thelongnews.com

Climate change is a classic long news topic: large potential impact, no short-term fix, has little or no amusement value (for sure!).  But dealing with the topic requires more than any simple solution. I was intrigued to discover a recent publication called “Wedges Reaffirmed”, by Robert Socolow. He presents a useful way to parse a long news problem by looking not at a single most likely outcome, but at a range of outcomes, which is certainly a healthy way to analyze climate change.  The science gives us possibilities but there’s no way to predict the precise outcome decades out.  He also uses “wedges” as a way to address the problem. Rather than a big-bang solution, the wedges provide a set of individual but meaningful actions that can be engaged to address the overall issue.  Each wedge adds to the solution, but all the wedges are needed to plug the gap.

While it lacks drama and headline grabbing power, a thoughtful reader will benefit from this approach. I only wish that similar approaches could be used to address other similar issues, such as jobs, taxes, government spending — yes I am talking to you, American government!  Much to learn here about both the specific topic and a general approach.

Perhaps the most important long news item for an individual revolves around the question of lifespan.  This fascinating article from the New York Times magazine tells about Olga Kotelko, the 91-year-old holder of 23 world records in track and field.  The extended article talks about what makes it possible for a nonagenarian to complete a 40 foot hammer throw or run a 200M dash?  Olga is a rarity but wouldn’t we all want to be like her?  While the article has no definitive solution, it does hint at the importance of exercise.

On the same theme but in a different age group, I noticed a lot of advertisement over the holidays on the NFL Play 60 program.  The Play 60 program is designed to encourage kids to play actively for 60 minutes a day (i.e. exercise).  While it is probably a sign of our times that we need to have a program to encourage kids to do what kids have always done naturally, it still is a step in the right direction.  I’ll be interested to see if such a program could improve our overall scorecard for health in the US.

Turns out the New York Times has started a November series on Thanksgiving menus for vegetarians.  I have to admit that some of it seems a bit far-out to me at first: Buckwheat and Black Kale anyone?  But then when I read the recipe, it turns out maybe it is not as bad as I first thought.  It’s really more about the flavors and not about the meat — or lack thereof.

The recipe overviews are located here.  And although we will be dining with friends for Thanksgiving, I might have to think about the Buckwheat and Black Kale for another time.

A couple of weeks ago I posted on 60 billion animals and my concerns about the long-term sustainability of a meat-centric eating environment.  The idea of a two-thirds vegetarian is that we can significantly reduce our overall meat consumption to two-thirds of the average American, improving our health and reducing our impact on the environment.

So, after two weeks, how has it gone?  Actually it has turned out quite well so far.  I don’t feel I have sacrificed anything in terms of flavor, because I have plenty of good Asian and Mediterranean recipes and I can still use meat for the occasional flavor or when out at a restaurant.  My total meat consumption over the past 14 days is less than a pound in total by my estimate, so I am well under the goal of 3 ounces per day.  My intention was not to save money specifically, but many vegetarian or low-meat meals are much cheaper than the meat meals, particularly in restaurants here in Prague.

For me this is simply a view of the future.  For health, for cost, for the environment, I think we’ll all be moving to less meat and more other foods.  So far, my test is proving that this does not have to be painful or unpleasant.  In fact it is quite the opposite.

Mark Bittman is one of my favorite cookbook authors; I regularly refer to my copy of The Best Recipes in the World for good ideas. I chanced to pick up his latest book, Food Matters, and it wasn’t just a cookbook this time.  Mark makes a compelling claim for changing our diet, and it isn’t just for the health benefits, though that is one big reason.  He also focuses on the huge and unsustainable meat production industry, which is a model that is resource-intensive, inhumane in many ways, and expensive.   We need to do something different, and we need a dietary model that will work.  I’ve commented here before on the unrealistic notion that we can all eat locally grown fresh foods and be happier.  There just are too many people in the world for that to happen, so we need another way to produce enough food for billions of people but have much less impact on the planet.

Mark links our food industry to the environmental and global warming issues, and again it is because of the sheer quantities of food that we have to produce in order to sustain our current diets.  The number that really took me aback was the one on the header:  we raise 60 billion animals a year for food production.  Although he doesn’t precisely break it down, it seems as though at least half of those are chickens; that is a lot of chickens!

In the book, Mark suggests that he reduced his meat consumption by about 70%.  I’ve decided to pursue this similar idea.  I’m calling it a “two-thirds veg”, which might be a little misleading but let me lay it out.  The goal for me would be to consume only one third of the typical American meat diet.  Since the typical American eats about 200 pounds of meat, chicken and fish each year, that takes the annual allotment down two-thirds to about 65 pounds per year.  A big step, but this seems doable.  Further round-numbered math means that is about 3 ounces of meat per day on average, which gives a pretty clear target to shoot for.  In the book, Mark cites a Lancet medical journal article that does a more detailed health analysis and comes to the same amount of meat as a recommendation.

So, a two-thirds veg, what would that mean?  Well, it means very few steak dinners, but I don’t do that much anyway.   We’ve already cut down the consumption of meat in our house, but I would have to watch out for the meat sandwiches at deli, the beef brisket at the barbeque place, and the all you can eat Brazilian place nearby.  The large sushi platter would be a concern, but that is already a concern because of the problem of overfishing and ocean resource depletion, so I guess that means more kappa maki and kampyo maki.  It supports a more Mediterranean-Asian diet, which is certainly OK at our house.  So I think a two-thirds veg is doable.

I haven’t yet worked through the problem of cheese.  It is an animal product, but a renewable one.  It isn’t a main course, but it is high in fat.  I’ll have to reserve this idea for another day, but for me cheese is a tougher loss than meat to be honest.

Mark also suggests that a diet change from meat might help with weight loss.  I’ll be very interested to see if my two-thirds  veg plan has an impact on me there!

One last note: kudos to my colleagues in India.  It is the Indian diet that first got me to thinking that being vegetarian would be doable.  My Indian cookbook is full of great recipes that are either totally or most free from meat and animal products, and we love going to Indian restaurants.  Thanks for leading the way to a healthier, less animal-focused diet!

While the New Yorker might not be thought of as a “news” magazine, I find some terrific writing there that certainly qualifies as long news.  I found the recent article, “Emptying the Skies”, by Jonathan Franzen, to be a real eye-opener and well worth reading for this long news topic.  It turns out that key European migratory flyways in Cyprus, Malta, and Italy are also key areas where it is a “traditional sport” to hunt, shoot, net, or capture songbirds.  In some cases it is also traditional to consume the birds;  in some cases it seems to be just to kill them for target practice.  Over time, and with other pressures on bird habitat and health, the bird population is now declining in a catastrophic way.  Still, the hunting continues, although illegally, and the eating continues, though illicitly.

Of course, in such hunting and trapping, many rare birds are captured and killed, which is a tragedy.  The EU has strict rules about this, but the local communities lack the staff to enforce them, and in some communities the hunters are also the enforcers.  But it is not just the rare birds that are becoming rarer, but even the birds that were once common are now seen less and less.

The practice is defended as a local tradition, a heritage that has been passed down from generations.  How many local traditions like this will cause us to bankrupt our local ecosystems?  How can we get people to shift their traditions to something more sustainable?  People are hard to change, and this article brought one more piece of the big picture to light.  This is a powerful piece of writing on a topic that would never make the 10 p.m. news.

(Note: the New Yorker website appears to have the full text of the article available only to subscribers.  The article itself is worth a trip to the local library if you can’t get it off the website.  Also worth noting is the New Yorker online application, which does a really nice job of simulating the magazine, without the use of staples and blow-in subscription cards.)

Here’s one I never thought about: where does helium come from? I guess I thought it just was something that came out of the air. Turns out that helium, once collected, easily disperses. Our helium supplies for party balloons and lighter-than-air aircraft comes as a by-product with natural gas production.

This article from Seed magazine gives more details. It looks like our supply of helium is due to run out in about 40 years — though price changes and increased conservation measures will undoubtedly affect that. But how many other elements or compounds are like this?  Oil gets all the press but I suspect there are others that are less easily substituted and more at risk.

I think the Long News here is that there are a number of resources that seem likely to run out in the next 100 years. We’ve lived on the exponential growth path for some time — but are there limits to this exponential growth for certain materials? Respected thinkers disagree — but it seems like something we’ll need to figure out sooner rather than later.

I just finished reading this scandalous article in the New York Times about how our elected representatives in Washington are setting up “charitable organizations” and take corporate donations to subvert funding rules.  Oh and also subvert pretty much any ethics principle one would hope for from an elected representative.

Read it and weep.  Seriously, even the quotes can’t even sound like the person that gave them could say those words with a straight face.  (And that means you, Hope Derrick, spokesperson for Jim Clyburn, D-SC).  Donate to my charity and you too can enjoy a golf spa in Utah and meet with a Senator (Orrin Hatch, R-UT) to promote your corporation’s special tax writeoff.

Really, how could any person look at this and say that there is no conflict of interest here? Great job in reporting from the New York Times.  Let’s hope there is enough outrage to vote these guys out and hopefully close this loophole.

California is on the verge of approving a ban on plastic shopping bags, which has prompted a number of posts (here and here for example) on the subject of plastic bags.  Living in Europe has taught me that I can’t assume that bags will be included in my purchase, so we either carry bags with us or ante up and buy new bags which we can then reuse later.  (In Europe they typically cost us the equivalent of about 25 US cents each; in the US the usual figure is 5 cents when stores choose to charge or credit people.)

What is astounding to me is the sheer volume of bags and the related oil costs.  (Yes, plastic bags come from petroleum, the same product that OPEC sells us to run our cars.)  One site said that the amount of oil consumed just for plastic bags in the US is 10 times the oil spilled in the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster.

(The numbers here, again, are highly suspect: written estimates range from 1.6 billion gallons of oil to 38 million gallons of oil per year for plastic bags in the US.  So someone needs to check their math.  Also to note: the American Plastics Council has been quoted as saying that a ban on plastic bags would cost “tens of thousands of jobs” if it were implemented.  Really, I don’t think so. Among other things, there would be a substitution effect.  And even if it were true, we have tens of thousands of people working to create a polluting, energy consuming, and totally substitutable product? )

So, from personal experience, a plastic bag ban/tax/disincentive system is perfectly workable, and given the energy and environmental costs, it is an idea worth promoting.

Nice analysis of the true costs of feeding ourselves and the efficiency of our food production system is in a recent op-ed in the NYTimes by Stephen Budiansky.   In short, he runs the numbers on how much it really takes to ship food across the country versus the “local food movement” idea that local food is better from a transportation, fuel, and pollution point of view.  Turns out that local food isn’t really that efficient.  The cost of shipping food across the country amounts to very little compared to the costs of even driving to the local farmer’s market.  Of course local food may TASTE better, and that’s a different issue.  But to assume there is a moral value to eating foods produced locally doesn’t hold up well.

The truth is, there are an awful lot of people in the world, and it is the collective actions of each of us as individuals that really have the impact on our energy consumption and environmental impact.  According to the article, 32 percent of all energy use in our food system is from home preparation and storage.  Transportation costs add up to 14 percent of the food system.

From a Long News point of view, I think this is another example of how we want to focus on “them” (in this case those California long-distance truckers) as the source of our problems, rather than figuring out how each of us contribute individually to the overall problem and how we address it.  Seems like my best next move is to buy a more efficient refrigerator!