Genetic Literacy Project

Eating local is not sustainable. Solution? Reality check and science - This weekend as you peruse your neighborhood farmer’s market for the best head of kale, you should be cognizant of the fact that there’s something these vendors aren’t telling you: the ‘eat local’ movement is broken.  No it’s not the fact they use pesticides or the antibiotic fed livestock, it’s because one of the central tenets of the movement — to reduce greenhouse gas and carbon emissions — is not being fulfilled. People who eat local believe that because their food doesn’t travel far from farm to plate they are doing something good for the environment. While this idea might be well meaning, for a variety of reasons it just doesn’t pan out.....

Claim GMO labeling opponents outspend pro-labeling groups 50 to 1 - The debate being waged over whether or not to label genetically engineered (GMO) foods is an especially contentious one. Are both sides spending big to win the fight? Not exactly. As we’ve reported, while the precise amount spent by the food and agriculture industries isn’t possible to tally*, an August estimate by the Environmental Working Group suggests that the number could be as high as $51.6 million for the first half of 2015 alone. This figure comes from federal lobbying and disclosure declarations filed by spenders that include the Grocery Manufacturers of America, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Monsanto, DuPont, Kellogg, Kraft, and General Mills. In response to this reporting, some have suggested that labeling proponents are spending nearly as much in an effort to bolster their own products. We decided to take a look at what companies and groups in favor of GMO-labeling have spent. Here’s what we found......

Editor's Note - I'm posting this next article for three reasons. First - To show how going green is impossible. Second - Green is a leftist concept and the left's only consistent foundation is they hate! This article is a clear demonstration of how the greenies even hate each other. Green is totally unharmonious with ..... well.... green..... as well as with ....well.... non-green! And the reason why is simple. Green has no logical foundation!  As with all things green clear definition is impossible! Without definition there can be no clarity, no understanding, no good decision making - ergo - disaster follows in the wake of "green". Finally, even when someone like Lynas – a former anti-GMO fanatic - has an epiphany and turns away from the anti-GMO insanity - he's still a greenie - and this bit of enlightenment is just a mere glimmer of reality in his life. He acknowledges the "overwhelming scientific consensus that GM crops are safe to eat" but he still continues to claim there's "even stronger scientific consensus that climate change is real, human-caused and a serious threat to humanity and the planet." Why?  Because if he abandons the Global Warming scam he will be cast out of the Church of Gaia and into eternal darkness and into a world which is totally antithetical to “green”.  Reality!

Ecomodernist environmentalist movement stumbles in European rollout - In late September, I and a few other people attempted to launch a new environmental political movement here in the UK and managed to alienate most of our potential supporters on the very first day. The movement is “ecomodernism”, an attempt to transcend some of the political polarisation in current environment debates.  At the risk of oversimplifying, environmentalism has for decades advocated that human societies need to be reintegrated into natural systems, using renewable energy, organic farming, etc. Ecomodernism proposes instead that “decoupling” from natural systems using technologies such as nuclear power and plant genetic engineering is a better way to support billions of people while reducing our impact on nature......
 

More than half of pesticides used by California farmers are active ingredients approved for organic - Did you know that organic farmers use pesticides? They do. Would it surprise you to know that many of the same pesticides are used by both conventional and organic farmers? In fact just over half of all the pesticides used in California by all categories of farmers are active ingredients that are approved for organic.  Would it surprise you to know that very little of modern pesticide use involves highly toxic chemicals? In fact the organic-approved and synthetic pesticides used in California today have a similar distribution of relative toxicity, mostly at the low toxicity end of the spectrum. This sort of useful information is publicly available, and is helpful in addressing many common misperceptions about organic and about pesticides in general......