I can’t say enough about this video on http://www.storyofstuff.com/ …. If you have about 20 minutes, its time well spent. This is probably the first time I’ve seen a concise video that captures so well our society’s addition to “stuff.” The one thing that I feel this video lacks(though it touched on it briefly) is how we treat each other as humans.  Our ability to bring awareness to how we treat each other as human beings or our willing to tolerate how others are treated can go a along way towards sensitizing us to the impact of our “stuff” addiction.   Its not just about technical solutions to the global climate crisis, its also about bringing into our awareness the needs of people around the world…. I know I need to add that to my list of top 10 things to consider for the new year in 2008.

Free at last, Free at last..I just had to mark this momentous occasion marking the restoration of Californians’ freedom to once again purchase Raw milk in California without having to go through the process of partial ownership of a Cow. This has been a battle that had been waged only in the last couple of months due to the fact that a few CDFA employees cleverly placed a few lines of anti-RawMilk language in AB1735. Organic Pastures in Fresno County has been the lead dairy in helping reverse this decision.

Here is a link to the full story:

If you are not familiar with the benfits of Raw milk, I encourage you to explore it for yourself. I’ve included a few links that go into further detail the benefits of raw milk.

Also check out this video from Mark McAfee, the CEO and founder of Organic Pastures Dairy explaining why he switched his dairy from pasteurized to all Raw.

(image courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle)

If you didn’t catch this story, as reported on the San Francisco Chronicle article the fender that protected the bay bridge from the tanker Cosco Busan last November has now been repaired. When this incident first happened, it made me think of society’s true cost in maintaining the petroleum diet. For those of us who don’t keep up with the ins and outs of fuel usages by such vessels, it was our first introduction to the fact that they burn the lowest quality of oil, mainly the byproduct of the refining of crude oil into gasoline. Not only do we now understand the cost to marine life during the spill, but we are also awakened to the air pollution caused by such vessels when they burn this foul fuel… This was a wake up call for us to look at how much unnecessary products we consume, ones manufactured overseas which inevitably have to be shipped over here on these very container ships.

Now to the fun part of this post. (more…)