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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Deny Climate Change

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Why Do Republicans Deny Climate Change

Florida Could Be Underwater In A Few Decades Can Republicans Win The Battleground State If They Refuse To Heed Environmental Warnings

Why Do Republicans Deny Climate Change Science?

Molly OTooleKeith JohnsonForeign Policy

MIAMI Florida is waging a quixotic battle against climate change that becomes immediately and aggravatingly apparent when driving anywhere in Miami. Endless orange traffic cones, flashing detour signs, and car-swallowing pits clog the streets as the city tries to rebuild overloaded sewer systems and literally raise roads above the encroaching flood waters.

Sitting in his cramped, cluttered office at the University of Miami, geophysics professor Chris Harrison squints at a rising red line on his computer monitor. It shows sea levels in Key West, which have risen 2 mm per year on average in the last hundred years or so. No longer: Now theyre rising by 3 mm each year bad news for a place where the highest elevation is 345 feet. So is Miami eventually doomed to a watery death?

Well, yes, he said.

I dont have a plan to influence the weather, he dismissively answered a question about climate change at a town hall in New Hampshire.

People Who Have Changed Their Position

“I used to be a climate-change skeptic”, conservative columnist Max Boot admitted in 2018, one who believed that “the science was inconclusive” and that worry was “overblown”. Now, he says, referencing the Fourth National Climate Assessment, “the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing.”

Climate change doubter Bob Inglis, a former US representative for South Carolina, changed his mind after appeals from his son on his environmental positions, and after spending time with climate scientist Scott Heron studying coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Inglis lost his House race in 2010, and went on to found republicEn, a nonprofit promoting conservative voices and solutions on climate change.

Jerry Taylor promoted climate denialism for 20 years as former staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council and former vice president of the Cato Institute. Taylor began to change his mind after climate scientist James Hansen challenged him to reread some Senate testimony. He became President of the Niskanen Center in 2014, where he is involved in turning climate skeptics into climate activists, and making the business case for climate action.

Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro expressed skepticism or cynicism about anthropogenic global warming for some years, but by 2010, he had become involved in explaining the connections between man-made climate change and extreme weather.”

Farmers And Climate Denial

Seeing positive economic results from efforts at climate-friendly agricultural practices, or becoming involved in intergenerational stewardship of a farm may play a role in turning farmers away from denial. One study of climate change denial among farmers in Australia found that farmers were less likely to take a position of climate denial if they had experienced improved production from climate-friendly practices, or identified a younger person as a successor for their farm.

In the United States, rural climate dialogues sponsored by the Sierra Club have helped neighbors overcome their fears of political polarization and exclusion, and come together to address shared concerns about climate impacts in their communities. Some participants who start out with attitudes of anthropogenic climate change denial have shifted to identifying concerns which they would like to see addressed by local officials.

Also Check: Democrats More Educated Than Republicans

Young Republicans See Shift In Gop: ‘from Outright Denial To Climate Caucus’

Twenty-four-year-old Republican Danielle Butcher is watching with anticipation as GOP leaders move from outright denial to now having a climate caucus a move she sees as the first step in integrating climate action into formal party policy.

Butcher, the executive vice president of the American Conservation Coalition , spoke to The Hills Equilibrium on Tuesday, just a week after Rep. John Curtis ;launched the Conservative Climate Caucus and the same day that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

The partys progress is huge, when you apply the context, Butcher said.; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

This is an excellent first step, she continued. The first thing you have to do in achieving climate action is start talking about these problems.

To Butcher, integrating climate action into Republican politics speaks to her partys historic conservation core the GOP with a deep-seated, rural heritage, was responsible for creation of the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency under former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.

I also see this as us reclaiming our heritage, she said.

But with two-thirds of Americans indicating that the government should do more on climate change a stance that Butcher observed is especially true among young people” she said Republicans need to be talking about these issues and involving the younger generation in the discussions.

The GOP has notoriously struggled with young people, she added.

% Of Scientists Agree That Humans Are Causing Global Warming Yet Belief In Climate Change Continues To Depend On Political Beliefs Above All Else

It is no secret that belief in climate change in America is strongly divided along party lines, a fact we were reminded of in last weeks Republican leadership debates. The relationship was assessed in an experiment by Dan Kahan published in Advances in Political Psychology earlier this year, which demonstrated that there exists an extremely bizarre paradox that is as mind bending as it is troubling. Believe it or not, the more Republicans know about science, the less likely they are to believe in climate change.;

The Ordinary Science Intelligence measure which runs across the bottom of the graphs above measures how likely someone is to answer tests of scientific knowledge and reasoning correctly. For example, someone with an average Ordinary Science Intelligence score has a 70% chance of giving the correct answer to the simple scientific question âelectrons are smaller than atoms â true or falseâ. Someone would have to be a full standard deviation below average to be more likely than not to get this question wrong.

As the graph above shows, a Democrat with an average level of scientific understanding has an 80% chance of believing in global warming, while the equivalent Republican has only a 20% chance. Astonishingly, this number falls even further as Republicansâ scientific literacy increases.

Follow Simon Oxenham on;,;,;,;RSS,;or join the;mailing list;to get each weekâs post straight to your inbox. Image Credit: ;FREDERIC J. BROWN/Getty

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Neither I Nor Any Christian I Knew Really Worried About Things Like Pollution Global Warming Climate Change Or Any Of The Other Seemingly Apocalyptic Scenarios Put Forth By The Scientific Community I Thought I Had Insider Information About The End Of The World And It Had Nothing To Do With Climate Change

When it comes to Christian eschatology, there are numerous end-times scenarios embraced by evangelicals. The details may change but the main plot rarely does. In general, there are three main theories: Premillennialism, Postmillennialism, and Amillennialism. The first posits that the end of time will bring a tribulation of suffering, that Jesus will return, and that Christians will be raptured, which is when Jesus takes the faithful back up to heaven with him. Within this theory are two types: pre-tribbers and post-tribbers. Pre-tribbers believe that true Christians will be raptured first and that seven years of hellish suffering brought by the Antichrist will follow, after which Jesus will return again to rule over the earth for the remainder of the Great Tribulation and give people one more chance to reject him before destroying the world. Post-tribbers contend that Christians wont be raptured until the tribulation ends and must evangelize during this time.

Postmillennialism holds that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will happen after a thousand years of relative peace on earth made possible by the practice of Christian ethics, at which time final judgment and the Rapture will occur and the world will end.

The fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire. Men were scorched with fierce heat; and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory.

A Majority Of Republicans Say They Support Policies To Mitigate Climate Change

Percentage of Republicans in each congressional district who agree thatwe should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant

National average:57%

A majority of Republicans in almost every congressional district support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, even when they dont believe those emissions are causing climate change.

That may seem like a paradox, but theres a long history of support among people of all partisan backgrounds for regulating pollution basic things like clean water and clean air, Professor Egan said. To the extent global warming is framed that way, it raises support for policy interventions more than the abstract concept of climate change.

Despite this majority support, Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has worked to repeal Obama-era policies regulating power plant emissions. He has also raised questions over whether his agency should be regulating greenhouse gases at all.

Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina who is working to get others in his party to accept climate change, said that Republicans are often willing to embrace solutions, even if they say they dont believe in climate change.

It doesnt help to point the finger at conservatives and ask, Do you believe? he said. By showing me a solution that fits with my values, Ive got a way to accept the existence of the problem.

Republican support for various policy proposals, nationwide

Support

Read Also: Do The Republicans Have The House

Yet Half Of Republicans Say That Climate Change Is Happening With Strongest Support On The Coasts And In Places Where Climate Effects Are Now Being Felt

Percentage of Republicans in each congressional district who say that global warming is happening

National average:50%

Climate views at the local level tend to reflect where liberal and moderate Republicans live compared to conservative Republicans,said Patrick J. Egan, a professor of politics and public policy at New York University. So its no surprise that Republicans in major cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York are most likely to say climate change is happening.

But, there are also tantalizing hints that geographic vulnerability to climate change may affect opinion, Professor Egan said.

For example, in south Florida, an area vulnerable to sea level rise and increased risk of extreme weather, an estimated 56 percent of Republicans agree that climate change is happening. A majority of Republicans in both Alaska and Hawaii say the same.

Nearly Nine In 10 Foresee Global Warming Effects Eventually Occurring

Why Climate Change Denial Still Exists In The U.S.

In addition to the 59% of Americans who believe the effects of global warming have already begun, another 10% predict they will start happening within a few years or in their own lifetime. A further 19% foresee the effects affecting future generations, bringing the total who believe global warming will eventually affect humans to 88%. Most Americans across all demographic groups expect this, including large majorities of Republicans and independents , and nearly all Democrats .

Still, there is variation across groups in the belief that the effects of global warming have already begun, a view that may be more relevant to the propensity for people to be politically active or factor it into their voting. Democrats , adults aged 18 to 34 , college graduates , non-White Americans and women are significantly more likely than their counterparts to say the effects have begun.

Already begun

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Figure 20 Proportion Of Each Group Who Believed The Worlds Temperature Will Probably Go Up Over The Next 100 Years

Future warming. Since 1997, majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents have believed that the earth will probably be warmer in a century if nothing is done to prevent it. In 2020, 94% of Democrats, 72% of Independents, and 56% of Republicans believe that warming will probably continue in the future. No notable growth has occurred in the partisan gap since 2011.

5Â°F warmer would be bad. Majorities of Democrats and of Independents have consistently believed that 5Â°F of global warming would be bad, but the proportion of Republicans expressing that belief has hovered around the midline, peaking at 59% in 1997 and dipping to its lowest points of 47% in 2010 and 2015. The partisan gap in 2020 is the biggest observed since 1997 at 34 percentage points.

A Case Of Legal Bribery

12 ;Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science , 30-32.

13 ;Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Tru

14 ;Ibid., 169-215.

4;;;;;In the 1970s eager to protect its activities from regulations and above all its profit margins, corporate America began to challenge the growing influence of environmental organizations and other advocacy groups who had been instrumental in ushering in this golden age of environmental legislation.12 Corporate leaders drew their inspiration from the successful tactics of the tobacco industry to thwart any restrictions on their activities: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway use the term tobacco strategy to explain how corporations set up or fund seemingly independent think tanks and hire experts and scientists in order to discredit scientific research and evidence likely to justify governmental regulations on their activities.13 Needlessly to say, this constitutes a complete perversion of the scientific process, as the goal results in the fact that no scientifically-based call for environmental or safety regulations go unanswered and doubt is cast on the consensus reached in peer-reviewed scientific research. The climate change denial movement is part and parcel of this larger corporate effort to hinder regulations.14

Read Also: How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans In Kentucky

On Why The Republican Party Has Become Opposed To Taking Action On Climate Change

Why has the Republican Party shifted? I have one answer for you: Money. They have been bought off by the fossil fuel industry. If its a congressman from Virginia, or Mitch McConnell from Kentucky where they have the coal or some of the oil and fracking interest theres a very clear correlation. Theres a reason there’s the phrase follow the money. Because if you do, you will see that the voting correlates with those major contributors to the Republican party, and most of them happen to be in the fossil fuel regions of our country.

Responding To Climate Denial

An Irish Times article notes that climate denial “is not simply overcome by reasoned argument”, because it is not a rational response. Attempting to overcome denial using techniques of persuasive argument, such as supplying a missing piece of information, or providing general scientific education may be ineffective. A person who is in denial about climate is most likely taking a position based on their feelings, especially their feelings about things they fear.

Lewandowsky has stated that “It is pretty clear that fear of the solutions drives much opposition to the science.”

It can be useful to respond to emotions, including with the statement “It can be painful to realise that our own lifestyles are responsible”, in order to help move “from denial to acceptance to constructive action.”

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Whats In The Pipeline

The annual carbon footprint from new oil and gas facilities in Texas and other Gulf states could be as high as 541 million tons of greenhouse gases by 2030the equivalent of 131 coal-fired power plants.

The industry was dramatically out of favor at the moment, in most every corner of the investing and political world, he said, and it needed urgently to adapt. At its most basic level, I think we can all agree that having less CO2 emissions in the atmosphere would be a good thingand as Houstons business leaders, we need to be committed to working to make that happen.;

For skeptics inclined to think the change in rhetoric was just a PR move, Staples for one was ready to oblige. Two days after his call with reporters, he went on the public radio show the Texas Standard to clean up his spill. It seemed as if he had intended to signal a change in messaging but was surprised by how seriously everyone had taken it. I think the term climate change has been hijacked. I think its been used to unfortunately introduce climate hysteria or climate confusion. I think the term is used in such a way to confuse the public that the sky is falling in, he said.;

Of course, theres something a little ridiculous about parsing statements from oil and gas trade groups at a time when Australia and the Amazon are burning. Theres a kind of recurrent amnesia that paints climate change as a perennially new problem, an issue that is just reaching critical mass of awareness.;

Emotional And Psychological Aspects

Florida State Senator Tom Lee has described the emotional impact and reactions of individuals to climate change. Lee says, “If these predictions do bear out,;that it’s just economically daunting. I mean, you have to be the Grim Reaper of reality in a world that isn’t real fond of the Grim Reaper. That’s why I use the term emotionally shut down, because I think you lose people at hello a lot of times in the Republican conversation over this.” Emotional reactions to climate change may include guilt, fear, anger, and apathy. Psychology Today, in an article titled “The Existential Dread of Climate Change, has suggested that “despair about our changing climate may get in the way of fixing it.” The American Psychological Association has urged psychologists and other social scientists to work on psychological barriers to taking action on climate change.

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piermanwalter · 3 years

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Thief’s Apprentice: Old Surenia, Old Sidra

SUPER SUMMARY: This isn’t even close to how many cultures and ethnicities there are in Surenia, but it should get the vibe across. Surenia’s hostile climate and geology forced its residents to become magically and technologically advanced to survive and withstand outside invasion. After near total depopulation following the plague, previous ethnic and cultural boundaries fell apart and people formed identities around their city or lack of city instead.

Although Sidra is peaceful and agreeable, its descendant civilisations on other continents are intense and terrifying, and their continued self identification as Sidrans even after thousands of years of cultural divergence raises great fear and suspicion in other parts of The World. Although there are many advantages to cultural cohesion, after one Sidran in Surenia invented the plague, it caused the reputation of all Sidrans to fall, leading to the formation of Gehenna, the most intense and terrifying Sidran descendant civilisation so far.

A man once rode on the back of a giant bird to an island covered in treasures. He was warned he must leave before the sun rose, so he quickly filled a few sacks with jewels and went home. The man’s neighbor, jealous of his new wealth, also went to the island on the back of the giant bird and collected too much treasure for the bird to carry, burning to death when the sun rose after the bird abandoned him. In the south of the continent Surenia, sheer cliffs of malachite tower hundreds of feet out of the ground, shot through with seams of pure copper as wide as city streets. In the north, desert sands are so filled with flecks of silver and gold that when wind blows over the dunes, they shine like waves on the ocean. Whenever a volcano in the mountain range that runs down the entire continent erupts, it leaves diamonds and peridots embedded in soft ash. Rivers gather these stones and ores as they pass through them. As the rivers converge, widen, and slow, polished gems are deposited into wide sweeping beaches.

But Surenia’s vast mineral resources also render it incapable of naturally supporting life. Groundwater in Surenia is almost always contaminated with heavy metals, and often dried up, became more contaminated, or drained out somewhere else after earthquakes. Indigenous humans of Surenia, the Ophtha, survived by using magic to scry for pure water and cure poison. Early Ophtha were nomadic. Because of Surenia’s extreme climate and geology, Ophtha lived with minimal contact with the rest of the world until about 4000 years ago, when sailors from Sidra Minor landed near what is now Alhambra.

Because Ophtha could magically identify areas with arable land and non-poisonous water and Sidrans could not, early Sidrans on Surenia had to trade with and/or pillage existing settlements to survive. Sidrans had no self-sufficient settlements on Surenia for about a century until they invented distillation, which they used to purify water and live in previously uninhabitable lands, allowing them to expand inland away from coasts and rivers. Sidrans and Ophtha were able to coexist in relative stability since neither peoples could control each-others’ resources for about 1500 years. Sidrans in Sidra and Sidrans in Surenia have become mutually unrecognisable but they are still on good terms.

During this time, the Alexandrian Empire originating from Beringia took over their home continent and began expanding into northern Surenia. After some wars, many northern Ophtha were absorbed into Alexandrian society. Because of Alexander’s continued beef with the original Sidra, northern Sidrans were antagonised, but refused to move and to survive, became extremely hardcore and desensitised towards death. This is a surprise tool that will help them later. While the Empire prospered around them, Sidrans continued to carve their lives from wasteland. The Alexandrian Empire soon collapsed under infighting and mismanagement, but much of their language and culture were preserved in the northern Ophtha.

Then Ophtha advancements in magic increased agriculture production and healthcare, causing a huge population boom, encroaching on Sidran territory. Ophtha entertained the idea of technological advancement, but human workers and magic were orders of magnitude cheaper than labor-saving devices. Meanwhile, Sidrans, squashed into infertile but ore-rich wastelands, improved Industrial Magic and invented steel. This started a period of constant bloody wars that lasted 400 years and ended when competition changed from combat to city planning.

Sidrans would challenge Ophtha to build a functional society on the worst land in Sidran territory and vice versa. The point of this is to flex on how resilient your own people are for surviving in such harsh conditions, and if the other people couldn’t live there, it proves you are better. Villa Princeps was built in a snake-filled swamp slowly sinking into the ocean. Villa Cardeia, now known as Veilheim, was built on an arsenic spring in the middle of the desert.

Bear in mind this was only going on in northern Surenia, since other Ophtha weren’t influenced by Alexandrian culture to stop their nomadic lifestyles, and thus had no reason to fight Sidrans, and southern Sidrans weren’t forced to become hardcore as hell.

While the two groups remained culturally distinct, the spite cities built in each others’ territories reduced animosity between them. About 800 years ago, people from other continents attempted to control Surenia for its minerals. The earliest attempts focused on northern Surenia, since it was closest to other coasts, but the post-Alexandrian Ophtha inherited the military training and tactics that led Alexander to conquer half of The World, and the northern Sidrans continued making weapons, making Northern Surenia hard to occupy. The intentionally shitty placement of major spite cities rendered northern Surenia even harder to occupy, since they were impossible to find by normal logic, and even if conquered, the occupiers would quickly starve or go insane from metal toxicity. Thus Surenia always had control over trade and extraction of its own minerals and maintained its reputation as mysterious and impenetrable.

Although Sidrans and Ophtha saw each other as very different, common practices on Surenia such as not wearing pants, polytheism, and reliance on magic were seen by the rest of the world as barbaric. Unlike other places, who were able to become populous enough to organise into large kingdoms and countries with a centralised leadership, Surenia government never progressed beyond unaffiliated city-states.

Southern Surenia was subject to many failed colonisation attempts, but what Surenians considered mundane and acceptable loss, outsiders saw as fantastically huge riches, so there’s no end to new invasions. The need for dangerous magic to compensate for low local population in fighting off foreign powers created a new class of mages who were no longer focused on survival or improving society. Taboos on certain types of magic were removed and mages could research anything, regardless of how harmful it is for regular people. While this was happening, Sidra had an easy pipeline of Surenian minerals from trade, which caused great jealousy and privateer wars.

The plague was a combination of Death and Gore Magic developed by a Sidran in the Ophtha merchant city of Cyrene on the first river delta which was buried using Doom Magic to prevent the plague from spreading. This area is no longer a delta, as the wreckage of the city slid into the river and dammed all the shallow tributaries.

Was the plague first created as a weapon or to save people? Nobody remembers and it doesn’t really matter anymore. The plague did technically free Surenia from colonisation by making it ungovernable. Lasting settlements would succumb to mad revenant attacks, while smash-and-grab expeditions would bring lots of gold and jewels home, but the plague with it. As the plague spread outwards from central Surenia, many fled, including the Ophtha ruling class of most northern spite cities, leaving the rest behind with no leaders. Cure Quest is a fictionalised account of these chaotic times. Despite impending plague hell, Sidrans took this opportunity to move in and become the new ruling class. Culturally ok with death, when they realised revenants could be sane, they were more willing to accommodate them and design societies devoted to dying properly.

Veilheim, objectively the largest and most prosperous city in Surenia, was originally one of these northern spite cities abandoned by Ophtha and recovered by Sidrans. The same geographical features that made life harder for the living happened to be very good for revenants. The sun dried and preserved revenants, and they could bathe in the poisonous arsenic springs to kill bacteria and maggots. Culturally, Veilheim is very much like the post-Alexandrian Ophtha that made up most of its starting population, but people in general don’t place as much importance on their history and ancestry, and identify as Veilheimers above anything else. Although boundaries between Sidrans and Ophtha are less defined, Sidrans such as the Rambush family continue to be powerful among the living. While living Veilheimers dress in post-Alexandrian Ophtha style, dead Veilheimers dress more like Sidrans, because the first sane revenants were mostly Sidran and later revenants copied them.

Traditional core Sidran values, which are extremely unintuitive to everyone except for other Sidrans, such as having literally no standards as to who identifies as Sidran, negotiating with anyone no matter how inconsequential or abhorrent, and avoiding conflict with other wildly divergent self-identified Sidrans, still heavily influence Veilheim and some other cities in Surenia today.

The Sidrans that first settled in Surenia believed deities are too powerful to have names, being referred to by euphemism like Singing Goddess or Sleeping God instead. When revenants started appearing, it wasn’t that far of a stretch to go from “powerful nameless deity” to “powerful nameless corpse”.

While The Necromancer was wiping out newly restored cities and absorbing their bones, early Veilheimers overcame their fear and disgust and spoke to him appealing to greed and investment, convincing him that if he wiped out a city now, he would lose out on all the potential bones the city would produce if it became large and prosperous.

Veilheim looks out for other cities with acknowledged Sidran presence, such as Alhambra, Punt, and Cyrene, but Villa Princeps prides itself on being Imperial and therefore anti-Sidran, so they beef endlessly.

You’d expect a culture with zero in-group out-group distinctions to die out, but Sidra has been unified for five thousand years and all of their descendant civilisations still identify as Sidran. Being Sidran is more like being part of a decentralised noninterference agreement than part of a specific culture, nationality, or ethnic group, although many people are driven to identify as Sidran because of outside beliefs on culture and phenotypes. “We’re all Sidran here.” is a conflict diffuser that either works beautifully or leads to disaster depending on who you are talking to.

Although Ophtha make up a majority of living Surenians, they ultimately have less of an impact on recorded history because their usual cultural policy of bailing out and leaving when things get bad is not very conducive to starting huge dramatic conflicts, making new discoveries in the face of hardship, or leaving lasting permanent structures.

After Beringia got obliterated by plague to one third its original population and the sheer mass death caused transmission to slow and things to stabilise somewhat, because a Sidran mage in Surenia invented the plague, Sidrans and magic users were scapegoated and exiled to the seacoast of Gehenna along with people with disfiguring diseases and injuries. Gehenna was the southernmost member of the Holy Pentacle, but was almost completely destroyed by plague. The few remaining local Gehennans survived by holing up in churches, but instead of hating the rest of Beringia for treating their homeland as a dumping ground for Sidran plague wizards, they treated the exiles with kindness and hospitality even if it meant risking plague.

While this was going on, Mu was able to eradicate the plague at the cost of completely destroying their own ecology by killing all wild nonhuman vertebrates and stayed plague free by establishing their isolationist sea gauntlet that sunk all foreign ships. Sidrans in Mu were scapegoated again and exiled back to Sidra. Soon, Sidra was not completely plague free, but stable enough to get involved with world events, and heard about how badly Beringian Sidrans were being treated. 621 years ago, Sidra sent a navy to aid Gehenna, who treated them as God-sent saviors, adopted and improved upon their plague-fighting techniques, and began purifying the rest of Beringia.

Although Sidra contains many ethnicities, because the Sidrans in Surenia were originally descended from Red Sidrans, Red Sidrans became the archetypal Sidran across The World. Other Sidrans were more easily able to blend into the general population, or maintain enough wealth and clout to escape to Sidra before persecution. Thus, Gehenna has significant Red Sidran ancestry, which can be seen in the red eyes common in the royal family.

Although Gehenna is currently the undisputed greatest power in Beringia, many people are angered by the extreme measures used to maintain it.

The biggest remnant of the Alexandrian Empire, Alexander’s continued beef with Sidra is so great that it refused to be placed under Gehenna protectorate until 255 years ago, when Pontiff Wine Uncorked and Poured into Glass Basin Noise smuggled an actual revenant into the Alexander court in their capital Alexandria to terrorise King Alexander DXXX into signing away its coastline. There is much debate over if Gehenna purposefully reintroduced the plague to Alexander to justify annexing it, but comparing dates of plague outbreaks at court in Alexandria showed that the initial infection happened before Pontiff Wine Uncorked and Poured into Glass Basin Noise pulled his stunt. That hasn’t stopped people believing that Gehenna secretly introduced the plague before, or that they messed with official records.

Hapsburg’s Vampire Court and reclamation of its coast from Gehenna has already been covered in extensive detail.

As of now, Gehenna is in a weird grey area where the royal family is Sidran, as well as many citizens in their original borders, but as they began taking coastlines of other countries under protectorate, Gehenna as a whole can no longer be considered Sidran. To appease its people and avoid conflict with the rest of Beringia, Gehenna acts against Sidran interests as often as it acts for them, such as by fining Sidran ships anchoring on its ports and constantly asking to place Medina, more commonly known as Ass of Sidra, under protectorate.

Gehenna is also in a different weird grey area because they owe their existence to the church, but as the royal family became more and more magical, they realised most of the church’s beliefs concerning souls were factually incorrect. Also, the Holy Pentacle faith became the dominant religion in Beringia and the church has since ballooned into a monolith of wealth and power, a far cry from the humble merciful people who first saved them. Although Gehenna’s culture is full of religious practices and motifs, in terms of belief, they are the ultimate heretics. The church can’t do anything about it because the other safeguards against the plague are vampires and Sidra, who has since resumed trade with Mu for some truly remarkable guns.

#thief's apprentice #worldbuilding #religion #long post #racism

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sparankime40-blog · 5 years

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UN Backs Seed Sovereignty as Defense Against Multinational-Led GMO Projects

Lambert here: Awesome. Very good news.

By Timothy A. Wise, a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, collaborating with director Frances Moore Lappé to start its new Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. Originally published at Triple Crisis.

On December 17, the United Nations General Assembly took a quiet but historic vote, approving the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas, by a vote of 121-8 with 52 abstentions. The declaration, which was the product of some 17 years of diplomatic work led by the international peasant alliance La Via Campesina, formally extends human rights protections to farmers whose “seed sovereignty” is threatened by government and corporate practices.

“As peasants we need the protection and respect for our values and for our role in society in achieving food sovereignty,” said Via Campesina coordinator Elizabeth Mpofu after the vote. Most developing countries voted in favor of the resolution, while many developed country representatives abstained. The only “no” votes came from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Israel, and Sweden.

“To have an internationally recognized instrument at the highest level of governance that was written by and for peasants from every continent is a tremendous achievement,” said Jessie MacInnis of Canada’s National Farmers Union. The challenge now, of course, is to mobilize small-scale farmers to claim those rights, which are threatened by efforts to impose rich-country crop breeding regulations onto less developed countries, where the vast majority of food is grown by peasant farmers using seeds they save and exchange.

Seed Sovereignty in Zambia

The loss of seed diversity is a national problem in Zambia. “We found a lot of erosion of local seed varieties,” Juliet Nangamba, program director for the Community Technology Development Trust, told me in her Lusaka office. She is working with the regional Seed Knowledge Iniatiave (SKI) to identify farmer seed systems and prevent the disappearance of local varieties. “Even crops that were common just ten years ago are gone.” Most have been displaced by maize, which is heavily subsidized by the government. She’s from Southern Province, and she said their survey found very little presence of finger millet, a nutritious, drought-tolerant grain far better adapted to the region’s growing conditions.

Farmers are taking action. Mary Tembo welcomed us to her farm near Chongwe in rural Zambia. Trained several years ago by Kasisi Agricultural Training Center in organic agriculture, Tembo is part of the SKI network, which is growing out native crops so seed is available to local farmers. Tembo pulled some chairs into the shade of a mango tree to escape the near-100-degree Fahrenheit heat, an unseasonable reminder of Southern Africa’s changing climate. Rains were late, as they had been several of the last few years. Farmers had prepared their land for planting but were waiting for a rainy season they could believe in.

Tembo didn’t seem worried. She still had some of her land in government-sponsored hybrid maize and chemical fertilizer, especially when she was lucky enough to get a government subsidy. But most of her land was in diverse native crops, chemical free for ten years.

“I see improvements from organic,” she explained, as Kasisi’s Austin Chalala translated for me from the local Nyanja language. “It takes more work, but we are now used to it.” The work involves more careful management of a diverse range of crops planted in ways that conserve and rebuild the soil: crop rotations, intercropping, conservation farming with minimal plowing, and the regular incorporation of crop residues and composted manure to build soil fertility. She has six pigs, seven goats, and twenty-five chickens, which she says gives her enough manure for the farm.

She was most proud of her seeds. She disappeared into the darkness of her small home. I was surprised when she emerged with a large fertilizer bag. She untied the top of the bag and began to pull out her stores of homegrown organic seeds. She laughed when I explained my surprise. She laid them out before us, a dazzling array: finger millet, orange maize, Bambara nuts, cowpeas, sorghum, soybeans, mung beans, three kinds of groundnuts, popcorn, common beans. All had been saved from her previous harvest. The contribution of chemical fertilizer to these crops was, clearly, just the bag.

She explained that some would be sold for seed. There is a growing market for these common crops that have all-but-disappeared with the government’s obsessive promotion of maize. Some she would share with the 50 other farmer members of the local SKI network. And some she and her family would happily consume. Crop diversity is certainly good for the soil, she said, but it’s even better for the body.

Peasant Rights Crucial to Climate Adaptation

We visited three other Kasisi-trained farmers. All sang the praises of organic production and its diversity of native crops. All said their diets had improved dramatically, and they are much more food-secure than when they planted only maize. Diverse crops are the perfect hedge against a fickle climate. If the maize fails, as it has in recent years, other crops survive to feed farmers’ families, providing a broader range of nutrients. Many traditional crops are more drought-tolerant than maize.

Another farmer we visited had already planted, optimistically, before the rains arrived. She showed us her fields, dry and with few shoots emerging. With her toe she cleared some dirt from one furrow to reveal small green leaves, alive in the dry heat. “Millet,” she said proudly. With a range of crops, she said, “the farmer can never go wrong.”

I found the same determination in Malawi, where the new Farm-Saved Seed Network (FASSNet) is building awareness and working with government on a “Farmers’ Rights” bill to complement a controversial Seed Bill, which deals only with commercial seeds. A parallel process is advancing legislation on the right to food and nutrition. Both efforts should get a shot in the arm with the UN’s Peasants’ Rights declaration.

The declaration now gives such farmers a potentially powerful international tool to defend themselves from the onslaught of policies and initiatives, led by multinational seed companies, to replace native seeds with commercial varieties, the kind farmers have to buy every year.

Kasisi’s Chalala told me that narrative is fierce in Zambia, with government representatives telling farmers like Tembo that because her seeds are not certified by the government they should be referred to only as “grain.”

Eroding Protection from GMOs

As if to illustrate the ongoing threats to farm-saved seed, that same week in Zambia controversy erupted over two actions by the government’s National Biosafety Board to weaken the country’s proud and clear stance against the use of genetically modified crops. The Board had quietly granted approval for a supermarket chain to import and sell three products with GMOs, a move promptly criticized by the Zambian National Farmers Union.

Then it was revealed that the Board was secretly drawing up regulations for the future planting of GM crops in the country, again in defiance of the government’s approved policies. The Zambian Alliance for Agroecology and Biodiversity quickly denounced the initiative.

The UN declaration makes such actions a violation of peasants’ rights. Now the task is to put that new tool in farmers’ hands. “As with other rights, the vision and potential of the Peasant Rights Declaration will only be realized if people organize to claim these rights and to implement them in national and local institutions,” argued University of Pittsburgh sociologists Jackie Smith and Caitlin Schroering in Common Dreams. “Human rights don’t ‘trickle down’—they rise up!”

This entry was posted in Africa, Commodities, Environment, Globalization, Guest Post, Social policy, Social values, Species loss on January 2, 2019 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/un-backs-seed-sovereignty-defense-multinational-led-gmo-projects.html

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encephalonfatigue · 6 years

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for its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak

In late April and May, I had some tomatillos from the Port Credit Seed Library growing along side some Chadwick cherry tomato seedlings.

I hope to explore the history of these two plants some time in a post here, because they have a fascinating and somewhat intertwined history, and there’s quite an interesting story of global botanical exchanges behind the tomato itself, something that only arrived in Europe after Spanish colonizers encountered it in Latin America.

Anyways in May, I transplanted these sprouting friends of mine into an existing bed in my family’s backyard.

Not a proper vegetable bed, and not quite adequately spaced or exposed to sunlight, but hopefully a few of them will survive. I did not read extensively on best practices, nor did I follow the little that I did read, because I’m only borrowing space in a backyard that’s not really my own. Yet it’s not really my parents’ own either, in an important sense.

This process of transplanting seedlings into the land last month prompted me to think a little more about the history of this land. I often hear language along the lines of ‘look how far we’ve come’, as people discuss the vanishing of farmland in the areas surrounding my neighbourhood, because there is a very particular idea of progress presumed by most people who live where I live.

Machine as Metaphor

I last discussed on here Terry Eagleton’s suggestion that modernity’s ideology of progress does not know what to do with death, as death does not fit within its linear ‘upward’ narrative. Modernity’s fixation on ‘progress’ however is not only implicated in our collective repression of death, but also in the functioning of power and the way our species (particularly under ideologies like imperialism) asserts power over other species within the ecosystems we inhabit. Modernity is paradoxically emblematic of the sort of perverse romanticism that Haraway brought into doubt when she said the cyborg knows of no Edenic dust to return to. Wendell Berry’s “Unsettling of America” speaks of this attempt of modernity to recover Eden by way of the machine:

“having thus usurped the whole Chain of Being, conceiving itself, in effect, both creature and creator, humanity set itself a goal that in those circumstances was fairly predictable: it would make an Earthly Paradise. This projected Paradise was no longer that of legend: the lost garden… This new Paradise was to be invented and built by human intelligence and industry. And by machines. For the agent of our escape from our place in the order of Creation, and of our godlike ambition to make a Paradise, was the machine-not only as instrument, but even more powerfully as metaphor. Once, the governing human metaphor was pastoral or agricultural, and it clarified, and so preserved in human care, the natural cycles of birth, growth, death, and decay. But modern humanity's governing metaphor is that of the machine. Having placed ourselves in charge of Creation, we began to mechanize both the Creation itself and our conception of it. We began to see the whole Creation merely as raw material, to be transformed by machines into a manufactured Paradise.

And so the machine did away with mystery on the one hand and multiplicity on the other. The Modern World would respect the Creation only insofar as it could be used by humans. Henceforth, by definition, by principle, we would be unable to leave anything as it was. The usable would be used; the useless would be sacrificed in the use of something else. By means of the machine metaphor we have eliminated any fear or awe or reverence or humility or delight or joy that might have restrained us in our use of the world. We have indeed learned to act as if our sovereignty were unlimited and as if our intelligence were equal to the universe.”

Berry’s comments resemble the way Ivan Illich speaks of our addiction to machines and how it harbours within it an old addiction to slavery. Yet I find Berry here most resembling a theme that recurs a lot in various indigenous thought, particularly the intellectual Vine Deloria Jr’s work. Deloria, in a talk on Native American religious freedom said that:

“The vast majority of Indian tribes (and I don’t know off hand of any that would not hold this view), the vast majority knew, saw, felt, and experienced the universe as a living entity.

...And for thousands of years, living in the North American continent, traditional people, medicine people... were able to communicate with other forms of life, whether they were rocks, or trees, or birds, or other kinds of animals. They were able to communicate with areas of the land itself.

…Now our continent was invaded by your ancestors. A lot of them came over here seeking religious freedom, but they also came over here with a European form of the Michelangelo virus. And that was the belief that the universe operated like a machine. And that has proven immensely useful in science, but I’ve seen a great rebellion among the younger generation of scientists, that the analogy of the machine does not adequately describe the physical world. And if you treat the physical world as if it was a machine, from time to time it’s going to break down.”

Deloria, in “The Metaphysics of Modern Existence”, quotes Alvin Toffler in order to explain the prevalence of the machine as metaphor:

“we all learn from our environment, scanning it constantly—though perhaps unconsciously— for models to emulate. These models are... are, increasingly, machines. By their presence, we are subtly conditioned to think along certain lines. It has been observed for example, that the clock came along before the Newtonian image of the world as a great clocklike mechanism, a philosophical notion that has had the utmost impact on man’s intellectual development...Then we used the analogy of a clock to prove the presence of an absolute time within the universe, which was conceived to operate in the absolute manner we had been taught to expect.”

Deloria goes on to discuss Paul Tillich’s critique of the machine metaphor:

“Tillich suggested that the “man who transforms the world into a universal machine serving his purposes has to adapt himself to the laws of the machine. The mechanized world of things draws man into itself and makes him a cog, driven by the mechanical necessities of the whole. The personality that deprives nature of its power in order to elevate itself above it becomes a powerless part of its own creation.”

Or, in the words of Karl Barth (from Vol 3, Part 4 of his Church Dogmatics):

“the power that exceeds our real necessities of life, the power of technology — which basically has its own rationale and purpose, and which, in order to survive and be able to improve itself, must call forth ever new problems to solve — this had to become the monster that it largely is today, and ultimately, absurd though it is, it had to become a technology of disruption and destruction.”

So what is the problem that the institutions of power have constructed here in this land I live on now?

The Problem

Machines stand in for modern ideas of progress, because we have too often defined progress as the ability to increasingly instrumentalize the world around us, to increase its productivity according to the exclusive interest of ‘us’ humans, or more accurately humans with the most power in a ‘free’ market economy (i.e. humans with the most money).

The arrogant ideology of modernization is the same one that the indigenous intellectual Taiaiake Alfred references in his work. He believes Canada’s government policy regarding indigenous issues is perpetually misframed as a solution to a particular ‘problem’, that ‘problem’ being the lack of economic development in indigenous communities – a failure on the part of these communities to adequately ‘keep up’ with modern progress or to accommodate the liberal democratic state. This has historically been called the ‘Indian problem’.

An example: Duncan Campbell Scott was a bureaucrat in the Department of Indian Affairs for two decades (1913 to 1932), while also maintaining a reputable literary stature. Northrop Frye once wrote glowingly of Scott’s ability to write on subjects ranging from “a starving squaw baiting a fish-hook with her own flesh” to “the music of Debussy”. Frye, however, never mentioned how Scott, in many ways, perpetuated the ‘cultural genocide’ of indigenous communities. Scott once wrote:

“I want to get rid of the Indian Problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.”

This aggressive integrationist model is behind all government policy that locates the problem of indigenous issues as one of ‘development’. This is a way the Canadian nation-state has acted as if it were God, and to make indigenous nations into its own image: ‘modernized’ and ‘developed’.

Taiaiake Alfred instead insists that Rosalee Tizya was right when she said the main issue and root problem is and has always been that indigenous land was stolen. The issue is not economic development nor even access to institutional state power. It was and is dispossession.

People Who Dwell at The Mouth of a Large River

Planting vegetables this summer, I am unavoidably planting vegetables on stolen land. Not only stolen, but also utterly ruined. The destruction of this land and its intricate ecological systems of interdependence was vital to its theft.

The the Anishinaabe academic, artist, and activist Leanne Simpson posed this question: “Why did my ancestors sign treaties after we lost the political power to have agency? They signed them because they were starving and they wanted me at the very least to be alive.”

Poverty in indigenous communities at the time of ‘treaty signing’ was not so much an issue of development, as much as it was about a tapestry of ecological connections that were torn apart, and a bounty of food that consequently disappeared. Survival and hunger (from a land stolen and destroyed) was the context of coercion that those treaties emerged from.

One of the most important food resources that disappeared in the 19th century was the abundance of salmon that once populated the area. In a footnote in “Dancing on our Turtle’s Back”, Leanne Simpson explains Mississauga’s etymology in this way:

“Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg means the Nishnaabeg people who live or dwell at the mouth of a large river. Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Elder Doug Williams explained to me that this is the way his Elders referred to themselves. Peterborough, ON, October 26, 2010. This is similar to Basil Johnston's Mizhi-zaugeek, Anishinaubae Thesaurus, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI, 2006, 14. Michi Saagiig or "Mizhi-zaugeek" people live at the eastern doorway of the Nishnaabeg nation, located in what is now known as eastern Ontario. According to Doug Williams, the word "Mississauga" is an anglicized version of Michi Saagiig or Mizhi-zaugeek.”

Leanne Simpson has also said that her people, the Michi Saagig, were salmon people. That was what they survived on. People have relied on the fish of the Missinihe river long before White settlers arrived. One of the most significant ‘pre-contact’ archaeological sites found in Mississauga (often called the Scott O’Brien site) is located around where the QEW highway intersects with the Missinihe (Credit River). The photo below (from “Mississauga: The First 10,0000 Years”) is a small sample of the 124 notched stone netsinkers found at the site, once used to catch fish in the Missinihe, back when the native species of salmon abundantly populated the river.

These netsinkers were found in two different caches on the site, one of them dating to the Middle Woodland period (~400 BCE to ~900 CE), conservatively over a thousand years old. People have evidently relied on the fish in the Missinihe for a long time, and within a century or two, these fish completely disappeared from the river.

What happened to the salmon? How did ‘the machine as metaphor’ shape the way 19th century White settlers treated the Missinihe river? And for what purposes and to what ends did they do so? Was it ‘worth it’? I hope to examine some of these questions in my next post here.

#Mississauga History

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megadarkbouquettidalwavethings · 6 years

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Government News 7/2 – News VietNamNet

PM lauds Chinese Ambassador’s contributions to bilateral ties

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) welcomes Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc hailed contributions made by Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hong Xiaoyong to the bilateral relations while bidding farewell to the outgoing diplomat on February 6.

Phuc expressed his delight at developments in the ties, with economic and trade cooperation remaining a bright spot.

China continues to be Vietnam’s biggest trade partner, while Vietnam has become China’s largest trader in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Two-way trade rose from 58.78 billion USD in 2014 to 93.69 billion USD in 2017.

China ranks eighth among 125 countries and territories investing in Vietnam. It also tops the list of foreign tourists visiting Vietnam, while Vietnam also ranks first in ASEAN in terms of the number of tourists to China.

The leader affirmed that the Vietnamese Party and Government always attach importance to its comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China.

He suggested both sides continue implementing common perceptions of their senior leaders; strengthen political trust through high-level meetings; carry out three working groups on infrastructure, finance and monetary, and discuss win-win cooperation at sea; and well control disagreements and maintain peace and stability at sea in order to develop the Vietnam-China relations in a stable, healthy and sustainable manner.

Ambassador Hong said he was impressed by Vietnam’s strong socio-economic development as well as important progress in the two countries’ partnership.

He affirmed that in any positions, he will always pay attention to boosting the bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership to bring it to the next level.

PM urges stronger multifaceted cooperation with Netherlands

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) and Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called on the Netherlands to continue support and cooperate with Vietnam in the fields of husbandry, cultivation, food safety, post-harvest network and market development.

While receiving Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag in Hanoi on February 6, PM Phuc said Vietnam is impressed with achievements the Netherlands has recorded in building irrigation works, seaports, high-tech agriculture and especially in adaptation with climate change.

Thanks to experience shared by the Netherlands, Vietnam successfully organised a major conference on climate change response in the Mekong Delta region, with the attendance of the Deputy Delta Commissioner of the Netherlands and other experts in this field, he said.

The PM praised the Netherlands as one of Asia’s leading trade partners, noting that Dutch businesses have invested nearly 8 billion USD in Vietnam.

He urged the Government of the Netherlands to encourage Dutch firms to increase investments in Vietnam in various realms, particularly in climate change response and renewable energy.

Vietnam is reforming itself strongly and improving its business environment which has been recognised by the international community, he said, adding that the country is integrating deeply into the global economy as reflected through its successful hosting of large-scale international events with the most noteworthy being the APEC Economic Leaders’ Week in 2017.

In that spirit, PM Phuc called on the two nations to further implement the strategic partnership through specific activities such as updating the Mekong Delta Action Plan by building a concrete planning scheme for the region; rolling out orientations for regional livelihood restructuring and building regional connectivity; stepping up cooperation between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi of Vietnam and Rotterdam of the Netherlands, as well as collaboration in personnel training in the environmental sector.

For her part, Kaag expressed her delight when seeing the two countries actively preparing for activities to mark the 45th founding anniversary of diplomatic ties.

The minister believed that the Governments and people of the Netherlands and Vietnam will tighten cooperation and accompany with each other in development, looking towards another period of 45 years for their peace and prosperity.

Kaag said she was being accompanied by representatives of major Dutch businesses who want to study the Vietnamese market and seek investment and cooperation opportunities in Vietnam in not only traditional spheres like climate change and high-tech agriculture but also in seaport management, technological development and start-up.

With its strengths, the Netherlands is willing to join hands with Vietnam in agriculture, seaport development and logistics, thus helping generate jobs, spur the country’s economic growth and improve living conditions of local people, she said.

The Netherlands always stands ready to partner with Vietnam in developing the Mekong Delta in the face of climate change, she said, stressing that through such cooperative activities, the two sides will target higher efficiency of the implementation of the millennium development goals (MDGs).

The Netherlands is also willing to share its knowledge and experience with Vietnam and work together with the country during its development process, she emphasized.

In reply, PM Phuc said he will instruct relevant agencies to study, propose and carry out these cooperative activities, covering water resources management.

He expressed his hope that Kaag’s visit will create a landmark in promoting comprehensive cooperation between the two countries more effectively, on par with the strategic partnership on climate change and water resources management, and the strategic partnership on sustainable agriculture and food security.-

Vietnamese ambassador works to promote ties with Russia

At the meeting

Vietnamese Ambassador to Russia Ngo Duc Manh had a meeting with representatives of social organisations and friendship associations at the Vietnamese Embassy on February 6 to seek to bolster the friendship between the two countries.

The meeting brought together Russian war invalids, military experts and technicians who accompanied Vietnamese people and army during wartime, contributing to national reunification.

Although they are retired, the Russian friends still have kept a close watch on Vietnam’s development, and contributed, in their own capacity, to consolidating the bilateral friendship.

Addressing the function, Ambassador Manh thanked the Russian friends’ support for Vietnam, considering their sentiments a valuable asset of the two counties.

Vietnam and Russia boast a lot of opportunities to step up their cooperation, especially in economy, Manh said, expressing his hope that during his term, he could have opportunities to advance the relationship across fields, helping to fulfill the bilateral trade goal of 10 billion USD in 2020.

The diplomat is scheduled to have working sessions with representatives from scientific, economic, political and press circles of Russia in the next few days.

Vietnam learns about latest technologies at Asia’s biggest airshow

Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army Pham Ngoc Minh and a Vietnamese delegation are present at the Singapore Airshow 2018 – Asia’s largest aerospace and defence event, to learn about the latest technologies in the field, especially patrol aircraft.

Opening on February 6, the 6-day biennial event is showcasing advanced aviation technologies, many of which meet Vietnam’s demand, particularly for medium cargo aircraft such as the CASA C-212 Aviocar and DHC-6 Twin Otter models.

As part of their attendance in the show, the Vietnamese delegation met representatives from the aerospace products seller Hawker Pacific.

Senior Lieutenant General Minh told the company about Vietnam’s interest in aircraft components, pilots’ training, and sea patrol aircraft.

Hawker Pacific said it will help Vietnam improve local pilots’ capacity and set up a centre for aircraft maintenance services in Vietnam with a view to transferring the technology to the country.

The Airshow’s first four days is expected to welcome over 1,060 companies from 50 countries and territories, who are seeking partnerships in civilian and military aviation. It will open to public attendance on the last two days, with the management board expecting at least 130,000 visits.

Experts said in the next two decades, demand for airplanes in Asia – Pacific will be higher than in anywhere else in the world. During the period, the region is estimated to need over 14,000 airplanes, whose total value exceeds 2 trillion USD.

PM meets Vietnamese contributors to Cambodian revolution

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (C) and Vietnamese experts who helped Cambodia fight against the Pol Pot genocide regime

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on February 6 received the former liaison team of Vietnamese experts, who helped Cambodia fight against the Pol Pot genocide regime.

Speaking at the meeting with 22 team members, Phuc said Vietnam’s assistance to the Cambodians at that time was a milestone in the country’s history and was highly appreciated by the Cambodian Party, Government and army.

“Vietnam’s assistance to Cambodia is impartial, pure, and responsible,” he affirmed.

Vietnam helped Cambodian people escape from the genocide regime and sent thousands of experts to help the neighbor revive their country, he stated.

On behalf of the Vietnamese Party and State, Phuc praised contributions of the former experts to Vietnam – Cambodia ties in the past and the current time, expecting them to further their good work in the future.

He said despite their old ages, the former experts have continued to get involved in various practical activities in the community.

The PM tasked the Government Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs with proposing ways to honour the former Vietnamese experts who served in Cambodia.

He informed his guests on robust growth of relations between the two countries, with regular exchanges of high-ranking officials taking place. The sides have worked closely in planting border markers and are planning to raise bilateral trade to 5 billion USD ahead of 2020, the leader said.

For their part, the experts expressed their expectation that the Party and Government will continue working with their Cambodian counterparts in reinforcing bilateral ties and educating the younger generation on mutual support shared between the two countries.

Friendship get-together celebrates Lunar New Year

Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh and delegates to the get-togther

The Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations (VUFO) and the Committee for Foreign Non-governmental Organisation Affairs (COMINGO) co-hosted a get-together in Hanoi on February 6 to celebrate the Lunar New Year (Tet).

Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh stressed that in 2017, Vietnam recorded proud achievements in all fields from socio-economic development, security, defence to external affairs, especially the successful hosting of the APEC Year 2017 and the APEC Economic Leaders’ Week in Da Nang, which was highly evaluated by the international community.

These achievements were made partly thanks to the support and assistance from diplomatic corps and foreign non-governmental organisations, she said.

Thinh congratulated VUFO and COMINGO on their performances in 2017, saying that these successes would strengthen and develop friendship, cooperation and mutual understanding between the people of Vietnam and other countries around the world.

VUFO Vice President and Secretary General Don Tuan Phong told participants that last year, the Vietnamese people received support, assistance and effective cooperation from the international community, nations, international and regional organisations and foreign non-governmental organisations.

The amount of foreign non-governmental aid reached 280 million USD, contributing to the country’s poverty reduction and socio-economic development, especially in the fields of health, education, settlement of social issues, environmental protection, emergency relief, response to climate change and overcoming war consequences, he noted.

Hanoi leader extends New Year wishes to Buddhists

Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee Hoang Trung Hai presents Tet gifts to the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (Source: hanoimoi.com.vn)

Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee Hoang Trung Hai extended his New Year wishes to Buddhist dignitaries and followers nationwide when paying a Tet visit to the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (VBS) at Quan Su pagoda on February 6.

He hailed the success of the VBS’s eighth congress in late 2017 and activities conducted by the VBS and its chapters, particularly those to reduce poverty.

He reported that the capital city gained numerous achievements last year with all 20 set target fulfilled, saying these results were partly contributed by Buddhist dignitaries and followers in the locality.

Most Venerable Thich Thanh Nhieu, standing Vice Chairman of the VBS’s Executive Council, said that Buddhist dignitaries and followers always exert efforts to further develop the city.

Over the past five years, the VBS has collected and used over 6 trillion VND (264 million USD) for charitable activities and supported disadvantaged people nationwide.

Lao media highlight Vietnam-Laos intergovernmental meeting’s outcomes

An overview of the 40th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee

The media in Laos on February 6 ran a series of articles highlighting the success of the 40th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee, underlining that the results will make significant contributions to the promotion of the bilateral special friendship and comprehensive partnership.

Major newspapers of Laos, including “Pathet Lao” (the nation of Laos), “Pasaxon” (People), “Laophatthana” (Laos development), Setthakit Kankha (economy-trade), and Vientiane Times, noted that at the meeting, co-chaired by Vietnamese PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Lao counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith, the two sides lauded the cooperation outcomes between the two countries in 2017.

The papers mentioned the success of the Vietnam-Laos, Laos-Vietnam Friendship and Solidarity Year 2017, and the 13.6 percent growth of two-way trade, higher than the target of 10 percent.

In 2017, the two countries realized bilateral agreements efficiently, the leaders noted in the meeting, adding that affiliation in politics, external relations, defence, security, economy, culture, society, and people-to-people exchange was also expanded. Currently, Vietnam is hosting over 14,000 Lao students.

Vietnam is currently the third largest foreign investor in Laos with 411 projects worth about 3.7 billion USD in Laos, 43 percent of which, or 1.6 billion USD, have been disbursed.

Along with detailing the discussion content of the meeting, the articles specified 12 cooperation deals signed during the event.

Pathet Lao, run by the Laos news agency, underscored that the deal between the Vietnamese and Lao governments on investment cooperation to develop Vung Ang port is the most important agreement as it allows Laos, a landlocked country, to access sea trade routes. It commented that the deals will help strengthen and expand partnership between the two countries.

The newspaper also quoted the Lao PM as saying that at the joint press conference with PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc following the meeting he highly values the outcomes of Vietnamese projects in Laos and pledged to create optimal conditions for the Vietnamese investors.

Along with the printed newspapers, many other media agencies such as the national television and radio also gave much space reporting the results of the 40th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee.

President awards Fatherland Defence Order to guard force

President Tran Dai Quang presents a Fatherland Defence Order, Third Class, to the People’s Public Security Guard High Command on February 6.

President Tran Dai Quang presented a Fatherland Defence Order, Third Class, to the People’s Public Security Guard High Command during a ceremony on February 6 to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the force’s establishment (February 16, 1953).

In his remarks at the event, President Tran Dai Quang lauded efforts and achievements of the guard force over the past 65 years. The country’s new era comes with not only many opportunities but also challenges, putting the public security forces, including the guard force, under greater pressure to ensure social order and security, the president said.

He urged the guard force, together with other forces under the Ministry of Public Security, to continue effectively enforcing the Party and the State’s policies in protecting national security, improving fighting capacity and ensuring the safety of senior officials, international events and foreign guests.

He also asked them to enhance the efficiency of their operations and take steps to prevent any acts of sabotage, terrorism, crimes and anti-State movements.

The guard force, previously known as the Guard Bureau, was founded on February 16, 1953 to protect President Ho Chi Minh and high-ranking officials during the anti-French resistance war.

Get-together marks 45 years of Vietnam-Australia ties

Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Union of Friendship Organisations Nguyen Van Manh at the get-together to mark 45 years of Vietnam-Australia diplomatic relations.

A get-together was held by the Ho Chi Minh City Union of Friendship Organisations and the municipal chapter of the Vietnam-Australia Friendship Association on February 6 to celebrate Australia Day (January 26) and 45 years of Vietnam-Australia diplomatic relations (February 26).

Congratulating Australia on its national day, Nguyen Van Manh, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Union of Friendship Organisations, said that the country has confirmed its position in the international arena thanks to its impressive development illustrated through high income per capita, modern infrastructure and advanced education system.

He noted that since Vietnam and Australia established their diplomatic ties 45 years ago and especially the comprehensive partnership relations in 2009, both sides have spared no efforts to strengthen relations in various fields.

They are cooperating in the fields of Australia’s strengths and Vietnam’s interests like development aid, education-training, infrastructure, agriculture and rural development, he said, highlighting that the Australian people in Vietnam have made significant contributions to developing multifaceted cooperation with Vietnam.

Currently, the two nations are enjoying sound bilateral trade with average annual growth standing at 12.5 percent and trade value hitting over 9 billion USD in 2017. Australia has landed 378 projects valued at 1.7 billion USD in Vietnam, focusing on industry and construction, services, education, processing industry and agro-forestry-fisheries sector, Manh said.

Karen Lanyon, Australian Consul General to Ho Chi Minh City affirmed that Vietnam is one of the most important partners of Australia in Asia-Pacific. Their long-standing history of the successful trade and cooperation will help both sides create more trade opportunities in the coming time, she added.

The bilateral ties have been consolidated thanks to increasing number of tourists travelling between the two countries, she said, citing over 320,000 Australian arrivals to Vietnam in 2017.

Praising the Vietnamese community in Australia, she said they play an important role in fostering bilateral relations.

Vietnam National Assembly presents gift to Cambodian Senate

President of the Senate of Cambodia Samdech Say Chhum (R) receives Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia Vu Quang Minh

The National Assembly of Vietnam has presented the Cambodian Senate with computers, printers, and photocopiers worth over 140,000 USD.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia Vu Quang Minh handed over the gift to President of the Senate of Cambodia Samdech Say Chhum in Phnom Penh on February 6.

On the occasion, the Cambodian Senate President spoke highly of the cooperation achievements between the two countries’ Parties and States over the past time and expressed his pleasure over the sound traditional friendship that brings enormous benefits for the two people.

He took this occasion to thank the Vietnamese Party, State and people for helping Cambodian people escape from the Pol Pot genocide regime and revive the country.

The close ties and active cooperation between the two governments and peoples not only contribute to the maintenance of peace and stability in the respective nations but also in the region and around the world, he said.

Earlier on February 5, President of the National Assembly of Cambodia Samdech Heng Samrin recieved the Vietnamese Ambassador, during which he called on the two countries’ people to promote the bilateral traditional friendship and cooperation in various fields.

Speaking at the meetings, Ambassador Minh extended the greetings of Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, President Tran Dai Quang, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, and National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan to the Cambodian top legislators.

He pledged to do his utmost in his working tenure to nurture the traditional friendship and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia.

The equipment presented by the Vietnamese NA will be used for senators elected for the new term of the Cambodian Senate during this month’s election.

PM expects Overseas Vietnamese to do more for nation’s development

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc on February 7 met with a delegation of Overseas Vietnamese returning home for the Lunar New Year 2018 celebrations.

Speaking at the meeting, representatives of the expats lauded the nation’s achievements in 2017 and determination and efforts of the PM and the Government, saying these helped improve the status of the nation.

They suggested the Government facilitate start-up activities in Viet Nam and strengthen connections between Overseas Vietnamese and businesses to promote the nation’s economy health.

The PM applauded the “Homeland Spring”, which attracts the participation of Overseas Vietnamese on the Lunar New Year, wishing them to have a warm festival in Viet Nam.

Announcing the outcomes of the socio-economic development in 2017 in all fields, the PM asserted that the achievements is partly attributed to the contributions of Overseas Vietnamese.

He hoped that Vietnamese living abroad will maintain and uphold the culture of Viet Nam, affirming that the Government works for the people, including the Overseas Vietnamese.

The State continues completing legal institutions and policies to facilitate Overseas Vietnamese to invest in the nation and enhance production, he confirmed.

PM requires trade offices to work for national interests

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked trade offices to actively work with local partners to support and serve businesses and protect the nation’s interests while attending the Trade Counselors Conference on February 7 in Ha Noi.

The event saw the participation of leaders of some ministries, agencies and trade offices at 63 countries and territories and representatives of businesses.

Speaking at the conference, the PM hailed contributions of the industry and trade sector and offices to the development of the nation, especially the two-way trade value of US$425 billion in 2017 and the export turnover of US$214 billion.

The Government leader required overseas trade offices to promptly provide information and recommendations on markets, enhance trade promotion and investment of businesses and localities to help Vietnamese commodities to enter into other nations as well as closely cooperate with local agencies to address arising issues.

He suggested trade offices propose measures to take the advantages of Free Trade Agreements, encourage local businesses to cooperate with Vietnamese partners and join hands with local agencies to tackle and limit trade disputes.

PM Phuc also highlighted the spirit of disciplines in activities of trade offices overseas, requesting ministries, agencies, localities and businesses to enhance administrative procedure reform and create favorable conditions for production and exports.

The post Government News 7/2 – News VietNamNet appeared first on Breaking News Top News & Latest News Headlines | Reuters.

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peopleoftexas · 7 years

Text

Benedict & Lomax, The Book of Texas, 1916

Page 14: To the People of Texas and all Americans in the world. Fellow Citizens and Compatriots: I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to this own horn and that of his country. Victory or death! William Barrett Travis, Lt. Col. Comdt.

Page 16: the concluding words of this Declaration of Independence are: “We therefore, the delegates, with plenary powers, of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended; and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations.”

Page 25: Hardly a decade of peaceful statehood had elapsed before the people of Texas, along with the rest of the country, were in the midst of exciting controversies preceding the Civil War. When the question of secession came up for discussion Sam Houston, who was again the chief executive officer in Texas, vigorously opposed it. He was thereupon removed from office, and the convention called for the purpose voted to secede form the Union by a majority of 166 to 8. During the Civl War Texas furnished probably 100,000 soldiers to the Southern army. The history of this war will prove that they were good though sometimes reckless fighters.

Page 27: Gen. Phil Sheridan was a Federal officer whose duty it was to impose the harsh military rule of reconstruction days on the people of Texas. His enforcement of the letter of that rule, with whatever amendments suggested themselves to him, made the lot of Texas as unhappy as any state in the South. Her duly elected officers were forcibly removed, her laws disregarded, and the rights of her citizens shamefully trample don in a thousand was by the edicts of military men. A radical legislature, which remained in session continuously for twelve months, by its reckless waste of public funds increased the tax rate 1,400 percent in four years.

Page 38: Since the time of Governor Hogg the people of Texas, except in the matter of the prohibition question, have not been greatly agitated about matters of state reform. They have paid more attention to national issues, such as free silver, imperialism, and our relations to Mexico, than to state problems. Questions of court procedure, judicial reform, public education, public health, improvement of public buildings and public roads, the introduction of manufacturing enterprises, the price of cotton, cooperative marketing, rural credits, tenantry, etc., have interested special groups at different times, and some of these problems are still far from solution; but the larger body of the people have not become excited over any one or combination of them. It may be safely said that the people of Texas generally believe that the United States should intervene in the Mexican situation, but there are really very few who favor this intervention should it require force of arms.

Page 197: The poultry business in Texas is claimed to have reached mammoth proportions by those who do not realize what a small quotient you get when you divide by the number of people in Texas. Go to Cuero to see the famous turkey trot, where several thousands of turkeys are gathered into one drove, and you will come away with the notion that the half-million turkeys in Texas would form a mighty big flock indeed if gathered together. Several towns ship Christmas turkeys by thousands, yet the people of Texas could eat every turkey in the state at two meals and have nothing left for hash. Next day they could eat all the geese for dinner, and the following day could dispose of all the ducks, pigeons, guineas, and ostriches (there is an ostrich farm at El Paso, and, as Walter Woehlke says, an ostrich drumstick undoubtedly contains a vast quantity of nutriment) that are reported in the statistics. The chickens, supposed to number four or five to each person, would not last for a week if Texas doctors were to put the people on a purely poultry diet. Eschewing the chickens but eating their eggs, one egg for breakfast is all that the average Texas would get all day. Of course, there are far more chickens in Texas than are reported; assuming that there are twice as many, there are still to few to feed the unconverted sinners after the good people have eaten all the fried chicken they want at the summer camp meetings.

Page 275: It is the duty and the privilege of the remainder of this book to deal with the higher activities and the spiritual wealth of Texas, with human welfare and human progress. Here it is our humbler task to summarize from the Census the material results, measured in dollars, of the working of the people of Texas with the land upon which they live. The Census summary is very incomplete. It takes no account of the strength or the weakness of the people, of the smiles of children and the good deeds of men, of summer breeze and bright sunshine, of the fishes in the sea and of most of the minerals in the earth, of the coming rains and of future crops. It includes only some of those tangible things that men are accustomed to measure in dollars. Incomplete and imperfect as the Census figures relating to wealth may be—the Census itself calls them “estimates”—they nevertheless show beyond the shadow of a doubt how very rapidly Texas is increasing in material wealth.

Page 291: It is required that all savings accounts be kept separate and distinct from other accounts in the banks. It is rather remarkable that the law has been in force and effect in Texas for more than ten years and that not one savings bank has been organized under its provisions. Texas is absolutely, so far as the records show or investigation can determine, without an incorporated savings bank, except as an accessory either to a state bank or to a national bank. Thirty of the state banks have savings departments, with total deposits on November 30, 1915, in excess of $3 million. Many national banks of Texas also having savings departments, though Texans are very backward as savings bank patrons. Mr. Gusset, Deputy Commissioner of the State Banking Department, thinks that the people of Texas are not yet educated up to the idea of hoarding money in this particular manner; he thinks, further, that probably the banks are somewhat at fault in that they have not sufficiently recommended to their customers the wisdom of small savings.

Page 351: The Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Praetorians, the Woodmen of the World, and other secret organizations draw their membership from the country as well as the towns. Through the agency of the United States Government, the Agricultural and Mechanical College, and the State Department of Agriculture, there have been formed baby beef clubs, boys’ corn clubs, girls’ canning clubs, Boy Scouts, and other organizations for the young people, while a multitude of uplift, reform, and educational associations are at work to help country people of all classes; in fact, the common complaint is that the people of Texas are suffering from over-organization. For example, there are in Texas 39 agricultural and livestock associations, 59 commercial and industrial associations, 30 fraternal organizations, 32 religious organizations, and, besides, 54 miscellaneous associations, all attempting to cover the entire state.

Page 380: The enactment of a practicable compulsory school attendance law for the people of Texas by the Thirty-Fourth Legislature marked a great victory for the cause of popular education in this state.

Page 431: Throughout the days of the Republic and during the first years of statehood there were few political differences in Texas. Of course the ambitions of some men came in conflict with the ambitions of others, and there were often diverse opinions about local policies; but the people of Texas were too intent on troubles at home to be much affected by national questions. During the days of the Republic there was an increasing public debt which served as a constant irritant to every administration; the Indians, provoked by Mexican leaders who had no lo

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dupont · 7 years

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Despite being born into slavery during the 1860s, George Washington Carver became one of the most highly-regarded African-American intellectuals of his age. Carver invented hundreds of products based on peanuts. Learn more here.

As a child, George Washington Carver was not able to do heavy farm work, so the young slave performed household chores, including gathering foodstuffs from the woods and fields around the southern Missouri farm. As the nation blazed with Civil War and early Reconstruction, Carver spent long hours exploring the local countryside and rich local flora. In time, locals nicknamed the studious young man “The Plant Doctor,” a testament to his practical knowledge developed by keen observation and experimentation that was freely shared with farmers.

Carver never lost his deep boyhood curiosity, or his eagerness to share his discoveries for the betterment of humankind. Today Dr. Carver (1860s-1943) is honored as a selfless trailblazer in agricultural science and technology. His thousands of discoveries in soil science, plant breeding and hybridization, bacteriology, bio-agricultural engineering, ecology and food science and nutrition have borne life-saving fruit for millions of people around the world. These pioneering advances continue to provide foundations and inspirations for important agricultural science today.

From Slave to Artist to Professor

Carver’s journey, from slave to eminent professor and researcher, is a dramatic, uncommon adventure through Civil War, Reconstruction, on to the Depression and World War II America.

Taught by his owners to read and encouraged in his agricultural explorations, Carver, now a young free man, left Missouri to continue his study and work. At first he was accepted, then rejected by a local college after learning he was black. He then traveled to Minnesota, but after witnessing the lynching of a black man, fled. In the ensuing years on the road, Carver supported himself by farm work and through a laundry he started and ran.

In 1886, he moved to Eden Township, Kansas. Now stronger, Carver worked as a ranch hand and experimental farmer. Maintaining a conservatory of plants, flowers and a geological collection, he would manually plough 17 acres of the claim, planting rice, corn, Indian corn and garden produce, as well as various fruit trees, forest trees and shrubbery.

A few years later, Carver became the first black student at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. He supported himself with gardening jobs. Eager to capture the beauty of plants and flowers in still-life paintings, he enrolled in an art class. One day his teacher and friend Etta Budd took Carver aside. Fearing he would never be able to support himself painting plants, she urged him to study them at the Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts, where her father was a professor of horticulture.

Carver transferred in 1891, becoming the school’s first and only black student. Due to racial prejudice, he was forced to eat meals in the dining hall kitchen until Budd intervened. Carver stayed at Iowa State for five years. An outstanding biology student, he became the school’s first black student to earn a Master’s in Agriculture (or any type of Master’s degree) and later — its first black faculty member.

In 1896, Carver left to begin a 47-year career teaching and heading the agricultural department the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, founded by Booker T. Washington. In his later years, Carver also pursued his own research and educational labs.

Carver’s work across nine decades produced significant, cross-disciplinary advances.

Pioneering Crop Rotation

At Tuskegee, Carver focused on researching and helping poor African American farmers. His teams developed crop-rotation techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of tobacco and cotton. And his teams encouraged and taught farmers how to restore nitrogen by alternating plantings of peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes. Besides improving cotton yields, the practice gave farmers alternative cash crops. (Carver also was an early advocate of chemical fertilization.)

Products from Plants

Carver believed that higher yields were only part of the benefit of improved production methods. His deep, practical interest in the chemistry of plants also convinced him that he could develop new, non-food applications for agricultural products and byproducts.

He saw farms as “God’s true storehouse, [which] can never be exhausted. We can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from the things that grow.”

Over his lifetime, Carver and his small industrial lab team became genius at creatively unlocking this hidden potential. They developed 118 derivative uses for sweet potatoes (including ink, dyes, plastics synthetic rubber, postage stamp glue), 75 for pecans and hundreds for soy and other crops, in everything from crayons to baby food to nitroglycerine to cattle feed. Their discoveries, including recipes for peanut butter muffins and other treats, were published in free agricultural bulletins.

This pioneering work was then known as “chemurgy.” Today, the science of using agricultural products, notably plant carbohydrates, as feed stocks for industrial production of plastics, paints, ethanol, etc., has evolved into modern biochemical engineering.

Inspiring Commercial Hybridization

Since youth, Carver had been fascinated by plant breeding and hybridization. His Iowa State Bachelor’s thesis was entitled “Plants as Modified by Man.” He continued the work throughout his career, inspiring many mature and budding scientists.

Among them was Henry A. Wallace, the young son of a colleague, Iowa State professor Henry C. Wallace. Racial prejudice prevented Carver from living on campus. So in 1894, the Wallace family invited Carver to live in their home.

On free days, Carver agreed to six-year-old Henry’s request to accompany him on the long nature walks he had continued since his own youth. The two identified and collected specimens around the Ames campus: Iowa Tallgrass, Purple Prairie Clover, Rattlesnake Master, Butterfly Milkweed and myriads of others. Back at the greenhouse, the pair experimented with sick plants and crop breeding.

Carver left for Tuskegee two years later, but his influence was deep and lasting. At fifteen, Wallace conducted experiments that helped demonstrate the concept of hybrid vigor. In 1924, he began selling the first commercial hybrid seed corn. Two years later, Wallace founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which would eventually become Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., and is known today as DuPont Pioneer.

Like his father, Henry A. Wallace later became U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. His worldwide efforts to create more productive strains of corn and wheat, inspired by Carver, are credited with saving over one billion lives from starvation.

Wallace later wrote: “George Carver deepened my appreciation of plants in a way I could never forget. I feel I must pay him this debt of gratitude.”

When Carver died in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized Carver and his selfless lifetime of achievements and awards. “All mankind are beneficiaries of his discoveries in the field of agricultural chemistry,” said Roosevelt. “The things he achieved in the face of early handicaps are an inspiring example to youth everywhere.”

#DuPont #croprotation #inventor #agriculture #science #engineering

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