politics

FOOD, INC: the politics of food on the big screen

thegreenconnoisseur — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:56:34 -0400

By now you've probably heard about Food, Inc, a new film that's co-directed by Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation fame. Filmmaker Robert Kenner offers a highly developed expose-type examination of the food industry...

(To see this full story and more, follow The Green Connoisseur Blog link on our homepage @ http://thegreenconnoisseur.com )!!

What Will McCain and Obama Do About Plug-In Hybrids?

jplatt — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:00:00 -0400

With four weeks to go until the presidential election, it's time to start thinking about the potential impact that Barak Obama and John McCain will have on the environment over the next four years. One area where both candidates see a future is in hybrid vehicles.

Each candidate has expressed a desire to bring plug-in hybrid cars off the drawing boards and into our garages.

McCain's plan is simpler, and hinges on the thought that plug-in prototypes are not quite ready for prime time. McCain told ScienceDebate2008.org: that he would create a "$300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. This is one dollar for every man, woman and child in the U.S. -- a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency – and curb the dangerous effects of global climate change."

Obama, on the other hand, is ready to start buying hybrid vehicles right now. According to his web site, Obama wants to use government buying power to jump-start the commercial market for plug-in hybrids. He promises to convert all White House vehicles to plug-in hybrids within one year (as long as that doesn't create any security issues). After that, he says he'll mandate that half of all new vehicles annually purchased by the government are plug-ins in just four years.

Obama's energy platform promises a $150 billion investment over 10 years which will, among other things, "accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids." He wants to put a million plug-in hybrids on the road in seven years, and will push for a $7,000 tax credit to help make that happen. He also promises $4 billion in "retooling tax credits" to manufacturers so they can be ready to put plug-ins on the road and repair them.

Interestingly, neither the Green Party nor its candidate Cynthia McKinney appear to have a specific policy about hybrid vehicles.

Tips to Throw A Green Party

scleaver — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

It’s no surprise that this year’s Democratic Convention will be a politically correct affair, but what that really means is that the new patriotic colors are red, white, blue, AND green. In an effort to make this the most sustainable, green convention “in the history of the planet,” as Denver’s Democratic mayor John Hickenlooper told the Wall Street Journal, organizers are scrambling to stockpile unionized USA labor-made, organic cotton fanny packs and baseball caps and stock the pantry with local food.

November will be here before you know it, so here’s how to party like the Democrats at your own green political bash:

1. Email invites: Though the Republicans aren’t getting in on most of the green hype, they are saving trees by sending out convention invites via email instead of paper.

2. Color code your food: The Democractic convention will have a rainbow on every plate, according to the Journal, “each meal should include ‘at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.’ (Garnishes don’t count.)”

3. Be flexible: To keep their food as local as possible, Denver’s vendors are trying to rework recipes to incorporate local wines and ingredients.

4. Reconsider flatware: While Dems are using compostable tableware, often shipped from Asia, some organizers are wondering if it would be better to use local china plates and wash them? It’s your party, you decide.

5. Establish a “trash brigade.” To accomplish the goal of reusing, recycling, or composting 85 percent of all convention waste, Andrea Robinson, director of greening for the convention, has 900 volunteers who will man the trash stations to make sure that trash ends up in reuse, recycle, or compost bins.

6. Go virtual: Fred L. Smith, Jr. president of the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute “suggested the Democrats could really shrink their footprint by staging a virtual-reality convention: ‘Just have everyone stay at home with their laptops, sitting in their pajamas, interacting through their avatars.’”

Photo from Oriental Trading where you can get green (colored) balloons.

New Report: Doubts Grow about Global Warming

jkraft — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

If you thought the red state/ blue state divide was extreme in our nation’s politics, now there’s evidence for increasing polarization between green states and grey states… of mind.

How you feel about global warming these days largely depends on your demographic. The more conservative you are, the less likely you are to trust Al Gore and his cohort of climate change scientists.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a report on May 8 showing that while 84% of Democrats and 75% of independents say there is evidence of global warming, only 49% of Republicans do.

The partisan divide also holds when Americans consider the cause of purported global warming. While nearly 60% of Dems and half of Independents blame human activity for the atmospheric sauna, only 27% of Republicans agree that we’re the cause.

Yet when the believers in both parties were polled about possible solutions to the problem, they both attest that we’ll be able to curb its potentially disastrous effects. But despite the optimism, nearly half the public believes that “major sacrifices” will be required to roll back climate change.

Overall, global warming seems to be slightly less of a priority concern for both parties than it was one year ago; however, Republicans put it at the bottom of the list of their top 21 issues.

Want to learn more about global warming?

Top 10 Lesser-Known Myths About Global Warming

Send an Instant Message, Fight Global Warming

Top 10 Ways to Prevent Global Warming

Global Warming Cartoons

Jared Leto Pushes Back on Global Warming

Clean, Renewable Energy: The Answer to Global Warming

What You Eat Can Affect Global Warming, New Study Shows

Want to learn more about Eco-Politics?

Check Out Obama’s Global Warming Plan

See What McCain Will Do About Climate Change

Hillary Clinton on the Environment

There’s More Than One Way to Hug a Tree

Top 10 Signs You’re Not Running a Green Campaign

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall… Who’s the Greenest President of Them All?

Is The End Near?

scleaver — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

To put it lightly: the food system is out of whack. So much so that we're conjuring up Thomas Malthus, a British economist not known for optimism. At the turn of the 19th Century, he predicted that a growing human population would be kept in check by food supplies, and predicted experiences like a “long night of hunger and drudgery.” For decades, even centuries, we thought we’d escaped Malthus’s ideas, with a seemingly endless increase in food, grain, meat, and convenience products (soup that fits in a car cupholder comes to mind) and it was all cheap too! (Take that Malthus.) But, as Bee Wilson writes in The New Yorker (“The Last Bite,” May 19, 2008), that "hunger and drudgery" that Malthus predicted is now upon us. That includes:

1. Thirty-three countries in food crisis,

2. Rapid increase in the cost of food staples (rice, corn),

3. 100 million people on the brink of poverty because of food prices, and

4. Hunger riots (Haiti), ration cards (Pakistan), and armies baking bread for the general population (Egypt), to name a few.

Recently, Paul Roberts published The End of Food, part of a “second wave of food-politics books,” writes Wilson. The first wave, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, wasn’t as apocalyptic as the current tidal surge that includes In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, Bottom Feeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe, and Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel.

The one thing that all these food writers agree on: the Western food system must change and, I think, better to change now than be forced to change in a few years. Roberts predicts that in the next four decades demand for food will exceed supply, and we're not dealing with a basic supply and demand graph—demand is increasing when our population is staying the same. So it’s not how many people we’re feeding (as Malthus predicted would be the cause of our demise) but what we’re eating. The richer we are, the more we eat (see rising rates of obesity), and the more we eat of the wrong thing, mainly inefficient meat products (it takes four pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat).

Bottom line: we’ve created a food market that’s out of whack from what you learn in economics 101. As Wilson writes, “Our current food predicament resembles a Malthusian scenario—misery and famine—but one largely created by overproduction rather than underproduction. Our ability to produce way too many calories for our basic needs has skewed the concept of demand and generated a wildly dysfunctional market.”

Wilson continues on to break down this market of bottomless stomachs and the enemy of cheap food with typical New Yorker thoroughness (read the full article HERE) and I can warn you that it’s not pretty, but what’s the solution?

Well, Wilson doesn't provide many. There's Pollan’s solution: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” something most of us could do to get behind. Or, as a country, we could stop using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides by using crop rotations and mixed-livestock farming, and split our huge industrial farms into smaller cooperatives. The only downside is that the best example of this (it’s already been done) is Cuba, so its unlikely that many countries will follow their lead.

Fine, so Wilson doesn’t give easy fixes, but he does provide a lot to think about, especially next time you’re in the grocery store and deciding what to cook for dinner (farmed salmon vs. industrially grown beef vs. a nice big salad with fresh veggies). Because, it seems, we're speeding into a food apocalypse, where everyone is susceptible, there are few "healthy" options left (thank you industrial farming), and every food choice we make has huge ramifications. Thank goodness its farmer's market season.

Book cover from Amazon.com

There's More Than One Way to Hug a Tree

jchatraw — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:00:00 -0400

So, you've failed in your bid for presidency--what do you do next? Become a crusader for the environment, of course. Oh, wait. Did you think I meant Al Gore? If so, you'd be inconveniently wrong. I'm talking about the most recent Democratic presidental nominee, John Kerry.

John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry collaborated on This Moment on Earth, which is equal parts inspiration, instruction, and history lesson.

Here's a green nugget from the book where John Kerry relates his perspective about the issue of clean lakes and rivers in America:

"The threats to our waters are nothing new; this is news we began hearing decades ago. But we have not heeded it. In the late 1960s, just as I was returning from service in Vietnam, the health of the nation's inland waters had reached a critical low. I'll never forget picking up the newspaper one day in June 1969 and seeing the stark photographs of Cleveland's Cuyahoga River on fire. The flames reached five stories high, and a large plume of black, dirty smoke wrapped the sky in darkness. In shock and disbelief, I—like many other Americans—learned that the river was so polluted that it had literally caught on fire. It was later reported that the fire had started from a spark that had landed on oil and debris floating on the waters of the Cuyahoga from a railcar crossing above it. Two years later, the problem persisted. In 1971, I traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, and as I approached the Cuyahoga, which snakes through the city before emptying into Lake Eerie, I could see the river smoldering. The oil and debris littering the river water remained, and the river still periodically lit up. It was an unnatural as it was unbelievable.

The images of the Cuyahoga River fire quickly became a symbol of the growing crisis of urban pollution. I couldn't help but wonder: How had it come to this?"

Want to learn more about Eco-Politics?

Check Out Obama’s Global Warming Plan

See What McCain Will Do About Climate Change

Hillary Clinton on the Environment

New Report: Doubts Grow About Global Warming

Top 10 Signs You’re Not Running a Green Campaign

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall… Who’s the Greenest President of Them All?

Top 10 Green Jobs

Julia — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:00:00 -0400

The following list comes from E Magazine’s article called “Ten Great Green Opportunities”, where they came up with a list of professions that are ready and waiting to be all greened up. Something catches your eye? Well jump right in and start creating new policies for the field!

1. Travel and Hospitality- Tourism is the largest business sector in the world economy. Ecotourism is growing at three times the rate of the tourism sector itself, and demanding more knowledgeable workers committed to sustainability.

2. Planning and Land Use- Local governments are increasingly interested in how they can reduce their communities’ carbon footprint, and turning to city planning professionals for direction.

3. Health and Medicine- According to a survey conducted in 2002 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), 36 percent of U.S. adults use some form of alternative care.

4. Energy and Renewables- Renewable energy careers have the potential to re-establish America’s lost middle class. Renewable energy requires more manpower than fossil fuel—wind power creates 2.77 jobs for every megawatt produced, solar PV creates 7.24 jobs per megawatt.

5. Legal Careers- When a power plant is polluting more than its fair share, or an imperiled mammal needs recognition under the Endangered Species Act, environmental law groups go to court and fight the good fight.

6. Information Technology- In the nonprofit sector, IT work may not require extensive training. For global organizations like the Internet is a valuable tool. Be open to starting with little to no pay. It will give you the experience you need to be able to be hired by those few organizations and businesses that can afford to provide the salary that you want.

7. Green Learning- Over the past few years, sustainability coordinators—a job position that didn’t even exist a few years ago—have been joining the ranks of educational institutions looking to “go green.” Though there aren’t many schools offering degrees in sustainability, that’s beginning to change.

8. Design and Construction- Green builders already have a competitive advantage over traditional builders, according to Ashley Katz, communications coordinator for the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). And that advantage will continue to grow as sustainable, energy-efficient building practices become the norm.

9. Corporate Social Responsibility- With companies working to establish guidelines for social responsibility, the word “corporation” could sill take on new meaning in the 21st century. To make corporations more responsive to environmental, human rights and health issues, corporate responsibility advocates start from business’ bottom line and work their way up.

10. Food and Farming- According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, land used for organic crops increased from 48,000 acres in 1997 to 122,000 acres in 2005. That increase has opened doors, especially for students seeking a hands-on experience on a working farm. Some manage organic farms without actually owning the land, leasing it through a land trust. And the market for organic food has opened channels well beyond the local farm stands.