Halo there... glad to be back after more than a week away from my desk. Had been catching up on my mail... Santa Claus had been busy while I was away...
Here's something important to share with you guys, courtesy from Jenna who is always updating me with what's new. This report confirms that a plant-based diet is the way to go if we want to stay healthy and free from meat derived diseases.
VEGETARIANS LESS LIKELY TO DEVELOP CANCER, SAYS RESEARCHERS
By Shane Starling, 02-Jul-2009
Vegetarians will develop less blood, bladder and stomach cancer than meat eaters, according to new research published in the British Journal of Cancer.
The grouping of two studies featured more than 61,000 vegetarians over a timespan of 12 years and found they contracted less cancer, independent of factors such as smoking, alcohol use and obesity than those who consumed meat or fish or both.
Differences in stomach and bowel cancer rates were not as pronounced as may have been expected given previous research and indeed, vegetarians had slightly higher, but not significantly so, rates of colon and rectum cancer.
Cervical cancer rates were twice that of meat-eaters among vegetarians. Breast and prostate cancer rates were similar, although there was less risk for prostate cancer among fish eaters than meat eaters.
For some cancers such as multiple myeloma, which strikes bone marrow, vegetarians were 75 per cent less likely develop the condition.
Cancers of the blood and lymph such as leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma were 50 per cent less likely in vegetarians than carnivores
More study required
"More research is needed to substantiate these results and to look for reasons for the differences," said lead researcher, Tim Key, from the Cancer Research UK epidemiology unit at Oxford University.
"At the moment these findings are not strong enough to ask for particularly large changes in the diets of people following an average balanced diet."
The researchers said the reasons for lower cancer rates among vegetarians were not clear but suggested it could be down to viruses and mutation-causing compounds found in meat such as N-nitroso which are thought to damage DNA.
The temperatures at which meats are cooked could also produce damaging carcinogens.
Study detail
The study population contained 15 571 men and 45 995 women, one third of whom were vegetarian.
Levels of physical activity were higher in vegetarians and fish-only eaters than in meat eaters, who also had higher body mass indexes (BMIs).
But the researchers said none of the findings were conclusive despite some evidence linking, for instance, high intake of fruit and vegetables and onset rates of some cancers.
“There is also some evidence that a high intake of fruit and vegetables might reduce the risk for stomach cancer, but the data are not consistent and, although on average vegetarians eat more fruit and vegetables than meat eaters, the difference in intake is modest,” they wrote.
Source:
British Journal of Cancer
(2009) 101, 192–197. doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6605098
‘Cancer incidence in British vegetarians’
Authors: TJ Key, PN Appleby, EA Spencer, RC Travis, NE Allen, M Thorogood and JI Mann
Friday, July 3, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
GLOBAL WARMING - A SECURITY THREAT???
This WORLD News article, dated 24th June 2009 - reflects former UN Secretary General KOFI ANNAN's concern on how environmental risks arising from global warming can and will undermine both the rich and poor nations in terms of security and safety.
SOURCE : THE STAR (24/6/2009)
(http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/6/24/worldupdates/2009-06-24T042620Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-405543-1&sec=Worldupdates)
INTERVIEW - Global warming is a security threat - Kofi Annan
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA (Reuters) - Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday, calling on poorer countries to speak louder about their climate change needs.
In an interview, Annan said he chose to focus his retirement energies on environmental risks because he believes that left unchecked, they could destabilise both rich and poor countries.
"We do have economic bases for conflict, and tensions, that we sometimes ignore," he told Reuters in Geneva on the opening day of his Global Humanitarian Forum's two-day meeting on the human impact of climate change.
"When we talk in terms of security and safety we tend to focus on political conflicts, military conflicts, when some of the sources can be fights over scarcity and resources," he said.
Politicians focused on salvaging the troubled global economy should not forget the risks their populations face from global warming, Annan said. "They need to pay attention because there will be tensions over scarce resources."
The six-year-old conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, which the United Nations estimates has killed 300,000 people, is an example where environmental pressures morphed into war, and the drylands of East Africa and the Middle East are also vulnerable to added stresses from global warming, he said.
Low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives also face the risk of disruption and panic if sea levels rise as scientists predict in response to a build-up of heat-trapping emissions from cars and factories, the former U.N. chief said.
"For these people there is nothing abstract about climate change," Annan said, while underlining the risks are not limited to poor, small, and island states.
New York City will need to ensure its bridges and tunnels are passable during a major storm or tsunami, and other cities worldwide need contingency plans for emergencies, Annan said.
"It does require planning and creativity. This is something that we should think about not only for the poorer countries," he said. "We are all in this together. We are all affected."
Earlier on Tuesday, Annan told his group's meeting that he was optimistic the world could agree on a climate change accord with the support of the U.S. administration of Barack Obama.
"Every year we delay, the greater the damage, the more extensive the human misery," he said in remarks to the conference attended by senior U.N. and government officials.
Annan, 71, said he hoped their discussions on "the greatest environmental and humanitarian concern of our age" would set the stage for a deal in Copenhagen in December on a successor to the Kyoto accord, which regulates emissions of greenhouse gases.
"A new president and new administration in the United States have demonstrated their seriousness about combating climate change. Given that the U.S. is the greatest source of emissions, this raises optimism for Copenhagen and beyond," he said.
Annan said it was "too early to tell" whether poor countries would get fair treatment under a successor deal, saying: "there are still quite a bit of negotiations and discussions to go."
Climate experts have warned pledges by industrialised nations to cut emissions by 2020 fall far short of the deep cuts widely advocated to avert climate change.
Overall emissions cuts promised by industrialised nations in the run-up to December's meeting now average between 10 and 14 percent below 1990 levels, according to Reuters calculations. U.N. climate experts say cuts must be in the 25-40 percent range below 1990 levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
(For more information about climate change and its human effects please see: www.alertnet.org)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters
SOURCE : THE STAR (24/6/2009)
(http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/6/24/worldupdates/2009-06-24T042620Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-405543-1&sec=Worldupdates)
INTERVIEW - Global warming is a security threat - Kofi Annan
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA (Reuters) - Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday, calling on poorer countries to speak louder about their climate change needs.
In an interview, Annan said he chose to focus his retirement energies on environmental risks because he believes that left unchecked, they could destabilise both rich and poor countries.
"We do have economic bases for conflict, and tensions, that we sometimes ignore," he told Reuters in Geneva on the opening day of his Global Humanitarian Forum's two-day meeting on the human impact of climate change.
"When we talk in terms of security and safety we tend to focus on political conflicts, military conflicts, when some of the sources can be fights over scarcity and resources," he said.
Politicians focused on salvaging the troubled global economy should not forget the risks their populations face from global warming, Annan said. "They need to pay attention because there will be tensions over scarce resources."
The six-year-old conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, which the United Nations estimates has killed 300,000 people, is an example where environmental pressures morphed into war, and the drylands of East Africa and the Middle East are also vulnerable to added stresses from global warming, he said.
Low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives also face the risk of disruption and panic if sea levels rise as scientists predict in response to a build-up of heat-trapping emissions from cars and factories, the former U.N. chief said.
"For these people there is nothing abstract about climate change," Annan said, while underlining the risks are not limited to poor, small, and island states.
New York City will need to ensure its bridges and tunnels are passable during a major storm or tsunami, and other cities worldwide need contingency plans for emergencies, Annan said.
"It does require planning and creativity. This is something that we should think about not only for the poorer countries," he said. "We are all in this together. We are all affected."
Earlier on Tuesday, Annan told his group's meeting that he was optimistic the world could agree on a climate change accord with the support of the U.S. administration of Barack Obama.
"Every year we delay, the greater the damage, the more extensive the human misery," he said in remarks to the conference attended by senior U.N. and government officials.
Annan, 71, said he hoped their discussions on "the greatest environmental and humanitarian concern of our age" would set the stage for a deal in Copenhagen in December on a successor to the Kyoto accord, which regulates emissions of greenhouse gases.
"A new president and new administration in the United States have demonstrated their seriousness about combating climate change. Given that the U.S. is the greatest source of emissions, this raises optimism for Copenhagen and beyond," he said.
Annan said it was "too early to tell" whether poor countries would get fair treatment under a successor deal, saying: "there are still quite a bit of negotiations and discussions to go."
Climate experts have warned pledges by industrialised nations to cut emissions by 2020 fall far short of the deep cuts widely advocated to avert climate change.
Overall emissions cuts promised by industrialised nations in the run-up to December's meeting now average between 10 and 14 percent below 1990 levels, according to Reuters calculations. U.N. climate experts say cuts must be in the 25-40 percent range below 1990 levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
(For more information about climate change and its human effects please see: www.alertnet.org)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
WHERE IS THE MILKY WAY?
Back in July 2006- when I was visiting my sister in Perth, Australia - I had the good fortune to travel further south of WA for a short holiday in Pemperton and put up at a farmstead for a night. My sister's friend who was with us took us out into the cold wintry night and told us to look up to the heavens. What I saw literally took my breath away! It was the MILKY WAY - in all its splendour like a piece of art in the inky black skies! I have seen lots of picture of it before but to actually see it was really an experience. I felt an encompassing solidarity with the UNIVERSE then. In that instant I was in tune with the Creator and His creation .... an awesome feeling!
Our friend told us that the Milky Way is always there in the heavens but cannot be viewed because of the constant smog and light pollution in the cities.Far in the outback, where the skies remain inky dark, and the air crisp and clean from pollution, the Milky Way can be easily seen with the naked eye.
I remembered in my younger days, whenever we looked up at nights, we had a great time trying to count all the stars in the skies. These days, you'd be lucky to find many of them , especially if you live in a city/town.
So, what else is new if our air remains 'light' polluted? The following article may shed some light (forgive the pun) and alert us to what we are doing to our environment and worst, to our animal co-inhabitants.
OUR VANISHING NIGHT - Light Pollution
(By: Verlyn Klinkenborg / National Geographic)
(http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text/1
If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun's light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don't think of ourselves as diurnal beings any more than we think of ourselves as primates or mammals or Earthlings. Yet it's the only way to explain what we've done to the night: We've engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
This kind of engineering is no different than damming a river. Its benefits come with consequences—called light pollution—whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky, where it's not wanted, instead of focusing it downward, where it is. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and radically alters the light levels—and light rhythms—to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life - migration, reproduction, feeding - is affected.
For most of human history, the phrase "light pollution" would have made no sense. Imagine walking toward London on a moonlit night around 1800, when it was Earth's most populous city. Nearly a million people lived there, making do, as they always had, with candles and rushlights and torches and lanterns. Only a few houses were lit by gas, and there would be no public gaslights in the streets or squares for another seven years. From a few miles away, you would have been as likely to smell London as to see its dim collective glow.
Now most of humanity lives under intersecting domes of reflected, refracted light, of scattering rays from overlit cities and suburbs, from light-flooded highways and factories. Nearly all of nighttime Europe is a nebula of light, as is most of the United States and all of Japan. In the south Atlantic the glow from a single fishing fleet—squid fishermen luring their prey with metal halide lamps—can be seen from space, burning brighter, in fact, than Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze that mirrors our fear of the dark and resembles the urban glow of dystopian science fiction. We've grown so used to this pervasive orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost. And yet above the city's pale ceiling lies the rest of the universe, utterly undiminished by the light we waste—a bright shoal of stars and planets and galaxies, shining in seemingly infinite darkness.
We've lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet, a process being studied by researchers such as Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich, co-founders of the Los Angeles-based Urban Wildlands Group. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being "captured" by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop. Migrating at night, birds are apt to collide with brightly lit tall buildings; immature birds on their first journey suffer disproportionately.
Insects, of course, cluster around streetlights, and feeding at those insect clusters is now ingrained in the lives of many bat species. In some Swiss valleys the European lesser horseshoe bat began to vanish after streetlights were installed, perhaps because those valleys were suddenly filled with light-feeding pipistrelle bats. Other nocturnal mammals—including desert rodents, fruit bats, opossums, and badgers—forage more cautiously under the permanent full moon of light pollution because they've become easier targets for predators.
Some birds—blackbirds and nightingales, among others—sing at unnatural hours in the presence of artificial light. Scientists have determined that long artificial days—and artificially short nights—induce early breeding in a wide range of birds. And because a longer day allows for longer feeding, it can also affect migration schedules. One population of Bewick's swans wintering in England put on fat more rapidly than usual, priming them to begin their Siberian migration early. The problem, of course, is that migration, like most other aspects of bird behavior, is a precisely timed biological behavior. Leaving early may mean arriving too soon for nesting conditions to be right.
Nesting sea turtles, which show a natural predisposition for dark beaches, find fewer and fewer of them to nest on. Their hatchlings, which gravitate toward the brighter, more reflective sea horizon, find themselves confused by artificial lighting behind the beach. In Florida alone, hatchling losses number in the hundreds of thousands every year. Frogs and toads living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses.
Of all the pollutions we face, light pollution is perhaps the most easily remedied. Simple changes in lighting design and installation yield immediate changes in the amount of light spilled into the atmosphere and, often, immediate energy savings.
It was once thought that light pollution only affected astronomers, who need to see the night sky in all its glorious clarity. And, in fact, some of the earliest civic efforts to control light pollution—in Flagstaff, Arizona, half a century ago—were made to protect the view from Lowell Observatory, which sits high above that city. Flagstaff has tightened its regulations since then, and in 2001 it was declared the first International Dark Sky City. By now the effort to control light pollution has spread around the globe. More and more cities and even entire countries, such as the Czech Republic, have committed themselves to reducing unwanted glare.
Unlike astronomers, most of us may not need an undiminished view of the night sky for our work, but like most other creatures we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself. The regular oscillation of waking and sleep in our lives—one of our circadian rhythms—is nothing less than a biological expression of the regular oscillation of light on Earth. So fundamental are these rhythms to our being that altering them is like altering gravity.
For the past century or so, we've been performing an open-ended experiment on ourselves, extending the day, shortening the night, and short-circuiting the human body's sensitive response to light. The consequences of our bright new world are more readily perceptible in less adaptable creatures living in the peripheral glow of our prosperity. But for humans, too, light pollution may take a biological toll. At least one new study has suggested a direct correlation between higher rates of breast cancer in women and the nighttime brightness of their neighborhoods.
In the end, humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs in a pond near a brightly lit highway. Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural patrimony—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.
BLOGGER'S NOTE : If you have been as lucky as I to have seen the MILKY WAY - you would sure appreciate what this is all about!
Our friend told us that the Milky Way is always there in the heavens but cannot be viewed because of the constant smog and light pollution in the cities.Far in the outback, where the skies remain inky dark, and the air crisp and clean from pollution, the Milky Way can be easily seen with the naked eye.
I remembered in my younger days, whenever we looked up at nights, we had a great time trying to count all the stars in the skies. These days, you'd be lucky to find many of them , especially if you live in a city/town.
So, what else is new if our air remains 'light' polluted? The following article may shed some light (forgive the pun) and alert us to what we are doing to our environment and worst, to our animal co-inhabitants.
OUR VANISHING NIGHT - Light Pollution
(By: Verlyn Klinkenborg / National Geographic)
(http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text/1
If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun's light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don't think of ourselves as diurnal beings any more than we think of ourselves as primates or mammals or Earthlings. Yet it's the only way to explain what we've done to the night: We've engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
This kind of engineering is no different than damming a river. Its benefits come with consequences—called light pollution—whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky, where it's not wanted, instead of focusing it downward, where it is. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and radically alters the light levels—and light rhythms—to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life - migration, reproduction, feeding - is affected.
For most of human history, the phrase "light pollution" would have made no sense. Imagine walking toward London on a moonlit night around 1800, when it was Earth's most populous city. Nearly a million people lived there, making do, as they always had, with candles and rushlights and torches and lanterns. Only a few houses were lit by gas, and there would be no public gaslights in the streets or squares for another seven years. From a few miles away, you would have been as likely to smell London as to see its dim collective glow.
Now most of humanity lives under intersecting domes of reflected, refracted light, of scattering rays from overlit cities and suburbs, from light-flooded highways and factories. Nearly all of nighttime Europe is a nebula of light, as is most of the United States and all of Japan. In the south Atlantic the glow from a single fishing fleet—squid fishermen luring their prey with metal halide lamps—can be seen from space, burning brighter, in fact, than Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze that mirrors our fear of the dark and resembles the urban glow of dystopian science fiction. We've grown so used to this pervasive orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost. And yet above the city's pale ceiling lies the rest of the universe, utterly undiminished by the light we waste—a bright shoal of stars and planets and galaxies, shining in seemingly infinite darkness.
We've lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet, a process being studied by researchers such as Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich, co-founders of the Los Angeles-based Urban Wildlands Group. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being "captured" by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop. Migrating at night, birds are apt to collide with brightly lit tall buildings; immature birds on their first journey suffer disproportionately.
Insects, of course, cluster around streetlights, and feeding at those insect clusters is now ingrained in the lives of many bat species. In some Swiss valleys the European lesser horseshoe bat began to vanish after streetlights were installed, perhaps because those valleys were suddenly filled with light-feeding pipistrelle bats. Other nocturnal mammals—including desert rodents, fruit bats, opossums, and badgers—forage more cautiously under the permanent full moon of light pollution because they've become easier targets for predators.
Some birds—blackbirds and nightingales, among others—sing at unnatural hours in the presence of artificial light. Scientists have determined that long artificial days—and artificially short nights—induce early breeding in a wide range of birds. And because a longer day allows for longer feeding, it can also affect migration schedules. One population of Bewick's swans wintering in England put on fat more rapidly than usual, priming them to begin their Siberian migration early. The problem, of course, is that migration, like most other aspects of bird behavior, is a precisely timed biological behavior. Leaving early may mean arriving too soon for nesting conditions to be right.
Nesting sea turtles, which show a natural predisposition for dark beaches, find fewer and fewer of them to nest on. Their hatchlings, which gravitate toward the brighter, more reflective sea horizon, find themselves confused by artificial lighting behind the beach. In Florida alone, hatchling losses number in the hundreds of thousands every year. Frogs and toads living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses.
Of all the pollutions we face, light pollution is perhaps the most easily remedied. Simple changes in lighting design and installation yield immediate changes in the amount of light spilled into the atmosphere and, often, immediate energy savings.
It was once thought that light pollution only affected astronomers, who need to see the night sky in all its glorious clarity. And, in fact, some of the earliest civic efforts to control light pollution—in Flagstaff, Arizona, half a century ago—were made to protect the view from Lowell Observatory, which sits high above that city. Flagstaff has tightened its regulations since then, and in 2001 it was declared the first International Dark Sky City. By now the effort to control light pollution has spread around the globe. More and more cities and even entire countries, such as the Czech Republic, have committed themselves to reducing unwanted glare.
Unlike astronomers, most of us may not need an undiminished view of the night sky for our work, but like most other creatures we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself. The regular oscillation of waking and sleep in our lives—one of our circadian rhythms—is nothing less than a biological expression of the regular oscillation of light on Earth. So fundamental are these rhythms to our being that altering them is like altering gravity.
For the past century or so, we've been performing an open-ended experiment on ourselves, extending the day, shortening the night, and short-circuiting the human body's sensitive response to light. The consequences of our bright new world are more readily perceptible in less adaptable creatures living in the peripheral glow of our prosperity. But for humans, too, light pollution may take a biological toll. At least one new study has suggested a direct correlation between higher rates of breast cancer in women and the nighttime brightness of their neighborhoods.
In the end, humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs in a pond near a brightly lit highway. Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural patrimony—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.
BLOGGER'S NOTE : If you have been as lucky as I to have seen the MILKY WAY - you would sure appreciate what this is all about!
Monday, June 22, 2009
GO ORGANIC TO SHRINK YOUR GARDENING BUDGET
FERN MARSHALL BRADLEY is a writer and editor whose favourite topics are gardening and sustainable living. Take a peep at what she has to say on the money-saving ways of organic gardening....
Saving the earth and protecting children and pets from dangerous chemicals are the reasons most gardeners cite for giving up pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, but guess what? Making the switch to organic gardening methods will save you money too! Here are six examples of how going organic will put money back in your pocket.
1. Plant veggies, spend less on doctor bills.
A recent article by a Texas research biochemist summarizes some bad news: many scientific studies show that the vitamin content of fresh fruits and vegetables is on the decline. That's alarming, because fresh produce should be an important source of vitamins and minerals in our diets. Without them, we're more vulnerable to getting sick.
Fortunately, there's a simple way to protect your health and reduce what you spend on costly doctor visits, cold and flu medications, and vitamin pills: plant some vegetables. Fresh-picked home garden produce is brimming with nutrition, and recent studies confirm that organically grown produce can be even richer in nutrients than conventionally grown fruits and veggies.
2. Fire your lawn care service.
How much do you pay for a lawn care company to care for your lawn? Chances are it's way too much. So ditch the lawn service and hire a local teen to mow for you instead.
To encourage a healthy lawn the organic way, have your hired help set the mower high—at least 3 inches. That way, your lawn grass naturally shades out weeds. (No more herbicides needed.)
Be sure your helper uses a mulching mower that returns grass clippings—which contain valuable nitrogen—to the lawn. (No more bagged fertilizer needed.) Once a year, have your helper spread good-quality compost too, about 1/4 inch thick. The compost will melt into the lawn almost immediately, adding a wide range of nutrients as well as beneficial microbes that help prevent lawn diseases.
3. Fight pests with flowers instead of pesticides.
More than 90 percent of the insects in your yard and garden are your friends, not your foes. Ladybugs, lacewings, and even many kinds of flies and tiny wasps are an important natural pest control force. Their larvae (the immature stages of the insects) gobble up aphids and other pests, or parasitize the caterpillars that would like to turn the foliage of your flowers and veggies into a holey mess.
One easy way to attract these good-guy insects to your yard organically is to plant a garden of perennials and herbs with tiny flowers, because the adult beneficial insects eat pollen, not bugs. Yarrow, purple coneflowers, daisies, tansy, cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias are great plants to start with, and you'll love how they look growing in sunny spots all around your yard. Buying a few packets of annual seeds and several potted perennials is much cheaper—and much more fun—than buying pesticides and a sprayer!
4. Forget the bagged fertilizer—buy seeds instead.
It's true! A packet of cover-crop seeds such as buckwheat or oats will add as much fertility to your garden beds as any bag of synthetic fertilizer can. And that's just the start of the story. Using synthetic fertilizer is a vicious cycle, because the chemicals in the fertilizer kill or repel beneficial earthworms and other organisms that help build a healthy soil. Plus, chemical fertilizer easily washes down through the soil when it rains, ending up in the groundwater we drink!
Not only will you save big in the long term by planting cover crops instead, they also prevent soil erosion, they encourage earthworms and other good guys, and they enrich your soil naturally. Simply sow the cover crop seed on lightly loosened soil, rake it in lightly, and water it to speed germination. Within 4 to 8 weeks, you can cut down the crop with shears or your lawn mower, and all that rich green material will naturally break down, leaving you a nutrient-primed planting bed that will produce bumper crops of veggies, fruit, or flowers.
Not only will you save big in the long term by planting cover crops instead, they also prevent soil erosion, they encourage earthworms and other good guys, and they enrich your soil naturally. Simply sow the cover crop seed on lightly loosened soil, rake it in lightly, and water it to speed germination. Within 4 to 8 weeks, you can cut down the crop with shears or your lawn mower, and all that rich green material will naturally break down, leaving you a nutrient-primed planting bed that will produce bumper crops of veggies, fruit, or flowers.
5. Reduce your water bill by capturing rainwater.
Depending on where you live, as much as 50 percent of the water you use goes to keeping your garden green and growing. That's a big expense that will only get bigger as water supply problems increase around the country.
But for less than $100, you can buy and install a rain barrel that will capture the rain that falls on your roof, providing you a free supply of water for your gardens virtually indefinitely. Rain barrels are available from home centers and mail-order suppliers, and it takes no special skills to install one.
6. Grow gourmet salad toppings on the cheap.
Microgreens are all the rage at fancy restaurants and farm markets, but boy are they expensive!
Here's a secret: you can grow your own microgreens at any time of year on a sunny windowsill for a fraction of the price. Simply save leftover clamshell containers from the deli and buy some organic transplanting mix that's enriched with compost. Clean the containers well, use a barbecue skewer to poke several drainage holes in each one, and fill them with moist potting mix. Then sprinkle veggie seeds—be sure the seeds haven't been treated with pesticides—generously over the soil surface, cover then lightly with more mix, and set the containers in a catch tray on the windowsill. Mist daily until sprouts appear, then water as needed to keep them growing.
Within three weeks, the sprouts will reach the two-leaf stage, and you can snip them with scissors to garnish salads, sandwiches, and entrees. Use lettuce, arugula, and other salad greens, as well as broccoli, kale, dill, cilantro, basil, even peas.
BLOGGER'S Note:
HAPPY ORGANIC GARDENING, EAT MORE GREENS and SOS PLANET EARTH at the same time!
Saving the earth and protecting children and pets from dangerous chemicals are the reasons most gardeners cite for giving up pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, but guess what? Making the switch to organic gardening methods will save you money too! Here are six examples of how going organic will put money back in your pocket.
1. Plant veggies, spend less on doctor bills.
A recent article by a Texas research biochemist summarizes some bad news: many scientific studies show that the vitamin content of fresh fruits and vegetables is on the decline. That's alarming, because fresh produce should be an important source of vitamins and minerals in our diets. Without them, we're more vulnerable to getting sick.
Fortunately, there's a simple way to protect your health and reduce what you spend on costly doctor visits, cold and flu medications, and vitamin pills: plant some vegetables. Fresh-picked home garden produce is brimming with nutrition, and recent studies confirm that organically grown produce can be even richer in nutrients than conventionally grown fruits and veggies.
2. Fire your lawn care service.
How much do you pay for a lawn care company to care for your lawn? Chances are it's way too much. So ditch the lawn service and hire a local teen to mow for you instead.
To encourage a healthy lawn the organic way, have your hired help set the mower high—at least 3 inches. That way, your lawn grass naturally shades out weeds. (No more herbicides needed.)
Be sure your helper uses a mulching mower that returns grass clippings—which contain valuable nitrogen—to the lawn. (No more bagged fertilizer needed.) Once a year, have your helper spread good-quality compost too, about 1/4 inch thick. The compost will melt into the lawn almost immediately, adding a wide range of nutrients as well as beneficial microbes that help prevent lawn diseases.
3. Fight pests with flowers instead of pesticides.
More than 90 percent of the insects in your yard and garden are your friends, not your foes. Ladybugs, lacewings, and even many kinds of flies and tiny wasps are an important natural pest control force. Their larvae (the immature stages of the insects) gobble up aphids and other pests, or parasitize the caterpillars that would like to turn the foliage of your flowers and veggies into a holey mess.
One easy way to attract these good-guy insects to your yard organically is to plant a garden of perennials and herbs with tiny flowers, because the adult beneficial insects eat pollen, not bugs. Yarrow, purple coneflowers, daisies, tansy, cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias are great plants to start with, and you'll love how they look growing in sunny spots all around your yard. Buying a few packets of annual seeds and several potted perennials is much cheaper—and much more fun—than buying pesticides and a sprayer!
4. Forget the bagged fertilizer—buy seeds instead.
It's true! A packet of cover-crop seeds such as buckwheat or oats will add as much fertility to your garden beds as any bag of synthetic fertilizer can. And that's just the start of the story. Using synthetic fertilizer is a vicious cycle, because the chemicals in the fertilizer kill or repel beneficial earthworms and other organisms that help build a healthy soil. Plus, chemical fertilizer easily washes down through the soil when it rains, ending up in the groundwater we drink!
Not only will you save big in the long term by planting cover crops instead, they also prevent soil erosion, they encourage earthworms and other good guys, and they enrich your soil naturally. Simply sow the cover crop seed on lightly loosened soil, rake it in lightly, and water it to speed germination. Within 4 to 8 weeks, you can cut down the crop with shears or your lawn mower, and all that rich green material will naturally break down, leaving you a nutrient-primed planting bed that will produce bumper crops of veggies, fruit, or flowers.
Not only will you save big in the long term by planting cover crops instead, they also prevent soil erosion, they encourage earthworms and other good guys, and they enrich your soil naturally. Simply sow the cover crop seed on lightly loosened soil, rake it in lightly, and water it to speed germination. Within 4 to 8 weeks, you can cut down the crop with shears or your lawn mower, and all that rich green material will naturally break down, leaving you a nutrient-primed planting bed that will produce bumper crops of veggies, fruit, or flowers.
5. Reduce your water bill by capturing rainwater.
Depending on where you live, as much as 50 percent of the water you use goes to keeping your garden green and growing. That's a big expense that will only get bigger as water supply problems increase around the country.
But for less than $100, you can buy and install a rain barrel that will capture the rain that falls on your roof, providing you a free supply of water for your gardens virtually indefinitely. Rain barrels are available from home centers and mail-order suppliers, and it takes no special skills to install one.
6. Grow gourmet salad toppings on the cheap.
Microgreens are all the rage at fancy restaurants and farm markets, but boy are they expensive!
Here's a secret: you can grow your own microgreens at any time of year on a sunny windowsill for a fraction of the price. Simply save leftover clamshell containers from the deli and buy some organic transplanting mix that's enriched with compost. Clean the containers well, use a barbecue skewer to poke several drainage holes in each one, and fill them with moist potting mix. Then sprinkle veggie seeds—be sure the seeds haven't been treated with pesticides—generously over the soil surface, cover then lightly with more mix, and set the containers in a catch tray on the windowsill. Mist daily until sprouts appear, then water as needed to keep them growing.
Within three weeks, the sprouts will reach the two-leaf stage, and you can snip them with scissors to garnish salads, sandwiches, and entrees. Use lettuce, arugula, and other salad greens, as well as broccoli, kale, dill, cilantro, basil, even peas.
BLOGGER'S Note:
HAPPY ORGANIC GARDENING, EAT MORE GREENS and SOS PLANET EARTH at the same time!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
12 COMPELLING REASONS TO DITCH STRESS IN YOUR LIFE
Hi all... take a listen to what an expert has to say about STRESS and what it can do to your digestion....
In this interview, Marc David, an expert in the psychology of eating, talks about the important role stress plays in digestion.
Marc is the founder and director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, and has written two excellent books on this topic: The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss, and Nourishing Wisdom: A Mind-Body Approach to Nutrition and Well-Being.
The fact is, you can't separate your wellness from your emotions. Every feeling you have affects some part of your body. And stress can wreak havoc even if you’re doing everything else “right.”
What is “Stress”?
The classic definition of stress is “any real or imagined threat, and your body’s response to it.” Celebrations and tragedies alike can cause a stress response in your body.
Some stress is unavoidable. Some mild forms of stress can even be helpful in some situations. But a stressor becomes a problem when:
* Your response to it is negative.
* Your feelings and emotions are inappropriate for the circumstances.
* Your response lasts an excessively long time.
* You’re feeling continuously overwhelmed, overpowered or overworked.
It’s important to realize that all your feelings create physiological changes. Your skin, heart rate, digestion, joints, muscle energy levels, the hair on your head, and countless cells and systems you don't even know about change with every emotion.
Marc notes that Americans, in general, tend to eat under a state of stress and anxiety.
While under stress, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure rises, and blood is shunted away from your midsection, going to your arms, legs, and head for quick thinking, fighting, or fleeing.
All of these changes are referred to as the physiological stress response.
Under those circumstances, your digestion completely shuts down. So a major problem with eating while your body is under the stress response is that you could be eating the healthiest food in the world, yet you won’t be able to fully digest and assimilate that food, and your body will not be able to burn calories effectively.
How the Stress Response Affects Your Digestion and Health
The stress response causes a number of detrimental events in your body, including:
* Decreased nutrient absorption
* Decreased oxygenation to your gut
As much as four times less blood flow to your digestive system, which leads to decreased metabolism
Decreased enzymatic output in your gut – as much as 20,000-fold!
Many nutrients are also excreted during stress, particularly:
* Water-soluble vitamins
* Macrominerals
* Microminerals
* Calcium (calcium excretion can increase as much as 60 to 75 mg within an hour of a stressful event)
As if that’s not enough, your cholesterol and triglycerides also go up, while gut flora populations decrease. You’re also more likely to experience increased sensitivity to food and gastroesophageal reflux, or heartburn.
But perhaps most importantly, when your body is under the stress response, your cortisol and insulin levels rise.
These two hormones tend to track each other, and when your cortisol is consistently elevat
ed under a chronic low-level stress response, you’ll likely notice that you have difficulty losing weight or building muscle.Additionally, if your cortisol is chronically elevated, you’ll tend to gain weight around your midsection. We’ve known for some time that body fat, and especially visceral fat (the fat that gathers around your internal organs, around your midsection) is a major contributing factor to developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome
The bottom line?
When you eat under stress, your body is in the opposite state of where you need to be in order to digest, assimilate nutrients, and burn calories.
Everyday Stress Relief
There’s no doubt that finding ways to relieve your everyday stress is an important, if not essential, aspect of optimizing your health. All the organics in the world can’t help you if your body can’t assimilate the nutrients you put into it.
Stress is a serious factor in the illness of nearly all of the patients seen at my clinic. Because in addition to everything mentioned above, stress also plays a major role in your immune system, and can impact your:
* Blood pressure
* Cholesterol
* Brain chemistry
* Blood sugar levels
* Hormonal balance
You cannot eliminate stress entirely, but you can work to provide your body with tools to compensate for the bioelectrical short-circuiting that can cause serious disruption in many of your body's important systems. By using techniques such as meridian tapping, you can reprogram your body’s reactions to the unavoidable stressors of everyday life.
But there are many other strategies you can employ to help you deal with stress and unwind each day, including:
Exercise. Studies have shown that during exercise, tranquilizing chemicals (endorphins) are released in your brain. Exercise is a natural way to bring your body pleasurable relaxation and rejuvenation.
Proper sleep
Meditation (with or without the additional aid of brain wave synchronization technology)
I also highly recommend you read the book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. If you’re experiencing any type of physical or emotional challenge in any aspect of your life, this book does a great job of explaining feelings: what they are, how you experience them, how they are integral to your physical health, and, most importantly, how to work with and overcome those that are pulling you down.
Find about more about Marc David perspectives/thoughts : www.marcdavid.com
10 QUIRKY ECONOMIC INDICATORS
Ever wonder if we are in the throes of recession yet? Here are some indications you may find funny or true....have a nice day!
SOURCE : Candice Lee Jones / 15th June, 2009 / Kiplinger.com
These off beat barometers of the economy can give you much needed guidance for your portfolio or simply a good laugh.
Everyone is scrambling to get their fingers on the pulse of the economy. When will it turn around? Have we seen the worst? The answers may not be as elusive as you might think.
In the past, you might have relied on the old Hemline Theory to determine which way the market was heading: As hemlines rose, so did stock prices. Think model Twiggy in her super-short mod dresses of the '60s, followed by falling hemlines in the '70s as the economy weakened.
But these days you'll find all sorts of clues in everyday life to help determine where the economy really stands. Dry cleaners, for instance, may seem a bit more cluttered these days, and it's true -- many people are stalling an extra week before shelling out to pick up their clothes. Eyeliner sales are surging these days, and a cutback in eye makeup may signal a resurgent economy in which people are spending on costlier personal luxuries.
1. Packed Theaters
During the last seven recession years, box office sales have increased in five of them. The new Star Trek movie pulled in more than $200 million in the month of May, just one example
of how well cinemas are faring these days. According to the National Association of Theatre Owners, the number of movie tickets sold in the first quarter of 2009 increased more than 9% from last year.
Better films? Hot new actors? People continue to fill theater seats, NATO says, because movies are one of the least expensive entertainment options out of the house. The average ticket price in 2008 was $7.18. So when the lines get shorter, go buy some stock.
2. Green Thumbs
The National Gardening Association finds that the number of households who will grow their own fruits, berries, vegetables and herbs this year is 19% higher than in 2008.
That makes 43 million gardeners in the United States this year. It's fun and relaxing, no doubt, but 54% of the respondents say the prospect of saving money on groceries motivates them to till the soil.
3. First Dates
Misery loves company, eh? Online dating service Match.com notices a pattern in its site activity during tough times. The fourth quarter of 2008 was their busiest in seven years (the site has been around since 1995). Match had a similar surge in late 2001, right after 9/11.
The company believes people are looking for someone with whom to try to forget about money troubles -- or share the pain. When the Dow Jones industrial average dropped to a five-year low last November, Match.com had its second busiest weekend of the year.
4. Romance Novels
The economy has broken your heart and stomped it to pieces and now you need to put it back together. At least that's what Harlequin, the giant romance novel publisher, says is happening. In 2008, Harlequin's sales were up 32% from the year before. In 2009, its sales are still rising.
The publisher credits this its uplifting stories that offer a haven, and to the low prices of the books relative to other entertainment. This theory has stood the test of time. Harlequin saw a similar sales increase during the recession of the early 90's. So if these stories start piling up unwanted on the discount table at the bookstore, alongside all those mis-timed guides to real estate riches, better news is on the way.
5. Droopy Eyes I
America is all tuckered out. A poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that nearly one-third of Americans lost sleep because they were worried about their finances. The 2009 Sleep in America Poll also found that 10% of those people tossed and turned specifically worrying about their jobs -- roughly the same percentage of Americans who are out of work.
6. Droopy Eyes II
Americans spent $10.3 billion in 2008 to endure 1.7 million cosmetic surgeries, which is 9% less than in 2007. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons cites the bad economy.
Without as much extra cash -- and facing depleted retirement funds and much less home equity -- fewer people can spend freely on plastic surgery. The number of liposuction procedures was down 19% in 2008 and tummy tucks down 18%. If you can get an appointment with a top surgeon without much of a wait, that's a sour sign for the economy. But, then again, maybe you can strike a deal.
7. Goopy Eyes
You've got that recession look in your eye. Total eye makeup sales at supermarkets and drugstores were up 8.5% in the one-year period that ended on March 22, compared to the previous year. In that time period, more than $260 million was spent on eye makeup -- in particular, eye liner was up 9% and mascara almost 13%.
The leading lipstick indicator -- the idea that lipstick sales rise in economic downturn as consumers settle for inexpensive luxuries -- is not holding up. Lipstick sales are down 11%. But eye make-up has replaced lipstick as the indicator, so the principle is the same.
8. Gators
What do 100,000 alligators have to do with the economy? The gators are all residents at Savoie's Alligator Farm, one of the largest alligator farms in Louisiana. The farm, which sells gator skin hides to tanners who in turn sell them to luxury designers like Louis Vuitton, has not sold a single hide since November, according to Savoie's.
This business is awful because people are not buying alligator skin handbags and luggage. The makers of designer labels therefore don't need to buy hides. This is tough on the gator farmers who are losing money fast and trying to keep the hides they already have in stock from spoiling. But it's good news for alligators everywhere -- if they only knew.
9. Dry Cleaning
The International Drycleaning and Laundry Institute is hearing gripes from many of its 5,000 members. The poor economy has customers are visiting less frequently and leaving clothes for longer. Weekly customers visit every two weeks, monthly customers visit bi-monthly, and some people delay their pickups even longer to avoid the bill. This has been a staple indicator of hard times before.
10. Mosquito Bites
We know the real estate bust has done a number on the economy, but did you know it can actually make you itch? In Maricopa County, Ariz., enormous numbers of foreclosed or abandoned homes have vacant swimming pools and unattended ponds. The stagnant waters -- known as green pools -- are a hotbed for mosquito breeding.
Maricopa County Environmental Services Department's Johnny Diloné says crews have treated more than 4,000 green pools already in 2009. During the same period in 2007, before metropolitan Phoenix's housing market collapsed, they had treated only 2,500. While most of the "green pools" are on vacant properties, some do belong to residents who just cannot afford to maintain their pools and ponds.
Copyrighted, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc
SOURCE : Candice Lee Jones / 15th June, 2009 / Kiplinger.com
These off beat barometers of the economy can give you much needed guidance for your portfolio or simply a good laugh.
Everyone is scrambling to get their fingers on the pulse of the economy. When will it turn around? Have we seen the worst? The answers may not be as elusive as you might think.
In the past, you might have relied on the old Hemline Theory to determine which way the market was heading: As hemlines rose, so did stock prices. Think model Twiggy in her super-short mod dresses of the '60s, followed by falling hemlines in the '70s as the economy weakened.
But these days you'll find all sorts of clues in everyday life to help determine where the economy really stands. Dry cleaners, for instance, may seem a bit more cluttered these days, and it's true -- many people are stalling an extra week before shelling out to pick up their clothes. Eyeliner sales are surging these days, and a cutback in eye makeup may signal a resurgent economy in which people are spending on costlier personal luxuries.
1. Packed Theaters
During the last seven recession years, box office sales have increased in five of them. The new Star Trek movie pulled in more than $200 million in the month of May, just one example
of how well cinemas are faring these days. According to the National Association of Theatre Owners, the number of movie tickets sold in the first quarter of 2009 increased more than 9% from last year.Better films? Hot new actors? People continue to fill theater seats, NATO says, because movies are one of the least expensive entertainment options out of the house. The average ticket price in 2008 was $7.18. So when the lines get shorter, go buy some stock.
2. Green Thumbs
The National Gardening Association finds that the number of households who will grow their own fruits, berries, vegetables and herbs this year is 19% higher than in 2008.
That makes 43 million gardeners in the United States this year. It's fun and relaxing, no doubt, but 54% of the respondents say the prospect of saving money on groceries motivates them to till the soil.
3. First Dates
Misery loves company, eh? Online dating service Match.com notices a pattern in its site activity during tough times. The fourth quarter of 2008 was their busiest in seven years (the site has been around since 1995). Match had a similar surge in late 2001, right after 9/11.
The company believes people are looking for someone with whom to try to forget about money troubles -- or share the pain. When the Dow Jones industrial average dropped to a five-year low last November, Match.com had its second busiest weekend of the year.
4. Romance Novels
The economy has broken your heart and stomped it to pieces and now you need to put it back together. At least that's what Harlequin, the giant romance novel publisher, says is happening. In 2008, Harlequin's sales were up 32% from the year before. In 2009, its sales are still rising.
The publisher credits this its uplifting stories that offer a haven, and to the low prices of the books relative to other entertainment. This theory has stood the test of time. Harlequin saw a similar sales increase during the recession of the early 90's. So if these stories start piling up unwanted on the discount table at the bookstore, alongside all those mis-timed guides to real estate riches, better news is on the way.
5. Droopy Eyes I
America is all tuckered out. A poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that nearly one-third of Americans lost sleep because they were worried about their finances. The 2009 Sleep in America Poll also found that 10% of those people tossed and turned specifically worrying about their jobs -- roughly the same percentage of Americans who are out of work.
6. Droopy Eyes II
Americans spent $10.3 billion in 2008 to endure 1.7 million cosmetic surgeries, which is 9% less than in 2007. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons cites the bad economy.
Without as much extra cash -- and facing depleted retirement funds and much less home equity -- fewer people can spend freely on plastic surgery. The number of liposuction procedures was down 19% in 2008 and tummy tucks down 18%. If you can get an appointment with a top surgeon without much of a wait, that's a sour sign for the economy. But, then again, maybe you can strike a deal.
7. Goopy Eyes
You've got that recession look in your eye. Total eye makeup sales at supermarkets and drugstores were up 8.5% in the one-year period that ended on March 22, compared to the previous year. In that time period, more than $260 million was spent on eye makeup -- in particular, eye liner was up 9% and mascara almost 13%.
The leading lipstick indicator -- the idea that lipstick sales rise in economic downturn as consumers settle for inexpensive luxuries -- is not holding up. Lipstick sales are down 11%. But eye make-up has replaced lipstick as the indicator, so the principle is the same.
8. Gators
What do 100,000 alligators have to do with the economy? The gators are all residents at Savoie's Alligator Farm, one of the largest alligator farms in Louisiana. The farm, which sells gator skin hides to tanners who in turn sell them to luxury designers like Louis Vuitton, has not sold a single hide since November, according to Savoie's.
This business is awful because people are not buying alligator skin handbags and luggage. The makers of designer labels therefore don't need to buy hides. This is tough on the gator farmers who are losing money fast and trying to keep the hides they already have in stock from spoiling. But it's good news for alligators everywhere -- if they only knew.
9. Dry Cleaning
The International Drycleaning and Laundry Institute is hearing gripes from many of its 5,000 members. The poor economy has customers are visiting less frequently and leaving clothes for longer. Weekly customers visit every two weeks, monthly customers visit bi-monthly, and some people delay their pickups even longer to avoid the bill. This has been a staple indicator of hard times before.
10. Mosquito Bites
We know the real estate bust has done a number on the economy, but did you know it can actually make you itch? In Maricopa County, Ariz., enormous numbers of foreclosed or abandoned homes have vacant swimming pools and unattended ponds. The stagnant waters -- known as green pools -- are a hotbed for mosquito breeding.
Maricopa County Environmental Services Department's Johnny Diloné says crews have treated more than 4,000 green pools already in 2009. During the same period in 2007, before metropolitan Phoenix's housing market collapsed, they had treated only 2,500. While most of the "green pools" are on vacant properties, some do belong to residents who just cannot afford to maintain their pools and ponds.
Copyrighted, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc
Friday, June 19, 2009
WORLD BANK WITHDRAW LOAN FROM BRAZILIAN CATTLE CORP
To all environmentalists and fans of BE VEG! GO GREEN! SAVE THE PLANET!..... here's a day for celebration!
Hot news! Read all about it!!!
SOURCE : THE IRISH TIMES / 15th June, 2009 / FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor
HEADLINES: WORLD BANK LOAN WITHDRAWN FROM BRAZILIAN CATTLE CORPORATION
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), private lending arm of the World Bank, has withdrawn a $90 million (€57 million) loan to Brazilian cattle industry giant Bertin, following complaints that it was using the money to expand further into the Amazon region.
“It is good news that the World Bank is withdrawing these funds, yet scandalous that it was feeding a company that causes Amazon deforestation and climate change in the first place,” said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign director.
The move came two weeks after a Greenpeace report, Slaughtering the Amazon, revealed that financial backing for the Brazilian cattle industry had turned it into the largest single source of deforestation in the world.
The report, based on a threeyear undercover investigation, showed how Bertin and two other Brazilian companies supplying the global market with cattle products for top brands and supermarkets buy cattle from Amazon farms involved in illegal deforestation.
By helping Bertin to expand into the Amazon, Greenpeace said the IFC had been driving further destruction of the rainforest, a haven for biodiversity and one of the world’s key defences against climate change because of its crucial role as a “carbon sink”.
For a bank that portrays itself as the ‘knowledge bank’, this was a very ill-conceived and thoroughly destructive use of its resources”, Mr Adario said at the weekend. “It must now guarantee that it will not invest in such damaging projects in the future.”
The last $30 million (€21.4 million) loan from the IFC will no longer be given to Bertin and it is anticipated that the World Bank subsidiary will ask that the $60 million (€35.6 million) it had already invested in the company be returned early.
Tropical deforestation is responsible for approximately 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and Brazil has been ranked by Greenpeace as the world’s fourth biggest “climate polluter”.
Following the slow progress of climate talks in Bonn over the past two weeks, Greenpeace is calling on world leaders to “take personal responsibility for securing an effective climate-saving deal” by attending the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen next December.
“This would include providing $110 million a year for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis, $40 million a year of which should go towards forest protection in return for commitments to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2015 and globally by 2020.”
Last week, Brazilian president Lula da Silva announced that he would veto clauses in an Amazon land reform Bill that would legalise the landholdings of millions of people who have settled in the region – a move that could spur more deforestation.
“We want to be an example to the world in taking care of our own things,” he said, adding that Brazil was now open to adopting targets to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions if rich countries agreed to do more.
Hot news! Read all about it!!!
SOURCE : THE IRISH TIMES / 15th June, 2009 / FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor
HEADLINES: WORLD BANK LOAN WITHDRAWN FROM BRAZILIAN CATTLE CORPORATION
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), private lending arm of the World Bank, has withdrawn a $90 million (€57 million) loan to Brazilian cattle industry giant Bertin, following complaints that it was using the money to expand further into the Amazon region.
“It is good news that the World Bank is withdrawing these funds, yet scandalous that it was feeding a company that causes Amazon deforestation and climate change in the first place,” said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign director.
The move came two weeks after a Greenpeace report, Slaughtering the Amazon, revealed that financial backing for the Brazilian cattle industry had turned it into the largest single source of deforestation in the world.
The report, based on a threeyear undercover investigation, showed how Bertin and two other Brazilian companies supplying the global market with cattle products for top brands and supermarkets buy cattle from Amazon farms involved in illegal deforestation.
By helping Bertin to expand into the Amazon, Greenpeace said the IFC had been driving further destruction of the rainforest, a haven for biodiversity and one of the world’s key defences against climate change because of its crucial role as a “carbon sink”.
For a bank that portrays itself as the ‘knowledge bank’, this was a very ill-conceived and thoroughly destructive use of its resources”, Mr Adario said at the weekend. “It must now guarantee that it will not invest in such damaging projects in the future.”
The last $30 million (€21.4 million) loan from the IFC will no longer be given to Bertin and it is anticipated that the World Bank subsidiary will ask that the $60 million (€35.6 million) it had already invested in the company be returned early.
Tropical deforestation is responsible for approximately 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and Brazil has been ranked by Greenpeace as the world’s fourth biggest “climate polluter”.
Following the slow progress of climate talks in Bonn over the past two weeks, Greenpeace is calling on world leaders to “take personal responsibility for securing an effective climate-saving deal” by attending the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen next December.
“This would include providing $110 million a year for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis, $40 million a year of which should go towards forest protection in return for commitments to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2015 and globally by 2020.”
Last week, Brazilian president Lula da Silva announced that he would veto clauses in an Amazon land reform Bill that would legalise the landholdings of millions of people who have settled in the region – a move that could spur more deforestation.
“We want to be an example to the world in taking care of our own things,” he said, adding that Brazil was now open to adopting targets to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions if rich countries agreed to do more.
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