Overconsumption of meat

Have looked over the site again....I did see the place where you mention advocating 2 vegetarian meals a week, but it's not very prominent. I guess I was hoping to see at least one bulleted item in the plan itself (the 4-week plan of bulleted items) address the problem in our society of overconsumption of meat and animal products which have huge impact on our environment (not to mention our health, which is in a terrible state and getting worse all the time). Granted, a lot of that issue relates to other greenhouse gases (other than CO2) and I see your focus is on C02. I do appreciate what you are doing and will look forward to hearing more....nice to know of a local effort. I am also a member of EarthSave - maybe you know of them? http://www.earthsave.com/ Here is a recent article that gets to what I am talking about: http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htmHard to know how to interpret all the science that is out there...even all the pro-environment scientists don't agree on the specifics, it seems, but this is certainly "food" for thought, at least the part about identifying other very significant greenhouse gases that are also involved which can also be attributed to human habits. Peace,Tracy

Understanding the Money Behind Junk Science

By Paul Bouboutsis

Walking with the 60 plus other eco-fanatics around Fort Atkinson the other day afforded a unique opportunity to see political action in motion, on a grassroots level. Inspiring and promising, this event helped to build community awareness and state clearly that citizens across the entire county are very concerned about the damage that is being unleashed while oil companies continue to gain unmatched benefits for their contribution to this issue.

Dissent against the validity of the science behind global warming has been surfacing increasingly in the media and as the Step It Up Campaign made headlines, certain news services felt obligated to offer a voice to this contingency in the name of fair and balanced journalism. And it’s here where the dissenters seem to have won a victory, in claiming that indeed there seems to be a controversy or better, a “debate” over the idea. In the years to come, it may be the case that oil executives will be subpoenaed to testify before Congress about their knowledge on how petroleum based emissions, and the inherent harm against humanity, was deliberately and surreptitiously suppressed from public scrutiny, much the same as big tobacco has been brought to that hotseat in years past.

In a stinging report issued November 6, of 2006, MotherJones magazine exposed that ways that the Bush Administration’s environmental agenda had been compromised, and what resulted was a series of richly marketed ad campaigns and talking points that were designed to contravene the hard work and honest efforts of environmental, oceanic, and atmospheric scientists worldwide. And the task was simple: Convince the public that global warming is based on illegitimate principles, false logic. “Junk science.” You’ve heard the president speak these very words. (See http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/11/let_them_eat.html). We’ve heard US representatives argue against the Kyoto Protocol stating “'science tells us that we cannot say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided,” but the truth is we can say with exact certainty that there are quantifiable data which point directly towards humanity’s emissions of fossil-based fuels and further, that the symptoms and diseases that our planet is currently suffering from can be directly traced back to these emissions. These are listed right here for you: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/global-warming-faq.html, read these points carefully.

So, the bottom line here, you might be wondering…it seems that we’ve been duped again. Look at how many lives were spent at the cost of weak or little warnings on the back of tobacco products. Read any label now, and you’ll find a very big difference in the content of that message. Here we are in 2007, and our fossil fuel policy is akin to those happy ending type messages found in the 1940’s era cigarette ads…it’s only a question of time as to when the facts are made public, when the real, unvarnished truth about what we’ve done to the planet is stated clearly; plainly. But in the meantime, it’s not just our loved ones dying of emphysema, or dealing with tracheotomies. It’s the myriad of species on the brink of extinction – the forming of a disaster from which the return is impossible because the destruction has been too great. It’s up to us to raise our voices loud and clear – and claim that the crimes against the environment are atrocities equal to any of those that we have unleashed against one another in the past; and I contend that they are greater – for there is no return to normalcy for the polar bear with no glacier on which to live. http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3002

Welcome to The Atkinson Diet's Blog

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”
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