sarah's sustainable life

i’d like to start by saying that i hope everyone had a nice, relaxing christmas break. now it’s time to go back to the business of greening our lives.
as i have stated in previous articles, i do not believe in global warming. however, those of you that do may be interested in this clip i found from the UN climate change summit. i take the UN about as seriously as i do global warming, but i think this fellow makes a good point. basically, whatever you may have read to make you believe in unnatural climate change there is just as much if not more compelling evidence that meat consumption could be a major player in global warming. click here to see photos. what it has come down to are leaders from around the world calling on wealthier nations to eat less meat as a means of cutting down their carbon footprint. for many years i have heard vegan activists and cookbook authors chiding prominent americans who call themselves environmentalists (namely al gore) for never mentioning the impact that factory farming has on the environment or, more importantly, how much it could help if people cut down on or cut out meat and dairy. i am very interested to hear what you all think about this!

denmark has become the first country on the planet to boast a completely energy self-sufficient region. just in time to become the gathering point for a UN climate change summit, the island of Samso completed a ten year renovation to rely on its own resources for energy. this looks very impressive, and it’s nice to know it can be done, but it raises alot of questions. what does energy self-sufficient mean, anyway? yes, they still drive cars that are powered by imported diesel, and i’m sure the wind turbines and solar panels were not produced on the island using “green” methods, but this is a starting point. the extremely high cost per person (something like 20k USD) to convert would alone slow the process down, but let’s look at the big picture. this was a government sponsored project. the danes had a neat idea, it got the world’s attention, and now there is a micro-model for how we could be improving conditions for the rest of the world. people tend to get very defensive when something like this happens because they are afraid they may have to change something. don’t bother, just be awed at the giant science fair project and hope developers have learned something.