Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

I am worried that your hotness may be contributing to global warming. I'm not sure what can be done to fix this.

O Zone

A. Dearest O,

You are making me blush. But I am using your letter as a springboard to report some exciting news: In an effort to make my operations more energy-efficient, I am combining my previous twice-weekly column into one weekly, multi-question column. Experts say the shift will result in 26 fewer milligrams of carbon emitted each week. I'll also be popping up in other places on Grist during the week now, and asking you dearest readers for more input. So keep the questions, suggestions, and blush-inducing compliments coming -- we'll lick this climate thing yet.

Efficiently,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

What is the most effective thing each of us can do over the next six weeks to help stop global warming?

Ned T.
Columbia, Md.

A. Dearest Ned,

I assume your six-week timeframe is pinned on the Copenhagen climate conference, to which we are all looking with bright eyes and big hopes. My advice for the interim is two-pronged: first, pledge to make one change in your own life that will reduce your energy use. Because I'm getting in the holiday spirit, I'll even say changing one light bulb counts, though I'd like to see you take some bigger steps as well. Second, but only because I couldn't blurt both ideas at once: Contact your representatives and senators. Tell them you support the passage of strong climate legislation, and tell them Obama would be insane not to go to Copenhagen. Tell them if they don't do something about climate change immediately, you are going to distribute photographs of them in compromising positions. We all know you don't possess any such photographs, but that sort of threat will always send a shiver down a politician's spine. When it comes to the climate crisis, we are no longer above such maneuvers.

Shiveringly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

Do you have any recommendations on how to make the annual corporate 'gift basket' sustainable, yet memorable?

Erin K.
Portland, Ore.

A. Dearest Erin,

Want not, waste not.Good for you for thinking about how to make this consumption-y tradition more sustainable. The obvious choice, of course, would be to forgo the gift basket entirely. Can you get away with that at your company? Why not send your supporters and customers a gift certificate for a nice meal, instead, or donate to a worthy non-profit organization in their name. It seems to me that, in an age when 83 percent of people report receiving gifts they don't want, the corporate gift basket has run its course. However, if you absolutely must dole out tangible items, see if you can draw any inspiration from our list of creative green gift basket ideas. If all else fails and a more traditional basket is required, make sure you are thoughtful about choosing local, sustainable products. You live in a land of good cheese, beer, and wine, so it shouldn't be hard.

Scroogily,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

Can I recycle my receipts? I'm worried that the type of paper they're printed on will contaminate the regular paper I'm recycling.

BadRabbit
Richmond, Va.

A. Dearest Bad,

What a good question as we approach Holiday Shopping Madness. I can say with nearly 100 percent confidence that you cannot recycle your receipts -- at least, those printed on thermal paper, which is the sort of shiny, sheeny paper that faxes used to arrive on. (Remember faxes?) However, as with all such "can I recycle this or that" questions, I'll advise you to doublecheck with your municipality. Two more things on the receipt front, one creepy, one promising. The creepy one is that some receipts are coated with BPA, the estrogen-mimicking chemical found in baby bottles and can linings. At present, the best advice for avoiding this form of BPA exposure seems to be to decline receipts when you can, and wash your hands after handling them when you can't. Now for the more promising news: I've been hearing about a business model in which you, the customer, can associate your debit card with an e-mail account and request digital receipts, so instead of ending up with a pocket full of non-recyclable thermal paper, you end up with an inbox full instead. Many people seem to be trying this notion, but I have not located one good, central resource that's figured out how to get it up and running -- readers, any insights?

Totally,
Umbra

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Common wisdom tells us there’s no free lunch. But you can have a guilt-free lunch, thanks to Umbra Fisk’s recipe for midday munchers everywhere. You won’t have to swallow your pride -- you can eat well, save money, and help this juicy planet we call home.

“Ask Umbra” is the first video series produced by GristTV. Look for new video tips for greening your life from Umbra nearly every week.

Watch it on the go! Subscribe to GristTV video podcasts via iTunes.

Feed your mind with these links from the Grist archives:
Ask Umbra on food storage options
Let’s (re)do school lunch
Cargill, the National School Lunch program, and antibiotic-resistant salmonella
Maverick chef Ann Cooper aims to spark a nationwide school-lunch revolution
… and even more on school lunch

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First, Colin Beavan donned a superhero nickname and gave up electricity, fossil fuels, un-local food, and buying stuff. He blogged, he wrote a book, he let filmmakers follow his family around (his wife and daughter were roped in too). The New Yorker criticized the stunt, er, experiment. Grist weighed in. Beavan responded to, um, the New Yorker. Whatever, that’s cool.

The dialogue continues--here’s an edited transcript of our recent conversation.

Grist: The movie leaves viewers wondering, how are you living now that the No Impact experiment is finished?

Beavan: We’ve tried to keep the things that actually make sense in our life, because so many of the resources we use end up hurting our quality of life. For example, it made sense for us to save $1,200 a year by not having an air conditioner, so we gave it away. On those five or six really hot summer nights, Michelle, Isabella, and I go down to Washington Square Park and play in the fountain and talk to our neighbors, instead of huddling inside with the air conditioner.

We kept our bicycles, but we also each have a rickshaw so we can take Isabella [TK-year-old daughter] around. And it makes sense to eat food that isn’t processed and full of chemicals, so we continue to eat locally as much as we can and shop at the farmer’s market.

And you’re traveling now?

Oh geez. I haven’t flown for personal reasons yet but I will be flying to talk about the book. The publishers have very kindly offered to make substantial donations to developing world renewable energy projects. The one in particular that we’re supporting at the moment is SELF (Solar Electric Light Fund). They bring solar panels into sub-Saharan villages, which isn’t about having reading lights, it’s about running the medical refrigerators. So it becomes important in the fight against AIDS.

You’ve taken flack for focusing on lifestyle choices--where you get your food, shutting off the electricity in your apartment, and what-not. Was it inevitable that people would get hooked on the personal stunt and not on the message in the book of civic engagement?

It’s not inevitable at all. I think there are two main arguments on individual lifestyle change. One is that we have to change our way of life no matter how much technology we get, no matter what regulation we get, because we have to get to 350 [parts per million of carbon dioxide] and because Americans generate five times the carbon emissions per capita as the Chinese. Our consumption-based economy, I would argue, doesn’t work for the planet. It doesn’t work for the people either.

Second, there are gigantic groups of Americans that we can’t meet directly through environmental politics. They’re just not going to call their congressperson and tell them to support the climate bill. But they do understand that there’s a problem and they are willing to begin to change their lives. If we’re going to get the legislation we need and then keep it next time there’s a Republican administration, then we have to go beyond just using our political power to leverage the rest of the country into doing what we want. We have to change the culture. And you can’t change the values of the culture through legislation.

Let me repeat that: I don’t believe in individual action over collective action. I believe in both. It’s what I call engaged citizenship, a combination of both living your values in your own life and also living those values in your community life, volunteering for nonprofits and putting pressure on your political representatives.

There’s a pervasive idea that we can start with lists of ‘10 easy things you can do’ and they will serve as a stepping stone to get people involved in more intensive work.The idea that people will start with their light bulbs and move up to calling Congress members and organizing. But Americans have been offered lists of easy green things for years, decades even, and they’re still not politically engaged on climate change. Do you have any faith in this strategy? Or does it teach people to think of themselves as consumers and not citizens?

I completely do not believe in the 10 easy green things. The problem is when people stop at using canvas bags or changing their light bulbs. I believe in robust lifestyle change instead.  For people who aren’t yet involved, who aren’t already in the choir, I find that the two big ways to start are with local food and bicycling. Once you get people to make those changes, then you can start getting them involved in politics. If you get somebody to cycle here in New York because it’s fun and healthy, they’re more likely to get involved with Transportation Alternatives and to push for changes in the cityscape.

But that sounds like the green tips thing again. It sounds like starting with the small things, and they’re going to bring people into local transportation planning. I’m just not sure that happens with enough people.

I’m not arguing that it happens with everybody. I’m saying that this is a way of doing things that reaches a certain population. And at this stage, the last thing we should do is sit back until we find the one thing that works. We need to all of us put our shoulders at the doors of change and push and not worry about criticizing each other as much as supporting each other in all the various methods. Somebody will have a breakthrough, and we all need to be cheering each other on.

We have to find an on-ramp into environmental politics, because it’s just not growing fast enough. The more attempts at on-ramps that we can think of the better.

That’s a nice way of putting it. I like that. It does seem like a lot of the reviews of your book mention that either/or mentality, as if the focus on lifestyle takes away from the civic stuff.

No impact family: Michelle, Isabella, and Colin.Photo courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories

I didn’t realize it when I started the project, but part of the reason is this: collective action is at the root of liberal ideology and individual action is at the root of conservative ideology. To straddle individual and collective action feels like, whichever side you’re on, you’re betraying your political heritage. To suggest that we should do both is strangely radical. It’s almost like you need a whole new political party.

I mentioned in reviewing the film that your project is getting much more attention than traditional environmental health groups like Sustainable South Bronx. What do you make of that?

Let’s talk about 350.org. What 350’s doing on Oct. 24 [the International Day of Climate Action] is in some ways a spectacle, right? Somebody dives under the ocean and unrolls a “350” sign by a coral reef. The spectacle itself is not important. What is important is that the number of spectacles happening around the world will gain enough attention for people to begin to think about this policy number 350. It’s unfortunate, but so much of our media is entertainment-based. We have to create spectacles in order to get the attention that we need.

The truth of the matter is that it’s awful that No Impact Man got more attention than Sustainable South Bronx. The South Bronx has one of the highest asthma rates in the country, and it’s caused by trucks passing through the neighborhood carrying our trash to garbage transfer stations. It’s insane! Let’s take this back to individual action. It’s important that people understand this and say, “I’m throwing out so much stuff that kids are getting asthma? Maybe the way I live and the way that my culture lives is not so great.”

So what’s next for you?

I’m concentrating now on starting a nonprofit called No Impact Project. It’s a portal, in the web sense of the word and the larger sense of the word, where people can get involved and ask themselves whether they might be able to find ways of living more environmentally, in ways that also make their lives better.

One of the centerpieces of the project is a one-week experience where you get led through a bunch of different environmental adaptations while being asked all the time, “Is this making your life more or less good?” Our three main partners are 1Sky, Food and Water Watch, and Alliance for Biking and Walking. The idea is we attract people to the idea of lifestyle change and then take that energy and loan it to the existing environmental nonprofits, who can feed them into the legislative process.

Let’s end with a very important question: What’s the deal with the Will Smith rumors? Is he going to make a feature version of No Impact Man?

Sony has optioned it on behalf of Todd Black, who did Seven Pounds and Pursuit of Happiness, both of which were Will Smith films. I have no idea what talent they’re hoping to attach to the film. But I do know they’re planning for it to come out in 2012.

Is this the kind of thing where they buy lots of these rights just in case, or are they really going to make it?

I mean, rumor in the street is that they’re really going to make it. They’re not in production yet, so we can’t know until they’re in production. But what I’m told is that they are going to make it.

Find out when No Impact Man, the documentary, is showing near you, and watch the trailer:

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What should we make of the USDA's "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative, which the agency rolled out this week?

USDA via FlickrAfter hearing USDA official Ann Wright's remarks Tuesday in Chicago and reading through the press release, I'm both encouraged and skeptical.

Speaking to attendees at the Chefs Collaborative Summit -- an audience consisting mainly of chefs who normally think more about flavor and farmers than policy -- Wright was vague, brief, and didn't seem in tune with what was happening at the home office back in Washington. (For example, she didn't seem to have read the press release that the USDA had released that day.)

But she got across her message: the USDA is determined to put resources into the challenging task of rebuilding local and regional food systems. The audience cheered her enthusiastically.

First, let's be clear on what the USDA is up to here. It is not committing new money to local and regional food systems. As Wright confirmed in a brief conversation after her talk, "Know Your Farmer" is really about publicizing programs laid out in the 2008 Farm Bill--prodding local food activists and entrepreneurs to apply for already available funds.

Asked by reporters how much money is available, Wright replied that the programs in question amount to "several hundred million" dollars. But she stressed that this amount will probably not go enirely to local and regional food initiatives. Instead, the number encompasses the total value of USDA programs that are open to such initiatives, but are not exclusively for such initiatives.

Thus local and regional food systems, in dire need of infrastructure investment, will likely receive less than "several hundred million" dollars over the life of the current farm bill, which ends in 2013. By contrast, industrial-scale corn producers routinely grab between $4 billion and $9 billion in crop subsidies each year. Overall, payments to producers of "program crops" -- corn, soy, cotton, rice, etc. -- reach as high as $24 billion some years. "Know Your Farmer" won't change that huge imbalance. (For starters, $4.8 million will go to projects in 14 states, USDA announced today.)

So it's hardly a revolutionary program.

Even so, it's remarkable and to my knowledge unprecedented that the USDA is making a major effort to publicize these programs and ensure that at least some federal money flows into emerging alternative food systems.

USDA leadership can't change the structure of the Farm Bill, but the agency does decide how farm bill programs play out. And the Obama USDA seems determined to do what it can to use existing rural-developent programs in a progressive way.

Of course, USDA also remains capable of playing its time-tested role or promoter and protector of Big Ag. Consider that in the current fiscal year, the agency has spent $151 million in taxpayer cash on mass-produced meat to bolster the struggling pork industry. For perspective on such meat-industry bailouts, see this lucid and important post from Elanor Starmer on Ethicurean.

The way I see the Obama USDA, it's got its foot in two camps -- one on the old industrial ag side, the other in the emerging paradigm of ecologically and socially responsible food.

That dualism may disappoint sustainable food activists; but it should be remembered that under past administrations, the USDA marched with both feet to to the agribusiness drummer.

After Wright's talk, in a huddle of reporters, I got her to pretty much confirm rumors that I've been hearing for months: that Michelle Obama is pushing for food-system change from her perch in the East Wing. When I asked whether the First Lady is involved in food policy, Wright perked up, smiled, and said that the USDA is now in "regular contact" with the East Wing.

There are no doubt forces within the administration that favor the approach to agriculture championed by the late Norman Borlaug: big, top-down, tech-centered, and corporate-friendly solutions to the problem of feeding the nation and world. Let's hope that Michelle Obama and her crew keep standing up to them.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is so fired up about local food economies that it's coughing up $65 million for a new program called "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food."

My first reaction: $65 million?!  That's all?!

At 3:45 central time a top USDA official is speaking at the event I'm at in Chicago. I plan to "live Tweet" that speech, so check my Twitter feed (@tomphilpott) or come back to this page.  The event I'm at, btw, is the Chefs Collaborative national summit.

In the meantime, here's Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack's recorded video remarks about the program.  The USDA press release is pasted underneath.

USDA Launches 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' Initiative to Connect Consumers with Local Producers to Create New Economic Opportunities for Communities

WASHINGTON, September 15, 2009 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new initiative - 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' - to begin a national conversation to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity. To launch the initiative, Secretary Vilsack recorded a video to invite Americans to join the discussion and share their ideas for ways to support local agriculture. The video, one of many means by which USDA will engage in this conversation, can be viewed at USDA's YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/usda . Producers and consumers can comment on the 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' YouTube playlist, as well as submit videos or provide comments on this initiative by e-mailing KnowYourFarmer@usda.gov.

"An American people that is more engaged with their food supply will create new income opportunities for American agriculture," said Vilsack. "Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food."

The 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative, chaired by Deputy Secretary Merrigan, is the focus of a task force with representatives from agencies across USDA who will help better align the Department's efforts to build stronger local and regional food systems. This week alone, USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiatives.

"Americans are more interested in food and agriculture than at any other time since most families left the farm," said Merrigan. "'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' seeks to focus that conversation on supporting local and regional food systems to strengthen American agriculture by promoting sustainable agricultural practices and spurring economic opportunity in rural communities."

In the months to come, cross-cutting efforts at USDA will seek to use existing USDA programs to break down structural barriers that have inhibited local food systems from thriving. Today, USDA announced a small initial group of moves that seek to connect local production and consumption and promote local-scale sustainable operations:

* USDA's Risk Management Agency announced $3.4 million in funding for collaborative outreach and assistance programs to socially disadvantaged and underserved farmers. These programs will support 'Know You Farmer' goals by helping producers adopt new and direct marketing practices. For example, nearly $10,000 in funding for the University of Minnesota will bring together experts on food safety and regulations for a discussion of marketing to institutions like K-12 schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other health care facilities.

* USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service proposed regulations to implement a new voluntary cooperative program under which select state-inspected establishments will be eligible to ship meat and poultry products in interstate commerce. The new program was created in the 2008 Farm Bill and will provide new economic opportunities for small meat and poultry establishments, whose markets are currently limited.

* USDA's Rural Development announced $4.4 million in grants to help 23 local business cooperatives in 19 states. The member-driven and member-owned cooperative business model has been successful for rural enterprises, and bring rural communities closer to the process of moving from production-to-consumption as they work to improve their products and expand their appeal in the marketplace.

* USDA's Rural Development will also announce a Rural Business Opportunity Grant in the amount of $150,000 to the Northwest Food Processors Association. The grant will strengthen the relationship between local food processors and customers in parts of Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and will also help the group reduce energy consumption, a major cost for food processors.

As the 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative evolves, USDA will continue to build on the momentum and ideas from the 2008 Farm Bill and target its existing programs and develop new ones to pursue sustainable agriculture and support for local and regional food systems.

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Islam is green by nature, and Ramadan offers a chance to make a big impact.Shawna AyoubAfter my grandfather had a stroke, the doctor said he might not walk again. He also said that getting him to challenge himself -- to give walking a true try -- was critical to his physical and emotional recovery. My grandfather took his first steps only a week after the near total paralysis of his left side.

While he never regained his easy gait, he also never let his slow, strained shuffle hinder him. Mornings, he made ten laps back and forth on the Lebanese mountain road outside the gates of his house. When I visited Lebanon, I walked with him, helping him stoop and clear the trash -- plastic bags, Pepsi bottles, paper, cigarette butts -- that passersby had tossed out their windows onto the road. It was close to the time Jiddo died that I learned clearing the roads wasn't so much a physical exercise as a spiritual one.

The responsibility Muslims hold in man's divinely bestowed role as the world's vicegerents extends to the planet's health. We know that removing litter from the road is considered an Islamic charity (Sahih AlJumea). We also know that God loves those who do not waste (Qur'an 7:31). In fact, Muslims are specifically commanded to eat fruit in its season and refrain from wasting the goods from this earth (6:141). Multiple examples from the life of the Prophet Muhammad (ahadith), peace and blessings be on him, instruct us to conserve water, avoid overeating, and care for animals and plants in need.

Islam is by its nature a "green" religion -- and Ramadan, the Islamic month during which fasting is prescribed for all able Muslims, offers a chance for the 1.2 billion of us worldwide to make a huge and hugely positive environmental impact.

There is more to a Ramadan fast than abstention from food, drink, and sex during the daylight hours. An Islamic fast also requires the participant to refrain from angry activities and discourse, and good deeds are strongly encouraged. The standard for good deeds is that they be charitable in nature, such as feeding the poor and taking care of orphans. Ramadan is capped off with a community-oriented feasting day called Eid al Fitr during which an obligatory tax (zakat) is collected that is redistributed to the needy.

While there is no disputing the social and economic value of feeding the hungry and nursing the sick during this holy month, it is just as important that we remember to take care of the world for which we are the inheritors.

Simply by not overeating before or after our fast, we can contribute to global health -- and our own. In a recent article for the Washington Post, Zafar Nomani, professor emeritus of human nutrition and foods at West Virginia University, noted that, "During Ramadan, research has shown that the basal metabolism of fasting subjects slows down. A person can stay healthy and active during Ramadan consuming a diet that is less than the normal amount of calories or food intake but balanced in nutrients."

Even if only 50 percent of the estimated 7 million Muslims living in the United States fast during Ramadan, if that fast eliminates our weekly cheeseburger (or meat and rice equivalent) and we do not over consume to compensate for a missed meal, that means the American Muslim community could reduce U.S. CO2 output by 60,900 metric tons during Ramadan alone. That's the equivalent annual CO2 output of 6,090 SUVs!

Further, we often pay attention to how our meat is slaughtered with little or no regard to how it was raised. Many local farms allow us to do our own slaughtering on their premises. This gives us a choice come Eid, when ritual animal sacrifices are made and the meat shared out to our neighbors and the poor. We can elect to purchase our animals (and vegetables) from farms that use sustainable agricultural methods. We may pay a slight premium, but isn't it worth it if, when we go before God on the Last Day, among our deeds it will be recorded that we chose from the animals that were responsibly and compassionately raised to offer as our sacrifice?

Go ahead -- start small.Shawna AyoubWhat else can you do? Begin with the next fast-breaking dinner (iftaar) you host or attend. Collect recyclables such as soda cans and plastic bottles and drop them off at your local recycling center. Choose reusable dishes instead of disposables. If you're attending a nightly community dinner at a mosque, set up a dishwashing schedule that will let your Muslim brothers and sisters rake in the blessings by pitching in once a week.

While you're at it, set up a Freecycle-style program for Eid gifts that allows community members to exchange goods or gently used toys. Not only will you save money that can later be donated to the poor, you will avoid buying new items that can be toxic for the planet and for your health. Encourage your community to get educated and organized in order to contribute, perhaps by planting an organic vegetable garden on the mosque lawn.

If you aren't fasting or have no local community, you can still chip in. Walk to the mosque for prayers (and gain rewards) or carpool when you travel. Consider putting in some time at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. You could even donate some of your time to the Humane Society. You can join groups such as Green Ramadan that have popped up online with the goal of a global green effort for one month each year.

Like my grandfather, we can all do our part in a small way. Each individual act is like a pebble in a pond that sends out ten ripples. Who knows how far those miniature waves will reach or what good they may carry?

Ramadan is a month of hyperawareness achieved through the challenges of the body in order to strengthen the soul. Every good deed is one that contributes to this renewal. And each one can contribute to the renewal of our planet, too, whether your efforts are individual or communal.

There are still plenty of blessed days left this Ramadan. Challenge yourself and strengthen your soul, and by doing so, earn the rewards of the next life. Make this Ramadan your greenest ever.

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This week’s verse was contributed by the White House as it worked on plans for a farmers market. Check out more climate poems from Grist.

First we thought cars were the fix, so Congress made a bet:
Give people cash and they will trade their clunking old Corvette.
And boy, they did! In drives—uh, droves—till we ran out of dough.
Now sliiiightly more efficient rides are always on the go.

If we can’t change the climate with a 2 m.p.g. bribe
Perhaps there is another way we can convert this tribe.
They still love dirty coal and oil and gas and even nukes,
But maybe they will see the light if we start selling cukes!

stuartpilbrow via flickr

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"The inevitable aim of industrial agri-investors is the big universal solution. They want a big product that can be marketed everywhere. And the kind of agriculture we're talking about that leads to food security and land conservation is locally adapted agriculture. And they can't do that. Industrial agriculture plants cornfields in Arizona; locally adapted agriculture says, what can we fit in this place that will not destroy it? Or what can nature help us to do here? That's the critical issue."

-- Wendell Berry, responding to a question about GMOs from The Washington Post's Jane Black

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Michael Specter’s new book ‘Denialism’ misses its targets

I don't think our goal should be to make all food in America as cheap as cheap food is now.  ... If the goal is cheap food, we're going to hurt our farmers, we're going to hurt the environment, we're going to hurt the public health.  The goal should be to give people the money so they can afford to buy good food. 

We're in this kind of reverse Fordism situation.  You know, Fordism was this idea that Henry Ford said, "I'm going to pay my workers enough so they can afford to buy my cars."  It raised everybody's boats.  This was the social compact in America, an economic compact, up until the '70s, and then it collapses. 

We have the opposite, it's kind of the Wal-Mart model, which is, "We're going to pay you so little you can only afford to buy our crummy food." And that's the kind of cycle we're in.

The answer is to give people the buying power.  

-- Michael Pollan, in an interview on The Splendid Table

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Photo: Beth RankinThe Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (FSEA) draft, was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Waxman on May 26, 2009 and is expected to move quickly through the House.  Consumers, farmers, and manufacturers alike all appear to be for a food safety bill, so the question is not whether a bill will be approved, but whether it will make our food safer. 

Our food system is seriously broken in places, and at first glance, many elements of the FSEA are hard to argue with.  For example, the bill would provide the FDA with mandatory recall authority, allow for more frequent inspections and institute traceability requirements so that the source of tainted foods can be more easily tracked. These measures might have helped lessen the impact of recent cases like Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), in which salmonella contamination sickened close to 700 people and caused 10 deaths (although it should be noted that the bill does not require microbial testing for pathogens).

While there are glaring inspection, reporting and accountability problems that need to be firmly addressed, traceability alone will not necessarily protect consumers. In fact, the PCA case exemplifies one of the primary failings of our food system: centralization in which a single entity can sicken so many people so geographically dispersed so quickly. In most of the recent food scares, centralized processing and distribution have been found to be the source of the problem, not growing and harvesting.

Reforming our food system means creating systems that support decentralized food processing and distribution, as well as sustainable production methods like organic and regional and local food.

Michael Pollan eloquently stated the need for decentralization or re-regionalization of our food system in his October 12, 2008 New York Times Magazine letter to, then, President-Elect Obama:

"A decentralized food system offers a great many...benefits... Food eaten closer to where it is grown will be fresher and require less processing, making it more nutritious. Whatever may be lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in resilience: regional food systems can better withstand all kinds of shocks. When a single factory is grinding 20 million hamburger patties in a week or washing 25 million servings of salad, a single terrorist armed with a canister of toxins can, at a stroke, poison millions. Such a system is equally susceptible to accidental contamination: the bigger and more global the trade in food, the more vulnerable the system is to catastrophe. The best way to protect our food system against such threats is obvious: decentralize it."

Consumers are already seeking stronger connection to their food. The increased number of farmers’ markets and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) points to the renewed interest and value consumers place on buying fresh, local food directly from the producer. There is an implicit accountability for food safety in these direct transactions. 

While buying food directly is not feasible on a day-to-day basis for most consumers, they still deserve the same level of accountability for food safety. Small farmers and producers that sell to food cooperatives and other grocers have demonstrated such accountability. That is not to say that no regulation is needed for small farmers and producers, but rather the larger focus of regulation should be directed towards the biggest problem areas that have the widest reach.

In addition to helping foster local and regional food systems, regulation should also support the environmental and health benefits of sustainable and organic food systems and the benefits of biodiversity, which Pollan alluded to above.

Government regulations and requirements tend to be scaled to the largest farmers and producers.  In many cases, the fees and purchases required for compliance are prohibitive for small operators—many of whom implement practices superior to those required by the FDA—and threaten to put them out of business. Our systems need to support the small family farmers and producers who are already doing the right thing. Our approaches need to be scale neutral or at least scale appropriate, and promote biodiversity.

Consumers have the right to safe food.  We need a system that minimizes risks and maintains public confidence in our food supply.  And we need to make sure that whatever regulations we put in place are enforceable with appropriate resources allocated towards this end.  But, let’s be sure that the regulations we adopt focus on our biggest food safety problems and help foster, or at least do no harm, to the many good practices that exist in our food production system.

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Wired Science has a good piece on the potential for tech startups to play a "disruptive" role in commercial food distribution. The post looks at several web services that are trying to replicate the restaurant supply chain system dominated by produce distribution giant Sysco and its ubiquitous trucks via a network of small farmers, iPhones and the Internet:

The food supply industry is ripe for ‘disintermediation’ because of the internet,” said Alistair Croll, a startup consultant working with FarmsReach. In other words, middlemen beware: Food could undergo a transition like the one that swept through classified ads, air travel and dozens of other industries.

...“The big problem in small agriculture is supply chain resiliency,” Croll said. “Chefs order from Sysco because they know, no matter what, they’ll get their orders or there is an account rep they can strangle.”

...FarmsReach wants to make ordering from local, small farms as easy and reliable as ordering from Sysco. Farmers with smartphones would snap quick photos of their produce, then upload their products into their “virtual stalls.” Restaurants could cruise through the vegetables online and pick what they wanted. It’s a classic farmer’s market with a high-tech twist.

There are all sorts of obstacles in the way of this kind of virtual supply chain -- like the fact that small farmers are more likely to be out in the fields rather than updating databases or the persistent challenge that any farm cooperative has of tracking who's growing what and how much or the reality that it may not be "convenient" enough to shop from a virtual farmers market. But it's still heartening to see folks working on the IT challenges of a local food system and holding out the possibility that someone out there is developing the Craigslist -- or better yet -- the Facebook of local food.

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Jeff Maurone via Flickr.If you were anywhere near Seattle this weekend and you didn’t make it to the Seattle Cheese Festival, oh man, I’m sorry. Oh man.

Pike Place Market, a sample-lover’s paradise on any day, played host to more than 200 artisanal cheesemakers for the weekend. Each brought some fine creations and each offered samples with extreme generosity. There were goat cheeses, sheep cheeses, and dairy cheeses, of just about every form imaginable. There were farmers from around the Northwest, and around the world, willing to talk about their methods and the diet of their animals. As an enthusiastic but otherwise unqualified cheese correspondent, I couldn’t come close to picking a favorite, though I can’t stop thinking about a fresh sheep’s milk offering from Black Sheep Creamery in Adna, Wash.

Organizers prepared for 65,000 attendees and may well have exceeded that target. Attendees barely held on to the façade of Seattle nice as they elbowed to get within arm’s reach of the more popular tables. I can’t imagine how many toothpicks, plastic spoons, and miniature plastic cups were consumed.

Sure, in the big picture of national dairy consumption, it made nary a blip—Kraft sells bazillions more units of factory cheese than these regional outfits. One salesperson told me how a partnership with Costco has been crucial for her company, offering a reminder that even noble artisan producers rely on problematic long-distance distribution.

But in the small picture of celebrating human-scale food consumption in all its breadth and splendor, it was a fine little party.

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Photo: TheTruthAbout..., via FlickrThe Ethicurean probably had it right when it declared yesterday that "local" jumped the shark. The shark in this case (or is it the jumper? I'm never sure which is which) is Frito-Lay and its Big Food brethren, which have embarked on marketing campaigns emphasizing the "local" producers who supply them. The NYT lays it out:

Frito-Lay is one of several big companies that, along with some large-scale farming concerns, are embracing a broad interpretation of what eating locally means. This mission creep has the original locavores choking on their yerba mate. But food executives who measure marketing budgets in the millions say they are mining the concept because consumers care more than ever about where their food comes from.

“Local for us has two appeals,” said Aurora Gonzalez, director of public relations for Frito-Lay North America, which is owned by PepsiCo. “We are interested in quality and quickness because we want consumers to get the freshest product possible, but we have a fairly significant sustainability program, and local is part of that. We want to do business more efficiently, but do it in a more environmentally conscious way.”

This is of course just the latest in a long line of greenwashing efforts that various conglomerates have engaged in of late, and Tom Philpott is right that it's more laughable than threatening. But their intent here isn't really to reach out to locavores and convince them of the benefits of this or that processed food. No, Big Food is "going local" out of fear that the multitude of recent food contanimation scandals have caused consumers to question the quality and security of processed food. This is about food safety, not sustainability. Indeed, a Conagra spokesman explicitly invoked consumer concerns regarding "food safety, quality and cost" as the motivating behind their own "local" marketing campaign.

With salmonella, E. Coli and swine flu in the headlines, Big Food is searching for a way to regain the trust of consumers. What Frito-Lay and Conagra are doing isn't really that much different from what Ocean Spray has done for a while with their ads or even from those old Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler commercials (which were a total fabrication) -- Big trying to create the illusion of Small. And anyway, the campaign is limited to the few growing regions that the industrial food business buys from -- California, Florida and parts of the Midwest. Ironically, given the geographical limits a centralized food system puts on them, this isn't a marketing campaign that can necessarily scale.

What really interested me about the article was the section decribing how some largescale growers in California are being encouraged to move away from commodity crops and towards "specialty crops," aka fruits and vegetables, that could be sold to local wholesalers and at farmers markets:

In central California, the Sacramento County Farm Bureau recently started a “Grow and Buy Local” initiative with a $50,000 grant from the county.

Part of the money is being used to encourage 3,000 area farmers whose fields are filled with feed grain, safflower and other commodity crops to plant acres of grocery store crops like strawberries or artichokes, or to hold some fruit, like pears, back from the canner.

That fresh produce can then be marketed as local and sold to nearby institutions like hospitals and jails that want to buy food raised nearby. And some of it can fill farm stands, which helps satisfy consumers who want to buy local fruits and vegetables and don’t care as much about, say, farm size or organic practices, said Charlotte Mitchell, the executive director of the county farm bureau and a Foster Farms turkey rancher.

This development is not at all in the same class as the warm-and-fuzzyish "local" ad campaigns of Conagra and Frito-Lay. What these Sacramento growers would do is EXACTLY what people interested in a more localized food system want. We want growers to abandon crops that are sold into the industrial meat and processed food system and instead grow things that their neighbors can eat fresh. There's no hypocrisy there, no corruption of the "local" label. As Mark Bittman has observed, as important as organic practices are (and as the the only sustainable form of agriculture in a post-carbon world, they are crucially important), right now it's far more important to get people eating larger amounts of fruits and vegetables and less processed food and meat. And while I don't appreciate Big Food's attempt to appropriate all the positive connotations of local food for itself, I do appreciate growers, no matter how large, who decide to fill local consumers' need for healthy food rather than the needs of industrial food processors and their insatiable demand for raw materials.

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David Bauer of Farm and Sparrow BakeryPhoto: April McGregerOn a recent vacation to Asheville, North Carolina, I headed to the market to get a loaf of bread. Asheville is home to a large a number of small-scale bakeries, many of which sell primarily at tailgate markets and wholesale to nearby specialty food shops.

I found the market shelves stocked with lovely loaves of ciabatta, baguette, marble rye, and challah, but I was most intrigued by a few loaves that I knew at first glance were special. Packaged in brown paper bags with a hand-stamped wood-cut logo, the loaves were not internationally known bread classics. Instead, their labels heralded unusual ingredients: "Heirloom Grit" and "Kamut." These intriguing loaves came from a bakery called Farm and Sparrow.

I couldn't resist calling up David Bauer, Farm and Sparrow's owner and baker, to arrange a visit. Through my talk with Bauer, I realized he represents a new type of baker. He sees himself as part of a larger decentralized, healthy, and diverse food system. The kamut, spelt, and buckwheat that you find in Farm and Sparrow's breads are known as landrace grains--grains that developed in the absence of modern breeding techniques. Landrace grains tend to be tougher, more resilient, and not dependent on chemical fertilizers, intense irrigation, and pesticides in order to survive.

Bauer sells his breads at the tailgate farmer's markets throughout the Asheville area. He is deeply committed to his local food community. Unlike most bakers who buy flour, Bauer sources whole grains, which he grinds himself the same day he makes his bread.

For him, the ideal would be to source grain locally. But finding locally or even regionally grown grain is nearly impossible in the United States today. The reason for this scarcity lies in the industrialization of agriculture over the last century, which went hand in hand with the consolidation of food processing.

A loaf of bread made of locally grown and stone-ground grains requires a certain kind of infrastructure that disappeared almost completely from our national landscape in the 1880s, with the introduction of the steel-roller mill and the rise hard Midwest-grown wheat. The steel-roller mill could efficiently remove the perishable germ and bran from wheat berries, creating a shelf-stable flour that could easily travel long distances.

Before this development, local mills had been necessary because flour had a shelf life of approximately one week. After, flour could be stored for months. Scalping the bran and the germ from wheat, however, meant stripping away key nutrients and fiber. This technological advance represented a nutritional step backward. 

Flour then went on to be the first food to be centrally produced and widely distributed. What essentially amounted to the dumping of cheap, Midwest-grown wheat on the rest of the country resulted in the erosion of regional grain markets as local farmers couldn't compete with the prices of cheap Midwestern wheat. The new roller mill technology also didn't work as well on the softer wheat varieties that grew in most of the rest of the country. So the disappearance of the small stone mill meant the disappearance of softer varieties of wheat as well--and the homogenization of U.S. bread making.

In the 125 years since, this transformation has been little noticed and mostly forgotten. Then in 2007-2008, global wheat prices soared for a variety of reasons, ranging from the U.S. biofuel boom to a drought in Australia's bread basket. Suddenly, bakers had to begin thinking hard about this fundamental ingredient that they had long taken for granted. Was it really worth it to pay top dollar for the same old mediocre hard-wheat flour they had been using for years? They began to see how their total reliance on Midwest wheat affected their regional food security--and, given the sudden prices volatility, their very viability as businesses. By fall 2008, high flour prices had pushed bakeries nationwide into a state of crisis.

Creative loafingPhoto: April McGregerIt was through my conversation with Bauer that I first learned of a group of bakers, millers, and farmers in North Carolina working collectively to do something about it by bringing back regional grain husbandry through the North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project.

Jennifer Lapidus, an immensely talented and principled bread baker of the now defunct Natural Bridge Bakery, is the project manager of the grant. She brings her experience as a baker to the table in hopes that by working cooperatively the group can successfully navigate the tricky task of developing supply and demand simultaneously.

I headed back out to Asheville a few weeks later for the Artisan Bread Festival to learn more about the NCOBFP, a major topic of discussion for this year's event. Glenn Roberts of South Carolina-based Anson Mills--which has done amazing work preserving southern grain traditions--was a featured speaker. He gave bakers some insight into the grain husbandry of yesteryear and a glimpse of our future as breadmakers.

Roberts predicted that we are moving back towards the old tradition of an average of 30 mills per county. Modern laboratory-developed wheat is failing us, he said: yields are plummeting as salt builds up in the soil from excessive irrigation. Meanwhile, new diseases pop up faster than the labs can generate resistant strands. The solution lies in biodiversity: a move back to region-appropriate, more robust wheat varieties, grown not in vast uniform fields but rather in combination with other crops.  

In order to grow wheat while maintaining the health of the land, one also has to grow buckwheat, sorghum, and cowpeas-- a legume that fixes nitrogen, suppresses a pest called nematodes, and keeps down weeds. Reviving regional grain-growing means a return to whole-system agriculture, and Roberts predicts it will happen sooner than we think.
For the health of people, of communities, and of the land, I stand with a group of micro-scale bakers like Lapidus and Bauer, who are ready to take on the challenge of developing intensely flavorful bread and pastries with unstandardized, capricious, and diverse locally produced grains.

Market Brown Bread
Making yeasted breads with small batch flours requires a bit of experimentation, scientific inquiry, careful observation, and an open mind. Anson Mills has a wonderful, informative website with lots of well tested recipes for using their products. If you are lucky enough to find a farmer growing wheat or cornmeal for sale at your farmer's market, I find it easiest to first experiment with quickbreads, biscuits, and pancakes. If you can't find locally grown grain in your area, let your favorite farmers know you would be a regular buyer if they grew it. Here's a quick and easy recipe for a very satisfying, unyeasted brown bread that was the first bread I made with 100 percent locally grown grains. Feel free to experiment with your grains since the bread is quite forgiving. Unlike most quickbreads, this one is not a dessert bread but the perfect accompaniment to dinner. With a simple carrot-ginger soup, it makes a lovely spring meal.

3 cups whole wheat flour (or rye or ground oats)
1 cup cornmeal (or other grain)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 3/4 - 2 cups buttermilk
2 Tablespoons sorghum, molasses, honey or maple syrup
4 Tablespoons melted butter
(optional - a handful of raisins or nuts)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a 1 pound loaf pan and dust it with cornmeal. Set aside. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and the buttermilk. Beat in the butter and the sorghum. Stir the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture. Different flours absorb different amounts of liquid so you may need to add another splash or two of buttermilk to get your batter to the right consistency. It should be thick but still pourable.  Spoon it into the loaf pan and cook for 50 minutes on the middle rack. To test for doneness, insert a toothpick into the center of the bread dough, and it should come out clean. If your bread is getting too dark on top, you can cover the top loosely with foil. Let the bread cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then remove from the tin onto a rack to cool at least 30 minutes before serving. Serve warm with fresh butter.

Makes 1 loaf.
 
 

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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

Photo: SimonShaw via Flickr.

In two months, I will walk across a lawn in taffeta and heels to stand beside my baby sister as she says "I do." Which means I have spent the last several months planning parties, calming crises, and trying not to gawk at the huge price tag looming over this blessed event.

Weddings are a celebration of love and commitment, but they're not often so loving on the earth -- or the commitment to trim your budget. And trying to save green while you plan a green wedding can cause quite the nuptial nightmare.

Is it possible to have an eco-friendly "I do" on a budget?

Yes, but you've got to focus on reducing waste and upping simplicity, advises Green Wedding author Mireya Navarro.

"A green wedding means trying to come up with earth-friendly alternatives to all the traditional elements of a wedding," she says. "If you follow all of the basic green principles -- recycling, and reducing, and reusing -- and apply that to a wedding, you're going to end up saving some money."

And it's not that hard to do, she adds. "It's just thinking in a different way, and you can still have a gorgeous wedding."

Here are some tips for tying the knot without tying up all your resources -- complete with estimated savings based on a survey by theknot.com that revealed the average U.S. wedding budget in 2008 was $29,334.

Tiny picture frames. Votive candles. Cutesy paper weights. Whatever the gewgaw, wedding favors are rarely what your guests actually favor -- and you're more likely to find them abandoned on tables than treasured as forever reminders of your special day. Why spend a few bucks a head on something that'll end up tossed in a trash bin? Estimated savings: $352

Invites stuffed in envelopes that are stuffed in bigger envelopes? Really? Consider Evites, or at the least, simpler guest correspondence. Setting up a wedding website and distributing the link is a great way to stay in touch with your guests without forfeiting trees -- or paychecks. Estimated savings: $538

Reduce waste. Yes, this mantra sounds like a push for compost bins beside your banquet tables (and hey, that's not a bad idea!), but it can be applied in a number of ways. Wedding planning too often gets mired in old-fashioned traditions -- who says you have to have expensive centerpieces on every table or string after string of twinkly white lights? Choose a venue with natural beauty and let your lovely guests do the shining. Estimated savings: $1,924

Photo: Todd Jones Photography via Flickr.Reuse your wedding attire. Everyone knows men can rent their penguin suits, but did you know brides can rent gowns as well? Many bridal shops are offering this option now, and it'll save you a bundle on the one piece of clothing you only wear once (fingers crossed). If you deciding renting isn't right for you, consider buying secondhand or borrowing. And to help spread the green, think about donating -- or Craigslisting -- your dress once your day is over. Estimated savings: $1,032

Recycle old jewelry. Instead of sporting freshly mined metals or blood diamonds, look into vintage/pawn-shopped bling. Superstitious? You can have the gems re-cut and the metals melted and reformed to create a unique piece sans voodoo -- for a lot less than a new one. Estimated savings: $900

Throw your shindig close to home to cut down on CO2 and build up your eco-karma. Let out-of-town guests experience your nuptials via the net by filming the big event and streaming it on one of many virtual wedding sites. Far-flung relatives will be munching on popcorn instead of your wedding budget. Estimated savings: $73 per person who doesn't show

While an all-organic buffet is likely to cost you a pretty penny, focusing on local foodstuffs could actually save you money, Navarro says, and you'll for sure save on greenhouse-gas guilt. Plus, your guests will appreciate the fresher, seasonal offerings -- and you would, too, if you could just get a minute to sit down and eat. Estimated savings depend on your local area and what time of year you hold the ceremony.

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Mention "reducing demand" to Average Jane American and she'll assume you mean conservation:  turning off lights, drying clothes on a clothesline, riding a bike to work, wearing a sweater when it's cold inside. And when she thinks conservation, she'll generally think, ugh, there go the dirty hippies telling me to feel guilty and be miserable again.

Both these associations are bogus.

First, when energy wonks talk about demand reduction, they usually mean efficiency. That means consuming the same energy services -- the same "warm showers and cold beers" -- using less energy. For instance, driving a Prius rather than a Taurus offers the same comfort and mobility while using less gas.

The distinction matters. Efficiency can boost economic productivity and reduce emissions simultaneously; McKinsey says it can get us 40 percent to where we need to go, at negative cost (that is, profit). And it doesn't require any individual lifestyle changes, so it's not as politically perilous.

Conservation is a tough row to hoe because people associate it with sacrifice -- shivering in the dark. What's poorly understood, perhaps because greens aren't very good at painting the picture, is that many changes that reduce individual energy consumption increase quality of life. Living in walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods can lower gasoline consumption while improving health and sociability. Raising food in a garden is rewarding; shopping at farmers markets is fun; having fresh, local food to eat is, well, tasty. Doing more socializing and less TV watching/web surfing increases life span.

The high-speed, high-consumption American lifestyle is no longer increasing happiness. Slowing down, spending time rather than money, can be enormously gratifying. The greener life is a better life. (For more on this, see Bill McKibben.)

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Daniel Duane in Mother Jones warns you about farmers markets becoming "farmers markets":

This should come as no surprise. Honestly, what do you expect when the local chamber of commerce is put in charge of food? You get a yuppie food mall, of course. "The market" gave us Wal-Mart, the Twinkie and Wonder Bread. When you put farmers markets at its mercy, this is what happens. Needless to say, the worst aspect of this development is the idea that commercial growers are taking (some might say "stealing") the farmers-market price premium from those whom it's meant to benefit. That's the worst kind of cynicism, on the one hand, and par for the market course, on the other.

The fact is that if we want farmers markets to accomplish particular policy ends -- whether it's to bring affordable fresh fruit and vegetables to cities or to provide dedicated outlets for small, local farms to sell their wares or both -- government has to be involved. To see what I'm talking about, check out what's going on in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Or see Scott Stringer's plan for NYC's local foodshed.

And I'm not arguing that farmers markets should be one thing or another, but when "the market" is in charge, the result will naturally be a place where space goes to the highest bidder. If the goal is to maximize profit, that's great. But if the goals are different -- and are meant to align food distribution in the public, rather than the private, interests -- then we'll have to put the chamber back in charge of glossy marketing materials and let food policy experts design some more appropriate incentives for our farmers markets.

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It seems everyone’s going green these days—but some couples are doubly committed to the cause. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we take a look at 14 prominent pairs who share a certain planetary passion.

Brad and Angie
Yes, the ever-expanding footprint of this family might raise a few eco-eyebrows, but they make up for it by, oh: green-rebuilding New Orleans, funding a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia to the tune of $5 million, narrating a PBS series on green design, supporting Haiti’s Clean Streets Project, partnering with an eco-cosmetics company to raise funds for charity, and buying an organic winery (OK, that one’s a glittery indulgence). Angie reportedly ate organic to get back into shape after having the twins, and buys bamboo pants for her kidlets too! How do we get adopted?

Photo: Jerry Bauer

Michael Pollan and Judith Belzer
Let’s say you’re the country’s leading voice on food politics and sustainable agriculture. Wouldn’t it be convenient if your life partner were not, say, a PR flack for Big Ag, but a landscape painter? Indeed it would, which is why it’s lovely that Michael Pollan is married to Judith Belzer. The college sweethearts, who met in 1974, have pursued their overlapping passions through a 22-year marriage, several moves, and Pollan’s rise to fame. No slouch herself, Belzer landed solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston while Pollan kept himself busy writing eye-opening titles like Omnivore’s Dilemma. As she wrote in one artist’s statement, “No one view of nature prevails because nature itself—not just the observer—is constantly changing.”

Portia and Ellen
Amiable talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres is, along with her partner Portia de Rossi (also known as “Really? Wow, good for her!”), raising awareness of a lifestyle that’s often marginalized by the mainstream. Yeah, we’re talking about veganism. After celebrating their marriage last year with a vegan ceremony, the two have apparently converted to a 100 percent vegan diet. De Rossi is designing a vegan shoe line, and DeGeneres promotes vegan companies on her show. Over the years, she’s also hosted eco-guests ranging from Al Gore to a six-year-old recycler from Columbia, S.C. Plus, did you see her dance with Obama? Maybe teh veganz are OK after all.

Ed Begley and Bill Nye
No, they’re not technically a couple. But thanks to their neighborly eco-spats, the actor and science guy have become nearly inseparable—in the media, at least. Taking the idea of “keeping up with the Joneses” to fierce new heights, Ed and Bill have made improvements to their respective homes that include solar panels, rain barrels, and recycled-milk-jug fencing—and broadcast their story every step of the way, to outlets ranging from USA Today to PBS. Skinny white homeowners unite!

Photo: Joli

Eddie Vedder and Kelly Slater
Another eco-bromance we’re wild about: the sun-and-fun-and-sustainability relationship between musician Vedder and pro surfer Slater. Besides frequently catching waves together, the two pair up to raise big bucks for reef protection and environmental awareness through the Kelly Slater Foundation. Vedder, in between songs at a benefit show for the foundation last year, explained his motivation: “Half of every song I’ve ever written was written in the ocean, so that’s sort of my way of giving back.”

Photo: TheHundreds.com

Erykah Badu and Jay Electronica
Soulful singer Badu, who’s been a vegetarian for 20 years, converted to veganism two years ago and has taken her family along for the ride; in one interview, she referred to her children as “vegan vegetarians, organic babies from birth.” Her charity organization, Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development (BLIND), focuses on building culture and community in her hometown of Dallas; in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she sponsored programs for young evacuees. On top of it all, Badu and her rapper boyfriend tweeted the birth of their child this month—think of all the paper they saved on birth announcements.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Margaret Kirkpatrick
The dreamily progressive, bow tie-sporting Congressman from Oregon is known for his vocal support of sustainable development, energy efficiency, clean water, and public transportation. His contagious enthusiasm has convinced fellow pols to join the 160-member Congressional Bicycle Caucus, which he founded upon being elected in 1996. And his wheel-vangelism apparently extends to his personal life: His wife “frequently bikes to work,” he told Outside Magazine last fall. Her job? She’s an environmental lawyer and VP at Northwest Natural Gas Co., vice chair of the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission, and co-chair of the American Wind Energy Association Siting Committee. Now that’s a power couple.

Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton
When the actress and her playwright husband took over as artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in 2007, they made greening the facility a priority. While it’s no small undertaking, the pair has made some headway—printing brochures on carbon-neutral paper and reviewing the waste-management contract—and still hopes to undertake a massive solar installation and water-system overhaul. The couple reportedly put $1.5 million into eco-renovations at their own home in Sydney, and Blanchett has been involved with Earth Hour and the Walk Against Warming. “As I see it,” she said in a 2008 interview with Marie Claire, “there’s no greater challenge we face as a species than dealing with climate change and its effects.”

Laura Dern and Ben Harper
The eco-leanings of this actress-rocker duo seem to have expanded with the addition of their two children, now 6 and 3. Dern is an active spokesperson for the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition, spreading the word about household toxics and how to avoid them. The two drive a hybrid (OK, two hybrids); Harper has also been spotted bike-hauling his daughter home from school. On the road, he tours in a biofuel bus, and his most recent CD was packaged entirely in recyclable materials. As committed as he is, Harper admits that his spouse leads the green charge, and told one interviewer, “She’s my environmental hero.”

Brian and Nancy Schweitzer
As governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer has earned kudos for his ability to address environmental issues without sounding like some kind of—how to put this?—East Coast weenie. Since being elected in 2004, the gun-lovin’ former rancher has hit the national scene by talking up clean energy and staring down climate change. Back at home, he and his wife, both scientists by training, have launched an initiative to get the state’s children engaged in science, both in school and through programs like roadside signs, trading cards, and a youth forest monitoring program.

Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith
There’s more to this green couple than their splashy Golden Globes arrival in a hydrogen-powered Beamer. The former James Bond met his future wife, an environmental journalist, while participating in an eco-campaign in Mexico. Since then, they’ve been actively involved in marine conservation, as well as fighting a proposed salt factory in Baja California and the LNG terminal off of Malibu. The couple has donated money and time to several green groups over the years, and taught their kids to compost. “I continue to be a student of the world,” Brosnan told [PDF] Bon Appetit last year when asked how he got interested in eco-causes—then listed his wife among the people who inspire him.

Barbara Kingsolver and Steven Hopp
The couple bared all in 2007’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, in which they chronicled a year of growing and locally sourcing food for themselves and their two daughters. But the book was no dilettantish dip into the eco-well. Kingsolver’s best-selling novels feature natural themes, and Hopp is an environmental studies professor with a vireo fixation. The “Hoppsolvers,” as they’ve jokingly referred to themselves, moved from Arizona to their farm in Virginia to escape the eco-unreality of a desert existence. They continue to blog about life on the farm, and retain a down-to-earth attitude. As Kingsolver puts it, “I’m sort of allergic to sanctimony.”

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck
Their eco-efforts first struck us as modest: Yeah, Jennifer was spotted shopping at a farmers’ market. OK, Ben dressed up as an ear of corn for a flex-fuel film! (Don’t watch it. Seriously, you can’t get that 5:31 back.) And fine, Jennifer and Ben made PSAs for Live Earth. But then we read that The Dimpled One campaigned against former California Rep. Richard Pombo in 2006. “Our fight to unseat Richard Pombo is ... a fight for the ecological preservation of the United States,” Garner said at the time. “It’s a fight for the world I want my little girl to inherit.” Yes! Only now it’s little girls, plural—congrats, you sorta-committed cuties.

Michael and Mary Brune
As executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, Mike Brune has helped convince major companies including Home Depot and Goldman Sachs to change their business practices, protecting millions of acres of rainforest along the way. On the Huffington Post and in his recent book Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal, he works to raise awareness about energy and conservation. Meanwhile, Brune’s wife Mary is an activist in her own right: she co-founded and is the director of Making Our Milk Safe, a member organization created in 2005 to raise awareness about industrial pollutants in breastmilk. The Brunes live in California with their two children; after having the first, Mary remarked that “we hope that she’ll be one more soldier on the front lines who’s going to fight for the Earth when she grows up.” With genes like this, the chances seem good.

Bono and Ali Hewson
In 1975, Paul Hewson met a girl and joined a band. The girl would become his wife; the band, U2. Over the years, the eco-causes taken up by Bono and Ali Hewson have included anti-nuclear activism, poverty and AIDS relief, and fair trade. In 2005, they launched EDUN, an eco-clothing line whose goal is to support sustainable business in the developing world.

Courtesy of New Belgium

Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan
We love a good love story, especially when it involves beer. In the early 1990s, Lebesch and Jordan turned a curiosity about amateur ale-making into New Belgium Brewing, the county’s fifth-largest craft brewer. The company is partially wind-powered, makes organic varieties, and gives bikes to its employees. Before going commercial, the Colorado couple hiked into the Rockies to write their mission statement; one of the 10 items is “honoring nature at every turn of the business.”

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim
The co-creators of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, an international, multifaith organization that explores the connections between faith and environment, are giving voice to a key constituency in the green conversation. The Yale-based brains have edited several books on ecology and spirituality; Tucker is also a member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Program.

Photo: Bart Nagel

Kit Crawford and Gary Erickson
Seventeen years ago this month, Gary Erickson debuted a snack that became a household name: the Clif Bar. He and his wife, who both grew up camping and hiking, now serve as CEOs of the company; they count “sustain the planet” as one of the five tenets of their business. Now living in Napa Valley with their children, they’ve branched out into the wine business, with a focus on organic and sustainably farmed grapes.

Photo: Ode Magazine

Jurriaan Kamp and Helene de Puy
This Dutch duo co-founded Ode magazine in the mid-1990s, with an eye toward telling the other side of the news—the side that shows social, environmental, and economic promise. Since then, their publication for “intelligent optimists” has found an audience of 100,000, and in 2004, they moved to California to launch a U.S. version. Recent topics have ranged from green search engines to sustainable banking.

Photo: greencouple.com

The Green Couple
OK, it’s not exactly a business, but we couldn’t resist: these kids are young and in love—and in love with the planet. The self-dubbed Green Couple blogs from the heartland to show others that it’s possible to care for each other and the earth without spending a ton of money or getting overwhelmed. NSFW, but only if your boss doesn’t like hope and earnestness bleeding from the page.

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