Green Daily

Ever wondered about the environmental implications of your Christmas ham? Many porkers in the U.S. are grown in facilities with thousands of animals. Putting this many of pigs in one place sometimes makes the pigs and the people around them unhappy, particularly because of the waste they produce. Following this report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, I spoke with registered nurse Barb Kalbach about her work trying to clean up factory farms. Barb works and lives in Iowa, where there are lots of large facilities that raise livestock.

I asked her if, as a nurse, she notices any health effects of the hog farms on local communities. She responded: "If you have a large hog facility nearby and you're elderly or very very young it goes without saying that there's going to be an impact [on health]." Health professionals say that levels of hydrogen sulfide (one of the noxious gases produced by animal waste) in the air should not exceed 15 parts per million (ppm). In order to determine air quality around these facilities, though, regular and accurate testing must occur.

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Thank you PETA for trying again to make us hate fur. Or at least hair. The latest star of their "I'd rather go naked" campaign is Khloe Kardashian, also know as the third prettiest Kardashian sister.

Over at StyleList they have a great gallery of the last twenty or so naked celebrity ads, and I have to say...Khloe might have the worst hair of a naked PETA ad ever.

First, I'm pretty sure (hope?) it's a cheap weave. Second, it looks like the spawn of an overloved stuffed animal that mated with a wig that Tina Turner rejected because it was made with synthetic hair. The horror!

Anyway Khloe claims that she's flaunting her derriere "to show she is so serious" about not wearing fur and raising awareness about the cruelty that goes on in the fur industry.

Color me just a bit skeptical about her altruistic motives. The whole family brings new meaning to the expression "fame whore". But hey, if you're a fan, PETA is giving away a copy of latest Keeping Up With The Kardashians DVD. Enjoy!

In the early 1960's, during a vacation in the Caribbean, one of Heineken's brewers noticed two major problems: the beaches were covered with discarded beer bottles and the people didn't have reasonably-priced building materials. Seeking to kill two birds with one stone, Heineken created the "world bottle" (WOBO), also known as "the brick that holds beer." Basically a rectangular-shaped beer bottle, world bottles were designed to fit comfortably end-to-end, making it possible to make walls, doors, and windows without cutting the bottles.

Although Heineken made a small production run of the world bottles, they were never released to the public. Today, only two WOBO structures exist: a shed on the Heineken estate and a wall at the Heineken museum in Amsterdam. However, even though the world bottle never went into production, other people have found a way to turn left over Heineken bottles into livable structures.

Using one million discarded Heineken and Chang beer bottles, Buddhist monks in Sisaket, Thailand constructed the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew monastery. A beautiful, graceful structure, it shows that there really is no limit to what a recycling program can accomplish!

Lots of crazy carnivorous proposals have been thrown around over the last year to promote a more climate-friendly form of meat-eating. Just off the top of my head, I can remember reading stories about the benefits of eating: venison, clones, whale blubber, rats, and kangaroo. Those are exactly the reasons why I think this ad from the World Wildlife Fund might be widely misinterpreted.

In case you were confused, the WWF doesn't officially endorse cannibalism as a means of fighting climate change. Even if they did, I doubt they would put their support behind baby cannibalism -- because that's just messed up -- and a baby's carbon footprint isn't even very large. I think the idea they're trying to promote is that naked babies look cute with apples and citrus fruit. Then again, it could be about conserving natural resources too.

[Usually, I really like the WWF's style. It's just that straight-forward guiltvertising, with no real suggestions on how to stop "Consuming the Earth" just kinda rubs me the wrong way. They should have plugged their pocket guide to One Planet Lifestyle.]

Hunter, fur coat enthusiast, and mediocre at best rap-rock-country crooner Kid Rock has says he's willing to "go to war" with PETA should they try dousing one of his fur coats with red paint or any other foreign substance. In an interview with the Daily Mail last week, Rock stated that "I want to go to war with PETA. My biggest extravagance is fur coats -- I've got every kind of animal in my wardrobe." Personally, I doubt that -- he can't really have woolly mammoth fur.

Rock also claims that his closet -- chock full o' fur -- was one of the major reasons his marriage with hardcore animal rights activist Pamela Anderson busted up in 2006. Did she think that she could change him? If it weren't for Ted Nugent, Kid Rock could possibly be the entertainment industry's most anti-PETA celeb:

"I understand people's problems with it but to throw paint on someone is just wrong. They do it to little Hollywood actresses who can't defend themselves."

Do you think Kid Rock's actually got a point here, speaking out as one of fur's only advocates? Or should he be silenced with a can of eco-friendly water based paint? One way or the other, I'm pretty interested to see how this confrontation might go down.



I had to giggle when I saw this Greenpeace advertisement. It's message is pretty clear. Unless you have sunshine streaming from your behind, use energy efficient light bulbs.

OK, I totally agree that Ringo's video announcement to fans -- the one where he threatened to throw all of their fan mail into the recycling bin unopened starting October 20th -- was a colossally bad PR move. Still, when you're a Beatle, you can make all kinds of incindiery statements and have the whole controversy blow over in a couple of weeks (see Lennon's bigger than Jesus). Especially when another more popular Beatle steps in a grants you absolution.

In defense of his old friend, Paul McCartney recently spoke out about the fan mail flap -- saying that Ringo was being blasted for simply speaking his mind. As a pretty serious environmentalist himself, Paul has probably felt a little guilty about the mountains of junk fan mail that pours into his office every day for the last 40+ years. It's just that Paul has the good sense not to say anything about it. In Paul's own words:

"We love Ringo... In the world that we live in you're not supposed to say that, so he's always getting in trouble for speaking his mind... I think it's a good quality. It's called honesty, actually."

[via Ecorazzi]

Advent is the season before Christmas, a period of waiting and preparation for the celebration of Jesus' birth. For many of us, it's also a period of frantic activity, with trying to decorate, attend those holiday parties and of course, shop. The Advent Conspiracy was started by five pastors who decided to make Christmas a truly "revolutionary event." How? By encouraging their faith communities to "Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More and Love All."

Each year, according to The Advent Conspiracy, we spend 450 billion dollars on Christmas. Each year, lack of clean water kills more people around the world than anything else and the cost to solve this problem is only 10 billion. You can do the math on that one. The Advent Conspiracy asks us to give more, and by partnering with Living Water International, aims to solve the water problem by bringing clean water to people and communities around the world.

Check out the video below for more information and inspiration. While it is from a decidedly Christian perspective, there is a message in there for all of us who participate in any form of holiday madness, no matter what your faith tradition.


[Via Green Phone Booth]

No, Greenpeace hasn't resorted to bombing buildings and whaling ships ... yet. Instead they've developed a new advertising campaign in which subject matter resembles nuclear explosions to drive the point home that we need to change our ways to survive.

This video features a plastic bag that blows up into an atomic mushroom cloud. Created by Israel's Grey ad agency, this short spot is a reminder of the number of bags used daily (Israel uses 430 million in one month alone). As we all know, plastic bags are with us almost forever; filling landfills and poisoning lakes and streams. There are also make from oil which is a waste of a non-sustainable resource.

Recently, as gas prices have dropped precipitously, pundits across the land have begun the tedious process of explaining a phenomenon that is actually pretty clear-cut. Some have claimed that prices have fallen because of the recession, while others have attributed it to a dark and twisted plot on the part of George Bush. Some claim that it is the result of seasonal fluctuations in fuel usage, while others blame commodities speculation.

While all of these theories have their good points, they seem to miss a major trend that has played out over the past forty years: as gas prices rise, consumers change their consumption habits. Whenever these changes start to inspire a national dialogue about reducing fuel consumption, gas prices inevitably drop. While this process could be coincidental, it seems far more likely that oil producers are raising prices to maximize their profit; when discussion begins on alternative fuel sources, they recognize that they've maxed out the market, and drop prices. This, incidentally, is pretty close to T. Boone Pickens' take on the issue.

One solution to this problem would be to institute a major, federally-funded push for an efficient, inexpensive form of public transportation. This could, conceivably, reduce reliance upon automobiles and airplanes, saving fuel and bringing the country a great deal closer to energy independence. Unfortunately, while passenger rail offers an intriguing solution, complaints about Amtrak's cost, inconsistent service, and limited travel area tend to shut down the discussion. The general argument states that Amtrak is less reliable, takes longer, and has fewer routes than airlines, and is far less comfortable than comparable European passenger rail systems. Critics usually finish the argument with a blanket statement about the huge size of the United States and the citizenry's natural distaste for public transportation, implicitly arguing that the country is, fundamentally, unsuited to passenger rail.

These arguments are neither accurate nor completely fair. To begin with, comparing Amtrak to automobiles, commercial airlines or European rail lines suggests that there is equity in their respective funding. In truth, Amtrak's funding is far smaller than that of its competitors. European rail lines, for example, are heavily subsidized by their respective governments, while Amtrak regularly has to fight tooth and nail to cover its yearly operating budget.

On the bright side, Amtrak recently secured funding of $2.6 billion per year through 2013. However, while this may seem like a lot of money, it's worth noting that the government spends $10 billion per year on America' s highway trust fund, while the FAA alone gets $2.7 billion per year (this, by the way, only represents a small part of the yearly public expenditure on air travel). In fact, federal expenditures on transport are roughly $40 per passenger for Amtrak, versus $500 to $700 per automobile on the highway. Passenger by passenger, rail travel costs the federal government a fraction of the price of other forms of transportation.

Another point of contention is the question of private versus public passenger rail. Advocates of private passenger rail point to the golden days of rail travel, when tickets were cheap, accomodations were luxe and the food was legendary. However, this is also an unfair comparison. As noted railway consultant Ted Michon points out, in the golden age of passenger rail, the railroads didn't have any competion. There were no planes or buses, and the highway grid was far from complete. There was only one carrier per area, and the major rail companies colluded to fix prices. While seemingly cheap by today's standards, rail prices represented the limit that the market would bear.

To bring passenger rail into the future, Amtrak will need a significant, long-term commitment from the Federal government. Michon points out that it takes a year and a half to build rolling stock, which means that Amtrak can't easily power up and drop down to adjust for customer demand. In terms of increasing speed, former Amtrak President Alex Kummant notes that, while high-speed trains are a possibility, they would cost somewhere along the lines of $40 billion, a sum that is almost unimaginable to a rail line that has, traditionally, had to fight for an operating budget of $500 to $600 million per year. However, Kummant also points out that much smaller budget increases could massively increase speed and ridership along many of Amtrak's most popular lines.

While the recent drop in gas prices has slowed down the conversation on public transportation, it has grown increasingly clear that an energy-efficient, well-run, and sustainable rail system could provide answers for many of the problems that currently plague American travelers. With any luck, the next few years might bring us closer to making it a reality!

Amar'e Stoudemire of the Phoenix Suns isn't your average NBA All-Star. Sure he's tall and dunks the ball like a man possessed, but his passion goes far beyond the hardwood.

How far? Would you believe Sierra Leone? The West African country, according to Wikipedia, is the lowest ranked country on the Human Development Index and the seventh lowest on the Human Poverty Index. Things are not good.

Today is Buy Nothing Day 2008, otherwise known as Black Friday. I don't get the whole Black Friday thing myself anyway. What is the appeal of getting up at 4 A.M. to go shopping, or even less appealing, staying up all night? No thanks.

In honor of Buy Nothing Day and thanks to Tracy at EcoStreet, see the video below from Bonfire of the Brands. It's all about how companies try to get us to buy more and more, and how guilty the fashion industry is in all of this. It's kind of a creepy video, but very well done. I especially enjoyed how it attacks the practice of calling people "consumers,'" one of my long-time pet peeves.

Poland has made Greenpeace's "naughty" list this year. The environmental group made its feelings clear by dumping four tons of coal in front of a Sheraton Hotel in Warsaw. Economic ministers from 20 different countries are attending a conference there and many of them are major polluters.

Greenpeace UK performed a similar stunt by dumping coal at the doorstep of Tony Blair's environment department last year.

Greenpeace believes that a new Climate Package adopted by the European Union will only worsen coal's effects on the environment. Ninety percent of Poland's energy currently comes from coal and the country is currently threatening to veto the agreement.

Poland is not the only country griping about decreasing carbon emissions. Many countries are looking at the current financial crisis and are concerned about losing jobs for their citizens. It looks like there will be plenty to be discussed at UN's climate change conference next week in Poznan, Poland.

Kristen Johnston is the latest celebrity to succumb to the clothes-taking-off wiles of PETA.

(Side note: What do those vegetarians put in the (filtered, never bottled) water around there? And why don't they ever get famous guys to strip? Where's Clooney? Or if they want to keep it all carrot munchers, fine, get a guy from one of their fifty zillion "Hottest Vegetarians" lists. I'm just saying, it wouldn't hurt to show us some famous pecs once in a while.)

Anyway, back to Kristen. Probably best known for her work on "Third Rock From The Sun" with the very brilliant John Lithgow, Kristen is posed, naked, with an extremely fake looking long blond wig (no animals harmed, just our artificial hair sensibilities) on top of a fake horse to protest horse-drawn carriages in New York City.

Aside from rolling my eyes at the mind-crushing, rom-com banality of a caleche ride around Central Park, like most people I hadn't given much thought to the horses when they're not on duty.

Suffice it to say, they live badly, and watch the video here of Kristen talking about her journey of animal cruelty discovery, if you are so inclined.

It's good to see Kristen doing anything. She's had some health problems recently, and seems to be doing better now. One thing's for sure, her next film definitely won't include a scene where the heroine gets a marriage proposal in a horse-drawn carriage!