Economic Warfare

Photo by Jim Posth, Picture Arts


With glaciers, ice caps and permafrosts melting at ever-increasing rates, causing alarming rises in sea levels and shifts in the oceans’ currents, playing havoc with ocean temperatures, salinity and the livelihood of all earth’s water-dependent inhabitants (every single living organism); with motor vehicles, a status symbol of the modern capitalist-consumer age, an advertising-led and urban-sprawl necessity entering, filling, congesting our roads in hoards of hundreds by the minute, driving pollution and a giant oil-hungry machine that plunders and rapes our mother earth for all her natural resources, ensuring a quickened death to our home, are we throwing it all away? Are we burning it all down? Or are we simply guaranteeing a grim future for the few generations that will live beyond our neglect, our selfishness and our greed? We live on the bloated corpse of an economic system that is no longer relevant to our time, and – since its very first day – has been completely detached from the very home our race inhabits. Controlled by a small number of maggots feeding on its insides and poisoning us all, will we see the light and change our ways, before the nature that supports us is bled of all it has to lose? —Carlos Hurworth

Yellow Pages Suing To Keep Laying Trees to Waste

David at The Good Human reports that Seattle, Washington recently passed an ordinance that allowed residents to “opt-out” of receiving the Yellow Pages at their homes, something that neds to happen in every city and state in the country. Dex Media West, SuperMedia LLC and the Yellow Pages Association say that the ruling violates their First Amendment rights to free speech and it will hurt them where it counts – their wallet. The ordinance went into affect in October, but with this lawsuit pending it looks like it’s going to be a while before it can be enforced.


Each year, phone books require the destruction of about 19 million trees a year, 7.2 million barrels of oil, 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and the generation of 268,000 cubic yards of solid waste that ends up in landfills — not including the waste of the unwanted books themselves.

I agree with David, “there is absolutely no reason that paper phone books should be automatically delivered to every household in America when I would venture that the majority of us just walk them straight back to the recycling bin.” If you want a phone book just ask for it.

Where's the Love?

For the Love of Honey

I love Honey! Okay, who doesn’t, right? Sweetening tea has been a family favorite for longer than I care to admit, but how about some other uses? It’s been used for medicinal purposes for years and this great blog I just discovered uncovers some more unconventional ways to use honey.

Did you know that Honey the only food that will not spoil? Despite the rumors of a McDonalds burger lasting forever, it will spoil.

Lead in reusable grocery bags prompts call for federal inquiry

USAToday reports-

Lead found in some reusable grocery bags is raising concerns that the toxin could pose environmental or health concerns to consumers.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is asking for a federal investigation into the reusable bags following a series by The Tampa Tribune. The newspaper found lead in bags purchased at Winn-Dixie, Publix, Sweetbay, Walmart and Target.

Using reusable grocery bags was thought to be a great help in reducing the amount of plastic going into our landfills and the great Garbage Island out in the Pacific Ocean.


Reusable grocery bags make up 10% to 15% of the market, and could become as much of 25%. But other concerns have previously been raised about E. coli contamination in bags. For example, If you put a hunk of meat in one of these bags and it drips, contamination, is the bag is left unwashed, could lead to contamination onto unprotected produce.

Is lead so abundant in our production stream that we just cannot get away from it?

In June 2010, Dr Kristie McNealy reports, a notice of violation of California’s Proposition 65 made by the Environmental Law Foundations alleges that a number of popular fruit and juice products sold in the United States contain unacceptable levels of lead. The specific food categories tested included apple juice, grape juice, packaged pears and peaches (including baby food) and fruit cocktail.


The specific way that these products were contaminated is unknown. It’s possibly related to soil contamination caused by leaded fuel and lead arsenate, an insecticide used in fruit orchards in various parts of the world until 1955.

Though the use of lead paint was banned in 1978, it is estimated that nearly five out of seven homes in the U.S. still have lead based paint. Further, many common household products, even toys and jewelry, contain dangerous amounts of lead. In 2006, the CDC reported that 8 million pieces of jewelry were recalled due to dangerously high levels of lead. Cases of serious illness and even death have resulted from children swallowing small pieces of jewelry containing lead.

Lead is also getting into Urban Vegetable Gardens.

Hopefully, we have not already done too much damage to our planet and ourselves to recover from it. Keeping fingers crossed and trying not to do more damage is possibly the only left for us.

Tell us what you think. Have we poisoned ourselves beyond hope?