Daily Quick Read - July 30, 2019

Honoré and the Green Army

Lt Gen Russel Honoré led the recover efforts in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.  Honoré’s actions saved lives and restored not just order to the chaos that followed the hurricane, but humanity and decency.  He’s taken on a new role and it’s a much bigger fight than any he faced in his military career.

Honoré retired in 2008 and while he’s traded in his fatigues, he’s still applying his trademark straightforward approach in a battle to save American lives. Today he commands what he’s named the “Green Army” against toxic pollution, “one of our nation’s deadliest enemies”, in communities up and down Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” corridor – the area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge littered with pollution from petrochemical plants.

“When I came home,” said Honoré, “I saw multinational corporations doing things that were clearly making people sick – poisoning the water, poisoning in the air, and acting with impunity.” It was another bad plan, and Honoré wasn’t going to stand for it.

Honoré sees his Green Army as a legislative and public relations arm of the work that environmentalists like Orr do on the ground here every day. Often it’s about him using his considerable name recognition to bring attention to communities who are being ignored.

“When people call, we physically go see what the problem is, and then we try to get them to organize – because nobody’s gonna do nothing unless you’re moving your feet.”

Waste That Could Feed Billions

From a health standpoint growth in the worldwide consumption of fish is good news.  To support that consumption , we are fishing the sea empty and yet, the industry wastes 30% of its catch before the food even gets to consumers.

Waste is an issue throughout the global food chain. Roughly one-third of our food supply—about 1.3 billion tonnes—gets wasted every year. A European or North American consumer may waste up to 115 kilograms per year, 10 times more than their counterpart in sub-Saharan Africa or south and Southeast Asia. But the problem is especially egregious in the seafood category, where nearly a third of global stocks are overfished. Wasting food—especially fish—appears to be an inefficiency our species cannot afford to keep up.

And yet. As we busily agree with each other, our discards continue to pile up.

Stockholm  Syndrome in the Oil Patch

A River of Oil                                                     KGET

When your livelihood depends on fossil fuels are you going to take a stand against them?  The Cymric oil spill in Kern County,California has grown to one million gallons and is still flowing.  Our world runs on oil and so what if the oil companies are destroying the environment?  That seems to be the attitude of many of those whose health is endangered by environment in this oil dependent community.

"People are anti-oil, anti-oil companies,” Whitteker said. “I think it’s ridiculous because our world runs on oil. All the plastic in your car. The baggies you put your lunch in. Your shoes.” 

Some of the men having lunch said they had not heard about an oil spill. Sabrina Ballou, who works at the diner, toasted bread and poured gravy over biscuits in the kitchen. When asked if she had heard about the oil spill, Ballou replied over the sizzle of hamburger meat on the grill: “I’ve heard about it, haven’t seen it. They’ve got it handled. It’s what they do around here.

Nothing new for us.” “They take it pretty serious around here,” said Ballou, whose husband drives a vacuum truck. “They try not to mess up the environment.”

I challenge you to name one oil company that has succeeded in not messing up the environment. 

That’s a Lot of Trees

350,000,000 planted in one day.  It’s going to take a while before they make a difference, but if Ethiopian can plant 350  million trees in a day, why can’t we?  And, we could help other countries do the same.

About 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister. The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part. The project aims to tackle the effects of deforestation and climate change in the drought-prone country. According to the UN, Ethiopia’s forest coverage was just 4% in the 2000s, down from 35% a century earlier. 

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright
This is good news - a 30% increase in the wild tiger population in India in the last four years. India has set aside 50 sanctuaries distributed across the country to provide protected habitats that will provide some safety for the tigers.

India’s wild tiger population has increased by more than 30 percent in just four years, according to a new census released Monday, raising hopes for the survival of the endangered species.The census found 2,967 tigers in the wild across the country, up from 2,226 four years ago in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed as a “historic achievement”.Population numbers in the nation have risen steadily since falling to its lowest-recorded figure of 1,411 in 2006.But they are yet to return to the figures recorded in 2002 when some 3,700 tigers were estimated to be alive in the country.It is believed some 40,000 tigers lived in India at the time of independence from Britain in 1947.