party favors with a purpose

My roommate came home from a baby shower the other night and, as she caught me up on the chocolate bar and drinking games, set down a party favor on the counter.

I can appreciate the cultural need to send guests home with some sort of gendered doo-dad--but honestly, does it need to be something that is headed straight to the landfill? What about a party favor with a purpose? Perhaps a reusable water bottle with ballet slippers on it? A rosy coin pouch? A pink pill holder? There is room for creativity and personality here.

Resources: limited. Landfill space: limited. Room in your friends closet: limited. So what's with all of the worthless junk? How about handing out something that can be used (and better yet, re-used).

tell Obama to attend Copenhagen in person

Tell Obama it's game time, and he needs to attend Copenhagen in person. Sign the petition here.

would you like water or air pollution with that?

In response to respiratory illnesses caused by yellow smoke emissions from coal-fired power plants (and several lawsuits), Allegheny Energy tried a new approach: installing scrubbers to clean the plant's air emissions.

The "victory" was short-lived.

Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.

...Much power plant waste once went into the sky, but because of toughened air pollution laws, it now often goes into lakes and rivers, or into landfills that have leaked into nearby groundwater, say regulators and environmentalists.

...The Environmental Protection Agency projects that by next year, roughly 50 percent of coal-generated electricity in the United States will come from plants that use scrubbers or similar technologies, creating vast new sources of wastewater.Yet no federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfills.

Read the full article

are you eating beef that's eating poop?

Lovely:

A coalition of food and consumer groups that includes Consumers Union and the Center for Science in the Public Interest has asked the Food and Drug Administration to ban the practice. McDonald's Corp., the nation's largest restaurant user of beef, also wants the FDA to prohibit the feeding of so-called poultry litter to cattle.

Members of the coalition are threatening to file a lawsuit or to push for federal legislation establishing such a ban if the FDA doesn't act to do so in the coming months.

Farmers feed 1 million to 2 million tons of poultry litter to their cattle annually, according to FDA estimates.

Using the litter -- which includes feces, spilled chicken feed, feathers and poultry farm detritus -- increases the risk of cows becoming infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union. full article

hormonal milk is not safe, says cancer expert

Special thanks to Organic Consumers Alert for the tip:

The Cancer Prevention Coalition is criticizing a widely publicized recent report, "Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin" (rBST) which claims that milk from cows injected with this genetically engineered hormone is safe.

The report was authored by eight paid consultants to rBST companies, including Elanco and Monsanto, points out Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. "All of these consultants were paid for their so-called 'safety assessments,'" he says.

What's the big deal? Well...

* rBST makes cows sick. Monsanto has been forced to admit to about 20 toxic effects, including mastitis, on the label of Posilac, the rBST product that when administered to cows makes them produce more milk. Monsanto's Posilac product was acquired by Eli Lilly in 2008.

* rBST milk is contaminated by pus, due to mastitis, an infection of the udder commonly induced by the hormone, and also by antibiotics used to treat the mastitis.

* rBST milk is chemically and nutritionally different than natural milk.

* Milk from cows injected with rBST is contaminated with the hormone, traces of which are absorbed through the gut into the blood of people who consume this milk or products made from it.

* rBST milk is supercharged with high levels of the natural growth factor (IGF-1), which is readily absorbed through the gut.

* Excess levels of IGF-1 have been incriminated in well-documented scientific publications as causes of breast, colon, and prostate cancers. Additionally, IGF-1 blocks natural defense mechanisms against early submicroscopic cancers. full article

Does Monsanto sound like a familiar name you've read about on The Colonic? Recall a recent blog post regarding Obama, Monsanto, and the FDA.

Maine votes against equality

Maine voters repealed the state's same-sex marriage law:

With 87 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, 53 percent of voters had approved the repeal, ending an expensive and emotional fight that was closely watched around the country as a referendum on the national gay-marriage movement. Polls had suggested a much closer race. full article

many apologies

Dear readers,

The Colonic is really slacking. I've been slaving away doing legal research for a predictive memo.

Perhaps if I had the time, I would tell the story of how I was pied with dead animal flesh this weekend. While this was particularly offensive and disgusting for a vegan to endure, I imagine anyone would be disheartened to get baconed.

Slaughtered pig aside, the gravamen of the offense was the utter disregard of my boundaries and sense of bodily security.

Back to work.

that's why a bear can rest at ease.

Obama pushes for coal

Finally Barack Obama takes a break from health care reform and shouts a holler to energy legislation...of sorts.

On Friday, Obama spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on energy and the environment, and called for “the best use of resources we have in abundance, through clean coal technology, safe nuclear power, sustainably grown biofuels and energy we harness from wind, waves and sun.” full article

Wow. Wait to start with a bang. "Clean" coal and "safe" nuclear?

Naturally, The Colonic is not surprised, seeing how Mr. Yes We Can rejected FOIA requests for Secret Service logs revealing the identities of big coal executives visiting the White House.

Can we be fair and say that Obama is pulling the strategic political strings by touting clean coal and nuclear, and tacking on renewables at the end?

Maaaayyybbbeee. But probably not. Change We Can Believe In handed the FDA over to Monsanto, attempted to suppress the democratic process of FOIA requests to hide his meetings with coal companies, and has done nothing of substance in to merit a leadership role in time for Copenhagen.

campaign viability: the cost of coaliton-building and casting a wide net

Campaign strategy presents a terrible conundrum: how wide can you cast your net before you start to repel your original campaigners?

Coalition-building is a good-faith attempt to strengthen the movement. Obviously, a minority of people will have limp impact. So here we go, re-framing our issue to appeal to different life perspectives and interests.

The benefit? Bigger numbers, more money, more interest, more impact. The cost? There is potential for the message to become diluted, modified, redirected, or otherwise misrepresented.

Exhibit A: Me.

Yesterday I participated in a Washington DC event for the International Day of Climate Action (I somehow thought this would be bigger and better than VA Power Shift--I was wrong, and sorry). Aside from the fact that I rolled up to extremely disappointing numbers (I'm guessing the thunderstorm was a large deterrent for many), the only speakers that I was able to stomach really angered me.

The first offense was relating the climate and environment to a biblical story. Wherever the delicate line is--appeal to the theists without offending the secular-minded--was definitely crossed.

Aside from pulling the religious card, the next offense is harder to articulate into words. Statements were thrown around such as "love is the solution...blah blah blah...start the revolution." GAG ME.

Yes, my interest in the environment is motivated by a love for life, but ultimately, my goals and passions are pragmatic. I am at this event for a very specific reason--public attention, networking, and political mobility--and I do not appreciate counting rainbows in the sky instead. It gets nothing done (maybe it motivates some?), and it's off-putting to the more goal-oriented, objective participants.

Sorry, love is not the solution. It's offensive to say that people who don't recycle or don't actively try to reduce their waste don't love. Lots of those people even love me.

The solution is recycling, reducing, reusing, eliminating waste, getting organized, and staying organized.

I suppose my main problem with the event is that I felt it was misrepresenting the real goal by dressing it up in some Noah hoo ha and fuddy duddy love junk--both of which are not all-inclusive perspectives. I felt silly being there. That is not why I care about the environment. Those statements do not motivate me. In fact, they prompted my departure. I do not care to participate in things that misrepresent me and my beliefs.

Of course, I suppose casting a wider net may deter original campaigners at some point or another, but if those original campaigners were ever truly dedicated, they are not going to up and leave. Instead, they create their own individual strategies and are more likely to cherry pick and criticize when appropriate.

step up for Kuwaiti women

Groovy

Kuwaiti women will be able to obtain their own passport without the consent of their husbands, following a ruling by the country's constitutional court.

But

Women activists welcomed the passport ruling but say they still need equal access to government housing and the right to pass citizenship to their children. full article

hot news on the cooling climate

Not much time tonight folks (what else is new?) but I thought I'd drop a quick link to address the climate cooling murmurings. Relatively stable temps are more complicated than they appear:

Scientists say the pattern of the last decade — after a precipitous rise in average global temperatures in the 1990s — is a result of cyclical variations in ocean conditions and has no bearing on the long-term warming effects of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere.

...Mojib Latif, a prize-winning climate and ocean scientist from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, in Germany, wrote a paper last year positing that cyclical shifts in the oceans were aligning in a way that could keep temperatures over the next decade or so relatively stable, even as the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming continued to increase. full article