Krishna Consciousness & Ecological Awareness

From FoxNews.com

Officials in the northern Indian state of Punjab, tired of dealing with the annoying and sometimes dangerous rhesus macaques that invade villages and towns, have decide to build a “rehabilitation center” to tame the pesky primates.

“In addition to veterinary doctors, the center will have experts and it would be a sort of good manners school for the monkeys,” a Punjab Wildlife Department official told The Hindu newspaper.

In recent years, thousands of macaques have moved into urban areas in northern India as humans move into the monkeys’ traditional jungle home. They often steal food and clothing and sometimes attack and bite humans if they don’t get what they want.

The rehab center, to be located in the city of Patiala, will be for the worst behaving monkeys.

“Once the center is functional, forest officials in Punjab will be able to catch monkeys from residential areas and send them across so that they can be taught to be decent and live socially with other monkeys,” state wildlife official Jasmer Singh told the Hindu.

For further news, see article.

By David Adam, Guardian News

The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows. Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.

According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published “misleading and inaccurate information about climate change.”

On its website, the NCPA says: “NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth’s current warming trend is [sic] still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause.”

The Heritage Foundation published a “web memo” in December that said: “Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007″. Scientists, including those at the UK Met Office say that the apparent cooling is down to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend.

In its 2008 corporate citizenship report, published last year, ExxonMobil said it would cut funds to several groups that “divert attention” from the need to find new sources of clean energy. The NCPA and Heritage Foundation are included among groups funded by ExxonMobil, according to details of its “2008 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments” published recently. (more…)

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.10.4

TRANSLATION

During the reign of Mahārāja Yudhisthira, the clouds showered all the water that people needed, and the earth produced all the necessities of man in profusion. Due to its fatty milk bag and cheerful attitude, the cow used to moisten the grazing ground with milk.

PURPORT

The basic principle of economic development is centered on land and cows. The necessities of human society are food grains, fruits, milk, minerals, clothing, wood, etc. One requires all these items to fulfill the material needs of the body. Certainly one does not require flesh and fish or iron tools and machinery. During the regime of Mahārāja Yudhisthira, all over the world there were regulated rainfalls. Rainfalls are not in the control of the human being. The heavenly King Indradeva is the controller of rains, and he is the servant of the Lord. When the Lord is obeyed by the king and the people under the king’s administration, there are regulated rains from the horizon, and these rains are the causes of all varieties of production on the land. Not only do regulated rains help ample production of grains and fruits, but when they combine with astronomical influences there is ample production of valuable stones and pearls. Grains and vegetables can sumptuously feed a man and animals, and a fatty cow delivers enough milk to supply a man sumptuously with vigor and vitality. If there is enough milk, enough grains, enough fruit, enough cotton, enough silk and enough jewels, then why do the people need cinemas, houses of prostitution, slaughterhouses, etc.? What is the need of an artificial luxurious life of cinema, cars, radio, flesh and hotels? Has this civilization produced anything but quarreling individually and nationally? Has this civilization enhanced the cause of equality and fraternity by sending thousands of men into a hellish factory and the war fields at the whims of a particular man?

It is said here that the cows used to moisten the pasturing land with milk because their milk bags were fatty and the animals were joyful. Do they not require, therefore, proper protection for a joyful life by being fed with a sufficient quantity of grass in the field? Why should men kill cows for their selfish purposes? Why should man not be satisfied with grains, fruits and milk, which, combined together, can produce hundreds and thousands of palatable dishes. Why are there slaughterhouses all over the world to kill innocent animals? Mahārāja Parīksit, grandson of Mahārāja Yudhisthira, while touring his vast kingdom, saw a black man attempting to kill a cow. The King at once arrested the butcher and chastised him sufficiently. Should not a king or executive head protect the lives of the poor animals who are unable to defend themselves? Is this humanity? Are not the animals of a country citizens also? Then why are they allowed to be butchered in organized slaughterhouses? Are these the signs of equality, fraternity and nonviolence?

Therefore, in contrast with the modern, advanced, civilized form of government, an autocracy like Mahārāja Yudhisthira’s is by far superior to a so-called democracy in which animals are killed and a man less than an animal is allowed to cast votes for another less-than-animal man.

We are all creatures of material nature. In the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that the Lord Himself is the seed-giving father and material nature is the mother of all living beings in all shapes. Thus mother material nature has enough foodstuff both for animals and for men, by the grace of the Father Almighty, Śrī Krsna. The human being is the elder brother of all other living beings. He is endowed with intelligence more powerful than animals for realizing the course of nature and the indications of the Almighty Father. Human civilizations should depend on the production of material nature without artificially attempting economic development to turn the world into a chaos of artificial greed and power only for the purpose of artificial luxuries and sense gratification. This is but the life of dogs and hogs.

The forests of India are a critical resource for the subsistence of rural peoples throughout the country, but especially in hill and mountain areas, both because of their direct provision of food, fuel and fodder and because of their role in stabilising soil and water resources. As these forests have been increasingly felled for commerce and industry, Indian villagers have sought to protect their livelihoods through the Gandhian method of satyagraha non-violent resistence. In the 1970s and 1980s this resistance to the destruction of forests spread throughout India and became organised and known as the Chipko Movement.

The first Chipko action took place spontaneously in April 1973 and over the next five years spread to many districts of the Himalaya in Uttar Pradesh. The name of the movement comes from a word meaning ‘embrace’: the villagers hug the trees, saving them by interposing their bodies between them and the contractors’ axes. The Chipko protests in Uttar Pradesh achieved a major victory in 1980 with a 15-year ban on green felling in the Himalayan forests of that state by order of India’s then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Since then the movement has spread to Himachal Pradesh in the North, Kamataka in the South, Rajasthan in the West, Bihar in the East and to the Vindhyas in Central India. In addition to the 15-year ban in Uttar Pradesh, the movement has stopped clear felling in the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas and generated pressure for a natural resource policy which is more sensitive to people’s needs and ecological requirements. (more…)

By Brigid Schulte, Washington Post

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Article from the Working Villages International website.

There are few places on Earth like the Ruzizi Valley. The average temperature remains around 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 C) year round. There is plentiful water, rich volcanic soil and four growing seasons. Twenty years ago the valley was covered with fertile farms and pastures and healthy herds of cows. Ten years of brutal war destroyed all this.

Today, the people of the Ruzizi Valley, in partnership with Working Villages International (WVI) have begun implementing an innovative yet practical economic model of sustainable village development just outside the town of Luvungi. WVI is building from scratch a model village which will have full employment, and private ownership of small farms and businesses. It is a village designed for maximum harmony with the environment. This project is a practical demonstration that it’s possible to profoundly increase living standards in rural Africa by relying on local resources and skills, enhanced by modern appropriate technology. (more…)

On the Banks of the Ganga: When Wastewater Meets a Sacred River by Kelly D. Alley

Introduction: Field Method and Layers of Data

“I started this project about nine years ago while studying tourism and public culture in north India.  I remember the day that the original idea for this study emerged from a dialogue I overheard while touring the north Indian city of Benaras with several American and German tourists.  While boating along the river Ganga and watching Hindu pilgrims bathe in this sacred river, these tourists discussed the state of the river, expressing horror that the native population did not recognize its polluted nature.  One said, “I wouldn’t put my big toe in this river, it is so polluted!”  As an observer, I began to think about this Western tourist interpretation in the light of the Hindu practice of bathing in sacred rivers, and about how this view of pollution is juxtaposed against a view of the sacred.  Other questions emerged.  Are these differences in thinking and approach mirrored within and outside of India in other ways?  How should an investigation of these two perspectives, the one in relation to the other, proceed?  What shall the methodology be?”

Preview the book On the Banks of the Ganga here.

by Allison Aubrey, National Public Radio

When consumers pay top dollar for organic milk, they know they’re getting dairy that’s free of synthetic growth hormones, pesticides and antibiotics.

Now there’s a move to ensure cows are feeding on plenty of fresh grass if producers want to label the milk as organic.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued draft rules that would require cows to be on pasture during the entire grazing season. The regulation would also require that cows on organic dairy farms get a minimum of 30 percent of their diet from grazing.

The proposals are intended to close a loophole that has allowed some huge feedlots, with thousands of cows, to sell their milk as organic even though their cows rarely graze on fresh grass.

It’s not a perfect proposal, according to the organic watchdog group The Cornucopia Institute. “What we need to do is level the playing field” says Cornucopia’s Mark Kastel. (more…)

By John Nielsen, National Public Radio

The busy bee may be a cliche. But it turns out that bees are very busy on the world’s farms, pollinating many of the fruits, vegetables and nuts we eat.

But a major report from the National Academies says bees and other important pollinators are losing out to development and disease. The report’s authors warn the losses could have a big impact on some farmers, such as the almond growers of Central California.

Growers there depend on commercial beekeepers to produce their billion-pound nut crop, which is among the state’s most valuable agricultural product.

A Beekeeper’s Best Friend

Beekeeper Gene Brandi stores some of colonies in large white boxes not far from a sprawling almond orchard near Los Banos.

Last spring, his bees spread pollen from tree to tree in the orchard. Now, giant harvesting machines are moving through the orchard, shaking trees with a crab-like craw and making the nuts spill down to the ground.

Recently, Brandi was getting his hives ready for the winter. He wore a big round hat with mesh that kept the honeybees off his face. To keep the bees calm, he shot puffs of dark gray smoke into the hives, after dropping matches into a beat-up metal box called a smoker. “The smoker is the beekeeper’s best friend, other than the bees themselves,” he said. (more…)