A Recipe For Disaster: Industrial Agriculture, Swine Flu, and Global Warming

[GRITtv]

Run time: 02:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs_UwF-l3Tc   Posted on YouTube: July 28, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: July 29, 2009 By DU Member: GRITtv Views on DU: 419

 
“A threat of unknown magnitude,” some have called it. The LA Times writes that it could kill hundreds over the next two years. What is it? Swine flu. How did we get here and what are the connections between industrial agriculture, global warming, and what many think could be a deadly flu epidemic?

Arun Gupta, an editor at the Indypendent and the author most recently of Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, Kim Knowlton, Senior Scientist at the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Global Warming and Health Project, and Michael Greger, Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States and author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching discuss the looming threats of avian and swine flu, global warming, and what we can do to change our system of industrial agriculture. You can find the NRDC’s new report on Dengue Fever here.

You can see the full panel at: www.grittv.org.

[edc]

1. Reasoned argument

predicated upon scientific fact will not prevail politically when it clashes with special interest money in the corridors of power. The pertinent questions then becomes simply a discussion of how we save ourselves, our children and our world from the pathological behavior of those interests? The answer is almost as frightening as doing nothing. A great impediment to action is that most of us are de facto slaves of moneyed interests and would be living under bridges in a matter of weeks or months if we lost the income they provide. God help us help ourselves.