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Human Activity Is Driving Earth's 'Sixth Great Extinction Event'
Population growth, pollution and invasive species are having a disastrous effect on species in the southern hemisphere, a major review by conservationists warns
Earth is experiencing its "sixth great extinction event" with disease and human activity taking a devastating toll on vulnerable species, according to a major review by conservationists.
Much of the southern hemisphere is suffering particularly badly, with Australia, New Zealand and neighbouring Pacific islands destined to become the extinction hotspots of the world, the report warns.
Ecosystems in Oceania, which includes Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia, need urgent and effective conservation policies, or the region's already poor record on extinctions will worsen signficantly.
Researchers trawled 24,000 published reports to compile information on the flora and fauna of Australasia and the Pacific islands, home to six of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Their report identifies six major causes that are driving species to extinction, almost all of which are linked in some way to human activity.
"Our region has the notorious distinction of having possibly the worst extinction record on Earth," said Richard Kingsford, an environmental scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and lead author of the report. "We have an amazing natural environment in our part of the world, but so much of it is being destroyed before our eyes. Species are being threatened by habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, climate change, over-exploitation, pollution and wildlife disease."
The review, published in the journal Conservation Biology, highlights destruction and degradation of ecosystems as the single greatest threat to the region's wildlife. In Australia, agriculture has altered or destroyed half of all woodland and forests. Around 70% of the remaining forest has been damaged by logging. Severe loss of suitable habitats is behind 80% of threatened species, the report claims.
The arrival of invasive animals and plants has devastated native species on many Pacific islands and contributed to the extinction of birds and mammals. The Guam Micronesian kingfisher is now thought to be extinct in the wild following the introduction of the brown tree snake, which preys on the birds. The impact of invasive species is often compounded by pollution from rapid development and burgeoning human populations on the islands, which have outstripped their capacity to deal with waste. Plastics and fishing gear are an ongoing danger to seabirds and marine animals, the report says.
The impact of humans on wildlife is likely to increase in Australasia and the Pacific islands, where populations are predicted to rise substantially. By 2050, the population of Australia is expected to have risen by 35%, and in New Zealand by 25%. Other islands with rich biodiversity are predicted to see an even more dramatic population rise, with Papua New Guinea predicted to be home to 76% more people by 2050 and New Caledonia having 49% more.
More than 2,500 invasive plant species have colonised Australia and New Zealand, threatening local species by competing for sunlight and nutrients. Many have been introduced by governments, horticulturalists and hunters. In addition, the report says Australia has seen increased average temperatures, especially since the 1950s, in line with climate change predictions, forcing some species towards Antarctica and others to higher, cooler ground.
The report highlights several studies that point to serious threats from diseases such as avian malaria and the chytrid fungus, which has been linked to large declines in frog populations. One of the most devastating animal diseases is an infectious form of facial cancer that is spreading rapidly among Tasmanian devils, the world's largest marsupial predator. Populations of the animals are believed to have fallen by more than 60% because of the disease.
Plants have also fared badly as a result of new diseases. For example a root fungus that was deliberately introduced into Australia has destroyed several plant species.
The report sets out a raft of recommendations to slow the decline of species by introducing new laws to limit land clearing, logging and mining; restricting the deliberate introduction of invasive species; reducing carbon emissions and pollution; and placing strict limits on fisheries. The report raises particular concerns about fisheries that cause disproportionate destruction to ecosystems by bottom trawling, and using cyanide and dynamite.
It also calls for the establisment of early-warning systems to pick up diseases in the wild.
"The burden on the environment is going to get worse unless we are a lot smarter about reducing our footprint on the planet or the human population," said Kingsford. "Unless we get this equation right, future generations will surely be paying more in terms of quality of life and the environment we live in. And our region will continue its terrible reputation of leading the world in the extinction of plants and animals."
47 Comments so far
Show AllGood to see they're finally daring to talk about our greatest problem, overpopulation. When are they going to start talking about our next greatest problem, the extreme concentration of wealth and power?
Overpopulation is necessary to maintain the extreme concentration of wealth and power.
Yeh, definitely helps.
As a member of the most "successfull"invasive species on the planet,most of my work is in countering the invasive species Homo Sapiens have introduced into my local environment.Scientists say the Biota on the planet is as thin as the mold on the skin of an Orange as compared to its' mass.And the atmosphere only slightly thicker.About the ratio of the skin on a navel orange.Maybe when the centers of power are submerged governments will take the problem seriously! peace
Sorry to pop your balloon. There won't be any government once disintegrating economies make governance untenable. As Werner Herzog so wonderfully described this state of human affairs in the title of his motion picture story about Kasper Hauser - "Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle". That is, "Everyone for himself and God against all".
property ownership...this is the outcome of humans 'owning' the planet...we cannot be trusted with such...ownership of land must pass away...title supports development...
"In Australia, agriculture has altered or destroyed half of all woodland and forests." These woodlands and forests were deeded, titled away...
This nightmarish "Planet of the BushApes" continues, where the only answer is extinction. Religion is to blame, since that undergovernment still to this day promotes "be fruitful and multiply."
If we could divorce ourselves from both religion and "growth market" predatory capitalism, we might have a chance at moderating our own numbers and being competent custodians of the planet. But both those mechanisms are tribal evolutionary tools that are so ingrained as to be considered worth dying for.
So we will.
Great Tragedy seems to be the inevitable fate of Homo sapiens.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
personally i would substitute 'tragedy' for relief..........
(as far as the other species on the planet goes)..............
I once had the great pleasure of spending the day with a eccentric upper crust Brit who claimed that he was the reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson.
We had a wonderful conversation filled with humor and wry observations about the state of mankind.
But what he mostly wanted to do was to see wild animals in nature.
So I took him for a drive up country where we say coyotes bounding up out of tall grass in the mist.
He was delighted and so was I.
Life doesn't get any better than that!
Since you love to quote Jefferson i thought I would share that with you.
Unfortunately I don't recall anything that was said except for a large WhooHoo when those wild dogs were gamboling in the light summer rain.
All the hype about carbon is dwarfed by this biological holocaust committed by modern civilization, agriculture, human arrogance and ignorance. Global warming will only hasten the exctinction rate.
I don't really want to live in a world without wild tigers, lions, whales, sharks, gorillas, bears, wolves, frogs, salmon, bluefin, and on. I hate to think of the generations proceeding mine (I am in my early 40's) that may have to exist without these critters in the wild.
I am fighting this madness every day out of my little cubicle office here at home. Not sure how else to cope?
Does anyone else have effective ways to wake the sheople up?
A modern and extended version of "Soylent Green" the movie perhaps?
"Soylent Green", the remake:
The hero staggers in. "Soylent Green, it's made of rich people!" The crowd surges forward. Front end loaders push the crowd back.
This is definitely an improvement over the original. But what will you do without Chuck?
First
Get out of your office and take a walk.
Find something in your neighborhood that is green or feathered or furry and hang out for awhile.
I'm a country girl and when I was in London for a month I had to resort to going to the nearest graveyard to find some peace and undisturbed greenery.
Whatever it takes!
Second
Support any cause that promotes Community Conservation and especially is trying to save HABITAT for endangered species.
Zoo's won't do it nor will seed banks.
We are on the list for extinction...right after the big mammals and indigenous peoples (who are going down fast I might add).
We have a small non profit that supports community conservation.
My husband, Ed, is a conservation biologist who saw the big picture in 1980.
Back then scientists were trying to save endangered species by going in and throwing a fence around them or putting them in zoos or whatever.
Ed started to talk to local land owners in small villages in developing countries and convinced many that
protecting delicate species was in their own best interest.
They got it right away.
In fact many already did as much as part of their daily life.
E.G. When the large turtles started to disappear the local fisherman would call a moratorium on catching turtles for food until the size indicated that they were plentiful enough for harvesting again.
Sometimes this took years
That's the beauty of being connected to nature.
Sometimes you see the big picture in something as simple as the size of a turtle.
So go for that walk, try to be happy for every breath you take and do a good deed every day.
Things are pretty grim but my experience in life has taught me that the humans do their best to pull together when their backs are up against the wall.
So my cup is half full.
How bout yours?
Lilsy thanks. I get to the ancient forests every week or two to maintain some balance in my life .... and I appeciate the story about how folks thought reserves were the answer at one time .... in the states we call them wilderness but they have basically become human playgrounds and or islands among a see of logging, grazing, strip mining and drilling.
But we still have about 60 million acres of roadless forests on National Forest land (which are not protected from all the extraction I mentioned above) inside the U.S. if only we can get Obama to really protect them as Biological and Carbon reserves....along with all the other native unlogged forests then we'd be making some real progress.
However, other than your response I see a lot flippant responses. Not much of any substance or advocating actually doing anything meaningful.
Maybe there still some hope aye.
You missed the whole point silly!
You need to be in touch every day with the earth and her treasures.
You can't become a real human again until you realize how you are part of the Whole.
I bet that you can do this in your own neighborhood.
You just need to open your eyes and open your heart to whatever is not made out of cement or steel in yr area.
We blew it when we got out of touch with nature.
Indigenous people have never been in doubt where their lives come from.
It doesn't come from automobiles or pavement or skyscrapers.
In fact it can't come from these things.
It is pretty straight forward..rain and sun and wind and soil are what it takes to keep us alive.
I can't tell you what to do because all I know is my own story.
I have been an ocean swimmer since I could walk.
When I was a young woman I heard that a nuclear power plant was being built about 30 miles south of my hometown on the ocean and that it would use ocean water for cooling.
I didn't even know what nuclear power was but within a year or two I did notiice that a lot of the small shelled creatures were disappearing from the shorelines and rocks.
I somehow connected this to the power plant.
Thus my journey began and I have been active in a small way with trying to keep water habitats clean so that all the creatures that live there can thrive (including me).
That was the beginning of my journey and it has taken me all over the world and into some very interesting places...externally and internally.
At first I arrogantly thought that I was going to be helping indigenous people to see the wisdom of not allowing trees to be cut down or animals to be hunted in their areas.
The teacher soon became the student and much has been accomplished but never enough in my mind ....but who knows?
It takes a long time for a people and societies to change so in the meantime we might as well try to be happy with what we have.
So when I suggest that one gets in touch with something in yr neighborhood that has fur or feathers or flowers...I am not being flippant.
I am being deadly serious.
That is the path to your salvation and may even inspire you to find out what you can do in your own small or not so small way.
Getting into a car and driving to an ancient forest is nice but I betcha that there is something wonderful right under your very nose.
Try it and let me know how it goes.
Cheers,
Lilsy
In my neighborhood, the green things are likely to be Japaniese Knotweed - which takes a foothold in in any cleared areas and gradually, but inexorably, displaces all the the hundreds of native forest trees and plants with a monotonout thicket - forever.
Or maybe the emerald ash borer.
The furry things are the wooly adelgid aphid - which is finsihing off the last of the giant eastern hemlocks in the Applacians.
And the feathered things are European House Sparrows and Starlings - introduced by a guy who wanted America to have every bird mentioned in Shalespeare;s plays. They displace many, much more beautiful and pleasant sounding American birds.
PJ..We have the same problem here so I have just decided to try and enjoy what little is left
and pay attention to what is happeneing.
I really don't think that we can "do" much at this point in time except bear witness and try to be happy.
We in the U.S. are on the top of the heap so we may have to cut back on the use of resources but we will probably survive.
Overpopulation IS the problem.
I live in Hawaii and am wondering where the 75 million displaced Polynesian folks will go when their isles are covered in brackish water.
The sorrow on the faces of the people from Tahiti is almost unbearable to see.
In 40 years there will be no rain fall on Oahu because the rain clouds will be higher in the stratosphere.
So the only islands that will have water are the ones where the clouds can hit the big mountains.
That's one of the reasons why I left CA and moved here 10 years ago.
So if you are worried do some research and move to a place that will mose comfortable.
If we could roll everything back 50 years we would probably have a chance.
I am glad to have lived in the best of those times.
It was lovely.
Population isn't a reliable indicator of impact. The human impact on Australia is probably the greatest in the world relative to its small population, driven by intensive resource exploitation in vulnerable arid ecosystems.
Promoters of lassez-faire supply-driven economics are to blame, along with irresponsible producers and consumers, with USans leading the charge of destruction.
Production should be demand-driven. This means no advertising/marketing, no "public relations" psych-ops, and no producer influence on public policy.
Elites are to be removed from the control loop. Market demand and public policy together are to be driven by an informed and responsible population.
"Production should be demand-driven. This means no advertising/marketing, no "public relations" psych-ops, and no producer influence on public policy."
I have always advocated that if a product needs to be advertised, the consumer does not need the product.
As currently written, corporate charters legally require them to max profit---at the expense of everything else, ie, not expensing resources, humanity, the ecology, the commons, species extinction, etc.
Corporations must be stripped of legal "personhood", and corporate charters must be drastically reformed.
Consider this, not religiously, but ANTHROPOLOGICALLY. Leads to some interesting thoughts.
Natural person : artificial (legal) entity "person".
Human : anti-human.
Christ : Anti-christ.
The corporation floats the wrong people to the top of the power structure for the wrong reasons. The price of that will be paid.
They can't take a write-off against Nature.
Grab millions of seeds and drop them into a nitrogen bath. Save them from extinction forever. Grab eggs out of the larger fauna species, fertilize them and freeze them. just toss the live bugs right in the nitrogen and let our descendents sort them out.
If we do this, our descendents get these species. If not, they become extinct and all the great grandkids get are pictures.
A seed bank has already been constructed in Svalbard. But such seed banks are of little use. The biosphere is a complex system. If we partially destroy the biosphere, it is likely that when thawed, the archived seeds may germinate, but may never be able to grow or propagate because the mechanisms in the biosphere necessary for growth (enzymes, etc) and reproduction (insects, etc) may no longer exist.
It is sci-fi nonsense to believe that we can simply transport seeds to an alien environment and expect them to grow/reproduce as they do here on earth.
you beat me to it wtf............
but it's interesting to note who has financed this 'doomsday seed vault' on a barren piece of rock near the arctic ocean (wonder if they have any frozen politicians in there too!!!!)..................
and as i said when this was first reported, how would any survivors of a cataclysmic occurrence know where to find the bloody things???...........
i'm a bit confused about your last sentence............
do you believe the vault was intended for transportation of seeds to some other planet in the near/distant future?................
Sorry, sorry. That last sentence is a bit of a non-sequiter, I intended it to follow from the false assumption that if we can bank it today, we can grow it tomorrow.
Actually, NASA under the Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights is developing seed strains for growing food en route, but they do recognize that nothing that grows on Earth today will grow on Mars (without a lot of DNA manipulation and environmental modification).
well i hope they are mung beans they take with them en route.............
and now for an example of 'human activity is driving earth's sixth great extinction event'...................
A sheep stranded on a cliff-face near Whitby has been shot dead after a rescue bid failed.
The ewe attracted the attention of locals near Whitby
The RSPCA feared the animal could bolt and injure those trying to save her.
She had been stuck half way down the 220-foot cliffs between Whitby and Robin Hoods Bay for several weeks.
Locals who gathered to take a look said the sheep seemed happy on the remote ledge and in no hurry to move.
She had earned the nicknames Shaunetta the sheep and Aretha - after the soul classic Rescue Me, which was actually sung by Fontella Bass, rather than Aretha Franklin.
RSPCA inspector Justin Le Masurier said they had been left with no choice to kill her.
Sedating the animal with a tranquiliser dart could have caused her to become disoriented and fall off.
"In the interests of its welfare, attempting a rope rescue on a 200ft cliff face would be too dangerous for the animal and for any rescue personnel," he said.
"She was humanely despatched, arranged by the owner."
He added: "We understand the public's concern for the animal. It is sad sometimes but we took the difficult decision as it was in the interests of the animal."
Onlookers had described the ewe as looking healthy and content.
"She seems to like it there, she's very mobile," on-looker Bryan Clarkson told Sky News on Monday.
"I'm sure she could get up to the top if she wanted to."
this was on skynews today...........
the comments that followed are priceless.........(even better than c.d)
why couldn't they just leave the bloody sheep alone??.........
talk about 'human activity' causing extinctions..............
i'm a vegan btw............
i just find it ironic that people are concerned about one stranded sheep when there are thousands being 'tortured' in factory farms........and no-one says a word!!!
(well, not on skynews that is, as far as i can see)
Not mung beans, but quinoa. Interesting stuff, quinoa. NASA declared it to be the ONLY complete single-source of protein on the planet. It was farmed by the Mayans, and held sacred by them. But then the Conquistadors arrived, banned the farming of quinoa, and forced the natives to farm corn instead.
See, imperialist warmongering elites have practiced utter stupidity for centuries!
I think it was the Incas that bred and grew Quinoa.
Check. My mistake.
Good post WTF. Svalbard is only six hundred miles from the nuclear trashcan of the world: Novaya_Zemlya. 226 of the biggest, dirtiest atmospheric nukes ever released were in the neighborhood. Even if MonInsanto and Bill Gates took precautions to keep them from getting zapped, the intent of the "doomsday vault" is very suspicious. What's the plan? Kill off everything but big M's line of roundup ready GMO seed, but keep natures real Mcoy around in case you want to splice up another new FrankenFood?
A real Dr. Evil type of project if you ask me.
TJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaya_Zemlya
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.avaaz.org:80/en/tell_clinton_no_pipeline/?cl=280474323&v=3696
AVAZZ has mounted an email campaign to Secretary Clinton requesting she say NO to the tar sands pipeline from Canada to the US.
The earth's resources are far over stretched. Genetically modified foods and cloned animals are not the answer. Forced family planning is the only way man can reverse the trend of population and extinction.
If mankind does not take these things seriously and make drastic changes in their behavior, mankind will be extinct.
"If the earth dies, man dies. If man dies, the earth lives."
Unfortunately, the majority of people on earth believe that either jesus, mohammed or jehovah will descend from the heavens and fix everything.
Really scary part is humans allowing made in lab genetically modified plants and animals, and letting them loose in the wild kingdom.
The majority who allow genetic manipulations are waiting for jesus, mohammed or jahovah waiting to take them to heaven away from here. So they care not what happens to this earth.
Time to get real. which is to realize man is a mistake in this universe.
toophat for you!
The Earth would be so much better without humans on it...
Makes sense to me. Probably 99% of all species that ever existed are extinct. Ecosystems are so complex that we cannot predict what will happen when species are introduced.
After the 6th major global extinction event rich ecosystems will once again evolve, even if it takes millions of years. Life is so well entrenched on the planet that a complete sterilization seems impossible.
I say it is a bit too late to be worrying about the 'human footprint' on the planet and its affect on all life including humans because it is just like blackmail or terminal cancer, it requires radical treatment and the 'sanctity of human life' will not allow for corrections that must be made or which should have already been made if it wasn't for the corrupt institutions of the religions, governments, economics that require untold numbers of humans all vying for the same resources that are actually now starting to be scraped from the bottom of the barrel, that allow those institutions to profit from the overflowing population.
It is nature that will decide on how this will happen and though some humans will survive, after all humans have survived many Ice Age Cycles before this, there will be few not affected by what great calamity that nature dishes out to all life on this planet.
By the way and for what it is worth, here is a site that just might prove enligtening for some and old hat for others who have visited it.
Here's the link I meant to give:
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/club_rome_a.html
People, you have to think some positive thoughts. I have seen less scare tactics at a TSA meeting than in some of the articles here.
I see even some mentioning eliminating the human race to "save the planet".
So here's a plan:
1.) Every member of the society that is non productive shall be eliminated. Does that sound progressive enough to you?
2.) Here's another good one: all members of the human race shall have only a limited amount of food supplied for sustenance calculated by the amount of work done for society.
3.) Movement of humans shall be restricted to built up areas only so as not to interfere with the natural beauty of the planet.
I'm on a roll but i gonna stop now and go throw up. Feel free to add more progressive ideas to the above.
Force people to do anything that is progress and make room at that commode.Tony
Don't be ridiculous, progressives can't save the planet. No one even listens to them, not even their own party. There hasn't been a real progressive policy implemented in the US since Nixon was president (OK there was the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it's not going to help save the planet). What's more, when humanity finally pushes the planet to the breaking point, the progressives will be the first ones sacrificed. Why? Because no one, especially pea-brained conservatives, can stand having someone around telling them "I told you so". So go puke and then maybe breed a child or two, maybe try and envision the world your leaving to them.
The problem is a nasty mix of human with non-human.
As currently written, corporate charters legally require them to max profit---at the expense of everything else, ie, not expensing resources, humanity, the ecology, the commons, species extinction, etc.
Corporations must be stripped of legal "personhood", and corporate charters must be drastically reformed.
Consider this, not religiously, but ANTHROPOLOGICALLY, it leads to some interesting thoughts---
Natural person : artificial (legal) entity "person".
Human : anti-human.
Christ : Anti-christ.
The corporation floats the wrong people to the top of the power structure for the wrong reasons. The price of that will be paid.
They can't take a write-off against Nature.
absoultlly right.
our whole perspective is in dire need of shifting.
we can't keep thinking of the value of everything in $.
we need to think/be much bigger then that.
"This culture is killing the planet." Quote from Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay's book, "What We Leave Behind."
Also, "I'll be explicit: if even the fundamental and necessary daily activities harm the landbase - we're not talking about luxuries here - there is no chance at all for sustainability under the current system."
The incredible hubris of human beings to believe that they are powerful and/or wise enough to save the world from themselves - no more realistic than expecting a bullet to be able to heal the heart it pierces.
In the greater scope of things we are little more than mewling infants with all their self-centered drives: feed me, love me, pay attention to me, my, and mine; and sooner or later mother nature will spank us.
State of Hominids 2009: Way too many humans, not enough chimpanzees, bonobos, gorrillas and orangutans.
If we can include GMO's, the uncontrollable spread of GMO plants or crops, and I certainly believe we can and should, then the following article is relevant. The author reports that Scientific American magazine is reporting in it's August 2009 issue that the reason for there being widespread ignorance regarding GMO plants, their impact or benefits for humans and animals, and ... so on, is that the large corporations in the business of producing GMO seeds and of getting (corporatist authoritarian, ...) governments to "help" impose GMO's on us all is that these corporations legally require that no independent studies can be performed on the culture of their GMO seeds; and the governments allow this, which is the only sense in which it's legal, for it's criminal, even extremely. Also, the only research that can be published must first be approved by these corporations.
"GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food on Humans
Scientific Tests Must Be Approved by Industry First",
by F. William Engdahl, July 29, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14570
QUOTE:
One of the great mysteries surrounding the spread of GMO plants around the world since the first commercial crops were released in the early 1990’s in the USA and Argentina has been the absence of independent scientific studies of possible long-term effects of a diet of GMO plants on humans or even rats. Now it has come to light the real reason. The GMO agribusiness companies like Monsanto, BASF, Pioneer, Syngenta and others prohibit independent research.
An editorial in the respected American scientific monthly magazine, Scientific American, August 2009 reveals the shocking and alarming reality behind the proliferation of GMO products throughout the food chain of the planet since 1994. There are no independent scientific studies published in any reputed scientific journal in the world for one simple reason. It is impossible to independently verify that GMO crops such as Monsanto Roundup Ready Soybeans or MON8110 GMO maize perform as the company claims, or that, as the company also claims, that they have no harmful side effects because the GMO companies forbid such tests!
That’s right. As a precondition to buy seeds, either to plant for crops or to use in research study, Monsanto and the gene giant companies must first sign an End User Agreement with the company. For the past decade, the period when the greatest proliferation of GMO seeds in agriculture has taken place, Monsanto, Pioneer (DuPont) and Syngenta require anyone buying their GMO seeds to sign an agreement that explicitly forbids that the seeds be used for any independent research. Scientists are prohibited from testing a seed to explore under what conditions it flourishes or even fails. They cannot compare any characteristics of the GMO seed with any other GMO or non-GMO seeds from another company. Most alarming, they are prohibited from examining whether the genetically modified crops lead to unintended side-effects either in the environment or in animals or humans.
The only research which is permitted to be published in reputable scientific peer-reviewed journals are studies which have been pre-approved by Monsanto and the other industry GMO firms.
The entire process by which GMO seeds have been approved in the United States, beginning with the proclamation by then President George H.W. Bush in 1992, on request of Monsanto, that no special Government tests of safety for GMO seeds would be conducted because they were deemed by the President to be “substantially equivalent” to non-GMO seeds, has been riddled with special interest corruption. Former attorneys for Monsanto were appointed responsible in EPA and FDA for rules governing GMO seeds as but one example and no Government tests of GMO seed safety to date have been carried out. All tests are provided to the US Government on GMO safety or performance by the companies themselves such as Monsanto. Little wonder that GMO sounds to (sic) positive and that Monsanto and others can falsely claim GMO is the “solution to world hunger.”
In the United States a group of twenty four leading university corn insect scientists have written to the US Government Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanding the EPA force a change to the company censorship practice. It is as if Chevrolet or Tata Motors or Fiat tried to censor comparative crash tests of their cars in Consumer Reports or a comparable consumer publication because they did not like the test results. Only this deals with the human and animal food chain. The scientists rightly argue to EPA that food safety and environment protection “depend on making plant products available to regular scientific scrutiny.” We should think twice before we eat that next box of American breakfast cereal if the corn used is GMO .
F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be contacted via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
END QUOTE
The corn in that cereal most probably is GMO.
Great posts Mike. Scary stuff.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson