Tuesday, December 8, 2009

New Brooklyn Green Team Eco-Challenge

The Brooklyn Green Team is back with a new challenge: reconsidering red meat. Join them and eat less beef! According to Treehugger, red meat is the most resource-intensive food on the table and eating less of it can be the single most green move a person makes.

A couple of alarming facts the team shares with us:

A study in New Scientist magazine reported that the production of one kilogram of beef produced as many greenhouse gases as three hours of driving.

Experts predict that by 2050 nearly twice as much meat will be produced as today, for a projected total of more than 465 million tons. (Worldwatch Institute)

Other types of meat (chicken, fish, pork, turkey, and venison) are excluded from the challenge, sign up by emailing brooklyngreen@gmail.com. Visit the Green Team's blog for more information, resources and encouragement.

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Park Slope Petitions Obama For Leadership On Climate Defense

The Eagle received this press release:

On Sunday, Park Slope citizens had a chance to tell President Barack Obama that real cuts in carbon emissions are necessary to avoid environmental catastrophe, as activists from the Park Slope Greens and Parents For Climate Protection collected signatures to send to the White House.

In under two hours the activists collected close to 150 signed pledge cards from Brooklynites, stating that US legislation and policies must cut climate pollution by at least 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent to 95 percent by 2050. These are the targets that climate scientists say are necessary to avoid a climate crisis.

The Obama administration’s earlier announcement of cuts of 6 percent from 1990 levels fall far short of the warnings of the scientific community.

In addition to posters and literature about the climate defense movement, the activists displayed a dozen home-made ice globes that melted in the afternoon sun to symbolize the need for climate defense now, as glaciers and arctic sea ice recede every year.

Activists in attendance included David Pechefsky, Green Party 2009 Candidate For City Council, and Gloria Mattera, Green Party Candidate For Brooklyn Borough President in 2005.

The pledge cards will be mailed to the White House before President Obama appears at the Copenhagen conference on December 18th.

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