Amerindia US Blog

Sustainable, healthy, environmentally and lifestyle – Design for Sustainable Lifestyle

Sustainable Lifestyle Town

Gay marriage, adoption, legalized in Argentina, first in South America.

argentina.gay.marriage

First in a series of articles in the Boston Globe about “El Sistema”, the energy of young people from around the world putting magic in the music at the Boston Conservatory of Music. Hopefully this new music will send sound waves of good energy to turn war into peace, injustice into humanitarianism, poverty into improvement in living for all, environmental destruction into sustainability – that it will be another path to a general harmony with the earth.

El Sistema music at Boston Conservatory of Music

This article is exceptionally good in covering the importance of good old fashioned farming practices. Well, maybe not some of them, like those that resulted in the US dust bowl of the 1930s. But what healed that disaster is what is being talked about here. Good, sustainable agricultural practices; water, land, and natural resource management that preserves food, water, and the environment in a non-technical way.
The west is currently trying to sell technical solutions to the African continent. But it has the same motivation that keeps it going – to our detriment and poor health – in the west. That is, dependence on artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics – all “necessary” because of intense monoculture production. This is for profit, not for the health of the farmers, the consumers, or the land and environment.
Wherever the “technological food revolution” is being touted, there should be a look back at the Western culture where it started. One can see the poverty, desperation, and elimination of the small farmer, sustainable methods, loss of land and water resources, and poor health of the consumers.
We could go on, but this article really says it best. The only thing it fails to say is that the West should be heading this warning too, not just Africa.
Western policy bad for Africa

The toll of oil drilling, and the inevitability of spills and its effects.
The toll of oil drilling

Turning land into farmland. Sustainable agriculture for farms and farmers, wherever they come from. A lesson that should inform everywhere.
http://www.grist.org/article/Kansas-City-pioneers-new-models-for-urban-farms/

A study going on in Vermont demonstrates how everything is connected, and begins with soil science. We “enrich” the land with fertilizers, pollute it with phosphates from sewage waste and runoff, and some is imbalance in the soil that is eroding away. It’s a loss of soil and a contaminate for our water.

Vermont studies soil, the consequences of phosphates and erosion

Malawi has gone in a few short years from being a starving nation to one that has an abundance of food for its people, and a surplus to assist other African nations. This was done by good government, sidestepping corruption, and instituting good land management practices that match their environment. GMOs were not necessary to reach this outcome, but good government was. There are a couple of great short videos on this link.

http://johnkaranja.com/2009/09/14/malawis-food-revolution/

The fight is on about salt in processed food. This article is an interesting light on how processed foods taste without it. It should raise alarm bells about not only the amount of salt in processed food, but what we’re eating underneath all that salt. First fat and sugar, now we find out how much salt is covering for nutritionally deficient food. It’s the usual line up of Cargill, ConAgra, Kraft, and so on and so on. What we know is that most of our processed food comes from a few major food ‘producers’, with a multitude of brands that are subsidiaries of the major food companies. And we are certain that more is invested in finding out what flavors are appealing than in what nutritional value is being delivered.

The major food producers are fighting back, and the latest argument is that without high amounts of salt, the Processed food “will disappoint the consumer and it won’t sell.” We are not against salt – we need small amounts of salt, and we use unbleached sea salt for the trace minerals we need and a little zip to top off a good, fresh, organic, whole foods. But salt should be the addition we choose; salt should Not be in our food as a cover up for the nasty flavors and textures that we shouldn’t be eating anyway. Take salt away from processed foods, and our primitive taste instincts would tell us – “oh, nasty, don’t eat that stuff.”
We recommend a small amount of unbleached sea salt, and no processed food.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/health/30salt.html?pagewanted=1&hp

We just found this on Twitter. A variety of useful tips on how to save money, and also have an eco-friendly lifestyle.
http://twitter.com/Rubbingnickels

Monsanto, Sygenta, Dupont, Bayer, the “gift” of GMOs and pesticides. The gift that makes us sick, ruins small farming (if they don’t sue you to economic death first). This “gift” that is talked of as what will solve the world’s need for food, is on the march to eventually starve us all. We can’t believe that the executives of these companies eat anything they produce.
Changing their tag line from “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible” to “Imagine.” Oh, we can imagine, and it’s a nightmare in the making. We in Amerindia think these companies are propagating a crime against the people. All people.
This article really sums it up:
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2927

The Queen of Amerindia

“If you have an interest in sustainable living, then we’d like to invite you to join the Permaculture Guild in our mission to support the permaculture community and encourage the spread of more conscious ways of growing and distributing healthy, nourishing foods and promoting the use of renewable sources of energy.”
http://www.permacultureguild.org/

From this article:
“EEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.

“Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

“Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050.”

The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed “over the edge” into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.

For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.

The launch of GBO-3 comes as governments begin two weeks of talks in Nairobi aimed at formulating new measures to tackle global biodiversity loss that can be adopted at October’s Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Japan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10103179.stm

The NYT article says discusses this article with a question mark. They haven’t been paying attention to the state of Vermont, which has outlined what a socially responsible business is. They question profitability, when we should be moving toward a world in which “profit” has a different meaning. Rather than huge returns to investors (who in the high stakes games are just gambling, with their finger on the roulette wheel), return can be interpreted to be ‘benefit to the community.’ So yogurt to children isn’t a hugely profitable enterprise in the now rather distorted sense, but it is a high return for the health and benefit of a community. So maybe we get healthy communities we no longer have to beg charities to chuck huge amounts of relief money into where ‘high rates of return’ have sucked it out. We hope this book makes it big, and creates prosperous communities, not just individuals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02shelf.html?emc=eta1

High Fructose Corn Syrup is just that. They are going to change the name so you don’t suspect the chemicals used in it’s making, and this is a highly subsidized genetically modified crop. Bad science can’t defend it. HFCS Not!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02syrup.html?emc=eta1

US farmers fighting back against giant agrabusiness and animal factories – and winning.

How to move from a lost environment to a renewed environment, climate, and society. Save 20″ to see this worth every second video.
Willie Smits restores a rainforest

We have to seriously reduce, marginalize, eliminate the need for plastics, much of it packaging, and much else that is just junk or could be made of something else. Plastic can be recycled into some useful products, however, recycling in general just uses up more energy, and then we’re making more plastic and the cycle goes on. Until more and more of it shows up in our environment, as giant globs of plastic forming in our oceans and polluting our shores indicates.
Once the word was “Plastics!” (made famous by “The Graduate”). Now it should be “Plastics – Not!”
Plastics in our oceans and on our beaches

Regarding our comments on leadership in our last post: a Pew Poll shows that US citizen’s trust in their leadership in government and institutions “has plummeted to a near-historic low.” We do know that there are bright spots and good leaders, but unfortunately they are too few, and in a democracy, it is critical to have a full quorum of good leaders. We need leaders who see themselves as responsible to the people who elect them, and those who are immune to selling their votes behind closed doors.

We think our comments on lack of good leadership was timely, and is supported by this poll.
Pew Poll: Trust in Government His Near-Historic Low

The Queen of Amerindia

We have commented on many issues as US administrations have come and gone, and as the world of nations elbow their way into, or fall away from, the progress of nations into the contemporary world. But our comments quickly become dated, so we leave specifics and details for another time. Our comment for today is that we need, everywhere, more responsible, grown up leaders. We need leaders who see beyond their own gain, and instead work for a Sustainable Good that they can leave behind. We need this from all the princes, presidents, CEOs, and other leaders of our time.

We wonder why the promises of a healthy, civilized society do not materialize as promised. More is not better, false science betrays, cures can become an ill begotten cause, choice becomes confusion, complexity obscures, and money purchases opinion, understanding, and leadership. As the world seems to shrink, we struggle with world problems that continue to be bigger than we are. Economy, politics, agriculture, environment, water – on a world scale much is not well. Hunger, poverty, disease, human rights, war, inequality – band aid solutions, token attempts, and even some very good and well intentioned ideas too, are not enough to stem the march into problems we can identify. And there is an angst that we no longer have another place, another neighborhood, another country – another earth, that we can escape to.

We see a fundamental issue that many leaders are as a child, or adolescent. First a child feels only for himself, then hopefully grows to understand the rights, feelings, and needs of others. Then comes adolescence, full of energy and drive, but still full of self. And adolescence is known for taking risks, a sense of invulnerability, and often not making the connection with future consequences.

But we hear “How could I have known?”, “I must have been wrong [ for 30 years]“, “there were no such memos – we had no idea”, “I don’t remember”, “we actually didn’t understand what derivatives were”, “I don’t know where the money went”, “the research proved it was safe”, “the data was flawed”, “unsubstantiated fears”, “it’s safe for humans”, “it was pilot error”, “we have no idea where the contamination came from”, “it’s the fault of the media for making it public”, “it’s technically legal”, and on and on. This sounds like the infamous “the dog ate my homework.” In other words, I’m not responsible for what happened, even though I’m in charge, and I don’t expect there to be consequences. Adolescent thinking.

This is true now with unimaginable Greed. The thought that one can take any amount, endlessly, regardless of the methods, that no one will catch on, I can bully my way out if they do, that I can buy the important things, it will make me all powerful and popular [forever], and there will be no consequence I can’t get out of. Adolescent.

It would seem to us that much of our problems are created by those who have not achieved full maturity.

Companies and kings, leaders of all kinds, many cannot think what their actions will get them in the long term. They do not see that power and wealth, no matter what you think it gets you now, you will not have it always. It will not buy you trust and true friends; it may get you compliance but with fear, not respect; true loyalty is not for sale . You will get sick, you will get old. Whatever you took from this world, no thing will leave it with you.

We need leaders who can live not at the expense of others, who are not afraid of transparency, who are ready to be accountable, and understand that our value is a measure of what we give, not what we have taken. We need the people to be fully informed of the whole truth, and to be strong and wise enough to demand the rightful behavior of leaders who guide our life on this planet, and life for the next generation.

The Queen of Amerindia