I do still intend to get an electric car, but I’m glad that reducing meat in my diet is, if anything, more effective, since that’s something I’m doing already. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Originally shared by David Brin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n VITAL (non-Brin) Weekend reading: The most recent edition of The World Post (carried on the WP site) is one of the most important ever, compiling a dozen links about how not-helpless we are, to deal with climate change. Hope can be more disturbing and demanding than “all-is-lost” nihilism! But in fact, we may be able to turn the corner on this, if our ship’s tiller can be yanked out of the hands of rich morons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n — EXAMPLES: “From the oil belt of California\u2019s San Joaquin Valley, Bridget Huber reports that climate policies are not killing jobs, but creating them. Through the prism of on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs of the ironworkers\u2019 and electrical workers\u2019 unions in Fresno, she traces the return of robust job and wage growth to what had become a depressed economic zone. This is largely thanks to state mandates to meet requirements for renewable energy production. \u201cSolar saved our bacon,\u201d one veteran ironworker told her. Also contributing in a major way to high-wage employment, she reports, are the construction jobs associated with California\u2019s massive high-speed rail project running through the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Brian Barth reports from farms in eastern North Carolina where pork production giant Smithfield Foods \u2014 the largest producer of pork in the world \u2014 has rolled out efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of its meat production \u201cAccording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,\u201d writes Barth, \u201cagriculture accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, roughly the same as the combined total for electricity and heating, and well above the transportation sector, which contributes just 14 percent. Add emissions from refrigeration, shipping and other activities required to get your dinner from farm to plate, and the food system\u2019s share of global greenhouse gases climbs to roughly a third, making it easily the most climate-unfriendly sector of the global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Barth discusses Paul Hawken\u2019s book \u201cNatural Capitalism,\u201d in which the environmentalist lays out the top 100 solutions to climate change. Of these, \u201c11 are related to food systems, seven to energy systems and none to transportation systems. Electric vehicles are #26, while \u2018tree intercropping\u2019 \u2014 planting strips of apple trees throughout a corn field, for example \u2014 is #17. The top food-related practices \u2014 reducing food waste (#3) and switching to a plant-rich diet (#4) \u2014 are largely consumer-driven solutions.\u201d Yet Barth\u2019s reporting suggests that farmers and producers play a crucial part in reducing emissions as well. Barth also discusses silvopasture \u2014 a \u201cmashup of forestry and grazing\u201d \u2014 which is the highest-ranked agricultural solution to climate change in Hawken\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n “The challenge for all these distributed cases of climate action is how to scale them up to realize the potential for massive change as the clock ticks. The political roadblocks of vested interests which always resist change aside, what has been true throughout history is that, in the end, scale and resources follow cultural commitments. That commitment will only grow deeper if society becomes more fully aware of the whole picture of what it is already doing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n