Burger King Shifts Policy on Animals

It's no giant leap, but it is the first step (hopefully of many) in pressuring other fast food chains and factory farm industry into better treatment of animals. Burger King has decided that it will buy a percentage of its eggs and pork from suppliers who raise their animals in a cage free environment. While cage free is not the same thing as free range, which Steven Grover (vice president for food safety) makes sure to point out, this move is still pretty impressive coming from a fast food company that, like all others, is set on keeping costs low.

“When the big boys move, it makes the entire industry move,” said Ms. Grandin, who serves on the animal welfare task forces for several food companies, including McDonald’s and Burger King...

Burger King executives said the move was driven by their desire to stay ahead of consumer trends and to encourage farmers to move into more humane egg and meat production.

“We want to be doing things long before they become a concern for consumers,” Mr. Grover said. “Like a hockey player, we want to be there before the puck gets there.”

The company has expressed the wish to raise the percentage of products coming from cage free suppliers, only the supply isn't there yet. I have a feeling that we'll be hearing news like this coming from other companies in a relatively short time and that farmers will take heed. I can only hope that soon the day of the factory farm will be abolished, but I think that would take a lot more pressure from consumers and I don't know if enough people are willing to take up this cause.

Harry Potter to Make Fewer Trees Disappear in His Final Appearance

Here's a cute article on the seventh and last Harry Potter book, which Scholastic will publish using greener methods than the last six books in the series. Scholastic received a lot of criticism, especially from Greenpeace, for not using enough recycled paper in the production of the sixth Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Scholastic, Inc., U.S. publisher for the popular novels about the boy wizard who battles the forces of evil while attending Hogwarts Academy, worked with the Rainforest Alliance to develop a plan to print the newest Harry Potter novel on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Perhaps this is another thing I can add to the list of reasons why I love Harry Potter.

Scientists Propose Interspecies Cloning

The gut reaction I experienced just reading the headline was "NO, who do they think they are, Dr. Frankenstein?!?" But upon actually reading the article, it seems that the rationale behind the decision to try to pursue this method of using animal eggs along with human DNA is fairly logical, especially when many people balk at the use of human eggs to create stem cells.

All three U.K. teams aim to get around that bottleneck by taking DNA from patients sick with a disease like Alzheimer's and fuse it with cow eggs that have had all their genetic material removed. The hope is that the human DNA will trick the eggs into thinking they're pregnant, beginning development.

After about five days of growth, the cloned embryos would be destroyed and the stem cells extracted. The stem cells would be grown in their labs and the researchers could look for the onset of diseases, study their development and test experimental drugs on the cells.

When this method was first tested by a Michigan-based researcher, his actions were condemned as unethical. Yet, as long as the growth in the egg is terminated and no interspecies being is created (as these scientists promise won't happen), it seems to be a logical step away from using human eggs for experiments. Many things that the average person would find startling have been done in the name of science, and the benefits to human beings seems too great to ignore the potentiality of this method. As long as the animals used, cows in this case, are not harmed in the process of harvesting their eggs, I'm all for this.

Updates: Gore's speech to Congress; defense of editing documents

Update on Gore's Petition to Congress:

Here's a couple of articles about Gore's speech to Congress yesterday and a few of the reactions. As expected, there were many who met the plea to make progress in protecting the environment with doubt and criticism.

Update on skepticism concerning the role of government officials in environmental reports:

It seems that the ex-White House official who was accused of editing climate reports was trying to defend his actions in front of the House Government Reform Committee. There is also an interesting section about the government pressure felt by scientists not to disclose certain information. I'll be keeping my eye out for any results from this hearing.

Global deforestation rate slows

The UN has just released the "State of the World Forest's Report" stating that the rate of deforestation is starting to decrease. In the 1990s, forests were disappearing at a rate of 9 million hectares a year, and this has now slowed to 7.3 million. Countries such as China are forerunners in this reduction thanks to tree planting initiatives. It's a bit of good news, but nothing to become complacent about.

"Deforestation continues and it continues at an unacceptable rate, however there are signs of potential change," said Wulf Killmann, a forestry expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which published the report.

The destruction of forests not only reduces habitat available for wildlife but also adds to the greenhouse effect because the carbon stored in trees is released into the atmosphere.

Gore's Petition to Congress

If you haven't signed Al Gore's petition to congress yet, now is the time to do so. Tomorrow Gore will testify at the Congressional hearings on global warming and has set a goal of 500,000 signatures on the petition - the more voices backing him up, the more power behind his message.

In his blog on his website, Gore talks about how concern over the environment is not just a liberal, democratic concern, but should be the concern of all political parties:

One of our goals must be to make this issue one that transcends partisanship. While many of the solutions to the climate crisis will be found within the political system, there should be bipartisan and transpartisan agreement on the basic nature of the crisis and the sense of urgency that is appropriate for us to solve it.

That point was brought home to me again last week when I visited London and met with the leaders of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. In the UK, both major political parties are completely committed to taking real action to solve the climate crisis. They openly acknowledge this is an unprecedented moral issue and are competing vigorously to see who can propose the most creative and effective solutions to solve this crisis.

The other day I was talking to my dad, who is pretty conservative, about global warming and he made some comment like, "My daughter, the liberal environmentalist," and I countered, "Liberals shouldn't be the only ones who care about the environment." He agreed.

Britain Proposes Legal Limits on Carbon Emissions

Kind of old news, but awesome news anyway.

Britain on Tuesday became the first country to propose legislation setting binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions as it stepped up its campaign for a new global warming pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

In its draft Climate Change Bill, the government said carbon dioxide emissions had to be cut by at least 60 percent by 2050, set out five-year carbon budgets to reach the target and created an independent monitoring committee to check annual progress.

As long as consequences are severe enough to keep local governments in check, this plan seems like it could work very well. There is debate about whether yearly targets should be put in place, which to me seems like a good idea so that it is easier to make sure that every area is staying on track. More countries need to abandon free-market thinking and create stronger laws against the emission of greenhouse gases. As a whole, we are not responsible enough to do it on our own, to choose environmentally friendly products over others which are normally cheaper, for example - we need guidance and isn't that what governments are supposed to provide?

Commercial Musings

I've been home on Spring Break, probably watching more television than I should, and I've noticed quite a few commercials using eco-consciousness to sell products. Most recently I was surprised by a Michelin commercial, which apparently was a Superbowl commercial (I didn't watch the Superbowl so the commercial is new to me). I find it amusing that the advertisement promises a clean environment for future generations (as signified by the children on the playground surrounded by green pine trees) when the product, tires, are part of the biggest cause of global warming, the automobile industry. The company paid big bucks to get this commercial seen during the Superbowl which leads me to believe that large companies are indeed thinking that environmental protection is going to be the next big trend in consumer consciousness. Hopefully it becomes more than a superficial fad that is used to sell things to us and instead becomes a mass change in lifestyle.

Anyway, it's great that companies in the automobile industry are acting responsibly and taking action to reduce actions that degrade the environment. To read more about what Michelin says it's doing, check out its Performance and Responsibility Brochure and judge for yourself whether this commercial is misleading.

Report outlines global warming's effects

Following up last month's global warming report issued in Paris, the same group of more than 1,000 scientists have put together a document that determines the likely social effects of global warming. And basically, what they've determined is just plain scary:

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

The information in these reports (2 more will be coming out this year) should prompt world leaders to act quickly. Not all the damage can be avoided, but much of it can if the industrial world puts a halt on CO2 levels. But this part of the report bothers me even more:

The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials. (emphasis mine)

With the history of the Bush administration censoring environmental documents, why should government officials be able to edit scientific documents, especially when many of them do not have the necessary educational background? And, officials from which governments? Perhaps this won't be a problem at all, but it bothers me that the AP writers would throw that line in without further elaboration.

Bank of America Launches $20 Billion Environmental Initiative

Bank of America Corp., the nation's largest retail bank, will spend $18 billion on commercial lending and investment banking for "green" projects over the next decade, company officials announced Tuesday.

The Charlotte-based bank said it will spend another $2 billion for consumer programs and on efforts to reduce its own impact on the environment.

While it's great that big corporations are making efforts to be environmentally friendly and promote environmental consciousness, I'm a little concerned that they're just capitalizing on popular trends in order to sell their products. The news piece also points out that they've started a new credit card program:

This year, Bank of America costumers will be able to sign up for a credit card program that will contribute a portion of every dollar spent to greenhouse gas reduction projects.

I guess it's good as long as it's helping the environment, but (and my one of professors brought this up in a similar situation concerning efforts to green my school) what happens when it's no longer "hip" to care about the environment? Will companies such as Bank of America implement such strategies then?

Scientists turn spotlight on world's poles

After reading junkscience.com and getting utterly frustrated, it's great to find an article about cooperation between countries in an effort to figure out how global warming is affecting the north and south poles.

Scientists formally kicked off the International Polar Year on Thursday, the biggest such project in 50 years. It is unifying researchers from 63 nations in 228 studies to monitor the health of the polar regions, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines. The project ends in March 2009.

It is predicted that ice in the Arctic will melt completely within the century, which will have effects on much of the world. Even if not all the leaders of this project believe that the results of global warming on the polar climate will be this drastic, it is important that so many scientists believe that this is such a pressing issue.

To kick off the event and raise awareness, teachers in schools around the world created ice-related activities for their students to participate in. Even though this fact is barely mentioned in the article, I think it's pretty important because, you know, children are our future.

Home, Green Home

I was talking to a friend from home last night and she showed me this really interesting article about the possibility of greening homes in Connecticut. The article is about how a family who wanted to build an environmentally friendly house had trouble a few years ago, but now are finding that green building is starting to go mainstream and, get this, low income housing projects in Hartford and Bridgeport are currently being built with the environment in mind.

Green residential buildings remain a sliver of the residential construction pie, to be sure, but when low-income housing goes green, as is happening in Hartford and Bridgeport, that is a signal. Because if there was a criticism of green residential construction, it was the cost.

But the premium for green construction can be comparatively small, and often offset by lower operating costs. Some elements of green construction, in fact, are so competitive that in both Hartford and Bridgeport, low-income green housing projects - where every dollar is critical - are under way. Some green building features don't even carry an extra cost, such as positioning windows to take advantage of natural light.

I too was under the impression that greening one's house would be an expensive process (and I still think that parts of it are, but then again, so it building/remodeling a house), but hearing that low-income "environmentally sensitive" housing is being made is a great step towards dispelling this belief. It's also important that this is low-income housing because traditionally the environmental protection movement is directed towards members of the upper-middle class and many people simply aren't aware that there are other options out there. I just have to say, I am pretty proud of my home state for this.