AlternativesMagazine

by Montana Environmental Information Center PPL earned $1.1 billion in profits in 2013, and can afford to clean up its toxic air pollution. It just doesn’t want to spend the money. PPL just asked the State to give it another year before it has to control its toxic air pollution. Tell DEQ to say NO to this appalling corporate handout!   After decades of delay, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted the first-ever federal limits for toxic air pollutants from coal-fired power plants in 2012. The regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), requires coal-fired power plants to reduce toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, and heavy metals by 2015. These pollutants harm public health, they harm the environment, and power plants have been pumping massive quantities of toxins into the air for far too long. Now, PPL, the operator of the Colstrip coal plant, has asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for yet another delay – this

So far this year, Germany has gotten more electricity from renewables than from any other single source, 27.7 percent. That (just barely) beats the 26.3 percent of power generated by lignite coal, according to Agora research organization. Wind accounted for 9.5 percent of the power fed into the country’s grid in the first nine months of 2014, biomass for 8.1, solar for 6.8 percent, and hydropower for less than 4 percent. Last year, Germany got 24.1 percent of its electricity from renewables, so it’s up more than 3 percent. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is aiming to get as much as 60 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean sources by 2035, even while phasing out nuclear power by 2022. The U.S., by contrast, thanks to a broken and corrupt political system and a greedy do nothing congress, got just 6 percent of its electricity from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal last year, and other 7 percent from hydro.

by Karuna Jagger Executive Director Breast Cancer Action It’s Breast Cancer Industry Month and the pink floodgates have opened. And again we ask: what have all these pink ribbon products and promotions done for women living with and at risk of breast cancer? Pinkwashing is now a household word. People understand that you always have to “follow the money” in pink ribbon marketing. We’ve exposed the hypocrisy in pink ribbon fundraising and achieved some momentous wins against corporations. This October, we’re taking it further. We’re calling out the empty awareness, the misinformation, the profiteering, the pinkwashing, the degrading of women, the “tyranny of cheerfulness” that hides the harsh realities of this disease. We’re sick of marketing giants raking in billions of pink ribbon dollars while women continue to be diagnosed with and die from this disease. This October, we’re targeting some of the most outrageous pink ribbon promotions that exemplify everything th

Every mouthful of McDonalds meal contains a handful of chemicals that raise 'bad'cholesterol levels, increase diabetes risk, lower immunity, and damage DNA. I had a weak moment last night and went to McDonald's. It's been a couple years since I last had a weak moment. Maybe it took that long to get the after taste out of my mouth. In spite the little voices telling me no, I went ahead anyway and ordered a Big Mac and a large of order of fries. Like in the picture above. When I picked it up off the conveyor belt I almost sent it back. It looked disgusting. It didn't smell like food and it certainly didn't taste like food. AND it wasn't cheap, or that fast. $7.50 for an order toxic sludge.  I can't believe they haven't been shut down by the FDA, the health department and every location be classified as a hazardous toxic dump site. And to think parents actually take their kids there to feed them and call it a TREAT!  If it wasn't bad en

Americans are getting fatter, and older. These converging trends are putting the USA on the path to an alarming health crisis: Nearly half of adults have either pre-diabetes or diabetes, raising their risk of heart attacks, blindness, amputations and cancer. Federal health statistics show that 12.3% of Americans 20 and older have diabetes, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. Another 37% have pre-diabetes, a condition marked by higher-than-normal blood sugar. That's up from 27% a decade ago. An analysis of 16 studies involving almost 900,000 people worldwide, published in the current issue of the journal Diabetologia, shows pre-diabetes not only sets the stage for diabetes but also increases the risk of cancer by 15%. "It's bad everywhere," says Philip Kern, director of the Barnstable Brown Diabetes and Obesity Center at the University of Kentucky. "You almost have the perfect storm of an aging population and a population growing more obese, plus fewer reasons t

  In  USA TODAY an article appeared, "What If Cancer Simply Can't Be Cured." Over the past 10 years we've featured many articles about cancer, it's cures, the fraud involved and many other aspects of this deadly disease. It seems like the medical profession and the cancer research institutions are hell bent in finding a cure simply through chemistry. And most of us agree the reason for that is because of the buck$. We very rarely hear anything from the medical side or big pharma that changing our lifestyle, eating a proper diet and doing a little exercise might go along way in preventing, not only cancer but many catastrophic diseases.  During this 10 period of following the growing cancer epidemic, we've heard many documented stories from cancer patients who were given the standard "X amount of time to live story," which usually came after the chemo, after radiation, after surgery and after their money ran out. Instead many decided to fore-

  An industry-funded study claims that diet soda drinkers lose weight faster than those who don’t drink ANY soda at all The study comes on the heels of rapid reductions in diet soda sales. Last year, diet Coke and diet Pepsi both dropped by nearly seven percent Research over the last 30 years has repeatedly shown that artificially sweetened no- or low-calorie drinks and other “diet” foods tend to stimulate your appetite, increase cravings for carbs, and stimulate fat storage and weight gain Studies have also linked diet drinks and artificial sweeteners to a number of other, more serious health hazards, including increased risk of stroke and cancer Artificial sweeteners trick your body into thinking that it’s going to receive sugar (calories), but when the sugar doesn’t arrive, your body signals that it needs more, which results in carb cravings.  Read the entire article from the August 15, 2014 Dr. Mercola newsletter. Click HERE . 

Approximately 400,000 people in and around Toledo, Ohio are being warned not to drink their tap water after high levels of a dangerous toxin were discovered in the water supply Saturday, according to the Toledo-Lucas County Department of Health. The toxin is called microcystin, the high levels of which were caused by massive increases in algae on Lake Erie. The increases in algae, called “algae blooms”, are poisonous if consumed — causing abnormal liver function, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, numbness, and dizziness. Boiling the water doesn’t help — in fact, it increases the presence of the toxin. Experts say one of the biggest reasons for the severity of this algal bloom is excess phosphorus runoff from urban and industrial agricultural lands, as well as from waste water from sewage treatment plants As of now, it’s unclear when Toledo residents will have clean water again. According to the Toledo Blade , fresh water samples are being flown to a specialized U.S. Environmental Protectio

Fryeburg, Maine residents pour out bottled water in protest of Poland Spring diverting the town's aquifer When Nestlé subsidiary Poland Spring came to the tiny town of Fryeburg, Maine, USA nearly a decade ago, residents noticed that their water was vanishing. Lake levels were lowering. Streams were getting smaller. Nestlé was pumping the aquifer under their town for all it could get. A battle over corporate privatization of our natural water resources When the citizens of Fryeburg spoke up, Nestlé unleashed an aggressive, divide-and-conquer strategy. It sued the town, nearly bankrupting several local activists. It worked to ensure that local regulatory boards were friendly to its position and it took its case all the way to the state Supreme Court. But Nestlé also set up a Poland Spring shop for local outreach, and established the Fryeburg Business Association -- staffed by a Nestlé employee -- to lead a charm offensive. Local schools even have a bottled water vending mac

By Jim Meyer Finland's capital hopes a 'mobility on demand' system that integrates all forms of shared and public transport in a single payment network could essentially render private cars obsolete.   The Finnish capital has announced plans to transform its existing public transport network into a comprehensive, point-to-point "mobility on demand" system by 2025 – one that, in theory, would be so good nobody would have any reason to own a car. Helsinki aims to transcend conventional public transport by allowing people to purchase mobility in real time, straight from their smartphones. The hope is to furnish riders with an array of options so cheap, flexible and well-coordinated that it becomes competitive with private car ownership not merely on cost, but on convenience and ease of use. Subscribers would specify an origin and a destination, and perhaps a few preferences. The app would then function as both journey planner and universal payment platform, knitt

By Emily Thomas Huffington Post  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ameri can families throw out about 25 percent of their groceries each year , often because they don't maximize the food's full use -- for example, some people throw away broccoli stems and only use the florets -- or they don't know how to store perishable items correctly. What's more, according to the World Resources Institute, about one-third of all food produced worldwide gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems annually. Josh Treuhaft, a recent master's graduate of the Design For Social Innovation program at the School of Visual Arts, first cooked up the supper club idea for his thesis project, "Eat Everything." He then decided to test out the concept on a bigger audience. "There’s all these people in [New York City] who spend extraordinary amounts on food, spend hours talking about their food and taking pictures of their food,"

From: Why Don't You Try This? No-one will believe the idea that something so cheap and simple such as Baking Soda can exceed the effectiveness of even the most expensive pharmaceutical drugs. At one stage it was common knowledge that baking soda could easily cure a common cold, as well as support a number of other ailments. I have heard stories of people who have sworn it to have rid their cancer.  There are 1000s of reasons to use baking soda but one overall reason is that sodium bicarbonate is a natural substance that will not harm us, our children or the environment because is it not a chemical compound that effects nature in any kind of negative way.  Baking soda is a compound that is found throughout nature, in the ocean, in the soil, in our foods and in our bodies. Baking soda is a neutralizer of many other compounds, this makes it exceptionally effective as a medicine in the age of toxicity.  Baking Soda (Sodium bicarbonate) is already in wide use and has been f

The Man Who Lives Without Money Read More: http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/10/the-man-who-lives-without-money.html The Man Who Lives Without Money Read More: http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/10/the-man-who-lives-without-money.htm "If we had to clean our own drinking water, we probably wouldn't shit in it." Irishman Mark Boyle tried to live life with no income, no bank balance and no spending. Here's how he finds it. The man who lives without money. If someone told me seven years ago, in my final year of a business and economics degree, that I'd now be living without money, I'd have probably choked on my microwaved ready meal. The plan back then was to get a ‘good' job, make as much money as possible, and buy the stuff that would show society I was successful. For a while I did it – I had a fantastic job managing a big organic food company; had myself a yacht on the harbour. If it hadn't been for the chance purchase of a video called