Umamiblog

Following on from my post the other day on the effect cows have on our environment I’ve been thinking more about food miles or, probably more accurately, food environmental cost.

Maybe we need, as consumers, some way of comparing apples with apples when making our purchasing decisions. Just as we need to be more aware of nutritional information with our expanding waistlines, we need to be more aware of the cost to the environment of our food.

Without much educated knowledge on the subject, I believe there are two key components. The cost of actually creating and producing the food in terms of emissions AND the cost of transporting the food to the consumer.

Logic would state that local food is good for the environment because it requires less transport to reach you (which is bad for the environment). But it’s not as simple as that which is why an index or exact figure amount on packaging (like calories or fat) would be so important.

There has been some press lately in the UK about the logic and cost in importing food items like kiwifruit from countries on the other side of the world, such as NZ with the term food miles bandied about a lot.

Our trade and industry groups were quick to point to reports such as Lincoln University’s own Comparing Energy/Emmision Performance [PDF 343KB] which refuted a lot of those claims. It reasons that, taking into consideration the amount of energy needed to produce and ship the food, it was more efficient for NZ to produce items like sheepmeat and apples and then ship them to the UK than it was for the UK to produce them itself. In the case of sheepmeat, we are 4 times more efficient.

Imagine another scenario as a UK consumer who wanted to be environmentally conscious deciding to buy locally grown tomatoes rather than cheaper imported Spanish tomatoes. However, in winter, the more environmentally friendly option would be to buy the Spanish tomatoes as they have a lower cost to the environment than local greenhouse-grown tomatoes.

If we had, as consumers, a way of quickly making a comparison and decision based off a number figure or index we’d be a lot closer to becoming more responsible consumers. How it would exactly work is another seperate problem and as always any system is able to be abused and misused. But would it be insane to imagine it working something like this?

It was interesting start to the day for most people on The Terrace today. Power went off at 8:30am and didn’t come back on until 10:30am meaning today was less than productive. It’s a little odd how quiet (and dark) the office was without power.

However, it appears the outtage affected people’s grammar as well…

Funnily enough, the notice on the other door was upside down…

Tom over at WellUrban has been posting some interest articles on statistics from the recently released 2006 Census. As you would expect, his focus has been on Wellington and his last post was on the age structure of our city and the 4 other cities that make up the Wellington region.

Wellington itself seems to be exactly opposite the other regional cities as well as the NZ average in terms of age structure. Put bluntly, we have few very young or very old persons, and a great proportion of 20 to 40 year olds. As usual the easiest way to see and understand this is to visualise in the form of graph as Tom has done – the lime green is Wellington City (click through and read the full article):

I was reading the NZ Herald yesterday and came across an article titled Cows , not cars, top threat to environment, says UN report.

Some key takeways:

Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

[Growing meat and everything it entails] produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide

their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

It makes for interesting (and possibly shocking) reading for those of you who, like me, are starting to become more aware of environmental issues from a personal level. The big question for me that comes directly from the article is Will I create a more positive impact on the environment if I choose not to eat beef or drink cow’s milk than if I sold my car?

There seems to be a focus on transport as the main culprit and the key to solving climate change. Whether that is an accurate reflection of the work, research, and literature on climate change, I don’t know. But I definitely feel it from the (sensationalist) media and the general public.

It also makes me wonder about opponents to the colloquially known “Fart Tax” and whether facts like these were included in the debate – I somehow doubt it. As a nation of 10 million cows we need to get real about the actual cost of producing and consuming our bovine friends.

I don’t for a second believe that the answer is to kill all cows or any suggestion like that. As Al Gore said rather eloquently towards the end of An Inconvenient Truth, the answer lies in making savings and efficiencies in everything across the board rather than searching for that one single silver bullet. If we can reduce the effect cows are having on our environment through smarter and more realistic consumption then we will find ourselves much closer to the goal of reducing emmissions to pre-gluttonous levels.

And hey, we might find people have a few less heart attacks as a result. We definitely need to see more debate on this.

Update: Catching up on RSS feeds I see the Celsias blog has already talked about cows

My cousin Aimee shot this today from the front of their house in Alexandra. The South got some snow last night.

Looks cold! The mountain range is known locally as the Old Woman. You can see it here on Google Maps, mountain range to the top and Alexandra to the bottom (might need to scroll down a bit), airport somewhere in the middle.

In a stunningly reassuring vote, Parliament has voted 72-49 against raising the legal drinking age.

I’ve been fearing and stewing on this private members’ bill for the last couple of weeks and I’m very very pleased to see reason and logic prevail.

More on the reasons why I believe this is the better outcome as well as the letter I meant to send to my MP after the jump (unfortunately it’ll probably be the weekend before I get a chance to put it up).

Please feel free to leave your own comments on this bill in the meantime.

…the 5th of November…



Wellington’s Guy Fawke’s Fireworks set »

That cheeky Dino is still appearing on Geonet’s White Island crater camera, two years on. I remember the first time I saw it and thought it was quite a laugh – I had initially wondered if geology staff had placed the toy there themselves given that it wasn’t being removed any time soon.

I didn’t realise it had such a following either, seeing as it had been Slashdotted (and BoingBoinged) as well as appearing in newspapers from the NZHerald to the New York Times. The truth appears to be that “some wag” glued Dino to his current locale and the GNS left it believing White Island’s acidic environment would “remove” the plastic Dino in a relatively short amount of time.

However, it is now 2 years on and it doesn’t look like a lot has changed for Dino. May he continue to reign on White Island for a while yet.

(via and via)

Remember when it was cool to stay up late enough to see the goodnight kiwi come on the telly? Ah, it takes me back, those were the days…

Thank you YouTube.

Two new sets added to my flickr account. On Friday night I went on a bit of a photo shooting rampage with Trey. The idea being to take some shots of Wellington at night. Have a look at Trey’s (much better) shots here.

Wellington at night set »

And then on Saturday, Mrs S got her ear pierced which was fun (for me) to take photos of… apparently it wasn’t “that painful”. The studio was Flesh Wound in upper Cuba St, the piercer was this chap.

Piercing set »

The ticking time-bomb that is the obesity epidemic, sigh… Check out this delightful (and skinny) website for the American Obesity Task Force. The website serves two purposes, the first is to reinforce the viral campaign with the video paced front and center on the page. The second purpose is to link people to information should they want to know more. I love how the website hasn’t tried to be anything more than that. Brilliant.

The video is more than a little bizarre on first view – what do you think?