From Food & Water Watch

Just as 2012 was wrapping up, the FDA decided to slip through a shoddy environmental assessment report using data from AquaBounty, the biotech company responsible for bringing us the genetically-engineered (GE) salmon, in support (duh!) of GE salmon.

This move by FDA (Food & Drug Administration), the last step before approving its sale across the country, did not go unnoticed. An outraged public inundated the agency with thousands of comments. Word from the Organic Consumers Association is that the FDA has now extended the public comment period re: approval of genetically engineered (GE or GMO) salmon an additional 60 days – new deadline: 4/26/13 to submit comments to the FDA asking them to stop their mad dash to put GE salmon in our grocery stores and to reject this frankenfish — Stop GE Salmon!

We urge you to use the Food & Water Watch template and send a letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg.

From Iris Marie Bloom, of Protecting Our Waters, 2/25/13:

Stop the Tennesse Gas Pipeline Solidarity Vigil and Press Conference
Tuesday February 26th between noon and 1 pm in Philadelphia

• express solidarity with residents in the upper Delaware River watershed who’ve been suffering the direct impacts of clearcutting
• protest against the degradation of our watershed created by fracked gas pipeline proliferation
• press the Army Corps of Engineers to intervene to stop the clearcutting right now in and near sensitive wetlands
• make our voices heard by the Delaware River Basin Commission — including its federal vote, the Army Corps of Engineers Commissioner — to refuse to grant the next-stage permit for Tennessee Gas Pipeline digging and trenching.

WHERE: 100 E Penn Square, Philadelphia, PA 19107, South Lobby.

Interns continue to work on projects that help make the Lehigh Valley more sustainable, including campus sustainability, healthy food, clean air, and Fair Trade.

Our campus sustainability internship has been reworked to reflect the fact that most LV campuses now have active sustainability initiatives. In addition, we will be working towards a student sustainability conference next year.

Rethinking the system & working for change is critical, and this is particularly clear with the food system in the U.S. Several interns’ work helps to bring out the importance of rethinking the food system:

• ‘You Are What You Eat’: Impacts of Industrial Agriculture on Human Health
• Healthy Food for Healthy Communities, an analysis of how food impacts the sustainability & health of our communities
• Campus Food in the Lehigh Valley

For more information, contact Peter Crownfield, internship coordinator

Current Opportunities •   Thoughts from past interns •   How To Apply

From Bill McKibben – 350.org – May 12, 2013

The news came Friday afternoon, towards the end of a long week: On May 9th, for the first time ever, the carbon dioxide counter on the side of Mauna Loa, the most important scientific instrument on earth, recorded a daily average of above 400 parts per million. It’s a grim landmark — it’s been several million years since CO₂ reached these levels in the atmosphere.

Together we’ve been building a movement to stand up to the fossil fuel money, and it’s beginning to pay off — just an hour after the news from Mauna Loa, we got word that the trustees of a fifth U.S. college had voted to divest their fossil fuel stocks, hard on the heels of 11 cities who’d done likewise the week before. But there’s no happy-talking the fact that for now we’re losing: the carbon in the air keeps rising, and with it the temperature, and the devastation.

We’ve got to build the movement bigger yet . . .

More info: 350.org

About the 2/19/13 League of Women Voters of Lehigh County-sponsored public forum regarding privatization of water and sewer services in the City of Allentown:

On the WFMZ website:

Here’s The Morning Call‘s article:

http://articles.mcall.com/2013-02-19/news/mc-allentown-water-sewer-lease-forum-20130219_1_sewer-lease-water-and-sewer-dan-koplish