Why GMO Trees Will Destroy Forest Biodiversity & Life on Earth

© Natural Society

Natural Society | Mar 16, 2014 | Christina Sarich

If you have wondered what GMO forests will do to the planet, and if they have anything in common with GMO food crops, you are likely to be flummoxed by the plans of the plutocracy to take all of the ‘natural’ out of nature.

Our forests provide an extremely high level of biodiversity, and the destruction of the Amazon forests in recent years has eradicated estimated thousands of life-giving plants and herbs, not to mention diverse animal species. Over 90% of Amazonian plants, for example, have not yet been studied by western science, but have been used by natives for thousands of years to teat a multitude of ailments.

‘Transgenic’ trees are touted as:

• A means to increase productivity, including the increase of wood fibers and wood pellets needed for paper production.

• Restore certain diseased or damaged tree species, by transferring a gene from a Chinese chestnut tree to a decimated American chestnut.

• A means for toxic cleanup and bioremediation that will help to remove heavy metals, and reduce contaminated soils.

However:

• Fast growing, non-GMO trees are not looked to as a resource. Bamboo, for example, is fast-growing and is a huge carbon sink.

• The level of disease in GMO-planted forests is not yet determined, and since GMO crops have led to super bugs and weed-resistant super-weeds, assuming that GMO forests would be any different is purely ignorant.

• The toxic cleanup of this planet can only be remedied by halting both the spraying of chemtrails and the continuation of GMO crops. Chemtrails and radioactive rain are killing our trees and plants, yet GMO continues to be the ‘solution’ forced on the public, assuming our lack of knowledge regarding genetically modified plant problems.

The Importance of (Real) Trees, Forests, and Nature 

The biological diversity in forests is unprecedented, and still little understood by mainstream science. Trees perform multiple ecological roles, but they also provide shelter for thousands of other plants that do not grow well on an open-range or without the shade of trees.

Aside from this, varying tree varieties (there are over 600 in the US alone, and thousands throughout the world) provide a home for many creatures. Animals, micro-organisms, and various plant species rely on the ecosystem which trees help to provide for their very lives. Genetic diversity is absolutely essential to the health of our forests.

There are thousands of complex genetic interactions between trees, plant species, insects, and fungi that cannot happen if we homogenize the forests, let alone genetically alter them. Ecosystems cannot function with a hybridized, genetically made version of Mother Nature. It is ludicrous for scientists to suggest that replanting large swaths of land with ‘faster-growing’ but asexual trees is a good idea. The USDA is currently considering uprooting thousands of native pine tress to plant a variety of GMO eucalyptus that cannot reproduce.

If International Paper Co. and MeadWestvaco Corp. get their way, the entire Southeastern United States will be transformed into one big GMO tree plantation. Just as Monsanto and GMO food crop companies marketed millions of suicide seeds before truly understanding their long-term effects on health, which are all but completely deleterious, lumber companies will attempt to plant GMO trees in order to control the forests and ensure dominance in an increasingly competitive market.

This is similar to the plans for GMO corn to provide ethanol for fuel, but without any consideration for the fact that the GMO varieties can easily cross-pollinate food crops and destroy a viable food source for the world. It also means that trees will now be owned as a patented product which only lumber and energy companies will hold the right to own, and therefore, plant. All seeds we purchase in the future to maintain forests must then be purchased by those who have ruined the natural ecosystems of this planet.

“Syngenta developed Enogen to tap into the growing demand for ethanol; about 40% of US corn production goes to make ethanol.

The problem is that Enogen could mix with corn grown for food and break down its starches, which would lead to crumbly corn chips and soggy cereals and corn bread.

‘This will ruin corn for milling,’ says Clarkson, who sells non-GMO and organic corn to food processors and millers. ‘The ethanol industry is happy but other industries are seriously undermined by this corn.’ (The Organic and Non-GMO Report)”

Dangers of GMO’ing All of Nature 

Whether it is food crops, fuel crops, or now, our forests, GMO is a haphazard and money-grabbing tactic for corporate interests to continue their aggressive and life-killing habits of ruining human, animal and plant health.

While GMO seeding of forests in the world is not new, it is finding support via our biotech-infiltrated USDA and EPA in the United States. They are already in Brazil as a source of biomass (supposedly to reduce fossil fuel-emissions) and elsewhere throughout the world, including Portugal, New Zealand, China, Chile, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, and Uruguay.

Of the 205 permit applications listed at the end of 2003 for GMO trees, 73.5% originated in the USA. A whopping 32% of the permits were asked for based on herbicide tolerance. Who is the biggest maker of herbicides? There are ten big ones in the world, but Monsanto is at the top of the list, even though regulators of these chemicals knew they would cause birth defects when used.

“Transgenic trees offer potential solutions to a number of forestry problems, yet the regulatory history for these trees in the United States is very short, explains RFF scholar Roger Sedjo in his new report, Genetically Engineered Trees: Promise and Concerns. The report focuses on the implementation of the Plant Protection Act and related regulations as the Act has been applied to transgenic trees.

Timber sources in the United States and throughout the world have evolved in recent decades, so that by the end of the 20th century, plantation forests accounted for about one-third of harvested industrial wood globally. (rff.org)”

Explained eloquently in this documentary entitled, The Silent Forest, that won first place in the EarthVision Environmental Film Festival and also First Place in the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film divisions, we can see how GMO is affecting people and animals on the planet from multiple angles. GMO forests are just the latest whack job timber industry joining the biotech game.

Move Over, Big Ag: Sustainability’s Moment Is Here

Move Over, Big Ag: Sustainability’s Moment Is Here
Dec 5, 2013 | Take Part | Steve Holt

Industrial agriculture will soon be in decline. Here’s why that’s great for humanity.

 What if one of the most prosperous periods for agriculture in the United States is actually a facade?

On its face, the amount of money agriculture contributes to the U.S. economy, around $444 billion in 2012, is incredible. More incredible still is that just 10 years ago, that number was $218 billion. But the more than 100 percent increase does not tell the whole story. Looking deeper into numbers from the United States Department of Agriculture, one finds that agricultural growth is not primarily attributable to a dramatic increase in growing foods Americans eat but to commodity crops grown for export (mostly to China) or to be turned into non-food products like corn-based ethanol. And we are still feeding an ever-increasing amount of food to animals to satiate the world’s exploding appetite for meat.

But no matter how great life on the factory farm may be these days (for the owners, that is), the agricultural bubble of the last decade is headed for an irreversible dip over the coming years, experts say.


“You’d almost have to view that as ‘This is the best of times,’ ” Bob Young, the top economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, told a group of Montana farmers in Billings recently. “I’d also tell you that whatever goes up like that, sooner or later, more than likely, one has to expect, one has to think about, getting ready for it to go the other way.”

Why? For one, Americans are using less gasoline year over year. Which means that following a three-times jump in fuel corn production since 2002, food-crop-based biofuels like ethanol will certainly decline. And last week’s announcement by the Obama administration that it is cutting the amount of ethanol it requires oil companies to add to fuel—made on the heels of a damning Associated Press report about corn ethanol’s environmental impacts and plenty of lobbying by oil companies—will further cut into agricultural growth. In his speech to farmers in Billings, the Farm Bureau’s Young also pointed out that China is expected to import half as much soybean over the next decade as it did in the last 10 years, slowing the growth of industrialized agriculture even more.

For Big Ag interests, Young’s sober outlook is an unwelcome reality. Not so for practitioners and proponents of sustainable agriculture, who say industrial agriculture’s coming decline will be its own doing.

“They have polluted their own nest,” says Elizabeth Henderson, an organic farmer in Wayne County, N.Y., and representative to the board of the Agricultural Justice Project at the Northeast Organic Farming Association. “They’re dragging themselves down by the methods they have chosen and dragging farmers down with them—farmers that have been convinced to use all the GMOs, pesticides, and damaging farming methods.”

If you can’t tell, Henderson is almost giddy about Young’s prediction. What she sees rising up in its place is a rapidly growing sustainable food system that crisscrosses the nation and encompasses rural organic farms and urban agriculture. She’s seeing young people getting into farming, as well as retirees, and has noticed a number of farms in Wayne County—which has 900 farms on 200,000 acres—converting to more-sustainable production methods. And with more Americans eating organic than ever, increasing organic production is the way to go.

Where Henderson disagrees with Young is in the endgame. Where he sees a decline, she sees a sea change.

“He’s right about the agriculture he’s talking about,” she says. “He’s missing what is happening, which is that [industrial] agriculture is being replaced. We have a healthier way of caring for the land that is taking over more acres.”

Steve Holt writes about food for Edible Boston, Boston Magazine, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere.

Unintended consequences: US ethanol revolution causes 'ecological disaster'

John Moore / Getty Images / AFP

Unintended consequences: US ethanol revolution causes 'ecological disaster'
Nov 12, 2013 | RT

A new investigation has revealed that the United States’ ethanol mandate is severely harming the environment without producing enough tangible benefits.

Since the Obama administration began implementing the ethanol mandate – requiring a certain level of the biofuel to be added to the gasoline supply – the Associated Press found that the damage done by the program has dwarfed any suspected benefits, many of which failed to materialize in the first place.

Since President Obama took office, roughly five million acres of land set aside for conservation have been lost in the drive to harvest more corn for ethanol, the investigation found. Farmers have plowed into land previously unused for farming, releasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the air that would take native plants decades to reduce naturally.

Billons of pounds of fertilizer were also used on land, some of which has leaked into drinking water, rivers, and has expanded the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone, which can no longer support life.

"This is an ecological disaster," said Craig Cox with the Environmental Working Group to the AP. Cox’s group, once a White House ally, now opposes the administration’s ethanol policies.

The effectiveness of ethanol as a reducer of carbon dioxide emissions has also been greatly exaggerated, according to the investigation, making it unknown whether or not ethanol could ever be improved enough to help combat the effects of global warming. On top of this, the price of corn has more than doubled since 2010.

Comment: Well, as global warming is now officially dead, the truth is much more devious.

As a result, the ethanol industry has come under fire from a surprising coalition of oil companies who oppose the mandate and green groups who consider corn-based ethanol to be a net harm to the environment.

The ethanol industry was quick to hit back at the AP investigation, however. "There's probably more truth in this week's National Enquirer than there is in the AP story," said the Renewable Fuels Association's Geoff Cooper on a press call, according to the National Journal.
 
The industry denies that the ethanol mandate is the root cause of conservation land loss, and said the data showing more corn going into fuel than food in 2010 is misleading.

For now, at least, the Obama administration is standing behind the policy, partly to avoid a legislative battle with the agriculture lobby, and partly because it believes that endorsing corn-based ethanol will promote the development of biofuels that are ultimately much cleaner and more efficient.

"That is what you give up if you don't recognize that renewable fuels have some place here,"

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy said to the AP. "All renewable fuels are not corn ethanol."
 
Regardless, the tangible benefits of ethanol have become low enough that the EPA is set to lower the amount of ethanol required in the gas supply. Critics of the mandate are now suggesting the government scrap it entirely, while the Washington Post also published a story today, headlined “Time to kill the corn ethanol mandate.”

Though the ethanol mandate was signed into law by President George W. Bush before his second term ended, implementation fell to the incoming Obama administration. The EPA was skeptical from the outset, due to concern that planting and harvesting so much corn would release enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to make the benefits of ethanol uncertain at best.

"I don't remember anybody having great passion for this," Bob Sussman, who worked on Obama's transition team and recently retired as EPA's senior policy counsel, said to the AP. "I don't have a lot of personal enthusiasm for the program."
 
With support from the Department of Agriculture and some of Obama’s senior advisers, however, the program went ahead. As a result of inefficient regulations and poor predictions regarding the biofuel’s viability as green energy, Obama officials have realized that the ethanol mandate is inadequate policy. Obama himself did not even refer to ethanol in his last major speech on the environment, though whether any action is taken outside of lowering the ethanol requirement for gas remains to be seen.

Sunspots and the great cooling ahead

SOTT: Sunspots and the great cooling ahead
July 18, 2013 | Jeffrey Folks | American Thinker

Presumably, even among the ill-informed ideologues at the White House, there are a few who have heard of sunspots. There may even be one who knows, as most informed persons do, of the correlation between sunspot activity and the earth's climate. But apparently no one has bothered to inform the president.

When sunspot activity is high, as it was during the 1990s and early 2000s, temperatures tend to be high as well. When it is low, as it is now, temperatures fall. And because sunspot activity occurs in decades-long cycles, the unusually cold winter and spring of 2012 may be just the beginning. As a Barron's article recently noted, current sunspot activity is now the least it has been in a century.

What this means is that the era of global cooling has begun. In the northern hemisphere, three out of the four last winters and springs have been unusually cold. This spring was so cold in East Asia that China was forced to import millions of tons of grain and soybeans from the U.S. and other suppliers.

The environmental elitists in Manhattan and Laguna Beach may not be greatly inconvenienced by cold winters, but ordinary people have to eat, too, and food exhausts a much greater share of their income. For the world's poor, a cold year means the difference between eating and going hungry, or between heating one's home and shivering all winter. Or as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it (while living through the thick of the Little Ice Age himself), it's the difference between a life that is warm and comfortable and one that is "nasty, brutish, and short." Because climate alarmists are focused on global warming when they should be concerned with cooling, life for the world's poor is likely to be just that.

That is because shortages inevitably result from global cooling. As supplies of foodstuffs and energy become constrained due to cold, damp growing seasons and the need for more heating, a global bidding war arises in which the poor lose out. The environmental elitists will not suffer -- they'll pay more as they roll their overladen buggies out of the local Costco, but what the heck? They can bask in the illusion that they are saving the earth.

But the poor in Mexico and India and here in American will suffer as their lives are shortened by malnutrition and disease. With astounding arrogance, President Obama in his latest budget promises tens of billions more to fund clean energy scams for his billionaire buddies. But has he ever considered, even for one moment, the suffering he has inflicted on the poor by distorting global food and energy markets?

Every year, nearly half of the U.S. corn crop goes up in smoke, burned as corn ethanol, while children in Guatemala lie listlessly in the dust, their bellies swollen with starvation. The president is not there at their side, either literally or figuratively. He is too busy playing golf or vacationing at the billionaire beach houses on Martha's Vineyard or Oahu.

There will be more hungry children once global cooling arrives in earnest. Ocean currents and other influences on the climate undergo natural periods of alteration. Inevitably, natural forces such as those which have increased global temperatures over previous decades will shift from warming to cooling. When this natural alteration coincides with decreased sunspot activity, as is happening at present, the result is extreme cooling. And history has shown that periods of global cooling last for decades, if not for centuries.

While these facts are well known to climatologists, the White House continues to pretend ignorance. Indeed, two weeks ago, the president unveiled a major initiative designed to cool the planet at the very moment when the planet is cooling all on its own. It is fortunate that this foolish plan to lower temperatures by reducing carbon emissions will not work. U.S. carbon emissions are now at the lowest point since 1992, and yet Obama says temperatures have been rising. So how, exactly, has the lowering of U.S. carbon emissions changed the climate?

Just because the president's climate initiative will not work, however, this does not mean that it is harmless. It will continue to harm the world's poor, and every other consumer, by raising the prices of food and fuel. And it will divert capital from the private sector, where it would create prosperity and thus leave us better prepared to face whatever climate issues lie ahead.

As Bjorn Lomborg argues in Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, government spending designed to control the climate would be better spent on real issues of hunger and disease. Or, I would argue, those funds would be best left in the hands of taxpayers. Most taxpayers would invest in businesses that produce jobs and increase prosperity -- including among the world's poor. And most would also donate to churches and charities that make the world a better place for all. But when that money is squandered on Solyndra, it can never be invested, never produce profits, and never rescue the world's poor. Instead, it goes into the pockets of Obama's billionaire buddies.

What America is facing with global cooling is year after year of crop failure, higher heating bills, and general inflation (as the effects of higher food and fuel prices ripple through the economy). The best way to prepare for this crisis is to unleash the powerful forces of the free market, thus creating prosperity for all and putting our nation in the position to prosper no matter what.

Instead of preparing for the climate crisis ahead, Obama kowtows to coastal environmentalists in return for donations. In doing so, he shows a complete lack of concern for the poor in this country and abroad -- those who will suffer the most in the bidding war for food and energy once the effects of the Great Cooling are felt. As the climate cools, hundreds of millions in America and abroad will lack the resources to feed themselves or heat their homes.

By then, of course, Obama will already have left office and will presumably be sunning himself on some balmy Hawaiian beach. He will not have to suffer from the effects of his policies, but those who do should not forget that it was this president who squandered our chances of preparing for the Great Cooling. More than anything, Obama's legacy may be that he was the fool who believed, or pretended to believe, that closing a few power plants would cool the planet just when the planet was already in the process of cooling. He is the one who looked in the rearview mirror and prepared for global warming just as he was about to crash head-on into the exact opposite.

Scientists Warn: Largest Ocean 'Dead Zone' in History

(Photo: Creative Commons/Severinus)

Scientists Warn: Largest Ocean 'Dead Zone' in History
June 28, 2013 | Common Dreams | Sarah Lazare

Unregulated pollution runoff from agribusiness is expanding the Gulf of Mexico toxic zone and choking marine life

The largest 'dead zone' ever recorded is headed for the Gulf of Mexico this summer, as high levels of pollution runoff, elevated by Midwestern floods, seep into the ocean.

The dead area could grow to as much as 8,500 square miles of toxic deep ocean water—killing all marine life in its path—warn National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration scientists.

The findings signal a warning not only about the Gulf of Mexico, but about the many dead zones that develop each year across the world's oceans.

Dead zones emerge deep beneath the marine surface when pollution runoff from farms seeps into the ocean, releasing nitrogen that feeds large algae growths.

When areas become over-grown with algae because of excess nitrogen, they become depleted of oxygen and thus toxic to marine life, choking and killing fish in a process scientists call 'hypoxia.'

"Dead zones are becoming more common worldwide in areas where coastal waters are swamped with nutrients, particularly nitrogen, from sewage or fertilizer," NOAA scientists explain.

This year's runoff is especially bad, because heavy rains and floods this spring are flushing Midwestern farm pollutants into the ocean.

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is expected to swell far beyond its usual 18,000 kilometers, alarming scientists.

Unregulated large-scale farming is to blame for the vast pollutants the rain washes into the ocean. Time Magazine reports:

The major factor driving the size of the dead zone—beyond changing flooding patterns—is the use and overuse of fertilizers in America’s rich Midwestern corn belt. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that 153,000 metric tons of nutrients flowed down the swollen Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers during May—a 16% increase over the nutrient load average seen during the past 34 years.

As Bloomberg points out, ethanol production carries much of the blame:

The culprits behind the dead zone are many, but one deserves special attention: corn. Unlike, say, soybeans, which can grow without fertilizer, corn can't grow without it. It takes 195 pounds of fertilizer to grow an acre of corn.

And the U.S. grows a lot of corn -- more than any other country. What's more, 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is devoted to making ethanol, which fuel companies must blend with gasoline under a congressional mandate. The Gulf dead zone is yet another reason for Congress to kill that mandate.

Green groups charge that the lack of state and federal regulations of big agribusiness is responsible for the toxic zones choking ocean life. State and federal initiatives are too reliant on farmers' voluntary self-regulation and come nowhere near to meeting nitrogen reduction goals.

In May, native and indigenous communities walked over 1,700 miles along the Mississippi calling for an immediate halt to the flow of pollutants into the river.

In New US "Bioeconomy", Industry Trumps Environment

Critics warn that the formulation of the
National Bioeconomy Blueprint focuses
too much on economic concerns,
placing too little emphasis on either
social issues or on the environment itself.
(Orlando Florin Rosu/Fotolia.com)

In New US "Bioeconomy", Industry Trumps Environment by Carey L. Biron

Petrochemical industry looks to profit from unregulated biotechnology market

WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday announced the formulation of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, aimed at shoring up the U.S. commitment to bioscience-related research.

 But critics warn that the new program focuses too much on economic concerns, placing too little emphasis on either social issues or on the environment itself.

"We're disappointed to see what finally came out," Eric Hoffman, a Washington-based campaigner with Friends of the Earth, an international NGO, told IPS. "This report largely seems to be an endorsement for the biotechnology industry to rush ahead without any real oversight."

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The biotechnology industry "says that it has been calling for this type of legislation for long time," Hoffman notes. "That makes sense, given that the industry stands to gain the most from the types of policies laid out in the Blueprint."

Hoffman says that the biotechnology industry includes many of the largest oil and petrochemical producers – ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Monsanto, Dow. The lack of plans for government regulation apparent in the Blueprint leaves him pessimistic that much "clean, green" technology will come out of the new effort.
He also points to a recent study by the Woodrow Wilson Center, based here, that found that "zero percent" of federal funding of synthetic biology was going into risk assessment. "That's not how you have an honest policy debate," he says.

The government itself defines the bioeconomy as "economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences". In the Blueprint, the issue of environmental concerns is dealt with only tangentially, although the general push is to phase out fossil fuels and industrial materials in favor of organically based compounds and "green" approaches.

Read more..

US: Domestic Fuels Protection Act Will Shift Cost to Consumers, Taxpayers

© naturalnews.com

Domestic Fuels Protection Act Will Shift Cost to Consumers, Taxpayers - EWG

Washington, DC - The Domestic Fuels Protection Act of 2012 (H.R. 4345) and its companion bill, the Domestic Fuels Act of 2012 (S.2264) would create a broad exemption from liability for a number of favored interests: fuel producers, engine manufacturers and retailers of virtually all transportation fuels and fuel additives such as gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol, or E15.

“The ethanol industry’s push for these bills is a glaring admission that E15 is a faulty product,” said Sheila Karpf, a legislative and policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group. “Rather than creating a better fuel, the ethanol industry wants consumers and taxpayers to foot the bill for any harms caused by E15.”

These bills, the subject of today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, would undermine state consumer protection laws, immunize makers of defective fuel products and shield owners and operators of leaking underground storage tanks from legal action.

The Environmental Protection Agency agreed last year to increase gasoline’s ethanol content by 50 percent. That decision will result in numerous problems that jeopardize public health and the environment, including damage to older vehicles and engines, leaks from underground storage tanks, and drinking water contamination.

As a cautionary tale, consider the U.S. experience with methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), a fuel additive that caused leaks in underground storage tanks across the country, resulting in serious water pollution. After this hazard was exposed, 25 states banned MTBE as a fuel additive.

As drafted, the bills to be discussed today would extend liability protection for damages caused not only by ethanol, but also by other transportation fuels and fuel additives such as MTBE.

EWG, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Our Children’s Earth Foundation, and Natural Resources Defense Council have sent a letter to congressional lawmakers opposing this legislation.

US: Ethanol fuel to blame for worldwide food shortage?

Ethanol fuel to blame for worldwide food shortage? - RT