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POPSFake Steve Jobs: When you buy "made in China", this is what you're buying
More: Well, this is the world we are living in. These are the people we are dealing with… We can't make these products in the United States. Nobody could afford to buy them if we did. And, frankly, the quality would be about half what we get out of China. But these guys play rough. They really do. They are not nice people. And, though we talk a good game about how we insist on workers being treated with dignity, blah blah blah, well, I mean, come on. Have you ever been to China?… We know what goes on there. We know how they open your mail, and listen to your phone calls, and let their factories pollute like crazy and exploit workers, all in the name of progress. And we turn a blind eye to it. We let them know when we're coming to visit, and they give us a tour and put on a little show of how great things are, and how wonderful the dorm life is, and afterward we pretend to keep an eye on them -- but it's all theater. It is. We know it. What's more, you know it. Everyone knows it.
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POPSTim O'Reilly - Seeing our culture with fresh eyes More: What will people think of our enormous steak dinners and obese portions of food? That's on the cusp of changing. What will they think of our profligate use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources? Our assumption that the American way of life will go on forever, just as it is, much as the British thought their empire would go on forever? What about our assumptions about unlimited technological progress? Will science fiction visions of star flight or "the Singularity" seem as quaint as "the White Man's Burden"? Above all, what will they think of the appalling amount of waste in our culture? Have you ever walked through a tourist area - say Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco - and seen entire stores devoted to schlock, made in developing countries by people who must scratch their heads in wonder at a people so wealthy that they can afford to spend money on things that are so utterly and obviously useless?
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POPSRoundup weedkiller kills human cells More: One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”…Roundup might cause pregnancy problems by interfering with hormone production, possibly leading to abnormal fetal development, low birth weights or miscarriages…an Argentine scientist and local activists reported a high incidence of birth defects and cancers in people living near crop-spraying areas. Scientists there also linked genetic malformations in amphibians to glysophate. In addition, last year in Sweden, a scientific team found that exposure is a risk factor for people developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma… Federal law classifies all pesticide ingredients that don’t harm pests as “inert”…Inert compounds, therefore, aren’t necessarily biologically or toxicologically harmless – they simply don’t kill insects or weeds. Monsanto is evil.
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POPSOakland is 4th greenest city in US (San Fran is #2, Berkeley #7) More: Since there is as yet no official criteria set by the Environmental Protection Agency for determining a city's "greeness", Mother Nature Network considered several key areas to measure the effectiveness of a municipality's efforts at carbon footprint reduction. These included air and water quality, efficient recycling and management of waste, percentage of LEED certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy, and easy access to green products and services.
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POPSMitsubishi makes bid for "most evil corporation around" title Because when you look at the prospect of imminent species extinction, OF COURSE your first thought is "hey, I can make money off this!" :mad: More: Fish stocks across the world are in retreat because of over-fishing. One study suggests oceans will be stripped clean of all fish by 2048. Bluefin is imminently at risk of commercial extinction. The wildlife charity WWF forecasts that breeding stocks of the fish that migrate from the Atlantic to spawn will be wiped out in the Mediterranean by 2012… conservationists suspect the actual catch is 60,000 tonnes, four times the maximum that marine scientists recommend. After studying catches and sales, Charles Clover, the environmental journalist behind the film The End of the Line, believes that businesses involved in the ransacking are deep-freezing 20,000 tonnes of bluefin a year for later use…
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POPSUC Berkeley researcher: Climate change hitting poor in the U.S. hardest More: California industries considered heavy emitters of greenhouse gases have a workforce that is 60 percent minority. Any climate plan that fails to transition those workers to new "green energy" jobs threatens to widen the racial economic divide.… The researchers also found most emissions trading and fee programs are blind to the location of the source: It makes no difference to climate change to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a dense urban neighborhood or an unpopulated rural area. But it can make a huge difference in public health, they noted, particularly as many urban greenhouse gas emitters also pollute the air and are located in poor neighborhoods.
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POPSThe 7 sins of Greenwashing Greenwashing is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.
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POPSTransition Towns wiki More: Cheerful disclaimer! Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact. We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale. What we are convinced of is this: * if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late * if we act as individuals, it'll be too little * but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time. Everything that you read on this site is the result of real work undertaken in the real world with community engagement at its heart. There's not an ivory tower in sight, no professors in musty oak-panelled studies churning out erudite papers, no slavish adherence to a model carved in stone. This site, just like the transition model, is brought to you by people who are actively engaged in transition in a community.
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POPSThe Transition Handbook, 2nd edition - wiki version More: Resilience refers to the ability of a system, from individual people to whole economies, to hold together and maintain their ability to function in the face of change and shocks from the outside. This book, The Transition Handbook, argues that in our current (and long overdue) efforts to drastically cut carbon emissions, we must also give equal importance to the building, or more accurately to the rebuilding, of resilience.
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POPSThe Starfish Project, Cambodia – "It makes a difference to this one." More: Our projects all have a beginning and an end in sight when we undertake them. We do not take on projects that require sustenance, or in other ways discourage client independence. Thus, assistance is given in many ways to ensure that initiated projects are locally viable and sustainable… The Starfish Bakery & Café was started in 2001 as an income generating project for the Starfish Project. The Starfish Center provides employment opportunities for Cambodian people with disabilities as all outreach workers, bakery/café, internet and massage employees suffer from some form of physical disability which makes it difficult for them to obtain meaningful employment elsewhere… Due to the fact that the Starfish Bakery & Cafe funds all of the necessary overhead and administrative costs, we are able to put all donations and money raised directly towards helping our clients.
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POPSSmall fry: Little fish are tasty, fun, and good for you More: These fish are found at the busy intersection of delicious, environmentally sound, healthy, and cheap. They cook in minutes and stand up to strong seasonings. And they’re delicious cooked with Asian, Spanish, or even Mexican flavorings.
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POPSHow dangerous is that jar of honey? Quick summary : Most U.S. and Canadian honey is of high quality and safe; , the large majority of honey consumed in the U.S. is imported; millions of pounds of Chinese honey destined for the U.S. is transshipped and frequently mislabeled as coming from a different foreign country; some importers and honey packers are in on the con; federal investigators and some large honey importers say they still find Chinese honey tainted with illegal medications; FDA, USDA, and customs agents have far too much on their plates to pay much attention to honey; and only a smallest fraction of honey seeping through our borders is ever tested.
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