Victory/Victoria

There has been some recent good news on the environmental and health front.
The big one, that I'm sure many of you have heard about, is the rejection of the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline by the Obama administration.  To briefly summarize, it was a proposal to bring tar from Canadian tar sands down to the gulf area to be refined into oil by building a huge pipe across the US.
Another victory, that wasn't as widely publicized is a 20-year ban on any new mining in the Grand Canyon.  There is a lot of uranium in the Grand Canyon area so special interest companies (many of them foreign) are eager to grab it up, however Ken Salazer, our Interior Secretary, did not bow to pressure citing the need to protect sacred grounds and a river that provides drinking water to millions of people, as well as one of the biggest tourist attractions in our country.
Another little interesting bit of news on the health front is the big three fast food joints (Burger King, McDonald's and Taco Bell) have decided to stop using ammoniated beef, commonly referred to as "pink slime."  This refers to fatty beef trimming, usually reserved for pet foods and other byproducts, being used as fillers for hamburgers.  Since these trimmings have a high risk of containing bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella, they were mixed with ammonium hydroxide.  Yum!

Now, these may be considered successes but notice that they are all about stopping.  They have all halted a negative and while I believe they are important, I think this is why the environmental movement gets such a bad rap...it's so focused on saying not this, not that.  I think true victories would be to see more positives happening.  Environmentalists are great in the defensive position, now we need to strengthen our offense.  Instead of legislation saying no to tar sands, I want to see a yes to renewable energies, instead of a stop to destroying wild lands, I want to see legislation focusing on increasing the acreage of wilderness areas.  Again, I'm not saying these successes are not important, just that I would like to see a shift in the victories.

I've seen a surge of cute sloth video's making the rounds so I thought I'd leave you with a video that will shed some light on the true nature of sloths:
Sloths