This just in:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
KSLG’s afternoon radio personality, Dr. Syd wants to buy you breakfast on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22 from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the northern Eureka Burger King. The catch is that Dr. Syd will only buy you breakfast if you carpool, “The importance of carpooling is finally being realized by many people now that gas has hit $4 a gallon.” Dr. Syd says.
KSLG wants to encourage Humboldt citizens to be environmentally conscience not just on Earth Day, but every day. Dr. Syd wants people to realize, “its also important to cut down emissions so on that note this coming Tuesday, Earth day we will be rewarding carpoolers with free breakfast from Burger King and KSLG.”
While we’ll have to agree that car-pooling is a good idea, bringing people to a fast food joint for Earth Day seems a bit, well, weird. Not that Burger King is a prime offender in the world of meat — they actually made history lat year when they
vowed to stop using pork and eggs from supliers who confine their animals
in cages or crates — but fast food and meat consumption in general are not exactly Earth-friendly.
Here’s some stats from a recent
New York Times
story, “
Rethinking the Meat Guzzler
.”
Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.
Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.
To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the
University of Chicago
, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
photo courtesy of Moe, borrowed from
Moe’s Flickr Photostream
This article appears in The Notebook of Alternate Juror No. 4.
This is what the New York Times article actually said…..your little typo makes it seem like just the opposite.
“In what animal welfare advocates are describing as a “historic advance,” Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, said yesterday that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.”
whoops — typo fixed — thanks for your editing skills…
I tried burgers but I choke on the sesame seeds. Lettuce for earth day! Only organic, please.
Haha wow. What a case of massively missing the point.
Onion rings represent the circle of life. In fact, that burger is circular, as is the mouth of the soda cup, and the Burger King logo. Very holistic.
French fries, however, are a disgrace to the planet.
Looks good to me!
Now I know what’s wrong… That photo is from the lunch menu. Burger King serves breakfast 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. The best you could hope for is the cup of soda.
Mo, the photographer describes his shot a “Power Breakfast.” Of course he’s German and the BK rules may be different over there.
Aww, shucks. I missed the photo credit. I had taken comfort in the notion that two NCJ staffers had risked their health eating artery clogging processed food in the name of new media journalism.
After reading Moe’s caption, I have to wonder, what are chili cheese balls?
My educated guess says chili cheese balls are what we call poppers, breaded peppers stuffed with cheeze and deep-fried. (One of my guilty pleasire, available at a couple of local bars and at Safeway.)
And for what it’s worth, I’ve been to BK a few times — their breakfast crois-sandwich (or whatever they call it) is a standard for road trips. And when it comes to a quick (and cheap) burger, I prefer their flame-broiled version over McD’s.
For on-the-road, I have to go with Subway or the Safeway deli or another grocery deli. Safeway doesn’t have a 3-story sign visible from the freeway, but the stores are present in half the towns where fast food restaurants congregate.
As for McD vs. BK, I go with a plain McD hamburger sans meat. Take the hamburger, toss the meat, and just eat the bun with pickle to be transported back to 1979 for a good 30 seconds. (I ate that clown meat back in 1979, but in 2008 I’m satisfied by just the bun infused with the meat juices.)
we all need to let everyone willing to take the steps that fit thier lifestyles. enough of the vegan zombie hordes, that diet throws people way off balance, suspected form of bipolar disorder. man has sharp teeth for tearing meat, ever hear a rabbit get skinned?
If people are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
don’t you mean “conscious” not “conscience”?
Last time I looked, rabbits, cows, deer, buffalo, and elk were made of meat and don’t eat animals. Some really bright person should tell them what they are supposed to eat.
Non-native,
You’re right about the word choice in the press release.
When it comes to diet choice, it can be like talking religion (and conscience). That said, the animals you list are herbivores; their systems just work that way.
For better or worse, humans are omnivorous, which means we can and will eat just about anything.
I like Michael Pollan’s diet advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”