Tri-Fly Spray Back in 85!

Here is a cartoon I published in the Kauai Garden Island in 1985. This shit has been going on for a long time!Background:Hawaii Wakes Up To Pesticides The US Department of Agriculture plans to eradicate three species of fruit fly in Hawaii by spraying suspected carcinogens and mutagens on the islands.

 

 Eco Terrorists?

Who are the real eco-terrorists? Recently,in Europe, the big Chemical and biotech seed companies such as Sygenta, have been labeled by the people as “eco-terrorists” symbolizing the harm and danger they present to the ecology and environment. These companies in most cases are prohibited from freely doing business in Europe. Because of the dangers corporate seed and pesticide company’s agricultural practices represent to public health and welfare they are heavily regulated and banned by European governments.

Here in Hawaii, with a smarmy slap at reality, the paid representatives for the Chemical and seed corporations have co-opted wording and the branding process before the Hawaiian public “gets it!” A representative of Sygenta wrote that that the law is guilty of “illegitimate targeting” of GMO crops by vandals and and “eco-terrorists!” To my way of thinking, the comedy club has a place for this representative of the real eco-terrorists in the present case.

Guess what? Just think about who is applying chemicals with unknown and unresolved ecological results upon the environment? Who is the eco-terrorist? We have a right know to and should be informed as to what chemical process is used to produce the food we eat. No question about it! Our health and welfare is of first importance. We should not be collateral damage in the corporate bookkeeping process.

When I first moved from Oahu where I grew up to Kauai in 1981, the first seed companies on the west-side were just getting started. One of the seed company managers lived across the lane from me in a small local enclave. He explained to me at that time that the seed company chose Hawaii to grow seed in because after one season any subsequent 2nd generation corn growing from the original Hawaii seed would not be viable in a colder climate. Money. Control of profits. That is what is important to these agribusiness corporations. Our health and welfare just don’t conveniently fit into the mix.

At the present the really clear and present danger from these genetically engineered crops is their use in tandem with pesticides that get into the plant’s and insect’s epigentic core and require increasingly strong applications of powerful pesticide chemicals. This is why I think the rules and the regulations bill 2491 put in place are good and speak to the relevant issues of human health and welfare on Kauai as well as elsewhere.

Monopolistic Utilities Know Renewable Energy Will Cut Their Profits, So They Stall It

From Truthout:  Please go here for the full story:

Monopolistic Utilities Know Renewable Energy Will Cut Their Profits, So They Stall It....no duh!

Last Friday, I wrote a commentary on a Hawaii for-profit electrical utility company that was taking new measures to dampen the selling (called "net metering" in the industry) of excessive solar energy back for distribution to other utility customers. The commentary was entitled, "Booming Solar Energy Halted by Hawaii Utility Because Sun Produces Too Much Power!"
The BuzzFlash at Truthout column was based on information provided in a Scientific American (no bastion of leftist bias) article entitled, "A Solar Boom So Successful, It's Been Halted: Photovoltaics proved so successful in Hawaii that the local utility, HECO, has instituted policies to block further expansion." Thus far, the BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary has received 11,000 Facebook likes and a lot of shocked readers.
However, there was a small number of alleged electrical engineers (and they may have very well been, instead of paid company shills which has become a common and legal practice in comments sections) who objected to both the Scientific American article and the BF/TO account of it.  They argued that "liberals" and "eco-types" don't know about how complicated and aged the electrical grids in the US generally are (although this was conceded in both the BF and Scientific American accounts).  That was the claim of the Hawaiian utility in question, HECO, which asserts on their website that they are avid supporters of renewable energy, just like Chevron or Shell does.