The Vegan Cookie Analogy

It is the first blog of the semester, and yet I sit here feeling somewhat dissatisfied as I stare at the computer screen. The source of my dissatisfaction is the $3 vegan cookie that a recently-turned vegan friend of mine seduced me into purchasing by claiming it was "the best cookie she had ever had." It certainly looked delicious - sitting there on the shelf, plump and chocolately. But now I have that weird post-vegan dessert feeling sitting in my mouth - that bitter, baking soda taste. And I reflect that, however much we want them to be, vegan cookies are never as tasty as non-vegan cookies. They are simply too good for us to also be delicious.


(Logo of the failed vegan cookie).

What does this story have to do with the blog? Well, what this blog aims to do is treat environmental and energy news sort of like a vegan cookie. We take a bite, we want to try new, healthy options, but then we are justifiably critical when they taste funny. And we don't ignore the funny taste just because vegan cookies are PC, or our friends like them, or what have you. Here on this blog, one senior Science in Society major (me) tries to take an honest bite out of environmental and energy news.

The other thing that I will try to do is deal with the fact that I will be graduating in a year (gasp of horror) - and when I graduate I want to have a job lined up for me already. The Career Resource Center has informed me that this will take an extra 10 hours of my time per week, since "job searching is a full time job." Yeah right, like I have an extra 10 hours to spare in between my classes, writing a thesis, and working 15 hours a week. Oh yeah, and enjoying my senior year, like in all the movies where no one seems to ever go to class. Anyways, I have some ideas about this career search already - and I will share them with you here. I also plan to research internships, fellowships and other opportunities within the energy and utilities/environment sector - and to share the fruits of my labor with you. I am going to blog twice a week this semester - so look forward to one news-oriented blog and another career-oriented one.

Now that all that information is out of the way: here are two small tidbits of environmental news that I picked up. The first quote is from a Reuters article, written about a new report on global warming released by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Included in the report was this little analogy, which of course made headlines:

Check out the full story at:


""The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition ... that if the emission of greenhouse gases ... is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic -- on the level of nuclear war," the IISS report said."

Ummmm. Climate change is pretty daunting, a challenge for all of humanity to deal with - but comparable to a nuclear war? Frankly, this seems insane to me. A nuclear war would immediately kill thousands-hundreds of thousands of people depending how many bombs were implemented (war implies more than 2). Climate change on the other hand has much slower effects which will probably negatively effect the world economy, may cause water shortages and more severe storms - but the effects happen slowly enough that there is room for adaptation - people can give up their coastal properties over time as insurance rates increase, or we can start growing new kinds of heat-adapted crop plants. Attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people directly to global warming is unwarranted based on the estimates of current scientific models.

The report also said that by 2100, the crop yields of 65 countries will loose 15% of their agricultural output. Where do I begin with the problems I have with this statement. How about:
a) What countries are they talking about, because many countries may be
naturally moving away from an agrarian based society.
b) World wide, food production has been increasing since the advent of
monoculture and industrialized agriculture (which has its own problems)
and shows no signs of stopping. Increased drought and temperatures
in some areas would shift crop production, but I feel that GM crops
and the opening up of new, northern farmland would make up for the
difference in all but the very severe conditions. The real problem
is not the amount of food we have, but the fact that FOOD SECURITY -
the ability of people, especially in developing nations - to reliably
get food - is projected (by some) to decrease. In my opinion, this
again is not really the fault of global warming in itself, but of
the our failure as a world to address the issue. That being said, hunger
rates in most countries are expected to decrease in the future. (1)

People, climate change is not a dump-truck where we can conglomerate all of the world's problems and attribute them to fossil fuel burning. Many of the most severe problems that MAY result from climate change will be more severely exacerbated by things unrelated to the weather - like poor distribution of medicine and food, high drug prices, hatred, inefficient governments, terrorism, ignorance ect.

Hope that gave some non-vegan food for thought.


(1) No, I did not just make that information up - I found it in a report called "The Food Policy Report" issued by the International Food Policy Research Institute" and written by Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, and Mark W. Rosegrant. You can find it online at: