Green by Red

What's Your New Year's Revolution?

2011-01-02T11:42:00.006-07:00

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

2010-08-23T17:23:00.011-07:00

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

2010-07-14T08:46:00.021-07:00

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

2010-07-04T19:43:00.017-07:00

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

2010-05-06T13:44:00.012-07:00

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

2010-03-08T15:00:00.004-07:00

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

2010-01-07T12:55:00.018-07:00

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...

The Living and The Dead (and The Fake)

2009-12-03T11:42:00.012-07:00

Are you worried about the ecological footprint of getting a Solstice tree? Are you concerned about the environmental degradation caused by wanting a tree to decorate for Festivus? You're right to be concerned, because yours is only one in 32 million holiday trees that are sold in the U.S. every year. But thankfully, there are some eco-friendly options...

Stayin' Alive

Buy a tree with the bulb still attached! This may only be a viable option for people who have land to plant it on afterward, and it should be noted that this makes the tree substantially more heavy, so be aware of that before you pick out an 8-footer.

Oh, and, uh, you must keep your tree alive until you're ready to plant it. Because of this, it must be slowly acclimated to the indoors, and spend no more than 2 weeks indoors before slowly re-acclimating to the outdoors. Also, I wouldn't force it to endure the heat from multiple incandescent light strings (buy LED!), fireplaces, or heat vents. Most people probably can't commit to a live tree, but if you do, remember to choose where you plant it wisely, as it can grow to be 40-60 feet tall.

If you do go this route, you'll be able to sleep soundly at night knowing that your tree is actively filtering water, removing air pollution, sequestering carbon, and providing homes for wildlife.

Consider Adoption

Many 'tree adoption' services have begun to spring up, such as this one in San Diego. And with this service, your tree is even delivered by singing, dancing elves! I might move to San Diego just for this. After the holidays, your adopted tree won't end up in a landfill--where it would take up precious space and release greenhouse gases as it decomposes--but instead, it'll be replanted! Beautiful.

Go Organic

Holiday trees are an agricultural product and carry the attendant issues of all mass agriculture. Most trees are grown using conventional agricultural methods, and the growers regularly spray pesticides for various tree pests, and apply fertilizer to the plots. But like any other agricultural product, there are trees grown with pesticides and herbicides vs. organic specimens, there are family operations vs. large-scale producers, etc. So, if you decide to go for a real tree, try to support a small-scale sustainable grower if you can.

Reduce and Reuse

First of all, let me say that the worst option is to buy a new, fake tree. Most artificial trees are vinyl Chinese imports, and quite a few contain lead. (And remember, we are boycotting vinyl to the greatest extent possible, people.) And here's some fun Christmas party conversation fodder: Christmas décor is apparently one of the largest categories of Chinese imports. Huh...interesting.

The only way that I would ever advocate for a fake tree would be if you bought it from a thrift store or if it was otherwise previously used. Note: For those of you who are price shopping, this is likely the cheapest option. (The Boulder Salvation Army trees ranged from $10-25.)

Use Nature

You may never again see those words written in this blog. However, in this case, I do advise using nature...use trees outside as your personal solstice trees! Make garlands (of something natural, like hemp) and string up walnuts, popcorn, stale bread, and whatever else (no cheetos, please), and drape them around trees near your house. Then, watch over the next few weeks--or days, or maybe hours--as critters of all varieties enjoy a holiday feast!

Of course, there's always the "Don't buy a tree at all" option, which I trust you have all already considered. If not: Have you thought about having no tree and living vicariously through the trees of others, decorating a house plant, or making your own tree as an ambitious crafts project?

Whatever option you choose for your Christmahanukkwanzaa tree, please make sure to decorate it with LED lights and fair trade ornaments, and to wear a hideously ugly sweater while doing it.

Happy Solstice! (And as a special solstice gift to you, I did not name this post 'To Tree or Not to Tree.' You're welcome.)

Scared of your leftover Halloween candy?

2009-11-02T12:12:00.011-07:00

Do you have a pile of Halloween candy sitting around that you don't know what to do with? Are you afraid you're going to eat it all?

Well first of all, next year, consider buying fair trade chocolates so you won't feel guilty when you're forced to eat all that's left. Or opt for something fun and non-edible to hand out, like small "fun-size" containers of Play-Doh. Yes, Play-Doh is non-edible.

Another fun twist is to go Reverse Trick-or-Treating. When trick-or-treaters knock on a door, they hand candy to the person who answers instead of the other way around! If you want to participate in this, Global Exchange will provide you with free samples of vegan, Fair Trade dark chocolate accompanied by cards informing recipients of poverty and child labor problems in the cocoa industry and how Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a solution.

But, to take care of this year's leftovers problem, here are some alternatives to shoving your face full of candy corn just so it won't go to waste:

1. Give It Back. Each year across the world, kids consume 2% more sugar than the year before – that's 50 million tons of sugar annually. And of course sugar is bad for kids because it contributes to hyperactivity, obesity, tooth decay, and obnoxiousness. Knowing all this, dentists have started buying back Halloween candy through a program aptly named Halloween Candy Buy Back. Participating dentists buy back kids' candy and it's then shipped to US soldiers serving overseas.

I don't know how much better it is to make soldiers fat and jittery than kids, but I guess it's out of sight out of mind, eh? You can also send your candy to the troops (by Dec. 5th) through Operation Gratitude. Don't get me started on the name.

2. Make Somethin. Looking for something a little more crafty? Make a gingerbread house. You know, for fun. Or you could make this weird wreath as Martha Stewart suggests, but only if you want squirrels living on your front door.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer the inside of your house to be decorated with candy wrappers, ditch the candy and make a Candy Wrapper Decoupage, whatever that is. Or use the wrappers for crafts such as these handsome purses and sell them at fair trade stores for $50.

3. Take Weird Al's advice. Just eat it.

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

2009-10-15T21:13:00.006-07:00

This year's Blog Action Day is all about climate change, so naturally, there's only one thing I could write about today: The one thing that's the best way for you to help curb global climate change. You must know it by now, so I'll keep it simple.

Livestock production generates 18% of all global warming-causing greenhouse gases--nearly a fifth of the world’s total--which is more than the entire transportation sector.

So what would it mean if Americans left meat off their plates for just one day a week? Or two?...

1. If Americans didn't eat meat for one day a week, this would be the equivalent of removing 46 million round trip flights between L.A. and New York, or taking 19.2 million cars off the road for a full year.

2. Two days a week would be equal to replacing ALL household appliances in the US with energy efficient ones.

3. Three days a week would have a greater impact on the climate than replacing all US cars with Toyota Priuses.

4. Four days a week would have the carbon savings equivalent of cutting the use of all electricity, gas, oil, petroleum, and kerosene in the US in half.

5. Five days a week would have the carbon savings equivalent of planting 13 billion trees and letting them grow for 10 years.

6. Six days a week would be the equivalent of eliminating the total electricity use of all households in the US.

7. And finally, if everyone in the U.S. ate a vegetarian diet for seven days a week, this would be the same as removing all the cars off the roads in the US.

Your fork is a powerful tool. Please use it wisely.

Early Retirement

2009-07-27T14:21:00.008-07:00

One hundred thousand dairy cows have been killed as part of a part of a national program that is attempting to ease what is being referred to as a "milk crisis". You, dear readers, know that we are in the midst of a milk crisis, but this is unfortunately not what they are referring to.

They are not referring to our country's parents and schools feeding our children pus-filled mucus that makes them obese and contributes to them getting osteoporosis, kidney stones, liver cancer, and colon cancer, not to mention causes them to ingest active hormones, herbicides, pesticides, dioxins, antibiotics, bacteria, viruses, blood, and feces. No, the milk crisis they are referring to is that milk prices are "too low".

The Onion has some funnyish commentary about the problem:

"Though the circumstances are unfortunate, the cows must martyr themselves to preserve the honor of the National Milk Producers Federation. And the errant farmers should be sent to the desert for reeducation."

"I can understand the milk producers' rage at the cows for overproducing this whitish mucus that causes acute stomach distress and spoils easily."

This national program to kill cows is headed by the National Milk Producers Federation, who must have the same PR person as the guy who came up with "collateral damage": Using a term that encapsulates their udder detachment from reality, program officials from the National Milk Producers Federation recently announced another “herd retirement”. Although you may think this means the cows will be put up in an assisted living facility with bingo and jazzercise classes, it will actually just send 100,000 more animals to be killed.

The Battle of the Burrito

2009-07-21T09:07:00.014-07:00

Last week, Chipotle and its crack PR department seized on a golden opportunity to promote the company's brand by hitching a ride on the coattails of the hit new documentary, Food, Inc.

Chipotle sponsored screenings across the country that were made free to the public in a move that, as far as I can tell, is mostly promoting irony.

(By the way, Food Inc. is now playing at the 29th Street Mall in Boulder, so go check it out! If you're not in Boulder, click here to find where it's playing near you.)

This past winter, headlines told of unimaginably brutal conditions on a labor camp in Immokalee, FL where workers were forced to pick tomatoes against their will, had their pay stolen week after week, and were beaten, chained, and locked inside box trucks so that they wouldn't escape overnight. (Take a virtual tour of Immokalee.)

This is where Chipotle gets their tomatoes. And they buy a lot of tomatoes.

After years of uncontested claims of "Food with Integrity," all the while buying tomatoes like any other fast-food giant, Chipotle executives probably figured they could get away with one more glaring contradiction. But this time, at Food, Inc. screenings across the country, Campaign for Fair Food allies rallied, demanding Chipotle show farmworkers some respect and dignity. Below are photos of fair food activists in Baltimore and in Denver, home to Chipotle corporate headquarters.

Director of Food, Inc., Robert Kenner, and co-producer, Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), joined Will Allen (Growing Power), Frances Moore Lappe (Diet for a Small Planet), Raj Patel (Stuffed and Starved), Josh Viertel (President of Slow Food USA), and two dozen other leaders of the sustainable food movement in signing a sharply-worded letter to Chipotle's CEO.

It reads in part:

"We realize that Chipotle has announced that it's paying an extra penny per pound for tomatoes, but we have to ask: What has Chipotle done since that announcement to identify and cultivate growers who are willing to raise their labor standards and pass the penny along to their workers? Your failure to do...hard work in the Florida tomato industry – together with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) – threatens to render your announcement an empty gesture aimed more at public relations damage control than an effort to make real change."

Moviegoers had the opportunity to sign the letter at their showing to help support the Immokalee farmworkers. (Sign it yourself here.)

Now when you hear the hype put out by Chipotle, you'll know the truth behind it.

It's also worth noting here that their burritos are just nasty. Did you know that one Chipotle Chicken Burrito (consisting of rice, pinto beans, cheese, chicken, sour cream, salsa, and a tortilla) contains 1180 calories and 19 grams of saturated fat? That's the same amount of calories and saturated fat as three 6-in. Subway Steak and Cheese subs, not to mention the Chipotle Chicken Burrito contains 2,900 mg. of sodium -- more than the recommended daily intake. They beep when they back up? So will you if you don't lay off the Chipotle.

Is your refrigerator running? And talking?

2009-07-16T10:50:00.007-07:00

Last week, a Boulder-based smart-grid startup called Tendril unveiled a deal with General Electric to collaborate on software to connect GE's “smart appliances” to the grid.

But why?

Given that about half of a typical home’s electricity consumption goes to power appliances, lighting, and water heating, these demand-response appliances would not only shrink your personal carbon footprint, but would also allow utilities to avoid building new power plants to meet peak demand or firing up dirty ones to avoid brownouts.

For most utilities, electricity demand peaks from 3-8 pm when people come home from work, cook dinner, wash clothes, run the dishwasher, charge up their cellphones, and flick on their big-screen TVs.

During the summer they crank up their air conditioners, which is why utilities like California’s PG&E have spent billions of dollars building natural gas “peaker” power plants that sit idle most of the time except when a heat wave hits. Or in the case of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, coal-burning power plants in Arizona and Utah provide them with peak power.

Of course, most consumers could care less because they pay the same flat electricity rate regardless of what it costs the utility to meet peak demand. Well, not for long. Smart electricity meters and the interactive power grid will allow utilities to impose variable or time-of-day pricing, which means it’s going to get pricey to run the washing machine in the evening when you realize you have no clean clothes for work the next day (so pull those clothes back out of the hamper).

How does this shit work?

How will these "smart appliances" help fix this electricity peak problem? I mean, sure it's smart, but is it a good conversationalist?

In fact, it is. If you turn on your oven to cook a meal when electricity rates are high, your stove will tell your refrigerator to delay defrosting or to adjust its temperature until after you've cooked your meal. Likewise, the washing machine will send a signal wirelessly or through the home’s power lines to the dishwasher to switch on after the clothes are cleaned. How freaking sweet is that.

When consumers buy a new fridge they’ll go online and register their new appliance with the grid. Then the appliance will start to receive pricing information and download algorithms to modify its behavior.

If you sign up for your utility’s demand-response program, the utility’s computers will adjust the energy consumption of your appliances and those in thousands of other homes—without affecting your lifestyle—to ensure peak demand is met.

Or you can set up your own rules for your machines like specifying a monthly electricity budget and instructing your appliances not to break the bank. Tendril is even developing an application that lets customers control their appliances from their iPhone.

Smart appliances will come with higher price tags, given the added electronics, but inevitable higher electricity rates will (hopefully) prompt people to replace their old machines when they realize the potential for savings and return on investment.

Like, for instance, this one, which is presented in this ravishing, high-budget GE video:

As we all know, U.Sians aren't great with recognizing long-term savings, but hopefully people aren't as dumb as their old machines and will recognize a smart investment when they see one.

Source: Smart appliances

Think Outside the Bottle

2009-07-11T16:15:00.005-07:00

This week, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources.

Later that same day, residents of the rural town of Bundanoon, south of Sydney, voted to protect the earth and their wallets banning the sale of bottled water in their town. "I have never seen 350 Australians in the same room all agreeing to something," said Jon Dee, who helped spearhead the "Bundy on Tap" campaign in Bundanoon.

Bundanoon's battle against the bottle has been brewing for years, ever since a Sydney-based beverage company announced plans to build a water extraction plant in the town. Residents were furious over the prospect of an outsider taking their water, trucking it up to Sydney for processing and then selling it back to them.

To prevent lost profit in the 10 town businesses that sell bottled water, it has been suggested they instead sell reusable bottles for about the same price. Residents will be able to fill the bottles for free at public water fountains, or pay a small fee to fill them with filtered water kept in the stores.

Over the past few years, at least 60 cities in the U.S. and a handful of others in Canada and the U.K. have agreed to stop spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water.

Although bottled water was first popularized in the 1980s as a convenient, healthy alternative to sugary drinks, it was quickly realized that it is actually just an environmental menace.

Here are some handy stats on bottled water consumption:

The United States consumes the most bottled water on the planet.
In 2007, the last year for which global statistics were available, more than 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold around the world, mostly in North America and Europe.
The total amount sold in the United States alone that year (33 billion liters) averages out to about 110 liters (almost 30 gallons) of water per person.
An estimated total of the equivalent of 32-54 million barrels of oil was required to generate the energy to produce the amount of bottled water consumed in the U.S. in 2007.

Let's take these statistics to our local officials and urge them to follow suit with "Boulder on Tap" and "Baltimore on Tap" and "Buffalo on Tap" and "Wherever-else-y'all-live on Tap" (even if you don't live in a "B" town like the rest of us). Let's think outside the bottle.

Sources: Australians Ban Bottled Water; bottled water stats

Where's the tainted beef?

2009-07-10T12:13:00.009-07:00

If you eat beef, you’ve almost certainly consumed JBS beef. That’s because Brazil-based JBS is the largest beef producer in the world, and the third-largest U.S. beef packer.

Here in the U.S., JBS has dramatically expanded a “voluntary” recall of beef “that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H,” the USDA reports. USDA rates the recall Type 1, meaning the product presents a “high” health risk, meaning people are dying from it. The recall originally involved 41,000 pounds; now the company is trying to call in 421,000 pounds. (For those of you crazies who think in terms of Quarter Pounders, that's 1.7 million QPs.)

Meanwhile, down in Brazil, JBS is being investigated by the Brazilian government for “bribing of public officials, racketeering, corruption, fraud and collusion,” Reuters reports. Not long ago, Greenpeace called out the company for knowingly buying cows raised on illegally cleared rainforest land.

The plant where the outbreak originated is located in Colorado, but by no means are Coloradans beef-eaters the only ones at risk. As for the U.S. recall, those 421,000 pounds were “distributed nationally and internationally,” the USDA reports, without adding which states and nations received it. Let’s all bow our heads for a moment and ponder what it means that a single beef-processing plant could produce nearly half a million pounds of beef in a day—and send it out to points unknown across the globe. Like a butterfly’s wings, a little bullshit in a massive slaughterhouse can have tremendous global impact.

What's almost as freaky is that the tainted beef got processed way back on April 21—meaning it has been circulating in the food system for three months. Already, 18 people in multiple, but unspecified states are known to have been infected. But the CDC reckons that for every confirmed E. coli case in an outbreak like this one, 35-50 people more actually comes down with it: That’s means that between 630 and 900 people are already ill from this one JBS incident, and the number of infected will almost surely grow. Very little of the suspect beef will likely ever actually come back -- most of it will be consumed by unwitting consumers.

As we reviewed last post, this is because recalls are voluntary. There is no requirement legally that the products be tracked down by the processor and yanked from store shelves, out of restaurant freezers, out of community and church group food lockers. There’s no requirement that grocers or chefs not use contaminated products.

If you somehow still think this is all just a fluke, let's look at how the USDA tests slaughterhouses for E. coli:

• The agency creates incentives for plants to use interventions (e.g. chemical sprays or hot water rinses).
• The agency avoids collecting data or performing tests that would show if these technologies are not being used effectively at the largest beef slaughter plants.
• The agency avoids enforcement of regulations at these large plants when it learns of unsafe production practices and contamination coming from these plants.

In other words, the USDA’s inspection program is much more geared to protecting the profitability of the meat giants than it is to protecting the public health. Gigantic meat companies like JBS, Tyson, and Cargil couldn’t exist without food-safety regime as toothless as this one.

JBS from the start. Satisfying to the end, when you die a horrible, premature death from something entirely preventable.

Source: JBS recall

FDA is an acronym for 'Monsanto'

2009-07-10T10:01:00.009-07:00

In a devastating and mildly predictable turn of events, Michael Taylor, the former Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto, has been chosen to advise FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg on food safety.

For 7 years, Taylor worked as an attorney for Monsanto and even helped them get rBGH (the bovine growth hormone) into our country's dairy. (If you've been drinking soy milk for so long that you don't even remember the dangerous effects of rBGH, it has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, particularly breast cancer.)

One of Michael Taylor's specific tasks will be "to plan implementation of new food safety legislation". (This conflict of interest and many more are highlighted in Food, Inc., which I hope you've already seen or are planning to see soon!)

Currently, federal agencies don’t have the power to enforce recalls of tainted foods. All food recalls are “voluntary” and offending companies are not even required to release information about where the tainted foods were sent.

But the food-safety legislation creeping through the House, H.R. 2749, or the Food Safety Enhancement Act, would give the Fucking DumbAsses the power to recall suspect food. That’s an important step and it’s shocking that the agency doesn’t currently have that power. But here’s the catch: the FDA’s purview does not extend to meat. Under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the USDA, not the FDA, monitors meat safety. And there are no such pieces of legislation to look forward to that would give the USDA this power over the meat production corporations.

Gigantic meat companies like JBS—which is currently under investigation for “bribing of public officials, racketeering, corruption, fraud and collusion—will still be deciding when to declare a recall and what information to divulge. (My next post will be about JBS' huge beef recall.) This is an outrage and our laws need to be changed so that the USDA has the power to, at the very least, recall tainted meat.

I suppose we'll have to later address punishing these corporations for what they've done, but for now, let's at least work to protect public health.

Sources: Michael Taylor; Food Safety

Food, Inc.

2009-06-29T13:50:00.010-07:00

Last night, I watched a great documentary called Food, Inc. that I urge you to all go see. Here is the website where you can watch the trailer and type in your zip code to find out if it's playing around you. And if it's not, ask your local theater to show it!

Here are some highlights from the film:

Corn:

" Our grocery stores display the illusion of diversity, but really it is only a few companies using a few ingredients. Most of our “food” is simply clever rearrangements of corn."
"30% of the land of the U.S. is used to grow corn because the government pays farmers to overproduce corn. We’re even forcing fish to eat corn. This cheap corn allowed cheap meat. So the prices of junk food and meat are artificially low because of these corn subsidies."
"Feeding corn to cows causes E.coli to grow in their stomachs. Even giving cows 5 days of eating grass will allow them to shed 80% of their E.coli, but this never happens."
"Many people have died from food contamination, but our government does nothing because nearly everyone who works for either the FDA or the USDA has ties to either the beef industry, the dairy industry, or Monsanto. In 1976, the FDA conducted 50,000 food inspections. In 2000, they conducted 5,000."

Workers:

"A typical grower for Tyson, Perdue, or any of the other big 4 growers is forced to borrow $500,000 (or risk losing their contract) and earns $18,000 a year."
Smithfield Farms (the cause of the latest swine flu outbreak) and other various multinational meat production companies pay their workers so little that they cannot afford to hire citizens of the U.S. So, they advertise in Mexico and arrange for buses to transport people across the border. Smithfield has an agreement with Immigration Services that immigration officers will turn a blind eye as the workers come across in the buses, but that they can arrest a few of their workers a day and send them back to Mexico, sometimes after people have been living and working there for 15 years. This way, the meat production is not disrupted and Immigration looks like they're doing their job. But of course none of the higher-ups at these companies ever get in trouble for hiring illegal immigrants. Only the workers, who work one of the most disgusting, most dangerous jobs in the world."

Health:

"Tomatoes are picked when they are green, shipped from far, far away, and then ripened with ethylene gas. So although it looks like a tomato, it’s really just the notion of a tomato. "
"Engineering foods is designed to push our evolutionary buttons: We have evolved to search for sugar, salt, and fat because they’re rare in nature."
"1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will develop early onset diabetes. For minorities, this number jumps to 1 in 2."
"We have “redesigned” chickens to have bigger breasts because people prefer white meat."

If this last statement doesn’t summarize the desire to dominate nature, the subjugation of women, the exploitation of animals, and the racism of the meat industry -- and of our society as a whole -- I don’t know what does.

But we have an incredible amount of power here. The battle against tobacco is a perfect model for how an industry’s dangerous practices can be curbed through consumer choices. (Of course, now all of those tobacco farmers are growing corn, so we need to change it again.) WalMart switched from milk that contained rBST (bovine growth hormone) because consumers asked for it: We changed the biggest company in the world simply with our purchases!

Every time you buy a piece of food, you vote. So if you are hungry for change, you can change the world with every bite.

Food Independence Day

2009-06-25T10:19:00.005-07:00

This 4th of July, let's declare our food independence by sourcing the ingredients for our holiday meals as locally, sustainably, and deliciously as possible.

Whet our appetites by sharing your menu in advance of the 4th of July! Share your recipes and the names of the local food producers whose ingredients you’ll be using.

Also, check out this cool nonprofit called Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI). KGI is a network of 10,000 gardeners from 100 countries who are working to help individuals, families, and communities achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through the promotion of kitchen gardening, home-cooking, and sustainable local food systems.

Let's Regress to Progress

2009-06-12T10:56:00.008-07:00

I recently spoke with some Europeans at a Boulder Climate Leaders meeting, and they provided an interesting perspective on the U.Sian lifestyle. They said that we are the only country they know of that still uses the inefficient "Edison bulb," or as we all know it, the incandescent. Here are a few facts about the Edison bulb vs. CFLs:

CFLs are 4x more efficient and last up to 10x longer than Edison bulbs.
A 22 watt CFL has about the same light output as a 100 watt incandescent. CFLs use 50 - 80% less energy than incandescents.
The electricity used over the lifetime of a single Edison bulb costs 5x to 10x the original purchase price of the bulb itself.
Although CFLs are more expensive initially, a single 18 watt CFL used in place of a 75 watt incandescent will save about 570 kWh over its lifetime. At 8 cents per kWh, that equates to a $45 savings.

Thanks for everything, Edison, but we've moved on.

These Europeans I was speaking with also told me that GE perpetrated the myth that CFLs release more mercury than incandescents because GE didn't want to have to switch from producing incandescents to CFLs. (And instead of progressing, they are now getting out of the light bulb industry all together.)

The people I was speaking with also pointed out that we are the only country that heats up 50 gallons of hot water in case we want some hot water. They all thought this was so funny. But not ha ha funny. And of course, we are also one of the only countries that has such huge houses that having a 50 gal. water tank sitting around isn't a concern.

We are also one of the only countries that heats an entire (huge) house when everyone is in the same room. They all simply had electric heaters in every room or even every couple rooms and just moved it to where they needed it. They said at dinner parties, they would put a heater under the table and the women (who presumably had bare legs and open-toed shoes) could lift up the table cloth and get warm from the heater. The men (who presumably had on pants and closed-toed shoes) would just keep the tablecloth in front of them. I thought this was such a poignant anecdote to illustrate how easy it is to have various people regulate their own temperatures and comfort levels without going to the absurd lengths that we do.

The same is true when attempting to cool our houses and offices. We make our office buildings freezing so that people can wear suits to work during summer. We surround our office buildings with asphalt and we fill them with machines that get left on all the time and with small heaters that we pretend are just giving us light. (Let's say you have a tiny office with only 10 incadescents. At 75 watts each, that's the equivalent of having a 750 watt heater running in your office all the time.)

In my experience, Europeans (and Kiwis and Argentines and Chileans and Bolivians) live how I think my grandparents lived. Their ecological footprint was miniscule compared to the average footprint now (and in fact, their feet were actually smaller, too). People who are seniors now were around when common sense was more common, and this is the ideal I think we should be striving to get back to. Our throw-away society has led us astray and it's time to revert back to what makes sense.

Atheism Unshrouded

2009-05-30T17:40:00.007-07:00

Religion and atheism have always gotten a lot of playing time in my writer's group, perhaps because atheists and theists are split about evenly within the group. But this past week, one member of the theist faction got particularly heated and spoke disparagingly about atheists and atheism, so I thought it was time to review the terms that are being used so that we can try to speak intelligently about this subject.

Atheists do not all think "we're just gone when we die" and atheists are not "people who believe in nothing".

An atheist is a person who disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings. Atheists do not believe in a supernatural god. It is as simple and as complicated as that.

And although atheists are still in the minority, last year, 1 out of every 5 Americans said that they did not have a religious identity. This "no religion" category nearly doubled their share of the adult population between 1990 to 2008.

Furthermore, people who don't identify with a religion are the only demographic group that has grown in all 50 states in the last 18 years, so theists will have to get used to more and more atheists coming out of the closet. And I think it would be wise for theists to find reasonable ways of interacting with this growing population (although I recognize that it may be difficult for some theists to incorporate reason into their thinking).

So, although I have much else to say about this topic, with this post I simply wanted to remind people of what atheism means so that, at the very least, people can have conversations that begin on or around the same page.

Statistics source: American Religious Identification Survey

Let's Not Be Snotty

2009-05-29T12:03:00.013-07:00

Last night at writer's group, Jessy mentioned that we shouldn't refer to tissues as "Kleenex," and I couldn't agree more. Kleenex are bad news and not only should they not get the privilege of being the brand of all tissues, we shouldn't use them at all.

Did you know that it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex? That's right, every time you use a Kleenex tissue, you are blowing away ancient forests. And every time you use Scott or Cottonelle toilet paper, you’re flushing old growth trees down the toilet. That's because Kimberly Clark, maker of these products, refuses to use recycled paper in its products.

Because of this, the Kimberly-Clark company (who makes Kleenex) is enemy No. 1 of the Kleercut Campaign to save ancient forests.

You may not be surprised to hear that U.S. paper consumption is the highest in the world: 3x more per person than the average European and 100x more than the average person in China. Our paper consumption eats up 12,430 square miles of forest each year—most of it in ecologically important areas. But did you know that pulp and paper manufacturing is one of the most polluting industries in North America and the third greatest emitter of CO2? That's a serious blow to the planet.

According to Kimberly-Clark’s 2005 Sustainability Report, they used 3,113,000 metric tons of virgin fiber in 2005. This was the last time they publicly reported this tonnage in their sustainability report.

The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is clearly causing unnecessary environmental devastation. But who is at fault? Is it the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products? In part, yes. But there is something else going on, too.

The New York Times reported a 40% in sales of "luxury brands" of toilet paper in 2008. Paper companies are anxious to keep those percentages up, and in its third quarter, Kimberly-Clark spent $25 million on advertising to persuade Americans against trusting their bottoms to brands that use recycled paper. So maybe softness is not a natural preference of Americans. Maybe someone’s been spending $25 million a year to whisper in our ear that recycled isn’t good enough, and we've been falling for it.

Well today's the day to stop! If you want some brand suggestions, I'm more than happy to offer my advice -- and if you're wondering how I keep my own bottom so soft, I use Seventh Generation, which is made from 100% recycled paper, at least 80% of which is post-consumer.

So don't let an already poo-filled situation get shittier by causing our ancient forests to be cut down. Switch to recycled toilet paper, tissues, napkins, and paper towels, and you'll avoid a real mess.

Source: Kleercut

What's in a Name?

2009-05-29T09:54:00.004-07:00

What's not in a name anymore? The word "things"!

This blog needed a name makeover and it got one. Hope you like it.

What Do You Do??

2009-05-27T10:23:00.004-07:00

Last chance (not really) to let me know what you do to reduce your ecological footprint! So many of you are doing so much to live a more sustainable, compassionate life, and I want to hear all about it!

So please email me (or use the comment function) and tell me the ways you're reducing your carbon footprint!

For a sample email, see here.

Thanks for participating!

Reef Madness

2009-05-26T09:12:00.011-07:00

The sunscreen that you dutifully slather on before a swim at the beach may be protecting your body or, as we learned in the last post, may be harming your body. But the chemicals in those common brands of sunscreen are also killing coral reefs worldwide.

I'm sure we've all heard of "coral bleaching," but maybe didn't really know what it was. Well, briefly, four commonly found sunscreen ingredients can awaken dormant viruses in the symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae that live inside reef-building coral species. These algae provide coral with food energy and contribute to the organisms' vibrant color, but without them, the coral "bleaches" (turns white) and dies.

Coral reefs are dying off much quicker than previously thought. For the last two decades, Indo-Pacific reefs have shrunk by 1% each year—a loss equivalent to 600 square miles. That makes the rate of reef loss about twice the rate of tropical rain forest loss.

Between 4,000 and 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen wash off swimmers annually in oceans worldwide, threatening coral reefs by sunscreen-induced bleaching. Other human-induced factors such as coastal pollution, overfishing, and sedimentation also contribute to coral reef habitat degradation.

What can you do to help protect coral reefs?

Stop eating seafood to help combat overfishing. Plus, it's chock full of mercury, and that shit is nasty.
Evaluate your life and find ways you can reduce the pollution caused by your actions and purchases.
Use sunscreens with physical filters (which reflect instead of absorb ultraviolet radiation) and that are eco-friendly. See this post for suggestions.

So whether you spend your summer at the beach, hiking in the mountains, or just lounging on your deck, please choose your sunscreen wisely so you can keep your skin pale, but not your coral reefs.

Source: National Geographic

I'm Burnin For You

2009-05-24T13:23:00.024-07:00

I can't believe I haven't looked into this sooner, but after speaking with Micki the other night about sunscreens, I realized that I don't actually know if I'm using a good brand or not.

Thankfully, it turns out that I am. I checked with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which puts out a new guide every year rating both the efficacy and the environmental health cred of more than 780 different sunscreens.

The Bad

Most people trust that the claims on the bottle will ensure that the product truly protects their health and their families', but nothing could be less certain.

In a new investigation of 979 name-brand sunscreens, the EWG found that 4 out of 5 sunscreen products offer inadequate protection from the sun, or contain ingredients with significant safety concerns.

Leading brands were the worst offenders: None of market leader Coppertone's 39 sunscreen products met EWG's criteria for safety and effectiveness, and only 1 of 90 products from Banana Boat and Neutrogena (the second- and third-largest manufacturers) are recommended by EWG.

Many products on the market present obvious safety and effectiveness concerns, including one of every eight that does not protect from UVA radiation. Paradoxically, many sunscreen ingredients break down in the sun in a matter of minutes or hours, and then let UV radiation through to the skin.

The EWG says that 44% of products on the market contain ingredients that may be unstable alone or in combination. Of course, FDA has not proposed requirements for sunscreen stability, nor have they finalized comprehensive sunscreen safety standards they began drafting 30 years ago. Name-brands all have misleading or inaccurate claims on them, yet nothing is done about this.

Many sunscreens contain also nano-scale ingredients that raise potential concerns about their unique, toxic properties. FDA has failed to approve effective UVA filters available in Europe that, if approved here, could replace nano-scale ingredients. Some sunscreen ingredients even absorb into the blood and are linked to toxic effects. They release skin-damaging free radicals in sunlight, can disrupt hormone systems, can cause allergic reactions, and may build up in your body or in the environment.

FDA now stands in direct violation of a Congressional mandate requiring them to finalize sunscreen safety standards by May 2006, flouting not only Congress but also consumers, who are reliant on sunscreen to protect our health.

The Good

In the EWG's database, sunscreens are scored according to their effectiveness at blocking UVA and UVB rays, as well as by the amount of ingredients they include that have been linked to health concerns like cancers, developmental and reproductive toxicity, allergens, persistence, and bioaccumulation.

Here are common brands they recommend:

1. Blue Lizard: anything without oxybenzone (meaning, not the "water resistant" ones)

2. California Baby: anything with SPF 30+

3. CVS: with zinc oxide

4. Jason Natural Cosmetics: Sunbrellas Mineral Based Sunblock

5. Kiss My Face: "Paraben Free" series

The EWG actually breaks it down by the amount of each potentially hazardous substance, giving each product a score from 0-10 (zero being the best, 10 being the worst) in each category, as well as an overall score. The products below all received an overall "0":

1. Soleo Organics Sunscreen Organic: SPF 30+

2. Keys Soap Solar Rx Cosmetic Moisturizing Sunblock, SPF 30

3. California Baby Sunblock Stick: no fragrance, SPF 30+

4. Badger Sunscreen, SPF 30

The Ugly

Unfortunately, there are a few "organic" or "ethically produced" sunscreens that fall into the EWG's lowest ranking, meaning they are both ineffective at blocking the UVA and UVB and they contain nasty hazardous substances:

1. Avalon Organics: Vitamin C Skin Care: Moisture Plus Lotion, SPF 15

2. Nature's Gate Moisturizing Cream: SPF 15

3. Kiss My Face Everyday Moisturizer: SPF 15

That burns.

Quite the Dilemma

2009-05-22T13:53:00.011-07:00

Great news! UC Berkeley has assigned its incoming freshman Michael Pollen's book Omnivore's Dilemma! This incredible, award-winning book is going to be given to all freshman and transfer students so that they will have "a common intellectual experience by focusing on a single exciting work". How incredible is that?! CU didn't give me shit.

Although Washington State University initially chose Omnivore's Dilemma, too, it has been "canceled" due to political pressure budgetary constraints.

But people on the campus say that the university, which has a prominent agriculture college, bowed to pressure from agribusiness interests. (They also question the budget argument, noting that the university has already purchased more than 4,000 copies of the book to give to its students.)

Oh, and Washington State is a land grant institution, meaning that WSU's mission is to focus on the teaching of agriculture, science, and engineering "as a response to the industrial revolution and changing social class rather than higher education's historic core of classical studies".

In an email to The Chronicle, Patricia Freitag Ericsson, an assistant professor of rhetoric and professional writing, said that in a meeting on May 4, an administrator told panel members that the common-reading program would be canceled, in large part because of political pressure arising from this year’s book choice. Members of the committee were upset. She says the committee was also told that potential books for next year’s common-reading program would be sent to the provost, who would make the selection.

Letting the provost dictate such details is an excellent idea. University faculty do have an awful tendency toward a dangerous intellectual curiousity coupled with a suspicious openness to new ideas. We certainly wouldn’t want young minds to be overthrown by revelations about the world they inhabit.

Source: The Ethicurean

Ghent It Goin' On

2009-05-22T10:36:00.009-07:00

Takoma Park, a city outside of D.C., recently celebrated and observed Veg Week: City council members signed a pledge to eat vegetarian for a week "as a simple yet effect way for each of us to help protect the planet and animals—one meal at a time".

An official mayoral proclamation was issued and Sen. Jamie Raskin kept a blog about the event. Local businesses also had discounts on vegetarian foods, which offered an additional incentive for "city residents to explore the many wonderful vegetarian options available in [their] city".

Although I think this was a wonderful gesture, overseas, Takoma Park has been one-upped: The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week.

Public officials and politicians were the first to give up meat for a day, and schoolchildren will follow suit with their own veggiedag in September. (The mayor says that it is not mandatory, but instead of the vegetarian option being the one you have to request, if people wish, they may request a special meal with meat in it.)

The mayor says they're doing this to recognize the impact of livestock on the environment. He quotes the UN's findings that livestock are responsible for 1/5 of global greenhouse gas emissions.

It is expected that Veggie Day will help tackle obesity and significantly cut Ghent's environmental footprint. In fact, if everyone in town observes a "Veggie Day" for a single year, the CO2 savings will be equivalent to taking 18,000 cars off the road.

And to help people find the best vegetarian eateries in town, 90,000 "veggie street maps" are being distributed. So which city is next? Boulder, perhaps? Let's get it started right now...who's with me?!

Hear what the deputy mayor of Ghent has to say about all this.

Source: Belgian city plans 'veggie' days

Why Is Junk Food So Cheap?

2009-05-21T13:14:00.014-07:00

Let's explore this question as it relates to soda, the ultimate junk food. Soda is on the table (although it shouldn't be on yours) as a possible funding source for Obama's health care reform. The taxman cometh for soft drinks.

But why is it so cheap to begin with? The drop in soda prices which began, suspiciously, in the early 80s just as High Fructose Corn Syrup was taking off. Butter and beer prices have also dropped since then, while the prices of fruit and veggies have risen substantially: 40% faster than the Consumer Price Index over the last 30 years.

People who claim that nutrition experts and food policy people are being unrealistic when they advocate healthier eating since good food is expensive are stupid. They are also short-sighted, as they're clearly not taking future health costs into account when they use the words "cheap" and "expensive". But I digress. Junk food is not intrinsically cheaper, nor is healthy food intrinsically expensive. We made junk food cheap and we made good food expensive.

The more I learn about what we eat in this country, the more I come to realize that there is no free market in food. There’s only the stuff we subsidize and the stuff we don’t. And I’m not talking simply about cash subsidies paid to corn growers. I’m talking about a system that drives the wholesale price of corn and soybeans (the raw materials in all processed foods) to well below the cost of production. Meanwhile, fruits and vegetables don’t get that benefit—they’re expected to sell at a premium (even if in some cases the premium is small).

So I say, what we need are straight-forward price subsidies on healthy food. It’s something that has worked in other parts of the world, and yet it’s an idea that we don’t seem willing to touch. Where in the world has this worked, you ask? A city called Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which is now being referred to as "the city that ended hunger". Quite a slogan, eh?

How did Belo Horizonte do it? Here's an excerpt from Frances Moore Lappé‘s article from Yes Magazine:

"[The city] offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

[The city started] three large, airy “People’s Restaurants”
(Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve
12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers."

If those policies sound familiar, it’s because they echo common recommendations among U.S. food policy progressives. But it’s always nice when someone tries them out first—and they work. And work they did:

"In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up."

Granted, Belo’s efforts focus on malnutrition, while we in the developed world must attack the two-headed monster of hunger and obesity. But Belo’s policies would likely conquer both, and this Brazilian city provides hard evidence that you can address underlying social ills when you localize urban food systems and promote healthy eating.

So, although it’s great that we are finally willing to start taxing unhealthy food, this is only the first step of many. Without doing something to promote the good stuff, we’re only fighting half the battle. And it's quite a battle.

Sources: Tax Junk Food; Belo Horizonte

Be a Reel Player

2009-05-20T12:47:00.009-07:00

Our landlord won't let us xeriscape our backyard (even though he will let himself leave half a car and a dishwasher in it). So we must deal with our weed-filled disaster interspersed with patches of various kinds of grass instead of just fixing it. Being forced to deal with it instead of fixing the problem. Sometimes I feel like a broken record. Sometimes I feel like a broken record.

The most traditional option would be to mow the fucker down, but as expected, I've discovered that gas-powered lawn mowers are polluting monsters: Mow for an hour or drive your car for four hours: the emissions are equal. Mowers have been largely unregulated with few emissions controls, although all that will change as of 2012, when new emissions standards for small spark-ignition engines take effect. (The new rules will hopefully provide a 35% reduction in hydrocarbon emissions, lower evaporative emissions, and hence less ozone and greenhouse gas formation as a result of all that grass cutting.)

But as it stands now, say you mow your lawn one hour per week, April through November. Even using EPA's low-end number of "1-mowing-hour = 20-driving-miles", you would need to cut at least 700 miles off your yearly driving to keep your emissions level down to that of your pre-lawn life! And then there are your precious lungs to consider, as you inhale a stew of particulates.

Because my landlord will also not allow me to get a goat, I think my next best option is a reel mower.

Reel mowers offer a durable, effective, trash- and emissions-free (after manufacturing) choice. While some of you may be getting squeamish at the thought of using your grandfather's reel mower as a kid, rest assured that new reel mowers are lightweight and are sharp, sharp, sharp.

The advantages of reel mowers can barely be listed in this space, but to start, they're silent, fairly cheap ($80-$200), an excellent source of exercise, free to operate, emit nothing, and can either leave grass clippings to fertilize the lawn or you can use a handy catch-bag. Or, if you'd rather exercise your legs instead of your arms, set up a rig like this guy:

Whatever you do this summer, if you have a lawn to take care of or if you know your parents are getting ready to rev up their mower's engine for summer, please pass this info on about gas-guzzling mowers and gently (or not) urge them in the direction of a reel mower (or, ideally, xeriscaping). Because even without considering the environmental costs (gasp!) of giving up that behemoth mower, the smell of flowers instead of allergenic grass and the serenity of a weekend without vvrrrrrrmm will make it all worth it.

Call it how it is

2009-05-15T12:49:00.016-07:00

As I've been writing these recent blogs about milk and urging you to try new, vegetarian foods, I've realized that I need to be careful what words I use. I want to be sure not to denigrate vegetarian food and not to elevate the status of meat, dairy, and eggs. As you know, just because these "foods" are traditional, doesn't mean they're humane, good for our environment, or healthy for your body.

I propose that we need a rhetoric revolution. We need to lay down our meat-dairy-egg-centric language and instead choose words that celebrate rather than belittle the plant-based foods of the world!

The culprits here are none other than "faux," "fake," "mock," "substitute," and "imitation." Some mildly less offensive, albeit not altogether appetizing, variations include "analog," "alternative," and "replacement" -- words that make vegetarian food seem strange and appealing, when really it's natural, tastier, and healthier.

Milk

Let's call plant-based milks what they are (ie., soy, almond, rice, oat, hemp, hazelnut), not "milk substitute" and never "mylk". Let's never put Ys where Is should go. It's just wrong.

It's important to also call animal-based milks what they are. The dairy industry likes to think they own the word "milk," but they don't. "Cow's milk" is what they're pushing (or maybe lion's milk, rat's milk, or human's milk -- we're not sure).

Butter

We already use the word "butter" to refer to nut and fruit butters (peanut, almond, cashew, and apple, for instance). We also use it to refer to other fats that are solid at room temperature, such as cocoa butter and shea butter. Choose, then, "non-dairy butter," not ever "imitation" or "butter substitute". I caught myself referring to my vegan butter last night as simply "butter," which doesn't really help my cause because it looks and tastes like butter, but people need to know that it is not dairy butter.

Meat

The word "meat" comes from the Old English word mete, which simply referred to all foods that were eaten rather than drunk (no liquid dinners here, you drunks). We already say "coconut meat," so why shouldn't we embrace "grain meat," "soy meat," and "wheat meat"? How did you enjoy that "mushroom meat," Jason?

Let's reject "faux meat" cause it sounds nasty and inedible. Burgers and deli slices made from these plants are not "fake," unless of course you're referring to imaginary food like in Hook.

Trash

I know this is slightly off topic, but let's get rid of telling people to "throw it away". There is no away. There is only landfill, and if it's not in your backyard, it's in somebody else's. So let's start calling our waste what it is. There are three categories: compost, recycling, and landfill. Try labeling your waste cans in your kitchen -- it helped me and I bet it will help you. (It will also help guests who come over.) This labeling system will also allow you to see where your landfill-bound materials are coming from, and will help you cut down on them (ie., if you're eating a lot of frozen dinners or buying a lot of things that come wrapped in plastic.)

Let's start this rhetoric revolution right now. As I've said before and will say again, I believe that one of the most destructive things we can do is lie to ourselves or allow ourselves to be fooled or misinformed about what we're eating. So let's call it how it is.

Email Me!

2009-05-15T09:45:00.009-07:00

I've been hearing a lot of great things in response to some of my blogs, but I would love to hear from all of you. So many of you are doing so much to live a more sustainable, compassionate life, and I want to hear all about it!

So, if you would be so kind, please email me (or use the comment function) and tell me the ways you're reducing your carbon footprint!

Example:

Hello Dearest Jess,

To start with, I've started composting and I love how much it's reduced my trash. Cause what is trash, anyway? It's just stuff bound for the landfill, and that ain't cool. Now that it's warm out, I turn off the water in my shower while I shampoo and soap up, which has saved me money off my water bill. I've been remembering to bring my canvas bags to the grocery store and never buy bottled water anymore, so I've really cut down my plastic consumption. With the savings from my bag credits from the grocery store and with the money I've saved not buying bottled water, I've been able to buy a lot more things organic.

Hmm, what else? Oh yeah, I've stopped eating eggs for breakfast and was able to go off my Lipitor, which has saved me a lot of money, some of which I've spent on hemp milk. I really love it because it tastes like melted vanilla ice cream! The rest of the money I've saved so far I spent on Smart Strips to reduce my phantom loads, but those have saved me money, too! I'm not sure what to do with all this extra money yet.

Ooh, you'll love this: I've cut out red meat from my diet (except roast beef on Christmas) and I've been eating vegetarian for 2 meals every day. Next week, I'm going to bump that up and only eat meat twice a week! And then on from there!! I already have more energy and better sex.

Thanks for asking me to do this. I feel good about thinking of all the things I'm doing, and it's helped me to see what more I can do. I'll be sure to update you as I add more things to this list and find other ways to reduce my footprint. By the way, you're wonderful.

Love,

So and so

Let's Make Organic Be Organic

2009-05-15T09:10:00.008-07:00

You asked for a nibblet of good news, and a nibblet you shall receive.

It is widely agreed upon within the environmental and animal rights communities that Tom Vilsack, Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, was a terrible choice: He is known for aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (which are factory farms), for supporting industrial ethanol production (which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, literally taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world), and for his continued pimping for Monsanto and other biotech companies. So that's the good news. No, I'm just kidding, all that is still really fucked up.

The good news (I did say it was only a nibblet), is that several decisions have come down from the USDA recently that suggest that perhaps business is not as usual at ag’s end of the Mall. One such decision is the USDA's proposed revision to the organic dairy rules that would require a significant amount of grass-feeding (i.e. pasturing) for dairy cattle as a pre-condition for organic certification. This isn't already the case, you ask? Yeah, I was shocked and appalled, too. (And still very happy that I don't drink any kind of bovine hormone secretion. (Pus.))

This proposed revision would also be a good thing because it would effectively shut down the controversial “organic” factory farms run by Big Organic companies Aurora Organic and Horizon Organic.

Horizon Organic is in many of the grocery stores around me (just a subsidiary of Dean Dairy) and has had many claims filed against it for non-compliance with organic standards. One such complaint is that their cows don't have access to pasture, and the below points are some of what qualifies milk as organic:

Organic dairy cows must eat grain that isn't genetically modified or treated with pesticides or fertilizers, and the cows cannot be given growth hormones or antibiotics.
Dairy cows must have access to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air and direct sunlight suitable to the species, its stage of production, the climate and the environment.

Basically, try not to buy Big Organic.

This decision would also bring the USDA organic label that much closer to being actually organic (at least for cow's milk), which is a good thing. So, that's the good news I've come up with. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with any of us, since we don't drink cow's milk anymore anyway, but it's still worth recognizing for the benefit of all those cows and all those pus-drinkers.

Monsanto

2009-05-14T14:56:00.011-07:00

This company has been mentioned in a previous blog about our food crisis, but do we know how bad this company really is?

Well, let's take this example. Monsanto, the world’s largest corporate agribusiness chemical firm, has a new radio ad out touting how its genetically modified seeds are going to save the world from environmental catastrophe and human hunger.

However, this corporation made more than $11 billion last year amidst a world food crisis. The catch phrase of this ad, “Produce more, conserve more” even has its own website, which conveniently links directly to Monsanto’s website section on “sustainable agriculture”. But the reality of Monsanto’s seeds and the company’s ethics and commitment to fighting world hunger have nothing to do with producing more or conserving more.

Of all genetically-modified seeds, 85% are engineered for herbicide tolerance, and most of these crops are Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” cotton, corn, soy, and canola seeds. What this tolerance means is that the plant can actually withstand significant amounts of pesticides being sprayed on it—in effect promoting pesticide use. In the past, farmers were motivated to spray judiciously since their crops could be adversely affected. But farmers growing GM seeds don’t worry about this, and as a result there has been an increase in pesticide use in the U.S. since the introduction of GM seeds. In fact, since the introduction of GM crops in the U.S., more than 120 million pounds of additional pesticides have been used.

In 2008, Monsanto’s total sales for Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides was more than $4 billion, which is up 59% from 2007. Perhaps more importantly, its gross profit from such sales was nearly $2 billion--up 131% from 2007. So, what is Monsanto conserving? Certainly not biodiversity, human health, wildlife, pollinators, or the soil, which are all adversely affected by pesticide use.

The claims of “producing more” that Monsanto touts in this new ad is also completely unfounded. Not a single GM crop has been commercially introduced that is intended to increase yield. Agronomists and plant scientists made far greater advances in yields through conventional breeding methods in the 20th century than they ever have with GM crops. In fact, there have been several studies that show that there are yield losses associated with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans.

Four cash crops--soy, maize, cotton, and canola make up almost 100% of GM crops planted worldwide. Of these commodity crops, most are used to make biofuels, processed foods, animal feed, and vegetable oils--they are not fed directly to people in their whole form. The bottom line? GM crops are not feeding the world and they are not enabling us to produce more.

What biotech companies have been effective at doing is crafting media messages that persuade the average person to believe that their crops increase yield and that without GM crops we simply couldn’t feed the world. But we aren't feeding the world right now, and I bet you can guess one of the main reasons for this. {Moooo.}

The Secretary of Agriculture that Obama chose, as you may know (and do know if you've seen Vox's latest show) is named Tom Vilsack. It is widely agreed upon within the environmental and human rights communities that Tom Vilsack was a terrible choice for this post: He is known for aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (which are factory farms), for supporting industrial ethanol production (which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world), and for his continued pimping for Monsanto and other biotech companies.

So, our Secretary of Agriculture is mixed up in all of this Monsanto bullshit that we've just learned about. However, I do have one nibblet of good news that's come out of the USDA recently, and am eager to share it with you. But you'll just have to wait until next time, cause I've rambled on enough for one day. Until then...

Replace That Egg!

2009-05-11T15:28:00.008-07:00

Preface

I really hesitate to say this, but I think I have to. If you have a farmers' market that sells eggs and you can't yet bear to give up eggs completely, I think there is one way you can still eat eggs humanely and compassionately. Just make sure to visit the farm from which the eggs come, verify that the hens are being treated humanely and that they're being fed what chickens should eat.

But remember that you still have to be careful about not eating anything made with eggs from stores and restaurants, cause who knows how sickly those eggs are (you do!). So if you're the type of person that can never eat any foods with eggs in them except the eggs you buy from your local humane farmer or the eggs from your own backyard, then more power to you! For me, I think I would have trouble with this distinction, so I'd better just give them up completely.

However, hopefully one day I'll have a few chickens in my backyard. I'll pick up and eat the eggs that the hens naturally produce, and I'll of course let the baby boy chicks live even though they won't give me eggs. I can't see anything wrong with this scenario (if you can, I'm certainly open to hearing what you have to say). But for most of you out there that don't have chickens in your backyard, hopefully you now realize that it's time to rid those ova from your refrigerator.

Egg-free deliciousness

So what do you do when it's somebody's birthday and they want a cake? You can either tell them to fuck off and find their own cake, or you can make them a tasty, egg-free one. In fact, it's actually very easy to make egg-free cakes, quiches, mousses and other traditionally eggy dishes. (Vegan cookbooks and websites contain plenty of such recipes.) And it's creative and fun instead of traditional, eggy, and gross.

Eggs are used to bind a dish and, when whipped, may also incorporate air making a cake or pudding very light. Vegan egg replacement powders are available from any healthy-esque grocery store (such as Whole Foods or Vitamin Cottage). These replacers can be useful, especially for tricky foods like meringues. However, many recipes can be adapted using one of the suggestions below (just remember to bear in mind the final dish -- you shouldn't use banana as a substitute when making a quiche).

Instead of 1 egg, you can use:

1 tbsp gram (chick pea) or soya flour and 1 tbsp water
1 tbsp arrowroot, 1 tbsp soya flour and 2 tbsp water
2 tbsp flour, 1/2 tbsp shortening, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 2 tsp water
50g tofu blended with the liquid portion of the recipe
1/2 large banana, mashed
50 ml white sauce

Alternative binding agents:

soya milksoya dessert (vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry)
custard
mashed banana
plain silken tofu
soya cream
sweet white sauce (soya milk, vegan margarine, sugar and cornflour)
agar agar

I'm not an expert on vegan baking (yet), but I do know people who are, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. And if you have any stellar recipes, pass them along!

By the way, I know I'm pushing the envelope a bit far when many of you are still working on getting rid of meat from your diets, but I'd love it if some of you gave this a shot and told me how it goes for you!

As always, thanks for reading.

Which Came First?

2009-05-11T10:47:00.013-07:00

It doesn't matter. You shouldn't eat either of them.

The case against eating eggs from a human health perspective is not as strong as it is from an animal rights/eating compassionately perspective. But, because maybe not everyone was fully convinced after reading my last post, I'll go over some of the human health problems associated with eating eggs so that you can add that extra piece to your reasoning for stopping eating them.

First of all, let's not kid ourselves about what eggs are. They are reproductive cells. Think of the word ovum the next time you think about eating an egg. Because they are reproductive bodies, eggs contain the bio-genetic makeup of its parent organism. So, to know something about an egg, we must know something about the progenitor of that egg. And as we know, most hens live horrible, horrible lives and eat horrible, horrible food.

But let's move on. About 70% of the calories in eggs are from fat,

much of it saturated fat. Eggs, as we know, are also full of cholesterol: about 213 mg per egg (for reference, it is recommended that you keep your cholesterol below 300 mg per day, although this recommendation comes from the same governmental body that allows us to eat mercury and arsenic, so I'd say that number is on the high end). Here's another point of reference: A single egg has as much cholesterol as 3 servings of beef tenderloin. (All vegan foods, however, are cholesterol-free.) Let's see...what else? Oh right, eggs are also the leading cause of Salmonella poisoning, which causes fever and the nasty d-word.

As you know, having high cholesterol means living with a greater risk of suffering a heart attack. But did you know that for every 1% increase in the amount of cholesterol in your blood blood, there is a 2% increase in your risk of heart attack (conversely, every 1% reduction from the average cholesterol level reduces the risk by 2%, so there is still hope for everyone).

Elevated cholesterol—anything above 150—promotes atherosclerosis, the buildup of cholesterol, fat, and cells in the arteries that feed the heart muscle. Incidentally, while the average cholesterol level in the U.S. is 210, the average vegetarian’s cholesterol level is 161 and the average vegan’s cholesterol level is 133. People with cholesterol levels below 150 are virtually assured of never having a heart attack, while nearly 1/3 of meat-eaters will die from a heart attack.

A Harvard study of over 21,000 male physicians found that the risk of death in men who ate 7 eggs a week went up 23%. (1) The men were studied over a 20-year period and routinely surveyed about their health status and eating habits. During that period, 1,550 had heart attacks, 1,342 had strokes and 5,000 died.

But don't just think that this means you'd have to have an egg every day for breakfast. Depending on your diet, eggs may be in virtually everything you eat: baked goods, breaded foods, pastas, anything with mayonnaise in it, pancakes, french toast, waffles, breads and crackers, etc. So, in order to keep your number well below 7 eggs a week, some dietary changes are likely in order.

It should be noted here that replacing eggs with egg whites in your diet only doubles the number of eggs used, which of course doubles the number of hens that must be held captive because of your diet. Egg Beaters and other egg replacers are usually just egg whites, so if you're looking for a subsitute, make sure to find a vegan one.

People used to talk about how eggs are good for you because they provide protein. However, while eggs also provide heart disease, soy protein has been proven to lower cholesterol, and the high fiber content of a vegetarian diet helps eliminate excess cholesterol from your digestive tract (meat, dairy products, and eggs have no fiber at all).

Drugmakers spend billions of dollars marketing cholesterol-lowering drugs, and the advertising works. Doctors write millions of prescriptions. The pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars. But since the focus is on treating the disease rather than preventing it, adults take their cholesterol-lowering drugs and feed meat, eggs, and dairy to their kids, which keeps the cycle going. Perhaps this is because doctors in the U.S. receive only 3 hours of nutritional training during all of medical school. Of course, adopting an egg-free vegetarian diet is cheaper and more effective than cholesterol-lowering drugs, and it has absolutely no adverse side effects.

My third post on this topic is going to be about how you can make the change to an egg-free life -- namely, what to use instead of eggs. As usual, I will be learning along with you and will be doing some (experimental) vegan baking, so I hope you'll join me! (Seriously, come over.)

Source: (1) Luc Djoussé and J Michael Gaziano. Egg consumption in relation to cardiovascular disease and mortality: the Physicians' Health Study. Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, Apr 2008; 87: 964 - 969.

Who Are You?

2009-05-10T15:39:00.021-07:00

(Wow, how existential of me.)

May I ask you to participate in a little exercise of imagination? Seriously, please, do this for me. What have I ever asked of you? Ok, besides that. And that. Just do it, ok?

Ok. Imagine you enjoy spending time with others. Imagine you are curious and that you enjoy lounging in the sun. Imagine you care deeply for your babies and look out for your family members and your friends. You are part of a complex, social hierarchy and you have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation. Imagine you are smart (I know it's hard, but just try). You demonstrate self-control and you worry about the future. You learn from watching others. You comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and understand that objects still exist even after they are hidden from view (which means you are smarter than a small child). You are smarter than your dog and smarter than some primates.

(No, you are not a unicorn (sorry), but I had to put a filler here so you wouldn't be able to cheat.)

So did you already figure out what I'm talking about? Did you think I was talking about primates until I said you were smarter than some of them? Well folks, it turns out that you're a chicken. You are a small bird with a big personality. You may have a bird brain, but that bird brain is incredibly advanced, and with every study, researchers are showing us more and more how fascinating our little birdy brothers and sisters are.

Oh, the Humanity

We've all heard of "battery-hens" and probably many of you have switched to "cage-free" eggs after hearing some of the atrocities committed in these battery cages. I did this, too. But I started to wonder whether I was just being tricked into buying more expensive eggs.

And sure enough, from researching this, I've begun to discover the unfortunate truth: Terms like "free-range," "organic," "natural," and "cage-free" are just humane-washing (?) terms that were developed to smooth over public sentiment so that people would continue to eat eggs in a time when more and more people are choosing to eat compassionately.

A recent Gallup poll found that 96% of Americans (at least say that they) believe that animals should be protected from cruelty, yet animals on today's farms receive no protection from even the worst abuses.(3) As people become more aware of the horrors of factory farming, companies are responding by adding labels to their products with these comforting terms, terms that may conjure up images of animals who roam freely in green pastures. But the reality of life and death for animals on organic and free-range farms is very different. In fact, there is nothing compassionate about "free-range" or "cage-free" eggs. In fact, the whole thing is really fucked up. Let's see why!

"Cage-free"

This term will always be in quotes.

Ok, so remember that you're a hen. Those of you that produce "cage-free" eggs (and those of you who don't) are debeaked at the hatchery: Your beak is cut off with a burning hot blade. Thankfully they give you anesthetics. No, they really don't. Many of your friends simply die after this because it becomes too painful to eat or drink.

After enduring these mutilations, you're are shoved into tiny wire “battery” cages, which measure 18x20 inches and hold 5-11 of you (I had to get out a ruler). Some companies tout themselves as serving humanely produced eggs -- i.e., McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Safeway -- and allow only a maximum of 5 of you per cage. But each of you has a wingspan of 32 inches; so even in this "humane" scenario, each of you will spend the rest of your life crowded in a space the size of a file drawer with 4 other hens, unable to lift a wing.(4)

You live in sheds holding 50,000-125,000 other terrified birds. You are all forced to churn out huge numbers of large eggs, which causes you to suffer from Uterine Prolapse, a horrifying condition that causes your uterus to push out through the vent area, which leads to painful infection and a slow, agonizing death.

The cages are stacked on top of each other, and shit constantly falls onto you from the cages above and then into huge manure pits that line the sheds. The stench of ammonia and feces hangs heavy in the air, and disease runs rampant. Many of your friends die and as a survivor, you are forced to live with your dead and dying cagemates, who are left to rot.

There are 340 million of you that are raised for your eggs, and each of you endures a nightmare that lasts for two years.(5)

So, although "cage-free" eggs are more costly, they are almost always eggs from battery-caged hens anyway. (This scam was uncovered by authors Singer & Mason.) The U.S. government does not regulate the term "cage-free" or even define its meaning, and "free-range" animals are still killed if they are "useless."

Oh, and your male baby chicks are killed at birth because they don't lay eggs.

Hey, special shout-out to those of you in my writer's workshop! (Mention this and win a prize at our next meeting!) So, I wanted to join the group by referencing This American Life, and this is what I found: After he toured United Poultry Concerns in 1998, Ira Glass was so impressed with the personalities of the chickens he met that he hasn’t eaten chicken or any other animal flesh since. I've still never heard this guy, but I like him already.

I'm into doing these "to be continued" blogs -- mostly so I don't overwhelm you (have I overwhelmed you?) -- so the next post will be about why eating eggs is really, really bad for you. I'm sure you already knew this, but I find it's always nice to have some stats to back up your intuition.

I'd like to end this post with this: I believe that one of the most destructive things we can do is to lie to ourselves or allow ourselves to be fooled or misinformed into believing that animal agriculture is humane or necessary. But, I have hope. And I have this hope because I am convinced that it will only work for so long, and sooner (hopefully not later), we will all live and eat compassionately. Many of our friends have already begun to make the switch, as have I, and I couldn't be more excited about it.

Sources:
(1) Michael Specter, “The Extremist,” The New Yorker 14 Apr. 2003.

(2) William Grimes, “If Chickens Are So Smart, Why Aren’t They Eating Us?” The New York Times 12 Jan. 2003, late ed.

(3) David W. Moore, “Public Lukewarm on Animal Rights,” Gallup News Service, 21 May 2003.

(4) Allison Schiff, “Fowl Call: Treat Egg-Laying Hens Humanely,” Twin-Boro News, 28 Jul. 2004.

(5) National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Chicken and Eggs,” 23 Oct. 2006.

The Wonderful World of Healthy, Cruelty-Free Milk

2009-05-05T15:21:00.007-07:00

Welcome to the wonderful world of healthy, cruelty-free milk! Glad you're here! So are cows. Cows are glad, too.

Navigating the non-dairy milk aisle can be difficult -- but not nearly as difficult as having to swallow a bovine hormone secretion, so that's good.

Each non-dairy milk -- hereafter referred to as "milk," because why should cows have a monopoly on the word? -- has its own idiosyncricies that we will explore.

Rice milk

Let's start with rice milk because, as far as I remember, it tastes the most like cow's milk. It's sort of watery and is naturally a bit sweet, which is good because getting sweeteners in your milk isn't the idea. But it is different from cow's milk in that it doesn't have pus in it, so if you were hoping for pus, you'll be sorely disappointed. Rice milk does have a fair amount of carbs, though, so maybe not ideal for people who want to chug glasses of it at a time.

Rice, one of the most widely planted cereal crops worldwide, is intensively farmed. It needs lots of water because it is grown in flooded paddies. So right now, rice milk isn't a great choice in terms of environmental considerations, but new varieties of rice may make rice farming less intensive. But, some of these varieties are genetically modified. So if you do want to buy rice milk, buy USDA organic.

Soy Milk

Soy milk is obviously the mother of non-dairy milks -- but thankfully, no mothers were harmed in the making of these milks. Soy milk is beige, which I imagine can be initially off-putting to cow's milk drinkers (who wants a beige milkstache?). It has a less watery texture than rice milk, which I actually prefer, but which might take some getting used to.

Environmentally? Not so great. Not only is soy a high-spray, intensively-farmed crop, but most of the US crop is also genetically modified. Soy is so popular world-wide (it’s used as food for humans and livestock, and for making biofuels) that -- as I'm sure you've heard -- vast chunks of the Amazon rainforest are being cut down to grow soy, thus wrecking habitats and indigenous people’s lives and so forth.

But, you can get around this: Buy American-grown, identity-preserved USDA organic soymilk. If you want to find the organic American behind your soymilk, check out the Find Your Farmer function on the Organic Valley site. If you’re going to buy products using imported soybeans and you’re concerned about, oh, say, the fact that the Amazon rainforest produces about 20% of Earth’s oxygen, consider doing a little homework.

The Nature Conservancy’s Amazon resource information officer says that you should find out where your soy comes from because in 2006 the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (ABIOVE) and the National Association of Cereal Exporters (ANEC) signed a “Soy Moratorium,” in which they committed to not buy soy from areas that were deforested in the Amazon biome after that date. So, finding out what companies are part of ABIOVE and ANEC, and reading the small letters on the labels is way to good start. Just go to soy milk companies' websites and dig around a little.

It should be noted that Silk (which is a wind-powered company), now makes organic soy milk, and makes it in "original" (sweetened), unsweetened, vanilla, and chocolate, the last two of which are like a fucking delicious milkshake. They also make silk nog, which I really wish wasn't a seasonal flavor.

Hemp Milk

Gets you high.

No, really folks, it does.

No, really. This one is my favorite, and I'll tell you why.

But first, let's start out with the basics. It probably looks and tastes the least like cow's milk. It is putty-colored and sort of grainy, which takes some getting used to -- but I promise, you will get used to it and then you'll never look back!

Environmentally, we've probably all heard a bit about the wonders of hemp. Hemp is a hardy, fast-growing crop that naturally suppresses, ahem, weeds (because of its tall canopy), that resists many diseases, and that does not need lots of watering (big taproot). In other words, it doesn’t require intensive farming. Organic hemp milk is available, but if the product isn’t organic, keep in mind that the hemp in foods on our shelves comes from Canada, where it’s illegal to spray hemp crops that are used for food (although conventional fertilizers may still be used). So, in this one case, don't worry so much about buying organic. (Please don't take this sentence out of context and haunt me with it.)

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You are likely to encounter an array of milks that includes not only the above milks, but oat milk, almond and other nut milks, and coconut milk, which they use in So Delicious desserts and yogurts that you absolutely must try. You'll never want (need?) ice cream again.

My last word on this subject is to keep an eye on sweeteners, additives, etc. If you need to start with your non-dairy milk sweetened, that's fine. I started with original soy milk, then moved to unsweetened, and have settled on hemp milk. Also, most of these milks are vitamin-enriched, so instead of bovine growth hormones and pus (did I say pus already? Pus), you'll get vitamins. It's a pretty good trade.

Pus and Cookies: Why Milk is Fucking Nasty

2009-05-04T10:50:00.019-07:00

I know I promised I would review some non-dairy milks—and I will next post—but I had a request: In addition to exploring the atrocities associated with dairy farming, would I also review the health effects associated with drinking cow's milk? Why yes, I would.

Although I am not an expert and probably don't know all the associated detrimental health effects, I'll at least tell you what I know, which is hopefully enough to convince you that cow's milk is fucking nasty.

Human Bodies Fight Cow's Milk

Besides humans (and pets who are fed by humans), no species drinks milk beyond infancy or drinks the milk of another species.

Cow’s milk is suited to the nutritional needs of calves, who have four stomachs and gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months, sometimes weighing more than 1,000 pounds before they are 2 years old. We do not want our babies to do this. Nor do we want our adults to do this.

Cow’s milk is the number one cause of food allergies among infants and children, according to the American Gastroenterological Association. Most people begin to produce less lactase, the enzyme that helps with the digestion of milk, when they are 2 years old, which leads to lactose intolerance. Millions of Americans are lactose intolerant, which can cause bloating, gas, cramps, vomiting, headaches, rashes, and asthma. Even when people don't think they have a lactose sensitivity, I have never heard of a person who stopped eating dairy and didn't feel better because of it.

Studies have also found that autism and schizophrenia in children may be linked to the body’s inability to digest casein, a milk protein; symptoms of these diseases diminished or disappeared in 80% of the children who switched to milk-free diets.(1) A U.K. study showed that people who suffered from irregular heartbeats, asthma, headaches, fatigue, and digestive problems “showed marked and often complete improvements in their health after cutting milk from their diets.”(2)

Calcium and Protein Myths

Although American women consume tremendous amounts of calcium, their rates of osteoporosis are among the highest in the world. Conversely, Chinese people consume half as much calcium—most of it from plant sources—and have very low incidence of the bone disease.

Medical studies indicate that rather than preventing the disease, milk actually increases women’s risk of getting osteoporosis. A Harvard Nurses’ Study of more than 77,000 women ages 34 to 59 found that those who consumed two or more glasses of milk per day had higher risks of broken hips and arms than those who drank one glass or less per day.(3) T. Colin Campbell, professor of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, said, “The association between the intake of animal protein and fracture rates appears to be as strong as that between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.”

Humans can get all the protein that they need from nuts, seeds, yeast, grains, beans, and other legumes. It’s very difficult not to get enough calories from protein when you eat a healthy diet; protein deficiency (called askwashiorkor) is usually only a problem for people who live in famine-stricken countries.

However, consumption of excessive protein in the U.S. is a problem. Consumption of excessive protein from dairy products, eggs, and meat has been linked to the formation of kidney stones and has been associated with colon cancer and liver cancer.(4,5) Consuming too much protein puts a strain on the kidneys, which compensate by leeching calcium from the bones.

Cholesterol and Fat

Homogenizing milk involves the breaking down of fat particles to such a small size that the milk looks nice and smooth with no chunks of cream. But these small fat particles are the ones that permeate the intestines and end up in your blood stream, which raises your cholesterol and makes you unhealthy.

Since 2003, The National Dairy Council has spent $200 million to try to make people believe that milk can help people lose weight. But children's doctors warn against feeding cow's milk to children because it can cause anemia, allergies, and diabetes, and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease, America's number one cause of death. Many studies have proven that milk consumption is linked to weight gain: A study of more than 12,000 children nationwide found that the more milk they drank, the more weight they gained.

The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. And while public health experts have been concerned about young people drinking soda, very few have spoken out about the dangers of drinking milk. In fact, in order to ween children off soda, some parents have tried to get their kids to drink more milk instead. But milk is not the answer. It is a big part of the problem.

Let's Talk Pus

Any milk with a somatic cell count—i.e., pus—of more than 200 million per liter should not enter the human food supply, according to the dairy industry. Therefore, anyone living in a state where the somatic cell count is higher than 200 million shouldn’t be drinking milk. The problem is that every state but Hawaii is producing milk with pus levels so high that it shouldn’t enter the human food supply. The national average, at 322 million, is well above the industry’s limit. People in the great state of Colorado, for instance, consume 312,000,000 somatic cells in each glass of milk. PETA is calling on the USDA to lower the legal limit of allowable pus in milk to the limit used by the rest of the industrialized world; presently, our limit is nearly twice that.

What creates this pus? You guessed it. Bovine growth hormone (BGH) from Monsanto.

Dairy farmers give it to their cows to increase the amount of milk that their already overburdened cows produce. As we discovered in my last post, because cows are not built to produce this much milk, they are prone to a painful udder infection called mastitis. When they are milked, pus and bacteria from the infection flow right along with the milk. Researchers estimate that an ordinary glass of milk contains between one and seven drops of pus. This isn’t just fucking disgusting—it's dangerous. Pus can contain paratuberculosis bacteria, which cause Crohn’s disease in humans.

Dairy farmers try to control the rampant mastitis with large doses of antibiotics—but these antibiotics also wind up in the milk. Children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of too many antibiotics, which researchers believe can inhibit the development of the immune system.

What else is in there besides pus? All cow's milk—regular and "organic"—has 59 active hormones, scores of allergens, fat and cholesterol. Most cow's milk has measurable quantities of herbicides, pesticides, dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels), up to 52 powerful antibiotics, blood, feces, bacteria, and viruses. Basically, in addition to all the horrible shit they give to cows, cow's milk can also have traces of anything the cow ate, including such things as radioactive fallout from nuke testing.

What Can You Do?

I could go on and on and on with this stuff, but hopefully I've gone far enough. So what other options are there? Fortified plant-derived milks! They provide calcium, vitamins, iron, zinc, and protein but don't contain any cholesterol. These milks are perfect for cereal, coffee, soups, baking, and anything else you would use cow's milk for. Except if you're looking to ingest pus. Then I can't help you. No one can.

Sources:
(1) “Milk Protein May Play Role in Mental Disorders,” Reuters Health, 1 Apr. 1999.

(2) Severin Carrell, “Milk Causes ‘Serious Illness for 7M Britons.’ Scientists Say Undetected Lactose Intolerance Is to Blame for Chronic Fatigue, Arthritis, and Bowel Problems,” The Independent 22 Jun. 2003.

(3) D. Feskanich et al., “Milk, Dietary Calcium, and Bone Fractures in Women: A 12-Year Prospective Study,” American Journal of Public Health, 87 (1997) 992-97.

(4) Gary C. Curhan et al., “A Prospective Study of Dietary Calcium and Other Nutrients and the Risk of Symptomatic Kidney Stones,” The New England Journal of Medicine 328 (1993): 833-8.

(5) Kathleen M. Stadler, “The Diet and Cancer Connection,” Virginia Tech, Nov. 1997.

Drinking Milk Doesn't Hurt Cows

2009-05-03T16:08:00.013-07:00

If you don't know how we get cows' milk, this is a reasonable assumption. I thought this for a long time: Cows make milk anyway, and I'm not hurting them by drinking it -- it's not like they're being killed.

Well, it is like that.

Surprisingly, cows make milk for the same reason humans do: to nourish their babies. And, much to my dismay, I discovered that I am not one of their babies.

The fact that cows produce milk for the same reason humans do also means that cows don't magically produce milk all the time. So, in order for the cows to continuously produce milk, they are constantly impregnated using artificial insemination. Then, the day the calf is born, it is taken away from its mother. The mother cows are then hooked up to machines that often tear their udders and that steal their milk several times a day.

Using genetic manipulation, powerful hormones, and intensive milking, factory farmers force cows to produce 10 times as much milk as they naturally would.1 When the mother is too exhausted to produce "enough" milk anymore, she is slaughtered and ground up for meat.

Nine million cows live this way in the U.S. They spend their lives in sheds or on shit-caked mud lots that are rampant with disease.2

If you don't buy & drink organic milk, the story gets even worse here. I'm sure you've heard something about BGH before. This is Bovine Growth Hormone, and the cows are pumped full of it. BGH is used throughout the U.S., but has been banned in Europe and Canada because of concerns over human health and animal welfare.3 BGH causes extremely painful inflammation of the udder known as “mastitis,” and according to the industry’s own figures, between 30% and 50% of dairy cows suffer from it.4

A cow’s natural lifespan is 25 years, but cows used by the dairy industry are killed after 4 or 5 years.5

An industry study reports that by the time they are killed, 40% of dairy cows are lame because of the filth, intensive confinement, and the strain of constantly being pregnant and giving milk.6 Dairy cows are turned into soup, cheap pet food, or low-grade hamburger meat because their bodies are too “spent” to be used for anything else.

The fact that the calves are stolen from their mothers is an oft-overlooked part of this tragedy. After they're taken, mother cows search for and call for their calves long after they have been forced apart. Author Oliver Sacks, M.D., wrote of a visit that he and cattle expert Dr. Temple Grandin made to a dairy farm and of the great tumult of bellowing that they heard when they arrived: "‘That’s one sad, unhappy, upset cow. She wants her baby. Bellowing for it, hunting for it. It’s like grieving, mourning—not much written about it. People don’t like to allow them thoughts or feelings.’”7

So what happens to those calves that are taken away from their mothers when they're a day old? The female calves are sentenced to the same horrible fate as their mothers.

The male calves, however, are put into dark, tiny crates, where they are kept immobilized so that their flesh stays tender. They are fed a liquid diet that is low in iron and has little nutritive value in order to make their flesh white. This heinous treatment makes these poor little guys ill, and they frequently suffer from anemia, diarrhea, and pneumonia. Frightened, sick, and alone, they're killed after only a few months of life. As you probably already know, this is what we call "veal."

Many people over the past few decades have stopped eating the meat of these male calves because of this torture, but many fewer people have stopped drinking milk because of it. But, whether you drink organic milk or not, “veal” is the flesh of a tortured, sick baby cow, and there is a hunk of veal in every glass of your milk.

Tune in next time when I'll talk about the different kinds of non-dairy milks available. What's best? Soy? Rice? Almond? Hemp? Coconut? Mmm -- it's coconut, isn't it. Check back to read my recommendations.

Sources:

1. Joyce D’Silva, “Faster, Cheaper, Sicker,” New Scientist, 15 Nov. 2003.

2. National Agriculture Statistics Service, “Milk Production,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17 Feb. 2004.

3. “UK Newspaper Cites OCA on Big Corporations Hijacking the Organic Movement,” The Guardian, 12 Nov. 2003.

4. S. Waage et. al., “Identification of Risk Factors for Clinical Mastitis in Dairy Heifers,”National Veterinary Institute.

5. Center for Food Safety, “What's Wrong With Factory Farming?” 2005.
6. D.L. Roeber et al., “National Market Cow and Bull Beef Quality Audit—1999: A Survey of Producer-Related Defects in Market Cows and Bulls,” Journal of Animal Science, 2001.

7. Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Vintage Books: New York, 1996

The Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife

2009-05-01T11:13:00.008-07:00

The point of this blog really isn't to just post what other people have to say about things, but sometimes other people just say it how you would've wanted to say it.

The GOP: Divorced from Reality

By Bill Maher
April 24, 2009

Los Angeles Times Opinion

If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.

It's been a week now, and I still don't know what those "tea bag" protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who's going to win "American Idol." But it wasn't tax day that made them crazy; it was election day.Because that's when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Even though they're not quite sure what "it" is. But they know they're fed up with "it," and that "it" has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

It's sad what's happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they're the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid.

The GOP base is convinced that Obama is going to raise their taxes, which he just lowered. But, you say, "Bill, that's just the fringe of the Republican Party." No, it's not. The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned Parenthood. And I would have to totally rethink my position on a border fence.

I know. It's not about what Obama's done. It's what he's planning. But you can't be sick and tired of something someone might do.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota recently said she fears that Obama will build "reeducation" camps to indoctrinate young people. But Obama hasn't made any moves toward taking anyone's guns, and with money as tight as it is, the last thing the president wants to do is run a camp where he has to shelter and feed a bunch of fat, angry white people.

Look, I get it, "real America." After an eight-year run of controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election has you feeling like a rejected husband. You've come home to find your things out on the front lawn -- or at least more things than you usually keep out on the front lawn. You're not ready to let go, but the country you love is moving on. And now you want to call it a whore and key its car.

That's what you are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him -- obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will.

But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy.

The healthy thing to do is to just get past it and learn to cherish the memories. You'll always have New Orleans and Abu Ghraib.

And if today's conservatives are insulted by this, because they feel they're better than the people who have the microphone in their party, then I say to them what I would say to moderate Muslims: Denounce your radicals. To paraphrase George W. Bush, either you're with them or you're embarrassed by them.

The thing that you people out of power have to remember is that the people in power are not secretly plotting against you. They don't need to. They already beat you in public.

Esta es mi Tierra

2009-04-30T12:42:00.011-07:00

It's been a year since I was in Bolivia, so I thought I'd check up on how She's doing. As it turns out, a lot is going on.

Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, is arguing the same case that is rapidly gaining ground in many other poor countries: that climate change must be addressed as a fundamental threat to development. Economic losses that can ultimately be traced back to industrialized nations’ carbon emissions, they maintain, must be compensated with the same urgency that these countries have discovered in confronting their own financial crises.

Instead of talking about the ecological footprint of Bolivian development, Morales is concerned with “the ecological footprint on our development”—and worries that his country is getting squashed.

Morales' 20-point list of demands on international climate policy represents the toughest line taken by any national leader, including a call for developed countries to contribute one percent of GDP—close to $700 billion per year—to a compensatory adaptation fund for poor and vulnerable nations. If the U.S. agreed to finance Bolivia’s proposal (ha) based on its 2008 GDP, it would owe $146 billion.

In our own attempt to curb global warming, our society has latched onto the ideas of hybrid and electric cars, unable or unwilling to give up the American Dream of a personal automobile. But in the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: Almost half of the world's lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found in the largest salt flat in the world, in Uyuni, Bolivia— a country that may not be willing to surrender it easily.

A nationalist sentiment about the lithium is building in the government of Morales, who already has nationalized Bolivia's oil and natural-gas industries. The government is talking of closely controlling the lithium and keeping foreigners at bay. Indigenous groups are also pushing for a share in the eventual bounty. "We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium," said the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar de Uyuni. "We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia's, but it is also our property." One provision of the new constitution Morales got passed last month could give Indians control over natural resources in their territory.

None of this is dampening efforts by foreigners, including Japanese conglomerates Mitsubishi and Sumitomo and a group led by a French industrialist, Vincent Bollore. In recent months all three have sent representatives to La Paz to meet with Morales' government about gaining access to the lithium. Mitsubishi is not alone in planning to produce cars using lithium-ion batteries. Ailing automakers in the United States are pinning their hopes on lithium. General Motors next year plans to roll out its Volt, a car using a lithium-ion battery along with a gas engine. Nissan, Ford and BMW, among other carmakers, have similar projects.

Demand for lithium, long used in small amounts in mood-stabilizing drugs and thermonuclear weapons, has climbed as makers of batteries for BlackBerrys and other thingies like it use the mineral. But the automotive industry holds the biggest untapped potential for lithium, and since it weighs less than nickel (also used in batteries), it would allow electric cars to store more energy and be driven longer distances.

But surprisingly, Bolivians don't care so much about our gizmos; they care about their livelihoods and their planet. “Western development has created a deathly wound to our Pachamama,” says the Bolivian Foreign Minister, using the Aymara term for Mother Earth. “Industrialized countries need to assume their responsibilities.”

Sources: Climate Change ; Lithium

When Pigs Flu

2009-04-29T15:57:00.017-07:00

Yep. The requisite Swine Flu post. But read on, and if you're not interested by the third paragraph, you can give up on it. (The third below this one. This one doesn't count.)

The initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection already travelling at higher velocity than did the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

Since its identification during the Great Depression, H1N1 swine flu had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then in 1998 a highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a farm in North Carolina and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost yearly.

What caused this acceleration of swine flu evolution? Virologists have long believed that the intensive agricultural system of southern China is the principal engine of influenza mutation. But the corporate industrialisation of livestock production has broken China's natural monopoly on influenza evolution.

Animal husbandry in recent decades has been transformed into something that more closely resembles the petrochemical industry than the happy family farm. In 1965, for instance, there were 53 million US hogs on more than 1 million farms; today, 65 million hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates.

(I would insert a horrifying photo here -- and I have one -- but I thought you might prefer a photo of a horrifying woman holding pig meat. Enjoy.)

Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a report on "industrial farm animal production" that underscored the acute danger that "the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission." The commission also warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (cheaper than humane environments) was sponsoring the rise of resistant staph infections.

Case in point: Smithfield Foods is the world's largest pork packer and hog producer. Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the Swine Flu outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year.

On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6: Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak.

According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.

This link is being made in the Mexican media: “Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha (La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started). But so far, I haven't heard this link being made in the U.S. press. Have any of you? If not, are any of you surprised?

Sources: The swine flu crisis lays bare the meat industry's monstrous power;Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to Smithfield factory farm s ; Cartoon

Phantom Loads

2009-04-27T11:12:00.009-07:00

Oooooooh.

What Are Phantom Loads?

New to the scary concept of phantom loads? Let me explain. Home appliances and personal electronic devices pull electricity when in use, as we all would expect. But most also pull electricity when not in use, either while they wait poised on "standby," or because they have a clock or LED light, or because their plug is poorly designed. Only today did I learn the term "wall wart" as applied to the black transformer boxes appended to our phones, laptops, etc., which draw power simply when plugged into an outlet, even if not plugged into their affiliated gadget.

The amount of "phantom" power drawn in an average U.S. home is expensive per home and truly impressive nationally. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 75% of the energy used by our home appliances is drawn while we think they are "off." These phantom loads cost USians $3 billion a year. Typical offenders include microwaves, stereo equipment, televisions, chargers for cell phones or iPods and co., and all the computer equipment.

I know the image above isn't easy to see, but you can at least see how long the lines are next to each household appliance: the lines represent how much electricity is sucked up (in kilowatt-hours), with red lines representing passive standby mode and blue lines representing active standby mode. Clearly plasma TVs are the worst phantom loads, unnecessarily using up 1,452 kwh per year and costing you $160 to power while you're not even watching it. The next worst offender is your computer, which uses 311 kwh and costs you an extra $35 on your energy bill.

How Can You Kill Your Phantoms? With a Strip Tease.

You can solve this environmental and financial problem by plugging the offenders into a power strip with an on/off switch. When you are through using the appliances on a strip, turn off the strip, which cuts the electricity to the appliances. Power strips control the electricity coming from the wall, and when they are off, the power is off to the attached equipment. Then, though the evil appliances wish to continue sucking power from the grid, they are thwarted.

But if you don't want to have to remember to switch off the power strip when you're done using your appliance, all kinds of equipment is available to tailor your phantom load reduction, the most enticing of which is a fancy power strip called Smart Strip. It has multiple outlets. One is the master outlet, and when you turn off the appliance plugged in there, all the connected outlets also shut off power. There are two obvious ways to use this: 1) In a home office, plugging the hard drive into the master outlet and the printer, scanner, and fax into the connected outlets; and 2) in a home entertainment center.

There are also such things as "electric-use meters". Plug the meter into the outlet first, plug the appliance into it, and the meter shows what the appliance draws. This is good for motivation. Humans often need to see the effects of their actions before they change their actions. But these things are still gizmos, and as such I hesitate to recommend them.

So if you already have plenty of motivation after reading this post, the way to reduce your phantom load is to buy energy-saving appliances, turn off their power when not in use, don't buy too many unnecessary thingies, and have faith in power strips.

Source.

What's Hotter Than a Firefighter?

2009-04-27T09:57:00.011-07:00

That's right. A vegetarian firefighter.

The top story on CBS's Sunday Morning show yesterday was about firefighter Rip Esselstyn and his plant-based Engine 2 Diet. Rip is a firefighter in Engine Company 2 in Austin, Texas, and when they're on duty, the firefighters of Engine 2 consume a plant-based diet. They eat nothing with a face or a with mother, and they eat nothing that comes from an animal.

For a crew used to pot roast and fried eggs, some wondered if a meat-free diet would leave them too weak to do their jobs. But now they all feel healthier and are healthier: They all lost weight and saw their cholesterol drop dramatically.

Rip Esselstyn started his fellow firefighters down the road to meatless, compassionate living back in 2003 when one of the guys found out his cholesterol level was dangerously high. "We started out with lunches," said Rip. "And then it progressed to lunches and dinners, and breakfasts. And then it was just full bore."

And it's a good thing, too. According to a 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, heart disease actually kills more firefighters than fire itself.

Rip, a former meat eater, loves his diet now and as a champion triathlete, he says he feels better competing as a vegetarian.

"Do you honestly think that every American could eat this way?", the CBS interviewer asked Rip. "I don't think -- I know every American could," Esselstyn said. "Now, it's a matter of how do we get them to do that. I think in less than five years, there will be such a stigma attached to eating meat and dairy, that it will be similar to smoking cigarettes today."

The second half of this CBS show, however, took a turn for the worse. To provide a "counterargument" against the benefits of a vegetarian diet, CBS interviewed a "nutritionist" who has been paid $1 million by the beef, dairy, and egg industries. Had CBS had the courage and self-respect to invite one of the countless expert nutritionists not tied to and paid by animal agriculture, even in addition to rather than instead of the industry rep, the comments made by the beef industry lackey would have been promptly rebuffed.

This nutritionist's insistence that not eating animal flesh deprives the body of necessary nutrients is absurd. It's been well-known for years that vegan and vegetarian diets are more healthy than omnivorous diets and that they can provide all the necessary nutrients for people of all ages. Organizations as mainstream as the American Dietetic Association have confirmed this unequivocally again and again. This nutritionist, as a member of the ADA, undoubtedly knows this fact, yet she was allowed to make her remarks about the supposedly inadequate nutrition provided by plant-based diets as if they were gospel truth and her opinion as a nutritionist rather than a paid mouthpiece.

Another main problem with this story was how it was introduced. CBS decided their introduction would be images of chickens, pigs, and cows wandering around in green, open spaces with narration implying that this, of course, is where meat, dairy, and eggs come from: "...great flocks of chickens, acres of hogs, and herds of beef cattle moving across an open range".

Surely someone, if not everyone, at CBS involved in the production of this piece knew that this method of meat production has long been a myth in the U.S., but they chose to ignore how animals are really raised for slaughter. I appreciate that CBS did a story about these firefighters at all, but they have a responsibilty to represent truth and reality, even if it's ugly, and they've once again failed to do so.

Sources: CBS Story; Change.org

Don't Just Clean It ... Greenwash It!

2009-04-25T18:26:00.008-07:00

Do you keep finding yourself wondering why brands you thought were environmentally-friendly -- and therefore not in the mainstream market -- have started showing up in places like Target and and supermarkets that are still catering to the ground beef & Campbell's crowd?

Well, Colgate-Palmolive bought Tom's of Maine. Clorox bought Burt's Bees. And many other large companies are buying many other small, eco-friendly companies in an attempt to

greenwash their image.

greenwash (a portmanteau of green and whitewash): The dissemination of misleading information by an organization to conceal its abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image.

Sound good? Want to know how you, too, can greenwash your business? Check out Greenwashers Consulting: Change Your Image to Change Their Minds. Their writers excel in the field of eco-persuasion.

Here are some testimonials from their happy clients:

Joe from Michigan (not that one) says, "I own a small business that had been getting a bad rep for “polluting” a local stream. Within a month, advertisements and Greenwashers' friendly eco groups and scientists convinced the local environmentalists that my business was completely organic based."

Says James from New York, "All claims of animal cruelty just for harmless testing fell silent thanks to the critical influencers at Greenwashers."

David from "USA" says, "Superb investment. Overall, it was well worth the services, rather than changing our entire oil operations and infrastructure we were able to promote our most appealing aspects of energy exploration. At the moment, the world is simply eating up the idea of anything being eco-oriented and there is not much possibility of surviving without this image."

And Ralph from Texas says, "Just thought I'd let you guys know I am recommending you to other busineses [sic] that are plagued with whining environmentalists inside and out."

Well sign me up and wash me down.

Plastic Fantastic One Night Stand

2009-04-25T13:04:00.013-07:00

Hopefully no one is bickering over the "paper or plastic" debate anymore. The answer is clearly neither.

But the plastic industry is still trying to push their terrible product, and on Earth Day they announced they will be switching to 40% recycled plastic by 2015. This $1 billion plastic industry makes 90 billion plastic bags annually in the USA alone.

This greenwashing move comes as some cities are outlawing the bags and trend-setting retailers, including Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and IKEA, have dropped them. Since IKEA's 'bag the plastic bag' program began in March 2007, they have donated $300,000 from their disposable plastic bag sales to American Forests. And since 1998, they have contributed $728,000 for the planting of trees in the US, which will offset 100,000 tons of CO2 emissions over the next 40 years.

Cal Dooley, CEO of the American Chemistry Council, the trade group for the major plastic bag makers, says the industry will collect 470 million pounds of recycled plastic annually to make the recycled bags. Home Depot and Walgreens are going to be participating in this 'effort'. Walgreens spokesman says the program is "innovative" and will "help improve the environment." Home Depot is "encouraged by the positive steps the industry is taking toward sustainability," says their spokeswoman.

40% recycled by 2015.

By 2015, how many plastic bags do you think people in the U.S. will have consumed? 2.3 trillion. (We use over 380 billion every single year, which costs retailers $4 billion.) Worldwide, we use 1 trillion plastic bags every year. That comes out to over 1 million per minute.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. And plastic bags don't biodegrade, they photodegrade, which means they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest them.

So what can we do besides using reusable bags and encouraging our friends and family to do the same? Well, perhaps instead of the empty gesture that Earth Day has become for so many people and companies, we could have a Clean Up the U.S. Day. Because, as part of Clean Up Australia Day, in one day nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected.

We could also impose a plastic bag consumption tax. In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. Then, an extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90% (which amounts to 1 billion fewer plastic bags consumed annually). Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. And to complete the win-win scenario, $9.6 million was raised from the tax in the first year, which is being put toward a green fund established to benefit the environment.

Our culture's throw-away mentality needs to end and this is one of the ways that's going to happen. So let's each do our part to make it happen, whether we do it in a trendy way or not.

Article source: Makers of plastic bags to use 40% recycled content by 2015

Why Isn't the Brain Green?

2009-04-21T13:13:00.007-07:00

Since climate change is anthropogenic, part of the solution must lie in changing human behavior. This is the reasoning for researchers from CRED (Center for Research on Environmental Decisions) to study how humans make decisions as they relate to climate change.

Among other things, CRED’s researchers consider global warming a singular opportunity to study how we react to long-term trade-offs, in the form of sacrifices we might make now in exchange for uncertain climate benefits far off in the future. And the research also has the potential to improve environmental messages, policies and technologies so that they are more in tune with the quirky workings of our minds.

Cognitive psychologists broadly agree that we have different systems for processing risks. One system works analytically, often involving a careful consideration of costs and benefits. The other experiences risk as a feeling: a primitive and urgent reaction to danger.

There are some unfortunate implications here. In analytical mode, we are not always adept at long-term thinking; experiments have shown a frequent dislike for delayed benefits, so we undervalue promised future outcomes. (Given a choice, we usually take $10 now as opposed to $20 two years from now.) Environmentally speaking, this means we are far less likely to make lifestyle changes in order to ensure a safer future climate.

Letting emotions determine how we assess risk doesn't work like we want it to either. We underestimate the danger of rising sea levels or epic droughts or other events because we’ve never experienced them and they seem far away in both time and place.

This research has also shown that we seem to have a “finite pool of worry,” which means we’re unable to maintain our fear of climate change when a different problem (such as a plunging stock market) comes along. We move one fear into the worry bin and one fear out.

What if we could remain persistently concerned about a warmer world? In comes something called a “single-action bias.” Prompted by a distressing emotional signal, we buy a more efficient furnace or insulate our attic or vote for a green candidate — a single action that effectively diminishes global warming as a motivating factor. And that leaves us where we started.

Debates over why climate change isn’t higher on Americans’ list of priorities tend to center on the same culprits: the doubt-sowing remarks of climate-change skeptics, the poor communications skills of good scientists, the political system’s inability to address long-term challenges without a thunderous precipitating event, the tendency of science journalism to focus more on what is unknown (will oceans rise by two feet or by five?) than what is known and is durably frightening (the oceans are rising). But considering what we've just learned about how people make decisions, some of these factors might not matter as much as we thought.

We've all heard about the experiments that have shown that people make decisions differently when they are in a group as opposed to when they are alone. These researchers' experiments have also shown that considering distant benefits before immediate costs can lead to a different decision than if you consider the costs first, like most people do. Here, then, is a kind of blueprint for achieving collective decisions that are in the world’s best interests.

If group involvement or the ordering of choices changes the process of making a particular decision, and in turn the result — whether because it tweaked our notions of risk or because it helped elevate social goals above individual goals and led to better choices for the global commons — that isn’t necessarily a distortion of our true preference. There is no such thing as true preference.

So, if there is no true preference, if we can heed what these researchers are telling us about the inner workings of our quirky little minds, we just might be able to improve environmental messages and policies enough to save ourselves. But it won't be easy.

Source: Why Isn't the Brain Green?

Keep Your Crazy Away from the Future of Our Planet

2009-04-20T15:49:00.019-07:00

While Democrats in the House are trying to get a comprehensive climate and energy bill passed by summer, many Republicans are really unleashing the crazy.

Let's start off with the Republican leader in the House, Rep. John Boehner: "The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.” Really, John? You want to talk about why there are so many cows in the world? And are you attempting to refer to the methane they belch? Or are you just explaining to us the fact that non-human animals also breathe?

“The earth will end only when God declares its time is over,” declared Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), explaining why it’s unnecessary to worry about climate change. He went on to suggest that the planet is “carbon-starved” and asked, “If we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? ... So all our good intentions could be for vain. In fact, we could be doing the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.” Taking away plant food? No, John, we are not a carbon-starved planet. We are a starved planet. People are starving, and if you ate more of this plant food you speak of, they wouldn't be.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) chimed in with his own seering analysis: “Adapting is a common natural way for people to adapt to their environment ... I believe that the earth’s climate is changing, but I think it’s changing for natural variation reasons,” he said. “And I think mankind has been adopting, or adapting to climate as long as man has walked the earth. When it rains, we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay.” When we are too stupid to know the difference between the words adopt and adapt, one would hope we would stay out of Congress.

A few weeks earlier, at a hearing on renewable power, this same man raised the question of whether expanding wind power might actually cause the planet to heat up: "Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about." Republicans are worried that we're going to use up all of god's good wind? Wow.

The "witnesses" Republicans have been bringing to these climate change hearings are saying shit that is just as cockamamy. First up was E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who warned that “fear of catastrophic, man-made global warming is a mistake,” and argued that because the “biblical worldview sees the world and ecosystems as the work of a wise God,” humankind couldn’t possibly be affecting the climate. Going further, he warned that restricting the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere would harm the poor, and that Americans are “morally obligated to provide access for the poor to affordable, abundant fossil fuels.” You know, by not working to lessen climate change, Republicans are really just looking out for the poor. They're the party of the poor.

The Republicans' second witness was Lord Christopher Monckton, aka the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, aka former advisor to Margaret Thatcher. “The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing,” he told the panel. Hmm. I do like being courageous.

He went on to argue that if Congress moved to address climate change, it would “create green jobs by the thousands and eliminate real jobs by the millions ... Green jobs are the new euphemism for vast unemployment.” I don't know about you, but I can't wait much longer for these fake jobs to be created, so let's step on it, Congress, and stop dilly dallying around with these idiots and their ridiculous rants.

Source.

Four Score

2009-04-20T12:26:00.003-07:00

Yes, a score means twenty.

"Penalties against a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against posession of marijuana in private for personal use. The National Commission on Marijuana and Abuse concluded years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations. Therefore, I support legislation amending federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana."

-President Jimmy Carter to Congress, 1977

Annual Causes of Death in the United States

Tobacco	435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity	365,000
Alcohol	85,000
Microbial Agents	75,000
Toxic Agents	55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes	26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs	32,000
Suicide	30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms	29,000
Homicide	20,308
Sexual Behaviors	20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect	17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin	7,600
Marijuana	0

Table source: Drugwarfacts.org

Be a tropical plant-hugger

2009-04-18T15:51:00.007-07:00

Forests that today soak up 1/4 of carbon pollution spewed into the atmosphere could soon become a net source of CO2 if Earth’s surface warms by another two degrees Celsius (3.6 F).

Plants both absorb and exhale CO2, but healthy forests—especially those in the tropics—take up far more CO2 than they give off. When they are damaged, get sick, or die, that stored carbon is released.

“We normally think of forests as putting the brakes on global warming,” said Risto Seppala, a professor at the Finnish Forest Research Institute and head of the expert panel that produced the report. “But in fact over the next few decades, damage induced by climate change could cause forests to release huge quantities of carbon and create a situation in which they do more to accelerate warming than slow it down.”

Manmade warming to date—about 0.7 C since the mid-19th century—has already slowed regeneration of tropical forests, and made them more vulnerable to fire, disease and insect infestations. Increasingly violent and frequent storms have added to the destruction. If temperatures climb even further, the consequences could be devastating.

“The current carbon-regulating functions of forests are at risk of being lost entirely unless carbon emissions are reduced drastically. With a global warming of 2.5 C (4.5 F) compared to pre-industrial times, the forest ecosystems would begin to turn into a net source of carbon, adding significantly to emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation.”

Source: Agence-France Press. This report will be submitted to the UN Forum on Forests.

He Can't Haz Cheezburger

2009-04-18T15:32:00.005-07:00

A new study found that guys who eat lots of meat, especially processed meat, and lots of full-fat dairy have lower sperm counts than men who eat fruits, veggies, and low-fat dairy.

Researchers believe the antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables may help protect sperm from damage. Men with normal sperm quality had a higher intake of certain antioxidants, like vitamin C and lycopene (which comes from tomatoes and red veggies), than did men with sperm abnormalities.

Another factor may be that meat and high-fat foods may expose men to higher levels of xenobiotics, including steroids and various chemicals in the environment that have estrogen-like effects, such as certain pesticides and PCBs. Xenobiotics tend to accumulate in high-fat foods, which in turn accumulate in men with this kind of diet.

Also, environmental contaminants can get into livestock through food and the water supply, and livestock are often given antibiotics and hormones for growth promotion.

Although you may be thinking this is great because Taco Bell and Chipotle are cheaper than birth control, down the road, those fertility drugs and that cholesterol medicine will definitely cancel out those savings. So please, men, stick with the fruits and veggies.

SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, March 2009.

War on Pirates

2009-04-17T16:03:00.014-07:00

I don't fully agree with the War on Pirates or the War on Piracy (seeing movies in the theater is expensive!). But let's deal with the original pirates first.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the golden age of piracy (1650-1730) the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard (who was taken from a French fairytale) that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. But even then, many people didn't fall for their lies and pirates were often saved from the gallows by the masses.

According to historian Marcus Red, author of Villains Of All Nations, if you became a merchant or navy sailor during this time period, you'd be plucked from the docks of London's East End when you were young and hungry. You would then end up in a floating wooden hell, working all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship. If you slacked off, the captain would whip you with the Cat o' nine tails. If you slacked off a lot, you'd be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you'd most likely be cheated of your wages. Wouldn't you choose piracy?

Pirates were the first people to rebel against these shit circumstances. They mutinied and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they have been viewed as romantic heroes, even before they looked like Johnny Depp.

Nowadays we still have piracy, most famously off the coast of Somalia. But what is the history of this situation? In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since, and some in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and do other unspeakable things. But let's speak about them.

As soon as the Somalian government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off their coast dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, says: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." And, of course, much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who are apparently passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. As usual, Africans come cheap.

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. After destroying their own fish stocks – like we have here – through overexploitation, now they have moved on to the Somalians'. More than $300 million worth of seafood is stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving.

This is the context in which these Somalian "pirates" have emerged. Many of them are Somalian fishermen who have taken speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70% "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense." Do we really think Somalia is just a nation of people who support raping and pillaging?

Some of these pirates do take hostages and do hold up World Food Programme supplies, but many do not, including this pirate leader, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas."

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes but when some of the fishermen respond by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20% of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

This modern War on Pirates was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the 4th century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor."

Source.

Are We Fucked? Some say yes. Some say sort of.

2009-04-17T15:46:00.003-07:00

A study by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Issues that's about to be published found that we will not be quite as fucked if we can cut greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by the end of the century. This cut would stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 450 ppm, which is 17% higher than how much of the shit we have now. This reduction in emissions could:

cut projected Arctic warming in half, stabilizing the northern Bering Sea and reducing impacts on fisheries
hold shrinkage of Arctic Ocean ice to an additional 25%
reduce global heat wave intensity by half
slow sea level rises
save us from fucking catastrophe

So to all you pessimists that say we're fucked if we do, fucked if we don't, sounds like we'll be even more fucked if we don't. But 70% is a lot, so let's get started.

Source: Climate could be stabilized with 70 percent cut in CO2, study finds

Unfood

2009-04-15T09:31:00.008-07:00

As you know, our country is having a food crisis. What most of us eat for most meals can hardly be considered food anymore. And even more appallingly, what we're feeding our children in school is often even worse than the shit we're feeding ourselves.

Today, 30% of American children are over-weight or obese. For children born in the year 2000, 1 out of every 3 Caucasians and 1 out of every 2 African American and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetime. Recent research has shown that the average age of children with kidney stones is 10, and that food additives and colorings contribute to ADD and ADHD.

We are failing to feed our children well, which means we are failing our children.

When I think about the multi-national agribusiness companies this type of school food service system supports, I cringe. When I think of the sugar, fat, and salt children are consuming, I gag. And when I think about the negative overall effect that this system has on People, Planet and Sustainable Profit, all my optimism just drains away.

Janey Thornton, the USDA chief's choice to lead the agency's child-nutrition efforts, must fix this systemic problem. She needs to dedicate a minimum of $1.75 to be spent on food, at least $1 of which should be spent on fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and whole grains, with a priority placed on buying local. She should set-up a National Culinary Cooks Corp which allows culinary students to work off student loans by working in K-12 schools, and she should have schools set up gardens. Perhaps these are the ag-tech classes of my middle school coming back to haunt me, but schools really should institute hands-on experiential learning in the form of cooking and gardening classes.

Michelle Obama's new organic garden at the White House is being grown in partnership with a local elementary school class, which is a great first step in having all schools grow gardens. I think it's just wonderful -- who couldn't? I'll tell you who. The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA), which represents chemical companies that produce pesticides, is not happy that Michelle Obama isn't using chemicals in her organic garden. Seriously. I'm not making this shit up. In fact, they're in the process of creating an enormous campaign of propoganda to try to convince people that chemicals are necessary to grow food. Well, I think they're too late. I think we're not going to fall for it this late in the game. I think people have discovered for themselves that organic food tastes better, has more nutrients, and is just more fun to grow (I mean, look how much fun Michelle is having!).

Some other countries are trying to get their food crises under control, too. For instance, Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, citing that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But Berlin could face millions of euros in fines if Monsanto (an American multinational) decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed. Fuck. We're even trying to ruin other countries' efforts to fix their food crises.

We better get our food production and consumption under control soon or we're going to be too tired and too sick from our food to be able to do anything about it.

Source about school lunches: Ann Cooper, author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children.

Gov. Ritter, Follow Japan's Lead

2009-04-14T13:12:00.011-07:00

On April 9th, in his monthly message to state employees, Gov. Bill Ritter suggested expanding the use of Casual Fridays as a good way for the state government to cut costs.

In the newsletter Ritter lauded the "casual dress environment" policy of Joan Henneberry, executive director of the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, citing it as a good example of how to "help reduce costs while keeping service levels high." Ritter noted how Henneberry says her policy is saving money: "This dress-down policy largely spares our employees the cost of dry cleaning, purchasing new suits and new seasonal clothing," the newsletter quotes Henneberry as saying.

If that's what Gov. Ritter wears when he goes horseback riding, I can see why he has such high dry cleaning bills.

Republican Senators say that although allowing state employees to wear jeans instead of slacks could save state workers money, it doesn't save the state any, and for once, I think that the Republicans may have a valid point. However (there had to be a however), if instead of citing Henneberry's stupid reasoning Gov. Ritter had stated Japan's sound reasoning, I would've applauded him.

In an ongoing effort to cut back on energy consumption, the Japanese government introduced the "Cool Biz" campaign in the summer of 2005. The initiative called for office thermostats to be set at 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 F) from June 21st to Sept. 23rd.

Workers were advised to forgo polyester suits and ties in favor of looser clothing made from natural, breathable materials. This also reduces those dry cleaning bills Henneberry was talking about, and of course the environmental damage caused by nasty dry cleaning chemicals. The most visible champions of this campaign were Japanese politicians, particularly prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and minister of the environment Yuriko Koike. The latter famously promised to close her office door on anyone wearing a tie or jacket.

Japan, which has the third highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world, is estimated to have cut of its total by some 460,000 tons during the summer of 2005 alone, the equivalent volume of CO2 emitted by 1 million households for one month. The results for 2006 were even better, resulting in an estimated 1.14 million-ton reduction in CO2 emission, the equivalent to the CO2 emissions by about 2.5 million households for one month.

The Cool Biz program has been so successful that the UN is now encouraging its staff to give up suits and wear lighter clothing during the summer in an attempt to cut air-conditioning costs and reduce emissions. By turning up the thermostats 5 degrees in the summer, UN officials believe they could save around $100,000 per month and reduce the amount of steam (currently about 2.2 million tons) that is released into the environment.

So, although Gov. Ritter's reasoning didn't make a whole lot of sense, his underlying idea did. Casual Fridays are a good way for our state government to cut costs. And so are Casual Thursdays and Casual Wednesdays...

Let's Celebrate Wal-Mart on Earth Day?

2009-04-14T10:19:00.014-07:00

Earth Day doesn't do enough to get the message across about what people should be doing to help protect the environment. In fact, it often rewards people and companies for doing something green for one day and then asks us to celebrate that. It's not about a day. It's about every day.

According to this 2008 study, 72% of Americans say they know a lot or a fair amount about environmental issues and problems (up 7% from 2007), and 28% claim they seek out environmental information (up 5%). But the polls show that Americans really don't know what's going on with the environment. In fact, many of us are getting worse. As recently as 2006, significantly more Americans thought the mainstream media underestimated the seriousness of global climate change (38%) than said exaggerated it (30%). Now, according to Gallup's 2009 Environment survey, more Americans say the problem is exaggerated (41%) rather than underestimated (28%).

Although many people claim that buying from green companies is important even in this time of economic crisis (67% claim this), most people didn't have a clue as to which companies came close to being green. How many Americans do you think cannot name a single company that they consider to be socially and environmentally responsible? 41%. Even more ridiculously, according to BBMG, Wal-Mart was simultaneously the most and the least environmentally responsible company people could think of:

"When asked unaided which companies come to mind as the most socially or environmentally responsible companies, 7% of Americans named Wal-Mart, followd by Johnson & Johnson (6%), Procter & Gamble (4%), GE (4%), and Whole Foods (3%). Wal-Mart also topped the list of the least responsible companies (9%), along with Exxon Mobil (9%), GM (3%), Ford (3%), Shell (2%), and McDonald's (2%)."

What does this say about us as citizens? That we say we want to buy environmentally and socially responsible products, but that we don't know where to get them? One in four consumers say they have "no way of knowing" if a product is green or actually does what it claims. Well, perhaps if more than 28% of Americans actually sought out environmental information, they would know what to buy and who to buy from. Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but a little research can go a long way. It's easy to seek out organic foods and cotton, to switch out incandescents, to look for energy star ratings on appliances, to buy recycled paper products,to reduce plastic waste as much as possible, to buy local when they can, to eschew processed and packaged foods, to lower meat and dairy consumption, to buy fair trade, and to unplug appliances and other phatom loads when not in use. It's so easy to do so many things that make a difference, and none of those things include shopping at Wal-Mart.

Polls (and common sense) show us that our citizenry is seriously confused, and taking one day a year to 'celebrate' our Earth is not going to fix that. We need a fundamental change in our society, a revolution of thought. This Earth Day, I urge you to take any steps you can to make your life more environmentally-friendly, more socially-friendly, and more compassionate, and to help others do the same. And then do this every day thereafter so that Earth Day will be the beginning of Earth Year, and Earth Year will be the beginning of Earth Decade, and so on until celebrating our Earth is just a way of life.

CWA Reflections

2009-04-10T14:50:00.008-07:00

The 61st annual Conference on World Affairs has come to an end.

In my opinion, Sanho Tree is the winner for best panelist due to his extensive knowledge of the war on drugs and what should be done about it, his insightful comments on modernity, his witty, rapid-fire speeches, and his willingness to use a photo of him and a monkey in his bio.

Keynote speaker and former Nebraskan Senator Chuck Hagel is in the running for the worst panelist, first and foremost because of his absurdly generic comments on International Relations, but also because of his seemingly limitless Nebraska football references and the 20 minutes of his speech he spent thanking people.

There were several topics that were noticeably absent at CWA:

Population growth. While I was Organizer of Boulder Population Connection, I tried relentlessly to get the higher ups at CWA to consider putting together a panel about population growth. I told them that the president of Population Connection had offered to fly himself to the conference and parcipate in the panel. I listed other people who could be on the panel. I thought of titles for the panel. I suggested what broader topics they could group the panel into (e.g. politics, the environment, climate change specifically, religion, anything having to do with Africa, China, or India). None of it worked, and there has yet to be a panel that addresses population growth.
What we eat. Not only would they never consider a panel on the benefits of vegetarianism and veganism to personal and environmental health, but they haven't even done a panel on anything relating to our food choices. In fact, the only time food was mentioned during the entire conference was during a panel I attended on breast cancer, in which it was briefly mentioned that eating red meat increases the risk of cancer.
Atheism. There were several titles of panels this year that made it sound like the panelists would be talking about atheism, but hardly any of them really did. The only panel that really addressed it was in the panel that concluded that atheists are the least likely people to get elected to public office. During another panel I attended that was supposed to be addressing the basic incompatibility of science and religion, the panelists were all Christian, and the voice of atheism (and what seemed to me, the voice of reason), was woefully absent.
American Indians. Anything having to do with American Indians. Anything.
I'll have to get back to you, but I can feel that there are others.

Perhaps I will try again next year to try to get these panels created, although I continue to wonder if the conference really has the ability to change. But maybe it's always just a couple years behind, and maybe next year the panels will really focus on, not just politics, but our planet as a whole and how our personal decisions can have suprisingly big impacts on it.

CWA: Can You Hear Congo Now

2009-04-08T20:06:00.006-07:00

11. Can You Hear Congo Now: Cell Phones, Conflict Minerals, and Mass Rape

In the Congo, more than 5.4 million people have died from the effects of war and its aftermath. This is the worst war since the Holocaust.
Following a peace agreement and a political transition backed by the world's largest UN peacekeeping operation, the Congo held elections in 2006.
But still, 45,000 people die each month, mostly from hunger and disease. Over 1 million people have been displaced.
Tin, Tantalum, and Tungsten are the minerals that are causing some of the worst sexual violence and mass human suffering in the world. The 3 Ts are used in electronics.
In the Congo, rape has become a tool of war, and it is the cheapest war tactic there is.
We need presidential action in the U.S., congressional action, and action from the electronics companies.

What can we do?

Go to Raise Hope for Congo to learn more and to join the movement.
Write your congresspeople and tell them that this is a priority.
Call the White House switch board at 202-456-1414 and tell them that you want Obama to name a special envoy for the Congo so that we will have one point person to take responsibility (he has already done this for Sudan and many other countries). Believe it or not, at the end of each day, the White House actually tallies up how many calls they got about each issue. So, this will actually help.

End of Day 3. Perhaps tomorrow will be more uplifting, although I doubt it. But stick around anyway...just in case!

CWA: Political Candidates: No Room for Non-Believers

2009-04-08T19:42:00.007-07:00

10. Political Candidates: No Room for Non-Believers

Chip Berlet:

Blame the English. They rounded up all the religious fanatics and sent them to us. At least Australia got the criminals.
Can be a "Christmas and Easter" Christian and still qualify for public office.
The more we talk about how the U.S. was actually founded, the better things will get.

Terry McNally:

52% of people who went to college would be willing to vote for an atheist. Of people who didn't attend college, only 32% would.
A disproportional amount of college-educated people are atheists: 10 or 11%. But only 1 congressperson says he's a non-believer, but all 535 people in Congress (hopefully) went to college. So, the numbers don't work out. This is because we invite people who are running for office to deceive us by requiring this religiousity.
People are willing to elect nearly everyone else before they are willing to elect an atheist. This is probably because black/white, male/female, able/disabled, etc. people all share a more similar world view than a religious person compared with an atheist. If people can't figure out where you got your morals or how you understand the meaning of life, they can't identify with you.

Susan Shaer:

She left Christianity to become a Feminist. (Heh.)
In just the last 10 years, Protestants and break-away churches have started voting. Before, it was only Catholics and Jews who voted.
When Bush was running for office, he had a team whose job it was it to find phrases from common prayers and church songs and insert them into his speeches. This made people, perhaps unconsciously, develop a sense of kinship with him. Even if they weren't religious anymore or didn't even like those prayers or songs, they were familiar. (It's like an annoying commercial jingle that you play in your head over and over.)
The only person less likely to win public office than an atheist is a female atheist.

Well fine. I didn't want to run for office anyway.

CWA: Obama's First 100 Days: How Do You Like Me Now

2009-04-08T19:31:00.006-07:00

9. Obama's First 100 Days: How Do You Like Me Now?

James Trengrove:

Obama has a 66% approval rating, the highest of our recent presidents in their first 100 days.
39% of people say the country is going in the right direction.
He is cerebral, reflective, and circumspect. All good things.

Sanho Tree:

How do you like me now? Two words: Me likey.
Obama is everyone's favorite Rorschach test.
Used to have to call D.C. Mordor on the Potomac.
Policies that are based on evidence, science, and reason finally have a chance.
Obama can grasp counterintuitive solutions and can explain them to the populus.
Our last president was profoundly uncurious. He never even seemed curious about travel or about understanding other cultures. Now we have a president who has lived overseas and who understands that things are different in other parts of the world. He also has the respect to talk to us like adults about these kinds of complex issues.
Things will change because the young voters of today did not grow up with the culture war of the 1960s that all of our previous president's presidencies have been based on. Gays in the military? These young people grew up watching Will & Grace -- they don't get what all the fuss is about.
Young voters of today don't have brand loyalty yet, and the Republican's brand of intolerance, bigotry, and hatred is an uncool brand. McCain and Palin made the fatal mistake of promoting this old brand.

Fuck yeah, Sanho. Fuck yeah.