Natural Communities Magazine A magazine devoted to the local natural wellness culture.

Congress is currently drafting a new Farm Bill, legislation that will determine agriculture policy for the next five years. Will it be more corporate welfare for polluting industrial agriculture or new incentives for farmers to produce healthy and affordable food while protecting labor rights and the environment?

Please write Congress in support of sustainable agriculture. Click here and take action now.

Source: The Organic Consumers Association.

Earth-friendly, energy-efficient vehicles that produce zero emissions seem to be from a dream of the future. But several companies are already well on their way to introducing such vehicles in North America and around the world. Recently, more than 400 environmentalists, investors and celebrities gathered for the unveiling and induction of the only five-passenger, all-electric, freeway-speed sport utility trucks at Los Angeles’ famed Peterson Automotive Museum, and there, they nabbed a sneak peak at the newest electric automobile soon to be launched: The Phoenix Motorcars “SUT” or sport-utility truck.

These new SUT vehicles will be made available by Phoenix Motorcars (www.phoenixmotorcars.com) for full release in 2008, but if you are lucky enough to live in California, a limited number of vehicles will be released to selected consumers in late 2007.

Phoenix Motorcars’ SUT is an all-electric, sport-utility truck with a top speed of 95 miles per hour. It’s a zero-emissions vehicle with no tailpipe or evaporative emissions, no emissions from gasoline refining or sales, and no onboard emission-control systems. Like other electric cars under development, this model can accelerate with great speed, from 0-60 mph in 10 seconds. However, performance electric cars from other companies like Tesla Motors can go from 0-60 mph in a whiplash-inducing 4 seconds.

According to the website for Phoenix Motorcars, the company “manufactures zero-emission, freeway-speed fleet vehicles. It is an early leader in the mass production of full-function, green electric trucks and SUVs for commercial fleet use.” The trucks can drive roughly 130 miles before needing to recharge, but the company is currently working on an expansion pack that would extend the range to 250 miles.

Charge me up!

The question on everyone’s mind about this vehicle is: how do you charge the battery? It’s accomplished with an onboard 6.6kW charger that plugs into a 220V wall socket. The battery operates in cold and hot weather and is expected to last more than 12 years. It only costs about a $3.00 to charge the battery, and it takes about six hours to charge. (A range of 130 miles for $3.00 worth of electricity is quite a bargain, considering it would cost about $30.00 or more in gasoline to go the same distance…)

The six hour charging time is typical for electric vehicles. The power is supplied through your household current, so the electricity could be generated by coal, solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear sources, depending on what your electric utility company uses. Off-board charging can be accomplished with a special charger in as little as 10 minutes, and a company called GreenIt is planning the construction of rapid-charging stations for electric cars.

Phoenix Motors is generating a lot of interest from consumers, and may start selling vehicles to the general public in the next two years. Actor and environmental activist Ed Begley, Jr., has recently purchased one and sees it as the car of the future. “This electric vehicle is rising from the ashes of the failed electric car industry,” said Ed Begley, Jr. “This is a cool vehicle. It is fast, green and attractive.”

Phoenix Motors acknowledged their supporter, saying they were “so appreciative to Ed Begley for his tireless efforts in helping to create awareness, not only of this vehicle, but of the larger environmental issues that all of us face,” said Dan Elliott, CEO of Phoenix Motorcars. “We’re equally as excited to be working with a team of brilliant partners, Altairnano Technologies, Boshart Engineering and UQM Technologies.”

The cars will sell for about $45,000 — not a bad price when compared to around $85,000 from some other electric car competitors.

The Phoenix Motorcars vision

Phoenix Motorcars started out as an alternative fuel research company that planned to design commercial products. They hope to eventually produce 20,000 electric vehicles a year, but for now will have to settle with the 500 currently slated for the first production run. The Ontario, California vehicle manufacturer hopes to expand production to more than 6,000 in 2008.

According to Byron Bliss, Vice-President of Sales, Phoenix Motorcars plans to sell fleets of vehicles to school districts and businesses, government agencies and companies with large groups of outside representatives.

The 2007 market strategy of Phoenix Motorcars targets operators of fleet vehicles, such as public utilities, public transportation providers, and delivery services. This market presents a significant opportunity for an increasing number of fleet operators now seeking freeway-capable, zero-emission, all-electric vehicles. Some government agencies
currently use plug-in hybrids.

The car company is planning to follow up the truck model next year with a sport-utility vehicle (SUV) that can go 250 miles on a single charge. The price to consumers will remain about the same. The cost to the environment, however, represents a substantial improvement over any vehicle using a combustion engine. Clearly, if we are going to sustainably live on this planet while still retaining the luxury of personal transportation, we are going to have to shift to clean, green and energy-efficient vehicles. Phoenix Motorcars hopes to play a significant role in that future, and should they succeed, we will all share in the benefits.

Source: www.newstarget.com

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Soldiers Grove, WI 54655
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Bloomington, MN 55431
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177 LaFayette St
Winona, MN 55987
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507-452-5077

By Dan Shapley

As publicists that started Planet Friendly PR to work exclusively with organic products, Katie and Mic LeBel knew they wanted to raise their children in an environment as free of toxins as possible.

They’re finding it much easier to do with one-month old Remy than they did with four-year-old Camden. There are more products coming on the market all the time, and mainstream retailers and grocers now stock them.

“I think people are more conscious of what they put in their bodies, as well as their children. That’s driving demand for organic,” Mic LeBel said from the family’s home office in Newcastle Maine. “We use pretty much exclusively organic care products. It costs more, but we think it’s worth it as a health investment. That’s the easiest way to try to keep your kid healthy – to feed them a good diet of wholesome foods.”

For many parents, pregnancy and childbirth are an awakening to the organic world. Suddenly, vague or distant-seeming concerns about health and the environment become focused on the new baby in the home. Studies have shown repeatedly that contaminants in the blood can pass from mother to fetus with alarming ease, and that the developing organs and tissues of infants, children and teenagers are more susceptible to damage from chemical toxins.

The parental reflect has driven a boom in organic pregnancy and baby product sales that is setting the pace for the organic industry as a whole. Sales of organic infant formulas and fibers were up 40 percent in 2005, baby care products were up 34 percent and baby food 12 percent.

Preliminary numbers from the Organic Trade Association show increasing growth for 2006, with baby food sales up nearly 22 percent to more than $250 million.

“One of the trends is that new parents who may never have used organic are now seeking organic because they’re thinking of their newborn or the impending birth of a newborn, and thinking, ‘This is a fragile new life that I’m responsible for,’” said Barbara Haumann, spokeswoman for the Organic Trade Association. “They’re trying to get things that are as natural and as clean as they can.”

That sentiment inspired Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissu, colleagues at the New York Observer, to write The Complete Organic Pregnancy, published by HarperCollins in October. The book is a user-friendly guidebook for the busy mom or dad whose bookshelf is already over-stuffed with baby advice manuals, but who - like Zissu - found themselves sitting awake at night worried about invisible threats in the home environment.

“It’s literally about recognizing that we live in a chemical world and minimizing exposures where you can,” Zissu said from her home in Manhattan, with 15-month-old Aili chattering in the background.

For those looking to take the first steps toward a more organic pregnancy, Zissu made these recommendations as the best common-sense first steps:

1. Don’t renovate your home during pregnancy or early childhood, to avoid exposure to sometimes-toxic dust. If renovation is a must, carefully choose non-toxic materials, protect against dust dispersal as much as possible, and get pregnant mothers and babies out of the home until the work is done.
2. Switch cleaning products to non-toxic alternatives. Zissu recommends the Seventh Generation and Ecover lines, and she also makes some of her own solutions.
3. Choose certified organic foods when possible. When not possible, educate yourself about and avoid those fruits and vegetables that tend to have the highest pesticide residues.
4. Pamper yourself with products that aren’t loaded with toxic or untested chemicals. There are many options for good-quality products that shy away from potentially sinister polysyllabic chemicals, like the Weleda creams and lotions Zissu favors. Read the ingredients and be wary of hollow labels like “nontoxic” that manufacturers can use without meeting any published standards.

“We’re not saying everyone’s a chemist,” Zissu said, “but we want to go as chemical free as possible.”

Source: www.thedailygreen.com

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Rocky Mountain Outlook

By David Suzuki

Did you know that genetically modified, or “transgenic” crops are now commonplace on North American farms? According to a recent survey in the United States, the majority of Americans have no idea just how pervasive this technology has become. In fact, North Americans have been eating transgenic foods and using products made from their crops for over a decade. So, what kind of effect, for better or for worse, are these crops having on the environment?

One of the major concerns many ecologists had a decade ago was that transgenic organisms could inadvertently disrupt ecosystems by harming other organisms. Some transgenic crops, for example, have been engineered to resist certain types of herbicide. This allows farmers to liberally spray their fields with the herbicide, knowing it won’t harm their target crop.

These concerns were apparently warranted, as farm-scale evaluations two years ago in the UK of some transgenic crops found that vigorous application of herbicides was also damaging to the diversity of other life forms around farms. That’s because many of the weeds killed by the herbicides were important for butterflies and bees. Populations of these beneficial pollinators on the test farms fell, possibly having other, more wide-ranging implications up the food chain for birds and mammals.

Another common type of transgenic crop has an insecticide “built-in.” These crops have been genetically engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin that wards off pests. One of the most well-known has been engineered using a certain kind of bacterium called Bt. The advantage, in theory, is that Bt crops do not need to be sprayed with an insecticide to kill pests, and thus could be potentially cheaper and more environmentally friendly than their contemporary non-transgenic counterparts.

Concerns were raised, however, when lab tests showed that pollen from Bt crops could be potentially harmful to non-target insects, making them grow more slowly or reproduce less often. However a new meta-analysis of the effects of Bt cotton and Bt maize on non-target insects in the field has found that these types of crops appear, at least on the surface, to be less harmful to insects than farming methods that use insecticides.

This report, recently published in the journal Science, looked at 42 field experiments and found that fields of Bt cotton and maize contained more non-pest insects than did those that used insecticides to control pests. Of course, insecticide-free control fields still had the greatest number of insects overall. The authors point out that further studies to examine the impact on specific species of insects, rather than just all invertebrates, are essential to better understand the environmental impact of these crops.

Disturbingly, the researchers had to resort to obtaining much of their information on Bt crops through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, because the companies that produced them did not publicly disclose it.

The researchers also note that the debate around transgenic crops has been a heated and emotional one, “However, in the case of GM crops, scientific analyses have also been deficient. In particular, many experiments used to test the environmental safety of GM crops were poorly replicated, were of short duration, and/or assessed only a few of the possible response variables. Much could be learned and perhaps some debates settled if there were credible quantitative analyses of the numerous experiments that have contrasted the ecological impact if GM crops with those of control treatments involving non-GM varieties.”

Transgenic crops are not simple products like widgets, ipods or even automobiles. They are living organisms that can interact with other creatures in the environment in myriad ways. Nature is complicated. When you modify an organism at a genetic level, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the results are also complicated, and often unexpected. Transgenic crops are, in many ways, radically new and should be subject to the greatest of scientific scrutiny, not suppressed by proprietary concerns.

David T. Suzuki PhD, Co-Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. He is the author of 43 books, and is recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology. An internationally respected geneticist, Dr. Suzuki was a full Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. He is professor emeritus with UBC’s Sustainable Development Research Institute. Take the Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org

Source: The Cornucopia Institute

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La Crosse, WI 54601
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