iEat Green – Elise Golan – 06.16.16

Elise H. Golan is the Director for Sustainable Development for USDA. In this role, she provides leadership in planning, coordinating, and analyzing the Department’s various policies, programs and activities that impact and relate to sustainable agricultural, natural resource, and community development including food security.

Prior to this position, Elise served as the Associate Director of the Food Economics Division at the Economic Research Service, USDA. She received her Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of California at Berkeley and completed a post-doctorate fellowship focusing on environmental economics at the University of Haifa, Israel. Before joining USDA, Elise did consulting work for, among others, the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, and the California Department of Finance. She served as a senior staff economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1998-99.

Dr. Golan’s research has spanned a wide range of sustainability issues, including land tenure and sustainable land management in the Sahel and West Africa; rice-straw burning and sustainable land management in California; regional and U.S. food-system modeling; food labeling and market development; food access, affordability, and security; and the distributional consequences of food policy.

Judy Wicks – The Beauty—and Power—of Small Business

Like many entrepreneurs, I started my business for the freedom it gave me to do things my own way. I was more individualistic than cooperative with a lone ranger mentality.  But I wanted to do the right thing and be a sustainable business. At first my goal was to have the best possible practices—recycling, composting, solar hot water, renewable electricity, …

GEOFFREY MCDONALD – The UN’s Happiness Propaganda

How are you today? This stupid question, no matter how well meaning it may be, always presumes that you should be happy. Even when it comes from someone who has to ask it a hundred times a day, people appreciate the concern and answer it, as if they have a personal relation with the cashier. The expectation is that somehow …

Derrick Jensen – Sustainable Development is a Lie

“Sustainable development” is a claim to virtue. The word “development” used in this sense is a lie. The word “develop” means “to grow,” “to progress,” “to become fuller, more advanced.” Some synonyms are “evolution, unfolding, maturation, ripeness,” and some antonyms are “deterioration, disintegration.” And here is a real usage example from a dictionary: “Drama reached its highest development in the …

What Women Must Know – Secret Ingredients: The GMO Story with Jeffrey Smith and Amy Hart – 01.14.16

Jeffrey Smith

Internationally renowned anti-GMO author/filmmaker Jeffrey Smith’s meticulous research documents how biotech companies continue to mislead legislators and safety officials to put the health of society at risk and the environment in peril. His work expertly summarizes why the safety assessments conducted by the FDA and regulators worldwide teeter on a foundation of outdated science and false assumptions, and why genetically engineered foods must urgently become our nation’s top food safety priority.

Smith’s books include: Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, the world’s bestseller on GMOs; and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods. As a highly regarded keynote speaker, Mr. Smith has lectured in more than 40 countries, counseled leaders from every continent, and has been quoted by hundreds of media outlets including: The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC World Service, The Independent, Daily Telegraph, New Scientist, The Times (London), Associated Press, Reuters News Service, LA Times, and Time Magazine. Also a popular guest, he appears on influential radio shows and television programs, such as the The Daily Show, BBC, NPR, Fox News, Democracy Now, and the Dr. Oz Show.

Jeffrey Smith is the founding executive director of The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), a leading source of GMO health risk information for consumers, policy makers, and healthcare professionals. IRT’s educational programs are driving the tipping point of consumer rejection of GMOs, which is already starting to push genetically engineered ingredients out of the market in the US.

Amy Hart

Amy Hart is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer dedicated to shedding light on important global health issues. Based in California and NYC, Hart is the founder of CenterPeace Films and Photography.

Hart directed and produced an award-winning film on global water issues entitledWATER FIRST: Reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The film was shown at numerous conferences and festivals around the world . Hart has specialized in global and public health issues since 2002 when she became the producer of educational broadcast programs at the University of Albany School of Public Health.

Hart has specialized in global and public health issues since 2002 when she became the producer of educational broadcast programs at the University of Albany School of Public Health.

Amy Hart met Jeffrey Smith when she took her camera up to the Heirloom Seed Expo with the intention of doing a photo essay on an angle of the organic food movement. Jeffrey Smith was a speaker and moderator of a panel on GMOs. Their very first conversation was about making films on GMOs together – so began Secret Ingredients.

http://www.secretingredientsmovie.com

Vandana Shiva – Paris, Peace, and Humanity on the Precipice

Humanity stands at a precipice. Merely 200 years of the age of fossil fuel has driven species and biodiversity to extinction, destroyed our soils, depleted and polluted our water and destabilised our entire climate system. Five hundred years of colonialism have driven cultures, languages, peoples to extinction and left a legacy of violence as the basis of production and governance. …

Nature Bats Last – 12.01.15

Mike and Guy interviewed Gail “the Actuary” Tverberg for her well-informed perspective on economic collapse. We included on an extensive climate-change update and comments about COP21 in Paris.

Eric Zuesse – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon Condemns Obama’s Actions on Syria

The U.N. headlined, “Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary-General) and Peter Maurer (ICRC) on the world’s humanitarian crises – Media Stakeout (Geneva, 31 October 2015).” The 23-minute news-conference video there included him saying (13:50): “I believe that the future of Syria, or the future of the peace talks, … should not be held up by an issue of the future of one man. I …

Yves Smith – “Stunning” Rise in Death Rate, Pain Levels for White Middle-Aged, Less Educated Whites

One of the long standing patterns in economies showing economic growth is longer life spans, and falls are see the result of severe distress and dislocation, as took place in the period right after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the expectancies of adult men fell by over seven years. The US has just become the first country to …

Michael T. Klare – Why the Paris Climate Summit Will Be a Peace Conference

At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held.  Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that designated that phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), …