For more than a century, home canning has been a popular way to preserve and enjoy homegrown fruits and vegetables, not to mention fresh-caught seafood and other delicacies. One of the key benefits of home canning is limiting exposure to the chemicals and pesticides used on most commercially available produce and seafood.
A debt-for-nature swap is an agreement by which a wealthier, developed nation like the United States forgives debt owed to it by a developing country in exchange for a promise to use some or all of the money instead to preserve critical environmental areas.
<B><U>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> ¿Hay riesgos ambientales y de salud en el uso de esmaltes de uña?</B>
<B><U>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> Acabo de leer un informe que señala que el pesticida DDT, prohibido ya hace muchos años, está siendo usado en Mozambique para combatir el paludismo. La malaria mata, pero no es el retorno del DDT aún más peligroso?</B>
Environmentalists around the globe are toasting a deal announced last week in which the U.S. government has agreed to forgive $24.4 million in debt from Guatemala to free up the money for use in forest conservation efforts there. Two leading international conservation nonprofits, the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International, were instrumental in putting the "debt-for-nature" together, and each organization also provided $1 million toward Guatemalan conservation initiatives to help sweeten the deal.
Following an international plea by a coalition of 60 environmental groups concerned about the health of marine ecosystems, the Bush administration last week joined dozens of other countries in calling on the United Nations to institute an international moratorium on unregulated high seas bottom trawling. Scientists say the fishing practice is destroying some of the world’s rarest and most sensitive ocean habitats.
Conventional nail polishes dispensed at most drugstores and nail salons contain a veritable witch’s brew of chemicals, including toluene, which has been linked to a wide range of health issues from simple headaches and eye, ear, nose and throat irritation to nervous system disorders and damage to the liver and kidneys.
<U><B>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> ¿Cuál es la elección más "ambientalista" con respecto a vehículos para los que necesitamos una camioneta o todoterreno? Estamos a punto de reemplazar dos camionetas viejas con una que es más eficiente en materia de combustible.</B>
<U><B>Dear EarthTalk:</U> What is the best eco-friendly vehicle choice for those of us who need a pickup or SUV? We are about to replace two older trucks with one that is more fuel-efficient.</B>
In our modern age of food preservatives and additives, genetically altered crops and E. coli outbreaks, as with the recent spinach debacle, people are increasingly concerned about the quality and cleanliness of the foods they eat.
Frances Moore Lappé says her new book Democracy’s Edge (Jossey-Bass, 2006) "is about hope—not sappy, wishful thinking but hope grounded in a grasp of the root causes of spreading misery. I propose that we are in the midst of an extraordinary historical moment—one in which anti-democratic forces appear to be in ascendance while at the same time, invisible to most of us, a powerful current is stirring that may well take us to democracy’s next historical stage. I cast aside the gloomy view that Americans are hopelessly divided, left vs. right and secular vs. religious, and uncover widespread shared sentiment and common democratic innovation across these supposed barriers."
A much-anticipated and long-overdue study by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released last week concludes that large wind energy projects can move forward as long as developers take precautions against interfering with military radar installations. A lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club in June accused DoD of instituting a near-moratorium on the construction of new wind power facilities by failing to complete the study, which Congress passed last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Without the study, at least a dozen wind farm projects were stalled, encompassing more than 600 individual windmills and capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of power.
