Author: The CNCL Team

Waters Near Arctic Ocean Just Jumped 30 Degrees Above Normal

An area just below the Arctic Ocean rose to 84 degrees Fahrenheit in recent days, a staggering 30 degrees higher than the average temperature for this time of the year, according to the Washington Post. Although the jump is likely due to an isolated weather event, the frequency of regional heat waves has risen in recent decades, which indicates the long-term effects of climate change.

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The Threat of War with Iran

Is the U.S. lurching towards another illegal war in the Middle East? The White House has ordered an aircraft carrier strike group off the coast of Iran and a fleet of bombers have flown to U.S. air bases near that country, while preliminary plans are apparently underway to send 120,000 U.S. troops to the region.

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Why Israel Will Continue to Bomb Gaza

On May 4, Israel launched a series of deadly airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, prompting a response from various resistance groups. At least 25 Palestinians were killed and nearly 200 people wounded in the Israeli attacks. Four Israelis were also killed by Palestinian rockets.

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Does Capitalism Mean War?

Which system, capitalist or socialist, was more likely to contain peace, or stated another way, more likely to wage war? Examination of the conflicts occurring during the Cold War provides a clue and answers another lingering question. “Does Capitalism mean war?”

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Where Is the Antiwar Movement in the US?

With all of these lies and deceptions that led our country into wars, why isn’t there more outrage among Americans to stop them? There are a few activist groups like CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace but there are almost no antiwar voices in the mainstream media.

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Distorting ‘Democracy’ in Venezuela Coverage

At every turn, Guaidó and his backers have taken steps that have nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with what Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (Independent, 5/1/19), who teaches human rights and philosophy at the University of London, aptly labeled “a white supremacist foreign intervention.” That corporate media manage to portray this as a “pro-democracy movement” is both a tragedy and a farce.

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Venezuela’s Crisis: A View from the Communes

Regardless of what happens next in Venezuela, Julian believes that the strong level of community organisation built up over the past two decades will not go away easily. “There’s still a lot of strength, a high level of organisation. Wherever you look, you will find a commune, a cooperative, some kind of committee or organisation.

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The Importance Of Bumblebee Conservation

Since the late 1990s, U.S. bumblebee populations have declined nearly 96%. We generally hear about the population reductions in honeybees due to their larger impact on our economy, while the plight of bumblebees is overlooked. Bumblebees’ contributions to our economy are significant as well, and they play a large role within their native ecosystems. For these reasons it is important that we take dedicated steps toward bumblebee conservation.

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One Million Species at Risk of Extinction, UN Report Warns

A landmark global assessment warns that the window is closing to safeguard biodiversity and a healthy planet. Yet solutions are in sight. Theh bonds that hold nature together may be at risk of unraveling from deforestation, overfishing, development, and other human activities, a landmark United Nations report warns. Thanks to human pressures, one million species may be pushed to extinction in the next few years, with serious consequences for human beings as well as the rest of life on Earth.

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Canada Just Banned Ocean Drilling and Mining to Protect Marine Life

Canada has banned ocean drilling and mining in marine protected areas along the coast. According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the new marine protected areas will function like national parks of the sea. Drilling, mining, dumping, and bottom trawling — an industrial fishing method where a large net with heavy weights is dragged along the seabed — will all be prohibited.

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Australia Reduced Plastic Bags by 80% in 3 Months

In the space of three months, Australia has reduced its use of plastic bags by 80 percent.Australia’s National Retail Association reported that the drop was not led by legislation or government policy, but by two of the nation’s biggest supermarket chains: Coles and Woolworths.

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The Ethical Dilemma of Teaching Kids How the Sausage Gets Made

We teach kids to identify vegetables — this is a carrot, this is an onion. But with animal bodies, we mask the truth: we say ham, hotdog, steak, salami, burger. We do not say, “Finish eating the pig’s belly and then you can have dessert.” Parents work hard to dissociate meat from its animal origins because, given a choice, preschoolers won’t eat a dead animal — but they will eat “bacon” (whatever that is).

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Greenhouse Gas Levels Keep Accelerating

Posted by Sam Carana / Arctic News   Carbon Dioxide Weekly CO₂ levels at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, in May, 2019, reached 415.39 ppm, as above image shows. An ominous trendline points at 420 ppm in 2020. The daily average CO₂ level...

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A Vision – Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it, if we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are...

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New Research Exposes a Crisis in the Global Trade of “Recyclable” Plastics

Plastic waste from industrialized countries is literally engulfing communities in Southeast Asia, transforming what were once clean and thriving places into toxic dumpsites. It is the height of injustice that countries and communities with less capacity and resources to deal with plastic pollution are being targeted as escape valves for the throwaway plastic generated by industrialized countries.

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New York City to Cut Meat Consumption by 50%

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today a plan to slash greenhouse gases by phasing out the purchase of processed meat and reducing beef purchases by 50 percent. The actions are part of the city’s own “Green New Deal” to attack the issue of global warming from all fronts in order to reduce emissions. The plan, laid out in “OneNYC 2050,” will ensure that NYC adheres to the Paris Agreement.

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Do the Solutions Find You?

“Get connected to the needs, and the solutions will find you.” Since 2005, I’ve been living with this idea, a statement I heard Marshall Rosenberg make a number of times during my first two years of training in NVC.

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Yemen: The Triumph of Barbarism

The war in Yemen has become a humanitarian nightmare that only a cessation of hostilities by Saudi Arabia and the provision of immediate assistance to the people in Yemen can help solve. The Trump administration, however, has chosen to continue supporting the Saudi regime.

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Interview – John Pilger on Assange (audio)

Emmy Award winning Filmmaker John Pilger shares his seasoned perspective on the elite’s crackdown on Julian Assange and Wikileaks (and on investigative journalism and whistleblowing in general).  Originally aired on the radio station, Flashpoints, KPFA.

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Have Hope, Humanity is Finding Ways to Defeat Climate Change

The restoration of these iconic areas in Ethiopia, while still ongoing, has been an astonishing achievement, and an enduring inspiration for the rest of the world to follow: an area associated with human tragedy a few decades ago is now home to viable rural communities drawing a sustainable living from the land, and seeking to remain there for the future.

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Interfaith Power & Light Connects Faith and Climate

“I read an article on the geopolitics of food that really helped me connect the dots between crop losses that were due to drought and wildfire that were fueled by climate change, resulting food shortages, and then the rise of conflict that was connected to that.” Interfaith Power & Light works on a variety of programs with places of worship to help connect people of faith to climate action.

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Grass-fed Beef Debunked

Grass-fed beef is still touted as the gold standard for the environment, health, and viewed as an ethical practice. This video looks at the research to examine labels, environmental impact, and the nutrient profile of grass-fed cows.

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Only Rebellion Will Prevent an Ecological Apocalypse

As the environmental crisis accelerates, and as protest movements like YouthStrike4Climate and Extinction Rebellion make it harder not to see what we face, people discover more inventive means of shutting their eyes and shedding responsibility. Underlying these excuses is a deep-rooted belief that if we really are in trouble, someone somewhere will come to our rescue: “they” won’t let it happen. But there is no they, just us.

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Melting Permafrost Releasing High Levels of Nitrous Oxide, A Potent Greenhouse Gas

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic may be releasing 12 times as much nitrous oxide as previously thought, according to a new study published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, can remain in the atmosphere for up to 114 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Saying Goodbye to Planet Earth

Chris Hedges argues that “the human-induced change to the ecosystem, at least for many thousands of years, will probably make the biosphere inhospitable to most forms of life [without] halting our consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet and dismantling the animal agriculture industry as well as greening deserts and restoring rainforests.”

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The Martyrdom of Julian Assange

The arrest Thursday of Julian Assange eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities, embraced by the Ecuadorian, British and U.S. governments, in the seizure of Assange are ominous. They presage a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes, especially war crimes, carried out by corporate states and the global ruling elite will be masked from the public.

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Turning the Tide – WWF Reports on 50 Years of Collaboration for Whale and Dolphin Conservation

Turning the tide briefly charts our growing  understanding of whales and dolphins, the  threats facing these intriguing creatures and the evolution of conservation approaches over the years. The report catalogues the rudimentary research techniques of the sixties right up to contemporary breakthrough technologies such as acoustic monitoring, genetic sampling, and satellite tagging, now applied to answer complex scientific questions. Ironically, the more we unravel the mysteries of these magnificent creatures, the more we realize that we are not curbing the activities that contribute towards the precipitous declines in their populations.

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Peace Of Mind: Mindfulness And Pro-Animal Behavior

Empirical evidence has shown correlations between mindfulness and ecological behavior, pointing out the potential of mindfulness to support changes in behavior toward greater sustainability as well as building intrinsic values and empathy towards other living creatures. Mindfulness practice is a powerful tool for veg*n education.

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A Dose of Reality: How Climate Change Affects our Kids, Straight From a Pediatrician

Millions of children are already affected by climate change, around the world and in the US. By virtue of its effect on sea levels, more frequent and severe hurricanes, heatwaves and droughts, air pollution, forest fires, and increases in infectious diseases, climate change is already affecting the way children live. The relentless destruction of ecosystems is depriving our children of experiencing nature’s beauty, clean air, safe drinking and recreational water, nutritious food supplies, and safe shelter.

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The Insect Apocalypse Is Coming

In a new report, scientists warn of a precipitous drop in the world’s insect population, a situation that could be just as catastrophic to humans as it is to insects. To avoid insect apocalypse, we need to reduce the size of our agricultural footprint.

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The (Other) Economic Madness of the Green New Deal

A green new deal that creates new jobs and stimulates economic growth amounts to little more than a final blow-out binge before our once-and-done global economy comes crashing down around our ears. The only means of mitigating the environmental catastrophe that is gathering pace around us is to engage in a managed process of de-growth to create far smaller, localised and less consumptive economies than we have had for many decades.

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Making Sense of the Walrus Scene in Our Planet

Because of rising temperatures due to climate change, Pacific walruses in the Bering Strait are losing their ice habitats. Instead of congregating in smaller groups on sea ice where they get better access to food, they are being driven on to land to haul-out in large numbers.

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Israel’s Merciless Bombing of the Gaza Strip

The bombs start again. Israel, as if on a timer, begins to pulverize Gaza. The bombs strike from one end of the country to another, a warning against the protests that have been ongoing for a year. There is a shudder from Gaza, phone calls to friends who say that they are fearful that this bombing run will escalate.

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Leading the Public Into Emergency Mode

Imagine there is a fire in your house. What do you do? What do you think about? The climate crisis is an unprecedented emergency. It is the United States’ top national security threat, public health threat, and moral emergency. How we react to the climate crisis will shape centuries and millennia to come.

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Medea Benjamin & Stephen Zunes: Peacemaker’s delegation to Iran

Codepink leader (and Global Exchange co-founder), Medea Benjamin and University of San Francisco Middle East specialist Stephen Zunes, are freshly back from a large people-to-people delegation to Iran. View this webinar for an in-depth report-back from their trip. They will share stories heard and perspectives gained from their encounters with Iranians from all walks of life — including the Foreign Minister.

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New U.N. Study Finds Air and Water Pollution Causes Millions of Deaths Each Year

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, greenhouse gas emissions from raising farmed animals make up about 15 percent of global human-induced emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency identifies animal agriculture as a primary source of water pollution, as manure runoff and animal waste flood surface and groundwater with nitrogen and phosphorus.

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