From the world of pessimism today:
We have a (rather bleak) estimate of the world’s true carrying capacity from climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion/
And another shout from the escalating cacophony of alarm on our vastly broken industrial food system. Pigs with MRSA. Sounds like a really, really, awful horror flick, only this one’s the real deal, kids. Nicholas Kristof uncovers some disturbing consequences of antibiotic use in livestock operations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html?scp=2&sq=MRSA&st=cse
This second tidbit is reason #3,475,392,865 why a) we need to do a much better job of educating the public, and schoolchildren in particular, regarding the provenance of its food and b) “outsourcing” food production to centralized, impenetrable feedlot fortresses far remote from customer bases severs this country’s valuable agrarian heritage.
What to do? For starters, vote with your food dollars. Knowing where my food comes from more than justifies any added expense. Should a critical mass of consumers (which this humble scribe believes must be more than the current constellation of regular Whole Foods and Co-Op customerdom) begin moving away from companies that adhere to simple bottom-line production cost models, we’ll begin to see the some substantive change. Perhaps more boardrooms will come to see the virtues of triple-bottom line business models, and responsible corporate citizenship.
Still fed up? Do what the Egyptians did; have an organic beer.
Over at Grist, Tom Philpott serves up the third installment of his series on organic suds: Brewer’s Dozen.
Kudos Mr. Philpott for showing the love to Middlebury VT shop Wolaver’s , but where is Peak Organic Brewing? Jon Cadoux and the boys at Peak mix up a mean brew … the Espresso Amber they served up at the Vermont Brewer’s Fest was quite tasty and Fair Trade Certified to boot.
I’ll take a full glass in a glass-half-empty-world any day.
