In July 2008, Roni A Neff, Iris L Chan and Katherine Clegg Smith of the Center for a Livable Future published the outcome of their two-and-a-half-year study of 16 major daily newspapers in the journal Public Health Nutrition. They plugged in the key words "food," "farm," or "agriculture" in any of the 4582 articles they surveyed that also contained the phrases "climate change" or "global warming." When they were done, only 109 of the articles included even a brief mention of one of the phrases, and only 20 of them took as its primary topic the relationship of food or agriculture to climate change.
In fact, that relationship is huge. It’s not mystery. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2006 that raising cattle generates more greenhouse gases than driving cars. Which added jokes about cow farts to the repertoire of the climate change deniers. Actually, burps are a bigger problem, and they’re no joke.
As Ezra Klein wrote several months ago:
The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant.
But there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.
If it's any consolation, I didn't like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It's not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.
Laura Kiesel recently asked at SolveClimatewhy the media are afraid to tackle livestock's role in climate change?. An excerpt:
[Roni Neff, the Research and Policy Director of the Center for a Livable Future] ... contends that media oversight of this topic may be partially due to what she deems "CO2 bias" among journalists. Since awareness of the significance of the food’s influence on climate occurred in the scientific community later in comparison to other factors, the topic may be undergoing a lag time before the media catches on as it did with climate change in general.
The [center’s] report cited the popularity of the climate change documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," during the period of the study. Though it is responsible for catapulting climate awareness into the mainstream, it makes no mention of agriculture and focuses almost exclusively on carbon dioxide.
CO2 bias is apparent even in coverage that does exist on the correlation between agriculture and climate change, as the general public seems most familiar with carbon emissions related to what has been termed "food miles."
The research that has received the most attention on the subject of food miles and helped popularize the eat local (or locavore) movement was conducted by Rich Pirog and the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University where he serves as director. The most famous Pirog-led Leopold study is the oft-cited "1500-mile study", which indicated that most conventionally-produced fruits and vegetables in the United States often travel an average of 1,500 miles before reaching its intended destination.
Eating local looms the largest in terms of food-messaging campaigns spearheaded or endorsed by environmental groups, climate coalitions and small farm advocates. This holds true even when it comes to the subject of meat eating, where alternative sourcing of animal protein from local farms is often advocated over reduced consumption.
Such messages have persisted even after Carnegie Melon released a study in spring 2008 indicating that eliminating red meat and dairy just one day a week from one’s diet did more to lower his or her carbon footprint than eating local everyday of the week. This study also received scant coverage in the media, as did a Guardian interview with IPCC chair, Rajendra Pachauri, who went on record to endorse reduction or consumption of meat as a critical personal behavior change in addressing global warming.
In fact, a comparison between The New York Times and The Guardian and its Sunday paper, The Observer, of the United Kingdom, shows that the UK publications covered the relationship between meat consumption and climate change twice as much as their U.S. rival between December 2006 and December 2008. The articles featured in the UK publication also averaged twice as long in word count and tended to feature more attention-grabbing, visceral headlines, such as, "Is Your Sunday Roast Killing the Planet?" |
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The diary rescue appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The resuce begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.
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Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse has posted the Eco News Roundup.
Unenergy wrote about Building a country's energy infrastructure: "My working life for the past 18 years has been involved in the process automation area, mostly heavy industry. So because of what you hear in the engineering, maintenance and operational offices and meetings as well as what the talk is on the shop floor, you tend to pay little attention to the so called 'environmentalists', as to pay them too much notice supposedly goes against believing in that which you are doing as a job. That they threaten your industry and its right to dig stuff up and burn it, smelt it, process it, weld it or refine it. That if they had their way we'd go back to living in the dark ages."
pollwatcher said we need a Government Green Jobs Program: "It's time for Stimulus II, the Green Jobs Program to invest in America's future and put Americans back to work. Stimulus II must be VERY different than the weak and ineffective Stimulus I. It must, in it's entirety, be directed at putting people back to work. No more bank bail-outs, no more tax cuts, no paying businesses to hire people they probably would have hired anyway, no state bail-outs to save an expensive job that takes the place of 2 inexpensive green jobs. FDR built the CCC in his first year in office. This was a government program, at low wages, to put as many Americans back to work as soon as possible. It was an emergency program, and if we don't have an emergency facing us now, I'm not sure what constitutes an emergency."
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Interceptor7 has posted the Overnight News Digest.
The Electrical Worker pondered something Muskegon Critic had looked earlier, whether Green Stimulus Money Will Go to China?: "Developers of a massive 36,000-acre wind farm in West Texas will be seeking federal stimulus money for the project which will include 240 2.5-megawatt wind turbines. That should be good news for American workers. There’s just one hitch. The Wall Street Journal reports that all of the turbines will be built by Shenyang Power Group, a five-month-old alliance with operations in China."
And BehrHunter pointed us to some more of that bad news in Evergreen Solar to Ship jobs to China: "Add Evergreen Solar to the list of companies that reap the benefit of tax payer-funded operations then ship the jobs to China."
Eddie C took on the beef issue from a slightly differently angle in This Ecological Action Diary is Not As Dull As You Think: "According to a USA Today story Eating can be energy-efficient, too ‘The production of 1 pound of beef creates 14.8 pounds of C02, the same amount produced by 20.59 miles of driving." Also ‘It takes about 15 pounds of feed to make 1 pound of beef.’ By that calculation when an E. coli contamination caused 545,699 pounds of ground beef to be recalled last week over 8 million pounds of C02 was generated. The carbon emissions equivalent of driving from New York to San Francisco 3,867 times were produced for far worse than nothing. Since it would have taken 8,185,485 pounds of feed to get this tainted beef to market, at 43,655 tons the combined total of grain that was mostly left behind as manure and garbage beef placed in landfill are comparable in weight (but far larger in mass) to the ill fated ocean liner Titanic.’"
Haole in Hawaii posted another photo diary installment, Elephants and Painted Dogs. In the phot is an African Wild Dog. Its scientific name, Lycaon pictus, means painted wolf.
goffchris complained that the climate change negotiators are Tinkering around the edges of disaster: "It can be safely said that most of the leaders of the G20 nations are dangerously in denial about the scope of the climate crisis. They are bickering about cuts that scientists agree will not limit warming to the 2 degrees that conventional wisdom has deemed acceptable, despite the fact that current data suggests that the tipping point could be as low as 1.7 degrees due to positive feedbacks.
Shaun Chamberlin has likened this discussion to people in a burning house arguing about the longest possible time they can stay in the building without being killed. It is suicidal madness."
Jerome a Paris sparked five other diaries with his Gah - how many times will it be needed to debunk silly pipeline conspiracies: "Once again the Afghan pipeline comes up in a recommended diary. Once again, I can only say: this pipeline will not happen, it cannot happen, it did NOT justify the war back in 2001 and it does not justify it today. I debunked the conspiracies back in 2005 and I update that diary below. Why it will not be built can be explained by having a detailed look at how pipelines are financed and paid for, and looking at how this applies to this project."
On the contrary wrote MotleyPatriot in Pipelines, Oil, and Someone I Can't Name, Dr Marcos in Pipeline Debate Rages On, RenderQT in Afghanistan,Pipes and Bush Admin First Scandal and BobTinKY in Debunking the debunking of not so "silly" pipeline conspiracies.
billlaurelMD gave us the latest skinny on News from the Arctic: "This week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center issued a press release to discuss October 2009 in the context of the progression of the Arctic sea ice refreeze season. ...The October 2009 sea ice extent in the Arctic was 7.5 million km2. The last four years from 2006 through 2009 have had the four lowest mean October sea ice extent in the record, with this year ranked second. Sea ice growth was slower this past October than in recent years, especially in latter part of the month."
Rei discussed The return of pack ice (or this year's lack of it): "Franz Josef Land is a cold, isolated place. The average daily high in July is barely above freezing. It has no native population, and its main historical role has been a Russian/Soviet military outpost. It supports populations of polar bears, foxes, walrus, and various arctic birds. Today, it should be in deep freeze, packed far beyond the edge of the ice pack. It isn't."
The Cunctator asked Will ConservaDems Follow Lindsey's Lead on Climate?: "Many conservative Democrats have questioned President Obama's clean energy agenda. Now, a Republican is breaking with his party to talk sense. In a press conference yesterday with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham rebuked senators unwilling to address carbon pollution. Saying that he has ‘seen the effects of a warming planet,’ Graham called for the United States to ‘lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution.’"
RLMiller had some good news and bad news in Climate: Baucus moves forward but stacks the deck.: "This diary starts by praising Max Baucus for good news: positive and timely action on climate. Almost immediately after the climate bill passed the Environment & Public Works committee, 11-1 (with all Republicans pouting, refusing to vote, and carrying on like sulky toddlers), Baucus announced that he wanted to move the process forward and has scheduled a hearing on the Finance Committee. Like Senator Boxer, he's standing tall in the face of potential Republican opposition. The bad news? On that 11-1 vote, guess who was the 1? He's stacked the deck of his hearing with professional deniers and coal industry representatives, instead of listening to people supporting clean jobs in his state and elsewhere. And watering down the bill would be a disaster for his state."
Turkana also took on Baucus in Copenhagen Climate Talks Already In Trouble
davidwalters delivered No. 8 in his series, the Daily Kos Nuclear Low Carbon Energy Round Up: "China's installed capacity of nuclear power is expected to reach 70 million KW by 2020, 200 million KW by 2030 and 400 million KW by 2050, Ye said. ‘It means nuclear power will account for 7 percent of China's overall power capacity in 2020, 15 percent in 2030 and 22 percent in 2050.’ Ye added. So....SO...this is more than tripling the expected new builds for the next 40 years at least as measured by their previously officially announced plans. I've warned in the past to those who pooh-pooh on the Chinese that they may well double this, triple this, since they a have national policy to build as much as they can to mitigate coal and LNG use."
It was kind of slim pickings for wide eyed lib in Free Food: Preparing for Winter Foraging: "Every week when I go out foraging, there's less and less to discover, less and less to collect. Leaves crunch underfoot, branches are increasingly bare, and annuals are dying back. The weather has gotten decidedly cool and it won't be long before this area experiences its first frost. ... If you like radishes, you'll love this plant. The leaves have a lovely peppery bite and can be eaten raw or cooked, though the best, most tender leaves are those on the leaf stalk. Some people may prefer them cooked since they're a bit coarse in texture when raw. Unless you're going for a very assertive dish, they should be mixed with other, milder greens."
Username4242 talked about the paleo-environment in Prehistoric Weekly--Life in the Western Interior Seaway: "Contrary to our somewhat limited perception, the Earth throughout its history has been anything but static. Instead the continents, like pieces of heat resistant bread, have slowly been floating upon a sea of magma. Their positions as we see them now are just one example of countless others throughout the past. And as these geologic plates interact, violent acts of both destruction and creation can and do often occur. Furthermore, the plates as we see them now are not necessarily the entirety of the plates that once existed. As an example that should strike home to most North Americans amongst us, the Rocky Mountains were largely formed as the now largely defunct Farallon plate slowly subducted (slipped beneath) the North American plate."
TheCrank delivered a Sunday Sermon on Hope, Faith, Evolution, the Climate, and the Future of Humanity: "I don't know where humanity will be in a million, a thousand, or even a hundred years. It's possible my kids' generation will see the end of natural death if medicine and understanding of aging and disease continues to advance (and computational power, nanotechnology, etc.) but it won't be my generation. That said, it's reasonable to believe that if we go with what has made us a successful species -- the fruits of science -- then we'll continue to be a successful species. There are weird frontiers way out there, if you look at physics and cosmology -- the end of time may not be the only place for us to go -- but we have to get over this larval stage to really explore those as a species. That's why energy policy, and the flip side of the equation, climate management, are not just the most important political issues now, they're essential to our fate as a species, and in terms of timing, this is the crucial century. We have some people who represent an old paradigm and others who represent the new one."
In his inimitable style, keirdubois explored the question of How Can You Have Any Pudding If You don’t Eat Your Meat?: "I don't care what you've read in school—what the hell do your teachers know, after all? They're probably all pinko commie vegans anyway. Who does that Mr. Sinclair think he is? Who died and made him Secretary of Agriculture? Jesus, it's not like any of them have had to slog through the killing floor day after day after day, is it? No, their lives aren't awash in polluted effluvia, and they never will be up in those shiny ivory towers. They have no idea what it takes to work for a living, raise a family, endure an office full of morons and a planet full of fools. Look at all those idiots! Look at all those boobs! Why, I'd wager they wouldn't even know ham from haggis, the smug, sneering elitists!"
Assaf sought our approval in the BBC World Challenge Competition: Vote for Israel-Palestine Alt.Energy Project: "World Challenge 09 is a competition organised by BBC... finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level COMET-ME (Community, Energy and Technology in the Middle East) is an Israeli-Palestinian solar+wind energy project among the 12 finalists. All finalists are worthy of winning. I am humbled that COMET-ME received such honors. And I personally ask that you vote for it."
MooingChoir alerted us to some Down Under politics in Smack! Australian Prime Minister calls out US Republican Climate Deniers: "Tonight, Kevin Rudd came out swinging. In an address to the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank on US-Australian relations, Kevin Rudd delivered a stinging critique of climate change skeptics, deniers, and other interests - in both Australia and the United States."
BruceMcF suggested an alternative to death-trap painted "bike boxes" at intersections in Weekend Bike Blogging: Bike Boxes I Can Believe In: "In the store, or at the airport, a "bike box" is a box that is supposed to have a bike inside of it. However, at an intersection, a ‘bike box’ is when you make a space at an intersection ahead of the ‘traffic stop here’ line. They are often combined, as in the picture, with a ‘protected by paint and optimism’ bike lane. In some cases for traffic lights that are tripped by stopped vehicle detectors, as in the YouTube clip below, they include a more sensitive stopped bike detectors in the bike box, so that the sensitivity of the regular vehicle detector does not have to be adjusted. Looking at the overall concept, as John Allen does in ‘A LOOK INTO THE ‘BIKE BOX,’ this is yet another case of, probably subconscious ‘if only we could kill off these cyclists we wouldn't have to worry about them thinking by traffic planners."
Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign, were happy to announce Another Coal Plant Bites the Dust!: "We’re celebrating great news out of Minnesota and South Dakota this week: ‘After almost five years of planning and permitting efforts, the participating utilities in the proposed Big Stone II Project announced...Monday that they will end their quest to build the project’s large coal-fired power plant and associated transmission facilities.’"
AKMask had good news for people who want to know where their food comes from in Laser-enhanced fruit (and I'm serious, too!): "I present to you, Low-Energy Carbon Laser Etching. This technology involves 'burning' (its not quite the same process, but a useful enough metaphor) the label on using ultra-low power carbon lasers. The power is so low, in fact, that the actual skin of the fruit is never penetrated, the etching only penetrates two or three cells, even in sensitive ones like a tomato. ... The marks, though only a few cells deep, are impossible to wash off or remove resulting in a safer, more easily traceable fruit and vegetable supply then we have today."
Other diaries in the past four days have included:
Sunday Train: Rescuing the Innocent Amtrak Numbers from SubsidyScope by BruceMcF .
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 5.3 by Frankenoid.
Which environmental organizations should I donate to? by retro postmodernist.
Frugal Fridays: A Little of This, A Little of That by sarahnity.
The Future of Farming by Simon MacGowan.
Climate Change, Habitat Loss, Humans by LokiMom.