EnviroVegans / EcoVegans / Ecotarians / EcoVeggies...

Well, I'm sure I'm not coining any new words today, but there sure is a good case to be made for working on the climate protection issue on a personal level—by becoming vegetarian or Vegan. If you've already changed out your light bulbs with compact fluorescent's and maybe even purchased a solar PV system, there is ample evidence that cutting back on your meat consumption (even just one or two days a week) could also make a contribution to further cutting your family's ecological footprint and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even if you can't identify with more "militant" Vegans who are opposed to eating meat for animal cruelty reasons, there are a number of important environmental reasons to do so. If you love eating meat as much as I once did, you will probably stop reading here because, frankly, you don't want to know anything that might make you feel guilty about enjoying it. You purchase meat in nice, shrink-wrapped packages that just kind of "show up" at the store, you take it home, you cook and you eat it. But if we're really concerned about the environment, about social justice, and about supporting sustainable food production practices, we also need to consider the following:

Animal agriculture is highly wasteful of precious resources (especially water), is highly polluting and damaging to our entire ecosystem, (air, land, fresh water and the sea), is a highly inefficient use of land for producing food, is a principal cause of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and elsewhere around the world, and is a major contributor to biodiversity loss. Go here for a short review of the many environmental problems associated with raising livestock. If you really want to understand the enormity of the issues, go here.

The following is good "food" for thought:

"Many of the impacts associated with eating animal products stem from the very basic process of digestion. Each time an animal consumes energy in the form of calories, it assimilates about 10 percent of the total energy available from its food. Roughly 90 percent of the energy is lost as heat and undigested material. This 90 percent loss occurs at each trophic level, so when humans eat animal products, they receive only one percent of the total energy available from the same amount of vegetation originally eaten by the animal (10% of 10% = 1%). Stated another way, if humans eat only vegetable matter, the total plant mass consumed at all trophic levels is 90 percent less than if they eat only animal products. Because omnivores require the consumption of so many more total calories than animals with pure vegetarian diets, they also require more resources to produce their food..." (and many of these resources are currently non-renewable). "It is this relationship between food and non-renewable resources that causes many environmental problems associated with eating animal products."

From "Environmental Implications of Modern Animal Agriculture: Save the Planet with your Fork" by Lacey Gaechter, University of Colorado


And the following adds some good points too:

"The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.

According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain—with 56 million people—could support a population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European meat eaters’ grain consumption is indirect (first being fed to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain in underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.

While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that is incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. “Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the ‘feed cost’ of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.”

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note that a pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water, whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds."

From The Case Against Meat by Jim Motavalli


With water predicted to become the new "oil" and even more wars being fought over water rights than access to oil in the century ahead, the massive amounts of water needed for animal agriculture just isn't sustainable.

Perhaps the way to go in the short term is simply to aim for a 10% to 20% reduction in meat consumption in this country. Most people, I think, could go meatless one or two days a week and barely notice it, but it could make a big difference for the environment and towards alleviating world hunger.

And check out Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie on the looming climate crisis:

Renewable Energy Projects

Great news for the CCA (Community Choice Aggregation) movement and those wanting to see real progress in climate protection! First, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently signed off on a local (CCA) power plan that is designed to achieve a 51% renewable energy portfolio for the city within 10 years—at rates that will meet or beat rates charged by PG & E. Using money from a “Solar Bonds” measure that was approved by voters in 2001, as well as funds from the SFPUC, the city will finance construction of a 360 MW solar power network and invest in a large-scale energy conservation effort. Many other communities around California and the nation are considering similar proposals and San Francisco’s leadership in this area will make a huge difference in legitimizing and vetting the concept and process for other municipalities. I urge you to find out more about the innovative CCA movement and to support it in your area. You can find out more about it here and here. Look for the Slide Show on the local.org web site. It has a lot of good information and is easy to understand. There's also a video available here.

In addition, the Kings River Conservation District and the San Joaquin Valley Power Authority (a CCA group) recently announced a multi-year agreement with Cleantech America LLC to build what will ultimately be the largest utility-scale photovoltaic facility in the United States. Located near Fresno, California, the Kings River project will be built in phases over the next 4 years: 10 MW in 2009, 30 MW in 2010 and 40 MW in 2011, for a total of 80 MW. This is yet another important success for the CCA concept and an important step towards energy independence and climate protection. For more information about this and other great things happening in the Solar industry, go here.

SICKO

I saw Michael Moore's new documentary "Sicko" last night and I would highly encourage you (and all of your family and friends) to see it as well. While I have always found Moore's movies entertaining, this one left such a powerful sense of injustice and made such a strong statement about the pathetic morals and application of our present health care system that I believe it will give rise to a long-needed groundswell of righteous indignation about who and what we are as a nation. At least that is my hope. I personally have Kaiser (Santa Rosa, CA) and my doctors and their assistants have always been professional and attentive. The problem does not lie with the caregivers, but rather with a system that puts money and profits above care and compassion. This system denied coverage and care to my otherwise healthy 21 year old son because of a minor pre-existing condition, and denied insurance payments to my mother-in--law for assisted living, even though she fell three times (injuring herself badly the last time), because she wasn't quite frail enough to meet their standards. I would wager that most, if not all, of you reading this know of someone who was similarly denied. Our system is sick and unjust, alright, yet we just sit back and take it.

In much the same way that Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" focused attention and mobilized action on the many climate change issues we now face, SICKO has the potential to do the same for the way we view and run health care in this country. In a highly entertaining and even amusing way at times—if you can laugh through your tears—Moore travels to Canada, England, France and even Cuba to compare their health care systems with ours, and the result not only pokes holes in almost everything we've been told about these other "socialized" health care systems—that they're too slow, poorly run by second and third rate doctors, and that most people are unhappy with them. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the film has an agenda, to be sure, and is laced throughout with Moore's acerbic wit, it becomes clear that it's the United States that is serving up an unfair, unjust and poorly executed health care system. And many other western countries are light years ahead of us in their view of health care as a basic right belonging to everyone, not a privilege belonging only to those who can afford it, and/or to those who don't need health services very often.

I would of course agree that we have some of the best doctors, best hospitals, and best medical technology in the world. So why is our life expectancy lower than most European countries?

I implore you....go to see Sicko and, if you feel like I did after seeing the film, let's rise up together and get things changed. Visit Michael Moore's web site to find out more about what you can do.