Archive for the ‘Clean Living’ Category

What to eat - Local food for less food miles, organic and less meat

Written by Karla Bell on Friday, 14 November 2008

British Academic, Tim Lang, on World Food Day, adviser to the UK Government on food security and tackling obesity, said one of the key ways Britain can help tackle Climate Change is through food policy. Lang, says, “not only should we buy local produce, but “we must cut down on eating animals and dairy foodstuffs to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced in rearing livestock”.

The popular wisdom on food and agricultural contributions to Climate Change has been espoused in terms of Food Miles, a phrase coined by Professor Lang. He has added two other parts to the ‘buy local’ movement solution to agricultural emissions that is buying organic to reduce pesticides and chemicals for human health reasons and to consume less meat as the conventional view is that herbivores produce large quantities of methane emissions contributing to Climate Change.  See main ghgblog.com for a contrary view by Dr Allen Savoury.

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Clean Living: the micro-credits of everyday life

Written by Karla Bell on Monday, 6 October 2008

Clean living is part of everyday life, the human and environmental interface is the juncture between you and the planet.

It is the interface we all have everyday with our environment.  Some articles in this section will be practical such as ‘what (not) to eat’, ‘what (not) to wear’, ‘what you build’ and ‘how you transport yourself around’.

Other aspects will be cultural not just ancient cultures, how do and will certain cultures relate to the environment. An interesting segment just released this morning, radio National ABC, Sydney Australia from the United Arab Emirates was about a 900 hectare live-in zoo development. A zoo environment as a native habitat for humans - with mountains and lakes and many wild animals. Just as people are collecting seeds to maintain earth’s bio-diversity, zoos are now the repository for many endangered and in some cases extinct species in the wild. The necessity to expand Zoos as safe havens for wild life I understood, but as a  form of property development!. It never occurred to me nor did I think it would appeal to people. Living with Lions and Cheetahs would be interesting. Other cultural attitudes will be looked at also. We all live on the planet - so there is no wrong or right way to preserve the environment.

Clean living, which is situated in this blog, which is mostly concerned with the macro Global and National perspectives on Emissions Trading as a mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol to combat Climate Change, can provide a link between the macro and micro. The mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI) under the Kyoto Protocol at heart rely on projects to be done to reduce emissions. These projects at this phase of the game are undertaken by what is considered to be out of the hands of ordinary people, the electricity sector, the oil / gas and energy sectors, but this will change as the big chunky emission reductions, the low hanging fruit are exhausted. In time what people do everyday, the micro credits, will become much more of a focus. There  will be interest by macro-economic players in your everyday habits as the whole global economy is transformed into a trillion dollar industry that is now opening up in the wake of the economic meltdown.