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

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

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

Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, director of documentaries like The Civil War and Baseball, trains his lens on The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, a six-episode series that premieres Sunday on PBS. (Click here to view a preview. You may also purchase the DVD boxed set or companion book on Oct. 6.) 

Sadly, well-known parks like Yellowstone, Joshua Tree, the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Acadia (right) are beginning to show their age, and they’re now threatened by funding shortfalls, pollution, climate change and encroaching developers. 

This hasn’t stopped committed individuals from fighting for the parks’ survival: 

• Maxine Johnston, dubbed the “Godmother” of Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas, worked tirelessly for 50 years to help protect some 100,000 acres of highly diverse wildlife habitat.
• Former Miami Herald reporter Juanita Green, featured in Burns’s film, wrote stories that were instrumental in creating and protecting Biscayne National Park. In the 1960s, the park was threatened by a proposal to dredge a channel through the bay and turn the area into a city.

 So, what can you do to help? 

1. Visit and explore one of our 391 national parks. Share your experiences with others to build support.
2. Join the movement without leaving home. Sign up for news and action alerts. Write to President Obama, and contact your congressional representatives and other decision makers. Voice your concerns about park conservation.
3. Reduce your carbon footprint. Global warming’s effects are already visible at national parks. At Glacier National Park, glaciers are disappearing faster than scientists predicted. In parks across the country, native trees and animals are losing ground because changing temperature and weather patterns affect the availability of food, water and shelter. Visit the Do Your Part! For Climate Friendly Parks website, which  helps you calculate your carbon footprint. Set goals for buying local foods, reducing automobile use and saving energy at home.

Photo courtesy of ARA

A former Miss Denmark, Helena Christensen is perhaps best known as a magazine cover model and Revlon spokesmodel.

Now a successful photographer and environmental activist, she recently traveled to Peru—her mother’s native country—to document the serious effects of global warming.

“The impacts of climate change are extremely severe in the areas we visited,” says Christensen, who traveled with Oxfam. “The farmers we met and talked to are already living very hard lives and are now being forced to adapt to the effects of the rapidly changing climate.

“One of the women I spoke to, Elizabeth Ayma, told me that because rainfall is less frequent now and impossible to predict due to the climate changes, this is having a huge effect on crop production,” she adds. “As a result, her family has less food to eat and less produce to sell, resulting in her not being able to afford her children’s school fees. The lack of nutritional vegetables also affects her family’s health.”

Christensen documented her trip through photographs, which will be exhibited in New York, Washington, London and at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, to be held in Copenhagen in December.

“Peru is on the frontline of climate change, along with other developing countries, which have played little part in causing the problem,” says Frank Boeren, Oxfam’s coordinator in Peru. “It is crucial that rich leaders do the right thing at Copenhagen so that we can begin to stop runaway climate change and protect vulnerable people around the world.”

“We are at a critical tipping point,” Christensen adds. “We need to put pressure on our governments in order for them to take the necessary, radical steps that are needed. There’s no time left; it is absolutely imperative to act now.”

For Your Organic Bookshelf: With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change

Photo courtesy of Oxfam America

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and California State Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) Friday cohosted a forum on climate change, which drew more than 400 attendees.

The legislators focused on California’s role as a national leader on climate policies, with emphasis on the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32, which Pavley authored as chair of the Select Committee on Climate Change) and The American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454, which Waxman authored as chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce).

The event was presented by the UCLA Institute of the Environment’s Center for Climate Change Solutions, the UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment, the UCLA Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, and the UCLA Office of Government and Community Relations.

“The fact is that climate policy creates jobs and saves consumers money,” Pavley said. “The fear tactics of carbon industry-backed lobbyists just flies in the face of what is in our best interests.

“The whole world is depending on what the U.S. does,” she added. “The dependence on foreign oil—the ability for some countries to hold our country hostage, economically speaking—is going in the wrong direction.” 

“We had a president who censored the research that his scientists were doing on global warming,” Waxman said. “He and his political people denied there was global warming. We had eight years of inactivity rather than leadership.”

Ret. Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn discussed the national-security dangers climate change poses, emphasizing the need for alternatives to all fossil fuels so the United States is less dependent on oil-producing countries. He said Americans use 25% of oil consumed worldwide each year, but we can produce no more than 3% of it.

 ”We cannot drill our way to sustained economic security,” he concluded. 

Editor’s note: Click here to watch Pavley’s recent PBS interview. 

For Your Organic Bookshelf: State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World

Insufficient government response to global warming is a major concern around the world, according to a new poll from the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes.

More than 18,500 respondents in 19 countries were asked:

• How high a priority does the government place on addressing climate change?
• Using the same scale, how high a priority do you think the government should place on addressing climate change?
• What is your guess on how high a priority the average person in [your country] thinks the government should place on addressing climate change?
• Do you perceive yourself differently from the public on how high a priority climate change should be?

As worldpublicopinion.org noted:

Majorities in 15 [countries] think their government should put a higher priority on addressing climate change than it does now. This includes the largest greenhouse gas emitters: China (62% want more action), the U.S. (52%) and Russia (56%).

Other countries polled included India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, Chile, Germany, Great Britain, France, Poland, Ukraine, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, the Palestinian territories and South Korea.

Specific study results can be viewed here.

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley

The banner, measuring 65 feet high by 35 feet wide, sends a clear message to politicians that climate change must be a top priority and politics as usual are not acceptable. Greenpeace insists the flag was not installed in any way that may damage carvings.

Oh, and just yesterday, Greenpeace took over four coal-fired power stations in Italy.

Via Ecorazzi.

And this is not earthy-crunchy finger-pointing. Rather, it’s the work of 12 federal agencies, including NASA and Environmental Protection Agency.

It’s scary. The risks global warming poses for the U.S. are steep and far reaching, ranging from spread of disease, drought, sea-level rise and more.

Here are some important findings:

• Human population growth and overuse of resources contributes to climate change.

• Global warming is happening in the U.S. and will get worse.

• Droughts and flooding are compromising water sources.

• Hotter temperatures are making it difficult to farm and raise livestock.

• Rising sea-levels and storm surge threaten coasts and increase erosion.

• Poor air quality and pollution endanger human health.

• Weather changes worsen airborne and waterborne diseases.

• And our actions to curb climate change today will impact our future.

For the entire report, check out: United States Global Change Research Program.

Via ENN.