Greta and George, the best short video of 2019

The Game Changers | Official Trailer

Your Relationship With Vegetables Is About To Get A Lot Better!

Your Relationship With Vegetables Is About To Get A Lot Better!

TIME for a PUBLIC OPTION on plantmilks?? Let's not WAIT UNTIL we get sick. Let's get our plantmilks NOW.

TIME for a PUBLIC OPTION on plantmilks??
Let's not WAIT UNTIL we get sick.

Let's get our plantmilks NOW.

So MUCH competition in the plantmilk space is broadening opportunities for consumers to try an array of very different plantmilks (not all plantmilks are the same - in fact, NO plantmilks are the same as any other plantmilks; they ALL differ).

But if ACCESS to plantmilks is the issue, there are SOME locations - by zip code - where plantmilks are NOT immediately accessible to coffee drinkers, cereal eaters, and others who tipple at the extruded plants.

Arguably, all this competition in the plantmilk space may be great for consumers, but the price point BENEFITS of competition cannot be GREAT for the fiscal sustainability of all these risk-taking innovators.

Some plantmilk producers will WIN - and some may go out of business after they have done 'their yeoman's duty' to expand the market for plantmilks.

Is it not time for some public strategy for dispersing plantmilks among the ENTIRE human population - maybe granting plantmilk as a protected right - so that everyone can have some plantmilk when and where they need it, and so that the nation's farmers can know that there's a continuing demand for high quality organic non-GMO plants to supply this industrial demand for producing soymilk.

In nations outside the USA, a national healthcare plan can mandate universal coverage yet periodically open to competitive bidders for supplying the national 'right to healthcare'! A national right to plantmilks could be organized the same way without disemboweling competitors who want to continue producing. Those additional competitors would just not win the federal contract for supplying the public option, and the public option could be 95% powered by private industry efforts.

What MIGHT be DIFFERENT (and hopefully BETTER) would be ACCESS to nondairy plantmilks, nondairy cheeses, nondairy creamers, and (I think that this would be INESSENTIAL) nondairy desserts.

I'd wager that restaurants in THAT kind of economic regime would carry plantmilks as a rule because it's a right, not because they suddenly took pity on the paying consumer.

Those who declare 'SOY MILK IS A RIGHT' can build upon their public values.

Plantmilk availability COULD become or be declared ethically normative in such a society.

Eat Your Fiber

Eating your daily supply of fiber will keep the intestine and colon running healthy, helping to prevent colon cancer and various intestinal diseases.

Bird Conservation Group Wants Tighter Controls on Wind Industry - Blades run afowl of the MBTA

Bird Conservation Group Wants Tighter Controls on Wind Industry | Wind | Rewire | KCET

The SOLUTION - the ENGINEERING SOLUTION - is to SHIFT THE PLANE from rotating the blades in the VERTICAL plane to rotating the blades in the HORIZONTAL plane.

Let's THANK animal (bird) advocates for raising this issue, but let's insist that future design integrate this concern from the outset.

Lots of blade building has already gone ahead, production machinery has been purchased, and workers have been hired and put on the assembly lines.

I raised this concern nearly a decade ago - and suggested this solution about 3-4 years ago. 

Advocates didn't see that as an issue at that time (or some merely said, yes, the blades shouldn't hurt the birds).



So let's "do the math" and consider that, if the IDEA of the SOLUTIONS pre-existed my SEEING the SOLUTION and RAISING the SOLUTION 3-4 years ago, the "solutions" may have pre-existed actuality in the minds of engineering visionaries.  So when we REQUIRE investment in something that the planet and this species needs (birds would rather adjust to global warming and let the infrastructures of human "civilization" decline or erode at the coastal edges), we need, increasingly, to look at the full picture and to engineer ONLY solutions which do NOT solve OUR problems at the expense of other persons (other species of life).

News and analysis about energy in California with an eye toward renewables.

FB

TW

[=]

Calling bird law violations inevitable at wind facilities, a group wants tighter controls on permitting. | Photo:  Changhua Coast Conservation Action/Flickr/Creative Commons License

WIND

Bird Conservation Group Wants Tighter Controls on Wind Industry

by Chris Clarke 

February 24, 2015 2:45 PM

A national bird protection group is calling on the federal government to require wind energy operators to get permits to kill birds that are protected under one of the nation's oldest environmental laws.

The Washington, D.C.-based American Bird Conservancy, which projects more than 1.4 million annual bird deaths in coming years from wind turbines and their associated transmission lines, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this month to require owners of wind power facilities to apply for permits under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 before being allowed to build their projects.

USFWS has been asking wind companies to follow voluntary bird-protection guidelines when siting and designing their projects, but American Bird Conservancy claims in its petition that the voluntary approach has been roundly ineffective at protecting birds from wind turbines.

The petition, filed earlier this month with the U.S. Department of the Interior, is actually a follow-up to an earlier attempt by the group to compel USFWS to crack down on wind industry violations of the law. This month's petition was sent to provide new information on the scope of the threat wind turbines pose to birds.

As part of that update, the group summarized a December 2014 study, commissioned by the group and conducted by researchers at Mississippi State University, that indicates USFWS' voluntary compliance policy has failed to prevent wind turbines from being built in extremely sensitive bird areas:

Nearly 30,000 wind turbines have already been installed within areas identified as being of high importance to federally-protected birds in the United States, with more than 50,000 additional turbines planned for construction in similar areas. These include more than 18,000 in the migration corridor of the whooping crane -- one of the nation's rarest and most spectacular birds, 1,800 in greater sage-grouse breeding strongholds, and nearly 1,400 in locations deemed to be of the most critical importance to conserving the nation's birdlife. This clearly indicates that the voluntary guidelines are not working to protect our public trust resources, especially since proper siting is probably the best and most effective form of mitigation.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) makes it illegal to kill or harm any of the 800-odd species of bird specifically listed under the law without a permit. Penalties for a single offense -- injury to a single bird -- range up to $200,000 in fines and a year's imprisonment.

As Rewire reported two years ago, USFWS has been highly reluctant to enforce the law against operators of wind turbines.

"In effect, the MBTA is not being enforced, except perhaps under very special circumstances," said Michael Hutchins of the American Bird Conservancy's Bird Smart Wind Energy Campaign. "This reality is particularly significant for the wind industry because wind energy projects will inevitably take birds protected under the MBTA. In fact, because it is virtually impossible to operate a wind energy facility without killing or injuring at least some migratory birds, most operational wind energy projects are in ongoing violation of the MBTA, and are effectively breaking the law with impunity."