Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup

Click here to access article by Evaggelos Vallianatos from Independent Science News.

The banning of DDT in America in 1972 did not bring about any rethinking of factory farming and its addiction to deleterious pesticides. In fact, large industrialized and pesticide-dependent farms are now crowding the planet. Their owners preach a war on hunger but in actual practice their war is directed against the natural world and small farmers and peasants. And despite their propaganda for feeding the world, they only produce about a third of the world food. Peasants, not industrialized farmers, feed most of the world’s people. But industrialized farmers are responsible for huge harm done to the natural world and people. That harm comes in the form of global warming and the poisoning of wildlife, rivers, drinking water, and food.