World Spirit Reflections and Updates

Forests provide habitat for more than half of all species living on land, help filter pollutants out of the air and water, and prevent soil erosion. They also play a major role in regulating global temperatures by absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in their cell walls. Unfortunately, the global benefits provided by trees are threatened by deforestation.

Earth loses more than 18 million acres of forestland every year—an area larger than Ireland—according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). When trees are cleared, their stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere. As a result, tropical deforestation is responsible for about 20 percent of total annual global warming emissions, making it second only to fossil fuels in terms of climate impact.

The best way to reduce emissions from tropical deforestation is to help ensure these trees are not cut down in the first place. Your purchasing decisions can play a role in this effort:

• Wood: When buying wood products, look for labels that indicate the wood comes from sustainably managed forests. There are several forest certification programs in place worldwide; see the related links for a description and comparison of each. For home improvement projects, you can avoid new wood products altogether by using reclaimed wood for floors and wood-free materials (such as composite resin boards) for decks or play areas.
  
  
• Coffee: Make your daily cup o’ joe using shade-grown coffee beans, which are grown under a forest canopy. In addition to supporting the preservation of forestlands, shade-grown coffee requires less fertilizer and pesticides to grow compared with coffee grown under full sun.
  
  
• Paper: While most U.S. papers are not made from tropical woods, reducing overall demand for virgin paper can have a global impact. You can support forest-friendly paper by buying paper made from sustainably harvested timber, a high percentage of post-consumer recycled content, or wood-free fibers such as kenaf.

Planting trees, while not a substitute for deforestation, can provide important climate benefits, especially in urban areas. In addition to absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, trees cool the air by providing shade and transpiring water from their leaves, which help reduce air conditioner use (and subsequent emissions from electricity production) during the summer months.

Help Save the rain forests for free

Labels: conservation agriculture, conserve trees, forest habitat, rain forests, regulate greenhouse gas

Stop the cruel confinement of calves in dairy farming! >" border="0">

Unfortunately, I have seen these corporate run dairies for myself. They are completely lacking in spirituality. God gave us our livestock. Does this mean we are allowed to be cruel to our livestock? They are also God's Creation and deserve to be treated as such - with love and respect.

Please help love and respect God's Creation by responding to this action alert. Thanks - RD

Did you know the dairy products you buy could be associated with baby calves being taken from their mothers just hours after birth and shipped away to live in cramped, filthy crates with barely enough room to move?

This shocking scenario is a sad reality for the young calves at Mendes Calf Ranch in Tipton, California. Take Action >>

The calves live by themselves in crates so small they can’t even turn around or lie down naturally. They have to contort their bodies simply to move around in the small space, which is often covered with their own excrement.

This confinement violates animal cruelty laws! Sign the petition to Free Baby Mendes – and the up to 12,000 other calves that Mendes confines every day of the year.

Land O’Lakes and Challenge Dairy are two of the major dairy producers who use milk from calves who were confined at Mendes Calf Ranch.

Let dairy corporations Land O’Lakes and Challenge Dairy know that these practices are unnecessary — and unacceptable!

Thank you for alerting Land O’Lakes and Challenge Dairy about what's going on at Mendes Calf Ranch — and telling them consumers won’t tolerate this animal cruelty!

Sincerely,
Breeana L.
Care2 Campaign Team

P.S. Remember what I mentioned about animal abusers being one step away from being Child Abusers? If it means meeting their bottom line, spiritless, Godless corporations stop at nothing. (Unfortunately, they are beyond the law in a fascist society.)

Labels: abused calves, animal abuse, corporate dairy cows, cruel confinement, evil corporation

Ordinarily, I only put up help links when I've experienced Something for myself. I have personally seen animal hoarding; this is done by depressed control freaks who believe that they can fill their emotional emptiness, the blackness in their hearts by hoarding dogs, cats, and any other animal they can get their hands on.

Yes, these kinds of people kidnap pets, yet they believe they're "helping."

Perhaps, there are those of you who think nothing of such actions because they are only "animals." These animals are also living creatures who share the hearts and minds of their owners; they return the loving and caring which you give to them because they are also spiritual creatures.

Beyond this, these depressed, psychotic, control freaks are one step away from child abuse; it has been documented in criminology studies that the same type of people who abuse animals also abuse children - HUMAN children.

The same type of people who do this to animals would think nothing of doing the same to YOUR OWN CHILD.

Therefore, we need whistle blowers like PETA to help stop the abusers from doing anymore harm. Please support their efforts in protecting innocent lives - RD.

In July, PETA informed animal control in Green Cove Springs, Fla., about numerous animals in a home there who were being kept in nightmarish conditions. Many of the cats were sick and injured, and their food and water bowls were overrun with roaches. The stench inside the home was overwhelming. In addition, a dog was left outside without water, and he frequently became tangled in his tether.

Before the sheriff's office responded to our complaint, PETA made sure that the dog had received clean water. When animal control was finally able to enter the residence, 11 cats were removed from the property. One cat's eye was completely missing, and another cat had a severe respiratory infection and was sneezing blood.

This case was horrifying but by no means surprising. In a practice known as "hoarding," people take in large numbers of animals—usually cats and dogs—in an attempt to "save" them. Hoarding invariably leads to abuse.

PETA is working to remove thousands of animals from hoarders in various parts of the country, and we need your help. Your online donation to PETA today will help us spare cats, dogs, and other animals from this kind of misery.

Hoarders are sometimes thought to be kind people who are simply trying to help animals. But in a shocking new report, titled "Animal Hoarders: Behavior, Consequences, and Appropriate Official Response," PETA exposes that hoarding has much more to do with cruelty than with compassion.

Hoarding is an obsession and a mental illness that causes people to severely neglect the animals in their charge. Extreme crowding of animals results in easy transmission of parasites and diseases, and hoarded animals are almost always denied veterinary care; broken limbs and wounds commonly go untreated. Hoarded animals are often confined to small, filthy cages, which are sometimes stacked on top of each other, with the waste from the animals above falling on the ones below. These animals crave companionship, and when they don't receive it, they frequently isolate themselves and engage in destructive behaviors such as self-mutilation.

PETA responds to thousands of calls to help abused animals each year, including many hoarding cases. With your support, we are able to remove many animals from these kinds of situations. We also work with state and local authorities to prosecute hoarders, and we also work to educate the public about these issues.

By supporting PETA today, you can help us spare companion animals from the abuse of hoarders—and give them a chance to live the healthy, happy lives they deserve.

Thank you for caring and for making a difference for animals.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

P.S. The companion animal overpopulation crisis has enabled hoarders to operate in every community. That means there's a greater need for PETA's work to stop the neglect and abuse of these animals—and a greater need for your life-saving support. Please donate to PETA today.

P.S.S. You can recognise animal hoarders: They drive around in large vehicles stocked with cages and petfood. They are usually in their middle ages to elderly and they are anti-social in one way or another. They may try to cover animal odors with heavy cologne. They try to lure pets with large plates of food in areas away from public view.

Labels: animal abuse, animal hoarding, insane, pet hoarders, PETA, sadism, sadist, sadistic, whistle blower