Bergen International Film Festival

Last week I spent most of my free time (and I have a lot of it here) between volunteering for the Bergen International Film Festival and seeing films.  I saw 18 in six days.

The worst film I saw was easily Better Things.  Truly an awful film.  The whole film is full of cliched stories of morose people moping around.  The boyfriend of the girl who OD'd.  The ex-boyfriend of the girl who's seeing someone else.  The fat granddaughter who is too depressed to go outside.  The elderly couple separated by some unspoken of  incident.  Everyone in the film speaks softly and excruciatingly slowly, as if to underscore to the viewer that this Important, Serious.  There isn't a light moment in the film and, about halfway through the film, I found I'd lost all sympathy for all of the characters and their endless drone.  I think others in the audience agreed; at least five people left the theater somewhere around the midpoint.  By the end, I was wishing for the suicidal characters to just do themselves in already.

Although Entre les murs got rave reviews, I had a hard time seeing what the fuss over yet another movie about a white middle class teacher and his classroom of minority students was all about.  Granted, the film was in French with Norwegian subtitles, so I'm sure I missed some of its subtler points.  And there was some great, very natural dialogue and really honest performances by all the actors, none of whom were professional actors.  The filmmakers also do a great job of drawing the audience into the tension that every new middle school teacher must feel as he struggles to keep his class from falling into the chaos.  They also don't sugarcoat anything in the film.  The teacher is not a hero, he's simply getting by.  But still, I've seen this that premise at least once before (Half Nelson) and the broader idea of the relationship between minority students and white teachers more than a few time before (Finding Forrester, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds...).

The best film I saw was also the last one I saw: The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Just Around the Corner.

When twenty-something Sashko (played by a doe-eyed Carlo Ljubek) awakes in a hospital bed in Germany, he has no memory of the car crash that has killed his parents and left him with amnesia, or of the grandfather hovering over his bed.  The grandfather (the almost impossibly charismatic Miki Manojlovic) decides that the only thing that can help Sashko regain his memory is a trip on a tandem bicycle back to their native Bulgaria.  That, and some backgammon.  As the pair bikes through the stunning countryside of Sashko’s childhood and plays backgammon on breaks, this delightful little film quietly raises questions about what identity without memory means and asserts that how we play the game is as every bit as important as the dice we roll, even when it seems like all is lost.

At the closing gala of the 2008 Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF) on Tuesday, the jury gave Stefan Komandrev’s “The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Just Around the Corner” the festival’s top prize, the Cinema Extraordinaire award.

Ballast--An unsentimental look at a broken Southern family's efforts to rebuild itself.

Chronic Town--A cab driver gets dumped by his girlfriend in a bleak town in Alaska and stumbles through a suicide attempt and copious amounts of drugs and alcohol as he tries to move on.

Citizen Havel--An intimate portrait of Vaclav Havel, the thoughtful and funny man who ruled the Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic.  Maybe my favorite documentary of the festival.

Downloading Nancy--Not as bad as I expected a film about masochists to be, but still not one of the best films I saw.

Encounters at the End of the World--Herzog's documentary introduces us to a wide variety of characters, who have ended up living in Antarctica.  Herzog often seems to be poking fun at his subjects and doesn't seem to respect them enough to present them as much more than cariactures.  Still, there are a handful of moments that make the movie worth watching, like the scene in which everyone lies down on the sea ice to listen to the otherworldly chirps of the seals below.

Fuel--The part of the movie that was made before the controversy over biofuels in 2007 flows smoothly.  The part after has a tacked-on, aimless feel that has some good material, but could certainly benefit from much tighter editing.  Overall, though, the film gives some great info on biodiesel, its potential to help the world fight climate change and wean ourselves from fossil fuels.

Gonzo--The filmmaking wasn't anything extraordinary, with its fairly standard format of interviews of friends and family mixed with clips and photos of Thompson and a "best of the 1970s" soundtrack, but Thompson's compelling personality overshadows the problems with the filmmaking.

Made in America--This documentary traces the birth of gangs in Los Angeles, from its roots in the squashing of organizations like the Black Panthers in the 1960s to the role the Crips and Bloods play in fulfilling gang members need for community and protection because they have been stripped of all defenses.

Planet B-Boy:  This film about breakdancing culture and the world's premier breakdancing competition features some incredible physical feats and a couple of interesting characters, but for the most part, it's hard to connect with most of the dancers.

The Price of Sugar:  A horrifying look at the Dominican sugar cane plantations that thrive on Haitian slave labor and the daily Herculean battles of a priest trying to improve the living conditions for the workers.

S&M:  An interesting and often funny argument for bringing attention to the rampant, but usually unintentional height discrimination faced by short males all over the world.  As easy as it is to think we don't discriminate, it's even easier to see ourselves in the people in the film who do.

Son of Rambow:  The film falls into the trap of a sugary ending but fortunately the movie's other charms, like the flamboyant French teenager and the funny moments filmed by the two protagonists, are enough to keep Son of Rambow from being totally ruined by its predictable resolution.

Standard Operating Procedure:  Errol Morris's documentary shows the torture at Guantanamo Bay through the eyes of the American soldiers, including Lynndie England, who worked there.  Morris's style of documentary is the direct opposite of Michael Moore's.  Where Moore uses loosely connected facts and contrived scenarios to make vehement arguments, Morris takes a seemingly detached perspective in which he simply observing the characters in SOP.  Where Moore is in nearly every frame of his movies, we simply never see Morris and often don't even hear the questions he asks in his interviews, only the responses.  As SOP progresses, though, we see that, by letting people speak for themselves, Morris has meticulously built up an unshakeable argument that the horrifying behavior at Gitmo was not just the work of a demented few, but was in fact pervasive and encouraged through the entire military operation at the prison and beyond.

The US vs. John Lennon--I was surprised by how impersonal this film about Lennon felt.  Mostly put together from footage of meetings Lennon staged with the press, like his famous "bed-in" with Yoko Ono in Amsterdam, and interviews with friends, supporters, and Ono, we get a clear picture of Lennon's political ideas and battles, but little idea about much going on in his personal life.  And for a film about his political battles with the US (or rather the bizarre political war the US quietly waged against Lennon), that's fine.

Yodok Stories-- a film about a musical about concentration camps in North Korea, and odd though it sounds, Yodok Stories was really good.  Hopefully, it will be able to shed light on atrocities that are occurring right now in North Korea, but that very few people either know about or acknowledge.  The film earned one of the prizes for best documentary.

Green hair

Last year for Christmas, my mom got me 2007 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. In it is a stunning piece by Susan Casey about our plastic ocean.  She writes, "A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse."  The online version of the piece has some photos of the heartbreaking effects plastics are having on animals--a turtle whose shell has been grossly deformed by the constraints of a plastic band, a dead seabird with a stomach full of plastic.  Casey writes that every year, each of us throws away about 185 pounds of plastic and that in 2005 the US alone produced about 120 billion pounds of plastic.  Unfortunately, both numbers are increasing and only a small percent of the plastic created gets recycled (partly because a lot of plastic doesn't recycle well or at all and partly because a lot of it just gets tossed and ends up elsewhere, like the ocean).

After I read that article, I vowed to get serious about using less plastic.  Besides the obvious ways like bringing my insulated mug with me everywhere (doubles as a water bottle and coffee cup, not to mention a replacement for plastic cups at events, on planes, etc.), switching to reusable shopping bags, skipping those clear plastic bags for produce, and cutting back on bottled soft drinks, I'm also trying out a shampoo bar as a way to reduce the number of shampoo bottles I go through.

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes..  From Intolerable Beauty:  Portraits of American Mass Consumption by photographic artist Chris Jordan.

Right now I'm using a bar by Burt's Bees that I like, though I will likely switch to a brand that is not owned by Clorox for my next bar.  And to a product that fares better on Environmental Working Group's (EWG) Skin Deep:  Cosmetic Safety Database.  I just discovered Skin Deep and really like it because it also includes whether the product was tested on animals.  (Now, if only they'd include some information on the environmental impacts of the product, like the carbon created, and the sustainability of the manufacturing processes, I'd love the site... doesn't seem like too much to ask of an organization called Environmental Working Group.) Anyway, EWG rates the shampoo bar 4 out of 10, or moderately hazardous, because it contains ingredients linked to cancer, reproductive problems, allergies, and other health problems.  I did a quick search of other shampoo bars on the market and there are oodles and oodles that EWG rates as posing a low threat to human health, including all-purpose bars that can be used as soap and shampoo.  The bar came in a small cardboard box, but I've seen shampoo bar with just a little bit of plastic wrap or a band of cardboard, so I think it's possible to do better on that front, too.  I think it's also possible to eschew packaging altogether at places like Lush that just slice the bar off a larger bar (though it's probably not a bad idea to bring a reusable soap container or an old bag to keep the bar from rubbing off on other things on the trip home).

 

It was a little weird getting used to a shampoo bar at first, mainly because it leaves my hair feeling a little bit waxy when I rinse (for that reason, I still use regular shampoo every other washing).  I have thick, curly hair and find the bar leaves my hair a bit more manageable and maybe a little less dry (the jury's still out).  Other than that, shampoo in a bar is basically the same as shampoo in a bottle--it lathers the same and my hair feels the same when it's dry.  At a little less than $5, it's also cheaper by a couple of bucks than Burt's bottled shampoos and I would imagine other shampoo bars are also cheaper than the bottled equivalent.  I've had the bar for about a month and still have most of the bar left, so I think it will last as long, if not longer, than a bottle of shampoo.  Additional perks:  it's lighter to pack, can be carried on a plane (and won't explode all over everything as my shampoo always seems to do), takes less energy to ship without all that water, and takes up less room in the shower.

Because I'm a firm believer that buying more stuff isn't the answer to most environmental problems (though buying different stuff can help), I'm also going to cut back on how much I wash my hair in general.  Last year I tried the Curly Girl method, which calls for skipping shampoo and just washing with conditioner to keep from overdrying curly hair.  They also suggest skipping the blow dryer for the same reason (not a problem for me... I've never had the patience to dry my hair), but still a good idea for saving some time and electricity.  When I tried skipping shampoo, my curls looked better, but my scalp felt itchy, so I ended up shampooing after about four days.  They say it takes about two weeks for hair to really adjust, though, so I may try it again.  People lived for most of human history without shampoo and most people in the world today wash their hair far less than once a day with no problems (and probably healthier hair), so I think the main hurdle will be getting over the feeling that I need to wash my hair every day with shampoo.  And if I can't, I'll still have my shampoo bar to fall back on.

Next thing to try:  conditioner bars.

Compass cows and mole rat magnets

I happened to come across two articles yesterday saying that a number of animals seem to have some sort of built-in compass.  The Economist article "Magnetism and behavior:  animal attraction" talks about how scientists used Google Earth to look at photos of grazing animals around the world.  They found that to minimize wind chill and maximize the sun's heat, cows in cold weather stand pointing directly north-south.  Termites also build their mounds north-south to maximize heat from the sun, according to a piece in The Atlantic.  Mole rats (so cute!) apparently use magnetism to find their way around their elaborate burrows, even though they're blind.  Scientists think that the little bits of magnetite in the corneas of mole rats may be responsible for their remarkable sense of direction.

Animals are pretty amazing.

The last person I'd want to run the country

Disgusting.

All you ever wanted to know about tomato farming, and then some

Last Friday I visited a tomato farm an hour or so outside LA. The farm, which is run by an alum from my
business school, is actually more of a seed business with produce as a byproduct.

It was interesting to learn about the seed business--it's much more complex than I'd imagined. The company hires a lab to cross-pollinate different varieties of tomatoes. The lab then sends thousands of varieties of seeds to the farm. The farm grows some of the seeds in order to evaluate the quality of the tomatoes and also gets other local growers to test the seeds. After they've tested the tomatoes and gotten feedback from growers, they select a few varieties of tomatoes, usually by how perfectly round and unblemished they are (so they'll either sell at the grocery store or fit neatly in the machines of tomato sauce makers) and by how firm they are (so they can withstand being stacked in boxes). No consideration is given to the taste, texture, or nutritional content of the tomatoes.

After they select a few varieties, they send the "recipe" for creating the tomato seeds to China for workers there to mass produce. Basically, they tell them which tomato plants to cross-pollinate and then have them extract the seeds of the offspring. I asked what happens to the tomatoes that the seeds come from; the farmer had no idea but suspected they just get tossed. After the workers extract the seeds, they send them back to the farm in California. The farm then distributes them for over $700 a bag. They don't patent the seeds because the seeds are hybrids and are sterile and of lower quality after several generations. So, while that's a great natural protection to the business's "intellectual property" (which I don't think organisms should ever be), it makes tomato growers totally dependent on the seed producers.

On another note, the farm also grows heirloom tomatoes, which varieties of tomatoes that have been grown for at least 40 or 50 generations. They are big, beautiful, and completely irregular in shape and color. Some looked like gnarled yellow pumpkins, others were deep red with dark green streaks and still others were almost purple. We got to taste five or six varieties of the heirloom tomatoes (and take home, lucky us!), along with conventional grocery store tomatoes. The heirlooms had incredible flavor, colors, and texture, while the grocery stores tomatoes tasted a little bit like mushy styrofoam. Anyway, the farm sell its heirloom tomatoes at farmers markets within a 60-mile radius. The farmer talked a little bit about how many of the other stands at farmers markets just buy produce wholesale and then resell it. For tomatoes, he said one way to tell is to pick it up and feel the tomato. If it feels smooth like grocery store tomatoes do, it may have been waxed, which is a sign that's it was purchased from a wholesaler. If it feels a tiny bit rough, almost like it has a little bit of dust on it, then it's less likely to be from a wholesaler. You can also talk to the grower about his practices and get to know growers at farmers markets. If you're interested, they should be willing to let you visit the farm to see how the food is grown.

We also got to walk through the hothouses they grow hydroponic tomatoes, which I imagined growing out of some sort of aquarium. In reality, they way they are grown isn't all that different from tomatoes grown in soil. Instead of soil, the farmers use shredded coconut husks to grow the tomatoes in. They use the shredded coconut material because it is sterile and has no inherent nutrients. In each greenhouse there are bags of the shredded coconut husks, arranged in long, neat rows along with lengths of hose. The bags have small slits for the tomato plants to grow out of and a tiny hose inserted into each slit feeds the tomato plant a mixture of water and nutrients every half hour. Seems like a lot of work to replicate the qualities of soil when it's available for free just under the bags of coconut, but I guess if the goal is to maximize the yield, then maybe it makes sense. Growing tomatoes hydroponically also allows for more efficient water use, as the water that seeps out of the bags of coconut material is captured and recycled.

WaPo reports US is behind the times with animal testing

From an article on how outdated the US's use of animal testing has become, "The reason we use animal tests is because we have a comfort level with the process . . . not because it is the correct process, not because it gives us any real new information we need to make decisions," said Melvin E. Andersen, director of the division of computational systems biology at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences near Raleigh, N.C. "Animal tests are no longer the gold standard," he said. "It is a marvelously new world."

Reason number 8,746 to go veggie

Disgusting.

Robots for rats

The NIH and EPA are teaming up to use more robots in toxicity tests and fewer lab animals.

This new, trans-agency collaboration is expected to generate data more relevant to humans; expand the number of chemicals that are tested; and reduce the time, money and number of animals involved in testing, officials of both agencies said.

Better, faster research, less cruelty, and for less money. Everyone wins.

The way nature never intended

Leave it to humans to take magnificent animal like a wolf and turn it into a marshmallow topiary of a dog, like the poodles on the left, shown last night at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And those are the best of the breed!

Hideousness isn't the only calamity that comes with inbreeding dogs generation after generation. It's no secret that "purebred" dogs generally suffer from a host of health problems.

Purebred dogs at even the best of breeders live pretty depressing lives. I dogsat a number of times for a coworker, who was also a breeder of terriers. My coworker really loved her dogs and had a reputation for being one of the best breeders. She and her husband had between 12 and 16 dogs at any given time, depending on whether there were puppies in the house. Only one dog was allowed out of her cage all the time. The rest got fed twice a day and walked a few times a day. They spent the remaining 23.5 hours of every day in small wire cages stacked on top of each other in the sun room.

When I dogsat, I tried to take the dogs on long walks and have a couple of dogs out in the fenced yard at a time. Because the dogs were not neutered and didn't all get along, I could only have a couple of them out of their cages at a time, which meant that even if I had several dogs out of their cages for most of the day and switched them every hour or so, the dogs still spent all but a couple of hours a day trapped in their cages. The dogs would thrash and cry every single time I had to put them back into their cages. Heartbreaking. And those are likely the best of circumstances for breeders' dogs. (I won't even get started on their far worse cousins, puppy mills).

On top of that, the more purebred dogs there are, the less likely it is that animals in shelters will be adopted and the more likely it is that shelter animals will either be put down or live out their lives in shelters. According to PETA, about shelters house about six to eight million unwanted cats and dogs and about half of those animals are put to sleep each year.

What can we do to reduce dog and cat populations so that no animals need to live in shelters or be euthanized?

First, pledge to stop buying pets from pet stores and breeders. Should be the easiest decision you've ever made, but if you're having doubts, just take another look at those fugpoodles above and then check out the adorable dogs on petfinder.com).

Second, spay or neuter your pets. Lots of low-cost options are available for those on a tight budget. Just think of all the money you'll save on diapers for your female dog when she no longer goes into heat.

Third, lobby for or support legislation calling for mandatory sterilization of pet populations, like the bill the City of Los Angeles just passed.

Fourth, spread the word.

Yeah, NYT!

One of the best articles I've seen recently on the argument for going veggie ran in yesterday's New York Times.

Sundance Film Festival

On Sunday I flew back to LA from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. Didn't see much for celebrities (no, the bald guy Charlotte marries in Sex and the City, Danny Baldwin, and the random guy from Neil Young's band do not count), but I saw some fantastic films, sat in on some really great panels, took in a set by Brett Dennen at the Music Cafe, and basked in the beauty of Park City's snowy, snowy mountains. Most of the celebrities come earlier in the week, so things were quiet, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that people seemed to be more focused on making great film and on making social change through film than on the glitz and glamour Hollywood has lent the event in recent years.

First, the films.

Flow: For Love of Water
The pathos was a bit over the top (they compared the future consequences of the water shortage in some parts of the world to the meteors that caused mass extinctions), which is too bad because I think it undermined the credibility of what was otherwise really good content on the consequences of privatizing water.

Red
Malicious teens shoot dog. Owner goes on insane rampage seeking vengeance, which (spoiler alert) ends with a bloodbath (at least for a Sundance Film). Don't get me wrong, I love dogs and empathize with the owner's anger, but no one in their right mind would go as far as he did. Overall the film was trite, predictable, and low on insight and character development. Too bad the best thing about the film, the cute dog, is only on screen for the first few minutes.

Sugar
The movie is by the creators of Half Nelson and is about how we crank ballplayers from Latin America through the baseball machine like so many cogs on a conveyer belt and toss them out when we're done with them. Unfortunately, I think that's exactly what will happen to the Dominican actors in the film. Still, the lush visuals and subtle acting make for a good movie.

Half-Life
What unwinds as a weird and unsettling look at the life of a dysfunctional California family is made beautiful and lovely by the animated (literally) imaginations of the main characters and touching depictions of each character's vulnerability.

I Always Wanted to be a Gangster
A French comedy, oddly enough, and the only lighthearted movie I saw. Absolutely gorgeous imagery. Funny, original, and sweet-but-not-too-sweet. Probably my favorite movie of the festival.


Now, for the panels.

That Must Be Told: Todays Human Rights Documentary Movement
The panelists started by showing clips of their films (more info below) and then moved to a discussion of whether it is enough to simply make a documentary film and raise awareness or whether one must also offer concrete ways for viewers to take action. That segued to a discussion on the trend of working with nonprofits that use documentary film in their campaigns, and the benefits that can come with collaboration, like exposure, funding, and offering audiences a way to take action. Amnesty International has a campaign related to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black former Panther and journalist, and his 25 years on death row, and so they were willing to collaborate with panelist Livia Giuggioli on her film about his life, In Prison My Whole Life. The film screened at Sundance, but unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see it.

Also on the panel:

*Gillian Caldwell, 1Sky Alliance

*Oren Yakobovich, B'Tselem, collaboration on Shooting Back, a very cool project in which B'Tselem gives cameras to Palestinians living in Israel to film their daily lives. Democracy Now! uses the film on their website.

Paul van Zyl, International Center for Transitional Justice

James Orbinski, the Nobel prize winning doctor for Doctors Without Borders and the Narrator of Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma


The Double Bottom Line: Too Good to be True?

A panel of directors and producers debated whether one of the goals of documentary filmmaking should be to make a profit. Panelist John Schreiber of Participant Productions argued that though every once in awhile a documentary will make a profit, films with critical messages need to be made whether or not they'll generate a profit. He does evaluate whether a film will be able to generate enough revenue to cover its costs, though.

Panelist and moderator Jess Search of the Channel Four Foundation (and formerly of Witness, a You-Tube like site for user-created content related to human rights), echoed Schreiber's sentiments and argued that there's a sweet spot between being socially important/relevant and entertaining that leads to a wildly successful film bu is really difficult for most documentaries to hit and creates unrealistic bars by which to measure the majority of documentaries. Occasionally a film like An Inconvenient Truth will hit that sweet spot, but if documentary filmmakers make only movies that are on hot topics and are always entertaining, lots of important stories will go untold.

Panelist Bristol Baughn, an executive with Reason Pictures and GOOD, disagreed. She talked about how she thinks it is possible for filmmakers to make a profit by telling relevant stories, using compelling narrative and marketing effectively.

The panelists then discussed ways to measure the social value documentary film creates, like number of viewers, number of click-throughs to take action, and measures of actual action taken, and agreed that social value is difficult to measure, but is becoming more measurable with online metrics.

The panelists also talked about how they are changing their distribution strategies in response to new media outlets like YouTube. Schreiber talked about takepart.com, a site that lets people watch documentary films on all different kinds of issues and gives them tools for taking action right on the site. A video on Canada's seal hunting, for example, is posted next to links for contacting Canada's prime minister, information on boycotting seafood, and supporting HSI's ProtectSeals campaign.

Panelist Annie Sundberg, the director of The Devil Came on Horseback, (which looks like a very compelling film on the Darfur crisis, by the way) spoke about how distributing films through non-traditional venues, like screenings at schools and collaboration with nonprofit would could use the film in their campaign, can be as effective as more traditional distribution. She also spoke about using viral marketing tactics like contacting relevant interest groups on sites like MeetUp.com to host screenings for a fee.

All in all, a fantastic few days.

Green schmoozing

Tomorrow I'm going to the Opportunity Green Conference on campus. Some noteables in the green business world will be there--a cofounder of Ethos water, the founder of Treehugger, some cool firms that do consulting and marketing in the green space.

More details tomorrow.

Guilty conscience, Mr. Roth?

Alex Roth, a guest writer for Grist, slams PETA spokesman Matt Prescott for saying, "You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist," and ends up getting slammed by the Grist community instead.

Now, I'm definitely not a huge fan of Prescott's statement that omnivores can't be environmentalists. Though I think it would take a whole lot of effort to rationalize the cognitive dissonance of being a meat-eating environmentalist away, I also think it's counterproductive to promote exclusionist environmentalism. But that's PETA's modus operandi. They say or do something shocking in order to get an idea across. We react strongly. They do it again. After awhile, the idea becomes mainstream (see also: PETA's campaign against fur). And, as Holly notes on the comments section of the Grist site, "PETA is not an environmental group. It is an animal-rights group."

That said, Roth's arguments are ridiculous and then some. He writes, "Of course, most of us carnivorous environmentalists do sometimes eat factory-farmed meat, just as vegans sometimes eat products made from industrial soybeans." Uh, Mr. Roth? It takes a much smaller toll on the environment to grow a pound of industrial soybeans than it does to raise a pound of meat.

According to "Choosing Nature, Three Times a Day: The True Cost of Food" on the Sierra Club website (emphasis mine):
WILD PLACES LOST: Fifty per cent of the Earth is devoted to cattle production. (In
the U.S., 45% of land is devoted to cattle.
WILD PLACES LOST: 70% of the land in the Western U.S. is devoted to cattle.
WILD PLACES LOST: 95% of the oats, 80% of the wheat and
80% of the corn in the U.S. is fed to cows.
WILD PLACES LOST: About 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to
create cropland to produce our meat-centered diet.
GRAIN: It takes 10 to 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of cow flesh.
WILD PLACES LOST: It takes 10 to 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.
DESERTIFICATION: The major cause is cattle grazing.
WATER: It takes up to about (some estimates are higher) 2,500 gallons of water to
produce one pound of grain fed beef. With the same water, farmers could produce 16
pounds of broccoli, 25 pounds of potatoes, enough soybeans for three pounds of tofu or
enough wheat for nearly five pounds of whole wheat bread.
TOPSOIL LOST: One pound of grain fed beef causes the loss of 35 pounds of topsoil.
ENERGY: It takes one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of beef.
POLLUTION: In the United States, two billion tons of untreated sewage is discharged into the environment from cows.

Roth also writes, "PETA also shoves aside the report's conclusion that many of the environmental harms caused by livestock production can be mitigated through better agricultural practices". Yeah, but as anyone who's taken Biology 101 knows, even with better ag practices, raising livestock still takes way more energy than growing plants. From the College of Agriculture Sciences at Penn State, "In a food chain, an animal passes on only about 10 percent of the energy it receives." That's why, as noted above, it takes about 10 pounds of grain to get one pound of beef.

Then he states, "To me, being an environmentalist simply means supporting policies and practices that promote a healthy environment". Everyone from the UN to the University of Chicago is publishing evidence that switching to a plant-based diet can lessen one's impact on the environment by as much or more than switching to a hybrid vehicle. So, by his own definition of what it means to be an environmentalist, Roth should, if not adopt a plant-based diet, at least support those who do, and at the very least, keep his yap shut when others promote veggie diets for environmental reasons.

He continues, "These days, climate change is known to be exacerbated by most human activities, from stir-frying tofu to watching videos of endangered baby harp seals." True enough. But some activities exacerbate climate change more than others. From the UN report:

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. . . The livestock sector is a major player [in climate change], responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.

Some behaviors are also easier to change than others. Reducing my carbon footprint by driving less and biking more has proved more challenging than adopting a plant-based diet, by at least a degree of magnitude. So, if eating meat creates a huge amount of greenhouse gases and it's fairly easy to avoid eating meat, why eat meat?

(On an unrelated note: I suspect Roth would be against clubbing a baby harp seal, but he doesn't seem to have a problem with shooting a bolt through a cow's head, as is standard practice in the beef industry.)

Roth continues, "No, what is most astonishing about a person like Prescott is that someone evidently so well-intentioned can simultaneously be so counterproductive and so irritating". Funny, I was just thinking same thing about you, Mr. Roth.

Fear and loathing in Lake Davis

On Monday the state of California started dumping $16 million and 17,000 gallons of poison into Lake Davis, all in the name of environmentalism. According to a New York Times article, 500 state fish and game personnel will be pouring CFT Legumine, which contains the poison rotenone, into Lake Davis in an effort to eradicate northern pike, an exotic invasive fish.

The northern pike is certainly an easy animal to fear. The aggressive invader with the folk name "water wolf" can grow more than three feet long and eats whatever it can get its razor sharp teeth around, like frogs, bugs, other fish, and even the occasional duckling. According to the NYT article, "State officials are particularly concerned that the pike might escape to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where it could feast on other fish, including valuable salmon and threatened species like the delta smelt. Signs on the lake recommend cutting the head off any pike caught and tossing the fish back in the water."

The pike first appeared in Lake Davis in the mid-1990s and were very likely introduced by people. In 1997 officials poisoned the lake with rotenone to the point that the state approved a $9.2 million settlement with local residents for damages. But the pike reappeared in 1999. Nobody's sure how many pike currently live in Lake Davis, but the California State Department of Game and Fish estimates the population could number in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Ok, so the pike breeds and hunts aggressively and isn't the cutest fish in the lake. But, is it worth pouring into Lake Davis a pesticide the World Health Organization classifies as "highly toxic for aquatic life" and, in its pure form, as "moderately toxic" to humans?

The State of California has successfully eradicated northern pike from the nearby Frenchman Reservoir by using rotenone. According to an info sheet on the Department of Fish and Game site:

[Rotenone] will be applied at a rate of about one part per million. The rotenone itself will initially be present at a rate of about 50 parts per billion. The trace compounds will be present at a few parts per billion at the greatest, and many will not be detectable in the water when the rotenone is applied.

Rotenone also decomposes quickly and there are no detectable traces of rotenone left in Lake Davis from the 1997 treatment. The lake, which does not currently supply the nearby town of Portola with water, will be closed for up to 45 days after treatments this month. The lake will again serve as the water supply for Portola at some point in the future.

Researchers at Emory University found that when they gave rats low doses of rotenone, the rats developed symptoms similar to symptoms found in people with Parkinson's disease. The findings "are consistent with the idea that chronic exposure to low levels of environmental toxin may cause cumulative damage to the brain’s dopamine system, eventually leading to the clinical symptoms of the disease."

While rotenone is being used in very low concentrations and decomposes quickly enough that it's not at risk of causing chronic exposure on its own, it is one more environmental toxin that we're exposed to. So, the risks the rotenone in Lake Davis could pose to human health are not clear.

And what about the plants and animals in and around Lake Davis, for which rotenone is "extremely toxic"? The website for the Department of Fish and Game says they will "herd" the trout downstream and restock them after the treatment, but they make no mention of the other species that inhabit the lake and happen not to be as important to the economy as trout.

But, wait. CFT Legumine, which the Department of Fish and Game will be using to apply the rotenone, actually only contains five percent rotenone. According to the manufacturer site, CFT Legumine also contains five percent "other associated resins" and 90 percent "inert ingredients". On savelakedavis.org Jeanne Tansey writes:

In the case of CFT Legumine™, the inert ingredients help disperse the pesticide more easily and evenly into the water.

16,000 gallons of CFT Legumine™ is the projected amount of poison according to the Lake Davis Northern Pike Eradication Project 2007 plan. That means that 90% or 14,400 gallons of inert ingredients will be put into the lake. We do not know exactly what those ingredients are. But the front panel of the pesticide container, immediately below the Ingredient Statement, reads “Contains aromatic hydrocarbons.”

The Department of Fish and Game doesn’t even know what the 90% inert ingredients are. They do not know what the 14,400 gallons of liquid chemicals, that they will be putting into the lake and surrounding streams, are. They analyzed a sample of CFT Legumine™ to get an idea of what they might be. We do know what chemicals the health agencies will be testing Lake Davis water and sediment for after the lake is poisoned. Page 7 of the Lake Davis Northern Pike Eradication Project 2007 plan is the “Water Quality Monitoring Plan.” It contains a list of 18 chemicals they will be monitoring in surfacewater and sediment. A logical conclusion would be that these chemicals were found in their analyzed sample.

Among these chemicals are benzenes, xylenes, naphthalene, and toluene. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services includes naphthalene, toluene, and xylenes on its “Table 1, Hazardous Inerts.” Table 1 is the list of the most dangerous chemicals identified by the Dept. of Health and Human Services. . . Benzene exposure also causes serious health effects.

So, the Department of Fish and Game doesn't even know what's in 14,000 gallons of the stuff they're dumping into the lake? Northern pike might be bad for the ecosystem (or maybe more accurately, the fishing economy) in Lake Davis. CFT Legumine might be even worse.

A call to all you writers

Grist has a short article on "fast fashion", the cheap, nearly disposable clothing that's becoming more and more popular. The article briefly touches on the environmental, social, and global impacts of producing so many clothes so quickly, but I'm sure there's tons more to be said. If anyone out there can do for "fast fashion" what Eric Schlosser did for fast food in "Fast Food Nation", I bet it would be an interesting, eye-opening read.

Light pollution

I spent last week backpacking in the wilderness of Yosemite and one of my favorite things was falling asleep under the stars each night because here in LA, planes are about the only lights visible in the night sky. So I was saddened, but not surprised, to read in The New Yorker that truly dark skies are slowly disappearing from the American landscape due to air and light pollution. In fact, even the darkest skies in this country aren't as dark as skies all over the world were in Galileo's time. From the article:

In Galileo’s time people assume that the Milky Way must be some kind of continuous substance. It truly resembled a streak of spilled liquid—our word “galaxy” comes from the Greek for milk—and it was so bright that it cast shadows on the ground (as did Jupiter an Venus).

Having grown up in South Dakota, I've definitely seen a milky-looking Milky Way, but I've never seen it bright enough that it could have cast shadows. How cool would that be? And check out the photo of the Milky Way on The New Yorker site to see how beautiful the Milky Way looks, if only we could see it.

Map of Factory Farms

Factoryfarmmap.org (created by the Food and Water Watch) lets you check out how factory farms for different animals are distributed across the country and across individual states.

And, an editorial from the NY Times on why it's an important map.

Ugly beautiful

Beautiful photos of garbage from Chris Jordan's exhibit called Running the Numbers. Click the photo to see a detail shot.

Want a green lawn? Get rid of it!

I'm at my parents' house in South Dakota this month and though the area has received a lot of rain this spring and summer, I'm still amazed by how much time people spending watering their lawns in this fairly dry region. Apparently it's an issue across the country. From a PDF called Water Efficient Landscaping on the EPA website:

Of the 26 billion gallons of water consumed daily in the United States, approximately 7.8 billion gallons, or 30 percent, is devoted to outdoor uses. In fact it is estimated that the typical suburban lawn consumes 10,000 gallons of water above and beyond rainwater each year.

This site offers some good tips for efficient indoor and outdoor water use, including:

Water the lawn only when needed
Step on the grass; if it springs back up when you move your foot, it does not need water.

Don't water in the heat of the day Watering in the morning or early evening when it's cooler and calmer will reduce the amount lost to evaporation.

Mow as infrequently as possible Mowing puts the grass under additional stress that requires more water.

But lawns are more than just water hogs. Beyondpesticides.org (a site I admit I know nothing about), reports that American dump 90 million pounds of herbicides alone on their lawns and gardens each year. According to the site, many of those pesticides are known carcinogens; have been linked to birth defects and asthma, developmental delays, and other health effects in children; have been tied to cancer in pets; are toxic to wildlife; and contaminate groundwater, among other things.

So checked out an article called "Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy" (my kinda article!). A few of their great tips:

Mow the grass higher
The shade of tall, dense grass turf will prevent essential light from reaching most weeds and, will aid in the destruction of new baby weed seedlings (such as the notorius dandelion). Tall grass is healthier and can use the extra sugar to make rhizomes (more grass plants) thus thickens the turf.

Leave the clippings on the lawn
They add organic matter and nutrients back into the soil and to prevent moisture from evaporating.

Water less
Same tip as above, but from the standpoint of lawn health, watering less will force your grass roots to go deep into the soil. Deeper than most weed roots.

Fertilize organically, if necessary
If your lawn needs fertilizer, sprinkle a little Ringer lawn fertilizer in the spring and fall. Why this brand? Well, there is nothing scary in the ingredients list; the stuff looks like rabbit food; and it works great.

Have the pH of your lawn tested
Dandelions love a pH of about 7.5. Grass loves a pH of about 6.5. So if your pH is 7.5 or higher, your grass will probably never beat out the dandelion. Lower the pH to 6.5 and your grass has the advantage!

All those are great ideas, but there's yet another problem--lawn mowers can produce about as much air pollution in one hour as a car would in four. And that's not counting the noise pollution. We can reduce the emissions by mowing after noon (something about the chemical reactions with the emissions and sunlight), switching to an electric or man-powered mower, mowing less often, and raising the blade on the mower.

But it seems there's got to be something easier. Then I started thinking about a piece Michael Pollan wrote in 1989 for the NY Times about the American lawn and its relationship to culture and nature. He writes that America's 50,000 square miles of "unbounded democratic river of manicured lawn" homogenize the landscape the way fast food chains do and gives a brief history of lawns in America. He describes how the neighbors ostracized his family one summer when his father decided mow their suburban lawn and therefore not to conform to suburban norms. Pollan then writes about his own boredom with the monotony of mowing and of the lawn itself, how he sees the lawn as a sign of man's dominance over nature, and eventually he concludes that when it comes to lawns, less is more, and for native plants, more is more. Aha!

So I was pleased to see an article by Cathie Draine in a local paper encouraging people to seed their lawns with native grasses that need fewer pesticides and fertilizers because they are adapted to the local pests and soils and that also store and filter water more efficiently. Just as importantly, she gives step-by-step instructions for how to reduce the size of one's lawn.

Take that, Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan spends the first handful of chapters in The Omnivore's Dilemma describing the havoc the industrial food industry (the meat business in particular) wreaks on the environment and the incredibly cruel treatment the animals in the food industry receive. Despite all of that, he argues that ultimately, animals benefit when we eat them because it ensures their survival as a species.

Anytime Stephen Colbert agrees with you, you know your argument is completely ridiculous.