craigp42’s Recent Comments

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  I am not religious myself, but I must agree with Markab. When someone says, "Environmentalists care more about trees than people," I'm always offended, though of course there is plenty of grist for the mill that churns out that line. Railing against religion is a pretty effective way to alienate a rather large number of people who believe in taking care of the planet. Even if this is only 10% of people who identify themselves as religious, (to borrow a random number from the string of posts here), that's a significant minority in the US. To illustrate the lack of cohesion in just the Protestant Christian community, imagine the most vile rhetoric you might hear from a rogue preacher, then consider that Wendell Berry, one of our finest writers on people and land today, is a Christian. "Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. To Dante, 'despising Nature and her gifts' was a violence against God. We have no entitlement from the Bible to exterminate or permanently destroy or hold in contempt anything on the earth or in the heavens above it or in the waters beneath it. We have the right to use the gifts of Nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more, which is why the Bible forbids usury and great accumulations of property. The usurer, Dante said, 'condemns Nature. . . for he puts his hope elsewhere.'"On Does anyone still care about "the land"? posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago 25 Responses

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  "This article and discussion underlines the absolute and remarkable disconnect between people and the very foundations of our existence on this planet." Exactly right! This doesn't undermine the ultimate goal that many of us on this forum share -- protecting the health and welfare of people and land. What the author highlights is a critical need to improve our communication with a broad and very diverse audience: "most people." It is time to choose our words carefully. Remember when Jefferson wordsmithed Thomas Locke's "life, liberty and the pursuit of property"? Even in a time when most people were directly connected to the land (when it was commonly understood that a man's livelihood depended on exploiting his property, and that the future looked bright mostly because there was a ready supply of "virgin land" for future generations to expand on to) it was easier to rally folks around "happiness" than property. To me, the bottom line is, the real stinkin' world is of utmost importance, but first you've got to talk to people in a way that doesn't make their eyes glaze over. Find out what matters to them, then connect it to the land. Kudos to Katharine for bringing this matter to the cyber table.On Does anyone still care about "the land"? posted 2 months ago 25 Responses

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  mercury free?

  It is absurd to that we allow coal-burning powerplants to dominate our atmosphere! Momentarily setting aside the issue of contaminants introduced during food processing, there is a nice parallel here to the time when strontium showed up in our milk supply. It was not so much a reason to abandon the idea of purity in our food system as it was a reason to question the wisdom of detonating nuclear weapons under our beautiful spacious skies.

  The potential for contamination of our food system does beg a couple of questions, like, "What is the rate of mercury deposition from atmospheric fallout?" Is it high enough to contaminate the surface of our leafy greens, our monster zucchini, our succulent red bell peppers? Or does it accumulate in our topsoil, reaching concentrations where plants are forced to take it up at higher rates than they would under ideal conditions? Several studies have shown that when mercury levels were artificially increased, the efficiency of photosynthesis went down--photosynthesis currently being the largest source of energy on the planet.

  If plants are taking up mercury, is it getting concentrated in roots, stems, leaves, or reproductive tissue? Maybe organic lettuce has more mercury in it than an organic tomato. Maybe both have lower chemical residue than their artificially-fertilized and artificially-bug-free counterpart (not to say that organic produce is plagued by bugs; there are just more creative ways to control pests than introducing toxins into your backyard).

  Wild fish in our lakes, streams, ponds, and sloughs have become a concern because they are near the top of the aquatic food chain and suffer from the effects of mercury accumulating in algae and bugs. Perhaps we should be more concerned about organic eggs or organic cheese than organic veggies? If we had the ability to do a very careful accounting of the the inputs and outputs of different food systems, my money is still on organic contributing more to the health of people and the land. Once upon a time, conservationists were concerned mostly with eroding soils and loss of wildlife habitat when it came to less-than-ideal farming and food producting. Today, we have all that and an obesity epidemic and a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. On The FDA sat on evidence of mercury-tainted high-fructose corn syrup posted 10 months, 1 week ago 13 Responses