Matthew McDermott
New York, NY
treehugger.com
March 13, 2009
It’s no secret by now that I’m always recommending that giving up meat eating entirely (or at the minimum, becoming a weekday vegetarian) is one of the strongest personal steps that can be taken towards reducing you personal carbon footprint, as well as your ecological footprint more broadly. At the Copenhagen Climate Congress, Elke Stehfest of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency presented additional evidence that a vegetarian diet, or one at least that radically reduces meat consumption, can have massive climate change mitigation benefits:
Continue Reading Vegetarian Diet Could Cut Climate Change Mitigation Costs by 70%, If Enough Of Us Make the Switch
Posted by Paul on November 18, 2009
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times
October 23, 2009
STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.”
“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.
But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.
People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.
Continue Reading To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates
Posted by Paul on October 23, 2009
By Felicity Barringer
The New York Times
July 30, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat.
“We’d come home in the summer, and the house would be 115 degrees, stifling,” said Mr. Waldrep, a regional manager for a national company.
He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.
All that changed last month. “Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” Mr. Waldrep said.
Continue Reading White Roofs Catch on as Energy Cost Cutters
Posted by Paul on July 29, 2009
By Andrew Martin
The New York Times
March 22, 2009
Anaheim, California — AS tens of thousands of people recently strolled among booths of the nation’s largest organic and natural foods show here, munching on fair-trade chocolate and sipping organic wine, a few dozen pioneers of the industry sneaked off to an out-of-the-way conference room.
Although unit sales of organic food have leveled off and even declined lately, versus a year earlier, the mood among those crowded into the conference room was upbeat as they awaited a private screening of a documentary called “Food Inc.” — a withering critique of agribusiness and industrially produced food.
They also gathered to relish their changing political fortunes, courtesy of the Obama administration.
“This has never been just about business,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, the maker of organic yogurt. “We are here to change the world. We dreamt for decades of having this moment.”
Continue Reading Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?
Posted by Paul on March 26, 2009
Kim Severson and Andrew Martin
The New York Times
March 4, 2009
MOST of the chicken, fruit and vegetables in Ellen Devlin-Sample’s kitchen are organic. She thinks those foods taste better than their conventional counterparts. And she hopes they are healthier for her children.
Lately, though, she is not so sure.
The national outbreak of salmonella in products with peanuts has been particularly unsettling for shoppers like her who think organic food is safer.
The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification.
“Why is organic peanut butter better than Jif?” said Ms. Devlin-Sample, a nurse practitioner from Pelham, N.Y. “I have no idea. If we’re getting salmonella from peanut butter, all bets are off.”
Continue Reading It’s Organic, but Does That Mean It’s Safer?
Posted by Paul on March 04, 2009
By Leslie Kaufman
The New York Times
February 26, 2009
Americans like their toilet tissue soft: exotic confections that are silken, thick and hot-air-fluffed.
The national obsession with soft paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra — which in 2008 alone increased its sales by 40 percent in some markets, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm.
But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.
Continue Reading Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests
Posted by Paul on February 26, 2009
By Brian Whitley
Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
February 11, 2009 edition
Almost 40 years ago, American scientists took their first steps in a quest to break the world’s dependence on plastics.
But in those four decades, plastic products have become so cheap and durable that not even the forces of nature seem able to stop them. A soupy expanse of plastic waste – too tough for bacteria to break down – now covers an estimated 1 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean.
Continue Reading Could ‘liquid wood’ replace plastic?
Posted by Paul on February 16, 2009
By Robin McDowell
The Associated Press
January 18th, 2009
TANJUNG PUTING NATIONAL PARK, Indonesia (AP) — Hoping to unravel the mysteries of human origin, anthropologist Louis Leakey sent three young women to Africa and Asia to study our closest relatives: It was chimpanzees for Jane Goodall, mountain gorillas for Dian Fossey and the elusive, solitary orangutans for Birute Mary Galdikas.
Nearly four decades later, 62-year-old Galdikas, the least famous of his “angels,” is the only one still at it. And the red apes she studies in Indonesia are on the verge of extinction because forests are being clear-cut and burned to make way for lucrative palm oil plantations.
Continue Reading Palm oil frenzy threatens to wipe out orangutans
Posted by Paul on January 20, 2009