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Organic farming doesn't use sewage sludge.

Recycling and using composted sewage makes sense in principal, but I guess we need more education and controls to prevent toxins from entering the sewage system in the first place.

The study is flawed because it counts CO2 equivalents of methane and nitrous oxide which have an atmospheric lifetime of only 10-15 and 120 years respectively while CO2 has a lifetime of several tens of thousands of years.

This means that after rime the 8.1 tons of CO2 equivalent from meat and dairy farming will decrease while the 4.4 tons of CO2 generated from your average car will still be the same for tens of thousands of years.

Of course it still isnt good that meat and dairy farming polutes but one must take into account the time factor in such a study before comparing it to transport as when you look at this some will think we should rather be careful of the farming then the transport.

Conclusion: Transport is far worse then farming even though on the short term it looks like the opposite.

As others have pointed out, the article incorrectly compared automobile emissions to food emissions.

It also did not compare full lifecycle emissions from the operation, manufacturing and storage of automobiles.

Emissions during the manufacture of an automobile are typically equal to around 20% of the operating emissions.

Each automobile requires road space to operate and at least 3 parking spaces; one at home; one at work and one at shopping. If the spaces are in a parkade, significant emissions occur in the construction. If the spaces are surface lots, they decrease the land that can be used by vegetation to sequester.

Road and bridge construction causes significant GHG emissions as well.

Thanks Jane for making a difference. There are many compelling environmental reasons to go vegetarian or eat less meat.

To make it easy for people we have a Veggie Challenge: Go meat-free for one week and receive an email per day for seven days. Each message includes meal suggestions, recipes, nutrition information and tips. You could even win some prizes! Check out http://www.veggiechallenge.com

If you stick with it, your taste buds may change. Which isn’t a bad thing. See FAQ: Do I need to cut out meat entirely? http://veg.ca/content/view/534/110/

[Alright if we post a story at veg.ca about this inspiring blog post? With a link to you of course.]

I hate phone books. The phone company even has the nerve to charge extra if you DON'T want your number listed in their dead-tree tomes.

One solution might be to get a cell phone from a company that doesn't print books.

When I print, I use the back of printed sheets of paper I have salvaged from the garbage or recycling bins.

Hello. We are talking about stuff that is often minuscule in size, spread out over an enormous remote area, contaminated with sea water and stuff growing on it, and weighs 100 million tons!

There is no realistic fix. We as a species actually need to stop producing and using so much plastic.

Alan Weisman's excellent book, The World Without Us, has a section about this gyre on page 122. Most of the plastic garbage comes from the land. Since plastic doesn't biodegrade, it overtime, blows in the wind or flows down rivers until it reaches the sea. Currents then take it all over the ocean, with much of it ending up in the huge North Pacific gyre.

More from the book:

There is six times more plastic than plankton on the gyre's surface! In India alone, 5,000 processing plants produce plastic bags. Kenya makes 4000 tons of plastic a month with no potential for recycling. Filter-feeders such as jellyfish and salps try to eat the plastic nurdles that litter the ocean by the billions thinking them to be fish eggs or krill. Toxins from plastic are contaminating the food chain.

All of this plastic has appeared in barely more than 50 years. Except for a small amount that's been incinerated, all of it is still with us somewhere in the environment. It surpasses 1 billion tons and continues to accumulate at a high rate.

Regarding point 4: The battery-free light I have on my back wheel is magnetically generated (very low friction) and stores a small amount of power so that it continues to flash when I come to a stop. The only annoying thing is that people frequently tell me that I have left my light on after I park it somewhere. This light has served me for around 15 years so far. Excellent investment. You never have to worry about remembering to turn your light on or off.

For more winter riding tips check out:

The adventure of riding a bike in the winter. If this link doesn't work just click on my name.

Recession can lead to more sharing, which is a good thing!

More people sharing homes, TVs, cars, home-cooked meals, books, etc.

The more serious the recession, the more necessity for sharing.

Unfortunately, a serious recession may be the only way to reduce global warming any time soon.

Food wise, reduced spend can lead to more gardening, and less land-intensive foods such as meat. A reduction in farm land can lead to increased wilderness.

The article that Lloyd linked to from "10 Ways the Recession Can Help the Environment" says:

"Farmers grow crops mostly to be fed to animals to feed a populations consumption of meat. Already more than 70% of all farming land is used for raising livestock, covering 30% of the world’s land surface, and responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The Chinese diet is changing, as the population is becoming richer they are demanding more luxury food such as meat, meaning more fields turned over to animal crops and more pesticides and fertilizer needed to grow these extra crops.

A reduction in consumer demand will cut the amount of money in the average Chinese farmers pocket, causing them to go back to boringly efficient food stuffs such as rice."

Not all costs are equal. Some costs are associated with big ecological footprints and others with small sustainable ones. For example treatment for Alzheimer's may just involve hiring a private nurse. God forbid that we might actually shift some of the spending on the military to health care for seniors.

Also the cost to society of producing cigarettes and unhealthy fattening foods have a higher footprint than the cost of additional health care for longer lives (due to people shunning cigarettes and fatty foods).

But, this is a troubling study. It brings up fear of death with the reminder that death is rarely pretty or, as it turns out, cheap.

It also brings up fear of old age -- the falling apart of the body. While this study points out that living longer means higher costs for treating disease. Behind the dollar figure is the pain of dying - the debilitation, the hopelessness, and serious loss of dignity.

We are a compassionate society (at least towards people and certain animals), so Brennan's idea that anyone beyond 75 should not get life-saving medical care, is at very least unrealistic. A better approach would be to allow older people to elect to not receive medical interventions, drugs, life support, etc if they prefer to die more naturally.

Perhaps the lesson here is not to eat the right foods to live longer (selfish motivations) but to eat more for environmental reasons. Like eating simple, low on the food chain, local, organic. And to not smoke because it means less tobacco grown on land that could be wilderness and sparing the resources used to dry and package tobacco.

Sure, living like this may lead to a longer life, but you can always insist on a natural death and resist medical interventions.

(Maybe those who elect to turn down modern medical interventions later in life could be rewarded with a large sum of money (based on the savings) that could be donated to a charity of their choosing.)

There is a green way to eat that trumps everything else -- rescuing slightly imperfect food from being thrown away.

No need to worry about local or organic as environmental considerations when you are buying (or finding) fruits and vegetables that are about be thrown away. Just today, I bought 6 red grapefruits for one dollar. Six! A little dry on the outside, but nice and juicy on the inside.

A 2004 study, from the University of Arizona, found that almost half of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten.

One trick is to be creative: bruised apples can be turned into delicious applesauce, and veggies that are past their prime make fine ingredients for a big soup.

You will also save tons of money.

Check out: Minimizing Waste: Eating for the Earth

I agree-- If you like crab, lobsters, and shrimp, then you should have no issues with insects, they are basically the same. Look at those micro shrimp on pizzas, those look just like maggots.

Also, farmed insects can be fed in a controlled manner, sometimes flavorful herbs, whereas "sea-bugs" eat garbage off of the sea floor.

People would ask her, and she'd say because eating animals is gross... they walk around, poop, pee, drip snot out of their noses, have blood, guts, tendons, bile, etc.,. etc,., And she'd go on and on about how gross it was to eat something that used to fart (only she'd use way more colorful langugage -- think Juno). I always thought her approach might be better than trying to have a rational discussion with someone.

At the end of the day people eat what they do because it's societally conditioned and socially transmitted.

If people thought about it, eating anything that ever walked around, bled and pussed would be considered pretty gross compared to picking an apple from a tree or a carrot from the ground. So people don't think about it.

Cold showers are good for you! While waiting for the water to get hot, I wash my feet and legs with the still cold hot water. Also at the end of my shower I finish with pure cold. Great wake up!

I looked at the Chili Pepper mentioned above. It is a way to recirculate the water in your pipes using a pump. The problem is that you will end up with hot water in your cold pipes (until it is flushed out). Hot water from a tank may be contaminated with bacteria.

Another solution would be to install a mini hot water booster tank in the bathroom. These plug into an ordinary outlet and only cost around $150. They heat up about 4 gallons of water, enough to last you until the hot water arrives.