The Green News Thread

[Bowwowmeow]

Solar Power Runs 'World's Largest Laundry'


By MICHAEL TARM (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
July 30, 2006 2:00 PM EDT
BERWYN, Ill. - One of Tom Benson's claims to fame, proclaimed in five-foot-high letters across his storefront, is that he owns the "WORLD'S LARGEST LAUNDROMAT" - complete with 153 washers, 148 dryers and 15 flat-screen TVs.
But that's not the claim that excites advocates of renewable energy. It's that, perched atop the hangar-sized facility in this working class Chicago suburb, is one of the largest, most cost-effective solar systems in the country.
Scaling a ladder to the scorching roof one recent morning, the 61-year-old beamed with pride as he showed off the 36 10-by-4-foot panels that supply his 24-hour laundry with hot water.
Benson's boast about having the largest coin-operated laundry on Earth might be open to debate. At least one laundry in Denver claims to have a few more washers and dryers - though Benson hastens to add that it seems to have less floor space than his.
What's not in doubt is that his $150,000 hot water system has become a darling of environmentalists and officials smitten with the solar promise, heralded as a prime example of how sun energy is practical, simple and cost-wise.
"The World's Largest Laundromat has served as a role model," said Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, a vocal solar advocate. "It's shown that solar can work in the Midwest climate, in the heartland."
To the chagrin of such advocates, however, fewer than 5 percent of the 40,000 coin-operated laundries nationwide use solar, according to estimates from the Coin Laundry Association, which represents nearly 3,000 companies in the $5 billion industry.
Benson first converted from natural gas to solar in 2001, two years after buying the laundry. The motivation, he says unapologetically, was pure dollars and cents.
His heating bills were climbing as high as $13,000 - the equivalent of 25 percent of his total monthly revenue.
"There was just no way I could survive if that continued," he said. "I was looking at a very dire situation."
At a meeting where laundry owners vented about energy prices, someone mentioned solar. Illinois was offering grants to pay 50 percent of the cost of solar systems; Benson applied, got the grant and had a system up within months.
His bank, to his surprise, didn't hesitate to loan him the needed money.
"When I showed the numbers to my bank, they understood immediately," he recalled. "It was like: Boom, 'Here's the money. Go for it.'"
His dream of a profitable, energy-efficient laundry seemed to shatter on Aug. 29, 2004, when a spark from a dryer started an inferno that destroyed the premises.
But instead of cutting his $1.6 million in fire losses and quitting, Benson vowed to rebuild. To make the laundry more customer friendly, he fashioned a play area for kids and added an indoor aviary, featuring miniature doves.
He also upgraded the solar system - again with state aid - in time for the laundry's reopening early this year.
Benson calculates his $150,000 system saves him $25,000 annually and so should pay for itself in about five more years. To boot, he expects it to remain operational for at least 20.
"I figure that when they plant me in the ground, one of my sons will run this place," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if, 30 years from now, this laundromat and this solar system is still working."
The technology is so simple, requiring what Benson says is laughably low maintenance, he's perplexed why more businesses don't embrace it.
"None of my competitors within a several mile radius are doing this," he said. "It's a shame."
Since a laundry depends on hot water, its bottom line can be greatly affected by how energy efficient it is, said Michael Sokolowski of the Coin Laundry Association.
But the cost of solar systems dissuades many laundries, most of which are a fifth the size of Benson's and have annual revenues of less than $200,000, he said.
"Continuing increases in energy costs would get more to (install) it, and so would better efficiencies for solar systems - especially systems made for smaller laundries," he said.
Benson, who has college degrees in philosophy and business administration, said he could have made his business even more environmentally friendly - say, by adding biodegradable floor tiles. But, in scrutinizing the bottom line, he said that would have been too costly to justify.
"A lot of times the environmental stuff ... ends up costing you money," he said. "People aren't going to do it if it costs more."
His solar setup, though, has virtually no downsides, he argued.
"This happens to be one of these wonderful cases where the idea works on every level," he said.
His reliance on solar also engenders loyalty among his customers, the majority of whom are Hispanic and many of whom are poor.
Their reaction, he says, has tickled him more than anything.
"Many people here have come up to me and said, 'Thank you for helping the environment. Thank you for going solar,'" Benson said.

[Oracl]

:thumbsup: Positive news for once! :)

We need to do much more with solar power here in Australia, given that we have so much sun. :rolleyes:

[Bowwowmeow]

Drivers Try Another Gas to Save Gasoline


By DAVID SHARP (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
July 31, 2006 1:22 PM EDT
TOPSHAM, Maine - Many motorists seeking to improve their mileage as gas prices soar this summer are examining everything - right down to the air in their tires. And for a growing number, plain old air isn't good enough.
George Bourque of Fairfield is one of those who's driving around on tires filled with pure nitrogen, the same stuff that NASCAR racers use.
Bourque, an engineer, said he has seen a 1 to 1.5 mile-per-gallon increase since he began filling his tires with nitrogen, which is touted as maintaining tire pressure longer and resisting heat buildup on hot summer days.
"I analyze everything," he said.
Nitrogen has been used for years in the tires of race cars, large commercial trucks, aircraft and even the space shuttle.
But it is finding its way into the mainstream at a growing number of tire dealers - including Costco Wholesale Corp.
Nationwide, fewer than 10 percent of tire dealers offer nitrogen, but the number is growing, said Bob Ulrich, editor of Modern Tire Dealer magazine in Akron, Ohio. Most dealers charge $2 to $5 per tire for the nitrogen fill-up, he said. The dealers generally offer free lifetime refills.
Bourque got his tires - filled with nitrogen - in Waterville, Maine at Tire Warehouse, which has 50 tire dealerships across New England. The nitrogen was part of an installation package when Bourque bought a set of tires.
Skeptics will question how much can be gained by filling tires with pure nitrogen when the air we breathe is 78 percent nitrogen.
The differences are subtle, but important, said Steve McGrath, Tire Warehouse's vice president of marketing in Keene, N.H.
Nitrogen molecules are bigger than oxygen molecules, so nitrogen seeps out more slowly from tires than air; nitrogen resists heat buildup better than air, which contains moisture; and nitrogen reduces oxidation, which can damage the tire from the inside out, proponents say. Nitrogen is an inert gas, so there are no safety or environmental issues.
Those advantages are important in vehicles equipped with tire pressure monitoring systems, which are sensitive to changes in tire pressure, McGrath said.
With or without nitrogen, proper inflation is the key to improving gas mileage. Motorists can improve gas mileage by 3.3 percent simply by keeping their tires properly inflated, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In the real world, though, only 1 in 5 motorists check tire pressure regularly, according to the Rubber Manufacturers Association. Nitrogen, therefore, could have an advantage for those who don't check their tire pressure regularly.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has no opinion on nitrogen, but it does encourage motorists to keep their tires properly inflated, both for safety and to boost gas mileage, said spokesman Rae Tyson. Severely underinflated tires are dangerous, especially for sport utility vehicles and light trucks, Tyson noted.
Tire experts at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, neither endorse nor object to the use of nitrogen in tires.
"Nitrogen is certainly safe to use in tires, and theoretically it does offer some benefits," spokesman Douglas Love said from Yonkers, N.Y.
For Bourque, his tire pressure remains constant - 40 pounds for his fully loaded truck - even on hot days when tire pressure normally fluctuates.
His gas mileage was about 19 mpg when he purchased his five-cylinder 2005 Chevrolet Colorado. Now, with the engine broken in and new tires filled with nitrogen, he gets 20.5 to 22 mpg depending on whether he runs the air conditioner, he said.
For tire dealers, the nitrogen generator and associated equipment typically runs between $3,000 and $12,000, Ulrich said.
Marty Mailhot, manager of the Tire Warehouse in Topsham, said the idea is catching on with consumers, who are purchasing nitrogen for tires for cars, trucks, motor homes and lawn tractors. He has even tried it on footballs and inflatable tubes pulled behind boats.
He has a retort for those who pooh-pooh the notion of paying for nitrogen when there's plenty of free air for the taking.
"I say, 'Why are you drinking that bottled water when there's a pond out back?'" he said.


That's what my tires are inflated with. :agree: :angelic:

[Bowwowmeow]

News flash!
Well, not really. I just bought a Shakelight and a Sidewinder Cell Phone Charger from gaiam.com/realgoods/ by Gaiam. The Shakelight is a flashlight that doesn't need batteries. You just shake it back and forth for 90 seconds, and it stays lit for one to two hours. Its waterproof, and it floats, too, which is handy for dockside living. The Sidewinder will give you 6 minutes of talk time with a charge time of 2 minutes. They don't seem to be available on the website yet. I got mine at Whole Foods, for thirty dollars each.

I love gadgets that don't need batteries or need to be plugged in to work. :psing:

[Oracl]

I love gadgets that don't need batteries or need to be plugged in to work. :psing:

:agree: Real Goods is a great website, BWM! :thumbsup:

[Bowwowmeow]

Yeah, it is, isn't it Oracl! Gaiam seems to be a good source for lots of environmentally friendly merchandise. I have never researched their ethics, though they do sell lots of things that are organic and suitable for vegans.

[Gliondrach]

This site has some interesting information about solar power:

solarcooking.org/

Just add http:// to the front to make it clickable.

[Oracl]

Very interesting stuff. :agree:

[Fauxmage]

[quote=Gliondrach]This site has some interesting information about solar power:

solarcooking.org/
Whoa! Did you see the ones made from umbrellas? :psing:
I make sun tea all the time. Even on foggy days, it still works. I don't drink it hot, though. I keep it in the fridge.:yum:

[paul]

Whoa! Did you see the ones made from umbrellas? :psing:
I make sun tea all the time. Even on foggy days, it still works. I don't drink it hot, though. I keep it in the fridge.:yum:

please explain.
sun tea, umbrrellas, and you keep your tea in the fridge :dizzy: is that ice tea

[Fauxmage]

See here (http://solarcooking.org/plans/barbeque.htm), paul. :rain:

You make sun tea by putting some tea bags in a clear glass jug, filling with water, and putting it outside during the day. In the summer, it can get kind of hot, but its mostly to be put in the refrigerator and served cold. Its very tasty. :agree:

[KRITER]

It is good.Been doing it for years.But you rite sun tea can get rite hot in the summer.

[paul]

See solarcooking.org/plans/barbeque.htm, paul. :rain:

You make sun tea by putting some tea bags in a clear glass jug, filling with water, and putting it outside during the day. In the summer, it can get kind of hot, but its mostly to be put in the refrigerator and served cold. Its very tasty. :agree:

very clever.:agree:

[Gliondrach]

We may as well use any energy that's free.

[paul]

We may as well use any energy that's free.

:agree:

[my3labs]

"An Inconvenient Truth" won the Oscar for "Best Documentary".
:yea:
Now, if we could just see "Earthlings" nominated....

[Oracl]

Bowwowmeow just posted about this too! It's fabulous news isn't it? :yea: I agree about Earthlings. :agree:

[my3labs]

This won't make the headlines but I'm excited. I started a recycling program at work. I work for an engineering firm and the amount of paper that is thrown away is outrageous. I talked to my boss and we're going to implement a recycling program later this week.
Yeah!!!

[Fauxmage]

Its still good news! :thumbsup:

[Gliondrach]

Good for My3Labs!

[thevegantwins]

That's great, my3labs! :thumbsup:

[Oracl]

I started a recycling program at work. Yeah!!!
Excellent! :agree: :thumbsup:

[Gliondrach]

What about me? I've started a bicycling programme. That's twice as good as one cycle.

[thevegantwins]

What about me? I've started a bicycling programme. That's twice as good as one cycle.
Only if you are generating alot of wind on your bicycle that is being used to harvest energy. I know you generate alot of wind but I don't think the excess wind is being put to good use. :whistle: :rofl:

[Gliondrach]

Very droll.

[thevegantwins]

Interesting article about trying to live green in a major city (New York). Going toilet-paperless..I don't think so. :flush: Of course, if they really wanted to live green, they should squat rather than living in a very nice apartment on 5th Avenue.

March 22, 2007
The Year Without Toilet Paper
By PENELOPE GREEN
DINNER was the usual affair on Thursday night in Apartment 9F in an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue. There was shredded cabbage with fruit-scrap vinegar; mashed parsnips and yellow carrots with local butter and fresh thyme; a terrific frittata; then homemade yogurt with honey and thyme tea, eaten under the greenish flickering light cast by two beeswax candles and a fluorescent bulb.

A sour odor hovered oh-so-slightly in the air, the faint tang, not wholly unpleasant, that is the mark of the home composter. Isabella Beavan, age 2, staggered around the neo-Modern furniture — the Eames chairs, the brown velvet couch, the Lucite lamps and the steel cafe table upon which dinner was set — her silhouette greatly amplified by her organic cotton diapers in their enormous boiled-wool, snap-front cover.

A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there.

Meanwhile, Joseph, the liveried elevator man who works nights in the building, drove his wood-paneled, 1920s-era vehicle up and down its chute, unconcerned that the couple in 9F had not used his services in four months. “I’ve noticed,” Joseph said later with a shrug and no further comment. (He declined to give his last name. “I’ve got enough problems,” he said.)

Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style. Isabella’s parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.

Mr. Beavan, who has written one book about the origins of forensic detective work and another about D-Day, said he was ready for a new subject, hoping to tread more lightly on the planet and maybe be an inspiration to others in the process.

Also, he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell. This being 2007, Mr. Beavan is showcasing No Impact in a blog (noimpactman.com) laced with links and testimonials from New Environmentalist authorities like treehugger.com. His agent did indeed secure him a book deal, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and he and his family are being tailed by Laura Gabbert, a documentary filmmaker and Ms. Conlin’s best friend.

Why there may be a public appetite for the Colin-Beavan family doings has a lot to do with the very personal, very urban face of environmentalism these days. Thoreau left home for the woods to make his point (and secure his own book deal); Mr. Beavan and Ms. Conlin and others like them aren’t budging from their bricks-and-mortar, haut-bourgeois nests.

Mr. Beavan looks to groups like the Compacters (sfcompact.blogspot.com), a collection of nonshoppers that began in San Francisco, and the 100 Mile Diet folks (100milediet.org and thetyee.ca), a Vancouver couple who spent a year eating from within 100 miles of their apartment, for tips and inspiration. But there are hundreds of other light-footed, young abstainers with a diarist urge: it is not news that this shopping-averse, carbon-footprint-reducing, city-dwelling generation likes to blog (the paperless, public diary form). They have seen “An Inconvenient Truth”; they would like to tell you how it makes them feel. If Al Gore is their Rachel Carson, blogalogs like Treehugger, grist.org and worldchanging.com are their Whole Earth catalogs.

Andrew Kirk, an environmental history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose new book, “Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism,” will be published by University Press of Kansas in September, is reminded of environmentalism’s last big bubble, in the 1970s, long before Ronald Reagan pulled federal funding for alternative fuel technologies (and his speechwriters made fun of the spotted owl and its liberal protectors, a deft feat of propaganda that set the movement back decades). Those were the days when Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth writers, Mr. Kirk said, “focused on a brand of environmentalism that kept people in the picture.”

“That’s the thing about this current wave of environmentalism,” he continued. “It’s not about, how do we protect some abstract pristine space? It’s what can real people do in their home or office or whatever. It’s also very urban. It’s a critical twist in the old wilderness adage: Leave only footprints, take only photographs. But how do you translate that into Manhattan?”

With equals parts grace and calamity, it appears. Washed down with a big draught of engaging palaver.

Before No Impact — this is a phrase that comes up a lot — Ms. Conlin and Mr. Beavan were living a near parody of urban professional life. Ms. Conlin, who bought this apartment in 1999 when she was still single, used the stove so infrequently (as in, never, she said) that Con Edison called to find out if it was broken. (Mr. Beavan, now the family cook, questioned whether she had yet to turn it on. Ms. Conlin ignored him.)

In this household, food was something you dialed for.

“We would wake up and call ‘the man,’ ” Ms. Conlin said, “and he would bring us two newspapers and coffee in Styrofoam cups. Sometimes we’d call two men, and get bagels from Bagel Bob’s. For lunch I’d find myself at Wendy’s, with a Dunkin’ Donuts chaser. Isabella would point to guys on bikes and cry: ‘The man! The man!’ ”

Since November, Mr. Beavan and Isabella have been hewing closely, most particularly in a dietary way, to a 19th-century life. Mr. Beavan has a single-edge razor he has learned to use (it was a gift from his father). He has also learned to cook quite tastily from a limited regional menu — right now that means lots of apples and root vegetables, stored in the unplugged freezer — hashing out compromises. Spices are out but salt is exempt, Mr. Beavan said, because homemade bread “is awful without salt; salt stops the yeast action.” Mr. Beavan is baking his own, with wheat grown locally and a sour dough “mother” fermenting stinkily in his cupboard. He is also finding good sources at the nearby Union Square Greenmarket (like Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, which sells milk in reusable glass bottles). The 250-mile rule, by the way, reflects the longest distance a farmer can drive in and out of the city in one day, Mr. Beavan said.

Olive oil and vinegar are out; they used the last dregs of their bottle of balsamic vinegar last week, Mr. Beavan said, producing a moment of stunned silence while a visitor thought about life without those staples. Still, Mr. Beavan’s homemade fruit-scrap vinegar has a satisfying bite.

The television, a flat-screen, high-definition 46-incher, is long gone. Saturday night charades are in. Mr. Beavan likes to talk about social glue — community building — as a natural byproduct of No Impact. The (fluorescent) lights are still on, and so is the stove. Mr. Beavan, who has a Ph.D. in applied physics, has not yet figured out a carbon-fuel-free power alternative that will run up here on the ninth floor, though he does subscribe to Con Ed’s Green Power program, for which he pays a premium, and which adds a measure of wind and hydro power to the old coal and nuclear grid.

The dishwasher is off, along with the microwave, the coffee machine and the food processor. Planes, trains, automobiles and that elevator are out, but the family is still doing laundry in the washing machines in the basement of the building. (Consider the ramifications of no-elevator living in a vertical city: one day recently, when Frankie the dog had digestive problems, Mr. Beavan, who takes Isabella to day care — six flights of stairs in a building six blocks away — and writes at the Writers Room on Astor Place — 12 flights of stairs, also six blocks away — estimated that by nightfall he had climbed 115 flights of stairs.) And they have not had the heart to take away the vacuum from their cleaning lady, who comes weekly (this week they took away her paper towels).

Until three weeks ago, however, Ms. Conlin was following her “high-fructose corn syrup ways,” meaning double espressos and pastries administered daily. “Giving up the coffee was like crashing down from a crystal meth addiction,” she said. “I had to leave work and go to bed for 24 hours.”

Toothpaste is baking soda (a box makes trash, to be sure, but of a better quality than a metal tube), but Ms. Conlin is still wearing the lipstick she gets from a friend who works at Lancôme, as well as moisturizers from Fresh and Kiehl’s. When the bottles, tubes and jars are empty, Mr. Beavan has promised her homemade, rules-appropriate substitutes. (Nothing is a substitute for toilet paper, by the way; think of bowls of water and lots of air drying.)

Yet since the beginning of No Impact, and to the amusement of her colleagues at Business Week, Ms. Conlin has been scootering to her office on 49th Street each day, bringing a Mason jar filled with greenhouse greens, cheese and her husband’s bread for lunch, along with her own napkin and cutlery. She has taken a bit of ribbing: “All progress is carbon fueled,” jeered one office mate.

Ms. Conlin, acknowledging that she sees her husband as No Impact Man and herself as simply inside his experiment, said she saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in an air-conditioned movie theater last summer. “It was like, ‘J’accuse!’ ” she said. “I just felt like everything I did in my life was contributing to a system that was really problematic.” Borrowing a phrase from her husband, she continued, “If I was a student, I would march against myself.”

While Ms. Conlin is clearly more than just a good sport — giving up toilet paper seems a fairly profound gesture of commitment — she did describe, in loving detail, a serious shopping binge that predated No Impact and made the whole thing doable, she said. “It was my last hurrah,” she explained.

It included two pairs of calf-high Chloe boots (one of which was paid for, she said, with her mother’s bingo winnings) and added up to two weeks’ salary, after taxes and her 401(k) contribution.

The bingo windfall points to a loophole in No Impact: the Conlin-Beavan household does accept presents. When Mr. Beavan’s father saw Ms. Conlin scootering without gloves he sent her a pair. And allowances can be made for the occasional thrift shop purchase. For Isabella’s birthday on Feb. 25, her family wandered the East Village and ended up at Jane’s Exchange, where she chose a pair of ballet slippers as her gift.

“They cost a dollar,” Ms. Conlin said.

It was freezing cold that day, Mr. Beavan said, picking up the story. “We went into a restaurant to warm her up. We agonized about taking a cab, which we ended up not doing. I still felt like we really screwed up, though, because we ate at the restaurant.”

He said he called the 100 Mile Diet couple to confess his sin. They admitted they had cheated too, with a restaurant date, then told him, Yoda-like, “Only in strictness comes the conversion.”

Restaurants, which are mostly out in No Impact, present all sorts of challenges beyond the 250-mile food rule. “They always want to give Isabella the paper cup with the straw, and we have to send it back,” Mr. Beavan said. “We always say, ‘We’re trying not to make any trash.’ And some people get really into that and others clearly think we’re big losers.”

Living abstemiously on Lower Fifth Avenue, in what used to be Edith Wharton country, with early-21st-century accouterments like creamy, calf-high Chloe boots, may seem at best like a scene from an old-fashioned situation comedy and, at worst, an ethically murky exercise in self-promotion. On the other hand, consider this response to Mr. Beavan’s Internet post the day he and his family gave up toilet paper.

“What’s with the public display of nonimpactness?” a reader named Bruce wrote on March 7. “Getting people to read a blog on their 50-watt L.C.D. monitors and buy a bound volume of postconsumer paper and show the filmed doc in a heated/air-conditioned movie theater, etc., sounds like nonimpact man is leading to a lot of impact. And how are you going to measure your nonimpact, except in rather self-centered ways like weight loss and better sex? (Wait, maybe I should stop there.)”

Indeed. Concrete benefits are already accruing to Ms. Conlin and Mr. Beavan that may tempt others. The sea may be rising, but Ms. Conlin has lost 4 pounds and Mr. Beavan 20. It took Ms. Conlin over an hour to get home from work during the snowstorm on Friday, riding her scooter, then walking in her knee-high Wellingtons with her scooter on her back, but she claimed to be mostly exhilarated by the experience. “Rain is worse,” she said.

Perhaps the real guinea pig in this experiment is the Conlin-Beavan marriage.

“Like all writers, I’m a megalomaniac,” Mr. Beavan said cheerfully the other day. “I’m just trying to put that energy to good use.”

[my3labs]

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets to help promote recycling.

Under the legislation, beginning in six months large supermarkets and drugstores will not be allowed to offer plastic bags made from petroleum products.

"Many [foreign] cities and nations have already implemented very similar legislation," said Ross Mirkarimi, the city legislator who championed the new law. "It's astounding that San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to follow suit." (Watch why it's no longer politically correct to 'think plastics' Video)

"I am hopeful that other U.S. cities will also adopt similar legislation," he said. "Why wait for the federal government to enact legislation that gets to the core of this problem when local governments can just step up to the plate?"

The city's Department of the Environment said San Francisco uses 181 million plastic grocery bags annually. Plans dating back a decade to encourage recycling of the bags have largely failed, with shoppers returning just one percent of bags, said department spokesman Mark Westland.

Mirkarimi said the ban would save 450,000 gallons of oil a year and remove the need to send 1,400 tons of debris now sent annually to landfills. The new rules would, however, allow recyclable plastic bags, which are not widely used today.

A spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who must approve or veto the legislation, called it sensible. "Chances are good that he is going to sign it," said Nathan Ballard.

[Fauxmage]

Interesting article about trying to live green in a major city (New York). Going toilet-paperless..I don't think so. :flush: Of course, if they really wanted to live green, they should squat rather than living in a very nice apartment on 5th Avenue.
Hmph. They could spend the next decade without toilet paper, and it wouldn't make up for the leather boot splurge, the cheese, butter, eggs, and who knows what else they think its ok to eat. Proof that necrotarians would rather give up toilet paper than their favorite animal-derived substances.

The new rules would, however, allow recyclable plastic bags, which are not widely used today.
Actually, they are. I guess your point of view depends on which stores you shop at. I didn't think anyone was still using plain old unbiodegradable plastic.

[thevegantwins]

I remember first shopping in a grocery store in the UK in the mid 1980's and being presented with the choice of purchasing plastic shopping bags or bringing my own. I was astonished that this existed but quickly learned to start carrying my own bags to use. Still amazes me that most Americans will not only use the store's carrier bags, they will ask the baggers to put 3 or 4 items in each bag so many, many bags are used.

[my3labs]

I've been using the canvas bags for a few months. I love them.

[Gliondrach]

In Costing the Earth, on BBC radio 4 - you can listen to it on the Listen Again facility on the radio 4 section of the website - they talked about solar energy. There are plans afoot to put giant collecting mirrors in the Sahara to concentrate sunshine to boil water to create electricity. They say it could be sent by underground and undersea cable and could provide much of the power needed by Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They mentioned an area of 60 miles by 60 miles. I forget if this was enough to power those areas or the whole world. And crops could be grown in the shade of the mirrors. And water could be desalinated by the power.

Not perfect but much better than building nuclear power stations or burning more oil and gas. But there could be problems with supplies - if the North African countries decided to cause trouble. The quick answer then would be to bomb them or invade them. Oh, that was tried in Iraq. Better to try to develop something in each country. And to use less. Here in the UK on bright days, we could generate a lot of electricity. It is light that's important, not heat.

The US has its own desert so could build something there. India has deserts. Oz has deserts. Southern Europe has semi-desert regions.

[Gliondrach]

On Countryfile, on telly, they were talking about animal feed for farm animals. They said that at present the only GM crops allowed to be imported for animal feed is soya beans. Other crops are banned by the EU but American growers - both South and North America - might go ahead and plant other GM crops because China and other countries are not so fussy about the dangers of GM crops, and they are becoming big customers for animal feed with their growing desire for corpse flesh. If that happens, the cost of meat will go up as the few existing non-GM animal feed supliers put their prices up or the UK 9and probably all the EU) will have to import meat and let animal farmers go out of business.

I think that the EU will cave in and allow the importation of GM crops to save their meat industries. They will reason that if they let their animal farmers go to the wall and import meat, that meat will have been produced by the feeding of GM crops in other countries. Then, the barriers to growing GM crops here could be lowered as well. And then there will be little sense in not growing GM crops for human food.

Monsanto will soon rule the world if this goes on.

[Tails4wagging]

On Countryfile, on telly, they were talking about animal feed for farm animals. They said that at present the only GM crops allowed to be imported for animal feed is soya beans. Other crops are banned by the EU but American growers - both South and North America - might go ahead and plant other GM crops because China and other countries are not so fussy about the dangers of GM crops, and they are becoming big customers for animal feed with their growing desire for corpse flesh. If that happens, the cost of meat will go up as the few existing non-GM animal feed supliers put their prices up or the UK 9and probably all the EU) will have to import meat and let animal farmers go out of business.

I think that the EU will cave in and allow the importation of GM crops to save their meat industries. They will reason that if they let their animal farmers go to the wall and import meat, that meat will have been produced by the feeding of GM crops in other countries. Then, the barriers to growing GM crops here could be lowered as well. And then there will be little sense in not growing GM crops for human food.

Monsanto will soon rule the world if this goes on.


You know that saying..

What you sow, you reap. Trouble ahead I think.

[my3labs]

MARYSVILLE, Wash. -- It's a simple step to take. And if we all do it, it can make a huge difference.

That's the message some seventh graders at Marysville Middle School want to pass on to you and me.

They closed their social studies books for a day to take a stand against global warming.

They're spreading the word around town about a global movement called "Earth hour."

For one hour on March 29, they want to dim down the unnecessary lights in your home or business.

Earth hour began last year in Sydney, Australia. More than two million people and 2,000 businesses turned off their lights for one hour, cutting the city's energy production by 10 percent. That's equivalent to taking 48,000 cars off the road.

The world took notice. This year, Earth hour has become a global movement.

What's really amazing about this effort is it was the students who thought of this went to their teacher and their principal to get support locally. Now, they want the Pacific Northwest to join in.

They're hitting up places like Home Depot, Starbucks and Microsoft. Boeing has already replied that they are in.

"They genuinely care about their environment," said teacher Gina Sanchez. "They're worried about what their children are going to live in. I think it's just cool the way they took this on."

So mark your calendars for March 29 -- a week from next Saturday -- at 8 p.m. our time and join these seventh graders in the fight against climate change.

And I want to hear from you if you are going to join Earth hour. Send me an e-mail at rsantos@komotv.com

[Bowwowmeow]

Wow that's great my3labs! I might take the forum offline for Earth Hour, besides turning off the stuff on the boat.

[thevegantwins]

That's a great idea. I'm going to write it on our calendar though if it is 8pm Pacific time, that's 11pm here and we'll be asleep anyway except maybe for Mr. TVT and Felíne.

[Gliondrach]

Good idea. Why only once a year, though?

[thevegantwins]

Funny thing about being green. A good friend of mine, B, forwarded a short email that she received from one of her friends. This friend was complaining that B won't confirm that she's going with this friend to the green festival next month and she also complained that B's dietary and transportation issues have become real issues for their friendship. B has been vegan a couple of years and went carless a few months ago, she gets around on bike or public transportation. So this friend wants B to go to a green festival but she has a problem with B being vegan and carless. :rofl:

[Gliondrach]

It takes all sorts to make a world.

[Bowwowmeow]

That's a great idea. I'm going to write it on our calendar though if it is 8pm Pacific time, that's 11pm here and we'll be asleep anyway except maybe for Mr. TVT and Felíne.
Yeah, it'll be 8PM Pacific time, to coincide with the kids in Washington. I'll put a customized message in the box that shows when the forum is offline, so that visitors will now what its all about.

It shouldn't actually impact very many of us, since there's hardly anybody logged in at 8 PM my time. And its only for an hour. I agree, though, Martin, people ought to do it more than once a year.

[Gliondrach]

I saw a telly programme months ago about the plastic pollution of the seas. They showed Midway Island and all the plastic rubbish that washes up there. Worse, they explained how albatrosses eat it and feed it to their chicks. I think I mentioned that programme here somewhere. On last night's telly news they reported on it. They said that every albatross on Midway has some plastic in their bodies. They showed the stomach contents of one dead one. Amongst the things were a toothbrush, a bottle top and a piece of fishing net. We saw a chick with a bit of plastic tube hanging out the beak. Someone gently pulled it out. A long piece of netting from a net shopping bag came out of its throat.

A special report about it will be on BBC1's 10 o'clock news tonight. Plastic can break down into minute particles in the sea. But it then attracts poisons, such as dioxins and pesticides, which stick to it. Shellfish can take it up and fish can eat the shellfish - concentrating more of the poisons in their bodies. Some of the polluters will eat the fish. Self-inflicted wounds.

[Gliondrach]

True. But a lot of it is deliberately dumped from ships. And fishing nets are lost - not that fisherman care about any damage they do unless it affects their pockets. They're probably pleased at the dangers posed to dolphins, seals and birds.

[Gliondrach]

Small Is Bountiful

Posted June 10, 2008

Peasant farmers offer the best chance of feeding the world. So why do we treat them with contempt?


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 10th June 2008

I suggest you sit down before you read this. Robert Mugabe is right. At last week’s global food summit he was the only leader to speak of “the importance … of land in agricultural production and food security”.(1) Countries should follow Zimbabwe’s lead, he said, in democratising ownership.

Of course the old bastard has done just the opposite. He has evicted his opponents and given land to his supporters. He has failed to support the new settlements with credit or expertise, with the result that farming in Zimbabwe has collapsed. The country was in desperate need of land reform when Mugabe became president. It remains in desperate need of land reform today.

But he is right in theory. Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen(2), and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than 2.5 acres are twenty times as productive as farms of over 25 acres(3). Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere.

The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming, it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There’s a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries like Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land(4).

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per acre than big farmers(5). Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don’t have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; they might grow several different crops in the same field.

In the early days of the Green Revolution, this relationship seemed to go into reverse: the bigger farms, with access to credit, were able to invest in new varieties and boost their yields. But as the new varieties have spread to smaller farmers, the inverse relationship has reasserted itself(6). If governments are serious about feeding the world, they should be breaking up large landholdings, redistributing them to the poor and concentrating their research and their funding on supporting small farms.

There are plenty of other reasons for defending small farmers in poor countries. The economic miracles in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan arose from their land reform programmes. Peasant farmers used the cash they made to build small businesses. The same thing seems to have happened in China, though it was delayed for 40 years by collectivisation and the Great Leap Backwards: the economic benefits of the redistribution that began in 1949 were not felt until the early 80s(7). Growth based on small farms tends to be more equitable than growth built around capital-intensive industries(8). Though their land is used intensively, the total ecological impact of smallholdings is lower. When small farms are bought up by big ones, the displaced workers move into new land to try to scratch out a living. I once followed evicted peasants from the Brazilian state of Maranhao 2000 miles across the Amazon to the land of the Yanomami Indians, then watched them rip it apart.

But the prejudice against small farmers is unshakeable. It gives rise to the oddest insult in the English language: when you call someone a peasant, you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive. Peasants are detested by capitalists and communists alike. Both have sought to seize their land, and have a powerful vested interest in demeaning and demonising them. In its profile of Turkey, the country whose small farmers are 20 times more productive than its large ones, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation states that, as a result of small landholdings, “farm output … remains low.”(9) The OECD states that “stopping land fragmentation” in Turkey “and consolidating the highly fragmented land is indispensable for raising agricultural productivity.”(10) Neither body provides any supporting evidence. A rootless, half-starved labouring class suits capital very well.

Like Mugabe, the donor countries and the big international bodies loudly demand that small farmers be supported, while quietly shafting them. Last week’s food summit agreed “to help farmers, particularly small-scale producers, increase production and integrate with local, regional, and international markets.”(11) But when, earlier this year, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge proposed a means of doing just this, the US, Australia and Canada refused to endorse it as it offended big business(12), while the United Kingdom remains the only country that won’t reveal whether or not it supports the study(13).

Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all(14), it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world. As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers’ stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up. The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own, large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. For many years, well-meaning liberals have supported the fair trade movement because of the benefits it delivers directly to the people it buys from. But the structure of the global food market is changing so rapidly that fair trade is now becoming one of the few means by which small farmers in poor nations might survive. A shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight. Fair trade might now be necessary not only as a means of redistributing income, but also to feed the world.

monbiot.com
References:

1. fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/statements/zwe_mugabe.pdf

2. Amartya Sen, 1962. An Aspect of Indian Agriculture. Economic Weekly, Vol. 14.

3. Fatma Gül Ünal, October 2006. Small Is Beautiful: Evidence Of Inverse Size Yield
Relationship In Rural Turkey. Policy Innovations. policyinnovations.org/ideas/policy_library/data/01382

4. Giovanni Cornia, 1985. Farm Size, Land Yields and the Agricultural Production function: an
analysis for fifteen Developing Countries. World Development. Vol. 13, pp. 513-34.

5. Eg Peter Hazell, January 2005. Is there a future for small farms? Agricultural Economics, Vol. 32, pp93-101. doi:10.1111/j.0169-5150.2004.00016.x

6. Rasmus Heltberg, October 1998. Rural market imperfections and the farm size— productivity relationship: Evidence from Pakistan. World Development. Vol 26, pp 1807-1826. doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00084-9

7. See Shenggen Fan and Connie Chan-Kang , 2005. Is Small Beautiful?: Farm Size, Productivity and Poverty in Asian Agriculture. Agricultural Economics, Vol. 32, pp135-146.

8. Peter Hazell, ibid.

9. new-agri.co.uk/00-3/countryp.html

10. OECD Economic Surveys: Turkey - Volume 2006 Issue 15, p186.
This is available online as a Google book.

I was led to refs 9 and 10 via Fatma Gül Ünal, ibid.

11. fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/HLCdocs/declaration-E.pdf

12. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), 2008. Global Summary for Decision Makers. agassessment.org

13. IAASTD, viewed 9th June 2008. Frequently Asked Questions. agassessment.org

14. Eg Terminator seeds.

monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/10/small-is-bountiful/

[Oracl]

Very interesting. :rubchin: Thanks for posting that, Gliondrach. :)

[Gliondrach]

It's good. Big aggribusiness won't like it. Their pet politicians won't like it, either.

[Gliondrach]

On Dispatches today, on Channel Four, they talked about the high prices of food. It was quite wide ranging, from commodity speculators/traders bidding up the price of futures contracts on the commodities, to the practice of increasing the amount of land that is planted with biofuels. They said that a third of the US corn crop will go to biofuel production. And that for every 100 units of energy that is used to grow biofuels, only 110 units are produced by the fuels. They also mentioned the growing demand for meat in China and India, and the amount of food that has to be fed to farm animals to produce meat.

One pig farmer here said that the feed for his pigs had doubled in price quite recently and he might have to go out of business. Ahhh!

They were giving advice on how to lower the family food bill, such as not throwing so much food away and shopping around for cheaper food.

The simple answer is to go vegan but the fools didn't think of that.

[Gliondrach]

From the ya hoo green pages.

Instead of sytrofoam, fungus and rice hulls
By Kim R. Posted Fri 25 Jul 2008 3:26PM BST

Polystyrene products have been used for years as home insulation and Styrofoam packaging, but the petroleum-based materials are infamous for the toll they take on the environment. Ecovative, a Troy, N.Y., start-up, aims to replace such products with an organic alternative derived from fungus and agricultural waste.

Rather than being manufactured from preexisting ingredients—a process that inevitably takes considerable energy—Ecovative's Greensulate is actually grown afresh. A mixture including water, recycled paper and rice hulls (a form of agricultural waste) is injected with living mushroom cells inside a mold and then placed in a dark environment. There the cells begin to grow and sprout thousands of cellular strands. In one to two weeks, the result is ready to be dried into a panel of insulation that can be used to keep a house warm in winter and cool in summer, or to protect a package during shipment.

Greensulate is fire retardant, and it's also unlikely to trigger mold and fungus allergies, by virtue of the drying process. And while its polystyrene counterparts take up landfill space indefinitely, Greensulate is highly compostable, enriching the soil surrounding it and even aiding the breakdown of other nearby waste. Current cost projections suggest Greensulate will retail at costs competitive with traditional foams, the company says.

Ecovative is still working on R&D and compliance with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International standards and International Building Code. It will focus on material optimization and compliance testing throughout 2008, it says, with a commercially available insulation product targeted for mid-2009. The company is actively seeking strategic partners to aid in Greensulate's commercialization. One to get in on early?

Website:

ht tp://ww w.ecovativedesign.com/

[Gliondrach]

H2O Battery
One replacement water powered (yes, water powered) battery for use with some of our water powered clocks and calculators.

FREE DELIVERY!

£3.75 (Inc. VAT)

Batteries, powered by water - are you sure?
Yes!

This has all been made possible by groundbreaking developments in portable power technology operated by an inexhaustible resource - water. The patented technology utilises two electrodes consisting of specially formulated alloys, one positive, and the other negative. When immersed in water an electrochemical reaction takes place resulting in the production of electrical energy.

To maintain a constant supply of energy simply refill as the water evaporates, typically every 2 to 3 months. The H2O battery has a minimum continuous life of at least 2 years. In addition to this, the H2O battery (unlike all other conventional batteries) can be stored in its dry state indefinitely and can be left to dry out at any time during its life and its life extended indefinitely.

As all the components of the H2O battery are recyclable, the benefits over traditional batteries are countless. Every year billions of conventional dry cell batteries are used, and the recycling of such waste is not only expensive but often incomplete, resulting in hazardous pollution and damage to our environment.

Please note that they cannot be used as direct replacements for normal batteries.
ecofreak.co.uk/products/0/77/H2O-Batteries.html

The only drawback is that the company only sells calculators and clocks that these batteries can power.

[paul]

Green Living: Lush founder revels in funding activism

Tuesday, December 30 12:45 am

As the wealthy co-founder of eco-friendly cosmetics chain Lush, Mark Constantine also revels in a more controversial role that he says is in line with his environmental creed - financier of anti-aviation activists.
Constantine, who set up Lush with his wife Mo in 1995, does not drive a car, cycles to work from his home near Poole, Dorset, to Lush's British factory, and still leads school tours around the local harbor to show them natural features of interest.
He spends a large proportion of his personal time bird-watching, and has published books cataloguing bird song.
So Constantine says he has no qualms when people accuse him of hypocrisy for running a retail chain of 600 cosmetics shops in 44 countries and being a frequent flyer -- while also funding anti-air travel pressure group Plane Stupid.
Earlier this month Plane Stupid activists staged a sit-on on the runway at Stansted Airport to protest expansion, grounding hundreds of flights and thousands of travelers. As well as funding the group, Constantine gave activists legal funds.
"I supported them before the Stansted occupation), and I support them now. I supported people chaining themselves to trees to stop roads," he said in an interview in his London office.
Pro-aviation groups have branded the entrepreneur a hypocrite as he has stores at various airports around the globe.
"You cannot be the perfect green person if you are encouraging people to consume," he readily acknowledged.
But Constantine, 57, said action was needed to make environmentalists' views heard as governments in general, and Gordon Brown in particular, were failing to provide a lead for people.
"We need great planning and not green talk from our government if we are going to see something happen," he said.
Constantine is adamant that he lives by his beliefs as well as he can despite the accusations he has recently faced.
He became a vegan at the age of 21 but recently began eating fish again because: "I found it too embarrassing."
"You go to dinner with somebody and they cook something (with fish) and what are you going to do? Make a big fuss and spoil their evening?"
Constantine's company, Lush, wears its green credentials on its sleeve, proud that 70 percent of its products such as soaps or "bath bombs" are sold without packaging -- which also helps cut costs by up to 75 percent on some products.
Constantine, whose personal worth is now estimated at 112 million pounds, says there was no master plan to his business but he did ensure the company adhered to his environmental beliefs.
Profits from the sales of certain Lush products are donated to environmental, animal welfare and humanitarian groups and no Lush products are tested on animals.
"I've been trying all my life to set some sort of example of green living and eventually I've come to the conclusion that this is something we have to do together and without being too earnest," he said.

[Gliondrach]

Nice to see Time magazine spreading the word a bit.

Eat Your Greens

By Bryan Walsh Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

If you really want to go green, the conventional thinking goes, buy a hybrid. Practically speaking though, there is a faster and cheaper option: shift to a low-carbon diet. The meal plan of the average American family accounts for 2.8 tons of CO2 emitted annually, compared with 2.2 tons for driving. Worldwide agriculture contributes some 30% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, far more than transportation. So when it comes to cutting your carbon footprint today, the truth is that what you eat is as important as what you drive. "If you can't buy a Prius," says Jonathan Kaplan of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "you can certainly eat like one."

And here's better news: eating green is good for you. The very foods with a high carbon cost--red meat, pork, dairy products, processed snacks--also tend to be laden with fat and calories. A green diet would comprise mostly vegetables and fruits, whole grains, fish and lean meats like chicken--a diet that's eco- and waistline friendly. "[Eating green] can make a big difference for the climate and be more healthy," says Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist for the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It may be hard to believe that a meal at McDonald's produces more carbon than your trip to the drive-through--until you consider just how vast and energy-intensive the global food system is. More than 37% of the world's land is used for agriculture, much of it ground that was once forested--and deforestation is a major source of carbon. The fertilizer and machinery needed on a modern farm also have a large carbon footprint, as does the network of ships and trucks that brings the food from the farm to your plate. On average, it takes seven to 10 times as much fossil-fuel energy to produce and ship food as we get from eating it.

The most efficient way to shrink the carbon footprint of your menu is to eat less meat, especially beef. Raising cattle takes a lot more energy than growing the equivalent amount of grains, fruits or vegetables: most produce requires about 2 calories of fossil-fuel energy to cultivate per 1 calorie of food energy; with beef, the ratio can be as high as 80 to 1. What's more, the majority of cattle in the U.S. are reared on grain and loads of it--670 million tons in 2002--and the fertilizer used to grow that feed creates separate environmental problems, including surface runoff that leads to dead zones in coastal waters like the Gulf of Mexico. Those grain-fed cattle then belch methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times as potent as CO2. "Reducing beef is the first step to a green diet," says Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

That one step can make an enormous impact on the atmosphere and your arteries. A 2005 study by the University of Chicago found that one person switching from a red-meat-based diet to vegetarianism could save about the same amount of CO2 as trading in a Toyota Camry for a Toyota Prius. There's no shortage of evidence that reducing red meat--Americans eat more than 60 lb. of dead cow annually--is also good for your health. CSPI estimates that replacing one 3.5-oz. serving of beef, one egg and a 1-oz. serving of cheese each day with an equivalent amount of fruits, vegetables and grains would cut your daily fat consumption and increase your fiber intake, all while conserving 1.8 acres of cropland and reducing animal waste by 11,400 lb. each year.

And while locally grown has become some eco-eaters' mantra, what you eat matters more than where it comes from. Our food travels from 1,500 to 2,500 miles on average from farm to supermarket, but that journey typically accounts for just 4% of a food's carbon footprint. "Focus on eating lower on the food chain, with more plants and fruits and less meat and dairy," says Kate Geagan, a dietitian and author of the forthcoming book Go Green Get Lean. "It's that simple." Installing solar panels or buying a hybrid may not be possible for many of us, but we can change today what goes into our bodies--and those decisions matter, for the health of our planet and ourselves.

Feeding the Earth. Foods with a low carbon cost tend to be healthier as well

Foods that require a lot of energy to produce--like beef--leave bigger carbon footprints

time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879192,00.html

[Gliondrach]

Solar-powered cooker takes climate prize

OSLO, Apr. 9, 2009 (Reuters) — A $6 cardboard box that uses solar power to cook food, sterilize water and could help 3 billion poor people cut greenhouse gases, has won a $75,000 prize for ideas to fight global warming.

The "Kyoto Box," named after the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol that seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, is aimed at billions of people who use firewood to cook.

Costing 5 euros ($6.60) to make, it can also make it easier to boil polluted water.

"We're saving lives and saving trees," the Kyoto Box's developer Jon Boehmer, a Norwegian based in Kenya, said in a statement.

The FT Climate Change Challenge was backed by the Financial Times, technology group Hewlett-Packard, which sponsored the award, and development group Forum for the Future.

The other four finalists were a garlic-based feed additive to cut methane emissions from livestock, an indoor cooling system using hollow tiles, a cover for truck wheels to reduce fuel use and a "giant industrial microwave" for creating charcoal.

A statement said that Boehmer would carry out trials in 10 countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia. He would then collect data to back an application for carbon credits.

The United Nations is discussing giving credits to developing countries that preserve tropical forests, which soak up carbon as they grow. Those credits could then be traded.

Many countries are looking for cheap green ways to stimulate economies mired in recession. More than 190 nations have agreed to work out a new U.N. climate pact to succeed Kyoto at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.

[Gliondrach]

Is this true?

epXNJNjYBvw

[Fauxmage]

It seems to be.

(http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090303-287.html)Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090303-287.html)
by Linn Cohen-Cole Page 1 of 1 page(s)
www.opednews.com

(http://www.usalone.net/cgi-bin/oen.cgi?qnum=7290)

(http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/pub/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.opednews.com%252Farticles%2 52FGoodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090303-287.html) (http://media.fastclick.net/w/click.here?cid=171598&mid=323964&sid=48406&m=6&c=0)
The "food safety" bills in Congress were written by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc. All are associated with the opposite of food safety. What is this all about then?


In the simplest terms, organic food and a rebirth of farming were winning. Not in absolute numbers but in a deep and growing shift by the public toward understanding the connection between their food and their health, between good food and true social pleasures, between their own involvement in food and the improvement in their lives in general, between local food and a burgeoning local economy.


Slow Food was right - limit your food to what comes from your region and from real farmers, and slow down to cook it and linger over it with friends and family, and the world begins to change for the better.


And as we face an unprecedented economic crisis, and it is hard to be sure what has value, one thing that always does is food. Which is why the corporations are after absolute control over it. But what obstacles to a complete lock on food do they face? All the people in this country who are "banking" on organic farming and urban gardens and most of all, everyone's deepening pleasure in and increasing involvement with everything about food.


Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.


Those are things we not only all want, but things we are actively getting involved in, and things we very much need. And where they are truly good, they are growing.


The international financial corporations which have wreaked havoc around the world with astounding nonsensical "solutions" that are destructive of everyone but them, are brothers to the international agribusiness giants (Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.) which are just as aggressively after their own form of "taking." Just seeds, animals, water, land.


And freedom.


Because human beings are by in large good and by in large incredibly resilient and clever, and left to their own devices - that is, free - they would handle this gargantuan financial stupidity the corporations brought us with NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and all other globalized schemes (which they hope to eventually top off with CODEX). How? By being productive in real ways and locally. And farming is the solid ground under that. Farmers produce something of real value (something we used to take for granted), and from that base, businesses grow up. Local markets, local food processors, local seed companies, local tool and supply companies, local stores ... and an economy based on reality and something truly good for us, too, begins to grow.


So, look again at what has been exciting us - Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands. - and realize that they are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and naturally community building. And more, they are a real economy and deeply democratic - and just at a time we need something that works economically, that supports our democratic rebirth, and that protects food itself and our easy access to it.


And it is all those things that threaten the corporations ... which is why we now have these massive "fake food safety" bills in Congress. Everything is going under thanks to these fools, and they wish to be there like vultures to make sure that every drop of blood that can be sucked out of our resources and us, is theirs. To wit, they must get rid of such good and innocent things and yet truly powerful things as:


Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.


And how will those who contaminate our country's food with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and more, do that? Why, by setting standards for "food safety" that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage. Imagine your being faced with a 100 page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing up. That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing our farmers. Imagine having the government and corporations deciding every single thing you can do and must do in your kitchen and backing that up with the threat of 10 years in prison for screwing up - though you have never made anyone sick, and those corporations have. Imagine being surveilled 24 hours a day by GPS tracking devices that feed into ... a corporate data bank, one they have now moved out of the country so no one here can have legal access to see what is in it.


Imagine the devil himself - or a whole boardrooms of them, dressed in suits - defining the only safe and healthy food in this country as dangerous and burdening hard working farmers with more work then anyone could bear, while his own, their own, food is so dangerous at this point that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90%.


And how did they get this far with such a scheme to apply insane industrial standards to every farm in the country? Through fear of diseases and of outbreaks of food borne illnesses, both of which they cause themselves.


How it works: Tyson helps Bill Clinton get into office. Bill Clinton immediately and significantly lowers contamination standards for poultry as a thank you. And it is such contaminated waste from transnational poultry factories which is now implicated as the source of bird flu. Then fortunes on made on that fear. And then poultry industry uses the crisis they created to push out small farmers and take greater control than ever. Their mantra? Biodiversity not only be damned but be eliminated. And get rid of those damn farmers who protect it while we're at it.


The bills would require such a burdensome complexity of rules, inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes to sell locally - a fruit stand, at a farmers market - no one could manage it. And THAT is the point. The whole dirty tricks point. The whole "be in tight control of everything needed for survival because it'll be worth a fortune" point.


So, if you like farmers markets, local farmers, fresh milk, fresh eggs, vegetables stands, and freedom, let your friends know that it's all on the line right now with those "fake food safety" bills brought to us with well-planned evil and more of it to come, by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.


Slow Food reminds us of just where we need to be (and notice how much would help any local economy):


Forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties in cooperation with local food systems;

Developing an "Ark of Taste" for each ecoregion, where local culinary traditions and foods are celebrated;

Preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation;

Organizing small-scale processing (including facilities for slaughtering and short run products);

Organizing celebrations of local cuisine within regions (for example, the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada);

Promoting "taste education;"

Educating consumers about the risks of fast food;

Educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms;

Educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few genomes or varieties;

Developing various political programs to preserve family farms;

Lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy;

Lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering;

Lobbying against the use of pesticides;

Teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners; and

Encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces.



But we need to stop these bills first or we are left with no money from the financial bailout and no food from the food stealout.


Send a message to Congress. (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714)


We need millions to be fighting this. Contact Eli Pariser at MoveOn moveon-help@list.moveon.org to tell him MoveOn is badly needed.


And below, where Oped News offers a means of writing your local newspaper, take advantage of a chance to vent.




Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Stop HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759 (http://www.usalone.net/cgi-bin/oen.cgi?qnum=7290)
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers (http://www.usalone.net/cgi-bin/transparency.cgi?qnum=oen7290)

[Gliondrach]

If enough people don't band together to stop this and other forms of madness we'll soon have a world without any individual freedom or choice.

[Bowwowmeow]

I know it. I don't know how much credit to give them, but there are rumors that Monsanto is run by an elite group of people who actually want to push "frankenfoods" and their associated chemicals in order to actually reduce the world's population, not provide them with more nutrient rich foods like golden rice.

Sounds like a sci-fi conspiracy theory, but I've got to wonder what the people at Monsanto think about how they are going to survive in a world whose ecosystems may be destroyed by their practices.

[Gliondrach]

People like that don't think. They just need to be in control or to have as much power and/or money as they can get.

[Gliondrach]

U.S. Climate Change Science Programme Releases Report on the Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land and Water Resources and Biodiversity.

WASHINGTON, May 27, 2008 -- The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) today released "Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3 (SAP 4.3): The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States." The CCSP integrates the federal research efforts of 13 agencies on climate and global change. Today's report is one of the most extensive examinations of climate impacts on U.S. ecosystems. USDA is the lead agency for this report and coordinated its production as part of its commitment to CCSP.

"The report issued today provides practical information that will help land owners and resource managers make better decisions to address the risks of climate change," said Agriculture Chief Economist Joe Glauber.

The report was written by 38 authors from the universities, national laboratories, non-governmental organizations, and federal service. The report underwent expert peer review by 14 scientists through a Federal Advisory Committee formed by the USDA. The National Center for Atmospheric Research also coordinated in the production of the report. It is posted on the CCSP Web site at:

climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/default.php .

The report finds that climate change is already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, and biodiversity, and will continue to do so. Specific findings include:

Grain and oilseed crops will mature more rapidly, but increasing temperatures will increase the risk of crop failures, particularly if precipitation decreases or becomes more variable.

Higher temperatures will negatively affect livestock. Warmer winters will reduce mortality but this will be more than offset by greater mortality in hotter summers. Hotter temperatures will also result in reduced productivity of livestock and dairy animals.

Forests in the interior West, the Southwest, and Alaska are already being affected by climate change with increases in the size and frequency of forest fires, insect outbreaks and tree mortality. These changes are expected to continue.

Much of the United States has experienced higher precipitation and streamflow, with decreased drought severity and duration, over the 20th century. The West and Southwest, however, are notable exceptions, and increased drought conditions have occurred in these regions.

Weeds grow more rapidly under elevated atmospheric CO2. Under projections reported in the assessment, weeds migrate northward and are less sensitive to herbicide applications.

There is a trend toward reduced mountain snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt runoff in the Western United States.

Horticultural crops (such as tomato, onion, and fruit) are more sensitive to climate change than grains and oilseed crops.

Young forests on fertile soils will achieve higher productivity from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Nitrogen deposition and warmer temperatures will increase productivity in other types of forests where water is available.

Invasion by exotic grass species into arid lands will result from climate change, causing an increased fire frequency. Rivers and riparian systems in arid lands will be negatively impacted.

A continuation of the trend toward increased water use efficiency could help mitigate the impacts of climate change on water resources.

The growing season has increased by 10 to 14 days over the last 19 years across the temperate latitudes. Species' distributions have also shifted.

The rapid rates of warming in the Arctic observed in recent decades, and projected for at least the next century, are dramatically reducing the snow and ice covers that provide denning and foraging habitat for polar bears.

USDA agencies are responding to the risks of climate change. For example, the Forest Service is incorporating climate change risks into National Forest Management Plans and is providing guidance to forest managers on how to respond and adapt to climate change. The Natural Resources Conservation Service and Farm Services Agency are encouraging actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration through conservation programs. USDA's Risk Management Agency has prepared tools to manage drought risks and is conducting an assessment of the risks of climate change on the crop insurance program.

For more information, please visit:

usda.gov/oce/global_change/
climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/default.php
sap43.ucar.edu/ .

[Gliondrach]

News flash!
Well, not really. I just bought a Shakelight and a Sidewinder Cell Phone Charger from gaiam.com/realgoods/ by Gaiam. The Shakelight is a flashlight that doesn't need batteries. You just shake it back and forth for 90 seconds, and it stays lit for one to two hours. Its waterproof, and it floats, too, which is handy for dockside living. The Sidewinder will give you 6 minutes of talk time with a charge time of 2 minutes. They don't seem to be available on the website yet. I got mine at Whole Foods, for thirty dollars each.

I love gadgets that don't need batteries or need to be plugged in to work. :psing:



Is it the one shown below? Does it really give a good light for 2 hours, or does it rapidly begin to dim?

[Gliondrach]

There are loads of torches, radios (even DAB), lanterns and 'phone chargers available that you wind up. I've even seen a wind-up DVD player. And there are watches and clocks that you can wind up.

[Gliondrach]

Not exactly green news but I thought it should go here. Many consumer and advocacy groups are fronts for the drug, oil, agri-chemical and tobacco companies.

I took an interest in this when I saw the name of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest. I knew that some of the other groups, such as the ACSH and the CCF, that the article mentions are fronts for big business so I was worried that they were going to say the same about the CSPI. I needn't have worried, though. I have used info from the CSPI on more than one occasion and find their site very informative.

They also mention the PCRM but the worst they say about them is that they advocate a vegan diet and don't tell people to eat less meat when they write about the dangers of meat. Yes, just like anti-slavery campaigners, when pointing out how wrong slavery was, didn't advocate using part-time slaves.

It's a good article.




Whose side are health advocacy groups on?

The names might sound impressive -- but when parsing their message, you'll want to know who they serve.

By Chris Woolston
July 6, 2009

Obesity is a national health crisis -- or it isn't. Vaccines cause autism -- or they don't. Think of any current health controversy, and you can be sure that plenty of experts have already taken opposite sides.

Some of the most influential and vocal health experts belong to advocacy organizations such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the American Council on Science and Health. These groups have well-oiled publicity machines, connections in Washington and a proven ability to show up in news stories. But who are they, and what do they stand for?

In large part, they stand for controversy. "Consumer groups will run with an issue if they think it will get them publicity and funding," says Robert Mayer, a professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That doesn't automatically mean that the issues championed by the groups aren't valid -- but it helps, when assessing their words, to know more about them. Here, the Healthy Skeptic takes a look at a few of the groups behind the press releases.


American Council on Science and Health

The ACSH calls itself an "independent, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization" with an advisory board of 350 physicians, scientists and policy experts. The organization says 40% of its funding comes from corporations, although it doesn't specify which ones. Previous donors to ACSH have included Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and Bristol-Myers, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a Madison, Wis.-based nonprofit organization that publishes PR Watch, a quarterly newsletter that tracks advocacy organizations and PR groups.


That money doesn't buy loyalty, says ACSH associate director Jeff Stier: "I have no problem accepting funds from corporations as long as there are no strings attached."

With one notable exception -- tobacco -- the ACSH generally sides with industry on every health controversy, says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy. Some of these stances are well-supported by science. For instance, the group has debunked claims that childhood vaccines cause autism, a position that puts them in the same camp as most scientists and public health experts. On the other hand, the group also dismisses any suggestion that phthalate compounds in plastics pose health risks, a threat that most experts say is still an open question.

"They have quite a few legitimate scientists on their board," Mayer says. (The panel that investigated phthalates in the late 1990s was headed by former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop.) Although they don't always reach the same conclusions as other consumer watchdog groups, they genuinely do seem interested in consumer safety and real science, he adds.

"We're controversial," Stier says. "We're always looking for areas where there's a gap between conventional wisdom and science."


The Center for Consumer Freedom

The CCF calls itself a "nonprofit organization devoted to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices." Founder Rick Berman, a Washington lobbyist, says his organization collects money from more than 100 companies, but he keeps the identity of donors secret, even from his own staff. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, past supporters of CCF include the American Beverage Institute, Monsanto, Tyson Foods and Wendy's.

The CCF has staked out some unusual territory in the health wars. The group has criticized Mothers Against Drunk Driving and fought against lowering the blood alcohol content thresholds for DUI laws. It strongly opposed a law requiring nutrition labeling in New York City restaurants. And it has frequently claimed that junk food doesn't cause obesity. For that matter, it believes that the entire obesity "crisis" is little more than media hype.

"We're libertarians," says Justin Wilson, a senior researcher at CCF. "Our convictions are founded on science." He claims that obesity is good for the economy -- all of those diet plans and doctor visits keep money flowing. He also says consumers deserve "full information" on health topics, as long as it doesn't interfere with their choices. "We should all be able to enjoy a meal guilt-free."

The CCF is often criticized as an unflinching mouthpiece for industry, especially food and beverage companies. "They are a completely self-serving operation," Mayer says. Rampton is more blunt: "[Berman] would promote arsenic if the arsenic industry paid him," he says.


Center for Science in the Public Interest

This organization, publisher of the Nutrition Action Healthletter, is best known for its reports detailing the nutritional excesses of Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants and movie theater concession stands. It once memorably dubbed the dish fettuccine Alfredo (typically more than 1,000 calories and 50 grams of saturated fat per restaurant portion) "a heart attack on a plate."

Often derided as the "food police" by the Center for Consumer Freedom, CSPI provides reliable information to reporters, politicians and the general public, Rampton says. "A lot of their funding comes from subscriptions to the newsletter," he says. "Readers expect them to be thorough and practical. That keeps them honest."

The group may go overboard occasionally -- did anyone really need a breathless press release to know that buttered popcorn is fattening? -- but it generally takes a "level-headed" approach to nutrition, Mayer says. He singles out CSPI's open-minded stance on genetically modified food: "They could probably sell more [newsletters] if they claimed that you'd turn into Frankenstein by eating GMO corn."

Michael Jacobson, executive director of CSPI, says the organization does not accept money from corporations or government agencies. "We believe in personal responsibility, but we believe in industry responsibility too."


Public Citizen

This group, founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, takes public stands on health and safety issues involving pollution, medicine and consumer products. Like CSPI, it's funded mainly by individuals and subscriptions to newsletters, including the monthly Worst Pills, Best Pills, a continuation of the book by the same name. It doesn't take money from corporations or the government.

Some of Public Citizen's most high-profile work has been in the field of drug safety. The group may have a tendency to overstate the dangers of prescription drugs, but for good reason, Mayer says. "They have to push against drug companies who claim that everything can be cured with a pill." In general, its positions on medications and other products tends to be well-supported by science, he adds. "They've done a good job of identifying risky drugs that were later pulled off the market."

Public Citizen sounded the alarm on the painkiller Vioxx in 2001, three years before Merck withdrew the drug over concerns about heart risks.

"We do our own research, and we publish in medical journals," says Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. "We feel that a large fraction of new drugs offer few benefits over existing drugs." Patients should avoid such new drugs for at least seven years until their safety can be established, he says. "We're not against all medications. When we warn against a particular drug, we almost always recommend a different drug instead."


Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

You can't tell from the name, but PCRM is dedicated to animal rights. Among other activities, the group lobbies against animal research, touts the health benefits of meat-free diets and rails against dairy as a cancer-causer. It runs "The Cancer Project," which promotes a vegan diet through activities such as free cooking classes.

PCRM claims to have more than 100,000 members, including about 5,000 physicians. The group says it is funded by individual contributions and subscriptions to its quarterly magazine, Good Medicine, along with occasional grants from the federal government and private foundations.

The general public should understand that every position from PCRM stems from its commitment to animal rights, Rampton says. The group trumpets research showing that too much red meat can increase the risk of heart disease. But instead of encouraging moderation, the group recommends vegetarian diets. "It's healthy advice, but health doesn't seem to be their primary intention," Rampton says.

Dan Kinburn, general counsel for PCRM, says that the group always cites scientific data when it files a lawsuit or issues a press release. "Nobody has ever disputed the science," he says. "Instead, they attack our motives. We believe that a vegan diet is a superior diet. We don't think there's any good data that even small amounts of milk or meat are good for you."
latimes.com/features/health/la-he-skeptic6-2009jul06,0,7175750.story

[Gliondrach]

A cancerous conspiracy to poison your faith in organic food

By Joanna Blythman

Last updated at 10:00 AM on 03rd August 2009

Despite its obvious benefits for our health and for the environment, organic food continues to be denigrated by the political and corporate establishment in Britain.

The food industry, in alliance with pharmaceutical and big biotechnology companies, has waged a long, often cynical campaign to convince the public that mass-produced, chemically-assisted and intensively-farmed products are just as good as organic foods, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

The latest assault in this propaganda exercise comes from the Food Standards Agency, the government's so-called independent watchdog, which has just published a report claiming that there is no nutritional benefit to be gained from eating organic produce.

Those forces bent on promoting GM crops and industrialised production, would have been delighted by the widespread media coverage of the Agency's report, portraying enthusiasm for organic foods as little more than a fad among neurotic consumers that would pass once the public is given the correct information.

But what is truly misguided is not the increasing popularity of organic goods, but the Food Standards Agency's determination to halt this trend and instead promote genetic modification.
The new report from the FSA highlights this. For all the publicity it has attracted, the document does not contain any new material.

In fact, it is just an analysis of existing research carried out by other bodies. Moreover, the organisation that conducted this second-hand study, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is not renowned as a leading centre in this field.

Indeed, there is far more significant work currently being done on organic foods by several other bodies, some of it funded by the European Union, though the FSA has chosen to ignore it.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the FSA has decided to give such loud backing to this report because it can bend the findings to suit its political, pro-GM, anti-organic agenda.

Ever since its creation in 2000, the Food Standards Agency has been biased against organic farming. The first chairman, Sir John Krebs, was supportive of the biotechnology lobby and only too keen to promote GM as the future of farming.

In fact, one early review of the FSA's work, by the Labour peer Baroness Brenda Dean, warned there was a risk of the Agency losing its 'objectivity' and 'rigour' in its support for GM crops and its opposition to organic production.

The departure of Sir John Krebs has not brought any change in policy, since the Agency is now largely run by plodding bureaucrats all too keen to follow the correct official corporate line.

Yet even in the context of the latest report from the FSA, the spin does not match the reality. For, contrary to all the hype this week, the Agency's own published research shows that organic foods are clearly far better for the consumer even just in nutritional terms.

According to the FSA's findings, organic vegetables contain 53.6 per cent more betacarotene - which helps combat cancer and heart disease - than non-organic ones.

Similarly, organic food has 11.3 per cent more zinc, 38.4 per cent more flavonoids and 12.7 per cent more proteins.

In addition, an in-depth study by Newcastle University, far deeper than the one conducted by the FSA, has shown that organic produce contains 40 per cent more antioxidants than non-organic foods, research the FSA appears to have overlooked.

But the concentration solely on nutrition is to play into the hands of the anti-organic, pro-industrial lobby.

As most of the British public understands, but the FSA fails to acknowledge, the benefits of organic food go far beyond this narrow point.

The fact is that organic production is much better for personal health, food quality, the environment and the welfare of livestock.

Organic farming works in tune with the rhythms of the earth, gently harnessing the changing seasons, the natural cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals for our benefit.

In contrast, the vast biotech, processed food industry is at permanent war with nature, continually trying to manipulate, overwhelm and conquer. Organic farming is all about harmony, non-organic about chemicalised ascendancy.

The most obvious way this difference is manifested is in the use of pesticides on crops, banned from organic farming but eagerly promoted by big industry.

Fifty years ago, agro-chemicals hardly existed in British farming, but today they dominate this sector. But their rise has not been without justifiable concerns about the side-effects.

There is now a wealth of evidence to show that pesticides not only poison the soil and harm wildlife, but also promote cancer and a host of other diseases because of their toxicity.

This is, after all, only common sense. Anything that can kill insects is bound to have an impact when consumed by humans.

It has been shown that ordinary pears are sprayed with pesticides no fewer than 17 to 18 times during one seasonal growing cycle. A third of all the food we eat, and no less than half of all our fruit and vegetables, contains such chemicals.

The Government airily dismisses any worries about the risks, but this kind of complacency is based on old, outdated science.

As the agro-chemical industry tightens its grip, the worse the dangers become. Organic farming, however, offers the opportunity to eat without these dangers. All organic food is free from chemical residues and thus the health threats are much lower.

Even the most die-hard GM enthusiast would have to admit that organic meat, fruit and vegetables taste much better than the mass-produced fare turned out by major suppliers.

Non-organic produce is not just grown with chemicals, it is also filled with additives, colourings, flavourings, salt and water simply so it has an acceptable appearance to the consumer once it reaches the shelves.

Again, this battery of synthetic additives which appears in many processed foods, ready meals and take-aways has a detrimental effect on our health, something that is avoided with organic produce.

Intensive farming also has a brutal impact on the well-being of animals, which in turn undermines both the quality of meat and our own health.

Organic poultry, eggs and bacon not only taste much better, but they have also not been pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, like industrialised produce.

Putting pigs and hens in battery cages inside vast hangars is a sure recipe for the spread of disease, akin to locking up a large group of children in an overheated, overcrowded nursery.

In this environment, the only way to combat germs is to dish out the antibiotics, but there are now scientific concerns that the overuse of such chemicals is weakening resistance in animals and also reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics among humans.

Giving animals a decent life through organic, traditional husbandry is better for them - and for us. All the cheerleading for the agro-chemical giants cannot hide the fact that industrialised farming represents a cul-de-sac for mankind.

We cannot go on as we are, pumping chemicals into our livestock and into the earth. The future has to be organic.

If it has any genuine interest in nutrition, the Food Standards Agency would be supporting a shift away from intensification, not pushing for more of it.

The FSA was meant to be an organisation for improving our food. Now it is just getting in the way.

dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1203343/JOANNA-BLYTHMAN-A-cancerous-conspiracy-poison-faith-organic-food.html

[Gliondrach]

Unlikely to be of much use in generating power but still interesting.

Electrical circuit runs entirely off power in trees

Hannah Hickey, Sept. 8, 2009

You've heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it's there, in small but measurable quantities. There's enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Transactions on Nanotechnology.

"As far as we know this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree," said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.

A study last year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants generate a voltage of up to 200 millivolts when one electrode is placed in a plant and the other in the surrounding soil. Those researchers are working with a company, Voltree, that holds patents for circuits to exploit this new power source.

The UW team sought to further academic research in the field of tree power by building circuits to run off that energy. They successfully ran a custom circuit solely off tree power.

Co-author Carlton Himes, a UW undergraduate student, spent last summer exploring likely sites. Hooking nails to trees and connecting a voltmeter, he found that bigleaf maples, common on the UW campus, generate a steady voltage of up to a few hundred millivolts.

The UW team next built a device that could run on the available power. Co-author Brian Otis, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering, led the development of a boost converter, a device that takes a low incoming voltage and stores it to produce a greater output. His team's custom boost converter works for input voltages of as little as 20 millivolts (a millivolt is one-thousandth of a volt), an input voltage lower than any existing such device. It produces an output voltage of 1.1 volts, enough to run low-power sensors.

The UW circuit is built from parts measuring 130 nanometers and it consumes on average just 10 nanowatts of power during operation (a nanowatt is one billionth of a watt).

"Normal electronics are not going to run on the types of voltages and currents that we get out of a tree. But the nanoscale is not just in size, but also in the energy and power consumption," Parviz said.

"As new generations of technology come online," he added, "I think it's warranted to look back at what's doable or what's not doable in terms of a power source."

Despite using special low-power devices, the boost converter and other electronics would spend most of their time in sleep mode in order to conserve energy, creating a complication.

"If everything goes to sleep, the system will never wake up," Otis said.

To solve this problem Otis' team built a clock that runs continuously on 1 nanowatt, about a thousandth the power required to run a wristwatch, and when turned on operates at 350 millivolts, about a quarter the voltage in an AA battery. The low-power clock produces an electrical pulse once every few seconds, allowing a periodic wakeup of the system.

The tree-power phenomenon is different from the popular potato or lemon experiment, in which two different metals react with the food to create an electric potential difference that causes a current to flow.

"We specifically didn't want to confuse this effect with the potato effect, so we used the same metal for both electrodes," Parviz said.

Tree power is unlikely to replace solar power for most applications, Parviz admits. But the system could provide a low-cost option for powering tree sensors that might be used to detect environmental conditions or forest fires. The electronic output could also be used to gauge a tree's health.

"It's not exactly established where these voltages come from. But there seems to be some signaling in trees, similar to what happens in the human body but with slower speed," Parviz said. "I'm interested in applying our results as a way of investigating what the tree is doing. When you go to the doctor, the first thing that they measure is your pulse. We don't really have something similar for trees."

Other co-authors are Eric Carlson and Ryan Ricchiuti of the UW. The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=51869

[Gliondrach]

New Source for Biofuels Discovered by Researchers At The University of Texas at Austin

April 23, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas — A newly created microbe produces cellulose that can be turned into ethanol and other biofuels, report scientists from The University of Texas at Austin who say the microbe could provide a significant portion of the nation's transportation fuel if production can be scaled up.

Along with cellulose, the cyanobacteria developed by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. secrete glucose and sucrose. These simple sugars are the major sources used to produce ethanol.

"The cyanobacterium is potentially a very inexpensive source for sugars to use for ethanol and designer fuels," says Nobles, a research associate in the Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology.


Brown and Nobles say their cyanobacteria can be grown in production facilities on non-agricultural lands using salty water unsuitable for human consumption or crops.

Other key findings include:

The new cyanobacteria use sunlight as an energy source to produce and excrete sugars and cellulose

Glucose, cellulose and sucrose can be continually harvested without harming or destroying the cyanobacteria (harvesting cellulose and sugars from true algae or crops, like corn and sugarcane, requires killing the organisms and using enzymes and mechanical methods to extract the sugars)

Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen can be grown without petroleum-based fertilizer input

They recently published their research in the journal Cellulose.

Nobles made the new cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) by giving them a set of cellulose-making genes from a non-photosynthetic "vinegar" bacterium, Acetobacter xylinum, well known as a prolific cellulose producer.

The new cyanobacteria produce a relatively pure, gel-like form of cellulose that can be broken down easily into glucose.

"The problem with cellulose harvested from plants is that it's difficult to break down because it's highly crystalline and mixed with lignins [for structure] and other compounds," Nobles says.

He was surprised to discover that the cyanobacteria also secrete large amounts of glucose or sucrose, sugars that can be directly harvested from the organisms.

"The huge expense in making cellulosic ethanol and biofuels is in using enzymes and mechanical methods to break cellulose down," says Nobles. "Using the cyanobacteria escapes these expensive processes."

Sources being used or considered for ethanol production in the United States include switchgrass and wood (cellulose), corn (glucose) and sugarcane (sucrose). True algae are also being developed for biodiesel production.

Brown sees a major benefit in using cyanobacteria to produce ethanol is a reduction in the amount of arable land turned over to fuel production and decreased pressure on forests.

"The pressure is on all these corn farmers to produce corn for non-food sources," says Brown, the Johnson & Johnson Centennial Chair in Plant Cell Biology. "That same demand, for sucrose, is now being put on Brazil to open up more of the Amazon rainforest to produce more sugarcane for our growing energy needs. We don't want to do that. You'll never get the forests back."

Brown and Nobles calculate that the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.

They hypothesize they could produce an equal amount of ethanol using an area half that size with the cyanobacteria based on current levels of productivity in the lab, but they caution that there is a lot of work ahead before cyanobacteria can provide such fuel in the field. Work with laboratory scale photobioreactors has shown the potential for a 17-fold increase in productivity. If this can be achieved in the field and on a large scale, only 3.5 percent of the area growing corn could be used for cyanobacterial biofuels.

Cyanobacteria are just one of many potential solutions for renewable energy, says Brown.

"There will be many avenues to become completely energy independent, and we want to be part of the overall effort," Brown says. "Petroleum is a precious commodity. We should be using it to make useful products, not just burning it and turning it into carbon dioxide."

Brown and Nobles are now researching the best methods to scale up efficient and cost-effective production of cyanobacteria. Two patent applications, 20080085520 and 20080085536, were recently published in the United States Patent and Trade Office.

utexas.edu/news/2008/04/23/biofuel_microbe/

[gabbles]

They should concentrate research on that, not on building new nuclear power stations.

[Gliondrach]

Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet

TimesOnline
October 27, 2009

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.

He also issued a clear message to President Obama that he must attend the meeting in Copenhagen in person in order for an effective deal to be reached. US leadership, he said, was “desperately needed” to secure a deal.

He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary,” he added.

Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry.

Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: “Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. It’s not a view shared by the NFU. Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don’t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us.”

On average, a British person eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day — the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop. This is a relatively low level for a wealthy country but between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern’s remarks. “What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,” she said. “Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.”

The UN has warned that meat consumption is on course to double by the middle of the century.

timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece

[Vinnie]

I hope some people take notice. But the rich might still eat meat because they will be the only ones who could afford it.

[Gliondrach]

More home-made wood burning stoves. They are said to be very efficient and almost smoke-free. If I could get a good supply of cheap or free wood I would consider having the gas supply to my house cut off. I only use gas to make cups of tea and the occasional veggie stew. I could use one of these stoves for those things.

This looks like an excellent and easy to make one:

Penny Wood Gas Backpacking Stove
csun.edu/~mjurey/pennywood.html

ehow.com/way_5318159_plans-homemade-camping-stove.html

garlington.biz/Ray/WoodGasStove/

See post 54 of this thread. The gizmo above might be better than the thing that won a prize. Or it might not.

And see post 25:
http://www.thesaucyvegan.com/showthread.php?t=2345&page=2

[Gliondrach]

Various designs of solar cookers you can make at home:
solarcooking.org/plans/

As well as lots of ideas for solar cookers, this site has plans for root cellars for preserving perishable food without a fridge:
builditsolar.com/Projects/Cooking/cooking.htm

This gives the advantages and disadvantages of each type of solar cooker on one page:
solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Solar_cooker_plans

[Blueshark]

8 Remarkable Animals That Saved People’s Lives
posted by Robyn, selected from Mother Nature Network Jan 19, 2010 3:05 pm (http://www.care2.com/greenliving/8-remarkable-animals-that-saved-peoples-lives.html)

Pig dashes into street for heart attack victim

JoAnn Altsman had a heart attack and collapsed to the ground. Lulu, her daughter’s pot-bellied pig, rushed out of the house, lying down in the street to stop traffic. The pig tried relentlessly to get help, returning to the house to check on JoAnn, only to rush back to the street desperate for help. Finally, one person stopped and followed the determined pig back to the house, where they found JoAnn in pain on the floor. She was immediately rushed to a hospital.

[Gliondrach]

Incredible.

[Blueshark]

The new Oprah special on where our food comes from hasn’t even hit television yet, but her official site has already dropped some great information on going vegan — including video of Alicia Silverstone doing some food shopping and cooking with Laura Linney. (Score on the brief shot of Annie’s Goddess Dressing — the greatest condiment in my fridge!)

They’ve also revealed Alicia’s shopping list. Check it out after the jump. See any favorites you like?

The List
Follow Your Heart cheese
Vegenaise
Earth Balance butter
Field Roast sausages
Tempeh bacon
Sunrise chocolate chips malt
Annie’s Naturals Goddess organic salad dressing
Brown rice penne pasta
Organic olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Gardein Chick’n Scallopini (meatless)
Amy’s Organics soups
Whole grain rice
Organic EdenBlend Rice & Soy Beverage
Hemp milk
Leafy greens
Maple syrup as a sugar alternative
Rice Dream Mud Pie (Mint is Alicia’s favorite)
Whole grains
Newman’s Own Organics Dairy-Free Newman-O’s cookies
Luna Bar (Alicia likes the chocolate peppermint stick flavor)

Original page here. (http://www.ecorazzi.com/2010/01/27/oprah-shows-you-silverstones-vegan-shopping-list/)

Looking at this lists makes me slightly envious of those in the US. I am not sure we could get some of those sweets in Sainsburys or Morrisons.

[Gliondrach]

You can find some nice sweets in healthfood shops. But they cost a small fortune.

[Blueshark]

Yes..I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that cookery is the best solution.

[Gliondrach]

Scheme sees high street in darkness

A new Government scheme to get businesses to cut their emissions could spell the end of the all-night bright lights of the local high street, the Environment Agency (EA) has predicted. Skip related content

Flat screen TVs, illuminated signs and brightly-lit window displays could all be switched off - instead of being left on overnight when shops and businesses are closed - as companies respond to the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme.

The scheme will require businesses to record their energy use and from next year, pay by the tonne for the carbon they emit.

Around 5,000 firms which use more than 6,000MWh of electricity a year - equivalent to bills of around £500,000 - must register for the energy efficiency scheme between April and September this year.

When the scheme is up and running, the Environment Agency will publish an annual league table of the best and worst performers under the CRC - with the top energy savers getting financial rewards and the worst companies being penalised.

With major supermarkets, clothing retailers and restaurant chains among the big energy users who will have to take part, the days of leaving doors open to encourage customers in and leaving lights on all night could be over, the EA said.

By improving energy efficiency, the CRC could achieve emissions reductions of 11.6 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2020, save participants money and boost green sectors of the economy, the agency said.

Tony Grayling, head of climate change and sustainable development at the Environment Agency, said: "The CRC is an opportunity for large businesses and public sector organisations to play their part in reducing dangerous carbon emissions.

"But for businesses the main motivation to cut their energy use will be their bottom line. By cutting energy use businesses stand to benefit from lower energy bills, and could be financially rewarded through the CRC if they perform well in the energy efficiency stakes."

And he said: "Carbon reduction needn't be complicated or expensive; in most cases better management of heating, air conditioning and lighting will deliver immediate energy and cost savings."

uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100131/tuk-scheme-sees-high-street-in-darkness-6323e80.html

And about blooming time. What about the Houses of Parliament? Every time you see them they are lit up like something that is lit up.

If the energy concern becomes a crisis, I would go further and turn off all streetlights after 9 pm. If people want to go out they should carry torches. All factories, offices and shops would have to work in the daylight hours. And Chief Warden Hodges, from Dad's Army would be put in charge of these things.

[Gliondrach]

Some interesting things on this site. Especially the 14th Feb entry which starts: 'India is leading the way in exposing Monsanto for what it is – corrupt to the core. The following two articles show how Monsanto regularly faked data to get its transgenic crop varieties approved in India.'
-------------

They also have posts about making chicken coops and milking goats. But there are still interesting things there.

ht-tp://survivingthemiddleclasscrash.wordpress.com/

Copy and paste the address but remove the hyphen from the ht-tp.

Here's where the monsanto story came from - also some interesting things there:
ht-tp://farmwars.info/?p=2407

[Gliondrach]

I don't know how accurate this is.

Emergency! Pathogen New to Science Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops?

USDA senior scientist sends “emergency” warning to US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on a new plant pathogen in Roundup Ready GM soybean and corn that may be responsible for high rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions in livestock

Mae-Wan Ho

ISIS Report 21/02/11

An open letter appeared on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance founded and run by Judith McGeary to save family farms in the US [1, 2]. The letter, written by Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, warns of a pathogen “new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber says it should be treated as an “emergency’’, as it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

The letter appeared to have been written before Vilsack announced his decision to authorize unrestricted commercial planting of GM alfalfa on 1 February, in the hope of convincing the Secretary of Agriculture to impose a moratorium instead on deregulation of Roundup Ready (RR) crops.

The new pathogen appears associated with serious pervasive diseases in plants - sudden death syndrome in soybean and Goss' wilt in corn – but its suspected effects on livestock is alarming. Huber refers to “recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.”

This could be the worst nightmare of genetic engineering that some scientists including me have been warning for years [3] (see Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, ISIS publication): the unintended creation of new pathogens through assisted horizontal gene transfer and recombination.

Huber writes in closing: “I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.”

Unique Physical Properties
This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.

Pathogen Location and Concentration
It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.

Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease
The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income-sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss' wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).

The complete letter is reproduced in the link below.

htt--p://ww--w.i-sis.org.uk/newPathogenInRoundupReadyGMCrops.php

Some supporters of genetically modified crops point out that a group of scientists from Purdue University have said the claims that glyphosate is having a widespread effect on plant health are unsubstantiated. And they say they haven't seen evidence of a widespread increase in susceptibility to plant diseases in glyphosate-resistant corn and soyabeans.

Purdue University is one of a group of universities which are part of the Glyphosate Stewardship Working Group. Their website says: 'Members are university weed scientists from major corn and soybean producing states who are actively involved in research and extension efforts in glyphosate-resistant cropping systems.' Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the Roundup herbicide.

The working group's own website shows the companies which are sponsors:

BASF, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Illinois Soybean Association, Indiana Soybean Board, Monsanto, Syngenta, USDA-CSREES NCIPM Competitive Grants Program, Valent USA.

The scientists from Purdue might be biased, seeing as how they are sponsored by the companies that create these crops and poisons. Perhaps like the scientists who were payed by tobacco companies said that tobacco was safe.
ht--tp://w--ww.glyphosateweedscrops.org/

If I had some land I would collect so-called Heritage Seeds, and would keep some planted in a sealed greenhouse in case the plants growing outside became contaminated by GM crops.

[Gliondrach]

I don't know if there are any vegan farms in this organisation. If you know of any, you could suggest they join it - and then you can work there for a holiday.

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms

WWOOF is a world wide network of organisations.
We link volunteers with organic farmers, and help people share more sustainable ways of living.

WWOOF is an exchange - In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.

WWOOF organisations link people who want to volunteer on organic farms or smallholdings with people who are looking for volunteer help.

h--ttp://ww--w.wwoof.org/