Change the World Wednesday – 31st Jul

Well, this week has been kind of rough.

Apart from the cold that has devastated Brazil for the last week and destroyed many crops that have already had an impact on the market. Milk has shot up in price, from R$2.70/lt to R$3.30/lt because cattle feed has gone up in price. I ask myself, why don’t they feed the cows on grass? Grass doesn’t go up in price.

The major upset this week, was the unexpected death of Lixo, my cat. He was poisoned, along with the neighbour’s fox terrier. You can read my post RIP, my Friend for the full story.

Lixo was AWOL for three days, then on Saturday, I heard the news.

My little furball rubbish (Lixo is Portuguese for rubbish) has been recycled. He is buried along with Herbie under a small palm tree that my neighbour grew from seed in the praça he loved so much.

It was with tears that I cleaned up Kitty Korner for the last time.

I remain hopeful; all my cats have come from the street, so it won’t be long before another comes along, that I can repurpose.

Click on the banner for the full post

This week’s CTWW, is about the Tar sands oil pipeline, an important issue, not only for the USA, but globally.

Have you heard about the Tar Sands Oil Pipeline? It not only threatens wildlife and natural habitat, it threatens drinking water. While it directly affects Canada and the United States, it sets a dangerous precedent worldwide … that the use of fossil fuel is acceptable. Let’s raise our voices and let the world know that we not only want to stop the Tar Sands Oil Pipeline but we want sustainable, environmentally-safe energy. Please sign this Petition (appropriate worldwide).

 

OR …

Choose any of the petitions found HERE (or choose a cause specific to your area) and take action.

 

OR …

Contact your public officials via letter, email or phone regarding your environmental concerns.

Because of the anonymity I maintain on the net, I will not be signing petitions, but I will spread the word and urge all my readers.

My reason for anonymity is not cowardice, for those of you who have known my blogs over the years will be aware that because I am outspoken in many areas; an attempt to be anonymous is a case of self preservation. My blogs have already been wiped once, and I don’t want to lose all my work again. Just because I am in Brazil, doesn’t mean that I am immune from NSA; it turns out that Brazil has the highest rate of eavesdropping by NSA in Latin America, and Brazilians are not at all happy about this.

The world is changing, and it is not for the better.

Simple Green Ideas

Sometimes the most surprising things can be repurposed in ways we never thought of.

It’s time to get your old boots into the kitchen!

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Don’t forget to line them with an old jar, or those wooden spoons are have an odour all of their own.

Monday Moaning

New Zealand pushing plans to drill Middle-earth as Hobbit filming ends

Plans to ramp up fossil fuel exploration, coal mining and sea bed dredging have New Zealand environment groups worried.

Still from The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring.

It’s probably safe to assume that New Zealand‘s conservative Prime Minister John Key likes the Lord of the Rings films and is probably partial to a little bit of Hobbit.

After all, ever since the short stumpy bloke with the hairy feet went off to try and chuck a ring down that hole in Mount Doom, New Zealand’s tourism bosses have been as happy as Orcs at an all-you-can-eat Elf buffet.

According to the New Zealand Tourism Board, about 13 per cent of overseas tourists between January and March took part in some sort of “Hobbit experience” while hanging around all those deep blue lakes, snow-tipped mountains and green, craggy valleys that are the cinematographer’s dream. The board credits the film for tens of millions of dollars in tourism income.

New Zealand has long pushed its international image under the signature “100 % Pure New Zealand” marketing brand. Last year the marketing people tweaked the brand to “100 % Middle-earth” to further cash-in on the film series’ international reach. The campaign saw a 23 per cent increase in visitors from the US, seen as a key market.

Filming for the third Hobbit movie ended in New Zealand only last week, with the final installment set for release sometime around December 2014. That leaves plenty more time for New Zealand’s tourism industry to playfully twiddle with Bilbo Baggins’ curly hair.

But just days before filming ended, National Party leader Prime Minister Key – who is also the tourism minister – delivered a YouTube address that made clear he thinks the future for New Zealand lies not so much in filming Middle-earth, but drilling it for oil and gas. He said:

New Zealand’s natural landscapes are part of what makes this country so special and unique. No matter where I am overseas people want to talk to me about how beautiful our scenery is…

I believe that energy and resources could well be a game changer for New Zealand. The next five years are crucial as we encourage further exploration. This is important because if we are to increase our oil and gas exploration by 50 per cent, we could potentially earn Royalties of up to $13 billion, which is huge…

Ultimately we need to grow our economy by increasing our earning potential. That’s the only way that our government can provide the resources that our families need and the jobs our families want.

See the video & read more

Opinion:

Lord of the Rings which has bought New Zealand so much, and possibly so much more yet is going to be pushed aside for the energy hunt.

New Zealand is often considered as one of the world’s last pristine countries in the western world.

If these plans for mining, oil exploration, etc go ahead, the country’s reputation is going to take such a hammering, it’ll never recover. People will stay away in droves.

Shame really.

Nature Ramble

A bit different again this week.

Let’s look at what happens to sanitised townies when they move to the countryside

A short guide to the country for townies

Those who move to the country should realise it is violent and muddy, horses don’t need road tax and there is no poo fairy

Horse riders on the North Downs Way in Surrey. ‘When [town dwellers] come to the country, they try to sanitise it to make it more like the town.’ Photograph: ICP /Alamy

The gamekeeper on the shooting estate where I have a small country retreat received a phone call from a panic-stricken resident of the nearby village a few weeks ago.

“Is that the ranger?” asked the lady, who had recently moved from suburbia to our little corner of the Surrey countryside.

“Ranger?” said the gamekeeper. “There ain’t no ranger here.”

“Yes, well,” continued the lady, very flustered, “someone told me to call you because you are the person who takes care of foxes.”

“That I am,” said the gamekeeper, now on more solid ground.

“Thank goodness,” said the lady. “I need you to come and deal with a fox in my back garden.”

“Right you are,” said the gamekeeper, and he drove straight over to her large, elegant house, located the fox, and without further ado, put a fatal bullet in it. Upon which the lady came screaming out of her house.

“What did you do that for?” she wailed.

“You said you wanted it dealt with.”

“Yes, but you didn’t have to kill it.”

The gamekeeper then saw that he was dealing with a townie.

Townies, as the cricketer and country-dweller David Gower complained in a recent interview, have very little clue as to what life in the country is about and how one might survive it. Townies think you can deal with foxes by ways other than killing them. Perhaps they think you can hypnotise a fox into the back of a Land Rover and then take it for a course of aromatherapy, after which it will see the error of its ways and desist from slaughtering poultry, game birds, smaller farm animals and family pets.

Gower is right to say town dwellers should be forced to learn about the countryside, but I am not convinced you could make them listen.

When they come to the country, they try to sanitise it to make it more like the town. Where I am, we woke up one day to find that a millionaire who had moved into a mansion with faux turrets had, during the night, resurfaced with shiny tarmac the dirt track bridleway leading to his driveway. So when we ride our horses on it now, they skate down it.

There is also a lottery winner who flies his wife to the pub in his helicopter. All this is very irritating for those of us who try to live as nature intended, which is to say driving to the pub in a beaten-up Fiat Panda rather than landing there in a Sikorsky.

Wearily, therefore, and with no expectation they will heed it, I give townies this short guide to what they should know about the countryside before moving there:

1. It is violent. Get your head around this basic choice: kill foxes or watch them kill everything else. There is no other option.

2. Horses are entitled to walk on roads. Do not shout at riders to ride on the grass verge. This is not legal. And no, horse riders do not have to buy road tax, in case the charming man who once screeched at me to do so is reading this.

3. Wellies may become stained by mud. Get cheap ones for everyday and save your special edition Hunters for best. Ditto Range Rovers.

4. Dogs may defecate in woods. Please refrain from picking up your dog poo in deserted places and hanging it in a small black bag on a tree. There is no poo fairy who comes in the night to take it away.

5. Stiles are provided for your convenience. Do not stand next to them rattling gates and demanding farmers “open up” or you will call the police. If you can’t climb a fence without suing someone for emotional distress and/or going to the European court of human rights, please go back to suburbia.

6. Trees and grass may grow, as part of a natural process. Do not ring the council to complain. They get government money per head of population and if only six people live there, then all you need to know about the local services is this: there are none.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

Margarine v butter: are synthetic spreads toast?

Sales of margarine are in decline, due to a combination of reformulated recipes, price, health and taste. Do you defend marge, or is butter simply better?

Margarine: makes wonderfully crisp shortcrust pastry. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

Butter v marg: it’s a fight that has gone on for decades. On one side, there’s butter – rich, creamy, defiantly full-fat and made for millennia by churning the milk or cream from cattle. On the other, there’s margarine: the arriviste spread invented in the 1860s. It might not taste delicious, and it doesn’t sink into your toast like butter, but for decades margarine has ridden a wave of success as the “healthy” alternative.

No longer. Sales of margarine have plummeted in the last year, according to Kantar, with “health” spreads dropping 7.4% in sales. Flora has been particularly badly hit, losing £24m in sales, partly due to reformulating its recipe.

Meanwhile, butter is back in vogue. Brits bought 8.7% more blocks of butter last year, and 6% more spreadable tubs. This is partly due to the “narrowing price gap between butter and margarine,” Tim Eales of IRI told The Grocer, but also to the home baking revival led by Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and co. We’re all sticking unsalted butter in our sponges these days.

A yen for natural, unprocessed produce could also be a factor. “Since all the food scandals of the last 10 years, people are thinking about where their food comes from – butter is perceived as ‘pure’,” says food writer Signe Johansen. But is marg really out for the count? Big brands are owned by powerful multinationals such as Unilever, with huge marketing budgets. Don’t rule spreads out just yet.

Margarine was invented in 1869 by a French food scientist, Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, who responded to a challenge by Napoleon III. Napoleon wanted to find a long-life alternative to butter to feed troops in the Franco-Prussian war. Mège-Mouriès mixed skimmed milk, water and beef fat to create a substance similar to butter in texture, if not in taste. He called it “oleomargarine” after margarites, the Greek word for pearls – a reference to its pearly sheen. In 1871 he sold the patent to Jurgens, a Dutch firm now part of Unilever.

Beef fat was soon replaced by cheaper hydrogenated and non-hydrogenated vegetable oils. “Margarine gained a foothold during the first world war,” says food writer and historian Bee Wilson. “George Orwell wrote of the ‘great war’ that what he remembered most was not all the deaths but all the margarine. But at this stage people recognised it was an inferior substitute for butter: an ersatz food, like drinking chicory instead of coffee.”

In the second world war, British margarine brands were legally required to add vitamins to their recipes. “The move in status to margarine as a health food, marketing itself as a superior alternative, happened after the war,” says Wilson. Added “healthy” extras – vitamins, omega-3s, unpronounceables that lower your cholesterol – are still a mainstay of the market.

But while margarine has spent decades fighting butter on the health front, what about taste? “Margarine has never been able to replicate the flavour of true butter,” says Johansen. This despite the fact many brands add milk and cream to their spreads. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? Really? I can.

Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to find a defendant of margarine among food writers and chefs. One of the few exceptions is Marguerite Patten, who a fan of baking with Stork. Indeed, Stork does make for wonderfully crisp shortcrust pastry.

Margarine has taken a bashing on the health front in recent years, too. Negative press about trans fats in the 00s saw many brands remove hydrogenated fats from their spreads and reformulate their recipes. Growing suspicion of processed foods has led many consumers to return to butter. As Johansen puts it: “If you want a healthy heart, eat more vegetables.”

And yet, and yet. I’m looking at a tub of Pure Dairy-Free Soya Spread. It contains 14g saturated fat per 100g, compared to butter’s 54%. For many consumers, such stats still outweigh taste when it comes to deciding what’s on their toast. And what about vegans, and those with lactose intolerance? Margarine can fulfil needs that butter can’t.

It will never win any taste awards, but there is still a place for margarine on the supermarket shelves – even if there isn’t one for it in most food lovers’ fridges.

Opinion:

I have heard it said… or did I read it? That margarine is one molecule short of being plastic. Which just begs the question; would you melt your Tupperware to spread on your toast?

Whether that is true or not, I can’t remember the reference, the fact is that butter and margarine are from different planets.

I have both in the house. Principally, I use butter, but the marg comes in handy if I run out of soft butter. In a typical month I would use 7x250gm packs of butter, whereas a 250gm pot of marg lasts the whole month, and into the next.

Don’t even think about suggesting that I soften the butter in the microwave! I wouldn’t have one of those in the house; I have even thrown a new one out of a restaurant kitchen. Microwave ovens are pure evil!

“In the mid-1970s Russia banned microwaves. Now you may think that is pretty silly, until you look at the latest reports on how they f**k-up food beyond all recognition. More recent studies have shown that microwave ovens totally alter the structure of food, so much so, that it isn’t food anymore.

Yes, Russia made a good move.

Microwaves should be banned globally, but of course that’ll never happen. The microwave oven market is big. Corporations like this because there’s a lot of profit. Because the corporations run America, America will continue to have microwave ovens and obesity, yes, microwave ovens are a part of the obesity problem.” – From a Make you Fink on Friday post a year ago; feel free to take your microwave to the scrap-metal yard.

The evils of butter vs the benefits or margarine were touted by the margarine manufacturers who suppressed all evidence that didn’t fit their claims.

The same happened to natural dripping and lard vs vegetable cooking oils. The same happened to milk vs pateurised milk; I have drunk pure unpasteurised milk throughout much of my life and have never suffered the maladies as claimed.

No consideration was ever given to your health. Oh, they said so, because that’s what you wanted to hear. Nobody ever challenged it.

But people are beginning to see through this veil of secrecy, food scandals are more frequently being brought to the fore and people are stopping to think.

When are you going to stop and fink?

Global threat to food supply

…as water wells dry up, warns top environment expert

Lester Brown says grain harvests are already shrinking as US, India and China come close to ‘peak water’

Iraq is among the countries in the Middle East facing severe water shortages. Photograph: Ali al-Saadi/AFP

Wells are drying up and underwater tables falling so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, one of the world’s leading resource analysts has warned.

In a major new essay Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, claims that 18 countries, together containing half the world’s people, are now overpumping their underground water tables to the point – known as “peak water” – where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year.

The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to Brown: “Among the countries whose water supply has peaked and begun to decline are Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. By 2016 Saudi Arabia projects it will be importing some 15m tonnes of wheat, rice, corn and barley to feed its population of 30 million people. It is the first country to publicly project how aquifer depletion will shrink its grain harvest.

“The world is seeing the collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a geographic region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of the failure of governments in the region to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed and less irrigation water with which to feed them.”

Brown warns that Syria’s grain production peaked in 2002 and since then has dropped 30%; Iraq has dropped its grain production 33% since 2004; and production in Iran dropped 10% between 2007 and 2012 as its irrigation wells started to go dry.

“Iran is already in deep trouble. It is feeling the effects of shrinking water supplies from overpumping. Yemen is fast becoming a hydrological basket case. Grain production has fallen there by half over the last 35 years. By 2015 irrigated fields will be a rarity and the country will be importing virtually all of its grain.”

There is also concern about falling water tables in China, India and the US, the world’s three largest food-producing countries. “In India, 175 million people are being fed with grain produced by overpumping, in China 130 million. In the United States the irrigated area is shrinking in leading farm states with rapid population growth, such as California and Texas, as aquifers are depleted and irrigation water is diverted to cities.”

Falling water tables are already adversely affecting harvest prospects in China, which rivals the US as the world’s largest grain producer, says Brown. “The water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its maize is falling fast. Overpumping has largely depleted the shallow aquifer, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable.”

The situation in India may be even worse, given that well drillers are now using modified oil-drilling technology to reach water half a mile or more deep. “The harvest has been expanding rapidly in recent years, but only because of massive overpumping from the water table. The margin between food consumption and survival is precarious in India, whose population is growing by 18 million per year and where irrigation depends almost entirely on underground water. Farmers have drilled some 21m irrigation wells and are pumping vast amounts of underground water, and water tables are declining at an accelerating rate in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.”

In the US, farmers are overpumping in the Western Great Plains, including in several leading grain-producing states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Irrigated agriculture has thrived in these states, but the water is drawn from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge underground water body that stretches from Nebraska southwards to the Texas Panhandle. “It is, unfortunately, a fossil aquifer, one that does not recharge. Once it is depleted, the wells go dry and farmers either go back to dryland farming or abandon farming altogether, depending on local conditions,” says Brown.

“In Texas, located on the shallow end of the aquifer, the irrigated area peaked in 1975 and has dropped 37% since then. In Oklahoma irrigation peaked in 1982 and has dropped by 25%. In Kansas the peak did not come until 2009, but during the three years since then it has dropped precipitously, falling nearly 30%. Nebraska saw its irrigated area peak in 2007. Since then its grain harvest has shrunk by 15%.”

Brown warned that many other countries may be on the verge of declining harvests. “With less water for irrigation, Mexico may be on the verge of a downturn in its grain harvest. Pakistan may also have reached peak water. If so, peak grain may not be far behind.”

Opinion:

Just another example of, ‘we’re in the poo!

Oh, and the same thing is happening here in Brazil…

Change the World Wednesday – 24th Jul

Brazil nuts – castanha do Para

Brazil nuts are being frozen up and down the country this week.

I tell you, the climate skeptics are just plain WRONG!

Brazil is experiencing the worst cold in more than 40 years, and the most generalised cold ever.

A mass of chilled Antarctic air is stationed over the southern half of the country, and extending into the Amazon areas in the west. Eighty cities had snow yesterday, some of them hadn’t seen snow in 40 years.

Here in Rio de Janeiro we have been chilled since yesterday and expect to remain so until Saturday.

This weeks CTWW is just not going to happen!

Click on the banner for the full post

Let’s look at this week’s CTWW.

This week, rather than use your stove/oven to prepare meals, use counter-top appliances (crock-pot, toaster oven, electric skillet, etc.) or eat raw foods. No cheating … we’re not suggesting that you buy prepared foods or head for the nearest restaurant. The challenge is to prepare meals at home using the least amount of energy. Can you do it for one day? How about seven?

Sorry, but, no! Not even for one day under the present conditions… cold food, you’ve got to be kidding.

I’m heating lunch now!

LOL, gotcha!

I haven’t got one of those. I make real coffee with one of these…

Simple Green Ideas

Still on about bottles this week. Found this patio bar…

From: GreenScene

Monday Moaning

It’s absurd that the cost of designer water is at a “280,000% markup” to your tap water and it’s reaching record heights in consumption.The comforting illusion of better water (bottled water) requires a lot of resource to manufacture and merchandise. The industry requires the cost of natural rivers and streams, semi-truck exhaust and diesel fuel, packaging, labeling, pollution of non-biodegradable plastic and the managing of recycling centers.

If you visit a gas station store or grocery store, you’re bound to see that a full third of all cold beverages on sale are bottled water. The Sierra Club explains, “Annually the water bottles themselves take about 1.5 million tons of plastic to manufacture for the global market.” Did you know plastics come from oil and therefore it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil a year?

Additionally the manufacturing process releases toxins into the environment, such as nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene. Even with current plastic recycling centers, “most used bottles end up in landfills, adding to the landfill crisis.”

via http://stmedia.startribune.com/

Source: Likes – Why You Should Never Drink Bottled Water