Eco Wrap – TreeHugger, Vanity Fair, and Monsanto

TGIF! Have an awesome weekend everyone!

Woot! This week I was named as one of TreeHugger.com’s favorite greens of the week! They are a huge blog (the big daddy of green) with a huge readership so I am honored. You can see their banner with my blog in it at the bottom of this post.

I received a very useful link from a new Twitter friend this week which I think nicely sums up the ways you can reduce waste. I especially like #8.

Vanity Fair has done it again. Another awesome green issue! Last year I wrote all about their feature article which took on anti-global warming liars lobbyists. This year they took on my all time most despised company on this planet…Monsanto. The article was prettyscathing too. Monsanto, for those that don’ t know is a chemical company. They make Round-Up weed killer and they genetically modify (GM) seeds and patent them. The article talks much about how they have a huge network of spies that haunt farmlands to see if anyone is using their seeds without paying for them. They bring lawsuits willy nilly even if there is no proof and seek to bankrupt the farmers guilty or no. They even sue farmers who have had the misfortune of having GM seeds blow onto their land from nearby crops. Let’s not even get into how WRONG it is to be able to patent a seed…a living biological organism that they did not invent and could not replicate even if they tried.

Monsanto is also the company that makes rBST, the growth hormone given to cows to make them produce milk at hyper speed. It is dangerous and unhealthy for the cows and many think it is dangerous for us. In fact these products are banned in Europe. Well, Monsanto is suing companies that advertise that they do NOT use rBST…they don’t think it is fair. They are also going state by state lobbying to get laws passed that ban milk companies from labeling their milk hormone free. This company is EVIL and they control much our country’s food supply. Scary stuff!

I also enjoyed an article from Rachels’ Democracy and Health News about how the attitude that economic growth outweighs environmental harm is biting us in the backside as we have exceeded many of Earth’s ecological limits as of now. This was VERY interesting:

 About six months ago, the United Nations Environment Programme’s fourth Global Environmental Outlook Report (GEO-4) concluded that we humans presently require 22 acres per person to support our global average lifestyle — but, the report said, Earth has only 15 acres per person available.

In other words, we have already exceeded the Earth’s “carrying capacity” — it’s capacity to “carry” (or support) 6 billion humans. And the human enterprise is poised for a massive spurt of economic and population growth — expected to raise our numbers to 9 billion by roughly mid-century and to double the size of the human economy every 23 years.

Where I live in rural Ohio I would be rich if I had a nickel for every time I have had someone tell me that my environmental concerns need to take a back seat to economic growth. Talk about short-sighted.

And in unrelated news I am a big fan of Homemaker’s Mentor and just wanted to shout out about their April homemaking lessons. The one on sewing simple curtains for your home is awesome.

Lastly, I wanted to say thanks to all the readers that have been emailing with requests about specific topics. I LOVE that so keep it up. I have many posts coming up that were specifically requested and don’t forget if you ever want to give me a day off and write for me…just contact me.

Have a great weekend everyone! Mine will be spent spring cleaning my 2.5 acres in central Ohio and planting in the garden.