Interesting documentaries about the environment

I have always loved watching documentaries about the nature, science and environment. As this is a blog about to environment I thought it would be nice to write the coming days about some really interesting documentaries and leave behind some links for you to watch the documentaries if interested. Some are about the environment, some about the horrors humankind inflict to other living beings, and some are purely about the beauty of nature, to show how precious our earth is and how sad it would be if all would be lost.

Earthlings

We are all earthlings. The term is free of speciesism, sexism or racism as every single creature that inhabits the earth is considered an earthling. Humans depend totally on the animals with which we share the world for food, clothing, scientific research, entertainment and pets, however, many of us show them absolute disrespect. This documentary is about exactly that. Sometimes with hidden cameras the authors have filmed the most horrible, disrespectful and unethical things humans do to animals. We are shown footage from pet stores, puppy mills, factory farms, the leather and fur industry, sports and entertainment industries and the scientific profession.

My opinion is that this is a very good documentary. It’s informative and highly thought-provoking. It might be a bit too extreme or gory for some, but that is exactly what the authors intended; to shock, so that we would become truly conscious of how much animals suffer for humankind.

Here is a link to a website where you can watch the documentary: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/earthlings Here is also a link to their official website: http://www.earthlings.com

The cove

This documentary follows a team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers as they embark on a mission to uncover the dark and deadly secret of a remote and well-hidden cove in Taiji, Japan. Using cameras camouflaged as rocks and well hidden hydrophones the team uncovers how this small village by the sea is the scenery of dolphin massacre. 

Besides the footage filmed there, the narrator also tells us about Japan “buying” votes of poor countries in the International Whaling Commission IWC so that they can continue killing over 23000 dolphins and porpoises yearly. 

What’s more, most of the Japanese are unaware of the dolphin slaughter and that dolphin meat is so undesirable because of its high levels of mercury that it got sold to school children, risking their health.

This is the link to the website where you can watch the documentary: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/cove  and a link to their official website http://www.thecovemovie.com

The end of the line: a world without fish

In the film we see the global effects of our fish consumption. It examines the imminent extinction of the bluefin tuna, the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish, and the profound implication that a world without fish could lead to mass starvation of the millions of people whom depend on fish

The End of the line rebukes myths of farmed fish as a solution. It advocates consumer responsibility to purchase sustainable seafood, pleas with politicians and fishermen to acknowledge the chilling devastation of overfishing, and for no-take zones in the sea to protect marine life. The solutions are simple and doable, but political will and activism is crucial to solve this international problem.

This is an excellent film to learn more about the current global problem of over-fishing, and to become more conscious about the fact that we, as consumers, can do a lot to help minimizing the extinction of fish

The link to the film online: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/end-of-line-world-without-fish/

And to their official website: http://endoftheline.com/

Tomorrow I will be posting more interesting documentaries. I truely hope you find them interesting and that they can help us become more concious of the great environmental problems that not only affect other species, but also all of humans.  

Food & environment IV: Sustainability

In this last part about food & environment, I will write about sustainable agriculture, including both animal and plant production.

Like you might have seen in my former posts, the production of animal and plant products relies on monoculture, mechanization, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, biotechnology, and government subsidies, which has made food abundant and affordable, but it has come at a big ecological and social price.  

Fortunately, many people are trying their very bests to find alternative solutions to build up a sustainable agriculture. Important points that are taken in consideration to create a sustainable agriculture are the following:

Conservation and preservation:The conservation of the soil and water must be more important than the productivity, which means that the lands should not be considered as an industry. Also, it should be avoided that the generation of contaminants and residues are a higher rate than the capacity to break them down and their recycling should be promoted

In addition, reduce the hidden costs generated by the use of fossil fuels and substitute them, if possible, by renewable energy recourses and increase the efficiency of their use.

Biodiversity: Necessary measures should be taken to protect the local animal and plant biodiversity.

Grow many different types of crops (polyculture), in combination with having livestock, and use the method of crop rotation which will enrich the soil and help prevent disease and pest outbreaks.

Use organic fertilizers instead of chemical ones and tackle plagues through biological control and not through chemical products.

Animal welfare: animal must be treated with respect and humanity, and cared for properly. they will recieve food which corresponds to their naturla diet, and are allowed to carry out their natural behaviour, like grazing, pecking, socializing and walking around. 

Economically viable: farmers are paid adequate wages. To be more sustainable over the long-term, labor must be acknowledged and supported by government policies.

Socially just: Workers are treated fairly and paid competitive wages and benefits. They work in a safe environment and are offered proper living conditions and food.

Of course, these are all things the agricultural sector should do, but what can WE, the consumers, do?

In first place, we must educate ourselves; get to know what sustainability is, what industrial farming is, why sustainability is preferable to industrialized agriculture, what are the most important issues

In second place start asking questions. Ask where you can buy local or sustainable raised food, ask how the animal whose meat you’re eating has been treated, ask if the vegetables you eat have been genetically modified, treated with chemicals etc. all these questions will help yourself to know where you can best buy your food

In third place; act! Buy your food at local farms, trough farmers markets and /or community supported agricultural groups. If you have space in your garden, or even just on your kitchen windowsill, grow your own crops.  Also try to get involved in the community supported agricultural groups, tell your friends and family about the importance of sustainability.

And in last place; be conscious of what you buy. You don’t need 300 grams of meat a day. You don’t need to eat 5 times a week fish, nor do you need to eat enormous quantities of vegetables. The secret is in balance. Get to know the amount of nutrients you body needs, and don’t go above that. Eat a healthy, balanced diet.

I will put down here some websites about sustainable agriculture:

http://www.moviments.org.es Moviments is a Spanish association which promotes conscious consumption. They buy food which has been produced in an ecologically, sustainable and commercially just way, and you can buy that food from them for reasonable prices. They are currently active in La Marina Alta and La Safor.

http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/concept.htm information about sustainable agriculture

http://www.sustainabletable.org/intro/ information about sustainability, with many links to other sites about where to get sustainable products, how to participate, even recipes.

http://www.sustainabletable.org/spread/handouts/3_Easy_Steps.pdf three helpful steps if you want to support a sustainable food system

http://www.ideas.coop/ a fair trade organization, whose mission it is to build a more just and sustainable world promoting fair trade, responsible consumption and a solidarity economy.

I hope this will be of some help. If you know any more websites about sustainability, just leave a comment ;)

Food & environment III: Agriculture

In this third part about Food & Environment, I will write about agriculture.

Agriculture was always very limited by the natural recourses of the cultivated area (weather, pests, soil, climate…), so only relative small quantities of products were produced. But after the Green Revolution, between the 50’s and 70’s in the 20^th century, there has been a great increment in the agricultural production due to the control of crops and their genetics, of soil fertility via chemical fertilization and irrigation, and of pests via chemical pesticides

Of course, this increment of production is not natural, it is only made possible by converting the agriculture into a industry, which leads to a series of problems of great environmental impact.

Pesticides A wide range of agricultural chemicals are used and some become pollutants through use, misuse, or ignorance. Pesticides can contaminate water, soil and air, and can thereby create a great health risk for the human population. They increase the risk of cancer, birth defects and infertility. Therefore, already many pesticides have been prohibited to use. 

Land degradation. Under degradation can be understood deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, mineral depletion, or chemical degradation. They are all effects of the intensive agricultural industry, and are a good reason to be worried, as already 40% of the worlds agricultural land is seriously degraded.

The map below shows us the soil degradation in 1997. Since then it has increased greatly, but I couldn't find any recent maps of it. 

Irrigation. 70% of the fresh water worldwide is used for agricultural purposes (only 10% is used by us in the everyday life). Since the green revolution, and the introduction of chemical agriculture, the crops have become highly inefficient because they need enormous quantities to dissolve the chemicals; they use between 2 and 10 more water.

Genetically modified food. Some of the transgenic plant products are; soy beans, rice, corn, sugar beet, papaya, tomato. I include this in the list of environmental impacts for several reasons. In the first place, by genetically modifying our food, we have no idea what the long term effects will be, as we place gens from other species in the plant products. And in the second place, G.M. plant products are a risk for the biodiversity and contribute to the loss of it. 


These are the most important impacts, but of course the list is very long. Next time, I will write about Sustainable Agriculture, because of course, if I write about how we do things which create an environmental impact, I must also write about how we can do things right ;)
Thank you for following me! Have a nice day :)

Food & environment II: the fishing industy

Today I am going to write about the fishing industry.  Nowadays about 20% of the animal protein we consume proceeds from fish.

Until the 1950 the fishing industry fished about 20 million tones /year, and in the present it is over 100 million tones/year. A considerable increase. And with that increase the environmental impacts have also increased.  Some of the most important of them I would like to comment here:

Overfishing: There are about 40 species of marine animals we consume.  As we fish over 100 million tones of them a year, there is an enormous pressure on them and their ecosystems. It is almost impossible that the fish populations stay constant, so the result is the disappearance of a very important food supply for millions of people. According to the journal Science, by 2048 there will be no more in the wild caught fish

Effects on habit: Some fishing techniques also may cause habitat destruction. Dynamite fishing and cyanide fishing, which are illegal in many places, harm surrounding habitat. Bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area's seabed life on a single run. Also the practice of aquaculture has its effects:  contamination of water (by antibiotics, chemical substances, and organic residues), loss of biodiversity, deforestation.

By-catch: not only fish and crustaceans are caught in the nets or traps, also enormous numbers of dolphins, whales, sharks, seabirds, sea turtles and other animals find their deaths in the nets every year.

Ecological disruption of the food chain: All animals and plants are linked to each other by the food chain. The plants get eaten by the herbivores, the herbivores by the carnivores, and they by the decomposers. Take away one level and the entire food chain will collapse. This is exactly what is happening, as we are fishing mainly the 2º level; the fish who eat plankton and are supposed to be eaten by other fish

The environmental impacts of fishing are disastrous. But what is there to do against it? Eat less fish. It is still recommended to eat fish twice a week, but I wouldn’t pass that recommendation. Also for your own health: more and more fish get contaminated with all the chemical substances we throw in sea, and have heavy metals in their flesh which are poisonous for us.

Here I have a map from the FAD, with the consumption of fish per year and per capita. It’s not surprising to see that those countries which also over consume meat, do the same with fish

And here I leave a link to the national geographic website, were you can see with many sorts of seafood their toxic levels, omega 3 levels, food chain level and sustainability ranking. It’s very interesting to investigate it a bit and become conscious of your choice what seafood to eat!

https://admin.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/take-action/impact-of-seafood/#/seafood-decision-guide/

Greetings,  and have a lovely day!

Food & environment I: animal products

In this first part dedicated to food, I will write about the effects to the environment of our diet with animal products. Please don’t stop reading now, thinking I am some extreme vegetarian trying to make everyone vegetarians. I just want to put scientific facts and evidence on a row to make people conscious of their choice to eat animal products.

For decades there have been numerous investigations wherever meat consumption is good or bad. Well, the truth is, human beings are omnivores. We need both vegetable and animal products. The problem is that nowadays our animal-product consumption is waaaaay too high. This is not only bad for the environment, but also for human health.

Livestock are releasing all day gases, with enormous quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more harmful than CO2 . Additionally, their excrements and urine greatly contaminate the soil and water, making it useless.

Another point is that livestock need a lot of space. An example is that, for the livestock production for North America, they have cut more than 20 million hectares of tropical forest in Latin America. This has produced loss of biodiversity, deforestation, loss of soil.

The chart here below indicates the CO2 emissions and amount of land to produce just 1 Kg of various animal products.

	CO2 emissions (kg)	Amount of land (m²)
1 kg Cow meat	14-32	27-49
1 kg pork meat	4-10	9-12
1 kg chicken meat	3,7-7	8-10
1 kg eggs	4-5	4,5-6
1 kg milk	0,8-1,3	1-2

 Source: Livestock science128

Now, another huge problem about livestock is that their diet is mainly based on grains, which, in fact is, what we humans eat. To give you the real number: over 40% of worldwide production of grain is given to livestock.  And that while more than a billion people worldwide suffer from hunger daily…

The last point I want to write about is the overconsumption of meat. It is extremely costly to produce meat, as you have just seen with the facts I have presented. Nonetheless, we seem to be eating more meat as the years pass by.

Let me show you one last chart, of the WHO, about the medium consumption of meat per person per year:

Region	Meat (kg)
North America	123
Europe	74
South America	70
Central America	47
Asia	28
Africa	25

 Source: WHO 2007

There is absolutely NO need to consume so much meat! Because if you calculate it, it turns out a medium North American eats 330 grams of meat per day! More than 3 times as much as recommended (100 grams per day)

Excess of meat consumption (as well as egg and dairy products) are a big problem for human health. It is related with obesity, heart diseases, hypertension, diabetes and certain forms of cancer.

This has been a very summarized text about animal products consumption. But knowing myself, I have to stop writing now, or I will be able to write an entire book about it hahaha. Anyway, it’s worth dedicating more posts about this topic, which I will be publishing the following days.

Thanks for reading, and if you have anything to say don’t doubt to comment!

Rooftop farms

By coincidence today I heard on the news something very interesting: in New York a group of young adults have started using rooftops of buildings as a place to plant vegetables and herbs. Little by little this is becoming something more common, because also other cities in other parts of the world have such rooftop farms.

My first thought was: GREAT! That is a really good idea. It has so many advantages! Let’s see if I can cite some of them:

-       It will reduce our carbon footprint: as the products come from near, there is no need for transportation as trucks, trains or airplanes, all big users of nonrenewable resources. This also reduces health problems; the air quality in the city will become a LOT better.

-     You know exactly where it comes from, if it is genetically modified, if it has been treated with pesticides and so on. Basically I think the product from the rooftop farms are quite healthy. And have the advantage of being very fresh when you eat them.

-     The vegetal coverage of the roofs reduces heating of the building (reducing in that way extra energy consumption by air conditionings!), it protects the roof from the weather, and as plants absorb water it will reduce quantity of storm water.

-     Plants produce oxygen, and filter the air. Like I said before, it will produce a mayor increase in air quality

There are many more advantages, but I think these are the most important

Maybe we should all (when possible) make our own little rooftop farms ;)

Here is a video about one of such projects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3mLPy0ttqc

My new blog :)

Well, this is my new blog :) To me it is a place where I can write all the things that cross my mind, and publish the texts I usually write. I won’t complicate it too much by writing a thousand things, I'll just leave it simple and clear: My main goal is to write about the environment. (But also about other things!)

This is a topic that interests me incredibly and is without doubt a very important issue for everyone. In the last decades there has been an increased interest in the environment. This is mainly because after the industrial revolution, humans have developed an industrialized economy and have been using all the resources for their own use, in an irresponsible manner, with the consequence that we have been contaminating the earth and using up nonrenewable resources. Now we finally understand that, if we don't change our way of treating the earth, we will have to suffer the grave consequences. 

So…I’ll write. About the environment. About the problems that affect all humans. About social-political problems. And also simply about life. About the things I experience in my daily life, about the way I learn to live truly and in harmony.

I simply love writing, even though sometimes the words don’t come to me with ease (like today haha)

I hope people will be interested in what I will write. I hope they will give me their opinions, discuss with me, say that I am wrong or that I am right etc.

And maybe what I mainly hope is that, through this blog, I can reach many people to make them conscious about everything that is happening around us.

 It’s time for a worldwide change in consciousness! Let us start today to create a better tomorrow!