Comments ssweitzer has made

  • Meat eating's not all bad

    A huge portion of the earth's surface is not suitable for cropping, but is great for growing permenant grass and pasture.  That green stuff can very nicely be converted to usable protien for humans by ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats etc.).  Eating grass fed beef, lamb, and so forth is not a bad option.  The weathiest and the poorest folks on earth seem to have this option, interestingly.  Not sure how to make it more available to those in the middle... BUT acting as though meat eating per se is terrible is not a very useful strategy, unless you are just trying to establish your virtue in some sort of 'eat your way to heaven/nirvana' approach.

    smsweitzer

    On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 Responses

  • United Nations meets pledge goal for Billion Tree

    Great intentions, those tree planters!  I happened to hear Crispin Lobo, a jesuit priest and Harvard alumni and colleague Sushil from the Sadhana Institute tell the story of the Watershed Organization Trust (http://www.wotr.org/wd.htm ) last night - a project in India which involves planting trees - among other things.  I was struck by the interdependent and interactive nature of community development and the transformation of the barren hillsides into lush, vegetated hills with thriving trees and grasses. Just to make a point, WOTR has actually seen the water table rise by as much as 3 to 4 meters... not in one but more than 300 villages... spread over more than 600,000 acres!

    The initial plan involved digging (by hand) water retention trenches all over these barren hillsides to capture the monsoon waters and feed them into the groundwater.  Everyone was pleased that the initial plantings of trees and vegetation did well - until it became clear that the need for animal fodder and the value of trees for lumber and fuel caused entire hillsides to be deforested and overgrazed in years two and three after planting.  The stories of how WOTR developed community support for protecting the trees, how that led to a huge change in the way women interact with their communities, the effects on the economy as well as the huge environmental success of these village based projects is well worth the read.  

    The long and short of it is that planting trees, recovering desert lands and poverty alleviation can go hand-in-hand, but it isn't quite as easy as just planting a tree.  But it includes planting trees.  Interdependence and interaction between humans and ecosystems is the name of the game.  In the long run, supporting the whole eco-system can also alleviate poverty.  As Grist would say, "Duh."
    On They Could Teach PBS a Thing or Two posted 2 years, 6 months ago 4 Responses