Morning No: No-Till

by: Natasha Chart

Fri Jun 26, 2009 at 05:30

... The amendment charges the USDA chief with coming up with a "list of domestic agricultural and forestry practice types that are eligible to generate offset credits under this title because the practices avoid or reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester greenhouse gases."

There's almost no doubt, as I warned a couple of weeks ago, that chemical no-till-a practice that sequesters little if any carbon but uses loads of herbicides-will be enshrined as a credit-worthy practice. The amendment language places "altered tillage practices" on an "initial list." Such offset definitions could shift yet billions more to chemical-intensive, monocrop agriculture. That's dismal-a kind of crime, given the gravity of climate change.

But there's also nothing stopping organic-ag practices from making the list, either-and with organic champion Kathleen Merrigan as Vilsack's deputy, it just might happen. After all, the USDA's own research reveals that "organic builds soil better than [chemical] no-till." Moreover, the "initial list" includes "winter crover cropping"-a classic organic practice ...

- The weapon of choice for the 21st Century, and governments know it.

- A meditation on togetherness.

- China is blocking Google now, apparently as part of a campaign against porn and sexual health info. This is probably going to prove, when historians eventually analyze the downfall of the Chinese government, to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

- Rural Kenyans now lynching the elderly for 'witchcraft'. I'm sure it's a total coincidence that the country has also been gripped by a severe drought and is expected to be hit hard by climate change in coming years, perhaps generating significant numbers of environmental refugees.

- Microevolution happens faster at warmer temperatures because cells tend to divide more rapidly.

- We are shocked, shocked to discover that the health insurance companies are illegally charging customers for procedures that should have been covered.

- Why are right wing men so pathetically insecure? Oh wait, right, I remember ... unrealistically inflexible gender norms that inevitably warp the brain beyond repair.

- And, last but not least, this one goes out to the Democratic Party, with feeling ...

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