Tag Archives: nature

The Environment Is Dead: Long Live Mother Nature

Posted on by Sherry Mac

Environmentalism’s failure raises key questions in moving forward

“Environmentalism has failed” is a statement that deserves attention. It comes from famed environmentalist David Suzuki marking 50 years since Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring,helped spark the modern environmental movement.Clouded Earth. (Wikimedia Commons / Stephen Slade Tien)

Suzuki’s recent essay,Environmentalism Has Failed: On Adopting a Biocentric Viewpoint, on the fundamental failure of environmentalism is ominous. The world faces not only environmental calamities such as deforestation, coral reef depletion, and freshwater shortages, it is also mired in economic crises and harsh political realities. Despite the promise of “Arab Springs” and the global Occupy movement, we are increasingly in planetary peril. Throughout his life, David Suzuki has been a leading educator on planetary health; his conclusion about the environmental movement’s failure must be agonizing. Perhaps that’s why his blog offered no new way forward.

What now?

Read More…

Free Your (Eco) Mind

Posted on by Sherry Mac

Gradually it’s dawned on me: We humans are creatures of the mind. We perceive the world according to our core, often unacknowledged, assumptions. They determine, literally, what we can see and what we cannot. Nothing so wrong with that, perhaps—except that, in this crucial do-or-die moment, we’re stuck with a mental map that is life-destroying.                                                          (Photo: Daniel Valle)

 And the premise of this map is lack—not enough of anything, from energy to food to parking spots; not enough goods and not enough goodness. In such a world, we come to believe, it’s compete or die. The popular British writer Philip Pullman says, “we evolved to suit a way of life which is acquisitive, territorial, and combative” and that “we have to overcome millions of years of evolution” to make the changes we need to avoid global catastrophe.

 If I believed that, I’d feel utterly hopeless. How can we align with the needs of the natural world if we first have to change basic human nature? Read more…

4/20: How Weed Day Got Its Name

Posted on by Sherry Mac

This article was originally published on April 20, 2009, and has been reposted each year since. This year, it is updated to include the full identities of the men behind the coining of the term “420,” as well as additional details. Carly Schwartz contributed to this story.

Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist, routinely plays with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, touring as The Dead. It’s the spring of 2009, he’s just finished a Dead show in Washington, D.C., and he gets a pop quiz from The Huffington Post.

Where does “420″ come from?

He pauses and thinks, hands on his sides. “I don’t know the real origin. I know myths and rumors,” he says. “I’m really confused about the first time I heard it. It was like a police code for smoking in progress or something. What’s the real story?”

Wavy Gravy is a hippie icon with his own ice cream flavor who has been hanging out with the Dead for decades. HuffPost spots him outside the same concert. Asked about the term 420, he suggests it began “somewhere in the foggy mists of time. What time is it now? I say to you, ‘Eternity now.’”

Depending on whom you ask or their state of inebriation, there are as many varieties of answers as strains of medical bud in California. It’s the number of active chemicals in marijuana. It’s teatime in Holland. It has something to do with Hitler’s birthday. It’s those numbers in that Bob Dylan song multiplied.

The origin of the term 420, celebrated around the world by pot smokers every April 20, has long been obscured by the clouded memories of the folks who made it a phenomenon. Read more…

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Cholera outbreak kills more than 10,000 birds in California

Posted on by Sherry Mac


JEFF BARNARD/AP

TULELAKE, Calif. — Dave Mauser walked the edge of a mudflat, peering underneath the dried brown rushes where one coot after another had gone to hide and then die.

“Now the coots are getting the worst of it,” said Mauser, head biologist on the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, the nation’s first large marshland preserved for waterfowl habitat. “Prior to that it was the snow geese and the white-fronted geese.”

Standing in line for scarce water behind both endangered fish and agriculture, Lower Klamath Lake has watched one marsh after another dry up in recent years. Now migratory geese, ducks and other waterfowl that come here by the millions, following the Pacific Flyway, are so closely packed together that an outbreak of avian cholera has killed more than 10,000 birds, mostly pintail ducks, Ross’ geese, snow geese and now coots. Read more…

Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges

Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge

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Solutions for Pet Owners

Posted on by Mac Ruffkins

Your roving, sniffing reporter is back with a few more tips.

Achoo! With all this cold and unpredictable weather we’ve been having, it’s cold season for some of us pets. Holestic vets recommend elderberry tea to treat sneezy, runny noses (I think this may even help our humans too). Steep 1 tea bag or 1 teaspoon of elderberry flowers (available at health food stores) in 2 cups of boiling water for 15 minutes. Let the liquid cool, then strain out the tea bag or flowers (which can be toxic), and pour into your pet’s water bowl (1/2 cup at a time), and store the rest in the fridge until needed. Elderberry’s immunity-boosting antioxidants will help you recover in three to five days.

 

Many cat and dog owners have a lot of trouble getting pet fur off the furniture. We pets love sleeping on the sofa because it’s so comfortable we just can’t help ourselves, but there is a better remedy for removing fur then dragging out that awful vacuum cleaner (that scares some of us). Grab a pair of old, clean panty hose and stick your hand in one leg, then run your hand over the furniture. The tightly woven nylon fibers will easily pick up the pesky fur. Tip: For fur under the couch or bed, slip a leg of the panty hose over the end of a broomstick, secure with a rubber band, and slide it around under the furniture.

Many pet owners have plants and those kitties love to nibble on them. Well, we can put a stop to that. Try sprinkling used coffee grounds on top of the potting soil. Cats are repelled by the coffee ground scent, so they’ll stay away. Plus, coffee is rich in phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, and copper, which will help fertilize your plants. Then you can sit down and enjoy a cup of fresh coffee and watch your plants thrive while the cats nibble on catnip.

Like humans we get upset stomachs too, so here is a vet-approved remedy for doggie diarrhea: Pepto Bismol. Just like humans, the pink stuff will coat our stomachs and provide relief from abdominal pain, loose stools, and excessive gas, but check with your vet before dosing. General guidelines: 1/2 teaspoon for dogs under 10 pounds, 1 teaspoon for dogs 10 to 50 pounds, and 2 teaspoons for dogs over 50 pounds. Do not dose more than once in an eight hour period. CAUTION: Pepto Bismol is toxic to cats so use this tip on dogs only.

That’s all for this week pet lovers, but tune in for more helpful solutions next week!