Australian scientists to tackle bovine gas

I've only been married for a short while now (almost 2 years), but discovered quite early in the game that I had inherited a whole new set of social manners. It is actually not appropriate, I learned, to lift one side of your bum to fart at the dinner table, (yes even if it makes it quieter). Nor is it acceptable to pull out your hanky and blow your nose before dessert. What once seemed to me the freedom and dignity of my earthly existence now proves to contain disastrous long-term consequences for my marriage.

Such is the case with our bovine friends.



Australia announced this week to invest $26 million in seeking a way to lower cow emissions. Yes, cow emissions. Yes, 26 million. It seems as climate change takes greater priority among world leaders and possible consequences loom on the horizon, beef-friendly countries are seeking solutions now. (Find the official statement here.) Australians are not the first to study this. Argentina has taken the approach of strapping large plastic tanks to each cow to collect their burps. This might seem silly, but when your country has approximately 40 million people and 55 million cows, you might think again. As climate change becomes more and more pressing around the world, many are surprised to discover that the methane produced by your Big Mac contributes 15-18% of global emissions (that is more than your Honda.) In fact, the 18% of global emissions exceeds that of cars, planes, and all transport put together, according to this UN study entitled Livestock's Long Shadow.

Some scientists are even experimenting with garlic as a way of reducing cow flatulence. Well, I'd like to find that garlic for a little testing of my own. My favorite report, however, was from this Times article, which claims, "Scientists at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen say they have developed a diet that has done the most to reduce the amount of methane produced by cows."

They could've all saved time and money by speaking with my wife.

hmmm... biofuels...

I'll surely write more on this later, but in reading Pollan's interview I recalled this (funny? sad? ironic? truth-telling?) piece from the Seattle Post last year...

Michael Pollan interview

I found this story today in my Google Reader and thought it must be passed on.

Michael Pollan is one of the most eloquent writers concerning issues agricultural. His latest book, In Defense of Food, is a serious call towards a more mindful meal. He has also written an excellent letter back in October 2008 to the incoming "Farmer in Chief". This is by far the best introduction to the mind of Pollan.

This interview from Mother Jones is a great one. Here is an excerpt from Pollan:

"It's a dead end to try and eliminate subsidies, because then you get all of America's farmers, who have political power out of all proportion of their number, unified against change. Right now the incentives are to produce as much as possible, whatever the costs to the environment and our health. But you can imagine another set of assumptions, so that they're getting incentives to sequester carbon. Or clean the water that leaves their farm, or for the quality, not the quantity, of the food they're growing."

As I read more about this topic each day, it seems some good steps are being taken to move in the opposite direction, even in the USDA - such as the creation of a new office of "Ecosystem Services and Markets", and a new pilot project which provides funding for midwest farmers to plant "such vegetables as cucumbers, green peas, lima beans, pumpkins, snap beans, sweet corn, or tomatoes" on its base acres. The history of Farm Bill's gets a little complex on this point, but it is positive to see any movement away from high commodity crops (such as corn and soybeans - the two most heavily subsidized by the USDA) in support of green goodies.

The hope for a renewed Dept of Agriculture is chronicled here and here.

"Low Carbon: High Growth" - report on Climate Change and Central America

Well my aims in this blog do extend further than posting 100 page reports, but upon reading this story, I felt it was worth pointing out the surprising deal of synergy between the findings and recommendations of such organizations as the UNEP and World Bank. Find the full report, entitled "Low Carbon High Growth: Latin America Response to Climate Change" here.

It lists these four major factors of concern for Latin America: "(a) the warming and eventual disabling of mountain ecosystems in the Andes; (b) the bleaching of coral reefs leading to an anticipated total collapse of the coral biome in the Caribbean basin; (c) the damage to vast stretches of wetlands and associated coastal systems in the Gulf of Mexico; and (d) the risk of forest dieback in the Amazon basin." (pg. 2)

What is encouraging is to find an organization such as the World Bank (alternative reading: "The Man") urging a move towards environmental protection. These are not granola-eating pot-smoking tie-dye-donning ideologues (what my father-in-law might call 'damned socialists'), these are capitalists through and through. They are not naive concerning the serious challenges facing us economically. But they are thoroughly convinced that the way forward must take into account the long-term health of the ecosystems upon which human flourishing depends AND will require the input of policy-makers, consumers, and producers.

Consider the following quote.

" If leaders at the national and international levels are visionary, they can avoid falling into the trap of sacrificing environmental sustainability to short-term macroeconomic necessities, and can take advantage of opportunities to address climate change concerns. In particular, policies and programs to address today’s pressing problems can be designed and implemented with a long-term horizon. Sometimes, these decisions can be win-win. But sometimes, there will be tradeoffs.  For example, private investment in, and consumption of, clean energy will be stimulated by a relative increase in the price of fossil fuels; this can be encouraged through a combination of regulations, taxes, carbon-trading schemes, and subsidies. But making firms pay to pollute and forcing households to consume more expensive, if cleaner, energy are not popular in times of economic recession. Tilting private sector activity in a sustainable fashion toward lowcarbon choices thus calls for carefully managed political compromises and sound judgment on the part of policy makers to ensure that long-term considerations are not neglected for political expediency..." (pg. x)

A few notes in response:

1. The call for leaders to think long-term is a necessary component to moving forward.

2. The relationship between private investment and government stimulus is a tender one, but a two-way street.  

3. The idea that 'the market' will simply 'fix' things without any input or stimulus is naive at best and damaging at worst.  That this report calls for "carefully managed political compromises and sound judgment on the part of policy makers to ensure that long-term considerations are not neglected for political expediency" ought to alert us to the dangers of placing the self and its desires at the center of our policy.

4. The socioeconomic well-being of peoples around the world is ultimately dependent upon the health of the ecosystems in and upon which we live.  If this seems odd, try to give up air, water, and food for a few days.

5.  Once again, the area likely to be hit the hardest, as we've already seen, is agriculture...

"Climate change is likely to also cause severe negative impacts on socioeconomic systems. Some of these socioeconomic impacts will be due to the direct effects of climate on human activities, while others will be intermediated through the impact that the climate will have on ecosystems which provide economically significant services. Among the economic sectors, the
one likely to suffer the most direct and largest impact from gradual changes in temperature and precipitation is agriculture." (pg. 8-9, italics mine)

UNEP "Environmental Food Crises" - an important report

At a meeting last week of the UNEP Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum (yes thats a mouthful) in Nairobi, Kenya, an important and powerful document was released entitled "The Environmental Food Crisis". The report can be found electronically here. Or you can also download the 104-page report in its entirety as a pdf file.

The focus of this report has been in the news for the last year or two as a number of factors (the report names "speculation in food stocks, extreme weather events, low cereal stocks, growth in biofuels competing for cropland and high oil prices" along with the loss of agricultural lands due to development pg. 6) have collapsed the global food status quo and drive more than 110 million people (in 2008 alone) into poverty, while leaving an additional 44 million undernourished. (pg. 13) (In case you weren't aware the 'extreme poverty' threshold has been valued at US $1.25 a day - about 50 cents less than my cup of coffee.)

Reports like this threaten our humanity and livelihood. They also threaten the common notion that caring for the environment is different from caring for the poor. When I consider how my own food choices implicate me in such systems of injustice, I am reminded of passages such as this one from the Prophets. Truly "The earth mourns" and "lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant."

For more news about this UN report try here and here. What these reports claim is that the changes which most make sense for the earth - smaller-scale organic operations, less waste of water and loss of topsoil - make the most sense for its inhabitants. The first report is of particular interest to me as I recall this same picture almost daily at my own University.

MacIntyre and intelligent action (and reading too)

Chris Tilling, over at Chrisendom has recently commented on a brilliant piece of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. He relates this post to the John Piper-Tom Wright debate over justification. It is a great thought and the post can be found here.

Here is the quote in full:

"I am standing waiting for a bus and the young man standing next to me suddenly says: 'The name of the common wild duck is Histrionicus histrionicus histrionicus.' There is no problem as to the meaning of the sentence he uttered: the problem is, how to answer the question, what was he doing in uttering it? Suppose he just uttered such sentences at random intervals; this would be one possible form of madness. We would render his action of utterance intelligible if one of the following turned out to be true. He has mistaken me for someone who yesterday had approached him in the library and asked: 'Do you by any chance know the Latin name of the common wild duck?' Or he has just come from a session with his psychotherapist who has urged him to break down his shyness by talking to strangers. Or he is a Soviet spy waiting at a prearranged rendez-vous and uttering the ill-chosen code sentence which will identify him to his contact. In each case the act of utterance become intelligible by finding its place in a narrative." (p. 210) (italics mine)

What MacIntyre so beautifully articulates is the role of context in shaping the intelligibility of action. While I think there is some fruit to be found in deconstruction and the sort of postmodern linguistic turn, what it fails wholly to grasp is the embedded nature of language and action. We are not completely adrift in a sea of language, no matter how much it may appear the case. Neither are we completely adrift in embodied action. The great gift of MacIntyre (and the whole theological school of Hauerwas et al. that followed him) is the realization that narrative plays a vital role in discourse.

Much of our misunderstanding, therefore, (and thanks to Tilling in naming this to be the case with Wright and Piper) is not over words themselves, but over the narrative context within which those words are given meaning. After all, we can read it as plain as can be "the righteousness of God". But as soon as we ponder what these words might mean within the context of Paul's letter to the Romans, or that of First Century Judaism and Christianity, we are onto a whole different topic. The same emerges in our readings of Genesis and Revelation. What are we to make of such potent imagery? Can we read these as simply as we can pick up a newspaper or must we immerse ourselves in another world of thought and metaphor to make sense of things?

I think this is why Wright is such essential reading, for he navigates these challenges as deftly as anyone. (If you haven't yet, stop now and go read his New Testament and the People of God parts one and two!) The task of faithful exegesis must begin from this point - the thought world of the Biblical writers and original readers - and ask these sorts of questions or else it does become adrift. It must be willing to listen and to wait and to press further into a narrative that is not, in the first instance, simply our own. Only from this point can we begin to grasp 'the way' and follow it.

science and the industry watchdog

Well I've long been concerned over the 'purity of science'. I mean, surely there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for every decent discovery? So perhaps is the case with the piles of money thrown into pesticides, genetically modified seed, and many other 'discoveries' which make agriculture more 'efficient'. Where, however, does the health of the ecosystems (upon which our own health depends) factor in shaping these findings? As Wendell Berry notes in Life is a Miracle, "There are scientists, one must suppose, who know all about atoms or molecules or genes, or galaxies or planets or stars, but who do not know where they are geographically, historically, or ecologically." Developing a way of life which orients and shapes us to live faithfully as creatures in and with creation is one of the major burdens of this blog. The fact that billion-dollar corporations have little interest in supporting such a way of life is regrettable, but must be honestly faced. The fact that we participate in these billion-dollar industries every day through our consumption and lifestyles ought to frame a call to repentance.

If you think this is all conspiracy theory, read the latest story here about scientists who are forced to write articles anonymously in fear of losing their research funding (much of which comes directly from large corporations).

To my mind, this is one of the great evils of our age. It will be a glorious day when our Churches begin to pray against this sort of death-dealing evil and find alternative ways of being human in a groaning creation.

"May something like scales fall from our eyes..."

Back in the Action

Greetings web-folk,

after a long silence, I have emerged energized and excited to begin posting again. I have also decided to begin including noteworthy articles concerning the Creation. I receive several daily updates from important environmental news agencies and magazines, and think it would be fruitful to pull some of the juicy bits together and respond in kind.

Check me out again soon for more fun stuff!