“If we treated others as we wish to be treated ourselves, then decency and stability would have to prevail. I suggest that we execute such a pact with our planet.” -Stephen Jay Gould According to polls, three-quarters of us define ourselves as environmentalists. We recycle our garbage, switch our lightbulbs to CFLs, take our reusable …
Apr
22
Mar
24
Eggs And The Environment
It’s not just pig farms that produce massive pools of waste. Olivera egg ranch in northern California has a 16.5 acre lagoon filled with waste sludge from its more than 700,000 caged hens. The stench and eye-burning fumes cause headaches and nausea for the neighbors. Waste lagoons like this (which are on all factory farms) are …
Mar
19
Expensive Excrement (yet another poop post)
Two weeks ago, a Kansas City, MO court awarded $11 million to 15 people in a case about pig poop. The plaintiffs sued Premium Standard Farms (a pig CAFO – Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) over the cesspits of pig manure causing nauseating odors and swarms of flies. In their testimony, the 15 plaintiffs said that the odors …
Mar
16
Post About Poop, Number 2 (pun intended)
This post isn’t actually related to the first Post About Poop, except that they both do happen to be about, well, poop. In the past 40 years, the US has effectively reduced the manmade pollutants that left our waterways dead, discolored, and occasionally flammable. But sadly, we’ve managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in …
Mar
12
The Clean 15: Foods You Don’t Have To Buy Organic
To follow up on the The Dirty Dozen, here is The Clean 15: The top 15 foods you don’t need to buy organic. There are many reasons to buy organic foods. The USDA Organic label tells you that fruits and veggies weren’t raised using manmade chemical pesticides, fossil fuel- or sewage-based fertilizers, or genetically modified seeds. …
Mar
09
Why Are Vegetarians So Depressing?
by Martha Flumenbaum, from The Huffington Post Animal agriculture is a bigger cause of global warming than cars. You’d be better off driving a Hummer than eating a steak. Eating too much meat can cause heart disease and cancer. Factory farms cause pollution and the people who live near them are getting asthma. Animals on …
Feb
10
It’s Personal (or is it?)
From the Washington Post, by James E. McWilliams I gave a talk in South Texas recently on the environmental virtues of a vegetarian diet. As you might imagine, the reception was chilly. In fact, the only applause came during the Q&A period when a member of the audience said that my lecture made him want …
Jan
15
Oily Food
From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen – about 17 percent of our nation’s energy use – for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use. Tractors, combines, harvesters, irrigation, sprayers, tillers, balers, and …
Jan
13
Carbon Footprint Of Food
A Swedish fast-food chain, called Max Burger, is trying to discourage people from eating too much meat by publishing the carbon footprint of each item on its menu. From the methane produced by the cows, to the machinery used on the farm, through to the emissions produced by the slaughterhouses and the trucks that deliver the …
Aug
04
Meat's Not Green: Water
Nearly half of the water used in the U.S. is squandered on animal agriculture. Between watering the crops grown to feed farm animals, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning the filthy factory farms, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, the farmed animal industry places a serious strain on our water supply. According …
