Quick Hits: The War Against Cow Belching Edition

07.12.2008

For anyone idly clicking around over the weekend, here are a few links of interest found while trawling the Internet on a lazy Sunday afternoon:

* One of the points raised in the ongoing climate talks at Poznan, Poland, this week: how to deal with emissions from farm animals, who generate 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, when you include the resulting deforestation in places like Brazil. Solutions range from taxes on meat to new feed that causes cows to belch less methane. Some experts argue that the livestock industry can never be sustainable, and we should all try to make do by eating less meat—even just switching from, say, beef to chicken has a huge impact. (Though, as Ben Adler reports in The American Prospect this month, that's a message many mainstream green groups refuse to touch.)

* James Temple of the San Francisco Chronicle has a good piece on California's bold new land-use law, which will attempt to promote denser urban development and slow the fast centrifugal spread of suburbia. Notably, the law will require local communities to submit long-term land-use plans and then re-zone accordingly—which makes it harder for area residents to block, say, new transit-oriented development. Since that weakens local control over land use, not everyone's pleased.

* George Tombs does an in-depth survey of the challenges facing the Great Lakes states and provinces, who recently signed a compact aiming to protect an ecosystem that's increasingly battered by invasive species, pollution, and declining water levels.

* Hawaii just struck a deal with Better Place to set up a statewide infrastructure for electric vehicles, joining the Bay Area and Israel. It helps that most Hawaiian drivers rarely travel more than 100 miles per trip, which is how far early car models will be able go before needing to recharge, though there will also be battery-swapping stations for drivers who can't wait that long. (Here's an old post describing Better Place's rather dramatic vision.) Investors seem to love the idea because the market for batteries could offer the sort of dependable revenue streams mortgages once did. Maybe an electric-car bubble is just 'round the corner…

--Bradford Plumer

Posted: Sunday, December 07, 2008 11:14 PM with 3 comment(s)

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sdemuth said:

Go vegetarian, and limit animal agriculture to milk, cheese and egg production. Make pigs into zoo animals, or at least sufficiently expensive, like lobster, say, that farmers raise good pork, and people it rarely as a treat - there really is nothing to be said for pork as a staple in the modern diet. That will generate a certain amount of meat for the hardcore carnivores to splurge on once a month (gotta do something with the aged milk and egg producers). It'll improve the health of the environment and of the population.

I extend this to most wild caught fish and ocean farmed fish as well - we don't need it to eat well, and it's an environmental disaster. Ratchet the catch down to sustainable levels, even if it makes the stuff so expensive you only eat it once/year at most.

Yes, I know, people like their meat and fish, but as a convert to a meatless diet some years ago, I can say conclusively that the change is not particularly stressful, nor difficult. Meat is a habit, not a nesessity, and one we can ill afford right now.

December 8, 2008 11:06 AM

cspencef said:

Not to pick on you personally, sdemuth, but that's exactly the kind of talk that will largely kill virtually any attempt at reforming public environmental policy it comes in contact with.

December 8, 2008 5:11 PM

cspencef: You may be right. But it sorta puts our values in context doesn't it: we're willing to see the environment put at high risk of extremely serious damage, all to avoid adjustment that simply aren't very difficult. For 25 years we've gone with fuel inefficient transportation, knowing it was bad foreign and environment policy, because we like this big SUVs - never mind that we don't need them and were for years less safe in them than in smaller cars. Every purchaser of a Navigator could look in the parking lot and see others - including big men like me - getting by with CIvics as their family cars, but they NEEDED the Navigator. It takes $4/gallon gas to make a dent.

Ditto the food thing. Everybody knows people doing quite well thank you as vegetarians. It's obvious it''s better for you and for the environment. Doen't matter, we like that meat. But maybe $7/lb ground chuck would cure that too.

I don't disagree that what I say would turn people off. But think about what that means about our priorities. Beefsteak yes, a planet for our grandkids, hell no.

December 8, 2008 11:20 PM