Thanks to Graham Dawson for this refreshing article on climate change policy.  Privatizing climate policy would be just, and it would work. 

“Climate-change policy ought to be privatized. All government policy instruments, including taxes, subsidies, regulation and emissions trading to mitigate climate change ought to be abolished. Instead, property rights to a climate unchanged by human activity should be protected by tort litigation on the basis that strict liability is appropriate.”

Story from Big Government. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

…the Build-A-Bear empire sweeps across nearly every state and into 17 other countries. You’ll find their outlets in shopping malls everywhere and even some ballparks. The company also has a website called Build-A-Bearville.com where children can play an interactive video game that, on it’s surface, is unlikely to raise suspicion or sound alarms.

But when your unsuspecting tot logs on and hops a virtual train to the North Pole…you should know that he or she will be informed — by Santa Claus — that Christmas may be canceled this year due to Global Warming. Below is part two of the 3-part video.

Here’s the video:

Here’s a little part of the dialog:

Girl Elf: Santa, it’s gone!

Papa Elf: It’s gone, It’s gone!

Santa: What’s gone?

Girl Elf: Tell ‘em, Dad!

Papa Elf: The North Peak.

Santa: A mountain? A mountain’s gone? How is that possible?

Ella the polar bear: Santa, sir, that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re here. The ice is melting!

Santa: Yes, my dear, we know, the climate is changing. There’s bound to be a little melting.

Ella: It’s worse than that, Santa, a lot worse! At the rate it’s melting, the North Pole will be gone by Christmas!”

Santa: My, my…all of this gone by next Christmas? I don’t think so.

Ella: No sir, not next Christmas, this Christmas! The day after tomorrow!

The left isn’t interested in debating adults about global warming… they just want to scare your kids into becoming socialists. Isn’t it funny how the secular left complains about teaching children about the Devil and Hell, calling it child abuse? But they have no qualms at all about scaring children with lies about the great global warming Devil and the impending Hell that is the result of our sinful American way of life. It goes on every day in the public schools.

Imagine that your community has been devastated by an un/natural disaster, like Hurricane Katrina. Imagine that where you live is at great risk for being devastated again. Imagine that you know wealthier, whiter parts of town are better protected from future disasters. Imagine that there are two toxic landfills near where you live, unfairly reopened without due process. Now imagine that you also are trying to farm vegetables and fruits on a plot of land in a city despite all of these things that stand in the way.

Right then, not everyone has to imagine that.

Aletho News | December 26, 2009

The promotional material from Big Green Energy, aka Biomass Gas & Electric, presents biomass as “clean, renewable energy”, sustainable and green. The US Department of Energy uses the terms “clean and renewable” when introducing visitors at its website to the topic.

But is it accurate to describe the repeated removal of biomass from agricultural or forested lands as sustainable?

A quick review of some basics on the role of organic matter in soils belies the claim.

To support healthy plant life soil must contain organic matter, plants don’t thrive on minerals and photosynthesis alone. As organic matter breaks down in soil nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur are released. Organic matter is the main source of energy (food) for microorganisms. A higher level of microbial activity at a plants root zone increases the rate of nutrient transfer to the plant.  As the organic matter decreases in soil so does this biochemical activity. Without organic matter, soil biochemical activity would nearly stop.

In addition to being a storehouse of nutrients, decaying plant matter keeps soil loose, helping soil remain both porous and permeable as well as gaining better water holding capacity. This is not only beneficial to plant growth but is essential for soil stability. Soil becomes more susceptible to erosion of all types as organic matter content is reduced.

The value of returning organic matter to the soil has been well-known to farmers since the earliest days of agriculture. Crop residues and animal waste are tilled back into the soil to promote fertility. Where this is impractical (orchard and vineyard trimmings for example) these materials are better used for paper making, from an environmental standpoint, rather than being burned.

Denny Haldeman of the Dogwood Alliance asserts that there is no documentation of the sustainability of repeated biomass removals on most soil types. Most documentation points to nutrient losses, soil depletion and decreased productivity in just one or two generations.

A cursory search of the Department of Energy website does not reveal that they have given the issue of soil fertility any consideration at all. However the biomass industry is supported by both Federal and State governments through five main advantages: tax credits, subsidies, research, Renewable Portfolio Standards, and preferential pricing afforded to technologies that are labeled “renewable” energy. Without government support biomass power plants wouldn’t be viable outside of a very limited number of co-generation facilities operating within lumber mills. But under the Sisyphean imperative of “energy independence”, and with generous access to public assistance, the extraction of biomass from our farmlands and public forests is set to have a big impact on land use (or abuse).

The creation of an artificial market for agricultural “wastes” harms entire local agricultural economies. In Minnesota, organic farmers are concerned that a proposed turkey waste incinerator will drive up the price of poultry manure by burning nearly half of the state’s supply. The establishment of biomass power generation will likely make it more difficult for family farms to compete with confined animal feeding operations and will contribute generally to the demise of traditional (sustainable) agricultural practices.

Similar economic damage will occur in the forest products industries. Dedicating acreage  to servicing biomass wood burners denies its use for lumber or paper. Ultimately, the consumer will shoulder the loss in the form of higher prices for forest products.

As available sources of forest biomass near the new power plants diminish, clearcutting and conversion of native forests into biomass plantations will occur, resulting in the destruction of wildlife habitat. Marginal lands which may not have been previously farmed will be targeted for planting energy crops. These lands have steeper grades, and erosion, sedimentation and flooding will be the inevitable result.

It gets worse.

Municipal solid waste as well as sewage sludge is mixed with the biomass and burned in locations where garbage incineration was  traditionally disallowed due to concerns over public health. Dioxins and furans are emitted in copious quantity from these “green” energy plants. Waste incineration is already the largest source of dioxin, the most toxic chemical known. Providing increased waste disposal capacity only adds to the waste problem because it reduces the costs associated with waste generation making recycling that much more uneconomic. In terms of dangerous toxins, landfilling is preferable to incineration. The ash that is left after incineration will be used in fertilizers introducing the dangerous residual heavy metals into the food supply. Biomass fuel is not only unsustainable, it is also far from being “clean”.

Andrew Bolt / Herald Sun - December 23, 2009

MOST people will date the death of the great global warming scare not from the Copenhagen fiasco – boring! - but from Avatar.

It won’t be the world’s most expensive warmist conference but the world’s most expensive movie that will stick in most memories as the precise point at which the green faith started to shrivel from sheer stupidity.

Avatar, in fact, is the warmist’s dream filmed in 3D. Staring through your glasses at James Cameron’s spectacular $400 million creation, you can finally see where this global warming cult was going. And you can see, too, everything that will now slowly pull it back to earth. December 2009. Note it down. The beginning of the end, even as Avatar becomes possibly the biggest-grossing film in history.

Cameron, whose last colossal hit was Titanic, has created a virtual new planet called Pandora, on which humans 150 years from now have formed a small settlement. They are there to mine a mineral so rare that it’s called Unobtainium (groan), of which the greatest deposit sits right under the great sacred tree of the planet’s dominant species, humanoid blue aliens called Na’vi.

If Tim Flannery, Al Gore and all the other Copenhagen delegates could at least agree to design a new kind of people, they’d wind up with something much like these 3 meter tall gracelings.

The Na’vi live in trees, at one with nature. They worship Mother Earth and, like Gaians today, talk meaningfully of “a network of energy that flows through all living things”. They drink water that’s pooled in giant leaves, and chant around a tree that whispers of their ancestors.

They are also unusually non-sexist for a forest tribe, with the women just as free as men to hunt and choose their spouse. Naturally, like the most fashionable of Hollywood stars, they are also neo-Buddhist reincarnationists, who believe “all energy is borrowed and some day you have to give it back”.

And, of course, the Na’vi reject all technology that’s more advanced than a bow and arrow, for “the wealth of the world is all around us”.

Sent to talk dollars and sense into these blue New Agers and move them out of the way of the bulldozers is a former Marine, Jake Sully (played by Australian Sam Worthington), who drives the body of a Na’vi avatar to better gain their trust.

(WARNING: Spoiler alert! Don’t read on if you plan to see the movie.)

Avatar: Extended Trailer

Link to entire article below…

Herald Sun

By most reasonable accounts, the public discourse around healthcare reform, from Sarah Palin’s made-up death panels and others’ hyperbole to conservatives actually bringing assault rifles to Presidential events, was pretty pathetic.

But as bad as the healthcare debate became, brewing climate-change policy reform will draw an even-more-foot-stompy reaction from conservatives.

Here are five reasons why:

Healthcare is one of the most boring areas of public policy imaginable, while environmentalism has consistently drawn a high level of attention for the past four decades. Whereas healthcare reform actually created the current ideological divide among the huddled masses about how, exactly, public policy should treat healthcare, with climate change, that divide has long been established despite decades of policy inaction.

There have been clumsy attempts at climate-policy reform elsewhere in the world. There are plenty of conservatives who think any government intervention into private industry at all, no matter how reasonable the policy, is inherently bad and riddled with ulterior motives. These people don’t need any additional encouragement, but they’ll get it from the same astroturfing lobbyists who organized anti-healthcare rallies and protests. See also: Climategate.

Progressives can effectively argue for healthcare reform by using moral appeals. Because pretty much everyone can agree that helping sick people, whether or not they’re insured, is the moral thing to do, there wasn’t a whole lot of noise from conservatives about poor people not deserving to live. But hard science, not moral fundamentals, will drive climate-change policy, and there’s a lot of overlap between those who have unwavering support for both upping morality and deriding science. Related:

It’s easy for conservatives to call climate-change science mind control. Talking to a climate-change denier about the science behind environmental trends is a bit like dividing by zero: There’s simply no way to make it work. Indeed, it was cold outside someplace today, and citizens of an industrialized country like the States will be among the last to experience climate-change ramifications first-hand. But plenty of Americans, with their grumbles about their HMOs, do have first-hand experience with the the plight of receiving healthcare. And on that note:

Climate change is a problem “designed to be ignored,” The Washington Post recently noted. “It is a global problem, with no obvious villains and no one-step solutions, whose worst effects seem as if they’ll befall somebody else at some other time.” H.R. 3247 (overview, full text) actually seeks to identify the psychology behind consumer reactions to climate change. Though there are certainly worse ways to spend $50 million, detractors have a habit of reacting to politics instead of policy.

Fortunately, “most Republicans,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), post-Copenhagen, “don’t feel comfortable with the idea that our party stands for unlimited carbon pollution perpetually.” So the brewing problems involve conservatives – those wishing to conserve policy rather than change it – and not the Republican party or its supporters.

There are even odds, though, on whether Graham and his supporters will hold onto that position when confronted with angry voters hellbent on conserving nonexistent climate-change policy that no one bothered to create in the first place.

(image via)

The Good: Special effects are among the best of the decade, with beautiful attention to art design in the Pandora forests and bad-ass mecha-military designs. The Na’Vi are depicted with vibrancy and enough attention to detail to distract from their still-clearly 3-D rendered bodies. Cool concept in the form of the Avatar. Well-done final battle scenes. Sigourney Weaver. Michelle Rodriguez a.k.a. Ana Lucia from Lost. Giant pterodactyl-like sky critters.

The Bad: Underdeveloped dialogue and thin character motivations. Pacing of plot causes movie to drag before its final third. A lack of character-building moments or slices of day-to-day life. Contrived romance. Sam Worthington’s bad-boy Marine fails to be compelling, particularly as his Avatar.

The Bottom Line: Avatar is certainly a breakthrough in the practice of 3-D filmmaking and special effects in general, but at its heart it’s missing the real elements that should make a movie truly great: a compelling script and singular acting performances.

Avatar was a mere blip on my radar when I first heard of it and that was when I figured the movie version of the animated series by the same name would be a bigger deal. It was touted as James Cameron’s return to cinema and a film that would change movies substantially, much as Titanic and his sci-fi franchise entries Aliens and the first two Terminators did. And, since Terminator, Terminator 2, and especially Aliens were, in fact, awesome films that integrated special effects well into the story, I was willing to shell over the $14 for a 3-D screening at the theater.

I don’t regret that decision, because if there’s anything that is must-see about Avatar it’s the 3-D effects. The entire movie feels like the most intriguing and elaborate Disney 3-D theme park attraction. Spears and guns pop out of the screen, characters and machines in the foreground are floating in front of you, and the alien creatures of Pandora, often luminescent and beautiful, spin and float in the theater. One of the best details is the ash from a burning forest spiraling out of the movie screen.

But “elaborate theme park attractions” is unfortunately the only category in which Avatar truly excels.

The year is 2154 and, once again, humans have raped and pillaged nature on Earth until there were no natural resources left. The protagonist is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, Terminator Salvation), an ex-marine confined to a wheelchair after a tour in Venezuela (presumably an oil war), who is given an opportunity to fix his spine by coming under the employ of RDA, a company that is trying to extract a rare and highly demanded mineral (actually called unobtuniam, ha-ha-ha) from the lush moon, Pandora. RDA’s hiccup comes in the form of the Na’Vi (hey! listen!), a race of tall blue aliens indigenous to Pandora who aren’t keen on having the humans bulldoze forests and take what they want. Jake’s role is to replace his identical twin brother, Tommy, whose genome was mapped to an Avatar, or a lab-grown organic Na’Vi shell which Jake can control with his mind thanks to that biological fact and old sci-fi trope: identical twins have the same DNA.

Do I have to wear the ponytail?

Jake quickly learns to like being 9 feet tall and able to run again, though he has little interest in what the Avatar program is about: research and diplomacy. He soon gets lost and introduced to a Na’Vi clan by the smoking-hot-by-alien-standards Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña, Star Trek). This meeting leads to the requisite crisis of conscience Jake experiences as he is tutored in the ways of the Na’Vi — does he help RDA forcibly relocate the clan or turn on his own race for luv?

The movie doesn’t really bother creating much suspense about that point, but I’ll let you guess what he picks.

With beautiful neon forests, campy heartless antagonists, and a cast that is mostly computer animated, Avatar feels like the most expensive Disney movie in history and that’s because it kind of is. This familiar plot was already covered in two children’s classics, Pocahontas and Ferngully (the latter actually produced by Fox, but whatever). It’s the well-known “White Man stumbles into native naturalist society and learns that killing nature is wrong” storyline. And that’s not necessarily a problem, since Avatar’s future setting and interesting questions about identity set it up for a unique interpretation. The problem is that the movie comes up short in actually exploring the aspects that could have made it mind-blowing.

Well...at least Avatar's sequel has to be better than these.

In fact, there was a time when Avatar could have been considered the best children’s movie ever made, if you cut back on some of the bloodshed and cursing. But even by those standards, we now live in the age of post-Pixar, whose movies actually do a better job of exploring human frailties than James Cameron’s script. It seems that Cameron spent so long on making the film that he stopped paying attention to the evolution of storytelling since the 90’s (or at least, I hope there was an evolution of storytelling since the 90’s).

Moving on, in the vein of talking about how visually appealing Avatar is…

BabeWatch

Avatar has three babes to witness in their bad-assery.

Zoë Saldaña already got full marks from Phil the Pill for her performance as Uhura in Star Trek. So she’ll get an honorable mention here as Neytiri, the slinky and deadly hunter naturalist who guides Jake on his path of becoming Na’Vi. While the face-mapping technology Cameron uses conveys everyone’s Na’Vi acting quite convincingly, Saldaña’s performance is particularly impressive, especially when she’s angry or grieving.

My fellow Latina Michelle Rodriguez has a significant role as the pilot Trudy Chacon. Lost fans know her as Ana Lucia from Lost and she’s pretty much playing the same character — a tough bitch with a heart of gold. I’m not sure if Rodriguez minds being typecast as the latin wildcat, but she plays the role comfortably. And she’s very purty.

But the ultimate Babe award goes to Sigourney Weaver and not because of her somewhat awkwardly-expanded role as Dr. Grace Augustine. She’s entertaining and interesting at the beginning as the scientist resistant to RDA’s violent encroachment, but her character unnecessarily sidetracks the plot in the last half. Still, it’s Sigourney Weaver. Ellen Ripley herself. And she still looks like she could punch a hole in a Xenomorph’s chest. So, for being the Queen of Sci-Fi Ass-Kicking, Sigourney wins top honors.

Ripley could take 'em all on...even herself.

The Politics

Naturally, the media couldn’t let the most expensive movie EVAR simply be about an acclaimed director telling a story. It wasn’t even enough that it had an environmental message right in time for Copenhagen (I guess the Chinese should have gotten an advanced screening). One of the articles I read focused on “some conservative groups” being angry because Avatar was clearly a critique on the Iraq War and American interventionism.

You should click on that link for the headline alone: “Avatar is a Big, Dull, America-Hating PC Revenge Fantasy.”

All right, Cameron is on-record as being a “liberal,” because he thinks it’s at the very least morally ambiguous that we bomb and missile other nations while going about our day buying $14 movie tickets. And yes, even without some of his quotes on the film, there is some influence of the times on Avatar. The RDA Security Chief played by Stephen Lang is clearly the warmongering archetype those “big Hollywood softies” have taught us to hate and their philosophy about Pandora bears some constructed analogy to our foreign policy.

Still, if you’re not looking for that type of politics, you won’t necessarily find it. The stronger message here is about preservation of nature. And while that’s certainly offensive to today’s conservatives, it’s a far-cry from “America is the devil, all soldiers are DICKS” controversy that Fox News would love to stoke.

In my opinion, if you see this is a blistering critique on the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, then you’re more likely projecting some inner guilt about what your country does. Yes, killing innocent people to achieve your ends is wrong, plain and simple. If you think that a movie that holds this tenant is somehow hating on America, then you can’t have that much more faith in the righteousness of our wars than those stinking commie liberals, can you?

In other news, conservatives are realizing that the original Star Wars was critiquing America when the Empire destroyed Alderaan.

Besides, it’s not like the movie doesn’t spend plenty of time glorifying 22nd century war machines and the thrill of war.

Below the Bottom Line

The irony in Avatar is that it’s a movie about a highly technological society ignoring the value of natural life and spirituality. Similarly, the creators of this cut of Avatar obviously paid a lot of attention to the technological spectacle — the face-capture, the 3-D, the realistic design of machine and creature — but they failed to nurture the elements of a film that reside at its natural core — acting, dialogue, and truly creative moments.

I walked into Avatar with the knowledge that people (people being the increasingly senile Roger Ebert) were claiming it was one of the best movies since Star Wars. But this isn’t in the same league as the original Star Wars movies. This is, disturbingly, the evolution of the genre George Lucas created with the Star Wars prequels. Despite being incapable of holding a candle to the writing, acting and direction of the first three films, the prequel trilogy made a lot of money and, ultimately, that’s all the Movie Machines that can afford to create sci-fi epics care about. We’re quickly losing a frame of reference constructed by the soul of cinema when touting Avatar as a revolutionary film.

There is certainly a place and a need for cutting-edge effects in sci-fi spectacles like these. And there are moments in Avatar that shed some hope for the marriage of big-budget technology and traditionally solid performance. On the whole, however, Avatar is simply a big, loud, shiny flick with a simple message. It’s  fun and it does it better than many in the blockbuster category. But don’t mistake “most expensive movie” for “best movie.”

But...but...THREE-DEE!

Verdict: 7 out of 10 Ikrans

Avatar
Directed by James Cameron
Cinematography by Mauro Fiore
Edited by James Cameron, John Refoua, and Stephen E. Rivkin
Music by James Horner
Studios: Lightstorm Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Links:
RottenTomatoes
Wikipedia
IMDB

For greenies and vegans: Stop eating plants.

The next moral step after that? Probably to kill yourself. Heck, they already tend to propose now and then killing others for the sake of the environment.

When people talk about ‘climate change’ now-a-days, they usually mean ‘anthropocentric’ climate change, which means climate change influenced by human activity.

I used to be in the above crowd. Why not? 250 years of Industrial Revolution actions that dumped millions of tons of hydrocarbon waste into the atmosphere surely must have an effect? And to note, ‘acid rain’, ie rain that is essentially sulfuric acid has fallen on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains here in Upstate New York during the 1970s through the early 1990s, the result of which from the smoke-stacks of coal-fired power plants in the Mid-West.

What has changed my mind?

Let me first say this disclaimer; I am not an atmospheric scientist, just a half-assed informed layman.

In that capacity, after 2 1/2 years of research I have IMHO discovered that there is a global elite who stand to gain significantly (economically) from centralized global control of ‘climate change’ policy.

Now do I think that we, as a global society, should get away from using fossil fuels to power our economies and societies?

Sure. But there are too many reasons to list here.

And the poor nations of the Earth, who get short shrift from the First World Nations anyway, know that their economies still need fossil fuel technology, just to break even and make their loan payments to the IMF.

But the recent climate conferences in the Netherlands in the EU (CO15) were not derailed by poor nations (they did walk out at one point anyway), but was jinked by the US and China (is China Third World or First World now?):

Following a meeting in Brussels to discuss how to rescue the Copenhagen climate process, EU environment ministers emphasized the need for concrete, legally binding measures to combat global warming.

The European Union went to Copenhagen with the hope of achieving a broad commitment to at least a 20-percent cut in carbon emissions below 1990 levels within 10 years, but that and other firm goals failed to emerge in the final accord.

The two-week, United Nations-led conference ended on Saturday with a non-legally binding agreement to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, but did not lay out how to achieve that.

Despite months of preparation and strenuous diplomacy, the talks boiled down to an inability of the world’s two largest emitters, the United States and China, to agree fixed targets.

“Expectations and pressure on the United States have risen after Copenhagen … to really deliver,” Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren told a news briefing on Tuesday after Sweden, as EU president until December 31, chaired pan-EU talks.

Ministers from the EU’s 27 member states will meet again in January to discuss what role the EU can play in cobbling together a stronger agreement.

DASHED PLANS

The bloc went to Copenhagen with a unified position and a plan for financing emissions cuts in the developing world, with a commitment to spend around 7 billion euros ($10 billion) over the next three years to aid poorer countries.

But those aims were largely sidelined as the talks failed to produce a breakthrough. Carlgren described the summit as a “disaster” and a “great failure,” despite what he called Europe’s united efforts.

“Europe never lost its aim, never, never came to splits or different positions, but of course this was mainly about other countries really (being) unwilling, and especially the United States and China,” Carlgren said.

Britain on Monday blamed China and a handful of other countries of holding the world to ransom by blocking a legally binding treaty at Copenhagen, stepping up a blame game that has gathered momentum since the talks ended.

In a sharply worded response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu rejected accusations that China had “hijacked” the climate talks and added: “The statements from certain British politicians are plainly a political scheme.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the summit as “at best flawed and at worst chaotic” and demanded an urgent reform of the process to try to reach a legal treaty when talks are expected to resume in Germany next June.

But Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard, who quit as president of the talks midway through after being criticized by African countries for favoring wealthier nations in negotiations, said there was no point in getting depressed.

“What we need to do is to secure the step that we took and turn it into a result,” she told reporters as she arrived for the Brussels meeting on Tuesday. Asked whether Copenhagen had been a failure, she replied:

“It would have been a failure if we had achieved nothing. But we achieved something — a first step.

“It was the first time we held a process where all the countries were present, including the big emitters.”

In short, there must be a way to convert the worlds’ societies economies and technologies slowly and evenly with alternate tech over the next 50 years to shift away from fossil fuels. Is there sufficient wealth in the market to begin the change, or is technology being suppressed by the global financial/energy elites so only they have the power to begin the shift, if they feel like it?

If they see money in it, they will start the change.

And the elite aren’t as united as one would think.

EU calls for more U.S. involvement in climate works

hat tip

For me, deciding on what food to eat is essentially a matter of deciding 2 things:

1. Is it healing?

2. Is it socially & environmentally responsible?

The answer to these questions can be challenging — how bad does it need to be for me to consider it harmful or reckless?  When is it merely questionable?   But generally I can chart both of these answers on this graph and when I begin wondering if something is too bad for me, others, or the environment, that signals I’m not comfortable with it.

In a perfect world I would only eat food near the number 1: food that improves my health and the world around me.  But this isn’t a perfect world and I don’t eat in that part of the graph all the time.  I have a major sugar addiction, for one.  A limited budget.  A family history full of foods that trigger emotional responses, like nostalgia and pride.  I’m sometimes at the mercy of other people’s hospitality.  Right now I’m staying at my parents’ house and they don’t eat like me.  They also don’t have access to the same stores I have at home.  And food — especially organic produce — is limited in their town, in the winter.

So I’ve been wondering where my lines are, and which circumstances I am willing to eat in different parts of the graph.  I’m nearly always willing to eat foods that are harmful to me, but environmentally/socially responsible.  Vegan donut, made locally?  Ummm, yes please.

Where on the graph do I eat during holidays?  When someone else is preparing the food?  When I’m stressed (emotional eating)?  When I’m poorer than usual?   When I’m celebrating?  When something looks like it will taste really, really good?  When I’m already imposing on someone?  And why do I pick the circumstances I’m picking?  What does that say about me and my values?  My privileges?  My alliances?

In the coming days I’m planning to reflect on this more.  I’ll share what I come up with.  I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts or stories in the meantime.

According to Canada’s national newspaper, it’s working so well that it should be made planet-wide:

The “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world’s other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity’s soaring reproduction rate.

Ironically, China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world’s leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict.

Now, the writer doesn’t say how this would be implemented, but presumably it would involve the same forced abortions (what was that about choice?), unbalanced sex ratios, and female infanticide that the Chinese currently contend with.   

But what are the human rights of a few women, when it’s for the environment. 

Therefore, the Drudge headline stating that “Canada’s National Newspaper advocates [this crap]” is entirely appropriate.

Jonah Goldberg looks at Copenhagan:

The historical record is clear: Democratic free-market nations are better at protecting their environments than statist regimes for the simple reason that they can afford to. West Germany’s environment was far cleaner than East Germany’s. I’d much sooner drink the tap water in South Korea than North Korea.

Mugabe rails against capitalism as if he has a better idea of how to run things. That’s almost funny given that Mugabe has destroyed what was once a great cause for hope in Africa, in large part by abandoning capitalism and democracy. Zimbabwe now has the highest inflation rate in the world and one of the lowest life expectancies. Let’s hope nobody was taking notes when he was giving out advice.

Moreover, capitalism, and the wealth it creates, is the best means of bending down the population curve. Don’t take my word for it. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that “affluence is correlated with long life and small families” and that growing prosperity will cause world population to decline even further.

Want to know the best way to heal the planet? Create more rich countries. Want to know the best way to hurt the planet? Throw a wet blanket on economic growth.

 But please, read the whole thing.

The state of the Arctic Sea Ice coverage does not appear to be in good shape; despite a recent recovery, the downtrend continues…

From YouTube:

The 2009 ice melt season has just been completed at the northern polar cap, and observations confirm that the arctic ocean ice cover is continuing a steady decline.
The last three melt seasons represent the 3 lowest summer ice areas in the satellite record.
Satellite measurements of total summer ice surface have been on a downward slope for 3 decades. In 2007, ice area suffered a spectacular and unpredicted slump. In the last 2 years, summer expanse rebounded from the catastrophic collapse, to mere precipitous decline.

If you’re in New York or are planning to be, you need to get to the Jewish Museum and check out their latest exhibit, “Reinventing Ritual, survey of “the explosion of new Jewish rituals, art, and objects that has occurred since the mid-1990s.”

The exhibit celebrates the post-modern age as time in which Jewish ritual can be radical as well as a return to its elemental basics:

This attitude of innovation is shared by a wide range of artists inclusive of generation, nationality, and religion. Contemporary artists and designers focus on Judaism as a lived experience by transforming the physical acts of ritual into new forms.

Outstanding works of industrial design, metalwork, ceramics, video, drawing, comics, sculpture, installation, and textiles from Europe, Israel, and North America reveal the diversity within Judaism. The exhibition will present works in thematic groups and environments that suggest the spaces and situations in which ritual is performed.

Here at JRC, we’re particularly honored that our new synagogue building is included in the exhibit. The Museum was interested in our LEED Platinum rated facility because “its principle of active conservation is at the heart of the exhibition.”

If you can’t make it to NYC, you can still see and read about many amazing pieces from the exhibit at the Museum website (like artist Michael Berkowitz’s combination wedding dress/amulet, above).

Ahh, the internet. What a beautiful thing, a technological work of art, a creative journey that lets you peruse collections around the world from the comfort of your desk chair.

Needing a brief reprieve from the chilly snow flurries, we spent a few hours at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art today, imagining the warm sun on our skin and soaking up the amazing exhibits. One that looked particularly interesting was a retrospective of the German artist Joseph Beuys called The Multiples. Here’s the exhibit summary from LACMA:

© Joseph Beuys Estate/Artists Rights Society

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) is perhaps the most influential postwar European artist; his sensibility challenged American domination of the art world in the 1950s and 60s with art that confronted recent German history. This exhibition features 572 of the artist’s works from the collection of The Broad Art Foundation. At the heart of Beuys’s practice was a particularly European form of multiples in which two- and three-dimensional objects are issued in editions. In myriad formats, Beuys’s multiples were intended to be widely circulated and cheap to acquire. Ranging from small-editioned objects to mass-produced political flyers and postcards, in materials as different as felt, wood, found objects like water bottles and tin cans, instruments, records, film, video, and audio tapes related to performances, these works, rich with allusions to his biography and personal iconography, provide a complete picture of his diverse oeuvre.

If only that told the whole story of how complex a character Joseph Beuys was! Our curiousity prompted a quick Google search, which brought these fascinating facts to life…

He was a member of Hitler’s Youth. He crafted or embellished a story of rescue after a plane crash where people took him in and warmed him with felt and fat, two symbols that he showcased in his future art.

The Pack, at The Tate Museum, featuring felt and fat

As a professor he felt that all students should be admitted to college, so he led a protest to make that happen (it worked for a year and then got him fired), ultimately creating a college called the Free International University.

He was also a environmental activist, with his biggest effort being one called 7000 Oaks, an installation where 7000 oak trees were planted at basalt stone markers in Kassel, Germany, between 1982 and 1987 (a year after Beuys’s death).

A few of the 7000 Oaks and their basalt stone markers

And, in case he wasn’t an interesting enough character, how about this quote of his: “Art is the only revolutionary force.” Makes us want to stand up and DO something!

If you’re lucky enough to travel to L.A. before July 18, 2010, let us know what else you learn about Beuys! And send us a postcard!

Perhaps man’s best friend is leaving behind more than just pawprints. As it turns out, your pet  may be worse for the environment than your SUV.

According to an AFP article,  New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Val analysed a dog’s carbon footprint by researching  consumption of popular dog food brands. Their book, “Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living,” shows a medium sized dog eats 164kg of meat and 95 kg of cereal per year.

The report suggests that  the land required to generate the  food is about  twice the amount of land used to build a 4×4 vehicle and drive it 10,000 kilometres in a year.

This is interesting since we can often overlook the possible environmental impacts of our pets. Not sure it changes how much we love them though.