In a humorous demonstration that includes audience participation, Joe Smith shows how to save millions of pounds of paper towels every year, using his simple Shake & Fold the paper towel method.

R. P. Joe Smith served as a District Attorney in Umatilla County and nearly won a race for Oregon Attorney General without taking a single contribution over $99.99. He is a former chair of the Oregon Democratic Party and is active with several local nonprofits.

On the third Friday of May every year, thousands of people celebrate Endangered Species Day by visiting parks, wildlife refuges and zoos and attending events in support of nationwide conservation efforts underway protecting America’s threatened, endangered and at-risk species. The Endangered Species list, co-administered by the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has prevented hundreds of listed species from becoming extinct.

“Endangered Species Day provides an opportunity to celebrate our successes and strengthen our partnership with the American public to conserve our shared natural resources,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. “By taking action to help our threatened and endangered plants and animals, we can ensure a healthy future for our country and protect treasured landscapes for future generations.”

The FWS and the Endangered Species Coalition are cosponsoring events around the country. Events are as varied as educational programs at the local libraries to the Youth Art Contest and week-long events that include International Migratory Bird Day. Go to your Facebook page and support the cause by changing your profile picture or cover photo to an Endangered Species to promote awareness.

“Endangered Species Day celebrates America’s natural heritage and our country’s successful efforts to protect imperiled species,” said Leda Huta, Executive Director of the Endangered Species Coalition. “As Americans, we can be proud that we have one of the strongest endangered species programs in the world. Americans have established a legacy of protecting endangered species for our children and grandchildren.”

Endangered Species need protection all year round, not on just one day. Here are 10 things you can do all year to help the cause.

Source: Endangered Species Coalition and U.S Fish & Wildlife Service

Agricultural and rural development are getting more money in some African countries. Source: Flickr/Oxfam International

[NAIROBI] The number of African countries delivering on the Maputo Declaration to boost investment into agricultural and rural development to ten per cent of their national budgets is growing, a conference in Kenya has heard.

Five more countries — Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Senegal — have met the pledge made at the Second Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union in July 2003, according to Estherine Fotabong, director of programme implementation and coordination at the directorate of the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency.

They had also invested in research, food production, and provided financing and market access support to farmers, she said.

“Significant progress has been made towards encouraging African countries to increase their budgetary allocations to agriculture. About 12–13 countries [in total] have achieved the ten per cent target,” she told the told the 8th Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Partnership Platform Meeting this month (3–4 May).

Countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Rwanda are investing more than ten per cent, she added, noting that these nations had also shown good governance, addressed institutional capacity and focused on producers.

But despite the positive trend, she said that there were still significant challenges to attracting private sector investment, policy coordination, funding agricultural research and fighting corruption.

She warned that failure to overcome these problems could undermine the ability to attract funding from the public, donor and private sectors for research and infrastructure.

Gibson Guvheya, senior partnership officer with the Kenya-based African Capacity Building Foundation, told SciDev.Net: “There is still the need to strengthen the capacity of key actors in the sector for more agricultural transformation in Africa”.

“Surprisingly, countries just emerging from conflicts, such as Central African Republic, Liberia and Sierra Leone, have scored well in terms of capacity for agricultural transformation [compared with] countries that have been reforming for some time,” he said.

Selina Sannu, a participant from Kenya, gave a cautious welcome to Fotabong’s comments, noting that: “It is true that more countries are now investing in agriculture, but the question is where the funding is going to. If it is just paying salaries and buying vehicles, this will be wrong. It should be directed at smallholder farmers.”

Participants at the meeting said domestic funding through private-public partnerships should be a priority for Africa, instead of relying heavily on foreign donors. They called for greater investment in infrastructure, and loans for smallholder farmers at lower interest rates.

Once a shining example of successful environmental regulation, the Potomac River is once again under threat -- from both pollution and lawmakers.

The nonprofit, advocacy group, American Rivers released it’s 2012 report on the nation’s most threatened rivers today, highlighting issues that impact clean water while outlining actions citizens and policymakers can take to protect America’s waterways.

Appropriately — if not ironically — topping the list this year is the Potomac River which flows through Washington, D.C., and where clean water regulation has come under fire in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Since 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson declared the highly polluted Potomac “a national disgrace,” the “nation’s river” became one of the premier examples of how environmental protections can improve a surface water ecosystem.

More recently, however, rapid urban and suburban growth have sent increasing amounts of polluted runnoff and pharmaceuticals into the system, while intensified agricultural operations upstream funnel fertilizers and animal waste into the river, creating marine life dead zones.

Kayaker running the Great Falls of the Potomac River. Credit: anoldent (flickr); Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Aside from providing drinking water for more than five million people and myriad recreational opportunities, the Potomac is the second largest tributary of the constantly threatened Chesapeake Bay.

As the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act approaches this October, the lower House of the U.S. Congress is seeking to undermine provisions  of clean water regulation that would exacerbate threats to the Potomac and other river systems nationwide.

Thus far, the U.S. Senate has been able to thwart highly-partisan House attacks on clean water safeguards, but the upcoming fall elections could alter current Congressional and Presidential dynamics, making rollbacks of clean-water protections a near certainty.

Founded in 1973, American Rivers has more than 65,000 members and supporters, with offices in Washington, D.C., and nationwide.

To learn more about the America’s most threatened rivers and what you can do to protect them, visit the links shown in the sidebar, or visit www.americanrivers.org/.

“This is a picture of what kind of world we could live in if we only willed it.”

The beautiful image you see is not photoshopped. It is a photo of the heirloom “Glass Gem” maize variety recently rescued by seedsperson Greg Schoen and carefully stewarded by the Seeds Trust. When I saw this photo, I was overwhelmed. This, I thought, is a glimpse into the world we have denied ourselves because of how we choose to live. This is a picture of what kind of world we could live in if we only willed it.

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, farmer or agriculture worker (although I do have a backyard garden). I’m not going to talk about food security, permaculture or sustainable agriculture. There are loads of great journalists and bloggers who can tell you all you need to know about those things. I study culture and society and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And for me, this incredible, breathtaking cob of corn tells us a story.

Crop Diversity or Monoculture?

National Geographic ran a story a few months back about crop diversity. It included an arresting graphic, which detailed the number of vegetable and fruit seeds commercially available in 1903 — and the number available now. A few examples: you could buy 497 varieties of lettuce in 1903; you can find 36 now. Tomatoes? Find all 79 varieties now and you’re lucky. There were 408 a century ago. If you’re looking for corn you’re limited to a dozen varieties nowadays; go back a hundred years and that number swells to an astonishing 307.

Three hundred types of corn! And those are only the ones commercially available. If you ever need proof of the wonder, the beauty the Earth offers us, you only need look at this survey of heirloom potatoes for the awkward, colourful and palatable diversities available. The paucity of russet vs. Yukon gold (both nevertheless delicious!) is striking.

It doesn’t take a PhD in agricultural science to realize why this is happening. Monocultures suit the capitalist mode of production which wants to produce the most food possible with the least quantities of financial cost and human labour. You can read all about crop giants like Monsanto and the attendant health problems, environmental risks and social costs elsewhere. I promised I wouldn’t get into that (OK, I lied a little); but the truth is that this flattening of diversity endemic to capitalism manifests itself in places other than our crops: it flattens our dreams too.

“Choice” is Not Diversity

Capitalism is supposed to offer us unlimited choice: I can have whatever I want when I want it. What Schoen’s gorgeous corn kernals show us, however, is that “choice” is not diversity. Why would I want to “choose” to have tepid, shrinkwrapped corn in December when I can have 300 or more kinds of corn in August? We see this dynamic play out in virtually every sphere of society: I may be able to choose which film to see on Friday night from a stock of dozens, with new movies opening every week — but when I start to realize that Chernobyl Diaries is just a watered-down Paranormal Activity 2, at what point do I need to wonder how many Batman (or Twilight or Harry Potter) sequels will be enough?

“There are few, if any, repositories of diversity so breathless, so awesome, as can be found in the natural world.”

There are few, if any, repositories of diversity so breathless, so awesome, as can be found in the natural world. So even when we’ve convinced ourselves that corn comes exclusively in yellow and light-yellow, the Earth has the capacity to shock us out of our complacency with such force as Schoen’s corn impressed on me. It’s moments like this – yes, something as simple as seeing a new seed varietal – when the utopian possibilities of our world confront us with dazzling urgency.

There Is an Alternative

Margaret Thatcher left us with the legacy of TINA: There Is No Alternative. But Schoen’s “Glass Gem” shows us that it simply isn’t so. The choices we make as a society actively deprive us of access to these alternate ways of being. If we can see such marvels in a single ear of corn or a misshapen tuber, what awaits us if we re-imagine the way we structure economic, judicial, parliamentary and cultural policies?

Perhaps this seems naïve — it may seem like a far leap from vegetables to social practices, ethics and mores — but what if we thought of naïvité in terms of its etymological roots: un naïf, the newly born, unencumbered. Such a perspective would surely look upon the capitalist system in which we live, which limits diversity, flattens our capacity for utopia and sets inexorable limits on the human and say: no, not that. Surely, it would choose instead to embrace the possibilities of a wondrous world as complex, multicoloured and beautiful as this photo; and as simple as an ancient seed.

Michael Stewart is a rabble staff member and a doctoral candidate in English at the University of British Columbia. His blog, BMWAP, is about culture and capitalism. Follow him on twitter: @blindmanspistol

Originally published by rabble.ca

Sky Waters, a 5th Grader, won the Grand Prize with his watercolor of a caribou, set against a blazing forest fire.

The 7th Annual Endangered Species Day is celebrated on May 18 and as a big part of the event, the latest winners of the 2012 Youth Art Contest were recently announced.

The contest provides young people with an opportunity to learn about endangered species and express their knowledge and support through artwork.

This year’s Grand Prize winner is 11-year old Sky Waters from Eagan, Minnesota. According to the local newspaper, the Star-Tribune, “it’s the latest in a string of awards and honors for the fifth-grader at Eagan’s Thomas Lake Elementary.

Sky placed third nationally in the 2012 International Aviation Art Contest for his painting, “Silent Flight.” The picture of a hot air balloon and glider is now in Switzerland, entered in the international round of competition. Adam Young, the musician behind pop band Owl City, posted that painting on his Facebook, writing “I LOVE THIS!”

One of Sky’s paintings hangs in Kevin Costner’s “Tatanka: Story of the Bison” center in South Dakota. He’s also won blue ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair and the Dakota County Fair.”

Sky will travel to Washington D.C. to receive his award. The contest is organized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Endangered Species Coalition, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art/ University of New Orleans.

Following are the rest of the winners. You can see the semi-finalists’ art here.

First Place, Grades K-2, Jasmine C. Lee: Quino Checkerspot Butterfly

First Place, Grades 3-5, Timothy Erwin: SF Garter Snake and Bullfrog

First Place, Grades 6-8, Meilynn Shi: Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

First Place (tie), Grades 8-10. Ella Chen: Polar Bear

First Place (tie), Grades 8-10, Pauline Chen: Ocelot

Where do squid, jellyfish and other sea creatures begin life? The story, told from the viewpoint of a sea urchin, reveals a stunningly beautiful saga of fertilization, development and growth in the ocean depths.

Although this targets children on TED-Ed, the visuals – and the information – are interesting for adults as well.  The language is easy to understand, with a touch of humor and a few double entendres added for the grown ups.

Lesson by Tierney Thys, visualization by Christian Sardet (CNRS/Tara Oceans), Noé Sardet, and Sharif Mirshak (Plankton Chronicles Project, Parafilms).

Ash from Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano forced the closing of the international airport serving the country’s fourth largest city, Puebla, on Saturday – the third such closure in less than a week.

Eruptions Friday night and Saturday morning sent red-hot rock more than a mile from the crater and a cloud of ash and vapor 4 km (2.5 mi) into the air, as tremors and loud rumbling sent residents scurrying into the streets as far as 10 km away. The weekend activity was strongest since the alert level was raised to yellow stage-3 last month – fifth on a seven-step scale.

More than 30 million people live within sight of the 17,900 ft. volcano, located 30 km (18.6 mi) west of Puebla and 80 km (50 mi) southeast of Mexico City in Central Mexico.

Although no evacuations have yet been called for, emergency centers have been set up in the event the eruptions intensify. Those living near the volcano have been urged to be prepared to leave on short notice should conditions change.

Popocatepetl’s most recent, major eruptions occured in 1994 and 2000, the latter causing nearly 50,000 residents to evacuate.

As a filmmaker and photographer, Karen Bass has traveled from one end of the earth to the other to film and photograph the earth, its creatures and people. Bass proceeds to show some of her truly jaw-dropping footage, much of it shot with the BBC or for National Geographic, often with veteran natural world commentator, David Attenborough.

See a clip of grizzly bears shot from a helicopter with a gyro-stabilized camera, like a “flying tripod crane and dolly in one.” And watch the amazing sneak preview of new footage of the tube-lipped nectar bat she’s taken for Untamed Americas, a new series shot for the National Geographic Channel. The bat is a 2.5-inches long with a 3.5-inch tongue and was just recently discovered. Bass’s images are breathtaking.

And visit the Altiplano region of the High Andes where the air is crystal clear, providing the ideal environment for shots of nature and the heavens.