Nature Haters: 2011

Rally for a safe climate this Saturday

The campaign against putting a price on pollution is becoming hysterical. People are being told a whole lot of misinformation and are being frightened that their cost of living will go through the ceiling.

The scaremongers peddling this misinformation are planning to rally outside Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s electorate office in Werribee, Melbourne this Saturday.

This anti-climate rally is the first of several “no carbon tax” rallies across the country. After years of climate inaction, it threatens to derail positive momentum in our parliament. This has gone beyond a debate about the merits of different sorts of policy. It threatens to drag us to new lows in the politics of fear and climate denial. If we don’t respond, we risk no action to cut pollution – again.

The science is clear: we need to cut our carbon pollution.
The evidence is in: pricing pollution is the critical first step.

With our allies, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is planning to participate in a positive, family-friendly rally to show our support for putting a price on pollution. It will be on the same morning, in a different place. Together, we can prove that ordinary Australians do want action on climate change.

Rally Details

When: This Saturday 12 March at 11am
Where: Treasury Place, Melbourne, outside Prime Minister Gillard’s federal offices. Map

Come in bright colours, bring a banner, and join Greenpeace, GetUp!, Australian Conservation Foundation and many more to drown out the naysayers and send a message to our parliament that:

•   YES! We want action on climate change.
•   YES! We want polluters to pay for their pollution.
•   YES! Bring on the clean energy future.

We need to show there is an overwhelming number of people in Melbourne and across Australia who support progress, want action on climate change and call for a clean energy future for our kids.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Source: Greenpeace Australia
www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/events/rally-for-a-safe-climate-this

Hawaiian Hippies

FLA do away with Ronald

Remember that group that kidnapped Ronald McDonald a couple of weeks ago, held him hostage and threatened to execute him if McDonald's did not answer their seven simple questions? Such as "Why don't you use only ethically produced meat? Don't you think it should be a goal for everyone to serve meat of an animal that has had a good, clean, drug free life? Why is that not your goal?"

Image by tankgrrl via Flickr

They were called the Food Liberation Army, or FLA for short, and they're out of Finland - Nature Lovers from way back.

Do you think McDonald's responded? Of course not... and they paid the ultimate price.

At 6:30pm, Friday February 11th, the FLA executed the plastic Ronald McDonald that they had kidnapped from a McDonald's 'restaurant' in Helsinki two weeks earlier.

Image care of our mates at Getty Images

Now this seems to me like a large price to pay, when instead they could have just answered the groups easy questions. So what have they got to hide? Nothing, surely?

Monsanto bringing down Aussies!

Can you believe it? Monsanto are here and they're already wreaking havoc. If you don't know who Monsanto are, let me give you a quick run down...

Image by adriansalamandre via Flickr

Monsanto are an American chemical company, turned Biotech giant. You might know them from such atrocities as DDT or Agent Orange or Bovine Growth Hormone... Or maybe you've heard about major health problems people have had from living too close to one of Monsanto's chemical waste dumps? Well, that was just the beginning. They may actually be the first ever Nature Haters.

They were the first to genetically modify a plant cell in 1982 and they haven't looked back since! Soon after they came up with a great little pesticide called Roundup. Shortly after, they released a number of genetically modified 'Roundup Ready' seeds - sounds tasty!! So farmers could now grow these Monsanto seeds, spray them all they wanted with this nasty pesticide Roundup, and everything else (plants and insects) would shrivel and die. Obviously an interesting prospect for farmers who had to battle different pests from time to time. Unfortunately, the devastating environmental impacts of this mono farming are now clear to us.

The third (or sixth) part of their great legacy, involves destroying honest farmers who have been doing their best to feed us GM free produce for years. In other words, if you didn't grow Monsanto GM crops your days were numbered. If the farmer next to you was growing Monsanto's GM crops, you could be sure that your farm would soon be contaminated. All it took was one seed blowing into your crops. And because you didn't purchase these patented seeds, Monsanto could argue that you had broken patent laws. And what chance do you, a tiny American farmer, have against a huge multi-national, multi-billion dollar company?? Zero.

Well... when I first heard of Monsanto and their atrocities, I thought "Only in America... Just try that shit in Australia - we dare you". Well I'm eating my words now.

In December, Australian farmer Steve Marsh had his organic farm contaminated by Monsanto's GM seeds - they blew in from a neighbors farm. He was then stripped of his organic certification - which may sound harsh, but it had to be done. Steve has confirmed he is taking legal action, but now faces the full weight of Monsanto head on. This is only one year after the West Australian state government allowed the GM seeds into the state.

Given what has happened in the USA over the last 30 years, the West Australian state government had full knowledge that this type of contamination would happen. And they allowed it. And worse still; West Australian agriculture minister Terry Redman (a farmer himself) has sided with Monsanto. I emailed Terry earlier and asked him what happened... had he sold his soul, was he corrupt? You can tell me Terry - I won't tell anybody".

I'm so angry this has been allowed to happen in Australia. I mean we're Australian for fucks sake! We tell greedy pricks like this to get stuffed don't we!? How did this happen? Why is this going to continue to happen? Will our justice system be more just than that of America and Canada? What can we do about it?

You can donate to Steve Marsh's legal costs to help him take on Monsanto or you can email the un-Australian Terry Redman: Minister.Redman@dpc.wa.gov.au

Image by adriansalamandre via Flickr

You don't need to eat meat

You don't need to eat meat to get protein in your diet. You've been told that you do all your life, and you've been lied to - probably not by the people who told you - but by somebody, way down the line.

I tell you this because since I've been a vegetarian (only 8 months), it's been the most common myth I've heard (pretty much every time someone finds out I'm vegetarian). I used to believe that I couldn't get enough protein without meat too; I didn't think I could survive without meat. I'm a skinny guy and I wasn't keen on getting any skinnier!

So what is protein anyway? Basically a complete protein is made up of 9 essential amino acids that the body can't produce (there's 12 others that the body does produce). We have to get these 9 essential amino acids from an external food source. They're all available readily in plants, but animals have already joined them together, so you can cheat and just eat the animal if you want! If you don't want to eat animals don't worry... you don't have to.

There are so many articles about the protein myth; it's crazy more people don't understand the basics already. I did a fair bit of research regarding this topic and this was the most comprehensive article I found.

"... Still, there's a lot of confusion about protein - or to be more precise, the tiny amino acids that make up the long strands of protein - especially as it pertains to vegetarians... All plant-based foods are low in at least one of the nine amino acids our bodies need to get from foods. But the only foods that are truly protein-deficient are fruits, fats and sugars. And you need to obtain all nine amino acids over the course of a day or two, not within an hour of each other.

Even if you ate nothing but rice, which is low in the amino acid lysine, you'd still get enough of all the essential amino acids; if you ate nothing but beans, which are low in methionine, you wouldn't be courting a protein deficiency. But since you do not (and should not) eat just one food all day, every day, the foods that are relatively low in an amino acid are naturally complemented by those that are abundant in that amino acid.

The fact is, protein deficiency simply is not a concern for anyone in the developed world. "We never talk about protein anymore, because it's absolutely not an issue, even among children," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Nutrition, Food and Hotel Management at New York University. "If anything, we talk about the dangers of high-protein diets. Getting enough is simply a matter of getting enough calories."

Source: Debra Blake Weisenthal "Shattering the myth of protein". Vegetarian Times. FindArticles.com. 24 Jan, 2011. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0820/is_n211/ai_17010257/

Ok, so in the developed world you don't need to eat animals to get enough protein. And the main people at risk of health complications are those that eat too much animal flesh. So what's the problem??? If a vegetable is low in one amino acid, then the one on your plate next to it almost certainly contains that amino acid. I mean rice is only low in one of the amino acids, so rice and onions will probably give you all the protein you need. Imagine all the protein in a vegetable curry with rice! And of course you're virtually cutting out most of the cholesterol and saturated fat that come with a omnivorous diet.

The other things that come easily with meat but not quite so sufficiently in a vegetarian diet are vitamin B12, iron, calcium & zinc. If you start to feel fatigued after switching to a vegetarian diet, this could be your problem - it definitely won't be a protein deficiency.

For iron and zinc...

...sources include many grains such as wheat and oats, along with lentils, beans, soy, leafy greens like spinach, broccoli, and mustard, and dried fruit. Oatmeal, whole wheat bread, and soy products such as tofu, tempeh, and soymilk are all excellent sources of iron.

Source: www.wisegeek.com/which-foods-are-good-sources-of-iron.htm

For vitamin B12, and calcium you don't even have to think about them if you still consume milk and eggs. Just make sure you're eating organic free range eggs and hormone free milk. If you're not into eggs and diary then soy is a good source of calcium but it may be worth taking a vitamin B12 supplement.

I can't say why I started to head down the vegetarian path - I'm sure the journey is different for all of us. But if you've had second thoughts about buying that factory farmed chicken from Coles, or that factory farmed bacon from Woolworths; try buying a vegetarian cook book and see how you go. Start with one or two vegetarian dinners a week and see how you like it. It felt right for me.

Here's something I prepared earlier... mmm...

The Future of Food is grim

I just watched episode one of a great two-part documentary series on SBS called The Future of Food. I think it took its name from a 2004 documentary of the same name.

This is a really important watch for everybody. Things are getting desperate and if we continue with our current food production and fishing methods then we're going to be in real trouble and really soon. You won't be able to afford a piece of fish in 20 years, you won't be able to afford petrol and chances are you'll be hungry more often than you are now.

There are so many issues at stake here, and they all relate to YOUR DIET.

Watch episode 1 here. Episode 2 will air on SBS at 8:30pm Tuesday 15th Feb.

I'm hating it!

Help end the needless suffering of millions of chickens every year.

McDonald's is obviously one of the largest buyers of chicken flesh in the world. They buy hundreds of thousands of chickens each year. That's why it would be so easy for them to demand the humane slaughter of the chickens they buy and sell. But they don't. Sounds like a bunch of nature haters to me.

You can help put pressure McDonald's to demand that its suppliers use more humane slaughter methods. You can do this just by spreading the word on facebook or by writing to McDonald's directly. Of course, don't buy anything from their 'restaurants' until they take action.

McCruelty: I'm Hatin' It--Learn More.

If you can't see the clip above, watch it here.

Meanwhile, a group called the Food Liberation Army (FLA) have kidnapped Ronald McDonald. They're not against McDonald's, but want them to lift their game, by leading the way in ethical meat production and sustainable business practices. Check out their demands in this clip. I love when they asked "How many tons of un-recycled waste do you produce each year? Why do you not publish that figure?"

If you can't see this clip, you can watch it here.

Of course KFC are guilty of the exact same thing as McDonald's. And the protesters who are trying to get KFC to change their ways were smart enough to enlist the help of everyone's favourite porn star Jenna Jameson...

or watch it here.

Fact

"Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change."

Jonathon Saffran Foer, Eating Animals

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