Ronnie's Blog
The Climate Emergency is finally getting the attention of the media and the U.S. (and world) body politic, as well as a growing number of politicians, activists and even U.S. farmers.
Alongside the massive political and economic campaign to move to 100% (or nearly 100%) renewable energy as soon as possible, we must put an end to the massive emissions of our corporate-dominated food and farming system and start drawing down and sequestering in our soils and forests billions of tons of “legacy” CO2 from the atmosphere, utilizing the enhanced photosynthesis of regenerative farming, reforestation and land restoration.
I’ll get right to the point.
The fundraising campaign we launched earlier this month is lagging.
Like other nonprofits, our team would much rather be out there educating, organizing, mobilizing, lobbying and having a real impact, than in here expending our time and energy on fundraising.
But it’s the reality we’re faced with: We’re powered by you—nearly 80 percent of our funding comes from individual donors like you, who contribute anywhere from $5 to $50 to $500.
Every single one of those donations counts.
Long before “fake news” was a household word, playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw warned:
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
For decades, Monsanto has manufactured and disseminated “false knowledge” about its top-selling weedkiller.
And our U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been right there by Monsanto’s side. Ignoring the truth. Protecting Monsanto’s profits.
There’s no reassuring way to say this: You’re being poisoned against your will.
Sure, you can take steps to minimize your exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.
But given its widespread and reckless use in this country, you’d have to live in a bubble to protect yourself from a chemical so toxic it’s been banned or severely restricted in 17 other countries.
Every 15 years, the EPA is supposed to review the latest science on glyphosate, then issue a determination on whether this toxic chemical should be re-approved for another 15 years.
The last deadline for a new review of glyphosate was December 2015. But that deadline came and went with no word—probably because in March 2015, the World Health Organization inconveniently announced that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen.”
Three-and-a-half years past the 2015 deadline, the agency that’s supposed to protect your health came out with its bold “no risk to public health” claim.
Now the public has until July 5 to comment on the EPA's so-called scientific review of this deadly herbicide.
We think “comments” aren’t enough.
Amidst all the bad news, scandals and neo-fascist machinations in Washington, there is some good news on the political front: A number of leading Democratic Party candidates for president, including U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), emboldened by a wave of grassroots action on the part of the youth-powered Sunrise Movement and Student Strike for the Climate, and bolstered by a group of recently elected members of Congress led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), are putting forth bold proposals that could actually solve the climate crisis.
Five years ago, at the massive People’s Climate March in New York City, a small but determined band of food, farm, natural health and climate activists held a press conference at the Rodale Institute in Manhattan, where we announced the formation of a new global network: Regeneration International (RI).
Vandana Shiva, Andre Leu, Richard Teague, Ryan Zinn, Kris Nichols and myself, among others, put forth the bold, but then little-known proposition that regenerative food, farming and land-use practices, scaled up internationally, and in conjunction with a global transition to renewable energy, could not only substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down global warming, but could actually draw down enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reverse climate change.
We pointed out that a Regeneration Revolution could also dramatically improve the environment, soil fertility, food quality, public health, biodiversity and rural economies, while revitalizing the body politic.
“Cook Organic, not the Planet.” - Banner of the Organic Consumers Association at the mass climate march in New York City, September 21, 2014.
Before we talk about the future of food and farming and the crisis of organic standards, here’s some good news: Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), a leading contender for the White House in 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and several other presidential candidates have just come out strongly against Monsanto and factory farming and in favor of fundamental change in our agricultural policies. (Sign this petition to thank Sanders and Warren for taking on Big Ag).
Sanders and more than 100 members of Congress, supported by millions of Americans--including leading farmers and ranchers— are now calling for a Green New Deal that encompasses both urban and rural America. A Green New Deal that will scale up fundamental change, not only in our energy and economic policies, but also in the food and farming policies that have devastated our landscape, public health and rural communities.
"Because of the Green New Deal, entirely new thinkers are now at the policy table instead of just Big Ag and Monsanto writing our public policy for us—from regenerative agriculture experts and family farmers, to indigenous leaders with intergenerational knowledge." - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Instagram post April 7, 2019
The audacious, game-changing Green New Deal (GND) Resolution, backed by the youth-powered Sunrise Movement, introduced in Congress on February 7, by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), has ignited a long-overdue debate on federal policy, including fundamental energy, infrastructure, food, farming and land-management policies.
Forty-nine years ago today, nearly 20 million people in cities across the U.S. poured out into the streets to demand that Congress put the issue of environmental protection on the national political agenda.
It was April 22, 1970, the first designated “Earth Day.”
Today, on Earth Day 2019, I’m writing to ask you, and the millions of consumers in our networks, to let Congress know that you want them to act more decisively, more radically, more urgently— and on a massive scale—to protect and restore Earth’s precious resources.
TAKE ACTION: Sign the Green Consumers for a Green New Deal petition
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