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RAISE awareness and LOWER emissionsTake Steps todayWe need to remember that the future is not somewhere we are going, it is something we are creating. Every day we do things that make some futures more probable and others less likely. Ian Lowe, ‘A Big Fix – Radical solutions for Australia’s environmental crisis’, 2006.
We need to recognise that the solutions are in our hands!
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Actions for householdsThe choices that we make now have implications for the future. We as individuals must become the leaders for climate change. As custodians of the future we need to ensure our children and other species have a future. This website is full of practical information and tips on how we can lower emissions - starting today. Reduce your Electricity Consumption
Reduce your Tranport Emissions
Reduce your Consumer Waste Emissions
Help raise awareness
Practising "sustainability" in your day to day lifeMake a New Year’s resolution to the planet:
How sustainable is your lifestyle – concentrate on 5 areas:
What is Green PowerAbout 90% of our electricity comes from Black Power coal-fired power stations). We need to phase out rapidly the burning of fossil fuels – coal and oil. These produce the gases causing Global Warming. Green Power comes from renewable energy sources, mainly wind, solar and hydro. 100% New Accredited Green power is available from some electricity providers – and as the industry has been deregulated we have more than one to choose from now. Here’s what you can do: ring Origin Energy on 1300 791 459 for 100% wind or solar power, or you can sign up for 100% wind power with local Byron broker, Climate Friendly. Go to Climate Friendly and click on the Green Power button. Businesses who sign up with Climate Friendly receive a ‘Climate-Neutral’ logo to promote their business. Most electricity providers offer some form of accredited Green Power, however, most are deficient and either involve combustion or the re-badging of old hydro electricity schemes. The best step you can take to reducing your greenhouse gas emissions is to sign up for 100% New Green Power and implement energy reduction measures in your home or workplace. It will cost around 5-6 cents extra per kilowatt hour – 1 or 2 cappucinos per week for the average household. [more info] Food issues, sustainability & Climate changeMeat eating places a much greater stress on the environment than non-meat eating. With the farming of animals there are far greater demands on the environment in terms of land, energy and water than other forms of farming exacerbating the problems we are facing with Climate Change. It would be more efficient to use cropland to grow food for humans to eat.
In the classic book, Diet for a Small Planet , Frances Moore Lappe states that eating meat is a protein factory in reverse' -meaning you start out with a large amount of protein, channel it through cattle, and end up with a much smaller amount. It currently takes around 13 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef. BEEF grain to meat conversion 13:1. CHICKEN grain to meat conversion 3:1
FISH STOCKS Farmed fish: Fish faming is factory farming in the water, and like land-based forms of factory farming, it suffers from the general problem of concentrated animal feeding operations - we have to catch or grow the food and bring it to the animals we are feeding. With fish farming, the extent to which this damages the oceans and wastes food resources depends on whether the fish are carnivorous, as Salmon are, or herbivorous, like Carp. Carp are farmed extensively in China , where they contribute to meeting the protein need of rural people with relatively few food choices. In the industrialised countries, however, it is usually the more expensive carnivorous fish (eg. Salmon)that are eaten, and farming them wastes the ocean's resources. Fish farming often causes pollution problems too. Farmed fish may be stressed from the crowding and confinement to which they are subjected and are dosed with pesticides to deal with lice infestations. They are also dosed with antibiotics and a colorant to give them the pink colour. The methods by which they are killed show total indifference to their pain and suffering. For these reasons, farmed fish isn't an ethically acceptable food.
SALMON Ratio for fish farming, 3:1. (Massive stocks of wild-caught Blue Whiting (a herbivore) are caught, pulped, pelletised and fed to Salmon (Carnivores) in fish farms. Why don't we eat the Blue Whiting? It comes from comparatively unpolluted waters, contains no pesticides or antibiotics. This species could be wiped out in a couple of years if we don't change some of these practices.
The whole carnivorous fish industry depends on the continued availability of small, wild fish, such as sand eels and blue whiting to grind up into pellets. That is why there is trouble on the horizon as the amount of small wild fish is finite, and so, the amount of fish oil and meal.
Of the two, the determining factor is FISH OIL which contains all the omega-3 fatty acids that we and salmon thrive on. This is because 70% of what is currently produced is already used in fish food. On the other hand about 34% of fish-meal currently goes into fish farms, 29% into pigs, 27% into poultry and 10% into various other human and animal foods. If we don't find ways of substituting vegetable oil for fish oil, and to a lesser extent vegetable protein for fish protein, the world will run out of fish food by the end of this decade. ( The End of the Line , Charles Clover, Ebury Press, London , 2004)
The Ethics of What We Eat , Peter Singer & Jim Mason, Text Publishing, , 2006.
We are all consumers of food, and we are all affected to some degree by the pollution that the food industry produces. If we manage to avoid local pollution of our water and air from manure, pesticides and chemical fertilisers, we and our children still cannot escape the long-term impact of the industry's greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to its impact on over six billion humans the food industry also directly affects more than fifty billion nonhuman land animals a year. For many of them, it controls almost every aspect of their lives, causing them to be brought into existence, reared in totally artificial, factory-styled production units and then slaughtered. Additional billions of fish and other sea creatures are swept out of the sea and killed so we can eat them. Through the chemicals and hormones it puts into the rives and seas and the spread of diseases like avian influenza, agriculture indirectly affects all living creatures. All of this happens because of our choices about what we eat. We can make better choices.
FOOD MILES It is important that all of us get smarter about the food we eat. We need to start asking the following questions:
An American study in 1998 showed the average distance travelled by produce was 2,443 kilometres! The average distance travelled by food that is consumed in developed nations has increased, partly because international trade in food has quadrupled since 1961.
That increase has allowed people in wealthier nations to enjoy, all year round, foods that once had a limited season eg. in the 1960s, North Americans ate grapes only when North American growers, mostly from California , could supply them, roughly from June through to December. Now almost half of the grapes eaten in the US are imported, many from Chile and other southern hemisphere countries, so grapes are available in the northern winter.
The big increase in imported grapes naturally means that the average distance that table grapes travel to reach the US consumer has also increased. The pattern is worldwide. In northern Europe , strawberries are available in January from Costa Rica . Asparagus is flown in , off-season, from South Africa . Even chicken is now imported from Thailand , where labour is cheap.
A British study calculated the ingredients for a single meal, consisting of chicken from Thailand , runner beans from Zambia , carrots from Spain , snowpeas from Zimbabwe , and potatoes from Italy , could have travelled a total of 39,210 kms. A similar meal could have been made with ingredients travelling only 500kms, if domestically produced ingredients were used and seasonal vegetables like cabbage and parsnips had been substituted for the out-of-season runner beans and snowpeas.
Agricultural products now account for close to one-third of all domestic freight transportation. |
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Last Update: August 2008 © NCCAG 2008 • Webmaster: DAT