Green Options

Most of us have heard on NPR’s Marketplace that the GMO-giant, Monsanto — a sponsor of the program — is “committed to sustainable agriculture…Produce more. Conserve more.” Obvious greenwashing, if you ask any farmer at a local farmers’ market or people committed to growing with nature, not synthetic chemicals. For more examples of greenwashing, see the Greenwashing Index from EnviroMedia and the University of Oregon.

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson has just utterly transformed the health care debate in the United States with his speech from the House floor. “I’m just saying what everyone else has been thinking,” explains Grayson.

Gooey melted cheese on pizza, a glass of cold milk with freshly baked cookies, ice cream on a hot summer day… who hasn’t at one time or another enjoyed something made from milk?

Dairy products are part of most American diets on a daily basis, but what is the health and environmental impact of this high demand for milk?

The production of much of the milk in this country is done in large scale-operations, some having thousands of cows.

That’s a lot of manure to be dealt with, this reduces the air quality (especially for people living near the dairy operation), and consistently finds its way into our rivers, streams, and groundwater.

Biofuels have been widely touted as a solution to redressing the world’s overdependence on oil and a significant part to resolving the climatic crisis  particularly in the developed world. But according to new report by Oxfam, the fascination with biofuels may not be a solution to either the climatic or oil crisis and is instead fueling a third crisis: food.

According to the report, interest in biofuels has intoxicated rich country governments to the extent that they are foregoing difficult but urgent decisions about how to reduce consumption of oil.

Sadly, the cumulative effect of the over-dependence on biofuels as a solution to the energy crisis is being felt in developing countries.