Thanks to my Dad for reminding me about this free screening (it’s so cool that we’re on a lot of the same health lists).
They did this last year as well, kindly opening up the Hungry For Change documentary for everyone to view online. If you missed it then or just want to watch it again, you now have another chance between March 21-31, 2013 at HungryForChange.tv.
One of the people interviewed in the film is the lovely Kris Carr whose new cookbook, Crazy Sexy Kitchen, my Dad is just eating up!
I hope you get to watch it (also available on Netflix) and encourage your friends and family to do likewise. Post in the comments and let me know what you thought.
I’m currently taking the free online class “An Introduction to the U.S. Food System: Perspectives from Public Health” at coursera taught by instructors at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the topic; the lectures have been engaging and the resources plenty.
One of the exercises they had us perform is to use the Ecological Footprint Calculator to determine an estimate of the number of Earths it would require if everyone were to live the way we do. Unfortunately, as an inhabitant of the USA, it’s very difficult to get away from the impact of our shared services, such as electricity and the interstate highway system, which can be frustrating when you’re doing everything else right. You’ll see.
It is also thru this course that I learned about the upcoming TEDx Manhattan event entitled “Changing the Way We Eat” which will be broadcast live via the internet this Saturday, Feb 16th from 10:30am – 5:45pm Eastern here on livestream.
Here’s one of the presentations from last year’s event:
So… How many Earths does the calculator say your lifestyle would require and which country do you live in?
I recently came upon this article, entitled “A Mysterious Patch of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark” and decided it was time to learn a bit more about this thing called fracking.
The article describes a disturbing new smudge of light on the nighttime satellite map of the United States where once there was only darkened fields. It’s not the birth of a city we are witnessing — though the population is booming there now — but rather what’s colloquially been coined “Kuwait on the Prarie,” i.e., burning gas wells, intentionally ignited flares of excess natural gas extracted via induced hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing, a.k.a. fracking.
What Is Fracking?
Like many, I’d heard of it and had a vague idea about the controversy, but seeing those pictures (do check them out), it struck me there was still more to assimilate. While I knew there were concerns about the grounwater, I didn’t realize the air pollution concerns.
Here’s a quick video explaining the process from a clean, animated, industry perspective.
What’s The Hubbub?
As if the images from NASA didn’t speak volumes enough, there’s the potential for drinking water contamination, runoff of toxic waste, and even destabilizing the ground itself (think sinkholes and earthquakes).
Several documentaries have covered the first couple of these environmental issues, the shortest being this one from Earth Focus about “the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale.”
Others worth watching are…
Oil Fracking and Its Dangers about the impact of drilling operations in Texas and the aforementioned North Dakota, and
Unearthed: The Fracking Facade which analyzes an oft-cited PR campaign claim that there’s no documented case of groundwater contamination due to fracking in 60 years.
