I read a very interesting article about international food aid today in a story about Bill Clinton. As it turns out when America gives aid there’s a directive that says it has to be in American produced food & not in cash. So basically the food is grown in America, & paid for by the American government, therefore benefiting the American farm industry. Then flown to countries in places like Africa where it’s given out for free thereby undercutting the local food producers & seriously undermining their ability to sustain themselves. Thus resulting in nations that can’t produce enough food to feed their populations, & have to depend increasingly on food aid from the so-called ‘generous’ developed nations.

I singled out America as an example but I’m sure other countries do the same. Although Canada for instance gives out 50% of their aid in cash, which can then be invested into the local farming industry. President Bush unsuccessfully proposed in Congress to allow the United States to also deliver some of its aid in the form of cash, but both Republican & Democratic Congressmen stymied its progress.

In conclusion, the aid meant to better the developing nations which receive it actually does the exact opposite & betters the first world country supplying aid. And that’s not right.

I’m sure a lot of you have been wrestling with the moral dillema for a while now of whether you should dispose of your leftover food in a garbage disposal, or toss it out in the trash.

Really, so none of you have been wrestling with that dillema. Ok I’ll admit I’ve not been either. But I stumbled across an interesting article the other day which should definitively answer your questions on the topic

Should we dispose of disposals?

Last fall, after 20 years of strident inaction, Congress finally passed a bill to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. There was a lot self-congratulation on Capitol Hill. The law seemed to mandate roughly a one-third increase in new-vehicle MPG by 2020 - enough to eliminate the oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf. Sounds great! “TMQ is hugely suspicious … [there is] a waiver provision that says that if the new standards prove too onerous, automakers can ask they be waived. That is a formula for what Washington specializes in: the appearance of dramatic action while nothing actually happens.” So what’s going on in Washington right now? Pleading poormouth, the big three automakers are already asking for a waiver from the 2015 interim standard, which requires roughly a 15 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. That standard does not take effect for seven years, and already Detroit automakers are saying they can’t meet it.

Or perhaps, they don’t want to try. Lee Hyun-Soon, president of Hyundai, told the Wall Street Journal last week his company will meet the entire 2020 standard by 2015, and will do so entirely with conventional vehicles — no complex plug-in hybrids, just sensible engineering using existing technology. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Subaru put their engineers to work — then build, at American factories staffed by American workers, vehicles that comply with MPG rules. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors put their lobbyists at work to dilute or evade the standards. There are only 535 people in the United States so gullible they would believe Korean engineers can meet a technical standard, yet American engineers cannot. Unfortunately, those 535 people are the members of the United States Congress.

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Half of the grain produced in the world is later consumed by animals that are slaughtered for their meat.

The grain & soy fed to U.S. livestock alone could feed over one billion people.

Twenty vegetarians could be fed on the land it takes to feed one meat eater.

When G8 leaders met in July in Japan, in part to decry the rising price of grain and rice — convening one day after U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a G8 member, advised British citizens to buy less at the grocery store in order to economize — they had a six-course “working lunch” with two wines, followed by an 18-course dinner with six wines. Even considering a ceremonial Japanese meal consists of many courses, this seemed to be Marie Antoinette territory. Menu items included caviar, “almond oil foam,” winter lily bulb, “kelp flavored beef” and “hairy crab bisque soup,” which must be really rich since “bisque” means “shellfish soup.” The wines, paid for by taxpayers, were usually expensive; for example, a Ridge Monte Bello 1997, which sells for about $125 per bottle. News reports said California wines such as the Ridge were specially flown to Japan, again at taxpayer expense, for the heads of state and their assistants.

After the bisque and champagne, the G8 leaders announced to much theatricality that greenhouse gases would be reduced 50 percent — but not until 2050. That is, current leaders will do nothing, leaving all real work to their successors. But while demanding that somebody else cut greenhouse gases, the G8 leaders were perfectly happy to burn fossil fuel to improve their dining experience. And the bold G8 declaration that somebody else will act against greenhouse gases 42 years from now? It’s nonbinding.

- By Gregg Easterbrook, Page 2

I came across a very interesting link today. It’s about the other side in the argument for compact fluorescent light bulbs.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/27/eco.flourescent/index.html

I think the professor makes a very good point in the article. And I think it highlights one of the main problems with the modern environmental movement: everyone is looking for quick fixes to the problem. Which is why I think you see governments so ready to proclaim that CFL’s will fix all of our woes. It’s why you have Al Gore pretending that you can stop global warming by switching from an SUV to a hybrid & changing the brand of lightbulbs you use. People really need to start looking at all sides before jumping on a bandwagon.

So I don’t know if everyone has heard, but a new study has came out highlighting the harm that exfoliating soap does to the world’s oceans. The exfoliation comes from little plastic beads that wash down the drain & find themselves in our oceans where the sea life can choke on it & die. Remember plastic doesn’t biodegrade so it’s best to limit its usage, especially in something like soap where the waste is inevitable. So buy a different type of soap.

Check out this link for more information: http://www.slate.com/id/2193693/

I’ve recently started loaning money to third world entrepreneurs on a microfinancing website called Kiva. I think it’s a pretty cool way to contribute to the under-privileged in the developing world. It’s not a handout so it comes back down to the basic principles of teaching a man how to fish. Sometimes I wonder if traditional charitable contributions to the third world do more harm than good, such as turning a nation’s peoples into beggars. I think microfinance is a way to combat that while providing encouragement, & exhibiting generosity, but at the same time providing a real world sense of responsibility.

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Kiva (www.kiva.org) is a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

You Can Help Stop Global Warming Today
The most effective way to fight the global warming crisis is to stop eating meat, eggs, and dairy products. Please also take a few moments to encourage Al Gore, the most prominent voice in the fight against global warming, to add going vegetarian to his list of solutions to our climate crisis.

Wasted Resources
Vast tracts of land are needed to grow crops to feed the billions of animals we raise for food each year. Of all the agricultural land in the U.S., nearly 80 percent is used in some way to raise animals—that’s roughly half of the total land mass of the U.S.10 More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals.

The U.S. certainly isn’t alone in its misuse of land for animal agriculture. As the world’s appetite for meat increases, countries across the globe are bulldozing huge swaths of land to make more room for animals and the crops to feed them. From tropical rain forests in Brazil to ancient pine forests in China, entire ecosystems are being destroyed to fuel our addiction to meat. According to scientists at the Smithsonian Institute, the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

In the United States and around the world, overgrazing leads to the extinction of indigenous plant and animal species, soil erosion, and eventual desertification that renders once-fertile land barren. Livestock grazing is the number one cause of threatened and extinct species both in the United States and in other parts of the world. Philip Fradkin, of the National Audubon Society, states, “The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and subdivision developments combined.” As more and more land both in the U.S. and around the world is irreparably damaged at the hands of the meat industry, what little arable land does remain may not be enough to produce crops to feed the burgeoning world human population.

Overgrazing leads to the extinction of indigenous plant and animal species, soil erosion, and eventual desertification that renders once-fertile land barren.

While factory farms are ruining our land, the commercial fishing industry is pushing entire oceanic ecosystems to the brink of collapse. Commercial fishing boats indiscriminately pull as many fish as they can out of the sea, leaving ecological devastation and the bodies of nontarget animals in their wake. Fishing methods like bottom trawling and long-lining have emptied millions of miles of ocean and pushed some marine species to the brink of extinction.

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