Act Now!

Yacouba Sawadogo's Vision

By Peter Rothberg

In the course of researching his forthcoming book on global warming, Living Through the Storm: How My Daughter's Generation Can Survive Climate Change, The Nation's environmental correspondent Mark Hertsgaard recently reported on what he considers one of the most encouraging developments taking place in the fight against global warming.

The story, as Hertsgaard explained recently on Public Radio International's The World, features West African farmers who rank among the poorest people in the world--and among those most threatened by climate change--who are taking effective steps to protect themselves, and sharing this knowledge with their neighbors far and wide.

The visionary behind the effort, Yacouba Sawadogo, was profiled by Andrew Leonard in Salon back in 2006, when Leonard explained how some three million hectares of degraded semi-arid land have been rehabilitated by farmers on their own initiative using traditional farming methods to restore soils damaged by desertification and drought largely thanks to Sawadogo's efforts.

Read More »

August 23, 2009

Bottled Water Sucks

By Peter Rothberg

I knew bottled water was a social ill but I didn't know how damaging it was until I saw an explosive and compelling new documentary called Tapped.

With style, verve and righteous anger, the film exposes the bottled water industry's role in suckering the public, harming our health, accelerating climate change, contributing to overall pollution, and increasing America's dependence on fossil fuels. All while gouging consumers with exorbitant and indefensible prices.

Claire Thompson summed up the problem well in her post on the movie at Grist:

Read More »

August 5, 2009

Stolen Beauty

By Peter Rothberg

Ahava Beauty Products promises "beauty secrets from the Dead Sea" but the real secret is that its products come from stolen Palestinian natural resources in the Occupied Territory, and are produced in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. The company's appropriation of materials from the Dead Sea is, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, a patently illegal use of resources by an occupying power.

Ahava puts a pretty face on its crimes, paying noted progressive actress and Oxfam Ambassador Kristen Davis to be its spokeswoman. But here's what Oxfam itself has to say about Ahava's business practices:

"The settlements on the West Bank are illegal under international humanitarian law and that creates a lot of problems for the Palestinians that live there."

Read More »

July 31, 2009

Fed Up With Corn

By Peter Rothberg

In Native American tradition, beans, squash and maize (or corn) were planted and grown together, supporting each other in their life-cycles and providing the foundation of a balanced diet offering carbohydrates, proteins and vegetable fats to their cultivators. The three crops were known as the "three sisters."

Those days, however, are as long gone as buffalos wildly roaming the plains. Michael Pollan's opus, The Omnivore's Dilemma, detailed the role of commodity corn in processed food and helped spark a chain reaction of impassioned documentaries and urgent op-ed pieces. As Pollan argues, spurred by government subsidies, US industrial farms grow more than 10 billion bushels of corn a year, far more than we can possibly eat, which leads directly to the mass consumption of corn-based fast food and high fructose corn syrup, which, in turn, leads directly to obesity, diabetes and numerous other health hazards.

Adding insult (and poor taste) to injury is another disturbing development which Daniel Patterson points out in a post at San Francisco Magazine: The corn that we eat has lost its flavor, falling victim to America's drift toward sweet, heavy-handed, one-dimensional tastes.

Read More »

July 27, 2009

End the Needle Exchange Ban

By Peter Rothberg

This post was written by Sarah Jaffe, a blogger, freelance journalist and Nation intern.

The drug war : it has failed to reduce the number of Americans using illegal drugs, it has not significantly affected world production of those drugs, it has clogged the prison system with non-violent offenders and it has dehumanized a significant part of the American population.

Read More »

July 24, 2009

Shop Locally

By Peter Rothberg

According to the 3/50 Project, for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. If you spend that with a national chain, only $43 stays at home. Spend it online and nothing stays in the community.

So, shopping locally is one of the best means available to support an economy based on small businesses rather than large corporations, to maintain regional diversity, to help sustain local public schools, to increase community job creation, and to maintain the availability of a wide range of products, good, services, media and food based, not on a national sales plan, but on the interests, needs and peculiarities of local communities as determined by community members themselves. This blog post by Rieva Lesonsky, Consulting Editor at BizWomen.com, explains well why it's so important to support local businesses.

The 3/50 Project is trying to make it easy to drop your dollars in ways that maximize the benefit to small brick and mortar institutions. The goal is simple: Ask consumers to frequent three local brick and mortar businesses they don't want to see disappear, and to spend $50 per month at each establishment.

Read More »

July 23, 2009

Whitey on the Moon

By Peter Rothberg

Thanks to Liliana Segura for reminding me of the great singer Gil Scott-Heron's take on Neil Armstrong's historic moon landing forty years ago today.

Scott-Heron recorded the spoken-word poem -- a humorous broadside criticizing the US government for spending billions of dollars on the space program while ignoring social issues -- in 1970, and the song has been widely credited with inspiring the development of rap music later in the decade.

Read More »

July 20, 2009

Don't Let Chipotle Fool You

By Peter Rothberg

All this week, Chipotle is seizing on the opportunity to promote its brand by sponsoring country-wide free screenings of the great new documentary Food, Inc..

There's just one problem here: Food, Inc.'s director, Robert Kenner, and co-producer, Eric Schlosser have been outspoken critics of Chipotle's exploitive production practices and just last month joined more than two dozen food justice leaders in signing a sharply-worded letter of protest to company CEO Steve Ells just last month.

Chipotle, the country's fastest-growing fast food chain, has resisted efforts by farm-workers demanding a lasting commitment to ending the brutal exploitation in Florida's fields. As the letter says, in part:

Read More »

July 15, 2009

Stop the F-22

By Peter Rothberg

This post was written by Sarah Jaffe, a blogger, freelance journalist and Nation intern.

As symbols of the overinflated military budget go, the F-22 takes the cake. The Washington Post recently reported that the jet costs $44,000 an hour to fly (in addition to its $350 million price tag) and requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour it spends in the air. Military experts agree that the F-22 is outdated and unnecessary. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called the plane a "niche silver-bullet solution," and has urged President Obama to veto any bill that continues reinstated funding for the jet.

Read More »

July 14, 2009

Hungry for Change

By Peter Rothberg

With a nod to the wonderful Nation magazine feature conceived by Walter Mosley, here's a list of ten simple things you can do to help change our food system for the better, drawn largely from the Hungry for Change campaign.

1. Stop drinking soda.
(Great way to lose weight too.)
2. Eat at home more than you eat out.
(Save money; eat healthier.)
3. Support the passage of laws requiring chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus and menu boards. (Knowledge is power.)
4. Help get schools to stop selling junk food. (Our tastes start young.)
5. Go without meat at least one day each week -- Meatless Mondays? (Single best way to help the environment is to become a vegetarian.)
6. Buy organic and/or sustainable foods without pesticides. (Chemicals kill.)
7. Support family farms by shopping at farmer's markets and CSAs. (Take market share away from the corporate sector.)
8. Know where your food comes from. Read labels! (Knowledge is power #2.)
9. Tell Congress that food safety is critical. (Regulations need to be expanded.)
10. Demand job protections for workers along each point of the food processing chain. (Labor rights are a critical part of food safety.)

I know I've missed lots of stuff. Add your own ideas in the comments field below.

Read More »

July 13, 2009