Crossing Nebraska

Ideas For Treading More Lightly on the Earth Diet Consider a vegetarian diet. Eating lower on the food chain requires fewer resources, in addition to being healthier and minimizing the suffering caused to animals. If you can’t embrace a totally vegetarian diet at the present time, try minimizing the quantity of meat that you do eat. Our protein needs can be met by eating a lot less meat than is present in the average American diet. If you decide to eat more seafood in lieu of red meat, be mindful of environmental pressures on individual species. If you decide to eat more chicken and turkey instead of red meat, be mindful of the environmental and ethical issues involved in factory farming. Consider free-range chicken and turkey instead. Shop at the local farmer's market in order to support local and regional agriculture. Doing so minimizes fuel-related shipping costs and eschews big agribusiness for th...

The Super Bowl is right around the corner and, given my interest in sustainability, I can’t help wondering how much fossil fuel will be burned in order to bring the annual spectacle into existence. How much carbon dioxide will be spewed into the environment for the sake of this one day of entertainment? Despite its rhetorical nature, my question does indeed have an answer. It would just take a whole lot of work for us to arrive at a reasonable estimate. Am I being elitist for picking on the Super Bowl? Perhaps. After all, I enjoy a good film festival now and then, which has its own sizable carbon footprint. And this post resides on servers that require a lot of energy to power up and keep cool. What’s the difference? We’re all creating carbon dioxide with our various endeavors and diversions. It’s a free country, right? Indeed, this is a question that touches on some of our most deeply held beliefs about freedom and personal responsibility. Before I delve into that, however, let me t...