyrdscience.wordpress.com

Heavy Snowpack, “Spring Creep” Raise Threat Of Record Floods   WASHINGTON (March 1, 2011) – Global warming is “loading the dice” to increase the frequency of record-setting snowstorms like those that have pounded the United States and Europe the past two winters. Full report here. Credit: Reuters

McClatchy News - Mar 2'11 The eastern cougar has been declared extinct, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Read Story here.

by Staff, Utne Reader - Mar'11   Air cargo is about to go steampunk. Read more here.   Illustration: Science Applications  International Corp. PUBLISHER'S COMMENT: Might this be considered for transporting goods to northern Manitoba communities, now that climate change is rendering surface transport on ice roads unreliable? l.p.

PlanetSave - Michael Ricciardi - Mar 2 '11 NASA climate scientists are playing with fire… from a nuclear war, to be precise…in a computer simulation, that is. Full story here. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Surely, if anything is provocative, this is! Why not let loose with your thoughts in the "comments" box, below! l.p.

Joshua S Hill - PlanetSave Mar 1 - '11   New research has shown that large dams have the ability to affect the local climate, to the point of drastically altering the local rainfall in some regions. Full story here. The Shellmouth dam and the reservoir behind it, Lake of the Prairies, in western Manitoba. (Note - this is not an area specifically mentioned in this story.)  Photos by l.p.


By Dr. Vandana Shiva, February 23'11 ClimateStoryTellers.org Biodiverse Ecological Farming is the Answer, not Genetic Engineering. Full story here.

Alastair Brown - Nature Climate Change - 01 March 2011 A. Maybe not! Read the full story here.