Cookstoves are a hot topic

by: mental_masala

Sun Dec 27, 2009 at 09:43:08 AM PST

If you were to list the top causes of death and sickness in the developing world, cooking would probably be in the top tier (I'd guess that lack of clean water is at the top). In villages and cities across the world, millions cook their food while engulfed in plumes of toxic gases and particulate matter (smoke and soot). Women and children bear the brunt of these toxins: women most often do the cooking and children are often nearby. The source of these toxins is the fire that is burning wood, kerosene, dung, or another material underneath their cooking pots. In addition, gathering the fuel can be risky business, exposing the gatherer to bandits and other nefarious people. One study (PDF) estimates that there are 1.6 million premature deaths and 3.6% of the global burden of disease due to indoor air pollution caused by the use of solid fuels.

This toxic burden has been receiving a lot of attention recently, including a long article in the December 21 & 28 issue of The New Yorker. When the issue arrived a few days ago, I made my usual scan of the table of contents to see what was inside. "A stove to transform the developing world"— the subtitle of an article called “Hearth Surgery” by Burkhard Bilger — caught my eye because I've long had an interest in domestic combustion devices.* So excited was I to see such an august publication covering something as humble as the cookstove that I immediately turned to the article and started reading.

In the first paragraph, I saw the name "Dale Andreatta" and just about fell over. Dale, it turns out, was one of my research colleagues during graduate school in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Even back then Dale had an interest in using engineering to solve difficult problems of the developing world. One project that I remember was solar water pasteurization with low-cost materials — some black trash bags, some sand, a hose, and a temperature switch.** I helped out on a few occasions, but at that time in my life I hadn't yet picked up experimental skills (I was into numerical modeling, the serious experimental work would come a few years later).

World farm voices, Mozambique: peasants of the world unite.

by: Natasha Chart

Tue Dec 22, 2009 at 13:33:16 PM PST

Renaldo Chingore João works a 5-7 acre farm with his family. There, they grow maize, beans and vegetables, keeping 15 cows for meat and milk, as well as draft labor. Though it's a small farm, João and his family don't face the world alone.

They're part of a community that's organized itself for advocacy and mutual support, both within Mozambique and the larger global community of peasant farmers.

ACTION: School Lunch, the EPA, and Climate Change

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Dec 14, 2009 at 06:00:00 AM PST

First, from CREDO, school lunch should be better than fast food. Kind of a no-brainer, except for the fact that a recent USA Today article revealed that fast food joints often have higher standards than the USDA's school lunch program. Ouch!

Second and third are alerts by the Organic Consumers Association. There's one about the EPA and one about the role organics can play in fighting climate change.

Blog Action Day: Conserve money and resources without spending a dime!

by: rossl

Thu Oct 15, 2009 at 13:04:29 PM PDT

I posted this last April, but there's no reason why it isn't still useful.  I decided to re-post it because of Blog Action Day today (the topic is climate change).  The last few items on the list are either new or were added due to suggestions from the first time I posted it.  I'll be taking suggestions and adding to the diary as them come in.

I've got an investment opportunity for you.  It doesn't involve a Nigerian prince, a billionaire investor, or any kind of mortgages.  It is not the kind of thing that will cause another financial crisis - in fact, it could help solve multiple crises that we as a nation are facing.

Whether you've been laid off or you're doing fine and just care about the environment, I've got some answers for your problems.  In this diary, I'll try to compile a list of things you can do to save money and conserve our resources without spending any money.  If you have any good ideas in the comments, I'll be sure to update my diary as they come - this is a collaborative effort because this community knows more than any individual.

So join me below the fold to find out how you can save money and save the environment!

Meat and climate change: it might be the system, not the meat that matters

by: mental_masala

Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 22:25:17 PM PDT

A guest post by Maine farmer Eliot Coleman over at Grist got under my skin today.  With a provocative title -- "Debunking the meat/climate change myth" -- and a maddening lack of focus and specificity, he eventually comes to the point that it isn't meat that adds to the climate crisis, but the industrial agriculture system.

Although much of the piece drove me crazy, I can't argue with his overall conclusion that much of the meat's climate change impact can be placed at the feet of industrial agriculture and our nation-spanning food system. Items like the production of soy and corn using chemical fertilizer (emission of N2O), transporting feed and animals (emission of CO2), use of machines (CO2), and so on, contribute a significant amount to the carbon footprint of meat. 

Farm Bureau confident climate change bill going nowhere

by: desmoinesdem

Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 10:02:54 AM PDT

Mary Kay Thatcher, AFBF director of public policy, tells Agriculture Online that Farm Bureau doesn't anticipate the massive climate change bill passed by the House last week to pass the Senate this year.

And the New York Times reported Tuesday that opposition from Farm Bureau and other agricultural groups threatens to kill the bill in the Senate. The Times reports that groups such as AFBF wield greater clout in the Senate, because members there must be protective of an entire state, rather than a small congressional district.

Here are the links to the Agriculture Online piece and the New York Times article.

You may recall that the Farm Bureau Federation lobbied members of the U.S. House to vote for Collin Peterson's lousy amendments to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act but against the bill intended to address climate change.

I have my own problems with the ACES bill, especially the deals made to appease the coal industry and Peterson's colleagues on the House Agriculture Committee. That said, the objections big agribusiness and their Congressional allies have raised against the cap-and-trade approach are off-base and short-sighted.

It wouldn't surprise me if Farm Bureau's vote-counter is correct and the Senate rejects the Waxman-Markey bill for the wrong reasons. Frankly, that might be better than letting senators like Claire McCaskill make this flawed bill even worse.

Sampler Platter: "Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone" Edition

by: JayinPortland

Fri May 15, 2009 at 05:30:00 AM PDT

• Scientists with kitchen utensils and model-train glue represent the last hope for the Puget Sound's pinto abalone.

• We ain't gonna bring back paradise to the parking lots, but maybe we can make something out of them after all.  I remain a Kunstlerian skeptic about those places; but at least our thinking is on the right track these days...

• The online link is subscription-only, but if you have one Harper's has a great piece this month on Alaska's disappearing salmon.

• The birds and the bees still can't catch a break from DDT.

• Speaking of which, almost one in eight bird species worldwide currently face extinction.

• Yeah, when you're resorting to having to catch, sell and eat the babies of a popular fish species, that probably does not bode well for the future of said species...

• The number of eels in European waters are down by 95% over the last 25 years.

• The oldest surviving human culture in the Andes, who've been around for over 4,000 years, may soon become the latest victims of climate change.

• Let's close this out with a bit of good news - this piece of Ancient Oregon is now owned by all of us, and will be preserved forever.

Could Food Shortages End our Civilization as we Know it?

by: Ellinorianne

Thu Apr 23, 2009 at 09:55:54 AM PDT

That's the question that Lester R. Brown asks in his fascinating piece for Scientific American, Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?.  And it's a valid question, especially since those of us in America who have a vast abundance of over processed and cheap food could never even consider this a problem.

For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.

I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy-most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures-forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.

Climate Change Asshats or Why They Love Getting their Graft Hotlist

by: Asinus Asinum Fricat

Wed Mar 18, 2009 at 11:46:08 AM PDT

this following excerpt is from Foot-in-the-mouth RNC Chairman Michael Steele, guest-hosting Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio show, March 6, 2009:

"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long."

Poor Michael Steele! As king Theoden said in LOTR II "Is this all they have?"

I'm sure astute posters here know why Greenland was named as such. And Iceland. Duh!

Cross-posted on the Big Orange!

Are your Skittles destroying the rainforest? Part 2

by: rossl

Sat Feb 14, 2009 at 17:44:04 PM PST

In Part 1, I introduced you to the palm oil crisis and talked about how it is affecting orangutans.  In the poll, I also called for a "boycott."  However, that may have been the wrong move on my part.

If you're interested - particularly if you didn't read Party 1 when I posted it - please read on to learn about how a seemingly harmless vegetable oil that is in one out of ten consumer products is one of the most destructive forces on our planet today.

Question for the La Vida Locavore community

by: desmoinesdem

Thu Jan 15, 2009 at 11:21:08 AM PST

A food mile is the distance food travels from where it is grown or raised to where it is ultimately purchased by the consumer or end-user. A Weighted Average Source Distance (WASD) can be used to calculate a single distance figure that combines information on the distances from producers to consumers and amount of food product transported. U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service produce arrival data from the Chicago, Illinois terminal market were examined for 1981, 1989, and 1998, and a WASD was calculated for arrivals by truck within the continental United States for each year. Produce arriving by truck traveled an average distance of 1,518 miles to reach Chicago in 1998, a 22 percent increase over the 1,245 miles traveled in 1981.

A WASD was calculated for a sampling of data from three Iowa local food projects where farmers sold to institutional markets such as hospitals, restaurants, and conference centers. The food traveled an average of 44.6 miles to reach its destination, compared with an estimated 1,546 miles if these food items had arrived from conventional national sources.

Would there be transportation fuel savings and reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions if more food were produced and distributed in local and regional food systems? To answer this question, we calculated fuel use and CO2 emissions to transport 10 percent of the estimated total Iowa per capita consumption of 28 fresh produce items for three different food systems. A number of assumptions were used regarding production origin, distance traveled, load capacity, and fuel economy to make the calculations. The goal was for each of the three systems to transport 10 percent by weight of the estimated Iowa per capita consumption of these produce items from farm to point of sale.

The conventional system represented an integrated retail/wholesale buying system where national sources supply Iowa with produce using large semitrailer trucks. The Iowa-based regional system involved a scenario modeled after an existing Iowa-based distribution infrastructure. In this scenario a cooperating network of Iowa farmers would supply produce to Iowa retailers and wholesalers using large semitrailer and midsize trucks. The local system represented farmers who market directly to consumers through community supported agriculture (CSA) enterprises and farmers markets, or through institutional markets such as restaurants, hospitals, and conference centers. This system used small light trucks.

The conventional system used 4 to 17 times more fuel than the Iowa-based regional and local systems, depending on the system and truck type. The same conventional system released from 5 to 17 times more CO2 from the burning of this fuel than the Iowa-based regional and local systems.

Growing and transporting 10 percent more of the produce for Iowa consumption in an Iowa-based regional or local food system would result in an annual savings ranging from 280 to 346 thousand gallons of fuel, depending on the system and truck type. The high end of this fuel reduction would be equivalent to the average annual diesel fuel use of 108 Iowa farms. Growing and transporting 10 percent more of the produce for Iowa consumption in an Iowa-based regional or local food system would result in an annual reduction in CO2 emissions ranging from 6.7 to 7.9 million pounds, depending on the system and truck type.

Does anyone know if this kind of research has been done in other states, or for the country as a whole?

At Vilsack's confirmation hearing, he said (among other things) that he wants to make global warming a priority, and he wants to promote local foods.

It would be helpful to have real numbers, like the kind in the Food, Fuel and Freeways report, showing that we could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by X amount if we eat Y percent more food that has been produced locally.

This is especially important if we don't want ethanol and biodiesel to dominate the discussion on how our agriculture policy can be oriented to reduce global warming.

Another nail in the ethanol coffin

by: kacie

Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 13:41:12 PM PST

Organic farming is carbon sequestration we can believe in (updated with petition and Digg link)

by: desmoinesdem

Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 06:07:10 AM PST

But Tim LaSalle, CEO of the non-profit Rodale Institute, reminds us in a guest column for the Des Moines Register that an effective means of sequestering carbon in our soil already exists.

Unsavory Water News, September 08

by: Asinus Asinum Fricat

Sun Sep 21, 2008 at 10:23:23 AM PDT

And even McCain jumps on the bandwagon calling for a conservative ethic in water management! Yeah, right, everything he touches turns to a changing position, so don't hold your breath. McCain should be renamed McVane, he blows where the wind goes.

And water flowed on Mars longer than thought.

Cross-posted on the Big Orange.

UN says eat less meat to curb global warming! About effing time!

by: Asinus Asinum Fricat

Sun Sep 07, 2008 at 08:08:40 AM PDT

The 68-year-old Indian economist, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who is a vegetarian, said diet change was important in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and environmental problems associated with rearing cattle and other animals.

'Give up meat for one day (per week) initially, and decrease it from there. In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity.'

BTW, Pachauri is due to give a speech in London on Monday under the title: 'Global Warning: the impact of meat production and consumption on climate change'.