GAIA HOLISTIC NEWS
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We have been running two different segments for many years - Gaia and Holistic Health News. We began looking at those sections more closely and really couldn't discern a tremendous difference between them. So, in efforts to save more trees and eliminate a couple of pages in our publication, we are combining them into our new Gaia Holistic News. Old News - Timely Messsage: JUNKRaft Sailed in Support of Banishing Plastics and Is Now Being Shown at Boat Shows The JunkRaft crew believes that there is enough floating garbage in the Pacific Ocean to create a heap the size of Massachusetts. In 2008, it took JUNK three months (and four hurricanes) of sailing 2,600 miles from Los Angeles to Hawaii at 1.5 miles per hour on a craft made of 15,000 plastic bottles and some other vital parts, such as a Cessna engine, to raise awareness about plastic marine debris fouling our oceans. As they sailed, they skimmed. The crew of JUNK state that, "Two thirds of the earth is ocean and it is now a plastic soup." They feel we are in The Synthetic Age and should have been moving into the Age of Sustainability much more quickly than we are. To continue education and awareness, the JUNK is being shown at boat shows, the most recent in Seattle. From their blog, they wrote the following: "There are over 20,000 man-made chemicals produced by the billions of pounds annually that are dispersed throughout the globe in an open loop of consumption that often ends as waste to be buried, burned or to flow down coastal watersheds out to sea. It is unsustainable and deeply troubling knowing that many synthetic compounds are persistent in the environment and are harmful to wildlife and humans. Plastic marine debris is one of them, and is the most ubiquitous form of pollution visible around the world. It is clear that single-use disposable plastic products have no place in modern society." (Source: www.junkraft.com) Chrysler's Peapod: 2 Cents Per Mile Plus A Smile Green Electric Machine Can't Go Over 25 Mph - But It Looks Happy Doing It It's the cute little car that smiles at you. And when you see how little it costs to run it, you'll probably smile back. It's called the Peapod, and Today Show's Matt Lauer recently took it for a test ride on Rockefeller Plaza and pronounced it "cool." Chrysler, which took the car from concept to production in less than two years, hopes the vehicle will find a market among people who want a vehicle to run errands and travel efficiently in towns and urban areas. Made almost entirely of recycled materials, the sleek little vehicle with a see-through roof has a top speed of 25 mph, is totally electric, plugs into a 110-volt outlet - and costs a mere 2 cents a mile to run. "They don't go on highways," the car's designer, Peter Arnell, told Lauer. "They're for errands, taking your kids down to the soccer field, going shopping. They're mid-range - 30 miles on a charge." Although it cannot run on the highway, it can be driven legally anywhere the speed limit is 35 mph or less, Arnell said. The car uses no gasoline and has a carbon footprint that's barely visible. Its power comes from six batteries that have a useful life of eight years, Arnell said. They take six hours to fully recharge. (Source: TODAYshow.com, Mike Celizic) Can a Tree Really Go to Court to Defend its Rights? David Gutierrez reports a growing number of environmentalists and legal scholars are arguing that non-humans such as trees, rivers and animals should have legal standing to defend their rights in court, and that humans should be able to bring lawsuits on their behalf. "If I've got a right to life, you have a duty not to kill me," said Cormac Cullinan, a South African environmental lawyer and the author of Wild Law. "If one thinks of other species in the same way ... they would at least have the right to exist, and therefore a fundamental right to play their part in the evolutionary story," he said. In law, the term "standing" refers to whether a person has been personally harmed and is therefore entitled to redress in court. With nature, the question centers less on the harm than on the right to be heard in court. Granting legal standing to nature was first proposed by Christopher Stone, a University of Southern California professor, in 1972. "Stones' article was a hugely innovative piece at the time and remains one of the touchstone pieces when you think about how we could do better in making environmental law," said environmental law scholar Jutta BrunnŽe of the University of Toronto. "But not a lot of progress has been made anywhere in that direction." Since that first article, the ability of individuals and organizations to bring suits on behalf of nature has been expanded. But courts still decide those cases based on human interest, not the rights of plants or animals. "It hasn't gotten to the point where you can say, `I'm worried about the marmots in the Rockies, I'm bringing an action on their behalf,'" BrunnŽe said. "It would be cast in terms of what is the interest of the general public in preserving this or that." And while the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 1988 that the endangered Hawaiian Palila honeycreeper "has legal status and wings its way into federal court as a plaintiff in its own right," the same court backtracked on that language in 2004. Writing on the case Cetacean Community v. Bush, the court dismissed its 1988 language as simply a "rhetorical flourish." (Source: NaturalNews Service) NYC Takes Lead In Setting Next Food Target - Salt First, it was a ban on artery-clogging trans fats. Then calories were posted on menus. Now the New York City health department is taking on salt. City officials are meeting with food makers and restaurants to discuss reducing the amount of salt in common foods such as soup, pasta sauce, salad dressing, and bread. About three-quarters of the salt Americans eat comes from prepared and processed food, not from the salt shaker. That's why New York officials want the food industry to help cut back. "It's very hard for an individual to do this on their own," said Dr. Lynn Silver, an assistant commissioner in the health department. The department has shown its clout with bans on artificial trans fats and rules forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts. To comply, fast food chains changed their recipes nationwide, and other cities and states have enacted similar policies. Some manufacturers said getting rid of trans fats took work, and reducing salt has its own difficulties. Unlike sugar, there's no substitute for salt. Cream soups - like that casserole favorite cream of mushroom - are the biggest challenge, said George Dowdie, head of research and development for Campbell Soup Co. The soup maker, which has been cutting salt for years, is in the talks with New York. By fall, Campbell Soup plans to have more than 90 lower-sodium soups available. That includes its first soup, tomato, which will have almost a third less salt. The industry hopes salt reduction remains voluntary. "Literally freight cars full of salt have been removed from these products gradually over time," said Robert Earl, vice president of science policy, nutrition and health for the Grocery Manufacturers Association. "It has to be done carefully - gradually and incremental over time." Too much salt raises blood pressure, and high blood pressure raises the risk of heart disease. A recent analysis showed that for every gram of salt cut, as many as 250,000 cases of heart disease and 200,000 deaths could be prevented over a decade. "Very, very small changes in diet could have dramatic effects," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a researcher with the University of California, San Francisco. (Source: Associated Press; www.naturalhealthsciencenews.org) Vegetable Juice May Aid Weight Loss: Study One glass of a reduced salt vegetable juice a day may help overweight people with metabolic syndrome lose more weight, according to a new study. Partly funded by the Campbell Soup Company and using its low sodium V8 brand juice, the study reported that people who drank a daily 8-ounce glass of the juice, as part of a calorie-controlled DASH diet, lost four pounds over 12 weeks, while those who followed the same diet but drank no juice lost one pound. The researchers from Baylor College of Medicine also reported that participants in the vegetable juice group were more likely to meet the daily five-a-day recommendations for fruit and vegetable intakes. "What this study shows is that by taking simple, proactive steps such as drinking low sodium vegetable juice while watching calorie intake, people can begin to control their weight, which helps reduce the risk of long-term health implications," said study author John Foreyt, PhD. The findings of the study, a randomized, controlled trial with 81 adults with metabolic syndrome, were presented at the Experimental Biology Meeting. (Source: www.nutraingredients-usa.com) Staying Slim Is Good for the Environment Watching your weight does more than protect your health. It may also help fight climate change. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine say that because food production is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, a lean population, such as in Vietnam, consumes about 20 percent less food and produces fewer greenhouse gases than a population in which 40 percent of people are obese, a rate close to that of the United States. Also, less energy is required to transport slim people, say the researchers, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts, of the school's Department of Epidemiology and Population Health. They calculated that a lean population of a billion people would emit 1,000 million tons less transportation-related carbon dioxide equivalents a year than an obese population would emit. Their research was published April 20 in the International Journal of Epidemiology. "When it comes to food consumption, moving about in a heavy body is like driving around in a gas guzzler," the researchers said. "The heavier our bodies become, the harder and more unpleasant it is to move about in them, and the more dependent we become on our cars. Staying slim is good for health and for the environment." "We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend toward fatness and recognize it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change," they said. However, they noted that the trend is in the opposite direction. The average body mass index (BMI) is increasing in nearly every country. The average male BMI in England, for instance, increased from 26 to 27.3 between 1994 and 2004, while the average female BMI increased from 25.8 to 26.9. The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more information about weight control. (Source: Yahoo News) |