A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Environment

  • The high price of “cheap” meat

    From Ethicurean: Here’s a number to knock you out of that mid-day stupor: every year, taxpayers shell out between $7.1 billion and $8.2 billion to subsidize or clean up after our nation’s 9,900 confined animal feeding operations. That’s the finding of “CAFOs Uncovered,” a new report released earlier today by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read more

  • Links for Earth Day

    George Monbiot on the food crisis, the environment and meat eating. Michael Pollan tries to reconcile personal virtue and social change. How to invest in renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and rebuild the American manufacturing base while we’re at it. Dreaming of an eco-apocalypse? A review of a book about looking for sustainable seafood. A collection Read more

  • Shoe size

    Here’s a new version of the ecological footprint quiz. Despite the fact that I a) don’t own a car and b) walk virtually everywhere I go, I scored pretty badly in the travel category, and I think virtually all of it can be chalked up to air travel. In his book Heat, George Monbiot tried Read more

  • Farm bill folly

    I caught part of this Bill Moyers interview with Bread for the World‘s president Rev. David Beckman. Rev. Beckman talked a lot about the farm bill currently wending its way through Congress and how its distorted system of subsidies rewards big landowners and hurts poor people, both here and abroad. Worth watching if you’re interested. Read more

  • Meat in a vat

    It’s funny, from the standpoint of animal suffering I ought to be all for this, but something about it still gives me the heebie jeebies. I’ll have to think a bit more about why that is. Read more

  • Polish farms vs. the EU

    Old Ways, New Pain for Farms in Poland: On the clash between traditional, organic farming in Poland and EU regulations that tilt the playing field in favor of big agribusiness. Read more

  • Chipotle goes locavore

    Speaking of cheap meat, here’s a bit of good news. Chipotle, the Mexican food chain, has made a deal with Joe Salatin’s Polyface Farms to use his pork in its branch in Charlottesville, Virginia. Salatin, the “Christian libertarian environmentalist” farmer immortalized in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, pasture-raises his animals in a traditional and sustainable Read more

  • What price meat?

    Ezra Klein on why “meat should not be cheap.” P.S. Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t be concerned about food prices, particularly for poorer folks. However, the system we currently have 1) subsidizes industrially produced meat while hiding costs (particularly environmental ones) and 2) makes healthier foods (whole grains, fruits, vegetables) more expensive than they Read more

  • Environmentalism for the rest of us

    I meant to link to this piece from Orion magazine earlier (via Russell I think). It’s all about cultivating an environmentalism that can appeal to working class people (specifically white ones in this case), not just by appealing to their interests, but by understanding and sympathizing with their culture. It’s no secret that much of Read more

  • Obama’s climate plan

    Gristmill’s Joseph Romm offers a defense. Read more