The Sierra Club helps you tell the Department of the Interior and the Office of Surface Mining to finalize a vigorous rule protecting our water from mining pollution. Our government has been working on a rule that would do more to hold mining corporations more accountable for the filth they spew forth into our streams and rivers, it does not give good citizens the right to sue mining corporations in court when said corporations make their water too toxic to drink or wash with or bathe in. Let me guess how dirty energy corporations will respond: nyah nyah, our right to gild the plumbing in our 17th vacation homes is more important than your right not be poisoned by the water you depend on! OK, maybe they won't say "nyah nyah," but whenever they talk about higher energy prices or killed jobs, they're really talking about the money their CEOs would make if they just didn't have to be careful about the mess they made. And we are committed to an America where money doesn't end all arguments and get all the say about everything, however Quioxtic the cynical may find that commitment.
Meanwhile, as you have likely already heard (from sources other than this humble blog, I hope!), Consumer Reports found that an astounding one in five samples of conventionally-raised beef contained bacteria resistant to at least two common antibiotics. Naturally (pun intended), more sustainably-raised beef suffers much less from this condition, but in a nation where we use four out of every five antibiotics on healthy feed animals, versus sick people or animals, of course sustainably-raised beef won't be able to get that number down to zero, because the bad bugs are everywhere now. So Consumers Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1552, which would seriously curtail the use of antibiotics in feed animals and preserve them for their intended use in sick people and animals. The factory farms won't like it, because cramming animals into small and dirty pens and then pumping them full of antibiotics so they can bear it better makes them more money. But if we're all dead from superbugs, who will be around to celebrate the superior cunning of factory farm corporations?
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Obama Administration to protect the Bryce Canyon National Park and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah from exploitation from coal mining corporations, then Friends of the Earth still helps you do that. Alton Coal operates its Coal Hollow mine (did they think how that name would sound?) a mere ten miles from these natural wonders, and now wants to expand that operation, to the tune of 50 million more tons of coal over the next quarter-century, which would vastly increase air, water, and noise pollution -- a fact our government knows, as evidenced by its most recent environmental impact statement. Would it be piling on to mention the Native American cultural sites that could be destroyed? I mean, religious freedom is for everyone, right, and not just for the proverbial emptiest wagons of our national discourse? And archaeologists also operate in these areas. And I can guarantee you that whatever they find will long outlast whatever Alton Coal can pull out of the Earth.
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