Environmental Racism, Global Warming Edition

Interesting side note about the spinach E-Coli outbreak

Leafy Green Sewage – New York Times

Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.

Well, talk about unforeseen consequences, cows really should not eat grain. Go watch my favorite food cartoon ever, the Meatrix, and its most excellent sequel, The Meatrix 2: Revolting for more.

When cows were switched from a grain diet to hay for only five days, O157 declined 1,000-fold. This is good news. In a week, we could choke O157 from its favorite home — even if beef cattle were switched to a forage diet just seven days before slaughter, it would greatly reduce cross-contamination by manure of, say, hamburger in meat-packing plants.

Seems easy enough to implement, if impossible to enforce.

Update

A more nuanced look, if not a debunking of the above theory can be found on this scienceblogs page.

I had a long rant brewing in my head all day about U.S intransigence at the Bali Climate talks, but hell, one massage and a Chimay later, I should just outsource to someone more qualified to lay down the law.

I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that. We all know that,” he said.

VOA News – Al Gore Blames US for Climate Change Deadlock in Bali

Here’s what pissed me off this morning…

U.S. Strategy Succeeds in Bali
Climate Talks Turn to Efforts Other Than Emissions Targets

BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 13 — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conceded Wednesday that the United States had succeeded in achieving one of its key objectives at the climate conference here, blocking a proposal that called on industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

Hmm, this is not even worth a rant. When the capital’s newspaper characterizes behavior that will no doubt result in untold human and material destruction as a “win”, what can be said?

Tags: climatechange, Gore

Canada’s greenhouse emissions soaring: UN report

The figures are based on the 2009 national inventory report that Environment Canada quietly filed last week with the United Nations to meet its international reporting obligations. The full 673-page inventory is available on the UN’s website and shows Canada has the dubious distinction of having its emissions climb more since 1990 than any other G8 nation.

Canada ranks “first among the G8 nations” for increasing emissions, the report notes, even though Canada had committed to cut them. It notes that while Canada’s emissions have soared, Germany chopped its emissions by 18 per cent between 1990 and 2006, and the United Kingdom slashed its by 15 per cent.

Hey, we’re first in the G8 in something! The increase was driven primarily by increasing Tar Sands emissions thanks to the oil boom. Cars and coal also contributed.