Saturday, September 16, 2006
The Big Mac is an Environmental Nightmare!
Welcome to alter-energy, my cool fuel, alternative energy, earth-friendly, green living, down with global warming, eco-blog.
I'm starting this blog because taking care of the environment is something I'm passionate about, and something I think can be easily achieved with minor changes in how we live and consume. The United States, a global leader in many respects, is also the top producer of greenhouse gases. Unless we plan to combat global warming by bombing the hell out of the atmosphere, I think it's time for all of us to do our part.
First step, I urge everyone to urge everyone to urge their reps to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. The W administration backed out awaiting more concrete evidence of global warming, greenhouse gases and some relationship therein to something vaguely bad. They claim a lack of evidence, but we all know it's really a lack of profit motive...
Outside of politics, small changes in and around the home are a start. Swapping just one incandescent bulb to energy efficient flourescent can make a difference, but we can easily do more. Our drive-through culture, with highly processed everything, available from the convenience of your front seat, is not helping, and frankly isn't a legacy I care to leave.
Simple steps like preparing meals at home and buying local produce, meat and poultry can drammatically reduce the greenhouse gases YOU produce. Compare the environmental footprint of a Big Mac to a hamburger you make at home with local lettuce, tomatoes, beef, etc and it's pretty obvious what I'm talking about.
For the patty, you either have beef raised in some pasture across the country, butchered, processed, frozen, shipped across country in cold storage to your local golden arches, cooked from frozen and kept under heat lamps until you buy it (or it gets trashed after sitting for more than 5 minutes or so), or beef raised in a rural community outside of your local town, butchered, processed and shipped across town fresh rather than frozen to your local market where you take it home and toss it on the grill.
It may sound stupid and downright obvious, but freezing and shipping frozen food across country and cooking from frozen takes a hell of a lot more energy than shipping fresh, across town and cooking from fresh vs. frozen. Multiply that by all the ingredients of your Big Mac compared to your homemade burger and the difference is staggering. Toss in producing and disposing of all that packageing the arches love to force on you, the bag, the napkins, the burger wrapper, the ketchup packages, etc, and the Big Mac is an environmental nightmare! Ronald McDonald is killing the planet...
I guess that's where I'll start this blog, not with "become a vegan and save the world," but with "local beef is good for the environment." I hope to get into alternative energy and fuel sources, hybrid, biodiesel, ethanol and electric vehicles, wind, solar and micro-hydro power and much more, but for now - stop eating fast food.
I'm starting this blog because taking care of the environment is something I'm passionate about, and something I think can be easily achieved with minor changes in how we live and consume. The United States, a global leader in many respects, is also the top producer of greenhouse gases. Unless we plan to combat global warming by bombing the hell out of the atmosphere, I think it's time for all of us to do our part.
First step, I urge everyone to urge everyone to urge their reps to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. The W administration backed out awaiting more concrete evidence of global warming, greenhouse gases and some relationship therein to something vaguely bad. They claim a lack of evidence, but we all know it's really a lack of profit motive...
Outside of politics, small changes in and around the home are a start. Swapping just one incandescent bulb to energy efficient flourescent can make a difference, but we can easily do more. Our drive-through culture, with highly processed everything, available from the convenience of your front seat, is not helping, and frankly isn't a legacy I care to leave.
Simple steps like preparing meals at home and buying local produce, meat and poultry can drammatically reduce the greenhouse gases YOU produce. Compare the environmental footprint of a Big Mac to a hamburger you make at home with local lettuce, tomatoes, beef, etc and it's pretty obvious what I'm talking about.
For the patty, you either have beef raised in some pasture across the country, butchered, processed, frozen, shipped across country in cold storage to your local golden arches, cooked from frozen and kept under heat lamps until you buy it (or it gets trashed after sitting for more than 5 minutes or so), or beef raised in a rural community outside of your local town, butchered, processed and shipped across town fresh rather than frozen to your local market where you take it home and toss it on the grill.
It may sound stupid and downright obvious, but freezing and shipping frozen food across country and cooking from frozen takes a hell of a lot more energy than shipping fresh, across town and cooking from fresh vs. frozen. Multiply that by all the ingredients of your Big Mac compared to your homemade burger and the difference is staggering. Toss in producing and disposing of all that packageing the arches love to force on you, the bag, the napkins, the burger wrapper, the ketchup packages, etc, and the Big Mac is an environmental nightmare! Ronald McDonald is killing the planet...
I guess that's where I'll start this blog, not with "become a vegan and save the world," but with "local beef is good for the environment." I hope to get into alternative energy and fuel sources, hybrid, biodiesel, ethanol and electric vehicles, wind, solar and micro-hydro power and much more, but for now - stop eating fast food.
# posted by Admin @ 12:01 PM 
