Go Veg, one day a week!

Ghent, Belgium was the first city in the world to go vegetarian one day a week. According to the article on Vegetarianism on Wikipedia:

In May 2009, Ghent was reported to be "the first [city] in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week" for environmental reasons, when local authorities decided to implement a "weekly meatless day". Civil servants would eat vegetarian meals one day per week, in recognition of the United Nations' report. Posters were put up by local authorities to encourage the population to take part on vegetarian days, and "veggie street maps" were printed to highlight vegetarian restaurants. In September 2009, schools in Ghent are due to have a weekly veggiedag ("vegetarian day") too.

It's just one city in a world of cities. But the decision is huge.

First things first -- your meat was once an animal. It ate a lot of food and drank a lot of water. The food it ate (probably some sort of grain) was grown somewhere. The food needed lots of water to grow.

From Time.com:

To produce 1 lb. of feedlot beef requires 7 lbs. of feed grain, which takes 7,000 lbs. of water to grow. Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle.

So, going vegetarian reduces water consumption. And note -- that's not "all hamburgers for the rest of your life." Just ONE hamburger = 40 showers (provided you're using a low-flow nozzle, probably about 5 gal/min).


Now, your pre-meat animal also contributed a lot of greenhouse gases. (Air pollution.) In 2006, the UN released these facts and info; meat production was found to have contributed 9% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions; 35-40% of the world's methane; 65% of the world's nitrous oxide; and 64% of the world's ammonia.

(And just FYI: In terms of Global Warming Potential (GWP): methane is about 21 times worse than carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide is 296 times worse than carbon dioxide.)

So, Going vegetarian reduces greenhouse gas emissions. And even if you don't believe in global warming, you should know that the World Health Organization estimates about 2 million premature deaths can be blamed on air pollution.


Finally, your pre-meat animal, as we said, ate a lot of grain. Did you know that people can eat grain just like animals can? Did you know that in the US, in 1999, 70% of all corn and grain produced went into the bellies of our pre-meat animals? Did you know that, according to Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel, "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million"?

So: Going vegetarian increases the amount of total food in the world. Seriously... 800 million people?

I'm sorry if writing all this down makes meat-eating seem a bit... selfish. (But on the other hand, maybe it is and maybe a little guilt won't hurt you any.)

I should note that I, myself, am not completely vegetarian. I limit my consumption, but unfortunately I sort of forgot what I set as my limit. Originally it was supposed to be that I could eat meat two days a week, keep them lower on the food chain (poultry or fish). Red meat could be consumed about once a month. Honestly, I've slipped a little -- but reading facts like this is a wake-up call to myself about the reality of what I'm eating.

Anyway, take a note from Ghent, Belgium. Are you eating meat all week? Think you could go veg just one day? I believe that you can. Are you eating just a bit? Think you can cut back more? I believe that you can. Try it and see.

I'm an addict. An e-addict.

I need to confess something.

I’m addicted to the internet.

Checking e-mail becomes a 3-hour episode of “let’s look at everyone’s pictures on facebook.” Looking up a song to add to my repertoire becomes five hours of watching cats jump in boxes.

It sounds funny. It is kind of funny, but I find myself completely exhausted and kind of disillusioned about my ability to do anything.

I lose time, and time is precious when you’re a guitar teacher naturalist singer-songwriter choir director. So there’s that.

There’s also the notion that I don’t actually like being on the internet. I’m a tree-hugger, for cryin’ out loud. I don’t actually like sitting in front of a glowing screen all day. So it’s kind of bizarre that glowing screens can so easily ensnare me.

And then there’s the environmental side that I’m thinking of. Not so much my own computer – most personal computers these days are getting pretty energy-efficient. What I’m thinking of is the internet in general. How much electricity does it take to keep all these servers going, all the time, 24/7, and to air-condition the buildings they’re kept in? (They have to be air-conditioned, otherwise they could run too hot.)

I’ve got a general idea that each site or service has its own set of servers, and I vaguely understand that the more activity a site or service has, the more servers it needs. But I don’t get much beyond that, if there is anything about that.

The most electronics-deficient I’ve ever been was in Alaska. We had 20 minutes of satellite phone time a week. We also had a laptop that we’d use to input our data. We had electricity and all – just most of it we used to power the freezer, and some for the lightbulbs at night. I love situations where I’m working outside and I’m too busy for the internet. I always come home thinking, “YEAH, I’ll just stay off forever!”

I’m on again in less than a day.

Wendell Berry railed against "hypertext." But now people use it without even knowing that they use it. How simply can I be living if I have facebook, myspace, flickr, and a blog? Not to mention, some old website stuff on comcast. It's just such a huge part of our culture and our relationships now. I tried deleting facebook -- I think I lasted like a week, maybe. Best week ever, but... I have scads of friends in North Carolina who I enjoy spying on.

Anyway, I’ve tried setting boundaries for myself and they’re just so easily ignored. I don’t really know where to go from here.

Hold off on that ark.

Yesterday, I was trying to get to work at the White Clay Creek State Park nature center, and I ran into a minor obstacle.


Much of the east coast got slammed Thursday by remnants of a tropical storm... or was it a hurricane? Anyway, it rained more than Hurricane Floyd. The flooding uprooted this bridge (which normally allows for car access to the nature center).


It turns out that the schools were all canceled anyway, which put a nix on the geology program we were supposed to run. That's probably a good thing, since the gravel bar that we normally go to was very much underwater.


According to the staff, the flooding will "recharge" the gravel bar, though, which basically means that the old rocks will move out and we'll get some new and exciting rocks.

This year, the White Clay Creek celebrated its tenth year as a National Wild and Scenic River. It's not a national park, but the designation is a partnership between locals and the National Park Service. In light of this flooding, it's a good thing that this land is all preserved.

In the first place, trees and other plants are HUGE help when it comes to preventing floods. Instead of going into the stream, water gets absorbed by trees. Their roots also aerate the soil, helping the water to go into the ground.

In the second place, most development that happens today actually increases flooding. This is basically because we like to create impermeable surfaces like parking lots, driveways, and rooftops, where water just slides right off where it used to be absorbed. So preserving land and protecting it from development helps decrease flooding.

Given these facts, it seems like it would be nice if we could develop responsibly -- making efforts to put back what we take from the earth, put those natural flood barriers in place when we remove them as a part of development -- but I'd argue that it's not only "nice." It's our responsibility.

Plus, everyone likes a parking lot with some trees in it anyhow.