Ronnie's Blog
The frightening COVID-19 pandemic, slowly but surely infecting millions, fueling an economic and political meltdown and metastasizing in the midst of a global Climate Emergency, has pushed a critical mass of us all to the brink.
Words can barely convey our waking nightmare, or fully expose the cabal of monsters and the degenerate “business-as-usual” practices that have brought on this disaster. Like a horror movie rerun, every night I wake up.
How did we ever let this happen? What can we do to protect ourselves and others? Can we rise to the occasion and organize a massive Grassroots Rising, head off disaster, and take advantage of this tragic “trigger moment”?
Can we deal with the degenerative practices that have unleashed this mega-crisis and bring to heel the perpetrators, the greedy elite who created and/or abetted this catastrophe?
As an international chorus of climate, environmental and political leaders warned this week, it’s now or never “to harness our fears, build hope and drive action to respond to the human health, economic, climate and biodiversity crisis with solutions that build resilient societies on the longer term.”
Over the past five decades, as a food, natural health and environmental campaigner, anti-war organizer, human rights activist and journalist, I’ve had the inspiring and at times depressing opportunity to work and travel across much of the world.
Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned through my work is that people respond best to a positive, solutions-oriented message. Gloom-and-doom thinking—the kind that offers no plausible solution—doesn’t generally inspire people to get involved or take action.
That doesn’t mean we should downplay the seriousness of our current situation. We face unprecedented life-or-death threats. We’re up against formidable political, economic and cultural obstacles. We must continue to highlight and criticize, with passion, facts and concrete examples, the bad actors, practices and policies that have brought us to the brink of a global crisis.
Through the haze of ongoing discouraging attacks on environmental and food safety regulations, a few potential rays of hope recently shone through.
Your voices may not yet be moving our corporate lobbyist-owned politicians to ban dangerous agricultural chemicals . . . but public pressure may be finally driving at least a few corporations to stop marketing poisonous chemicals that have contaminated our foods and environment.
The majority of people still equate the words “Green New Deal” with a plan to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy technologies. Very few people who hear or read those words think “food and farming.”
But the Green New Deal plan laid out by Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is much more than a renewable energy transition plan—it’s also a plan to end industrial chemical farming.
Whether you’re a consumer fed up with pesticide-laden foods and GMOs, an environmentalist outraged by industrial farming’s widespread pollution of U.S. waterways, an animal rights activist waging war against factory farms or a climate activist, Sanders’ Green New Deal addresses your concerns—boldly, and in concrete terms.
Beyond the media smog, the 24/7 fixation on the Trump cesspool and the endless distractions of the holiday season, I probably don’t have to remind you that the end of the modern era is at hand.
As most of us realize, even as we repress this thought in order to maintain our sanity, we are fast approaching “the point of no return,” whereby our 21stCentury Climate Emergency and societal meltdown begin to morph into global catastrophe.
Even in the midst of enjoying a break over the holidays and celebrating with our family and friends, it’s hard to avoid thinking about the “Emergency”—and the climate criminals, indentured politicians and climate deniers who have dragged us to the precipice.
Our common house is “on fire” as Greta Thunberg reminds us. And as Arundhati Roy laments: “It is becoming more and more difficult to communicate the scale of the crisis even to ourselves. An accurate description runs the risk of sounding like hyperbole.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed consumers over and over again. We’re used to it.
But this latest news—that the EPA (along with the U.S. Dept. of Justice) has stepped in to help overrule jurors in a Monsanto Roundup weedkiller case—is shocking on a whole new level.
It’s also a stark reminder of how critical it is that we fight back against corporate and political corruption, and that we do everything in our power to support a new kind of food and farming.
As another year winds down, I’m appealing to you with a greater sense of urgency than ever before.
The longer industrial agribusiness is allowed to destroy soil fertility, pollute waterways, bankrupt family farms, and monopolize our food distribution system for the purpose of profiting off the sale of nutrient-deficient, pesticide- and drug-contaminated food, the harder it will be to reverse course.
We can’t wait.
Defying the machinations of discredited President Sebastian Pinera—who abruptly cancelled the Global Climate Summit in Santiago, Chile in reaction to the nationwide grassroots uprising that erupted here on October 18—an intrepid band of North and South American farmers, food activists and climate campaigners, under the banner of Regeneration International, came together in the Chilean capital of Santiago to share experiences and ideas, and to develop a common strategy for reversing global warming and resolving the other burning issues that are pressing down on us.
With global attention focused on Madrid, which hosted the December 2-13 official COP 25 Climate Summit after Chile pulled out, a number of us decided nevertheless to hold our own North and South America mini-summit here, expressing our solidarity with the Chilean people’s epic struggle, and, at the same time, giving some of the best practitioners and campaigners in the Regeneration Movement the opportunity to focus on what’s holding us back and how we can most quickly move forward.
Two of the most often repeated comments I hear from donors are: “Thank you for never giving up!” and “I wish I had more to give.”
Today, on #GivingTuesday, I promise you that no matter the obstacles, we will never give up the fight against corporations that contaminate your food and poison your environment.
And to those who say they wish they had "more to give," let me say this: Your donation is critical! Our organization runs on donations just like yours.
Why is it especially urgent that we ramp up the campaign against Roundup weedkiller right now?
Because the U.S. EPA is facing a deadline to decide whether to renew—or ban—glyphosate.
There are signs that the political will to keep allowing this cancer-causing chemical to poison us is faltering.
But without massive grassroots pressure, we will lose momentum.
Please consider making a generous donation today, either online, by phone or by mail.
Public opinion turned against Monsanto and Roundup long ago.
Now, there’s a glimmer of hope that regulators are tired of taking heat for supporting the likes of Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer.
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