How Vegetarianism Can Stop Global Warming

Photo and quote via Queenofheartss: “This is how you traditionally hack up a cow. Think about it.”

MEAT OF THE MATTER

Eating meat spews out more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions than driving cars. In fact, cutting meat out helps more than switching to a Toyota Prius or eating locally. Always remember however that supporting local farmers who farm without chemicals, drugs and hormones helps to support people in your local community by providing jobs while cutting down on water and air pollution. Alas lots of people like eating too much meat as we’ve mentioned in a previous post.

Read the rest of the post at FoodCycles.org.

US IS “PRISON CAPITAL of WORLD”

Photo Via The Secular Parent

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote a lovely article blasting the American prison and law system. He’s absolutely right – politicians and government spend more money and time putting people in prison than they do in giving people better healthcare (and fixing the social reasons for bad health/SDOH) – healthcare that would keep people out of prisons (because they’d be thinking a lot more clearly).

Op-Ed Columnist – Priority Test – Health Care or Prisons? – NYTimes.com: “At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is ‘too expensive,’ how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?”(for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks?)

(Via The New York Times.)

What were the sadly amusing trivia facts?
- California spends roughly $49,000 per year per prison person.
- the United States has the highest record for people in prison and the highest record for people with no basic medical care. Apparently it’s 5 times the world average.
- 82% of anyone put in prison were jailed for non-violent, petty crimes.
- California spends $216,000 per kid put in the kid jail system.
- California spends around $8,000 per kid to go to school.
- The US “war on drugs” caused the jail rate to skyrocket after the 1970s.
- 1 in 10 black men (age 25-29) were jailed last year because of crack (no thanks to how America has treated them) and get punishments as if they had 100 times more cocaine on hand.
- Black men have a 32% chance of winding up in jail at some point in their lives.

Nicholas and I would also agree that education as well as better healthcare would go a long way to preventing the petty crimes that currently put people in jail. Of course some of the laws are just so rocky that there’s no room to be flexible. Decriminalizing drugs in Portugal has shown that drug use can be lower if you make drugs less a behind the scenes, black market thing.

4 Veggies You’ve Got to Get

Sunny gives you a tour of the FoodCycles outdoor market garden and hands you a rundown on what’s being grown. Turns out that there’s benefits to being the “front lawn” for the first urban park in Ontario, let alone Canada. Having a nice hike, sitting by a lake and getting some awesome exercise through farming is all within reach. See the first part of the report at http://bit.ly/JOAe5. For more on the original building event posting see http://bit.ly/kLrw. [FoodCycles Report Jul 31 2009 Part B]

See the full video post at FoodCycles.org