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True Green Report

Mary had a little hare

January 6, 2003

Detractors of radical animal rights activists have asked: Is there nothing sacred?

In Amsterdam, a Dutch animal rights group is targeting the Mother of Christ. In an anti-cruelty campaign earmarked for Christmas, the group used pictures of the Virgin Mary cradling a dead hare instead of the Baby Jesus. The pictures were designed to highlight how animals eaten at Christmas are farmed and slaughtered.

In an era where the politically correct are determined to obliterate Christ from Christmas, devout Christians are incensed with the activists’ Mary-had-a-little-rabbit theme.

Dierenbescherming, the animal association with the name almost as long as its radical activities, placed pictures in magazines and newspapers. The pictures portrayed a mournful Mary clutching a lifeless and bleeding rabbit to her breast. (In the animal rights kingdom, living creatures can still bleed after they’re dead). Hare, or rabbit, is traditional Christmas fare in the Netherlands.

The group said its campaign aimed to raise public awareness of cruelties associated with the intensive farming of what are naturally wild animals.

"Heavenly Christmas…Don’t make it too wild," urged the poster. The Dutch word for game is "wild".

A Christian democrat member of parliament and farmer, Annie Schreijer-Pierik, was outraged at the mimicking of the traditional Christmas scene of Mary cradling the Baby Jesus.

The picture took the right to freedom of expression too far, she told parliament: "Hands off my Holy Virgin Mary. Mary with a child at her breast is totally natural. Mary with a dead hare is definitely not."

Dierensbescherming spokesman Niels Dorland told Reuters: "I don’t understand what this woman is saying. We are using the Mary figure, a symbol of peace on earth and care for all creatures, to contrast with some of the realities of the festive season and awaken public awareness."

"Our message is don’t eat these hares. Everyone can eat what they want, but they must be aware of how the animals are kept, many in tiny cages.


Nearly half of Earth’s wilderness still intact

Some good news amid the doom and gloom pumped out by environmental lobbyists is bound to send the greenies running for their antacid.

A new study shows that nearly half of the Earth’s surface remains an untouched wilderness.

A critic of the Green movement says environmentalists "will be furious" with the report because they raise money based on the "idea that man is killing the planet and earth is running out of everything".

The Conservation International report, Wilderness: Earth’s Last Wild Places, was the result of two years of research and the work of hundreds of international scientists. The study revealed that the Earth’s untouched wilderness areas are 46 percent intact.

"A lot of people will be surprised by the percent of land surface that is in very good shape. We were surprised," said Russ Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International, in an interview with CNSNews.com.

Human activity has reduced the Earth’s wilderness areas from just over 54 percent of the Earth’s surface since the dawn of man to the present day coverage of 46 percent, according to the authors.

The intact wilderness sites on the planet occupy a land area equivalent to the six largest countries on Earth combined; or more than seven times the size of the United States, according to Mittermeier. These wilderness areas are critical to the survival of the planet.

Other positive notes from the study are that the tropical rainforests of the Amazon and the Congo have not been decimated by development and logging. "For the most part, these forests are really intact," said Mittermeier.

Another unexpected finding was how sparsely populated the wilderness areas are in terms of human habitation.

"Seven-tenths of the world’s population was in 38 percent of the (Earth’s) land area. That surprised us," he said.

The absence of human populations in wilderness areas is considered positive for the environment because man and nature do not have to compete for resources, according to the study. Nine of the wilderness areas were in the United States.

"We are painting a picture of guarded optimism…Yes, there is some good news,

but let’s not sit on it and say we don’t have to do anything," Mittermeier cautioned.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free-market environmental think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, thinks the study’s findings will be "met with extreme hostility" by a lot of environmental groups.

"They will be furious, their entire fund-raising and therefore existence is based upon the idea that man is killing the planet and the earth is running out of everything," Horner told CNSNews.com.

Horner said most green groups believe "as a matter of faith" that man has destroyed the natural world and development must be restricted.

"They cannot allow people to believe anything but catastrophe is possible if you don’t do what they want," he said.

Horner was also critical of the Conservation International study for it’s implied message that human development is not desirable.

According to the study, Horner said, "Half of the world is in pretty decent shape, (and) that is the half of the world that has no man. So decent shape means no people.

"Wilderness good--man bad," he added.


Praise the Lord replaced by Save Mother Earth!

Latter day churchgoers can expect more than a fire and brimstone lecture from the Sunday pulpit.

Today’s faithful can expect orders to save the environment rather than readings from the bible.

Religious institutions around the world are going green and providing a push to the environmental movement, says a new report from Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World documents how these unconventional alliances are growing in frequency and significance to address issues from deforestation in Thailand to green investing by stockholders in New York.

"This collaboration could change the world," says author Gary Gardner, Worldwatch Research Director. "These groups have different but complementary strengths. Environmentalists have a strong grounding in science. Religious institutions enjoy moral authority and a grassroots presence that shape the worldviews and lifestyles of billions of people. It’s a powerful combination that until recently remained virtually unexplored."

There are many examples of the growing trend between organized religion and the environmental movement.

In the 1990s, "environmentalist monks" in Thailand opposed shrimp farming and dam and pipeline construction and protected mangroves and bird populations. They even saved trees by "ordaining" them within sacred community forests.

Since 1996, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the symbolic leader of the 250 million-member Orthodox Church, has used the prestige of his office to gather prominent scientists, journalists, and religious leaders for four weeklong, shipboard symposia focusing on water-related environmental issues.

And in Sri Lanka, the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement, the largest NGO in the country, covering roughly half of the country’s villages is active in promoting a Buddhist-inspired vision of development that stresses modest consumption.

Religions are tapping their extensive grassroots presence and economic resources to engage issues of sustainability. In the United States, 3,500 Lutheran, Presbyterian, Unitarian and Quaker congregations have committed to purchasing fairly traded, shade-grown, often organic coffee. Just five years old, the Interfaith Coffee Program now supplies about one percent of the country’s congregations and is the fastest-growing source of revenue for the Equal Exchange Coffee Company, the program’s sponsor.

Meanwhile, Episcopal Power & Light offers its U.S. customers the opportunity to purchase electricity generated from solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources, and helps congregations to "green" their houses of worship.

Sierra Club president Carl Pope has called for greater attention to churches as allies in the environmental movement.


The news can kill you

Talking heads Connie Chung and Peter Jennings may only get on you nerves, but according to Raymond Lesser of Funny Times, the news can kill you.

"Is America the most dangerous place in the history of the world?" asks Lesser. "It must be, if you believe the increasingly hysterical reports issued by our paranoid scientists, government officials, and big haired talking heads in the news media. On a typical day last, month (Ozone Warning Level: Orange, Homeland Security Alert Code: Yellow) I tabulated news reports and updates about 137 things that can kill you, and that was all before eating red meat for dinner.

"Besides the usual and obvious threat to life from things like rattlesnakes, cigarettes, and soldiers with guns, we were warned by the UCLA School of Dentistry that snoring can kill you. (The struggle for breath can result in soaring blood pressure which can damage the walls of the carotid arteries and increase the risk of a stroke. Persistent loud snoring may also cause your spouse to attempt to smother you with a pillow.) Light from the sun can kill you, so we have been trained to slather on SPF40 sunblock. Now it turns out that sunblock can kill you, too. And indoor light isn’t safe either, because of the danger of foreign made lamps that can electrocute you.

"Guns are incredibly dangerous, but doctors are 9,000 times more likely to kill you than gun owners. (I don’t even want to think about how deadly a gun-owning doctor might be.) We all know that fast food can kill you, but so can a low-fat diet, peanuts, wheat or eggs. Too much alcohol can kill you, but so can too much water. Cannibalism can kill you whether you’re the victim or the cannibal. Skyscrapers can be lethal, but so can the music you listen to while driving, bleeding gums, and salt substitute.

"Even if you don’t have a statistically dangerous job as a bodyguard, or bomb squad cop, you’re still not safe at work, because even boring jobs can kill you, according to researchers from the University of Texas School of Public Health. They found that workers who spent their lives in undemanding jobs with little control over their work were 35 percent more likely to die during a 10-year period than workers in challenging jobs with lots of decision-making responsibilities.

Divorce can kill you, due to stress and its effect on your immune system. In fact, just becoming single takes seven years off your life expectancy, although those would probably have been years spent arguing with your spouse whose turn it is to cook and clean. (As Phyllis Diller said, `Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance.")

"Outdoors we face lethal dangers from lightning, small avalanches, jet blast, grain dust, airbags, and road stripes. But indoors you will run across the even scarier lethal dangers of root canals, amalgam fillings, ozone generators, vintage Barbie dolls, and showering (which "boosts concentrations of hazardous trihalomethanes.)

"An occasional cup of coffee is worse for the heart than drinking it every day, The Internet can kill in a short 48 hours, as so can your CD-ROM, practical jokes, too much sleep, too much studying. Too many demos, being too smart, and too much of a good thing

"Perhaps most frightening of all are ongoing studies, reported by New Scientist magazine, that fear can kill you. For example, Dr. Robert Kioner, a California cardiologist, found that on the day of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, the coroner recorded five times more sudden cardiac deaths than would ordinarily be expected. Dr. Kioner said: "This was nothing to do with people physically exerting themselves as they dug themselves out of the rubble. The typical story was that a patient clutched his chest, described chest pain, and dropped over dead.

"I wonder how many of these victims were watching or listening to the news?"


Greens sue EPA over global warming

Three environmental groups recently sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a bid to force it to combat global warming by limiting air pollution from United States automobiles.

The groups--the International Centre for Technology Assessment, Sierra Club and Greenpeace--said they filed suits in U.S. district court because EPA was dawdling over their 1999 petition, which said the U.S. must use the Clean Air Act against "greenhouse" gases from cars. They asked a judge to order EPA to respond to the petition within 60 days.

"We think the situation, of global warming, requires action," said Joseph Mendelson, ICTA legal director. "We think we have a very strong case" because the Clean Air Act gives EPA the power to act on pollutants harmful to people."

The three groups petitioned EPA on Oct. 20, 1999, to reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. EPA accepted comments on the petition from January-May 23, 2001. The lawsuit said there has been no action since, although federal agencies are required to decide matters "within a reasonable time."

Environmentalists have said the Bush administration is unwilling to act on global warming despite acknowledging its threat. Last year, President Bush withdrew the United States from the so-called Kyoto treaty on global warming. He said the treaty would hurt the U.S. economy and would rely on voluntary efforts to reduce pollution."