Billions of people live in the kind of squalor that was eradicated long ago in the rich world. It is a global water and sanitation crisis that deserves our undivided The-issueattention NOW (well, yesterday, to be exact)… especially since there is a lack of political will to push through changes that could benefit the poorest and most vulnerable people. Here are just two shocking statistics:

• 884 million people don’t have clean water
• 40% of the world’s population suffer without a safe toilet, that’s 2.5 billion people!

Fortunately, there are organizations dedicated to providing sanitation and clean water to the world’s poorest people. End Water Poverty is one of them and I am committed to helping them raise awareness about the critical issues and motivating people around the globe to take action.

Here’s one easy way to take action and it will just take a minute or less! Sign the End Water Poverty Petition, urging global leaders to specifically address the lack of toilets. What happens when something as basic as a toilet is unavailable?

• Girls’ educations are ruined due to open, unsafe or no toilets at schools
• 4,000 young children die each day due to unsanitary conditions
• Communities become locked into circles of ill-health, poverty and despair

Want to do more to help? Put November 19th on your calendar: World Toilet Day. Celebrate the fact that you have a toilet — you probably even have two… or more! Organize a public big squat in your community–Here’s how: big squat movement for the toilet-less

Spread the word about this day and the crisis any way you can. If you’re on twitter, follow @EndWaterPoverty @WorldToiletDay and @icount4myEARTH and join us every Wednesday to tweet about World Toilet Day and other world water crisis issues–be sure to use the hashmark #waterwednesday to help earn us Trending Topic status and to make @WorldToiletDay tweets virul. Simply re-tweet our tweets or come up with some of your own. Here are some sample tweets:

• Join a million putting an end to the water and sanitation crisis @endwaterpoverty http://bit.ly/3Q8ces #waterwednesday
• #waterwednesday Celebrate your toilet on @WorldToiletDay – because 2.5 billion people don’t have one! http://bit.ly/3X6wT7
• Urge politicians to stop 4000 child deaths/day @EndWaterPoverty @WorldToiletDay action http://bit.ly/3X6wT7 #waterwednesday
• Did you know @WorldToiletDay is #19Nov? Why should you give a crap? http://bit.ly/PslHg #waterwednesday

If you’re on facebook, join End Water Poverty’s group and invite your friends. OR copy and paste this entire blog entry into an email and forward it to friends, family and colleagues. For more ways to help, go to EndWaterPoverty.org

More facts about the world water crisis:

• More than half of hospital beds in Sub Saharan Africa are occupied by patients suffering from sanitation and water related diseases
• These diseases are the biggest killer of young children, killing over five times more than HIV/AIDS and twice as many as malaria.
• Young girls simply don’t attend as there aren’t toilets at school, or they aren’t safe or private.
• Other girls spend hours of their day walking to fetch water or caring for ill siblings and have no time for an education at all
• In Africa, an estimated 5% of GDP is lost to illnesses and deaths caused by dirty water and the absence of sanitation
• Climate change is making things worse, increasing pressure on water resources.

End Water Poverty is calling for:

• One global action plan for sanitation and water monitored by one global task force
• 70% of aid money for sanitation and water to be targeted at the poorest countries
• Water resources to be protected and shared equitably

Success depends on rich governments protecting good water and sanitation plans from failure due to inadequate financing; and developing countries must commit to implementing these plans. Please sign the petition now and learn about other ways you can take action by visiting EndWaterPoverty.org. If you’re part of an organization, consider joining The End Water Poverty coalition.

4,000 children do not deserve to die each day because they are lacking clean water and sanitation. Together, we can help make a difference.

SIDE NOTE: To get a glimpse at our world water crisis, consider renting the award-winning documentary  FLOW (for love of water) and sharing it with your family.

Producing more. Conserving more. Improving farmers’ lives. That’s sustainable agriculture. And that’s what Monsanto is all about. (You can see the full add here)

What!?! Are you joking?!!?! Which is what exactly went through my head when I first heard these ads airing on NPR. This I have to say is first rate “Green Washing”, and probably the best I have ever seen. And I was even more shocked to hear it run on NPR of all places! But I guess they have a bottom line to meet. I used to make yearly donations to NPR and then stopped. I have reconsidered several times about renewing my “membership” and donation, but my decision has now been made. I will divert my dollars to other projects that I believe in like the Center of Food Safety, a project I firmly believe in.

Just to give you a brief background on Monsanto, up until two decades ago it was a chemical company that produced chemical warfare, specifically agent orange. Today it is the biggest seed corporation in the world and controls the worlds seed supply through genetic engineering and patents. It is also the market leader in genetically modified US corn, soybean and cotton seeds. In a previous blog, I discuss why Monsanto could be a sitting target for an antitrust enforcement by the Obama administration because they have their farmers in an iron grip with their contracts (but I’m not holding my breath with Michael Taylor, former Monsanto executive, appointed by Obama as the FDA’s food czar or “senior advisor to the commissioner”).

As Marc David, Nutritionist and Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, stated in one of my Green Club interviews, GMO’d foods are a huge genetic experiment of which we don’t know the repercussions. I agree. And if you want to know how GMO’d foods are affecting our children’s health in the form of food allergies you can listen to my interview with, Robyn O’Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It

In a recent video put out by the Center of Food Safety, Vandana Shiva founder and director of Navdanya in India, leader in the Slow Foods Movement (which is at the top of my favorite food movements), and author of the recently released book, Soil not Oil, shares the heartbreaking story of farmers pressed into deep debt, and some driven to suicide, by the economy of biotech crops.

Over the next month, CFS will be bringing you videos from experts with whom they work closely in the trenches—Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Anna Lappé, and CFS’s Executive Director Andrew Kimbrell—to help reveal the real truth about the bogus claims put forth by Monsanto and other biotech companies. I will be closely watching these videos to learn more about what’s going on with our food supply and hope you will too!

The Center for Food Safety is on the front lines fighting against the corporate take-over of our food, farms, and future; advocating REAL, sustainable, solutions to the problems of the biotech industrial agriculture model.

If you want to get involved and help keep our food supply green, organic and sustainable, become part of the solution and say no to industrial and GMO’d agriculture by taking action and make a donation to the Center For Food Safety. Join more than 85,000 members across the country saying no to industrial agriculture, and yes to True Food!

As a number, 350 may not mean much to you, but it’s extremely important to those following the climate-change crisis. 

According to the Citizens Climate Lobby, 350 parts per million (ppm) is the carbon-dioxide limit each nation must achieve to keep global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels. The current atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration is 389 ppm—a number that’s climbing 2 parts a year. 

Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) has asked President Obama to reach agreement on this goal with other world leaders at next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. He and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) are circulating a letter in the House that calls upon Obama to take action. Click here to read the full text. 

“Global leaders can negotiate with one another, but humanity cannot negotiate with the earth’s climate,” says Citizens Climate Lobby Founder and President Marshall Saunders. “It will not compromise. We must yield or face the wrath of nature.”

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis

According to Time Magazine, our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

It’s a fact: what we choose to buy and eat can help contribute to a better, healthier way.

Organic foods are more gentle on Mother Earth. Consider why:

• Organic farmers leave soil and crop residue in the ground rather than digging it up (known as the ‘no-till’ method). That means organic farmers release less CO₂ into the air by sequestering it in the earth.
• Organic farming uses 50% less energy overall than traditional farming.
• Smaller-scale organic farms use 60% less fossil fuel per unit of food than conventional industrial farms.²

If we turned all of our farmland in this country to organic and regenerative methodologies, where we’re putting basically cover crops or compost back into the soil and not using chemical fertilizers, we could mitigate 25 percent of our emissions in this country alone.
-Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute. Read the transcript or view the video of LaSalle’s response to critics who say organic farming is unsustainable and produces smaller crop yields.

So yes – support, buy and eat organic.

Other top tips for a global warming diet include:

• Eat grass-fed beef only: cows and ruminant chewing animals that graze on healthy  pastures reduces greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and overall energy consumption.
• Go meatless one night a week: This is a great money saving tip and will create room in your budget to add more organic veggies to your diet.
• Eat local: the closer the origins of your food, the less transportation and corresponding carbon emissions into the atmosphere. And the more likely your produce has been vine ripened which makes for delicious foods!
• Eat in season: foods that are in season are usually in abundance and can be more affordable delicious!
• Eat lower on the food chain: choose foods that consume fewer other foods and eat as much of a plant-based diet as possible (choosing organic, of course!)

Many people ask me if I eat locally conventionally grown foods, in other words foods sprayed with pesticides. My answer: no. Please don’t ask me to eat foods that have been sprayed with toxic chemicals, even if it is grown locally. If I told you to make a beautiful fresh garden vegetable soup and, oh by the way, pull out the ant and roach spray and lightly give your veggies a fine mist before cooking to ward off any pests that come crawling along your kitchen counter, would you do it? Probably not.

What are your favorite global warming diet tips?  Share them with others – we love hearing from you!

¹Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin, “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming,” Earth Interactions 10 (May 2005)
²Ready, Set, Green; Eight Weeks to Modern Eco Living, Graham Hill & Meaghan O’Neill

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) are holding public hearings this week on the country’s first greenhouse gas emissions limits for passenger vehicles.

Hearings began today in Detroit and will continue in New York City on Friday and Los Angeles on Tuesday. You can thank President Obama for pushing this environmental agenda, in concert with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, automakers, the United Auto Workers Union and eco-conscious organizations.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), passenger cars and light trucks emit “nearly 20% of the nation’s greenhouse gases, in the form of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons. In April, EPA provisionally found that these four contaminants and two other greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare.”

The proposed standards would apply to new cars produced from 2012 to 2016. The EDF cites the following benefits:

• Breaking Our Oil Addiction and Strengthening National Security. The vehicles subject to the proposed standards are responsible for about 40% of all U.S. oil consumption. The standards would reduce our oil consumption by 1.8 billion barrels, while achieving a 5% annual improvement in fuel efficiency for U.S. passenger cars.
• Reducing Global-Warming Pollution. Vehicles covered by the proposed standards account for 60% of heat-trapping emissions from the transportation sector and about 20% of all U.S. heat-trapping gases. These emissions have increased by more than 1% annually. The proposal would cut carbon dioxide pollution from passenger vehicles approximately 21% by 2030, reducing emissions by 950 million tons.
• Saving Money at the Pump. Families can save more than $3,000 over a vehicle’s lifetime.

Photo:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth will be released on Nov. 3.

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis is available for preorder at Amazon, which is offering a 34% discount (retail price: $26.99; Amazon price: $17.81). An abridged audiobook (CDs) is also available (retail price: $29.99; Amazon price: $19.79). 

The book is printed on locally produced and sourced 100% recycled paper, with low-VOC inks.

“An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people with the message that the climate crisis is threatening the future of human civilization and that it must and can be solved,” says Gore, co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work. “Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis.”

As with An Inconvenient Truth, Gore will donate 100% of the new book’s proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to spreading awareness of the climate crisis.

From Our Organic Blog

• Warming Up to Al Gore
• “An Inconvenient Truth” for Kids
• Al Gore Receives Nobel Peace Prize
• Holland Goes Greener, with a Little Help from Al Gore

Sunday marked the beginning of Animal Action Week, an International Fund for Animal Welfare campaign to teach both children and adults about biodiversity, habitat and ecosystems.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, an IFAW honorary board member, is promoting the campaign, which provides schools with a free education pack and Under One Sky: Why Animals Matter, a 15-minute film he narrates. Click here for access to educational downloads. You’ll also find a wide selection of downloadable Animal Fact Sheets—great tools to share with your kids.

Students may enter an art contest, with the winning design to appear on next year’s campaign poster. Families are also encouraged to sign a global pledge to make lifestyle choices that better protect the environment we share with animals.

“Animals and their vital habitat face more threats than ever before,” DiCaprio says. “Animals, like people, need a home that provides food, water, shelter and space. It’s our responsibility to protect animals and our planet’s vital ecosystems if we want to leave a better world for future generations.”

For Your Organic Bookshelf: The Animal Ethics Reader

Toyota’s Solar Flowers exhibit has left San Francisco (see photo), arriving at its final tour stop in Glendale, Calif.

The oversized flower sculptures, on display at The Americana at Brand, are partially powered by solar panels on the backs of their petals and bases of their stems. Some of the flowers are up to 18 feet tall.

Five flowers provide seating for up to 10 people, access to free Wi-Fi service, and power to charge cell phones and laptops. Hours of operation are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, now through Oct. 18.

The flowers are part of the 2010 Toyota Prius marketing campaign, whose theme is “Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine.”

Glendale bus riders will find solar-ventilation bus shelters spread throughout the area, which feature rooftop solar panels that help run fans and circulate air. This experience is designed to demonstrate the Prius’ Solar-Powered Ventilation System, which uses a fan to draw outside air into the cabin to reduce cabin temperature when the car is parked in direct sunlight.

“It’s exciting to see how the public has really embraced both the displays and the vehicle,” says Tim Morrison, corporate manager of marketing communications for Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A.

Photo courtesy of:

What unites former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and international artists like Fergie, Lily Allen, Duran Duran, Mark Ronson, Jamie Cullum, Marion Cotillard and Milla Jovovich?

A global musical petition that demands climate justice.

A new cover of Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning is designed to send a message to world leaders who will participate in the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December.

Each free download will count as a signature on a “digital petition” for an ambitious, fair and international answer to the global-warming crisis. More than 1.3 million people have signed on thus far.

“Climate change is the greatest humanitarian challenge facing mankind today,” Annan says. “And it is a challenge that has a grave injustice at its heart. It is the major developed economies of the world which contribute the overwhelming majority of global greenhouse emissions. But it is the poorer and least developed nations that are hit hardest by its impact.

“By downloading ‘Beds Are Burning’ for free from major music download platforms on the Internet, people from around the world will be adding their names to this growing global petition—joining the campaign for climate justice and becoming a climate ally. This will be the first time ever that a musical petition has been created to demand decisive action from our world leaders.”

“Music is the universal language, capable of transcending cultures, generations, religions and races,” adds song producer Alexandre Sap. “A song or an artist truly has the power to translate a message or a movement more than any politician or world leader can on a global scale. This will create a voice for all of us who deserve to have a say leading up to Copenhagen in December. The goal is to draw enough attention to an event that will affect everyone’s lives on the planet.”

You may download the song from the Time for Climate Justice website, Amazon or iTunes. 

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children and Our Grandchildren

Whether you take the global warming argument or not, just look around, the whole world is preaching fuel efficiency.

And what’s wrong with that! It is almost 2010, if we can’t have flying cars yet, let’s at least have super efficient vehicles.   

But not everyone agrees. A new study shows some Americans cry patriotism and tout it’s their right to drive an abomination.

Hummer drivers say they are defending America’s frontier lifestyle. So all those housewives from the suburbs, blinged out rappers in Los Angeles, and well-groomed businessmen in New York City, are frontier people? Yee hah!

Writing in the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers found American Hummer owners claim a moral high ground, insisting they represent patriots who stand up against all the anti-American discourse.

Hummer owners feel it is their right to over-consume and have adopted the role of “moral protagonist” and defend traditional American values.

So can’t you also make the same argument that segregation, “Irish need not apply,” and child labor, are “traditional” values too? Dumbest argument ever!

Via EurekAlert!

Image credit: Petrol-Head