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‘Animal factories’ have no place in a cleaner, healthier world
(The piece posted here is the Introduction to Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment by David Kirby. The new book (March 2010) examines the environmental contamination and heath impacts of industrial livestock production.)
[caption id="attachment_9802" align="alignleft" width="139" caption="David Kirby, author of Animal Factory"]  [/caption]
Many Americans have no idea where their food comes from, and many have no desire to find out.
That is unfortunate.
Every bite we take has had some impact on the natural environment, somewhere in the world. As the planet grows more crowded, and more farmers turn to industrialized methods to feed millions of new mouths, that impact will only worsen.
[Read more →]
Tags: · agricultural pollution, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, beef, CAFOs, chicken, concentrated agricultural farming operations, cows, Dairy, food borne illnesses, OtherVoicesBlog, pigs, pork, poultry
U.S. car fever waning after a century of growth
(This article, originally entitled U.S. Car Fleet Shrank by Four Million in 2009 – After a Century of Growth, U.S. Fleet Entering Era of Decline ran on the Earth Policy Institute website in January. Its author, Lester R. Brown is president of the EPI and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.)
By Lester R. Brown
America’s century-old love affair with the automobile may be coming to an end. The U.S. fleet has apparently peaked and started to decline. In 2009, the 14 million cars scrapped exceeded the 10 million new cars sold, shrinking the U.S. fleet by 4 million, or nearly 2 percent in one year. While this is widely associated with the recession, it is in fact caused by several converging forces.
Future U.S. fleet size will be determined by the relationship between two trends: new car sales and cars scrapped. Cars scrapped exceeded new car sales in 2009 for the first time since World War II, shrinking the U.S. vehicle fleet from the all-time high of 250 million to 246 million. It now appears that this new trend of scrappage exceeding sales could continue through at least 2020. (See data.)
[Read more →]
Tags: · auto industry, automobiles, Earth Policy Institute, gasoline prices, Lester R. Brown, Mass Transit, OtherVoicesBlog, trains, urban mobility
Educating and empowering the next generation of green citizens
By Jean M. Wallace, MAEd
CEO, Green Woods Charter School, Philadelphia
As a young girl, I spent every summer at the Jersey shore. I loved the beach! I’d stand by the water’s edge and simply marvel at the vastness of the ocean. With my red plastic bucket in hand, I would spend countless hours exploring the small tide pools and discovering the diversity of life that lived within the ocean current. It was fascinating to me and, looking out over the horizon I always imagined to myself, “What is out there?”
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Tags: · education, environmental education, green education, Green Woods Charter School, Jean Wallace, OtherVoicesBlog, Philadelphia
Do we have to limit growth to save the planet?
(The question “Do We Have To Limit Growth To Save The Planet?” was posed to sustainability expert Frances Moore Lappe by the Corporate Social Responsibility’s Talk Back Blog.)
By Frances Moore Lappé
We humans create the world according to ideas we hold. Our biggest ideas, our frames, determine what we can see and what we can’t. Ultimately, they will decide whether we can turn our beautiful planet toward life…or not.
Two frames I increasingly hear are “Because growth is killing the planet, we need no-growth;” and “We’ve hit the limits of a finite earth.”
Hmm.
[Read more →]
Tags: · agricultural inefficiency, Amory Lovins, Earth's limits, Frances Moore Lappe, global growth, OtherVoicesBlog, population control, sustainability
‘Startling Climate Facts’
(Sometimes a few words on a list can explain a lot. Here, reprinted with permission from the Environmental Defense Fund, is a list that captures the profound and reverberating effects of climate change .)
Here are 10 startling facts we learned in 2009 that underscore the climate threat:
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A study published in the journal Science reports that the current level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere – about 390 parts per million – is higher today than at any time in measurable history — at least the last 2.1 million years. Previous peaks of CO2 were never more than 300 ppm over the past 800,000 years, and the concentration is rising by around 2 ppm each year.
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Tags: · Arctic ice, carbon dioxide higher than ever, Climate Change, coastal wetlands, Environmental Defense Fund, hottest decade, ice sheet shrinking, OtherVoicesBlog, startling facts about climate change
2009: The Year in Wolves
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="397" caption="Howlsnow (Photo: Wikimedia)"]  [/caption]
(The following was originally posted Dec. 30, 2009 in the NRDC Switchboard blog, under Saving Wildlife and Wild Places)
- By Matt Skoglund
2009 was a dismal, tragic year for Northern Rockies wolves. They lost all protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), were hunted for the first time in Montana and Idaho (and continue to be hunted in Idaho), and were killed by various causes in record numbers. In all, almost one third — one third! — of the Northern Rockies wolf population was killed in 2009.
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Tags: · Idaho, Montana, Northern Rocky Mountains, OtherVoicesBlog, Rocky Mountain wolves, sport hunting of wolves, wolf hunt, wolves removed from Endangered Species List, Wyoming
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