Inhabiting Eden Footnotes with Live Links
Chapter 1: The Problem of Change, Then and Now
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Chapter 2: Humans and Creation
- Lynn Townsend White Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” Originally published in Science 155 (March 10, 1967):1203–7.
Chapter 3: Leaving the Garden
- This externalization of costs is the reason behind proposals of carbon taxes. Like Pigovian taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, the intentions are to discourage excessive use and recoup societal costs. A growing number of countries worldwide have imposed carbon taxes. Some advocates propose that such taxes could replace other taxes while still generating revenue. See “Where Carbon Is Taxed.”
Chapter 4: Commerce and Contentment
- See, for instance, John Helliwell et al., eds., “World Happiness Report.”
- Ibid.; Emily Alpert, “Happiness Tops in Denmark, Lowest in Togo, Study Says” (April 2, 2012).
- This history is detailed by Jeffrey Kaplan in “The Gospel of Consumption,” Orion Magazine, May–June 2008.
- Quoted in Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, “The End of Shorter Work Hours.”
Chapter 5: Food for Life
- “FDA Reports Numerous Violations at Egg Farms,” CNN, August 31, 2010. For commentary on the subsequent congressional fight over regulations, see Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, “A Stale Food Fight,” New York Times, Nov 29, 2010.
- “Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?” Natural Resources Defense Council.
- Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, offers a well-known example of closing the ecological loop as he grows grass-fed livestock, poultry, and eggs on land that the animals fertilize and the humans manage. He boasts that his family has not bought a sack of fertilizer in fifty years.
- Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 63. For another discussion detailing similar issues, which uses the 2009 dairy crisis as a case study, see “Taking on Corporate Power in the Food Supply,” a March 2011 fact sheet assembled by Food and Water Watch.
- Ben Lilliston, “Who’s Benefitting from Higher Farm Prices,” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, April 13, 2011.
- Ben Lilliston, “What Does the Occupation of Wall Street Have to Do with Agriculture?” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Sept. 30, 2011. See also this more detailed report: “Commodities Market Speculation: The Risk to Food Security and Agriculture,” Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2008.
- David Banker, “Production Shifting to Very Large Family Farms,” Amber Waves (June, 2005).
- See for instance the Action Aid International USA report “Biofueling Hunger: How U.S. Corn Ethanol Policy Drives Up Food Prices in Mexico,” May 2012. Food prices in Mexico have risen more than 50 percent in the past five years, resulting in more than half of all Mexicans suffering some period of food insecurity in 2011. Rising food prices have increased by 44 million the number of people worldwide living below the extreme poverty line.
- See Alexander E. Farrell, Richard J. Plevin, Brian T. Turner, Andrew D. Jones, Michael O’Hare, and Daniel M. Kammen, “Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals,” Science 506.311 (27 January 2006). Their findings show that the only kind of ethanol with potential to save substantially in fossil fuel and its pollution is cellulosic, that is, what is produced from wood, grass, or the inedible parts of grass. Corn ethanol, by contrast, uses a substantial amount of coal and natural gas.
- Pollan, “How to Feed the World,” Newsweek, May 19, 2008.
- “Obesity and its Relation to Mortality and Morbidity Costs,” Committee on Life Insurance Research, Society of Actuaries, December 2010.
- Patrick Canning, Ainsley Charles, Sonya Huang, and Karen R. Polenske, “Energy Use in the U.S. Food System,” USDA Economic Research Report No. (ERR-94), March 2010.
- For more information on these issues, see also Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,2001) and Wendell Berry’s books, including his classic The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (rev. ed.; San Francisco: Sierra ClubBooks, 1996; orig. publ. 1977). See also publications on sustainable agriculture by agricultural extension agents across the country as well as SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education), which works with the U.S. government to fund grants and provide information for farming projects that promote farm profits, sustainability, and ecological health. Detailed information is also available from grassroots organizations such as the NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Project, headquartered in Butte, Montana; NSAC, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and its many state, local, and university-based participating member organizations; and NFFC, the National Family Farm Coalition, with its own state and local members. See also The Union of Concerned Scientists, “Hidden Costs of Industrial Agriculture”; Doug Gurian-Sherman, “CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations” (Union of Concerned Scientists, April 2008).
Chapter 6: The Needs of Animals
- Augustine, City of God 1.20. This is not an isolated thought. In a commentary on Genesis he argued that the dominion passage meant: “Let him have power over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over the other animals which lack reason, so that we should understand that man is made in the image of God in that respect, in which he surpasses the irrational animals” (Literal Commentary on Genesis [De Genesi ad litteram] 3.20 (CSEL28.1:86), quoted in Gillian Clark, “The Fathers and the Animals: The Rule of Reason?” in Animals on the Agenda, ed. Andrew Linzey and Dorothy Yamamoto (London: SCM Press, 1998), 71. Her article quotes extensively from several of his writings concerning the inferiority and utility of animals.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 64. Murder, Article 1. For more on Aquinas, see Dorothy Yamamoto, “Aquinas and Animals: Patrolling the Boundary?” in Animals on the Agenda, 80–89.
- Tom Leonard, “Cat Predicts 50 Deaths in RI Nursing Home,” Daily Telegraph, Feb 1, 2010;see also the facility’s own Web site. Geriatric physician David Dosa first discussed the cat in 2007 in the New England Journal of Medicine, and has since published the book Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat (New York: Hyperion, 2010).
- Arsenic has been routinely fed to chickens since the 1950s to promote growth and kill intestinal parasites. In 2011, after an independent FDA study found carcinogenic arsenic in broiler chickens, the drug company producing it, Pfizer, voluntarily suspended its sale (Gardiner Harris and Denise Grady, “Pfizer Suspends Sales of Chicken Drug with Arsenic,” New York Times, June 8, 2011). The regular use of antibiotics preventively in animal feeds continues to pose human health risks; see for instance Jane Goodall, Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating (New York: Warner Books, 2005), 87–89.
- Carole Morison with Polly Walker, “Organizing for Justice: DelMarVa Poultry Justice Alliance” (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2007). See also Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 139–42; and Lorraine Mirabella, “Poultry Growers, Chicken Processors at Odds,”Baltimore Sun, July 19, 2010.
- Environmental Protection Agency, “Regulatory Definitions of Large CAFOs, Medium CAFOs, and Small CAFOs.”
- See the 2001 estimates by the Union of Concerned Scientists in “Hogging It! Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock,” and compare with the actual use as reported by the FDA in “2009 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals.”
- Farm Sanctuary, “Opinions of Veterinarians and Positions of the AVMA: Analysis of Eight Commonly Occurring Farming Practices.”
- Jonathan Safran Foer, “The Fruits of Family Trees,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 7, 2009.
- Derek Thompson, “How America Spends Money: 100 Years in the Life of a Family Budget,” The Atlantic, April 5, 2012; “Consumer Expenditures—2011,” Bureau of Labor Statistics News Release, September 25, 2012; Carrie R. Daniel, Amanda J. Cross, Corinna Koebnick, and Rashmi Sinha, “Trends in Meat Consumption in the USA,” Public Health Nutrition 14.4 (12 Nov 2010): 575–83.
- William J. Weida, “Considering the Rationales for Factory Farming,” presented at a 2004 Iowa City conference entitled Environmental Health Impacts of CAFOs: Anticipating Hazards—Searching for Solutions. Weida was an economist in the office of the Secretary of Defense and professor of economics and business in the Air Force Academy and at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and since retirement has served as director of the GRACE Factory Farm Project and president of the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project.
- For information on Farm Bill legislation see Institution for Agriculture and Trade Policy, “Farm Bill 2012.” For a perspective on the importance of public policy see Michael Pollan, “How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System,” The Nation, Sept. 11, 2011. Also see the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Food and Faith blog.
- Andrew Grant, “Investigation: Inside Egg ‘Factory Farm,’” November 18, 2011. See also Steve Karnowski and Derek Kravitz, “Target Follows McDonald’s Lead, Drops Egg Supplier Sparboe Farms after Shocking Undercover Video,”Huffington Post, November 19, 2011, also found on Fox News.
- “Prayer for the Blessing of Animals,” quoted in Birch and Vischer, Living with the Animals, 59.
Chapter 7: Environmental Fairness
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Environmental Justice.”
- 2011 figure from the National Center for Children in Poverty. Twice that number live below the level for a family of four to cover basic expenses. See David Seith and Courtney Kalof, “Who Are America’s Poor Children? Examining Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity” (NCCP, 2011).
- “What is Superfund?” U.S. EPA. Love Canal was an abandoned canal in Niagara Falls, New York, that became a dumpsite for hazardous chemicals. When the dump was closed in 1953, Hooker Chemical Company sold the property to the city school district for a dollar. Ignoring leaks, punctures, and exposed chemical drums, the city developed the area for schools and homes. In 1978 a news reporter discovered an abnormal number of birth defects and other ailments among residents. Subsequent studies showed high rates of miscarriage, low birth weight, high white blood cell count, and chromosome damage more than thirty times the expected rate. Eventually the U.S. government relocated more than 800 families.
- The United Church of Christ report “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987–2007” pressed for the reinstatement of the Superfund tax, and in 2010 the EPA and Obama administration also pledged support. Since the revenues from heavy industries ran out in 2003, taxpayers have shelled out $1.2 billion per year to pay for the 606 abandoned sites. But more than twice that is needed and the rate of cleanup has dropped from 89 in 1999 to 19 in 2009, according to Juliet Eilperin, “Obama, EPA to Push for Restoration of Superfund Tax on Oil, Chemical Companies,” Washington Post, June 21, 2010.
- David Kreibel et al., “The Precautionary Principle in Environmental Science,” citing C. Raffensperger and J. Tickner, eds., Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999).
- Living on Earth, “Earth’s Cancer Alley,” May 17, 1991.
- Living on Earth, “LOE Retrospective: Cancer Alley,” April 8, 2011. Even when industries and politicians resist them, insights like Templet’s are reaching the public. According to a recent bipartisan survey by the American Lung Association, 73 percent of voters support stronger pollution controls, believing that we do not have to choose between air quality and economic strength. A two-to-one majority (60 to 31 percent) believe that strengthening safeguards against pollution will create jobs rather than destroy them.
- The National Religious Partnership for the Environment makes available denominational statements by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); the United Methodist Church; the Black Churches; and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, as well as Jewish, Catholic, evangelical, and ecumenical statements.
- For a report on the carcinogenic, allergenic, and hormone disruptive chemicals that are not identified by manufacturers in a number of common household cleaners such as Pine-Sol, Tide, and Bounce, see Women’s Voices for the Earth, “Dirty Secrets: What’s Hiding in Your Cleaning Products?” November 2011. For an extended discussion of the power of transparency to change buying habits, see Daniel Goleman, Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (New York: Broadway Books, 2009).
Chapter 8: Our Children’s Inheritance
- For example, between 1998 and 2008, ExxonMobil gave at least $23 million to some forty groups seeking to undermine mainstream scientific findings on climate change, including the Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation, and the Frontiers of Freedom Institute. CEO Rex Tillerson pledged to discontinue this at board members’ urging, but it was later found that funding continued. At the same time, Tillerson has begun to argue for a carbon tax that would replace revenue from other sources, such as payroll taxes. See David Adam, “Exxon to Cut Funding to Climate Change Denial Groups,” The Guardian, May 28, 2008; David Adam, “ExxonMobil Continuing to Fund Climate Sceptic Groups, Records Show,” The Guardian, July 1, 2009; Chris Mooney, “Some Like It Hot,” Mother Jones (May/June 2005); Eric Pooley, The Climate War (New York: Hyperion, 2010), 36, 155; Rex Tillerson, “Promoting Energy Investment and Innovation to Meet U.S. Economic and Environmental Challenges,” remarks at the Economic Club of Washington, DC, October 1, 2009.
- Jessica Ruvinsky, “Fill ’Er Up with Plankton,” ScienceNow (October, 2003).
- James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy, “Perception of Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Aug. 6, 2012.
- Independent Catholic News, “Pope Benedict: Human Development Requires Fighting Climate Change and Poverty,” Jan. 11, 2012. See also Pope Francis’s Radical Environmentalism.
- See Bartholomew’s statement at the beginning of this chapter. See also “Encyclical of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for the Day of the Protection of Natural Environment,” Sept. 1, 2006.
- The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, “A Green Environment for Now and the Future,” speech made on December 29, 1990.
- Damian Carrington, “David Cameron to Make Keynote Environmental Speech,” The Guardian, April 4, 2012.
- Jonathan Watts and Ken McFarlane, “China Builds Windfarms in Renewable Energy Boom,” The Guardian, March 20, 2012.
Chapter 9: Living within Our Means
- A well-designed presentation of the Nineveh palace and the carvings can be found here.