common sense for the common good

Changing Habits

May 7th, 2008 Posted in Activism, Climate Change, Environment, Ideas, Society, Vegetarianism | No Comments »

Bookmark and Share


I received an email from Sierra Club today with a link to a website called 50 Ways to Help the Planet.

The crazy thing is, on the site, “they” give you 50 actual ways to help the planet. Unbelievable!

This isn’t the first published set of green action items, and it won’t be the last, but the lesson to take away from these lists is that they all ask people not to do things differently every now and then. but to change our habits. Only if fundamentally alter our behavior will we change the course we’re on.

The devastating climate change we’re experiencing currently took millions of people and decades to create. Changing to compact fluorescent light bulbs, while helpful, is only a small piece o the puzzle. The 49 others ways to help the planet presented on the list I’ve linked to should also be done by everyone; they must become habits.

Number 8 on the list - Go Vegetarian Once A Week - is the change in lifestyle that can go the furthest, yet is most often ignored by people. The site says, “One less meat-based meal a week helps the planet and your diet. For example: It requires 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. You will also also save some trees. For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed.”

Bill Maher talks about vegetarianism on his show frequently, but no one else in the popular media - if HBO can be considered that - ever mentions it. I’ve talked about it time and time again, most recently in reference to an article written in The New York Times by a freakin’ carnivore of all people. And like Mark Bittman, the author of the NYT piece, a realistic real goal for environmentalists should be to get people to eat meat only once a day, not just be vegetarian once a week.

So go check out the site; it has bitchin’ free wallpapers for download and some great t-shirts for purchase.

Sphere: Related Content

Related Posts

Two Broken Ankles

May 4th, 2008 Posted in Animal Cruelty, Society | No Comments »

Bookmark and Share


AP: Eight Belles was trying to become just the fourth filly to win the Kentucky Derby.William C. Rhoden begins his piece in this Sunday’s The New York Times by asking, “Why do we keep giving thoroughbred horse racing a pass? Is it the tradition? The millions upon millions invested in the betting?” I’m going to go with the millions upon millions.

For those of you paying attention to the annual series of barbaric horse races, yesterday’s Kentucky Derby further highlighted the idiocy of the “sport”. The horse that finished second had to be euthanized immediately after the race because it broke both of its first legs trying to slow down. Supporters of the “sport” claim instances like this are rare. This claim is as true as is it ignorance.

In the upper eschalon of racing horses surely only a very horses are so tragically injured that they must be put to sleep, you know, instead of trying rehabilitate them as they’ve made people millions of dollars. The ignorance in the aformentioned claim arises from the fact that thousands upon thousands of horses you never see on televison on race day are abused on a daily basis.

Rhoden professes, “The sport is at least as inhumane as greyhound racing and only a couple of steps removed from animal fighting.” While horses aren’t trained to kill each other, that these animals are stressed beyond their natural limits to do things only man wants them to do makes this statement true. Anything for a dollar.

The more philosophical issue at hand here is that fact that we are selectively compassionate. People only object to something when it behooves them. People rationalize the extreme stupidity of group behavior because they could get paid at the end of the day.

A tragic ending to a horse race is only as rare as a hungry movie star. If we only examine the extremes of society, we will find it difficult to find relative atrocities. The truth, on the other hand, is that race horses aren’t the only horses that exist, and movie stars aren’t the only people that exist. Horses all over the world that never make the national broadcasts are abused and killed every day, and people who never make the national broadcasts die of hunger every day. 100 to 1 odds on the long shot makes these truths easy to ignore and keep us from evolving as a society.

Sphere: Related Content

Related Posts

One Voice: Convincing the Convincers

April 28th, 2008 Posted in Activism, Climate Change, Corporations, Education, Environment, Responsibility | No Comments »

Bookmark and Share


Al Meyerhoff, an environmental lawyer for 30 years and former director of the Natural Resource Defense Council Public Health Project, has written a great, and slightly irreverent, piece for the Sacramento Bee entitled, “It’s getting hot”. The gist - environmentalists need to band together and create onecommon message to deliver to the people regarding climate change.  Meyerhoff believes,

People ultimately act from self- interest. Americans need to be convinced that by declaring war on the weather, they could become its victims, because warming brings with it floods and hurricanes, drought and famine, massive human migrations and the rampant spread of disease. The body politic must be persuaded that a warming climate threatens its homes and its families, its children and its children’s children.

Take for instance the war in Iraq. The government delivered to the people a thoroughly consistent, however grossly erroneous message to the people prior to sending in our troops. Through blatant lies and misinformation, a few people convinced nearly the whole of the American public that support was needed for a war against our “attackers”. Given we were all lied to about weapons of mass destruction, who actually attacked us, and the government’s motives in pursuing warfare in the Middle East, imagine what could be done with the truth about climate change if it were presented in one neat package. Seriously.

Perhaps there have been too many cooks in the kitchen. Not anymore; one well-known cook is now launching a massive campaign to educate the American public. To date, Meyerhoff jokes, people’s general attitude could be summarized in one sentence: ”When there is a polar bear on my front lawn, call.” Hopefully that attitude is not long for this world. Why? Al Gore plans on spending $300 million to change the minds of the American public.  While that sum of money would get us through about 12 hours in Iraq, it will hopefully be enough to raise awareness of climate change in American minds past a threshold. Meyerhoff’s thinks,

But that this campaign is necessary at all speaks volumes about the failure of environmentalists to persuade our citizenry that the climate threat is both real and immediate, overcoming not just skepticism but national torpor and attention deficit disorder as well.

Disagreeing with that statement is difficult, and disagreeing with Meyerhoff’s conclusion is even harder. He finishes by saying,

“True change only happens when activists join together and directly impact those who control the means producing the threat. We can switch from plastic to paper, drive hybrids and use better light bulbs – but the polluting industries need to be compelled to reduce carbon emissions. And the American public must be convinced to compel them.”

Sphere: Related Content

Related Posts

St. Louis Earth Day 2008 - Renew Missouri SURGE

April 19th, 2008 Posted in Activism, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, green | missouri | No Comments »

Bookmark and Share


St. Louis Earth Day celebrations will be held tomorrow in Forest Park. While sustainability, recycling and the like will be on the agenda, the most important happening will be the continued petitioning for signatures for a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) in Missouri.

I wrote about the effort two posts ago but I don’t think enough attention can be given to the issue.  Accordingly, I was happy to see some coverage in the local paper today.

Earth Day represents one of the last big gatherings of like-minded folks at which to gather signatures to get the RES on the ballot in November.  Hopefully Sunday’s surge will actually work.

Sphere: Related Content

Related Posts

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

April 15th, 2008 Posted in Agriculture, Environment, Feature, Globalization, Health, Responsibility, Vegetarianism | 1 Comment »

Bookmark and Share


Mark Bittman does a yeoman’s job of summarizing the meat industry’s impact on the globe in this article. The facts are astonishing, mind-blowing, and will create real shock and awe in your mind if you synthesize them. And in light of the current global food crisis, the idea of reducing our collective meat intake makes even more sense. Please read the article in its entirety - I promiseyou won’t regret it, unless you like to be ignorant that is. Further, Bittman is not a vegetarian, so don’t think he’s predisposed to one side of the argument. His point is that those who choose to eat meat should eat much less to help both the environment and their health. Here are a few teasers from the piece:

  • . . . an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.
  • . . . a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
  • Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.
  • We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.

I don’t want to repeat the entire article so that’s all I’ll give you. Seriously, go read it. It takes only a few minutes. I’m not telling you to become a vegetarian, though the change would be good for both you and your neighbors. I’m telling you to audit your meat intake and reduce the amount you eat while increasing the quality of it. That change alone, among all of us, will help redirect food sources to the people who need it most while significantly reducing pollution caused by the meat industry. You have to be a real jerk to order a double cheeseburger meal while people all around the globe struggle to find food daily. Throwing money at the problem is a bandage, not a long-term solution.

Sphere: Related Content

Related Posts

« Previous Entries