Ronnie's Blog
The final months of 2018 will likely be remembered as the decisive moment when the global grassroots awakened to the life-or-death threat posed by global warming. With violent weather and climate disasters becoming the norm, and international scientists finally shedding their customary caution to report that we must drastically slash (by at least 45 percent) global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, hundreds of millions of ordinary people across the world seemed to simultaneously wake up.
Young climate activists under the banner of the Sunrise Movement in the U.S. and the Extinction Rebellion in the UK and other countries, sat in at politicians’ offices. They blocked streets and roadways. They emanded immediate and bold action.
“New models are emerging today . . . from the longing in many hearts, the genius of many minds, the effort of many hands to build what we know instinctively that we need.” - Marjorie Kelly, “Owning our Future.”
Last week, the USDA released its final rules for GMO labeling. As predicted, the federal law is full of loopholes. So full of them, that the law can easily be summed up in two words: a joke.
Now, with a roster of newly elected members of Congress who understand that we must connect the dots between food, farming, environmental, climate and economic justice policies, we’re standing on the brink of an unprecedented opportunity to transform our food and farming system.
We need your help to make the most of this opportunity.
For decades, we’ve been shouting from the rooftops to anyone who would listen—and some who wouldn’t—that using poison to grow food is a terrible and dangerous idea.
With your help, we’ve published thousands of articles, organized hundreds of protests, sued numerous poison-spewing corporations, funneled hundreds of thousands of emails and letters and phone calls to Congress.
I’ve been following the news about Hurricane Florence, and its tragic consequences for the people of North Carolina—the destruction of their lives, homes and land.
If you’ve been tracking the situation, too, you’ve seen the gruesome photos and headlines about the millions of chickens, turkeys and hogs left to drown on North Carolina’s factory farms.
You’ve also read reports of what it means when huge lagoons full of pig manure—disgusting enough when intact—overflow.
The word “Monsanto” probably wasn’t the first word to pop into your head as you read these grim headlines.
But let’s not forget: Monsanto’s GMO crops and toxic weedkillers are the linchpin of our horrendous industrial factory farm system.
And that won’t change, unless we all work to make it change.
We are still short of our fall fundraising goal. Can you pitch in with a donation by midnight, September 22, to help us keep up the pressure on Monsanto and factory farms? You can donate online, by phone or by mail—details here.
The storyline right now is this: A jury in California hands a huge victory to one of Monsanto’s victims, accusing the biotech giant of causing a man’s cancer, with “malice and oppression.”
That one victory pushes up the number of similar lawsuits against Monsanto to more than 8,000.
California’s Supreme Court says “no” to Monsanto—and “yes” to requiring manufacturers whose products contain glyphosate to tell consumers that their products could cause cancer.
Chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, which recently paid $66 billion to acquire Monsanto, watches its stock price plummet.
Cities from Santa Rosa, California, to Austin, Texas, ban Roundup in public parks.
Those are the latest in a string of plot twists. And they've all happened in less than one month’s time.
Things are going our way in this, the latest chapter in a story that began decades ago, when Monsanto corrupted the EPA in order to push its GMO and Roundup products on an unsuspecting public.
But how the story ends, whether consumers and common sense prevail over the powerful, corruptive ways of Monsanto, depends on what we do next, together.
Early this week, a California court appointed the judge who will oversee the trial of DeWayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company.
DeWayne “Lee” Johnson was a school groundskeeper, a job that required him to use Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller on school properties.
The 46-year-old father of two is now terminally ill, with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). And he’s suing Monsanto.
Johnson is just one of thousands of NHL sufferers suing Monsanto for not only causing their cancer, but for knowingly exposing them to risk by concealing Monsanto's own internal evidence linking Roundup to NHL and other health problems.
Johnson is the first to go to trial, because California expedites trials for the terminally ill.
Wayne Johnson could have chosen to live out the rest of his life in peace. Instead, he chose to use the time he has left to face down one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Johnson is committed to holding Monsanto accountable.
We owe it to him to be just as unwavering in our determination to hold Monsanto accountable.
Consumers know if the tomatoes they buy in the supermarket were imported from Mexico. They know if the sweater they purchased was made in Vietnam.
They also know if the chicken they toss in their grocery cart was imported from another country. Under Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) laws, these products are required to carry labels that tell you if the product was imported from another country.
But beef and pork? Those products are exempt from COOL laws. That means consumers have no idea where their steak and bacon came from, unless the producer chooses to label it.
Worldwide, two-thirds of all farm animals are now inhumanely imprisoned on highly-polluting factory farms, fed pesticide- and chemical-contaminated grains and GMOs, often supplemented with contaminated fish meal and oils, and routinely dosed with antibiotics and hormones.
What a lot of consumers may not understand however, is that most of the fish sold in grocery stores and served up in restaurants today in industrialized nations is also factory-farmed.
Factory-farmed salmon and fish not only threaten wild salmon and other marine species by spreading disease (and now GMO-related risks ), but also by contaminating coastal waters and the ocean with the toxic chemicals and feed used on fish farms.
Salmon and other fish farms also pose a major threat to human health. In fact, according to Mercola.com, farmed salmon are perhaps the most toxic food that Americans consume.
It was a soil scientist who reminded me recently of something we self-obsessed humans often forget: We don’t need to worry about saving the planet. The planet will save itself.
Planet Earth will survive in one form or another, no matter what damage we humans inflict on it. The question is, will we survive with it?
Or will we destroy Earth’s ability to sustain life, all life, as we know it?
Once again, a major report on the costs—financial, social, environmental, political—of doing nothing to slow runaway global warming focuses exclusively on reducing carbon emissions. The new report fails to mention that even if we achieved zero emissions tomorrow, we’re still in big trouble—unless we draw down and sequester the billions of tons of carbon already in the atmosphere.
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