Live Small and Prosper Pt 3: The more solar projects the better

Concerning solar projects, the more the merrier, I say.

19 of 20 proposed projects will likely begin as early as 2011 in Ontario.

1 of 20 was recently cancelled, because concerned citizens made an effort to save a significant plot of arable land.

I support their cause. We should save arable land and put it to good use.


["Fields of white beans border the Lake Erie shoreline": photos GH]

And I believe it’s possible to save more than we already do.


["Soy and corn grow back to back in may plots of land"]

For example, much of the farmed land surrounding Deforest City is covered at this time with healthy crops of white and soy bean and corn.

A lot of those crops are destined for the beef and pork industry, and many would say Ontarians benefit greatly as a result, especially after the corn has been passed through a cow or a pig.


["More corn, more soy, more soy, more corn"]

Interestingly enough, cows are grass eaters (thus the second stomach) and must be force fed a lot of chemicals along with the corn in order to keep their health up to standard. Grass would be a healthier diet - for the cows and those who feast on them - but it would take beef producers almost twice as long to get the cattle to the slaughter house and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

‘Cause business is business and the beef business is big business closely connected to the fossil fuel industry.

Knowing this, it may make much sense to preserve more arable land for sustainable food products - and even a few solar arrays if no one wants to plant fruits or vegetables - by reducing our meat consumption by 5 - 10 % for the remainder of 2010.


["Reduce meat consumption, save more arable land"]

Then, if we survive the minor change to our diets, reduce meat consumption even more in 2011.

(I bet most readers would survive quite well. Many would even look more svelte. Now, isn’t svelte a word you’d love to hear in the same sentence as your name?)

Ontario - produce less pork and beef and more sustainable energy.

Now, there’s a campaign slogan for a brave politician, eh?

***

Only good will come from reducing meat and dairy products.

.

What say you? Global warming may be phenomenal?

I borrow the word ‘phenomenal’ from the following quote:

Grain farmers in the London area have had a great spring, with corn plantings several weeks ahead of schedule, says (Peter Johnson) a crop specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

“The planting progress is nothing short of phenomenal.” (May 1, London Free Press)

‘Phenomenal’ doesn’t spring to mind as I put excerpts from the newspaper article under the umbrella of global warming, which is where the warmer temperatures in our region likely fit.

For example:

About 80% to 85% of the corn in the London area has been planted, compared to 5% to 10% by now in an average year.

Is it phenomenal, even a good thing, that we’re so far out of whack with an average growing season?


(As well), “This year is the diametric opposite of last year. For most of the London region, it’s hard to complain right now,” Johnson said.

I suppose he’s right. It will be easier to complain in the future, when the negative results of global warming are a bit more obvious to more people.

The winter wheat is also benefiting from the good weather and is at least two weeks ahead of normal maturity. “Bean acres will fly into the ground in the first week of May, if the weather holds, and that’s way ahead of normal.”

Because beans and corn chiefly end up in the gut of a cow, and BBQs are a summertime passion in Deforest City, there will be much clapping of hands on backyard patios this year.

“Phenomenal beef,” some will say.

How long will we continue to stuff our faces while the world slowly warms?

.

Climate Change Concerns: Gorillas under threat = climate concern?

When I read the title (Congo Basin gorillas under mounting threat) and three short paragraphs re a recent report in yesterday’s London Free Press I related the matter to climate change.

Because of two words really. Can you see which ones?

Gorillas may become near-extinct in Africa's Greater Congo Basin by the mid-2020s unless action is taken to prevent poaching and to protect their habitat, a UN-backed report said on Wednesday.

The situation is particularly critical in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where activity by local militias has hit local gorilla populations, according to the report by the UN Environment Programme and Interpol.

Illegal logging, mining, and escalating demand for bushmeat, or meat for food, an increasing portion of which is ape meat, have also taken their toll.

If you said illegal logging you are correct.

Not because I know tonnes about illegal logging. (Yes, I rescue lumber for birdhouses from an area landfill site but that’s only slightly dodgy).

I know some things re illegal logging and its connection to climate change because I’ve been reading Saving Planet Earth by Tony Jupider recently and came across the following:


[Congo Basin gorilla: photo link]

In addition to being cleared to free land for agriculture, the tropical rain forests are also being plundered to supply the world with wood... the loggers are targeting the large blocks of natural forest that remain in Amazonia, New Guinea and Central Africa... including the Democratic Republic of Congo. (pg. 192)

The growing demand for exotic woods and beef from North American, European and Asia drive deforestation tactics that lead to wasteful, fossil-fuel dependent agricultural practices (e.g., soy production for cattle feed), the emissions of more climate-changing gases and biodiversity loss.

Not only are natives driven off their land, but as ape habitat is lost the animal’s often end up on dinner plates - and visa versa (for apes).

“An expanding trade in so-called bushmeat, now driven by demand from urban centers where animals caught from the rain forest, including gorillas, are considered as delicacies, is one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity across the central African forests.” (pg. 193)

I think Joni Mitchell got it right when she sang, we won’t know what we’re missing ‘til it’s gone.

Please click here to read about other climate change concerns.

.

Live Small and Prosper: Self-restraint is easy and we all need easy

I entitled a very popular recent post [especially to the persistent J, whoever he may be]
Live Small and Prosper: The latest reason for practicing restraint out-shadows all others.

I suggested that eating less meat results in many positive benefits and that the absolute best reason is:



“It takes less effort than leaving the car at home to conserve fuel (our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels is another reason grain prices are on the rise) and we need an easy way to practice restraint over and over and over again until we get really really good at it so we’ll be ready for the hard hard times when they come.”

I know I’m right too. You can quote me on it.



(I mean, if we can give up cheeseburgers we can certainly take public transit.)

A great comment soon followed.

Theresa said...

That J dude is persistent, if unimaginative. 



Going vegetarian is one of the best things I've done as a human, I think. It was one of the easiest changes to make too, and one with a lot of positive consequences for me and for the world. Way easier than driving less or not using any plastic. When I found out how much food could be going to humans instead of animals, how much I lowered my risk of colitis and colon cancer (which runs in our family), and how I didn't want to be responsible for the de-beaking, and otherwise and inhumane practices of factory farms, I was just so done with meat.

Being vegetarian has actually broadened my diet, not restrained it at all! May 5, 2008 7:00 PM


[Photo: "Where does our business as usual philosophy end?" G. Harrison]

I told theresa I’m still a flexitarian (semi-vegetarian) and feel better for it. And it’s easy.

And we need ‘easy’.

[Visit below for more easy-reading Monday Memoirs]

Reading Books, Riding Bikes: Buried in Killing Power and Cheap Food

I read while riding a recumbent bike in the basement and though I’d like to say I’m learning and staying lean at the same time I’d only be half right.

Cycling makes me hungry and soon after I dump sweaty clothes in front of the washing machine I open the door of the fridge and look for replacement fluids, especially in the shape of a can of Guinness.

The following is from The Little Green Handbook (TLGH), one of two or three books I dip into several times per week:

“Between 1989 and 1993 about 100 million pistols, revolvers and rifles were sold through US-approved commercial channels to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.”


After several mathematical calculations I learned that, if annual sales remained the same, another 350 million light weapons would have been sold since then - by the US alone. Many other countries sell vast numbers of weapons, of all kinds.

TLGH is a book that outlines seven trends shaping the future of our planet and ‘Conflicts and Increasing Killing Power’ is one of those trends. What a blast.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma I read of another disturbing trend:

“Of course the problems of our food system are very different - if anything, it produces too much food, not too little, or too much of the wrong food.” pg. 257, Michael Pollan

Why so many bullets and burgers?

When time allows, link to the two books; see “Recommended reading”, side panel.]

[On the lighter side, also see Cartoon in Progress at Four Mugs and a Crock]

Book Review: Like to Eat? The Omnivore’s Dilemma a ‘must read’

I’m reading three books at the same time, four if I count the one I peek at during TV commercials that concerns Bob Dylan’s big song, Like a Rolling Stone, and though The Little Green Handbook by R. Neilsen is loaded with amazing facts, figures and charts [U.S. military budget is 42 % of gov’t spending and rising, education is less than 7%] I spend most of my time with my nose in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

I’m on page 219, slightly over halfway through the very readable text, and getting an alarming and long-overdue education about our continent’s over-reliance on corn and industrial-sized, fossil-fuel-driven farming practices that debase humans, animals and our ecological surroundings. [And it’s true. If factory farms had glass walls many of us would never eat beef, pork or chicken again.]

But I’m also learning about how farming can be a very innovative, rewarding and environmentally friendly vocation or life.


For example, author Michael Pollan spends time on a family farm that cultivates grasses, mainly dependent on free sunlight, that in turn support the healthy growth of a wide variety of animals and by-products.

Chickens team up with cows to manage the grass and replenish the soil, chickens and rabbits team up to provide a unique cash crop, turkeys keep grape vines in tip-top shape, pigs turn cow patties and grass into free, rich compost, and together with a farmer who knows more about plants and animals than 20 factory farmers put together forms an enterprise that rewards the land rather than kills it.

Read the following quote and tell me where the author was at the time - a factory farm or grass farm.

“Unfolding here before us, I realized, was a most impressive form of alchemy: cow patties in the process of being transformed into exceptionally tasty eggs.”

I recommend the book highly to anyone who wants to eat healthy food and leave the air, water and land in good condition for future generations.

[Check Recommended Reading in the right hand panel for a link to an even better book review and go to Motorcycle Miles to read a bit about my next adventure.]

Me? Less beefy? What the profile will never tell you

One of my resolutions for 2007 was to lose 7 pounds in order to fit into the suit pants I purchased a few years earlier while I was an active long distance runner.

I reached my goal in time to wear the suit for Christmas dinner and though I hit a treadmill and recumbent bike 3 - 4 times per week I know I’m just barely keeping even, if that. (I don’t own a scale, never will, the suit pants will be my guide for several more years, but last time I checked they felt a bit snug again. Stink.)

Another runner patted his stomach this morning at the Red Roaster coffee shop and said, “I’m running more miles now, about 60 this week, but I can’t get rid of this roll.”

“Yeah, same problem here,” I said, patting my own stomach sympathetically.


[GH - third from the right, but add a few pounds]

At a certain age, especially in this country, it gets tough to stay totally fit even with regular exercise because we are surrounded by millions of bad food choices.

You don’t need to know my age and height etc., but it’s fair to say I’m concerned about making a lighter footprint, as well as smaller, and it’s books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma that keep me on the straight and narrow.

Well, narrowish.

More meaty quotes from The Omnivore’s Dilemma

I generally do my best reading while riding a recumbent bicycle in the basement.

My concentration is deep, pages fly by, I underline with jiggly lines many world famous quotes (well, they will be once everyone reads the same book and sees things the way I do), calories fall to the floor, beads of sweat form on my brow.

Not all of the beads are produced by the much-needed exercise.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan writes:

“When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen (make fertilizer from mountains of ammonium nitrate left over from WWll munition production in the U.S.), the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel.” (pg. 44)

Of course, being self-reliant is commendable in many ways but we supplant the sun at great personal and environmental cost.

The personal: Mountains of fertilizer turn into mountains of corn which, along with a mountain of antibiotics and truckloads of fat, feed millions of cows that become the meal of the day (in North America we eat a fifth of our meals in cars and feed a third of our children at a fast-food outlet every day) for an obese population.


The environmental: “The ultimate fate of the nitrates spread on cornfields (e.g. in Iowa) is to flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where their deadly fertility poisons the marine ecosystem... creating a dead zone as big as the state of new Jersey”. (pg. 47)

I’ve finished only 20 per cent of the book so I’ve many miles to pedal before more important lessons have been learned.

But I can almost guarantee I’ll be less beefy by the time I reach the last page.

Quotes from ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ keep beef off my plate

I should take a few steps back from the line re meatloaf in my last post because, I’m not kidding, I have been eating a lot less meat for quite some time.

Though I do eat meat on occasion (yup, I’m a flexitarian) it is hardly ever beef - due to the influence of several books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen and informative comments from friends.

Good ideas in some books and great ideas in others usually find a home inside my little round head.

For example, I will never forget the sardonic Scaramouche (from the book of the same name by Rafael Sabatini) who was "born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

I read the book twice while in my teens (all the way through too) and feel I am still much like him, though rather than mad I think the world is just a bit out of whack, slightly off kilter and in need of an extensive tune up. Now.

One of the three books I have on the go right now is affecting how I look at every meal I eat, and I eat a lot of them.


In The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan I am learning about the unsettling connections between oil, fertilizer, dead land, cheap corn, unnaturally fat cows, tons of antibiotics, truck loads of fat and doctors on factory farms who say things like:

“Hell, if you gave them (cattle) lots of grass and space, I wouldn’t have a job.”

It’s enough to make me take several more steps back from meatloaf.