Ten in Ten Dietlog

Local Resilience

Lynn Shwadchuck — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:12:22 +0000

Craig’s fired up about our community of friends here, about ways we’re cooperating, sharing, trading, teaching, and enjoying each other. So he’ll be posting here now and then.

Lynn

George Monbiot tries to put words in Obama’s mouth

Lynn Shwadchuck — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:29:06 +0000

George Monbiot’s column today is a speech he’s written for Obama at Copenhagen. Sigh.

Someone named Sue said:

“There are too many political favours to return, too many powerful interests to appease.” George Monbiot

George answers his own question “can he do it?”

Is our demand and overconsumption responsible for climate change: polluted water, air and land?

“In terms of immediacy of action…reducing meat consumption clearly is the most attractive opportunity.”
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, UN Chair on Climate Change

Defensiveness and clinging to old, bad habits is not going to help our environment.

Farmed livestock contributes 40% more to climate change than entire transport (cars, trains, ships, planes, trucks) according to a recent UN study.

Are we really doing everything we can or are we just content to complain and wait for others to rescue us?

98% of soy crops and 756 million tons of grain and corn per year are fed to farmed animals.

If you really want to do your part and not just complain, put down the cheeseburger.

I said:

Sue, you said it! I’ve been reading this month’s “Notebook” in Harpers, which talks about how to get manufacturing back in the U.S. Same issue. It’s people mindlessly stuffing their houses with the cheapest junk they can find and their faces with the easiest food. There could be a revolution of non-consumption and mindful eating. It has to be socially contagious. It won’t begin with a speech from a Wall Street supported politician. Westerners could begin by seeing Christmas shopping as obscene. I’m making noise with my site about scaling back one’s diet.

So, people, let’s do it!

Lynn

Magic! (?)

Lynn Shwadchuck — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:50:14 +0000

I don’t consider myself a blogger, since my main thing is a ‘static site’, www.10in10Diet.com. This blog is a workaround because my site is on Yola, whose blog function sucks and it doesn’t have a comment function at all. So, in the past day or so I happened to be inspired to post a couple of things here and suddendy I’m getting hits on the blog from alphainventions.com

It’s been around for a year or two and bloggers mostly seem happy that it brings readers to them. Some people with sort of private blogs are quite miffed, though.

Anyway, I don’t really have a clear idea who might be inspired to try out the diet on my site, so who am I to turn down the opportunity to have my blog show up on AI? The coder who built it said to post on your blog a link to AI, so here I am. Sorry if you’re following me – this is way off topic!

Lynn

Food for the poor

Lynn Shwadchuck — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:57:12 +0000

I’ve been reading the comments under this idyllic photo/words essay “And the Pursuit of Happiness” in the New York Times by children’s book illustrator Maira Kalman.

This comment really struck me:

254. A few weeks ago, as I waited in the quick checkout line at a grocery store, I noticed a young woman ahead of me in line with her two small children. Their clothes were tattered and they all looked tired. Her basket only contained a bag of dried blackeye peas and slow-cooking regular oats – reasonably healthy choices. When she tried to use her WIC stamps card, WIC wouldn’t cover these purchases (it doesn’t do regular oats, wouldn’t do 10 oz bags of beans only 16 oz bags which this store didn’t carry). So instead, at the cashier’s suggestion, she bought a jar of Jif peanut butter and sugar-flavored instant oatmeal packets.
Until we as a society address these issues, elitist promotion of slow food and high priced organic produce makes me ill.

Copenhagen Nutshell

Lynn Shwadchuck — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:32:26 +0000

From Tenney Naumer’s blog, Climate Change the Next Generation

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Plans for Copenhagen by Leon Simons, Dutch Country Coordinator of the Global Youth Panel

Hello everyone,

My name is Leon Simons, I just became the Dutch Country Coordinator of the Global Youth Panel. I wrote the following a few days ago and would like your opinions about it.:

According to Yvo de Boer, (executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)): the four essentials calling for an international agreement in Copenhagen are:

1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?

2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?

3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?

4. How is that money going to be managed?

“If Copenhagen can deliver on those four points I’d be happy,” says Yvo de Boer.
http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=876

According to me (Leon Simons — I have studied climate change by myself for over three years), this makes no sense at all in the real world, and Copenhagen should focus on these four essentials:

1. CO2 is now 38% higher as it has been in the last 2.1 million years (1) and modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years (2). 15 million years ago the world was 3 to 6 °C warmer and the sea-level 20 to 40 meters higher.

2. Aerosols are at least as important for the global climate as greenhouse gases are. Aerosols cause a cooling effect which might be as big as 2 °C (3) and thereby hide some of the warming effect of human made greenhouse gases.

3. The Arctic minimum sea-ice extend in September 2007 was 20% smaller than the all time low measurement in 2005. The mean IPCC 2007 models predicted this to happen only in 2040(4).

A sea-ice free arctic sounds nice to a lot of people when it comes to availability of new passages and resources. On the contrary it could lead to runaway global warming and sea level rise trough feedback mechanisms like decline in albedo, new sources of greenhouse gases and aerosols (melting permafrost, open ocean and methane hydrates) and warming and expanding sea water(5). Not to mention the collapse of the Greenland ice cap because of enhanced calving from sea water and rainfall(6).

4.Because of these threats, which the policy makers do not seem to realize or understand, there are gigantic measurements needed to keep the planet in its current, highly productive state. The scientific community is proposing things like: burying char in agricultural soils to raise productivity of the land and reduce the carbon dioxide in the air(7), man made output of aerosols in the stratosphere to keep the planet cool(8), building a dam between Alaska and Siberia to reduce the flow from warm water into the arctic and keep the sea ice from melting(9) and many more.

Fossil CO2 emissions increased by 29% since 2000(10), while the natural carbon sinks are weakening(11).

Campaigning for a small emission reduction in a far away future will not lead to anything good.

Thank you.

(1) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618143950.htm
(2) http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/10/joseph-romm-co2-levels-havent-been-this.html
(3) www.unep.org/pdf/ABCSummar

yFinal.pdf
(4) http://www.damocles-eu.org/artman/uploads/2007-record-low_sea-ice-event.pdf
(5) http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/global-warming-threatens-arctic-feedback-loops-5386/
(6) http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/research/39917
(7) http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/updates/issues/may-2007/soils-offer-new-hope/
(8) http://www.cogci.dk/news/Crutzen_albedo%20enhancement_sulfur%20injections.pdf
(9) http://www.cleverclimate.org/art/uploads/file/NORTH_POLE_RESCUE_PLAN_full_press_release_6521_characters_%E2%80%A6.pdf
(10) http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=62887&CultureCode=en
(11) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090317094729.htm
Posted by Tenney Naumer at 1:52 PM
Labels: Copenhagen

Contentment

Lynn Shwadchuck — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:25:24 +0000

My friend Dekyi Lee Oldershaw is doing a series for the newspaper the Hamilton Spectator on the 16 Guidlelines for Life. She visited recently and looked around my little house in the bush, deciding I’d be a good subject for the segment on contentment. It makes me a bit nervous because I feel incredibly lucky and can’t help but think that anyone would be over the moon if they had my life. But I do know that several friends who know me well would absolutely hate it here. It’s all relative, subjective, and dependent on context. Anyway, if contentment is wanting what you have rather than wanting what you don’t have, then I’m content.

The video from the online version of the series includes two interview clips of me. My son said “The context comes from the second clip, which makes it totally clear how you actually live, because in the first clip you COULD assume anything and you COULD say ‘oh rough life you’ve got’ (which I jokingly implied, but obviously I know how you live and it’s privileged only in the sense that you are not starving in Africa), but you can’t say that when it’s clear that you’re living modestly and totally exemplifying the point of the video.” My son also said, “It’s not like you’re going “boo hoo it costs too much to fuel my yacht”.

Sorry, the Spec took the set of videos off their site. (August 16 2010)

Lynn

A visit by the Heart Shrine Relic Tour

Lynn Shwadchuck — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:13:52 +0000

What a surprise! Dekyi Lee Oldershaw phoned from down the road to say she was passing by on her way from Ottawa to Burlington with a van full of the display. So I had the good fortune to have the case containing the relics of 39 teachers, including the Buddha, in my meditation room for a few hours. I’ve attended events on the tour twice before, but having them arrive here – what a blessing! Dekyi Lee interviewed me on one of the 16 Guidelines for Life for the Hamilton Spectator’s series, “Leading by Example”. She chose contentment after wandering around outside with her little camera for awhile. I guess she figured she’d be pretty content if she lived here.

Lynn

Foraged Apples

Lynn Shwadchuck — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:21:30 +0000

Our next-door neighbour gave us directions to an apple tree up in his 130 acre property. After wandering far afield (because I didn’t listen well enough) we eventually found the tree at about five o’clock, which is close to sunset this time of year. Today he called to ask if we got enough apples and to describe some lovely photos he caught yesterday. He had hung his motion-detector camera in a tree about 200-300 yards up the trail from the apple tree and about a half hour before we reached the tree the camera recorded a huge glossy bear beautifully backlit by the setting sun. Whew. Update on the applesauce to follow.

Lynn

Perfect Poached Eggs

Lynn Shwadchuck — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:53:56 +0000

If you’re as lucky as we are and have access to fresh eggs from a neighbour, then you can do them full honours by poaching them gently to allow them to show off their perky firmness. I recall being taught in Grade Nine Home Ec that you can tell an egg is fresh if when you crack it into a pan the yolk stands right up tall and the white is very thick, then the second layer of white is thinner – three levels. In the movie Julie and Julia our blogging girl makes quite a production of eating her first egg – poached. I didn’t look up her instructions. I just decided to avoid boiling motion in the water. I boil water in a kettle, then pour it into a small pot and turn the heat on medium. Then I crack the egg into a small glass dish and lower the dish on its side into the water letting the egg slip out. You can do this with multiple eggs and they won’t fog up the water with a mess of wispy whites. Watch the eggs closely while you make toast. Take them out with a slotted spoon. You can test them for perfect softness and lower them back in if need be.

Our new egg lady has 20 hens who run around outside the barn. She said she prefers the reddish-brown and black chickens who produce brown eggs because they’re better with her young children than the white ones are. Isn’t that nice?

Lynn

For Diabetics

Lynn Shwadchuck — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:33:54 +0000

I’m no nutritionist, but I detect that diabetics must be feeling inundated with pressure from various food interest groups. I think my simple meal plan would be great for diabetics who don’t know where to start in cooking from scratch with whole foods. My therapist friend who teaches mindfulness-based stress reduction to diabetics points out that changing eating habits is a huge obstacle for lots of folks. It’s easy to conclude that it’s just impossible, if a plan is too complicated or limiting. Excluding every molecule of egg and dairy makes food quite a chore for people used to eating mostly convenience foods purely for pleasure. My plan excludes meat and doesn’t lean on dairy or eggs for its protein. It’s tasty and cheap, too.