What's Your New Year's Revolution?

Like so many others, I complain about "the holidays." I complain about the family get-togethers and the random gifts I've gotten that I don't know what to do with, just like everybody else does. But many of you have likely noticed that my complaining extends past this. Thanksgiving? An annual Holocaust for turkeys, I say. Christmas? Preaches "Peace on Earth," but repeats the culinary slaughter all over again.

This year, I'm taking aim at yet another holiday: New Year's.

New Year's is a bizarre event. Presumably, we celebrate the arrival of this random second because we have completed another successful trip around the sun. What did you expect to happen? Aren't you afraid of alienating Jewish people who are on a different calendar? Or Chinese people? Or Druids?

But this isn't so much what I'm concerned about. What bothers me most are the New Year's resolutions. During the first couple weeks of January there are fewer smokers and drinkers and more joggers and vegetarians than at any other time of the year. During January, we live in a veritable utopia.

But by Groundhog Day, slaughterhouses are again awash with blood and humans are back to eating meat -- and to ruining the planet and their health because of it. This is not to say I don't advocate personal improvement.

(Sorry about the weird graphic. I just needed something to break up all this text and couldn't find anything else good about "personal improvement.")

Most people are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and New Year's that they ignore what they should really be worried about: what they eat between New Year's and Christmas.

So this year I implore you to examine how you feel during that magical time just after New Year's when your convictions are in line with your actions. I would never ask anyone to "go on a diet" or to do anything as unhelpful (and often harmful) as that. But I am asking you to try going vegetarian or vegan. And I promise you -- it won't feel like a sacrifice. It will feel like a step up.

Think of it as eating everything in the world except animal products. We humans are creatures of routine that hate change of any kind, but if you go into this with a sense of the abundance of options, vegan cooking and eating will open your eyes to a world of foods you may never have known existed. We're not just talking plates of raw vegetables here, people. Do I look like a person who eats plates of raw vegetables?

Even if you cut out animal products just [insert (hopefully large) number] days a week, you can make a huge difference in your health and the health of the planet. Any time you eschew meat, you are indeed saving the lives of others and are helping to save and improve your own life. Remember that foods that deprive the fewest lives of others contribute to the longest lives for ourselves.

Oscar Wilde wrote: "A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other," which seems to be true. Some 40-45% of American adults use New Year's to make resolutions; and although many may eventually ditch their resolutions, statistics show that setting goals is valuable: 75% make it past the first week and 46% make it past the 6-month mark. And these are Americans we're talking about.

If you think you're going to quit eating meat for life and then you get wasted and eat a slice of pepperoni pizza, don't take that to mean you're destined for a life of carnism.

According to statistics, people who keep their resolutions for at least 2 years report an average of 14 slips or setbacks during that time. But those slips didn't stop them from continuing to fulfill their resolution.

Forcing a radical change that you won't be able to stick with isn't what I'm advocating because I think that's one of the problems with New Year's resolutions. But easing into a lifestyle of health and compassion at a pace and depth that feels comfortable is what I'm after. And I'm betting that if you do it part-time, you'll only want to go further.

***

Note: For those of you who have made New Year's resolutions, I'd love to hear what they are and how it's going! The comment section is eagerly awaiting your tales of fasting and jazzercising...

What is Linked to IQ: Part I

Out of necessity, I’ve been thinking about religion a lot recently. And coincidentally, I just read an interesting study in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly entitled Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent.

This study found that, on average, people who identify as liberal and atheist have higher IQs. Experts say the data should not be used to stereotype (although the study does not necessarily explain why not), but they do say that the results show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be. Also found to be associated with higher IQs was sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women.

The reasoning is that liberalism, atheism, and sexual exclusivity in men all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them. Said GW professor James Bailey, "The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward. It makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."

With regard to the sexual exclusivity aspect, the gender differential makes sense evolutionarily because having one partner has always been advantageous to women.

Experts believe that religion did not necessarily help people survive or reproduce, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid. For example, assuming that a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger. "It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere," the author of the study said.

In the context of this study, "liberal" is defined in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. "Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with," the author says. Using these definitions of liberal and conservative, it’s clear that being conservative makes more sense evolutionarily.

Conservatism as a worldview is about keeping things stable, which is an evolutionarily safer approach than venturing toward the unfamiliar. Related to this, Professor Bailey argues that unconventional preferences appeal to people with higher intelligence. Atheism "allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion," he said.

The author of the study concludes by stating that none of this means that the human species is evolving toward a future where these traits are the default. "More intelligent people don't have more children, so moving away from the trajectory is not going to happen," he said.

[Photos courtesy of Enterprise Dashboard, Dangerous Intersection, and Motifake]

Burn Pot, Not Coal

The time has come for Boulder to become the green town it wants and needs to be, but it won't be without a citizen fight.

The City of Boulder currently has a franchise agreement with Xcel Energy, which allows Xcel to put its equipment in the city and act as Boulder's primary energy utility. This contract for their Valmont Coal Plant expires at the end of this year though, granting us the perfect opportunity to extract ourselves from this dirty, sooty, slurry-filled strangehold.

If the citizens of Boulder decide they no longer want to be an accomplice to Colorado's staggering reliance on coal, we have the option to vote this way. By August 3rd, the City Council must decide whether they will put this option on the ballot: the option to municipalize our city's energy supply.

Municipalization will allow the citizens of Boulder to chose where we get our energy, allowing us to transition to renewables. It will also allow us to stop paying Xcel's shareholders and CEO, Richard Kelly, who last year received $11.3 million—more than twice as much as he received in 2008 (1). That profit comes from us, and it's time we voted to say "stop." Stop the high prices for dirty energy and dirty profiteering.

Colorado is currently 86% coal-powered and that number has only gone up over the years, not down. The Valmont Coal Plant—and all others—emits noxious air pollutants including mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide, estimated at over one million tons per year. Due to Colorado's reliance on coal, our CO2 emission factor of 1.93 lb/kWh is quite high compared to the U.S. average of 1.34 lb/kWh (2).

The Valmont Coal Plant also wastes an enormous amount of water: two million gallons every single day to slurry the coal.

Boulder's goal needs to be to 'decarbonize' our electric supply by replacing carbon-intensive coal burning with clean renewable energy such as wind and solar power, which are so abundant in Colorado.

Loveland, Fort Collins, and Aspen are all municipalized, and Marin County and Cleveland have both recently fought their utilities providers and broken free to become municipalized.

Based off of Xcel's contemptible tactics, it's clear that we will not win this without a fight. They will probably say that our rates will skyrocket (when, in fact, they have already increased our rates 3x in the past 4 years); they will likely say the excise tax is something new we will have to pay (when, in actuality, we would be getting rid of Xcel as the middle man and would pay our city directly for its services); they will probably say lots of things to try to keep their $646 million in pure profit every year, but I think Boulder residents are eager enough to reduce their large carbon footprints that they will see through all that.

If you live in Boulder and want to do something about this, here's what it's going to take:

1. First, email (and email often!) City Council at council@bouldercolorado.gov and tell them you want municipalization. Tell them you want to vote against the Xcel franchise and for the excise tax and tell them you want renewable energy (and not just some fake windpower crap from Xcel). Please note that it is important to both vote against the renewal of the Xcel franchise and for the excise tax—otherwise, the city will be out $3.9 million a year.

2. Attend the public hearing on August 3rd to voice all of this in person. I'll be there wearing a topic-appropriate t-shirt, and I invite you to join me in this.

3. Contact me and we'll talk. There is something stewing that I can't necessarily reveal here, but it's gonna be good.

Activists at the Valmont Coal Plant in April '10

Sources:

(1) Xcel Energy CEO Kelly's pay doubled in 2009

(2) Clean Energy Action: Colorado Coal

Note: This is my first post that is in response to another blog post. I believe the issue was mis-characterized and one-sided and felt I had to respond (with the other side). I hope you've enjoyed the retaliatory nature of this post.

Buy a Bit of Reprisal for Only $10

Anyone who has met me knows I've been fanatically watching every moment of the World Cup while spending any remaining time reading about the oil hemorrhage. (It's not a spill.) And as I anxiously wait to see whether South American fútbol or European fußball will prevail, BP continues to burn sea turtles alive.

I have been feeling depressed and disheartened by what is happening in the Gulf. It’s so bad I don’t even like the word "beyond" anymore. I'm realizing that being overwhelmed by a big crisis may cause us to think that our personal actions are meaningless.

But this is where we’re wrong, dear friends.

Here is where I would normally say how you can reduce your oil consumption. I would say to eat less meat because producing animal protein requires 8x as much fossil fuel as producing the same amount of plant protein. I would say to use less plastic because plastic production in the US alone requires 200,000 barrels of oil per day. I would say lots of things. But I think at this moment, we should put off our guilt -- quite temporarily, of course -- and bask in the pleasure that annoying the shit out of BP execs will bring us.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the World Cup and the BP Oil Hemorrhage converged, but they finally have: Some guy named Adam Quirk is organizing a crowd-funded protest to buy and blow 100+ vuvuzelas all day long in front of BP's London headquarters.

He writes, "Anyone who pledges $10 gets the satisfaction of knowing you just bought a vuvuzela that will undoubtedly frustrate some smug oil baron."

Half of the money will go toward purchasing and shipping the obnoxious horns and the other half will go toward the Center for Biological Diversity's Gulf Disaster Fund.

Although I think the idea of this project is laudable, I hesitate to sanction it because I'm afraid the vuvuzelas are made of {gasp} plastic. I will leave it up to you to decide, but if you'd like to contribute to this effort, go here.

We may not be able to do to BP what they are doing to sea turtles, but maybe at least we can annoy them to death.

PS: Check out this Onion article. Heh.

5 Mother Earth-friendly Mother's Day Gifts

This Sunday, why not celebrate both of your mothers? No, I’m not saying your mom is a lesbian. I’m saying that just because it’s Mother’s Day, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice Mother Earth by buying pesticide-laden flowers, bleached cards, or worthless crap that you mom will just stuff in her closet.

So what’s a loving son or daughter to do? Try buying one (or more) of these 5 Mother Earth-friendly gifts:

1. Your mom probably remembers when Frances Moore Lappé came out with her mind-blowing book, Diet for a Small Planet, in 1971. This is the book that sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappé, picks up the conversation with her book, Diet for a Hot Planet, which exposes another hidden cost of our food system: climate change. What better Mother’s Day gift than a book – or a set of both books – written by a mother/daughter team working to save the world?!

2. A Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership is a great way to repay Mom for those countless dinners she prepared. You’ll pay in advance for a portion of a local farm’s harvest and then your mom will receive weekly deliveries of organic fruits and veggies. Deliveries are often big enough to split between two households, so consider signing up yourself and mom for a joint membership if you live near each other. Most programs start in June, and you can find one near you via Local Harvest or Green People.

3. As the proud mother of two delightful fur people, I know what I’m getting myself from them for Mother’s Day: reusable produce bags! These bags are the best I’ve found in terms of convenience and washability, and they’re made of recycled plastic bottles to boot. While you’re on the Reusable Bags site, snoop around to see if there are any other products your mom might find handy, like this cool reusable gift wrap.

4. Many spas use nasty chemicals and cost a pretty penny, so why not bring the spa home to mom? Shea Terra Organics, for example, offers high-quality healing products from indigenous African ingredients. Recognizing the value of uncontaminated raw materials in a fragile world with so much at stake, Shea Terra has culminated a formula for sustainability and fair trade. From a rich organic shea butter lotion to dead sea salt scrub to a Moroccan deep tissue bath scrubber, their products offer more than just a sweet smell.

5. Fair-trade, organic chocolate. And not the kind with pus in it (stick with dark!).

Time for you to PAY

Considering I’m currently in an environmental law course, I thought I’d write about something relevant: Victims of Hurricane Katrina are seeking to sue greenhouse gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the storm. In my mind, suing multinationals for making the coffee hot that you then poured onto your genitals constitutes de minimis non curat lax, meaning “the court will not be concerned with trifles.” However, neither global warming nor the death of over 1,200 people seems a trifle to me.

This class action suit was brought by residents from southern Mississippi weeks after the storm hit in August 2005. The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the U.S. caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming. They say the increase in global surface air and water temperatures “in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs' private property, as well as public property useful to them.”


They allege that companies had a duty to "avoid unreasonably endangering the environment, public health, public and private property." Can you imagine the world we would live in if companies actually lived up to this duty?

Considering who these people are up against for compensation and punitive damages—Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Honeywell, and American Electric Power—they seem to actually be managing well so far. The suit has already passed several key legal hurdles, after initially being rejected by the district court, which argued that Congress first had to enact legislation "which sets appropriate standards by which this court can measure conduct." (Clearly Congress must do this, but whether that needs to occur before this case can proceed seems arguable.)

With cases such as these, there are likely not precedents off of which courts can rule by analogy, as they typically do. Because of the nature of climate change, however, it seems high time that the court take it upon itself to create such a precedent, as I can only envision such cases—and such storms—becoming more and more frequent.


Source: Katrina victims seek to sue greenhouse-gas emitters

The new year begins in a snowstorm of white vows

Like so many others, I complain about "the holidays." I complain about the family get-togethers and the random gifts I've gotten that I don't know what to do with, just like everybody else does. But many of you have likely noticed that my complaining extends past this. Thanksgiving? An annual Holocaust for turkeys, I say. Christmas? Preaches "peace on Earth," but repeats the culinary slaughter all over again.

This year, I'm taking aim at yet another holiday: New Year's.


New Year's is a bizarre event. Presumably, we celebrate the arrival of this random second because we have completed another successful trip around the sun. What did you expect to happen? Aren't you afraid of alienating Jewish people who are on a different calendar? Or Chinese people? Or Druids?

But this isn't so much what I'm concerned about. What bothers me most are the New Year's resolutions. During the first couple weeks of January there are fewer smokers and drinkers and more joggers and vegetarians than at any other time of the year. During January, we live in a veritable utopia.

But by Groundhog Day, slaughterhouses are again awash with blood and humans are back to eating meat -- and to ruining the planet and their health because of it. This is not to say I don't advocate personal improvement.


(Sorry about the weird graphic. I just needed something to break up all this text and couldn't find anything else good about "personal improvement.")

Most people are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and New Year's that they ignore what they should really be worried about: what they eat between New Year's and Christmas.

So this year I implore you to examine how you feel during that magical time just after New Year's when your convictions are in line with your actions. I would never ask anyone to "go on a diet" or to do anything as unhelpful (and often harmful) as that. But I am asking you to try eating vegetarian or vegan. And I promise you -- it won't feel like a sacrifice. It will feel like a step up. I think of it as eating everything in the world except animal products. I know we humans are creatures of routine that hate change of any kind, but if you go into this with a sense of the abundance of options, vegan cooking and eating will open your eyes to a world of foods you may never have known existed. We're not just talking plates of raw vegetables here, people. Do I look like a person who eats plates of raw vegetables?

Even if you cut out animal products just [insert (hopefully large) number] days a week, you can make a huge difference in your health and the health of the planet. Any time you eschew meat, you are indeed saving the lives of others and are helping to save and improve your own life.

Oscar Wilde wrote: "A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other," which seems to be not only funny but true. Some 40-45% of American adults use New Year's to make resolutions; and although many may eventually ditch their resolutions, statistics show that setting goals is valuable: 75% make it past the first week and 46% make it past the 6-month mark. And these are Americans we're talking about.

If you think you're going to quit eating meat for life and then you get wasted and eat a slice of pepperoni pizza, don't take that to mean you're destined for a life of carnism.

According to statistics, people who keep their resolutions for at least 2 years report an average of 14 slips or setbacks during that time. But those slips didn't stop them from continuing to fulfill their resolution.

Forcing a radical change that you won't be able to stick with isn't what I'm advocating because I think that's one of the problems with New Year's resolutions. But easing into a lifestyle of health and compassion at a pace and depth that feels comfortable is what I'm after. And I'm betting that if you do it part-time, you'll only want to go further.

***

Note: For those of you who have made New Year's resolutions, I'd love to hear what they are and how it's going! The comment section is eagerly awaiting your tales of fasting and jazzercising...