Chickork

Can we trust our food labels? Appartently in the UK we can not. I doubt things are much different here. BTW, why do the Powers That Be allow water to be injected into chicken? 

Energy Independence

Charles Hugh Smith at Two Minds had a guest blogger yesterday:

The Bush Administration may have made a strategic error when it chose a primarily military response to 9/11. We’ve spent a couple trillion dollars in the decade since with precious little to show for the expense and effort. Would a national effort to develop renewable energy have had a greater impact? Probably not at the time—the slow pace of technological progress could not have competed with the primal thrill of military conquest.

But the tangible benefits of a renewable energy thrust would certainly be evident by now. Lower dependence on foreign oil imports, the rise of new technologies, the creation of new businesses and new jobs and a sense of a hope for a better future might be apparent today had the leadership of the time embraced the long view. And it could have been accomplished for a fraction of what we’ve paid to date for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The link I posted on Saturday got a lot of discussion on Facebook. One point was that there was an advantage to energy independence and that the Chevy Volt helps in this. I think that energy independence should be a national goal. This will require tariffs, which is not mentioned in the article at Two Minds. A good read anyway. 

The Chevy Volt

I remember being excited about the Chevy Volt. I was wrong. While we want a society that is more sustainable, government environmental policies are part of the problem not part of the solution. The online magazine Liberty Unbound:

The Chevy Volt, to cite one example, can travel 35 miles on its fully charged 16 kWhbattery. Thus, charging the battery by means of the average US power plant creates 19.2 pounds of CO₂; in effect, 0.55 pounds of CO₂ per mile. The EPA rates the Volt's gas-only fuel economy as 37 mpg. Since a gallon of gasoline produces about 19.6 pounds of CO₂ , the Volt produces 0.53 pounds of CO₂ per mile. Incredibly, the Volt's carbon footprint is 0.02 pounds per mile larger when powered by its battery — another electrical mystery.

Sometimes it is the appearance of environmental progress that is more important than the reality. A Volt might make you feel better about yourself, but is does not help the environment. 

The article concludes with this analogy:

This plan is a costly, inane indulgence in fantasy. If the curtain were pulled back, it would reveal a fatuous illusionist, feverishly operating the levers of subsidies, tax credits, and regulatory mandates to orchestrate the scam.

Read the whole article, it is worth your time. 

Head Hunters of Borneo

Idyllwild is an artsy kind of town. There are eleven art galleries.  There are gift shoppes with an emphasis on New Age and magic. So I was not surprised when I caught snatches of conversations at the local coffee emporium. “Head Hunter of Borneo ...”; “He was raised in the Belgian Congo ..”; and “You have to understand that Shamans ...”

I was curious, so when talk turned to a seminar about living a more sustainable life I asked where it was. While the seminar was too far away to attend, it gave me an opportunity to talk. I mentioned that I was blogging on related issues from a Christian perspective. Someone earlier had mentioned fighting the “system” so I summarized my blog this way: I talk about how Christians need to leave the system which the Bible calls Babylon the Great. He asked me about this scripture:

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 

Of course he did not know the exact scripture. He asked me if Christians wanted “dominion.” This is a popular jargon word among certain Christians. My answer was that if I had dominion over my living room, I did not dump trash there. He understood. 

We both left satisfied with the conversation, we had emphasized our areas of agreement not where we disagreed. This was a good lesson for me as I usually do not do this. 

This conversation got me to thinking as my family and I walked home. Were there things I needed to “take dominion” over? Do I need to empty the trash, or trim the bushes? What do you need to do to be a good steward over what God has given you? If we want more physical things, or more importantly more spiritual things, should we not first take care of what we have? In one of Jesus parables he told us what happens if we are good stewards:

Mat 25:23  “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’”

Aren’t these the words any Christian longs to hear?