Earth Day 2010

Earlier today, someone asked me what they could do to celebrate Earth Day. I responded, "Planting a tree or giving up factory farmed meat for a day (or forever) would be a good place to start."  Then I found this brilliantly begun message in my inbox and felt I had to pass it on....

Dear Jennifer,

You are destroying the ocean. We all are. We're polluting oceans with plastic waste and chemicals, we're overfishing, and we're causing climate change to warm and acidify our ocean waters.

But this Earth Day, you can do something about it. Since we are the problem, we can also be the solution. We can change our habits and protect our oceans forever.

We've partnered with our friends at Participant Media, the entertainment company behind such films as An Inconvenient Truth and Oceans, to help start a movement of people dedicated to taking simple steps to reduce three of the main threats to oceans: plastic waste, overfishing and climate change.

This Earth Day, you can make a difference by signing a public pledge to take at least one action to help save our oceans »

Here are the three most important steps you can take to help protect our oceans:

1. Choose reusable bottles and bags instead of plastic ones. Americans together use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour and each use 500 plastic bags annually. These can take anywhere from 1,000 to 1 million years to degrade, and are why plastic constitutes 90% of all trash floating on the ocean's surface.

2. Eat non-endangered seafood. Due to our over-consumption of seafood, 90% of the world's large fish, such as tuna, swordfish, flounder and sharks have been killed in the past 50 years. If we continue at our current rates, all salt-water fish could be extinct by 2048.

3. Reduce your carbon footprint. Carbon intensive activities such as driving, flying, and inefficient home heating are warming ocean waters, which could be catastrophic for millions of ocean species unable to adapt to higher temperatures. The extinction of any number of these species could in turn cause a collapse of the marine food chain, affecting everything from plankton to polar bears.

We can change all this by together changing our own individual behavior. Together we can ensure healthy, clean oceans for future generations. It all starts with people like us deciding to make small changes that can have a big impact.

Sign the pledge today and commit to help save the world's oceans »

Thank you for taking a stand,

– The Change.org Team in partnership with Participant Media

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day with good food.  If you need more ideas, check out last year's post Eating Green for Earth Day.

smaller = < climate change

"Can we imagine smaller?"  Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy, The End of Nature, and now Eaarth, asked in talk last Friday night at the Urban Ecology Center.

Smaller, as opposed to business as usual, is what it will take to mitigate the very worst effects of global warming.  Smaller seems revolutionary, but as we are already running into the limits of growth, what is really radical is not doing anything.  Smaller is necessary to slow down the heartbreaking losses related to climate change that are already occurring: the arctic melting, island nations disappearing, glacial water supplies being lost faster than they can be replaced, extinction of species, increased flooding & stronger storms.  "We are not allowed to bet on this," said Bill.  We are not allowed to gamble away the things we collectively need and love as humans.

Bill explained how we have already "built a new" planet in the past 200 years of burning fossil fuels, releasing carbon into the atmosphere that took millions of years to lay down.  The result: the earth's temperature has been raised by one full degree, there is 5% more moisture in the atmosphere, and 30% increase in oceanic acidity.  Each of these changes has led to myriad of problems, as mentioned, but the things that make it seem real to us are the stories with which we can identify.  In the face of all the dramatic stories, I was surprised how deeply I was saddened when Bill shared, very matter of factly while he was really talking about something else, that his home state of Vermont (once my home state) is losing their maple trees.  Just imagine; no sugar on snow.

Many people, especially leaders of large nations such as ours (as evidenced by the outcome of Copenhagen,) are in a state of denial, but the science is clear: it's real, we've caused it, and we need to take some drastic actions now.  The safe level of carbon in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm), as found by leading climate scientist Jim Hansen and his team (tipped off when the arctic started melting in 2007.)  We're now at 387ppm.

Enter the 350 campaign.  Bill Mckibben and a few grad students have started a global campaign to draw attention to climate change.  350.org is home to a global network of citizens of the earth concerned about the present and the future.  October 24, 2009, the international day of action on Climate Change,  was reported by CNN the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history.  Go to 350.org to see thousands of pictures of people from every continent taking action.  Maybe you'll see the photo of the Bangladeshi orphans who apparently sent a not along with their photo that said something like, "even though no one cares for us, we care about the earth."  The environmental movement is often seen as elitest, but Bill made the (too often missed) point that those with the least resources suffer the worst from environmental disasters; climate change is no different.

The 350 campaign has announced 10/10/10 as a Global Work Day.   From the website:

2010 is the year we
Get To Work.

With ideas and input from thousands of organizers from around the world, we've formed a climate action plan for 2010.
We'll get to work to start changing our communities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead. It's a plan that may well break the logjam and get us moving. But only, of course, if we work together to make it happen.

What will you do in your community?

One final point that resonated with me and I think is important for us all to think about.  When asked about personal lifestyles, Bill responded by talking about how our choices do matter, but that we should be, "saving some of the energy we use to perfect our own lives" to get political.  Global warming is a global problem.  The 350 campaign is a way to move world leaders to the end result of putting a price on carbon to reduce emissions significantly everywhere.


Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  The food system accounts for an estimated 20% of carbon emissions.  See past blog posts Changing Climate Change, Industrial Nutrition, and 50% Less Meat, and for ideas on low-carbon diets.  Changing our food system to one that emits less doesn't have to be all drudgery either.  One study found that people, on average have ten times more conversations while shopping at a farmer's market than while at the supermarket.  I'd love to see a study exploring how much more famer's market shoppers enjoy their local, fresh food too:)

Jamie's Food Revolution

If you haven't yet seen British chef Jamie Oliver's new reality show, Jamie's Food Revolution, about trying to change school meals in one of the unhealthiest places in America, you can watch full episodes on ABC.com.  It's worth a watch: his earnest desire to help a town combat its alarming rates of overweight and obesity by serving real food instead of processed food at school stirs up mixed responses from residents.  While Huntington, WV has been singled out due to a CDC report that named it the most obese city in the country, its eating habits, its school lunch, and its public health picture is found in the towns and cities across America.    Jamie's show uncovers some of the shocking realities of school lunch, like french fries counting as a serving of vegetables.  It also puts a face to the "obesity epidemic" by featuring residents whose lives have been severely impacted by obesity. 

Jamie (and viewers) may not realize that there is a long standing grass roots food movement in America, one arm aimed directly at improving school lunch.  He might have a better chance of success if he calls on the expertise of people like Ann Cooper, the Renegade Lunch Lady, and Chef Greg Christian of Chicago's Organic School Project.

My hope is that the show will get more people involved in ongoing projects to improve school food or to start their own project.  A starting point may be to find out about a school's (federally mandated) wellness policy.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line:  Kids do spend a large amount of time at school and the food served there has a dramatic impact on their overall diet quality.  School lunch funding is not adequate to serve quality meals.  The federal Childhood Nutrition Act, which regulates the school food spending, is being reauthorized and so this is an important opportunity for change.  Let your congress people know you support healthier food in schools. Learn more at Slow Food USA's campaign for good food in schools website: Time for Lunch.