Hot Under the Collar

I was poking around the Community Center kitchen, last night, in search of disposable cups. They were showing that movie, An Inconvenient Truth.* Here I am, looking for another way to pollute the environment.

This movie is great, though I have a big gripe. You walk out of there feeling too small to make a difference. And, that's really too bad. Because nothing stops people from trying faster than that feeling of hopelessness. I'm doing a couple simple things, quite by accident, that are good for the environment. Maybe you can, too.

I buy fresh food.
Mostly I do that because I worked in the food industry for many years and I know what goes into that crap. Frozen food requires 10 times more energy to produce and it's not a very healthy choice.

I buy organic, including wine, whenever I can afford it.
Organic gets a bad rap because people don't understand. They think of it as some silly hippy thing. It's not. Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils of conventional farms.

Try this on for size: if Iowa would grow their corn organically, we’d remove 200 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Want to make a difference? America worships the Almighty Dollar. When you buy fresh, over frozen, you impact profits in a big, big way. Food companies will change, in hopes of hanging onto your money.

You've got more power than you think. Okay, I'll get down off my soap box, now.

* The movie, Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore,) should be required viewing every April 22nd (Earth Day.) Explores the impacts of global warming.