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USDA caves to vegetarian pressure.

Several Gristmillians have advocated that going veg is good for the environment.

Vegetarians were a little miffed when the USDA announced its new food pyramid, er, pyramids without providing dietary recommendations for a plant-based diet.

Well, someone must have been listening, as "Vegetarian Diets" is now listed under MyPyramid.gov's "Tips & Resources."

Interestingly, it seems like the USDA's definition of the term "vegetarian" leans more toward "vegan," as they specifically provide tips for "lacto-ovo vegetarians." I would have expected the opposite.

However, the folks over at PCRM make the point that this information is only available on the website and not in the printed literature ...

But such online resources don't meet the needs of consumers who do not or cannot use the Internet. What the country really needed was a simple graphic conveying a clear message about how to improve our eating habits.

And for those of you who missed it, go back in time to read our fearless leader's thoughts on using the MyPyramid concept for green purposes.

And while we're on the topic of graphics to convey good practices, I also refer you to Sustainable Business: A Declaration of Leadership, from the archives. (Okay, I know this has nothing to do with food or vegetarians or pyramids, but I just wanted to point out there is some good stuff buried under all the other good stuff.)

Wired reports on the new power generation

We Americans sure do like labels don't we? (And I'm not talking about food labels.) That's right, in addition to soccer moms cruising around town in hybrids and flexitarians buying their food stuffs at Whole Foods and the like, we now have "hygridders."

What's a hygridder? According to a Wired article:

... people who are both middle of the road and off the grid. Across the US some 185,000 households have switched from the local power company to their own homegrown, renewable energy. The fastest-growing segment of this population - their ranks are doubling each year - isn't doing a full Kaczynski. Sure, these folks are slapping solar panels on the roof and erecting the occasional wind turbine, but they're staying connected to the grid, just to be safe. And in many cases, they're operating as mini-utilities, selling excess electricity back to the power company. Just as their cars aren't kludgy and their food isn't flavorless, their homes aren't drafty or dimly lit. Call them hygridders. And look for them soon in a neighborhood near you. Because - trendmeisters, take note - hygrid is the new Prius.

Learn about this new breed by reading the article. And if you feel so inclined, let us know what you think or tell us about your foray into hygridding.

Now your $9 ballpark beer comes in an eco-cup

It's a single piece of news, but a revolution in its own right: starting Friday, the Oakland A's will serve drinks in compostable cornstarch cups, and provide compostable cutlery too. McAfee Coliseum staffers will dig the items out of the trash at the end of each game -- pausing only briefly to wonder if they should have taken that internship with Dad's friend's company instead -- and ship the whole beery, mustardy mess to a composting facility.

It's all part of stadium manager George Valerga's plan to reach a 75-100 percent recycling rate. And the San Francisco Giants are considering composting too. OK, OK, California did pass a law requiring special-events venues to increase their recycling. But hey, whatever it takes to make America's ballfields greener. Let's go A's!

Thanks to an interview with the architect/designer in Newsweek.

I'm probably naive, or easily suckered, but sue me: Whenever I read what architect and designer William McDonough says, I get optimistic. Excited, even. His is the kind of environmentalism I want to be part of, the kind that will be easy to sell to the public. It promises growth and abundance instead of guilt, shrinkage, and doom. It conceives a future that has room for the unbridled expression of our bursting impulse to create and innovate.

This interview with Newsweek is a case in point.

For those unfamiliar with McDonough's ideas (most famously presented in Cradle to Cradle), it's a great introduction. For those of us who are familiar, it's a great update on what's currently happening. And what's currently happening is just remarkable. Consider this:

Listen to Your Mother

Since the thread on mothers and the environment is going so well, let me echo Japhet in pointing you all to Listen to Your Mother, an effort by the Rainforest Action Network to marshal maternal power in service of getting Ford to reduce the emissions of its carbon-heavy fleet.

Infamous industry defender chosen as contest judge by science association.

Steven Milloy, proprietor of junkscience.com, commentator on Fox News, adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, and dedicated industry whore defender, chosen as a contest judge by the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science? Say it ain't so.

Paul Thacker from Environmental Science & Technology sorts it out, and along the way offers some interesting tidbits on "The Junkman" and the many ways that corporations fund pseudo-scientists and think tanks to do their PR dirty work.

Private Eyes Are Watching Ewe

Remote sensors, cameras able to monitor earth’s health Technological advances in the burgeoning field of environmental monitoring are allowing scientists to take frequent and accurate measurements of weather conditions, animal behavior, and even contaminant levels without leaving their workstations. By placing tiny wireless instruments — no larger than a cell phone or a deck of […]

Fiddler on the Hot Tin Roof

Climate scientists grow more concerned as Rome burns, Nero fiddles In most fields of science, lay opinion tends to be more alarmist than scientific opinion, says Carbon Mitigation Initiative codirector Robert Socolow. “But, in the climate case, the experts — the people who work with the climate models every day, the people who do ice […]

Lead and Circus

EPA lead regs quietly morph from mandatory rules to voluntary standards The U.S. EPA has fallen a bit — and by “a bit” we mean nine years — behind schedule on issuing lead regulations pertaining to building renovation. But better late than never, right? Maybe not. Turns out the EPA has quietly shifted its regulatory […]

‘Scientist’ debunks global warming based on a typo, itself based on a fabricated data set. Fun.

Oh lordy, this is hilarious.

First, David Bellamy of The Conservation Foundation writes a letter to New Scientist denying global warming and claiming that "555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980."

Subsequent letters debunked the claim, but it's a curious claim to begin with, yes? So writer/journalist George Monbiot decided to look into it, and after much valiant labor, tracked down the source. To quote from Tim Lambert's summary:

He got it from a crackpot web site ("The next ice age could begin any day"), which got it from Larouche's 21st Century Science, which got from SEPP, which seem to have made it up. Plus he made a typo, turning 55% into 555. [Emphasis mine.]

A typo! And yet it instantly spread through flat-earth circles, becoming part of the skeptical gospel.

I conclude with a quote from Monbiot that both Lambert and Mooney share, but which can't be spread too widely:

It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist.