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How much can we or should we limit our food imports?

Continued from last week ...

Soon, it's hairnet time. We pass through the double doors that separate the break room from the plant itself. The building looks big enough to hold several jumbo jets, and is divided into a tasting area, a storage area that holds the green as-yet-unroasted beans that arrive at Equal Exchange in burlap bags, and a roasting area featuring an enormous red roaster.

The green, unroasted beans are dumped into one of eight hoppers, then mixed at the roaster's discretion so they achieve the right blend of beans for the type of coffee being roasted that day. The entire contraption is controlled by a modest laptop computer, lending the whole endeavor a kind of mad-scientist feeling, like those giant weather-changing machines movie villains use to hold the world hostage.

On the other side of the plant are rows and rows of beans that have been bagged for delivery to stores and other retail customers. The sheer quantity of coffee is overwhelming. Rodney explains how quickly and dramatically Equal Exchange has grown: Over its 20 years, the co-op has grown on average more than 30% annually, and since just 2002 it has doubled to its current size of $23 million.

Animal rights and environmentalism should stay separate

I was going to write a post on animal rights a few months ago but thought better of it. I changed my mind and fluffed up what I had written in order to supplement (but not invalidate) the discussion initiated by Jason over here.

Environmentalism and animal rights should remain separate groups. Their interests, though sometimes related and even mutually beneficial, are just as often too disparate for a harmonious union. For example, hunters can make powerful conservationists (conservation being a major branch of environmentalism), but hunters and animal-rights activists mix worse than oil and water.

This article makes mention of the hundreds of thousands of goats that have finally been eliminated from the Galapagos Islands. By eliminated I mean: they were shot. Had an organized and well-funded animal-rights campaign arisen, accomplishing that task might have taken much longer, or cost a great deal more. Or it might not have happened at all. I use these goats as an analogy for the horse roundup mentioned in Jason's article. Both species of domesticated animal are the result of many thousands of years of genetic engineering by human beings to produce an animal of use to them. Neither has a place in the wild. The ecosystems they evolved in are human-generated.

Amusing

From Overheard at the Office:

Employee #1: It's them damn environmentalists that make the gas prices so high.

Employee #2: Yeah, those morons won't let us drill for oil anywhere. They're what's wrong with this country.

Employee #1: Yeah, them and the French.

North 6th Street
Gainesville, Florida

Overheard by: Environmentalist

Diversity is strength

What is environmentalism? If you ask five people you may get five distinct answers. Some think this is a big problem; I disagree.

Italian smog gets eaten

It sounds almost too good to be true, but an Italian cement manufacturer has managed to develop a pollution-degrading concrete. The technology, dubbed "TX Active," breaks down air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, benzene, and others through a natural chemical process called photocatalysis.

In areas where streets have been repaved with the compound, nitric oxides have been measured at 45-60% below normal. And in addition to being good for the ambient air, TX Active building facades stay gleaming white longer -- since the compound breaks down pollutants, it also prevents grimy buildup.

A report

I'm here in San Francisco at the Green Festival -- billed as the world's largest green expo. The San Fran convention center is packed to the rafters with booths, booths, booths.

It is somewhat verboten to say so these days, but the predominant vibe is still distinctly hippie. (As I wrote that, a small troop of people wandered by playing drums and tooting on flutes.) Dreadlocks abound. Tofu products are ubiquitous. The word "spirit" is deployed with alarming frequency. There's batik and tie-dye and didgeridoo honking and so forth. It's like an enormous Grateful Dead parking lot.

Boxer kicks out Inhofe as Senate Environment committee chair

Democratic victory in the mid-term elections means that Barbara Boxer of California will replace James Inhofe of Oklahoma as the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. According to Katrina Van Heuvel of The Nation, yesterday Boxer said:

"He thinks global warming is a hoax and I think it is the challenge of our generation. We have to move on it."

Voters like or don’t like, nothing more complicated than that

Amanda's article is good, but I tend to think that pundits and politicians vastly overinterpret election results. Everyone tries to figure out what "message" voters were sending, and just about everyone tends to find a message that, surprise, lines up with their own political predilections. For my part, I think the Dem victory on Tues. was a clear message from voters that I deserve a raise.

Really, though, I suspect the general public sends one of two messages in any given election: "eeennnh" (displeased) or "eh" (disinterested). Any interpretation beyond that tends to do little but reflect the interpreter's filter.

Dem wins good news for ethanol industry

Not all investors, CEOs, and lobbyists were sad to see the GOP lose on Tuesday. From Bloomberg:

Shares of Archer Daniels Midland Co. and VeraSun Energy Corp., the two biggest U.S. ethanol producers, soared on speculation that Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives will boost demand ...

"A Democrat-led House is likely to amount to a political net plus for the ethanol industry," Stanford Group Co. analyst Mark McMinimy wrote today in a report to clients. "The political climate for ethanol in the Congress will shift from an environment that was already favorable to one that is promising for ethanol-friendly legislation over the coming two years."

In Toilets Is the Preservation of the World

U.N. study illuminates deadly global water and sanitation situation Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice — but it’s more likely to be lack of access to clean water that does us in. A U.N. report says dirty water is the second-leading cause of death among children around the world, […]