Sacrificing old growth redwoods for cattle trucks

Cal Trans plans to widen the stretch of 101 highway that goes through Richardson State Park in order to accommodate larger trucks. Evidently local cattlemen have been successful in rallying business owners dependent on trucking to pressure Cal Trans into proposing this latest bit of commercial attack on ancient redwoods.

I used to live at Bridgewood, right at the edge of Richardson State Park and I used to walk through the groves there nearly everyday going to work at Heartsook Inn and Singing Trees restaurant when they were still in operation. If there is anything out of place in those beautiful groves it is the constant sight of large trucks barreling the through the groves as fast as the law allows.

I don't know what's wrong with community planners that allows us to carry on a transportation technology that is so utterly wasteful or non-renewable resources as if there were no such thing as cost effectiveness. Do any of us really realize how much of our money is being spent to shore up a technology that should have changed decades ago.

I'm talking about mass transit systems and the current ancient one is eating us alive in increasing costs that make no sense when compared to developing alternative transport systems. How much oil is used to making these highways? How much oil is used fueling the big trucks that are almost the sole responsible agents for highway destruction?

Cars aren't heavy enough to impact road beds but big trucks do yet is is the general taxpayer paying constantly for road repairs for all these big trucks and the inadequate highway system that supports them.

If I hadn't myself without any formal technological education thought of a rationale alternative mass transit system perhaps I would be more sympathetic to the existing system. But I did think of a system way back in 1976 and it's now, what? 31 years later and we are still paying to “fix” these highways that never get fixed.

My solution was the development of a “Solar Rail” system, a new type of monorail system where the monorail itself is one long continuous solar collector feeding electricity into the system everywhere the sun in shining. Instead of road beds needing constant repairs we build monorails on adjustable piers through land that is prone to shifting with the rains.

With the monorail up above the ground and winding through the forests avoiding any old growth trees we save these ancient beings instead of knocking them down so cows can go off to the slaughterhouse and our hamburgers won't cost quite as much.

Below is the 1976 original idea that still needs to be done to stop energy inefficient cars and trucks and the wasteful highway

ead with dismay th

system becoming the most important items in a community's economic development plans.

The Solar Rail System

"Imagine the highways and freeways gone. No cars, no trucks, no exhaust pollution, no noise pollution, no dead animals lying on the sides of the road.

Imagine no huge Cal-Trans budget and tax burden because the roads are gone. Imagine no more CHP tickets and no more fossil fuel cars.

Imagine all the money saved if California had a state-wide mass transit system that fueled itself with electricity generated by the Sun.

Imagine the thousands of acres of highway road beds turned into forests and organic farms and quiet villages where people and animals can safely cross underneath a quiet electro-magnetic monorail system where the monorail itself contains a thousands of miles long solar collecting system that catches, stores, and releases electricity from the sun supplying all the power needed to run both passenger and freight monorail trains throughout California.

This is the future. This is the promise of the Solar Rail System for the 21st Century."

This was the future 31 years ago. Why wait any longer to have a better, cheaper mass transit system than the one in place that now forces removal of trees people come from all across the nation to see? Is this responsible forest management?

Avaaz activist org's petition to G8 finance ministers to keep their word

Dear Avaaz member,

This Friday, in a letter to the G8 finance ministers, we're calling on rich countries to keep their promises of aid to the world's poor. Click here to join Desmond Tutu in signing the letter: Sign the letter now

This Friday, the finance ministers from the world's eight richest countries will meet to plan the G8 summit. That morning, we will send them an urgent letter on global poverty, signed by key global figures: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson--and, we hope, you.

Our message: keep your promise to provide 0.7% of national income in effective aid to relieve extreme poverty. Millions of lives are at stake. The more people sign the letter, the more powerful our demand becomes. Click here to sign:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/g8_poverty_letter

The statistics of global poverty are shocking. Each day, 20,000 children die preventable deaths in poor countries. That's why the broken promises of rich countries are so infuriating.

The world's rich countries have pledged 0.7% of their national income to development aid. But these promises have not been kept. In fact, outrageously, the G8 countries gave less in 2006 than in 2005.

At the same time, the last few years have seen an unprecedented groundswell against global poverty--which has led to new promises and, in some countries, real change. These fights can be won. That's why we are working with our friends at the Global Call to Action Against Poverty to assemble citizens and celebrities behind a single call--for world leaders to keep their word on global poverty.

Here's an excerpt from the letter:

Together you represent the world's economic powerhouses. We write to ask that you also strive to represent the millions of people whose lives are blighted by extreme poverty.

Aid is not a panacea. But Marshall Plan aid from the US kick-started the rebuilding of a Europe shattered by war and delivered real benefits to the US in terms of new markets for its goods. Aid to East Asia helped catalyse the economic miracles that have lifted millions of people out of poverty. Today many African governments are using aid to underwrite growth and provide essential schools, health services and water supplies for their people. The poorest countries in the world need you to honour these aid pledges if they are to meet the Millennium Development Goals and end poverty. Please seize that chance today.

The letter will be delivered Friday with big ads in the Financial Times and German press, just in time for the G8 finance ministers' meeting. Click here to join Desmond Tutu by signing on:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/g8_poverty_letter

With hope,

Ben, Ricken, Galit, Iain, Graziela, Paul, and the Avaaz team

PS Once you've signed, please pass this email along to ten friends. It's hard to think of anything more urgently important--and, at the same time, so achievable, than the fight against global poverty. Let's show these finance ministers how much we value human life.

Original Mother's day proclamation

MOTHER'S DAY PROCLAMATION

by Julia Ward Howe

"Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be of water or of
tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant
agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and
applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have
been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the
devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The
sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out
dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day
of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the
great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the
sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general
congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace
deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its
objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable
settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

Vegans jailed over death of baby

A vegan couple have been sentenced to life in prison by a US court over the death of their malnourished baby.

The baby died six weeks after birth after being fed a diet largely made up of soy milk and organic apple juice.

Defence lawyers for Lamont Thomas and Jade Sanders said they had starved their child unintentionally by adhering to a strictly vegan diet.

But prosecutors in the US city of Atlanta said the couple had deliberately neglected their child.

"No matter how many times they want to say, 'We're vegans, we're vegetarians,' that's not the issue in this case," Prosecutor Chuck Boring is quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.

"The child died because he was not fed. Period," he said.

Strict vegans adhere to a diet that avoids all animal products.

'I loved my son'

Crown Shakur weighed 3.5lb (1.6kg) at the time of his death in April 2004.

The baby was born in a bathtub in the couple's house.

Defence lawyer Brandon Lewis is quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper as saying the couple did not take their child to a doctor because they feared hospitals were full of germs.

Defence lawyers said the couple did not realise the baby's life was in danger until it was too late.

A jury deliberated for seven hours before delivering its verdict on 2 May.

Sentencing the couple, the judge said the murder verdict made the life sentence mandatory.

Jade Sanders told the judge: "I loved my son - and I did not starve him."

According to the AP news agency, Lamont Thomas complained that he had not known he was being tried for a felony - rather than the lesser offence of a misdemeanour.

"We had no idea involuntary manslaughter was a felony. We were told for three years this was a misdemeanour," he reportedly said.

"It takes money to prove this wasn't a felony - money we don't have."

Wind farms urged to go easy on birds and bats

By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK (Reuters) -

Ducks in the Dakotas, tanagers in Texas and grosbeaks along the Gulf of Mexico could all be hit by the rapid growth of wind power unless the renewable electricity farms are carefully sited, experts said.

"The first three rules of avoiding impacts with wind turbines are always going to be location, location, location," Mike Daulton, a spokesman with the National Audubon Society, said in a telephone interview.

Clean-energy wind farms are cropping up rapidly in the United States on rising concerns about greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emissions and flat output of natural gas, which fires most of the power plants built since the 1990s. U.S. wind power is expected to increase by 26 percent in installed generation this year, after similar growth last year.

A study by the
National Academy of Sciences' released late this week found that wind energy could reduce the energy sector's carbon dioxide emissions by 4.5 percent by 2020.
But federal and state governments should take environmental impacts of wind energy more seriously as part of the planning, locating and regulating turbines, it said.

It said the percentage of birds killed by collisions with the towers and spinning blades of turbines were few compared with kills from vehicles and buildings. But wind turbines could begin to threaten local populations of some bat and bird species, especially along migration corridors, if wind power grows rapidly over the next 20 years, it said.

Audubon supports wind power, believing it reduces global-warming pollution and that any climate change resulting from fossil fuel emissions would kill more birds than wind turbines would. The group cautions, however, that industry-wide safeguards should be developed to minimize bird harm.

The American Wind Energy Association said the industry funds wildlife research through agreements with conservation groups and urged the National Academies to study all energy sources for impacts on wildlife.

REMEMBER ALTAMONT

A wind farm went up at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in California in the 1980s that has killed birds of prey like golden eagles, whose populations are still recovering from use of the now-banned pesticide DDT.

"It's kind of raptor heaven and there's a big wind farm in the middle of it," said Audubon's Daulton. "From our standpoint, the site is particularly bad."

Texas tops the country in installed wind-power capacity where in some areas its power can be cheaper than that from fossil fuel sources. It is also home to the Gulf Coast region, a major flyway for migration of tropical birds.

"I don't envision these wind turbines being like a giant weed eater chopping birds to bits," said Clifford Shackelford, an ornithologist at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
He said bird kills could peak, however, during spring migrations when cool fronts from the North bring late-night storms. "Like any airline, bad weather at night makes it hard for birds to fly, and they use the lights on turbines as beacons in bad weather." He said several species of tanagers, grosbeaks and other birds could suffer, without planning. Turbines more than 200 feet high are often lit so airlines avoid them.

North and South Dakota are also areas of potential risk because much of the U.S. water fowl population breeds in an area known as the Prairie Pothole region. "It's basically the duck factory of the country," said Daulton.

Cooperation with Animals

Another avenue of research for developing the Peaceable Kingdom is seeing how far animals can go in making cooperative arrangements with human beings that allow them to exist in human dominated environments. I have done some experiments myself along these lines and found that one can make "deals" with many wild species, even insect species, so that the two of you can co-exist without fear or vast inconvenience. In my limited experiments I've successfully made deals with ants, spiders, (including black widows), and raccoons.

Once, long ago in communal days, members of our commune, which was situated on an old mining site where there were overgrown mining "tailings", piles of stones that made excellent rattlesnake dens, made a "deal" with the rattlesnakes. There were literally too many of them to get rid of and so we simply told them that we wouldn't bother them if they didn't bother us, which they seemed to have agreed to as they stopped coming near our communal mainhouse which before the pact they often went near scaring us often as well. No one ever got bit by rattlesnakes there and there are few places in California were there are higher concentrations of rattlesnakes than on this particular farm in the foothills of the Sierras..

A muddauber wasp was the creature that actually taught me how to strike deals with animals. The wasp taught me to open our cabin door for it to go out using common wasp language: it would buzz close to my head to get my attention, buzz around until I was up and moving trying to get away from it as it circled me until I neared the cabin door and opened it up for it to zoom out. It came back through some unseen passage in the walls but always wanted me to open the door for it to go out. Same routine of buzzing me until I opened the door for it.

One Fall season my kitchen was invaded by ants who made an ant city in a large Coleus plant pot I had on the kitchen counter near the sink. I noticed that the Coleus plant had greatly grown in size after the ants moved in and discovered that they were fertilizing the potting soil as well as breaking it it up into smaller and more nutrient-available form for the Coleus plant. Obviously, the plant and ants had a cooperative symbiotic relationship going on. Why not with human too? So, the deal I made with them was simple: When they were out on the kitchen counter in their thousands eating up tiny pieces of food they found there and I wanted to use the counter, I told them I would knock three times on the counter which would be their signal to go back into the pot. They picked up on it right away and within 2 or 3 minutes all the ants on the counter would disappear after I knocked three times.

Another deal I made was with raccoons. I was living in a tiny rural trailer park I guess you could call it. I had a small kitten and raccoons came around regularly at night to check out the garbage cans. I knew that raccoons sometimes killed cats and because I had a kitty-door that was easily accessible to the raccoons as well as my cat I decided to make a deal with them. I told them one night that I would feed them my table scraps if they would not come into my trailer and steal food or hurt my kitten. I started feeding them at night with scraps on a plate that I would reach up and put on top of the trailer roof so the neighbor dogs wouldn't eat it. The raccoons would waddle up the nearby tree and jump to the roof and eat. They never came into my trailer and never bothered my cat. My next door neighbor who hadn't made any such deal was frightened several times by these same raccoons when she tried to shoo them away from her garbage cans. I never had any conflicts with the raccoons who honored our agreement.

In the future I can imagine there will be people who are good at communicating with animals who will have jobs arranging cooperative coexistence systems between people and animals. I found that one doesn't have to have any magic animal language to talk to animals; just talking plain English to them seems to work fine, explaining what I want about two or three times when they are within listening distance and paying attention. I can see new symbiotic relationships forming between humans and animals, i.e., with animals doing clean-up work in exchange for food as my ants performed.

Species forms may change with human community interaction, e.g. the foxes into dogs example. But we human beings must develop ways that allow our wild friends to continue to co-evolve with us as we progress further with human society. In the Climax Civilization pages you will find that our universal social aim is to develop a universal human society that can coexist with the natural communities of life and that is also the aim of developing the Peaceable Kingdom.

* * *

KMUD Radio denies Free Speech

Editor:

I urge those who listen to KMUD radio not to give a dime to this station censors free speech when it comes from non-Leftists who do not share the KMUD RADio anti-corporate political slant. While this may have been somewhat acceptable if KMUD could prove its politics matched its supportive listeners' political persuasions but that's never been the case--KMUD listeners run a much wider range of political persuasions than one would suspect from KMUD programming.

Unfortunately, Progs and radical enviros have long ago set the standard at KMUD and now that standard has slipped into a petty dictatorship wherein KMUD program director Michael Jacinto can and has teamed up with the KMUD Board to stop free speech from happening on KMUD radio. Case in point-our KMUD Heartlands Show scheduled and canceled last year.

Michael Jacinto effectively canceled our show when major Paul Gallegos campaign contributor Leonard Bowman, current Bear River Tribal Chairperson, asked KMUD to put a gag order in effect on our Heartlands Show so that even my Bear River Heartlands Project partner Don Brenard was forbidden to talk about the Heartlands Project's connections to the Bear River tribe--a total impossibility since our Heartland Project was under the Bear River Tribal Council's authority for over three years.

Bowman's $25,000 contribution to Gallegos election campaign seems to have bought free speech rights over KMUD radio programming. Do not support a radio station that denies free speech for those they perceive as political opponents.