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Lots o’ goodies

The Nation has devoted its current issue to "surviving the climate crisis," and it’s chock full o’ good stuff. First up is Jim Hansen, the World’s Least Censored Censored Scientist, who recommends the following five steps: "First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to […]

Nothing sexier than debates over ethics!

I forget where I found this, but there’s a good piece on Environmental Research Web about the moral aspects of geoengineering. The author, UW prof Steve Gardiner, raises several concerns, but for my money, this is the most telling: It is not silly to think that substantial investment in geoengineering will itself encourage political inertia […]

Feeding the world sustainably

(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.)

If heaven was a pie it would be cherry
Cool and sweet and heavy on your tongue
And just one bite would satisfy your hunger
And there'd always be enough for everyone
-- Gretchen Peters, "If Heaven"

Agriculture for food and fiber represents another significant category of environmental impact. Before we worry about how to farm, we should consider how much agriculture we need. If you read the technical news, when this subject comes up it always centers on how to increase food production for a hungry world.

This is completely misleading. There is enough food produced (including meat and fish) worldwide not just to feed everyone on the planet, not just to make everyone fat, but to make everybody morbidly obese. Counting grain, beans, roots, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other plants and fungi (not including animal feed), plus livestock, dairy, fish, eggs, and other animal products raised for human consumption, we produced nearly 2,800 calories per person per year in 2001[1] -- including 75 grams of protein. 2,200 calories per day is generally accepted as the average needed to keep a person healthy -- neither losing nor gaining weight[2]. 56 grams of protein is the U.S. RDA for adult men[3].

Many people have higher requirements than this -- most grown men, pregnant and lactating women, athletic women. (As one instance, Lucy Lawless used to perform gymnastics and horseback riding in fairly heavy armor ten or more hours per day while starring in "Xena - Warrior Princess," and probably burned 6,000+ calories daily at the peak of her schedule.) Children, and median-height adult women, generally need less. Below 2,200 calories, and 56 grams on average, is considered an absolute shortage; if we allow a comfort and safety margin, that would mean we want at least 2,300 calories on average per person available worldwide.

How big an increase do we need to keep up with population growth? According to the U.S. Census[4], if you assume the same production with projected increases in population we will still average ~2,500 calories per person per day in 2010, ~2,300 per day in 2020. Without no cultivation of more acreage or increase in production per acre, we then approach absolute scarcity, falling to 1,900 in 2050. We need no increase in total food production before 2020, and only a 21 percent increase by 2050.

Moreover, in one sense the problem of getting that increase is already solved.

Willie Corduff has taken arms against a sea of Shell troubles

Willie Corduff. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. “We’d never objected to anything in our whole lives,” says Irish farmer Willie Corduff. But when Shell Oil proposed to put a high-pressure gas pipeline through his family farm, Corduff changed his quiet ways. He and a handful of his neighbors refused to allow Shell on their property — […]

Ts. Munkhbayar fights destructive mining in Mongolia

Ts. Munkhbayar. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Born into a family of Mongolian herders, Ts. Munkhbayar remembers when the livestock was healthy, the water was clean, and kids went ice skating on the nearby river. “I had a very happy childhood,” he says. In the early 1990s, a gold-mining boom overshadowed all that; because of widespread […]

Top 10 U.S. green buildings

The American Institute of Architects has put together a list of the top ten green buildings in the U.S. Here they are, in alphabetical order: EpiCenter, Artists for Humanity / Boston, MA Arrowstreet Inc. Global Ecology Research Center / Stanford, CA EHDD Architects Government Canyon Visitor Center / Helotes, TX Lake/Flato Architects Hawaii Gateway Energy […]

The Onion

Still funny.

Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon chew the fat on their 100-mile diet

Two years ago, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon set out to see if it was still possible, in these hyper-globalized times, to live off food grown in your own ‘hood. The pair made a pact to dine on dishes culled from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver, B.C., home for an entire year. Their […]

It can be done

ModeShift has an intriguing post on a proposed regional high-speed rail transit system for the Midwest. Here’s the wow bit: In essence, for the same cost as building less than 120 miles of new Interstate freeway, the Midwest could design, construct, and operate a 21st Century passenger rail network that would make the region’s transportation […]

The seductive lure of toys that promise solutions without change

Reading about the sunken tidal turbines -- which seem interesting -- I got an overwhelming feeling of "here we go again."

Why is it that people who know that "eat the foods you love and lose weight without exercise!" is hokum can't resist spending hours and hours hyping and being hyped about technotoys that promise "abundant low-cost clean energy that lets you lose carbon without reducing consumption!"