Virescent

I’m up, I’m up.  On my way to the Summit too.  I’ve read a bit about Eco-City Charters and the documents that Alexandria has already prepared.  It looks very general at this stage- we’ll agree to think about sustainability now in the Charter, then in the Environmental Action Plan based on the Charter, actual sustainable programs and policies will get underway.  As much as I like specifics, and dislike mornings, I’m thinking the Summit today is a good place to get to know the local officials involved.  Maybe meet some local activists, and review the playing field.  Also, I’m hoping they have doughnuts.

Found a couple interesting articles on the environmental impacts of eating meat today.  First, from Wired, an argument that eating meat is an ethical issue because of its impacts on the global food supply.   Livestock require lots of food to eat and big areas to hang out in, so that prompts deforestation, decreases farmland, and drives up grain prices.  There are plenty of other things driving up food prices (corn-based ethanol, argh), but the rising demand for meat is certainly one of them.  After describing food riots in a dozen countries:

Even before this crisis, food experts said the world could not feed itself in coming decades if growing populations in developing countries insisted on a meat-rich western diet. That time may already have arrived — and largely without climate-change induced agricultural disruption. Add droughts and years of failing harvests, and things get seriously scary.

So maybe it’s time for taste to take a back seat to conscience. I know that sacrificing meat for veggies won’t solve the problem on its own, but it’s certainly just as meaningful as using compact fluorescent bulbs or cloth shopping bags, and I do that without hesitation.

I dig.  Fauxsage for dinner it is.

Ok, so cut back on the meat, check.  And when we do get meat, organic free range meat is neat!  Right?  No.  The BBC makes a case that organically raised beef and poultry might produce more greenhouse gases, consume more food, and produce more waste that’s harder to clean up than livestock sequestered indoors.

Housing animals gives humans control. The diet can be precisely manipulated to maximise growth and minimise polluting gases.

Animals do not waste food energy on running about and keeping warm. Their manure can be collected and burned as a fuel, avoiding damaging evaporation and seepage into rivers.

In the future, it is hoped that sealed barns would have exhaust vents where the harmful gases could be captured before they entered the atmosphere.

This combination of precision husbandry and species advantage is what puts commercial indoor poultry sheds at the top of the climate chart.

Peter Bradnock of the British Poultry Council says: “Organic poultry meat has about 45% more global warming potential than indoor-reared poultry meat.

My first reaction: Well, *expletive*.

We have to keep the animals indoors and still for us to reduce emissions?  But that makes them sick, and unhappy, and unhealthy, and and and.  The way they raise non-organic pre-meats today, they inject them full of hormones and feed them weird stuff to fatten them up.  Plus, do poultry farms really feed their birds to maximise growth AND minimize emissions already?  Or are they just focused on maximizing growth?  Most farms don’t have biomass heaters or other waste collection/conservation systems in place to actually get rid of the emissions: the article points out that they might, later.  So for now, they’re just pumping the animals full of chemicals, and keeping them immobile in a barn so the greenhouse gases probably aren’t reduced, but they are all emitted from the same general area.

Do any of these environmentally friendly barns exist?  And are the animals in them treated humanely?

With none of those questions really answered for now, I’ll have to pick my poison: emit more gases (maybe?), or eat healthier food.  I’m sure the meat-makers, if they are interested in their carbon impact, will find a way to raise healthier meat in a less greenhouse-gas intensive way.  Maybe that will be indoors.  Maybe it will be humane.  I’m not holding my fork.

Conclusion: I’ll keep buying hormone-free chicken, and free-range if I can find it.  Same with beef.  Until I find one animals from one of these wonderful indoor gas collection barns.

If you live in Alexandria, whether or not you’re headed to the Summit this Saturday (can we be summit friends, if you are?), read the draft of the Eco-City Charter that’s been put together already.  It’s a 12-page .pdf file, with some non-specific but pro-environment goals lined up (”we will reduce water pollution”/”we will encourage mass transit”).  A few interesting points- we’re going to encourage the preservation of open spaces?  There’s construction going on everywhere.  And we’re going to make the rivers fishable?  Hunh. 

Anyway, give it a look-through, then take the survey they’ve put up to collect lots of public comments.

I did pretty well on my Construction Management exam today, and rewarded myself afterwards with thrifting. (If I’d done poorly, I would have consoled myself with thrifting. So’s we’re clear.) It’s getting hotter out, and I need skirts and short sleeve blouses. Thus:

Cotton wrap skirt with colorful print (detail shown), $4. I’ll need to pin it closed- it’s basically just a big bit of cloth with a waist tie. But it’s wonderful, and has pictures of five kinds of animal and two different people on it. Shapeless, huge purple skirt, $5. It’s a very light, swishy fabric, so I’ll take it in and make a proper waist band instead of the elastic mess. Pink Linen skirt, $7. Extravagance! Grey blouse, $4. Soft and light, plus a functional sleeve pocket. For…what? I might get the urge to add something to the bottom hem, but it will work nicely as-is. White cotton blouse with blue and purple threads, $4. Has some small stains, which will hopefully wash out. Navy and white plaid button-down for my darling guy, $4. Oddly dirty, so half of it is darker because I was soaking it. Needs a good washing. Former owner had a dog and some fine white powder? A blue-green guayabera with white embroidery for my ookle dumpling, $5. Guayaberas are so snazzy. Even when they’re made in Korea, and a have a little frayed seam. The latter, I can fix, and the former, I can ignore.

About half of the stuff I find at the Salvation Army is something that needs to be resized, or sewed on to make it truly cool. I’ve been getting ideas and inspiration from the newest link, Wardrobe Refashion- a group blog of people who challenge themselves to buy nothing new, and remake old and used stuff into awesome other stuff. Goodness, my project plans just keep piling up.

Also, I need to suggest to the Salvation Army-Little River people that they not staple price tags tot he clothes, especially in collars and other places where holes are noticeable.

Update: an album.

Last night, in a meaty post, I flippantly eliminated red meats from my diet. That’s not going to work. I like red meat. It tastes very good, especially when undercooked. My fondest memory of food is that rare filet mignon I had on a patio in Ponce with several Tempranillos and good friends: chewing that steak was like making out, the good way. And some weekends, Five Guys is a necessity.

Realistically, though, I can cut the red meat down to twice a month. That’s good enough for the environment, and it will keep me from having odd cravings. I’ll also set a goal of having meat at all in one meal per day.

I’m fine with flirting with vegetarianism (especially if I can get some recipes for those fantastic-smelling things my vegetarian officemate eats), but I’m keeping some meat. And environmental plans that make sense late at night often don’t hold up in the harsh light of day: I want to set goals that I can keep.

Are you a vegetarian? Why? Do the stats on food production I posted yesterday make you want to eat less meat? Want to try and cut down red meat to twice a month with me?

While we were kicking around New York a couple weeks ago, my young man and I met up with a couple of his friends at Red Bamboo, a vegetarian retaurant in Greenwich Village.  This was not our idea.  Our dining-out ideas more typically involve meat buffets, or at least cheeseburgers the size of my face.  Let’s just say that we’ve never chosen a restaurant for their salad bar, so the idea of an entirely vegetarian meal was daunting.

At home though, I typically eat vegetarian.  It’s just too hard for a budding environmentalist to choose meat at the grocery without a serious guilt trip.  Back in January, Mark Bittman wrote a piece for the NYT summarizing the different environmental and societal impacts of meat production: we get to worry about methane from the animals, carbon from transportation, huge amounts of grain for feed, inhumane treatment (not that I want them to get back rubs or anything, but I’d settle for content and healthy), animal waste in the water supply- woo!  Enough to make me skip the red meat entirely. I just fret in front of the selection of regular/hormone free/totally organic free range birds.  Normally I get exasperated by my own indecision after a few minutes and just head over to the frozen cheese ravioli.  Voila, I’m a vegetarian for a few days.

Red Bamboo is a vegetarian restaurant specializing in fake meat.  I find this to be strange.  Our friend explained that lots of practicing herbivores began life in meat-eating families. They make a conscious decision to switch over to the planty side, but still feel the need to structure a meal around a slab of protein, just like Mom.  Also, he likes their soy buffalo wings (still not real buffalo!).  Makes sense to me, and the wings weren’t bad.  Tasted like chicken, mostly, and had a not-unpleasing ground texture.  (The “chicken” parmagiane was pretty good, also, but avoid the “beef” stew.)

Meat’s on my mind, because a new study by a pair at Carnegie Mellon has calculated the various environmental costs of shipping food internationally, categorized by the type of food consumed.  Turns out it makes more environmental sense to subsist on apples imported from New Zealand than eat beef from next door.  From the study abstract, published by the American Chemical Society:

Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

Hunh.  Sounds like I’m doing pretty well at the grocery.  And maybe I’ll spring for that free range chicken next week. 

There are more reasons to buy local, or grow your own stuff, than just “maybe fewer emissions”, though.  Supporting small farmers, broadening the food supply, saving money…

Final Thought: I will eat less meat, especially red meat.  But only because of the environmental impacts.  How long will it take for sustainable beef to be readily available?  Does anybody know of any?  I would like cheeseburgers again.

Starting with seeds, I’ve grown romaine lettuce, spearmint, cilantro, chives, shelling peas, lavender, and basil to eat- then morning glories, cardinal creeper, and sweet peas to look at. In a couple weeks, I’ll inherit peppers and tomatoes (thanks, dad!). I definitely made mistakes during planting, but my sprouts have turned out to be very forgiving.

To improve in the future, I need to separate seeds when I plant them to make transplanting them less traumatic (for me, anyway), and also to have a better idea of what’s what, and what’s where. For instance, it appears that spearmint has invaded three of the pots, and there are two things growing in the lavender pot, and I have no idea which one is lavender. I’d also like to turn my garden towards more substantial food production, but I’m glad I got herbs and garnishes in now.

One happy side effect of this was getting introduced to a big, supportive group of garden bloggers. Thanks for the comments and suggestions from all of you! Typically when I wrap up a monthly goal, I only post sporadic follow-ups. Gardening being what it is, I’ll continue posting about it frequently, even though I’m shifting focus now.

In May, I’m going to practice local activism. I’ve got the Eco-Summit on Saturday, and I need to become more informed about local politics and sustainability groups, to see how and where I can get involved to advocate my cause- and what kinds of causes are good to advocate.

I’ve never been much for causes. I’m typically quite content to educate myself independently about an issue, decide my own course, and only discuss it with close friends or when somebody else brings it up. I don’t get out and try and change things much, I don’t join groups, and this blog is really the furthest I’ve gotten in trying to convince others to reexamine their own lives. See now, I don’t even talk about that here- I just offer examples of my own changes, and don’t make the leap to advocacy.

Leadership by example is well and good, but I need to start taking bigger leaps. Plus, in order to actually live more sustainably, I can’t just change the way I do small things. I need to work to change the way wasteful systems around me work. A group at MIT published a study on carbon footprints of Americans recently, and concluded that even if you’re doing all you can to reduce, you’re still, on average, emitting so much more than any other country- because of the way our lifestyles are arranged at all levels.

“There’s a certain amount you can do as an individual,” said Timothy Gutowski, the MIT professor of the mechanical engineering class who lead authored the paper, “but if you recognize this is a system-wide problem, you need system-wide attention to the problem.”

That’s going to mean cleaner power, say, solar concentrating power plants plus wind. Better transportation options need to speed to market, probably smaller electric vehicles and smarter mass transit options. Materials like cement and plastics need to be made with far less energy. Cities will have to be redesigned to reduce the need for commuting. More efficient ways of transmitting, storing and using energy at the grid and home levels need to be mainstreamed. What we eat will have to change; the challenge will be making the future food taste as good as the corn-based delicacies that populate our menus now.

Now greenhouse gases aren’t the only measure of sustainability, but they’re a good, quick reference. So if I’m gong to do this right, I need to try and change somethign else besides me, personally. Activism it is.

I’m going to start tonight by having a sit-down with my house mates about how much electricity we use. Wish me luck.

Yesterday afternoon, I moved my plants to larger containers. It wasn’t pretty. Roots were torn, plants were lost, dirty words were said, tiny, heartbreaking plant screams were screamed.

To my plants: I am so sorry, you guys. I was young and naive when I planted you a month ago, and my mistakes have lead to a great ripping of roots and the loss of some of your fellows. They were brave sprouts. You are stronger for having known them, mostly since I’m going to spread you all with their composted remains.

I planted my seeds in pots, too close together, so it was impossible to move them to new containers without damaging everybody’s root structures. I couldn’t get a few of the glories back in the ground. They’re my first casualties. I know now to start seeds in individual containers- I’m already saving TP tubes, I hear they work well. For this year’s crop, though, it was too late.

This morning, though, the survivors all looked green and perky. So far, it seems that everybody who got back in dirt is recovering. I hope they believe that today is so nice and sunny out because I wanted to make up for the ravages of yesterday. Also, I planted the chives (with plenty of room to spare), and I’ve got a few sweet peas emerging. So I feel a bit less guilty. Only a bit.

I put up an album. It’s not too horrifying, but I was too busy trying to not hurt the plants too much to get pictures of the worst of it.

Thanks for the advice, Heather! I’ve got them on chopsticks right now, but they’ll grow to about 30″ tall, so I need to find some bigger chopsticks.

In the background you can see my new purple hydrangea. I hope that one day it will grow into a bush. For now, it looks lovely in one of the pots the Gentleman Friend’s mother gave me. (I keep wanting to abbreviate him as “the GF”, but I don’t think that sends a clear message. I’ll type it out until a new, more graceful euphemism is found.)

Garden photos update here. It’s been very cold the last few nights, so I moved most of the sprouts inside for the time being. I think the spearmint has invaded my basil. Also, I started soaking cilantro seeds this evening. This summer is shaping up to be pretty tasty.

Here’s something I’ve learned: Next year, I should plant the seeds individually in small containers to sprout next year, so they transplant neatly and painlessly. I need to dig up the ones I’ve got going and replant them with more space. Since they’re germinating together in little planters, their root systems aren’t neatly separated, and I’m afraid the transplanting shock of pulling their roots apart will anger them. I’m especially worried for the kalanchoe- will he be ok if I dig up the morning glories from all around him, then fill in the hole with new potting soil? Or will he become my first victim of the season?  Only Time Will Tell.

Katie at GardenPunks tagged me to answer a few questions, so here goes:

What was I doing 10 years ago? What does one do in middle school? I was probably reading.

My To-Do List For Today: Work, taxes.

What I Actually Did: Work, taxes. Living the life!

Snacks I Enjoy: Goldfish (the cheese crackers, not…ew), all cookies that don’t involve marzipan and/or marshmallow

Things I Would Do If I Were a Billionaire: Quit my job like whoa, distribute funds until I was a just a comfy millionaire, get a house in Alexandria with a yard, go back to school full time.

Three of My Bad Habits: Nail biting, going out with wet hair, napping during classes.

Five Places I’ve Lived: Richmond VA, Charlottesville VA (count this a few times since I moved around like 8 times while I was there), Alexandria VA.

Five Jobs I’ve Had: Jiffy Lube Technician, Waitress at Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House, Waitress at a Chinese Restaurant, Research Assistant in Metallurgy lab, Patent Examiner

Five People Who Write Interesting Blogs That I’d Like to Tag (no pressure, dude):

I’ll do one- Lynn at I’d Type A Little Faster. She’s writing a book!