Comments BernardBrown has made

Whoa there cowboy!

Pastured organic beef is not necessarily the answer to all our problems. As far as I've been able to figure out, some techniques of pasture management can sequester carbon pretty well, but it's hard to tell from the consumer's position that a specific operation is using those techniques - how the heck do I know that the beef (or cheese, or eggs for that matter) I'm looking at were grown correctly? Even if you planted me in the middle of the field, how could I, the end purchaser tell by looking at it?

In addition, whatever the carbon sequestration, raising beef to slaughter on pasture alone is slower than a feedlot CAFO, so even in a world of all perfect pasture management, we'd never be able to replace the current levels of production, and certainly not the levels forecasted to be demanded by the the Thirld World in the future.

In the end we're all going to have to cut back, and while what we do end up buying should probably be pastured in a sustainable way (I know I do my best at the farmer's market), we're still going to have to eat beef, etc. as smaller portions of our diet, similar to how we're all working on getting electricity from a more sustainable mix just as we're working to cut down on our overall usage.  

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Kind of Like Clean Coal

As far as I've been able to tell, this carbon-storing ranching is possible, but I have no sense of how to know when livestock is raised in this manner, I have no sense of what proportion is produced this way now, and while sustainable ranching could sequester comparable quantities of carbon under ground as a prairie, I still haven't seen how it can sequester as much carbon as a forest (including the above-ground carbon stored in a forest in the form of trees).

Maybe there could be a shift to all of us buying pastured animal products that are raised sustainably (I certainly try to at the local farmer's market), but as far as I can tell it's more expensive than factory farmed product, so ultimately less would be consumed - something I have no problem with as long as we don't cut down forest and overgraze the West under the fuzzy label of biodynamic ranching.  On Umbra on homegrown meat posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 33 Responses

cut back

Although I understand that we have to get involved in the legislative process over this kind of thing, it mainly motivates me to cut back even more on my animal product consumption and eat what I eat local and small producer produced - more cause to drag myself out to the farmer's market Saturday morning for the pastured eggs and cheese.

Billy

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It's not YOUR SUV they're talking about

I think you've mis-summarized Martin's recent article. The point he was making (citing Tom Tomich, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program) about miles was that it can be less efficient to ship food fewer miles if you're using a particularly inefficient mode of transportation - say an old pickup truck carrying a relatively small load rather than an 18 wheeler carrying a whole lot. I don't think it's a broadside attack on local food, it's just pointing out that energy efficiency in transportation doesn't always depend just on distance, and that eating for lower emissions might be a little bit more complicated than simply buying at the farmers market. I certainly wouldn't put this piece in the same category as that Economist article, which made a much broader attack and did a horrible job at it.

I also liked the point about eating lower on the food chain.  

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maybe not as important as consumption patterns

I'm less concerned about the population hitting 1.5 billion than I am about the present population buying more cars, eating more meat, running more AC units, consuming more 'medicinal' wildlife, etc. On China's population rapidly rising posted 1 year, 11 months ago 10 Responses

Shape of the curve

The newly posted Grist article on the proposed San Francisco carbon tax has some interesting implications for this discussion. A few local carbon tax experiments could give us a feel for how businesses and individuals (in cases where individuals pay the tax) respond to a given level of carbon taxation and reduce that point of uncertainty in the comparison.

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Consumer feel

I don't understand why a carbon tax couldn't be incrementally increased (remaining revenue neutral through increasing income tax reductions or rebates) over time similar to how the cap in a cap and trade would be incrementally lowered, which would seem to take care of any worries about it being set too low.

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How far?

Wow. That sounds really cool on the face of it, but of course the devil is in the details. Another article here mentions how the question of how to include biofuels and 'energy crops' will make getting something like this passed tricky. On WTO may slash tariffs on green goods posted 1 year, 12 months ago 2 Responses

lifecycle costs

I'm wondering what the lifecycle environmental impact of plug-in hybrids will look like. I'm not hinting that anyone should by a Hummer instead, I'm just asking since I think lifecycle impact should be part of any discussion.

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Is "Vegetarian" counterproductive?

I agree with almost everything you wrote, and I don't think you'll find much objection here to the idea that reducing animal product consumption is a good idea for the environment.

However, I worry that the all-or-nothing approach of advocating vegetarianism will turn people off before they have a chance to turn down a hamburger.

Obviously I have my own angle on this, but with all serious respect to the broader effort, I don't want any of us to lose out on the chance to influence the diet of someone who says "I'll never be able to go vegetarian/vegan," when they can still make a positive impact by significantly reducing their animal product consumption.

Bernard Brown

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what are other ways to 'sell' solutions

I guess schemes like this are my answer to when people say that activists should stick to activism and let the gnomes/business people think up the great market-based solutions.

Part of me thinks we're just going to see more of these types of sketchy solutions as the market turns its sights on Global Warming, and that with the European bio deisel/SE Asian palm oil debacle as the scariest example, we should just give up on market solutions and regulate, regulate, regulate.  

Part of me, though, is still trying to think of a way of actually selling people emissions-reducing-alternatives. We have to be able to think of something better than this (and better than assuaging pollution guilt by planting trees and hoping that works in 40 years).

Bernard Brown

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Back in the States...

It's worth mentioning that both types of problems - declining numbers of some species and invasive exotics - are amphibian problems in the States too. In New Jersey, where I spend a lot of my free time searching for reptiles and amphibians (herping - kind of like birding), and in other states such as Illinois, cricket frogs are in mysterious decline. Out West bullfrogs, which are native to the eastern US, are a major pest implicated in the decline of their own native frog species.

Happy Herping

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quantifying the impacts of daily activities

I think a lot can be gained by quantifying and publicizing the effects of different options of how to carry out ordinary daily activities. We've started the PB&J Campaign (http://www.pbjcampaign.org) to do this with some basic meal options, but the same could be done with all kinds of products - sheets of office paper recycled vs. non-recycled is another example.

I think the Water Footprints of Nations' work with virtual water is a good model to follow - once we have an analysis of how much GHG is produced in the basic, simple little things we do (that of course all add up), we've got something people can sink their teeth into.

Bernard Brown  

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