Pig Business - More 4 tonight 2200

The flurry of important environmental events at short notice continues apace.

The latest is Pig Business, a film by Tracy Worcester, which is being shown tonight on More 4 at 2200.

Tracy did a brilliant job chairing the launch of the groundbreaking and quite possibly historic Wild Law research paper last Tuesday, by all accounts. More on that later.

While if all of us had her commitment to building a better world, just imagine how much better things would be. Here's what she does according to Wikipedia - amongst other things.

In 1989, Tracy Worcester began working with Friends of the Earth. Since then, she has been active in green politics as Patron of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a Trustee of the Gaia Foundation, the Schumacher Society and the Bath Environment Centre, Patron of the UK's Soil Association, and as a member of the advisory board of The Ecologist magazine and a member of the International Forum on Globalisation.

And still has time for making movies!

Pig Business exposes the unconscionable costs of bringing home the bacon on four fronts:

- animal rights

- destroying small farmers - at an astonishing rate as the market is globalised by multi-national farming conglomerates

- polluting the environment - in a big way...

- jeopardising our lives


For example on the environment (my bolding throughout, other than titles)

'One-third of the world’s total cultivable land is dedicated to growing cereal and soya to feed livestock, while a further 7% is used for grazing animals. Eighty per cent of the world's soya beans and 60% of its maize and barley are grown for livestock feed.

'Much of this land is acquired by destroying forests, a major cause of CO2 emissions and loss of biodiversity. Between 2004 and 2005 around 1.2 million hectares of rainforest were cut down as a result of soya expansion, almost entirely for animal feed and livestock pastures.

'How livestock production contributes to 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions

Source: McMichael et al. (2007) Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. The Lancet, 370(9594), 1253-1263

'In Latin America the land devoted to soya crops doubled between 1994 and 2004, and deforestation, particularly of the Amazon rainforest, now accounts for around 75% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. Soya cultivation in Brazil to date occupies an area of land the size of Great Britain.'

On the threat to our lives:

'Because of the crowded and unnatural conditions in which factory farmed animals live, they are frequently given antibiotics to prevent disease or bolster their weakened immune systems. Across the world half of all the antibiotics used are administered to livestock. Around 80-90% of all antibiotics used for humans and animals are not fully digested or broken down, leaving them to pass through the body and enter the environment intact through waste.

'Evidence suggests that this over-use of antibiotics is helping to spread drug-resistant strains of diseases such as MRSA and E. coli, which can cause humans serious illness and death. The transfer of MRSA from pigs to humans is already recognised in the Netherlands, and it is feared this new strain of MRSA affecting pigs in some countries will spread to the UK, exacerbating the existing problem.

'Workers at risk
'... at least a quarter of factory farm workers consistently suffer from respiratory diseases, including bronchitis, mucous membrane irritation, asthma-like syndrome, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

'A deadly environment
'Studies repeatedly show that air and water quality are threatened in and around factory farms. Noxious gases in the atmosphere from manure containing hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, and dangerous pathogens cause ill health not only to those working with the animals but those living nearby. Many local residents report unusually frequent headaches, eye irritation, excessive coughing, nausea and asthma. Hydrogen sulphide may cause nausea, blackout periods, headaches and vomiting, and breathing in too much ammonia can cause severe respiratory damage.

'Excessive spraying of faecal material onto fields results in run-off into nearby lakes and rivers, poisoning the water table, eco system and drinking water. The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources has discovered that 1 in 10 drinking-water wells near factory pig farms contains unsafe levels of nitrates, which has been linked to risk of blue-baby syndrome. Six-month-old infants, pregnant women and adults with immunity deficiencies are especially vulnerable.

'President George W. Bush, in one of his last acts before he leaves office, has proposed to free industrial-scale pig and cattle farms from the Clean Water Act if they declare they are not dumping animal waste in lakes and rivers.

'Exploiting the poor
'In the US, intensive pig farms are clustered typically in non-white areas near low-income communities where people are extra vulnerable to the hazards of factory farms because of existing problems of poor health, poor housing, low income, and lack of access to medical care.

After all that, one may ask why not go the whole hog, keep the poor old hog whole, and just go vegan? George Monbiot came to that conclusion, at least intellectually, in this article last April:

Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity, but - take it from a flesh eater - flesh eating is worse

While there are some telling environmental arguments put forward by the Vegan Society here and in the side links dealing with land, water and energy.

Perhaps most telling, particularly for those inclined to blame climate change on the growing human population is this:

'World meat production has quadrupled in the past 50 years and livestock now outnumber people by more than 3 to 1. [2] In other words, the livestock population is expanding at a faster rate than the human population.'

And consuming a substantial proportion of the available resources, particularly land, food and water.

More than enough said.

Wild Law - holy grail sighted

Greetings

Poor connectivity has delayed getting this out, so if it turns out to be old hat, forgive me. Otherwise, this seems truly something to celebrate.

After all the years of questing rewarded only by fleeting but encouraging sightings of 'laws already in place that had some of the essential characteristics of Wild Law', miraculously the elusive grail has appeared in all its pristine glory.

The event occurred in the State of California on 22 July and has been widely witnessed. Thanks to Governor Arni Schwarzenegger (Republican) and a State Senator by the name of Joe Simitian (Democrat), we now have some real Wild Law in the form of Senate Bill 1399, albeit rather modest in scope.

Its purpose is to liberate trees and shrubs from previously existing controls over their existence and growth should they happen to cast shade on solar collectors installed after they were planted.

While this may not seem to be much, it would seem to be Wild Law pure and unadulterated as it effectively gives rights to plants, and does so over a whole raft of anthropocentric concerns which normally be expected to take precedence in consumerland.

Those wishing to make a pilgrimage to the site of where the miracle was revealed can visit The New York Times at

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/23solar.html

However be aware that the yokels filing the report were entirely oblivious to the magnitude of the event they are covering, and completely overlook its significance in favour of rustic humour and grunge reporting of the unseemly dispute which happened to presage the incarnation of this measure.

A better account can be found at

http://origin.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9961578?nclick_check=1


Braver souls undeterred by the experience of Sir Galahad may wish to try for a full revelation themselves, for whom a highlighted PDF of the legislation is attached (please email if you would like a copy). From the Wild Law perspective, the operative parts are:

Section 2 - which places restrictions on the amount of shade a tree or shrub may cast upon a solar collector; and

Section 6 – which exempts pre-existing trees and shrubs from the entire chapter.

Clean copies can be had from this link, where the evolution of the bill can also be found:

http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_1399&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen


As in the Grail mystery, let us hope that this may be followed with more and increasingly generalised sightings, and that it will herald in a age of renewed peace and harmony on Earth.


In passing there are a couple of other reasons to take heart from this story. The first is the phenomenal pace and scale at which California is setting about greening itself under Arni's leadership. That this can be done at all, let alone in the face of a federal administration hostile to the entire concept, speaks volumes of how much can be achieved given inspired and enlightened leadership and a reasonable level of popular support. Whilst this puts almost all other politicians currently in power to utter shame for their inertia, shortsightedness and most of all their inability or unwillingness to recognise that if economic interests are not subordinated to responding to environmental catastrophe the game is up for all of us, it also proves how fast things can change in a big way once the will is there. There are yet grounds for hope.

Following on from that is the inspiration to be drawn from Arni's miraculous conversion at the personal level. Quite leaving aside the Terminator and other movies, here is a man who has gone from thinking he was green whilst driving around in a gas (petrol) fueled Hummer when he first took up office, to being one of the most outstanding environmental leaders on the planet. Testimony to that is the extraordinary fact that he is apparently being cited for an environmental post in the next administration under either presidential candidate

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/us/politics/14schwarz.html

Whilst he still began with a good nose in front of most politicians, if Arni can do it, the possibility of epiphanies remains for all.


As to The Terminator, it would seem fairest to judge the man by his own standards. To quote the last article:

'Mr. Schwarzenegger also offered some praise for Mr. Obama, saying he disagreed with people who have criticized the senator as a flip-flopper.

'Someone has, for 20 or 30 years, been in the wrong place with his idea and with his ideology and says: “You know something? I changed my mind. I am now for this.” As long as he is honest or she ís honest, I think that is a wonderful thing.'

The Republican candidate for 2012? From recent experience, things can only get better!

Smile and be happy
steve

Wild Law Successes - Introduction

NB TWEAKED ON POSTING

Intoduction

The proposal is to use this topic as a place to post concrete examples of Wild Law successes and discuss them.

These need not necessarily be legislation. Examples which manifest Wild Law principles outside of legal process might also be included. New ideas seem to have a habit of arising spontaneously in several places and forms at more or less the same time, so even those which do so entirely unconsciously could be useful as examples of an idea and ethic whose time has come.

The intention is that by collecting what we know individually into a rather rude database a better appreciation of where Wild Law has actually got to in terms of penetration will emerge. Networking thus should help to keep everyone in the frame at minimum effort.

It may well throw up a few surprises. In particular, it might emerge that there is a divergence in what Wild Law is considered to be and to embrace. Which is fine, and may well serve to stimulate the debate and sharpen collective thinking.

It can also act as a point of departure for those coming into Wild Law afresh, and as a reference source for journalists and academics, albeit rather makeshift.

With that in mind, it would be helpful if the subject of each post could be explicit in stating the initiative it discusses. That will make it easier to sort and access in what may well turn into a quite long list fairly quickly.

A case can be made for making a separate post for each project accordingly, but as there may be a need to discuss related projects as a group that is left to your discretion.




Just to kick things off on a provisional basis here’s a cut and paste from Simon Boyle’s excellent article in the Guardian of 08 November 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/nov/08/ethicalliving.society

‘… a body of legal opinion is proposing what are being called "wild laws", which would speak for birds and animals, and even rivers and nature. One of the first was introduced in September, when a community of about 7,000 people in Pennsylvania, in the US, adopted what is called [the]Tamaqua Borough Sewage Sludge Ordinance, 2006.

'It was hardly an event to set the world alight, except for two things: it refuses to recognise corporations' rights to apply sewage sludge to land, but it recognises natural communities and ecosystems within the borough as "legal persons" for the purposes of enforcing civil rights. According to Thomas Linzey, the lawyer from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, who helped draft it, this is historic.'

If Simon or anyone else wishes to fine tune this, I’ll be happy to either edit or withdraw this post.



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