GMO controversy won’t go away

More reflections on Prop. 37
The issue of labeling GMO food is not going to go away just because Big Food & Pesticides managed (barely) to squash it during the recent election.

As Zack Kaldveer (pictured), the Bay Area-based assistant media director for the Yes on 37 campaign, wrote to me recently, “A grassroots coalition that gathered 1 million petitions in just 10 weeks to place Proposition 37 on the ballot came three points away from defeating the world’s largest pesticide and junk food corporations and their $45 million war chest.

“The fundamental, democratic right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our children isn’t going anywhere,” Kaldveer said. “This food movement has just begun, and while a $1 million a day in deceptive ads bankrolled by companies like Monsanto and DuPont was just enough to keep consumers in the dark this time around, it won’t be enough next time.

“The more people understand what the ramifications of genetically engineered foods are—to our health, our environment, and to the future of our food supply—the greater the support there will be for a simple label.”

GMO-free county
In happier GMO-focused election news, on Nov. 6 the voters of San Juan County, Wash., overwhelmingly passed Proposition 2012-4, which makes it against the law to grow or propagate genetically modified plants or animals within the county limits. Violators are subject to penalties and the destruction of their GMO-laden goods.

Tips for the President
In view of the fact that Barack Obama will be serving a second term as president of the United States, Huff Post Green ran a story recently titled “Mr. President: 5 Ways to Salvage Your Environmental Legacy,” by Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

“To be blunt, when it came to tackling the most important environmental issues of our age, President Obama’s first term was a disappointment,” wrote Suckling.

Hence, Suckling’s Top-5 to-do list for President Obama:

“Address climate change and ocean acidification.” Suckling observes that “there is no crisis bigger than the one that’s rapidly transforming the world’s climate and oceans. … Left unchecked, climate change threatens millions of people around the globe and countless species already on the brink of extinction.”

“Stem the extinction crisis.” The world’s animals and plants “are going extinct at an astonishing rate, up to 10,000 times faster than normal in some cases,” noted Suckling. “Unfortunately federal agencies in charge of saving endangered species have yet to respond on a scale that meets the speed and magnitude of this massive loss.”

“Keep politics out of the Endangered Species Act and other vital environmental laws.” Suckling points out “a growing movement in Congress to cripple” the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

“Safeguard our public lands, wild places and the Arctic.” “In the face of urban sprawl, habitat loss, population growth and a consumption-driven economy,” the nearly 650 million acres of federal land, such as national parks and wildlife refuges, are in danger. Additionally, Suckling puts the finger on “profit-driven companies that want to mine, graze, log, bulldoze and drill them into oblivion.”

“Embrace a newer, cleaner energy.” Noting that “fossil fuels are a huge part of what’s got us into this mess in the first place,” Suckling wants the United States’ focus shifted to renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geo-thermal.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/preztips to read the entire article.