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Climate Change May Be Escalating So Fast It Could Be 'Game Over', Scientists Warn

U.S. EPA Approves Toxic Dicamba Herbicide for Use on GMO Crops

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As we listen to the speakers, weigh the options, evaluate the strategies and solutions here at the COP22 Climate Summit, we’re encouraged that the role of regenerative agriculture and land use is at least finding its way into the climate change conversation.

But we need to turn up the volume. Sooner, rather than later.

In a sobering news report today, scientists warn that global warming may be escalating so fast it could be “game over” soon:

New research suggests the Earth's climate could be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than thought, raising the spectre of an 'apocalyptic side of bad' temperature rise of more than 7C within a lifetime.

This news will no doubt generate more talk about how we reduce fossil fuel emissions. Great, we need to do that. But if we don’t focus at least that much attention, or more, on the other 50 percent of the solution—drawing down and sequestering carbon through regenerative agriculture and land-use practices, we’re doomed. Simple as that.

On the other hand, if we wise up and start scaling up this shovel-ready solution, we have a chance to avert a climate disaster. At the same time, we’ll also address the multiple, and inter-related problems of deteriorating public health, world hunger, water scarcity and water pollution, and broken local economies.

We’ve featured this video before. But in light of this latest climate news, and in the context of our participation in the COP22 Climate Summit, here it is again.

Watch the video

We need an independent, in-the-streets and in-the-voting-booth, power to the people movement, using a mix of tactics, coming together and working together, supporting each other, basing our actions on love, showing the world that we are going to righteously oppose all the many retrograde and unjust, sexist, racist and pro-the-1% actions that Trump and the ultra-right will be undertaking. – Ted Glick, November 9, 2016

And so it begins. Future President Trump (who won the electoral college—but lost the popular vote), is looking to surround himself with corporate cronies to help “lead” our country.
 
America’s new Climate-Denier-in-Chief has appointed Myron Ebell, a leading climate skeptic, to run the EPA transition working group, and possibly head up the agency under a Trump administration. Just what we need, given the latest sobering predictions, published in today’s London Independent newspaper, that unless we reverse course immediately it may well be game over for Planet Earth.
 
To lead the USDA transition team? It's been reported that Michael Torrey, a leading junk food industry lobbyist, will have that role. Torrey's lobbying firm represents the likes of American Beverage Association, Dean Foods, the Illinois Soybean Association and pizza franchise Little Caesars, according to Politico.

And who will advise Trump on ag policy? Industry titans from Big Ag and Big Dairy top the short list.

Given that industrial agriculture is the number one culprit in global warming, deteriorating public health, rural poverty, and environmental destruction, none of these choices bode well.

We have a long road ahead of us. We can, and will, continue to work on changing public policy. But under any administration, and especially this administration, we will to need to do so much more. We will need to use our purchasing power. We will need to bring all of our movements together, to strategize, to boycott, to march in the streets, to show the corporate-owned powers that be that we won’t let them ruin our health, poison our food, pollute our waters, bankrupt us with their wars and drive us over the cliff with their ignorant and willful business-as-usual strategies.
 
This isn’t just about food or GMOs anymore. We need all of the movements that are struggling on their own to come together as one. And we need to do it now.
 
This is our mission. Now, more than ever, we will need your help.

Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)

Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)

Support OCA's Regeneration International Project (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic, regenerative agriculture and climate change)

Get out your bullshit detectors. 

The term “Climate-Smart Agriculture” has a nice ring to it—until you learn that corporate agribusiness, including companies like Monsanto and Syngenta, claim to be “Climate-Smart.”

During a panel on what’s commonly referred to as “CSA,” OCA’s Ronnie Cummins said:

“World governments spend $486 billion a year to subsidize an industrial food and farming model that the United Nations estimates, contributes 43-57 percent of total man-made greenhouse gas emissions. It’s time to stop subsidizing agricultural practices that contribute to global warming, and start subsidizing food, farming and land-use practices that restore the soil’s capacity to draw down and re-sequester excess carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil.”

Speaking to a panel hosted by the Social Innovation and Global Ethics Forum in conjunction with the COP22 Climate Summit, Ronnie told participants to beware of this popular term, that has now come to be associated with corporate greenwashing.  

“Scientists tell us that even if we achieve zero emissions tomorrow, the planet would continue to heat up for another thousand years. Our best hope to avert a climate disaster, restore public health and revitalize rural economies must include a plan that not only achieves zero emissions, but also draws down the billions of tons of excess carbon already in the atmosphere. That plan exists. It’s called regenerative agriculture, or agroecology.”

Regeneration International has organized and/or is participating in numerous events at the COP22 Climate Summit in Marrakech, with a focus on regenerative agriculture and land-use as a critical strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and draw down excess carbon from the atmosphere.

Read the press release 

Follow RI at COP22 

Official COP22 website 

Sign up for the RI newsletter 

Follow RI on Facebook and Twitter 

Support OCA's Regeneration International Project (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic, regenerative agriculture and climate change)

Big Biotech and Big Food think the only reason consumers don’t like their GMO foods is because we are just too ignorant to “understand” their benefits.

So to help “educate” us groups like the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, and the Corn Growers Association, among others, want Congress to give them some of our taxpayer money to help promote their toxic, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly products.

As reported by Farm Futures, 56 groups, including biotech and food industry lobbying organizations, wrote a letter asking four members of the Ag Appropriations Committee to include $3 million in the 2017 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act in order to “ensure key federal agencies responsible for the safety of our nation’s food supply – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – are able to more easily convey to the public science- and fact-based information about food.”

The groups justify their request for consumers to foot the bill for industry’s marketing campaign by stating that: “These benefits are passed on to consumers who reap the advantage of affordable food prices, greater access to nutritious food, an improved environment, a strengthened rural economy, and enhanced domestic and international food security.”

In their letter, the groups claim “there is a tremendous amount of misinformation about agricultural biotechnology in the public domain.” 

We would argue, and a recent investigation by the New York Times confirms, that much of that “misinformation” comes from industry itself–in the form of false promises.

Read our latest blog post on this affront to consumers

TAKE ACTION: Tell the Ag Appropriations Committee: Don’t Use My Tax Dollars to Promote GMOs!

After you sign the alert, call and tweet the committee members.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)
(202) 224-5054
@SenThadCochran No tax dollars to promote #GMOs! http://orgcns.org/2fTfEhK

Rep. Harold (Hal) Rogers (R-Ky)
(202)225-4601
@RepHalRogers No tax dollars to promote #GMOs! http://orgcns.org/2fTfEhK

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.)
(202) 224-4654
@SenatorBarb No tax dollars to promote #GMOs! http://orgcns.org/2fTfEhK

 Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.)
(202) 225-6506
@NitaLowey No tax dollars to promote #GMOs! http://orgcns.org/2fTfEhK

The best thing about the 2016 election, a contest between two of the most unpopular candidates in history, is that it’s over.

Now, we get back to work. Back to our radical roots (it’s never been lost on me that the word radical originates from the Latin word for root). 

With this divisive and toxic election behind us, we can now get back to the grassroots work of regenerating our food and farming system, our health—even our democracy. Assuming, that is, we can set aside our differences long enough to focus on the root of our problems—corporate control over every aspect of our lives, including our political system.

As Dr. Joe Mercola wrote in an article that appeared just before the election, it’s time to recognize where our “true power” lies. It lies in the choices we make every time we make a purchase, especially a food purchase. 

Every consumer choice we make either supports the corporations that are writing the laws we oppose. Or doesn’t. It’s that simple.

Read Ronnie’s blog post