News Forum Archives: July 2004
Nurture and Nature
by Michael Rosen-Molina
Alternet.org
July 26, 2004
Today, not many fledgling farmers are being born into the business. In fact, many are relative city slickers with little or no exposure to farm life, driven by a desire to grow organic produce and get back to the land.
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Greenhouse gas buildup seen as risk to oceans
By Beth Daley
The Boston Globe
July 16, 2004
Almost half the carbon dioxide from the past two centuries of human industry has been absorbed by the world’s oceans, an injection of greenhouse gas that could change the acidity of the ocean in the future and threaten some sea creatures, according to a report published today.
Scientists have long known that the oceans played a key role in the storage of carbon dioxide, the abundant gas largely responsible for global warming. But today a team of researchers reported in the journal Science that they have taken the first widespread measurement of how much carbon dioxide the ocean is absorbing, and found this situation has the potential to cause harmful changes to the ocean’s chemistry.
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Dietary wasteland growing
Grocery deserts common in rural, urban community
By J.M. Hirsch, Associated Press
Monday, July 05, 2004
PITTSBURG, N.H. – William Laste thinks nothing of driving more than 400 miles roundtrip to buy groceries, or of supplementing his shopping with fiddlehead ferns and dandelion greens gathered in fields near his home.
In this mountainous outpost of 870 people along the Canadian border, good food at fair prices is hard to find. There are no supermarkets, and the community’s two convenience stores offer little fresh produce and plenty of high prices.
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Breaking the lawn-care pesticide cycle
By Jane M. Bradley, E/The Environmental Magazine
July 2, 2004
Elise Craig lives in a garden apartment in Portland, Oregon, where children roll in the grass and run barefoot across lawns in the summer light. A year ago, she realized that whenever the landlord spread lawn-care chemicals on the grass, her six-year-old son, Michael, lost bowel and bladder control for weeks afterward.
“Michael’s symptoms came back every time they treated the lawn,” said Craig. “They told us it was safe after a day, so I kept him off the grass for a week or two. Michael still got sick. We were ultimately successful in organizing our community to go organic, but we are about to move, and I may face this battle in our new home with new neighbors.”
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