Jonathan Safran Foer is in town tonight to talk about his new book Eating Animals. Part of the case he makes against consumers participating in the factory-farm industry is environmental: He details many of the egregious effects of wide-scale animal agriculture with which Earth to Philly readers will be all too familiar.

Another part of the case, though, is an ethical one - that what is happening in our names (and by way of our funding) on factory farms and conglomerate slaughterhouses is so commonly, relentlessly cruel that it's a violation of the values we all really believe in. He goes so far as to say these practices should be illegal.

The two concepts, pollution and cruelty, are not as distinct as they may seem: Foer agrees that the general population is now beginning to awaken to how badly animals are being abused in a way that mirrors how people eventually came to realize climate change and environmentalism were not just the wacky fringe concerns of a handful of crackpots. And he believes we might see factory farming "rejected" in a major way within the next ten years.

These are some of the topics we discuss in this audio interview (MP3, 7 MB) from last Thursday.

We’ve known forever that cigarette smoking is deadly.  But so are the butts that smokers toss aside after their last puff, claim researchers from San Diego State University, the University of California-San Francisco and consulting groups Oxford Outcomes and the Varda Group.

That’s why the team is leading an effort to have the butts considered toxic waste.

The researchers will present their findings today at the 137th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, right here at the Philadelphia Marriott.

According to SDSU public health professor Rick Gersberg, cigarette butts allowed to soak in both fresh and salt water kill half the exposed fish in a standardized hazard assessment at a concentration of about one butt per liter. Further research is planned to identify the organic and inorganic chemicals in the cigarette butt that are lethal to fish and may be identified in natural environments.

The research is part of the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project funded by the California Tobacco Related Disease Research Program of the University of California.

According to a press release from SDSU, project participants are committed to eliminating toxic cigarette butt waste from the environment using science, awareness raising and policy interventions at local, state and national levels.

The big, bad tobacco industry is not amused, notes the release, because an alliance among environmental and tobacco control groups would demand that the industry take responsibility for discarded cigarette butts.

Regulatory policies that may help reduce cigarette-butt waste, the research suggests, might include levying litter fees on tobacco products, strengthening the enforcement of existing penalties for illegally disposing of cigarette butts and possibly bringing lawsuits against the industry to recover costs to communities of cigarette butt blight and butt cleanups.

The research will be presented today from 12:30-2pm in Marriott’s Grand Ballroom, Salon B. Immediately following, the research team will hold a press conference from 2:30-3:30pm in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Room 301.

Read our lead editorial from today musing on how the Phillies' win - and potential loss - on Tuesday might have influenced SEPTA's strike timing.

"We agreed not to strike during the World Series. We took people to the game because we are professionals. Now it's time to reward us."

And for everybody scrambling to get somewhere, some things to remember...

A TRANSIT STRIKE anywhere can be devastating. But in a city known for its kind, compassionate, and helpful people . . .

Oh, wait. Wrong city. We're the ones who boo Santa.

 Read the rest here.

UPDATE 11/05: Is it time for binding arbitration?

It's completely a coincidence in terms of timing, but today's news of a surprise, late-night SEPTA strike was accompanied in our pages by word that Philadelphia may soon be getting a serious fleet of Pedicabs, which are already a fixture in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. If you were one of the many people trying to shoehorn yourself onto a Regional Rail train today - or if you weren't even that lucky - you may have wished you could jump on the back of one of these oversized trikes and be whisked away.

OK, maybe only 1.3% of you were thinking along those lines. But there are other reasons to take a good look at the phenomenon also known as "cycle rickshaws" besides save-the-planet rationales.

Among others, two brothers tell of being forced into exile by L&I...

The lack of pedicab regulation in the city had been a problem for local companies and for operators in other cities that wanted to set up shop here.

Ben and Tom Dambman co-own Chariots of Philly, a pedicab company that operated in Manayunk from 2003 until 2005.

When the brothers tried to expand into other parts of Philadelphia, the Department of Licenses and Inspections ordered them to cease operations until pedicab regulation was in place.

For the last three summers, they operated their business in Avalon, N.J.

"We want to work exclusively in Philadelphia - this is our home, and this is where we want to live and work," said Tom Dambman.

Seems like a good idea to let them work at home. But could pedicabs make a difference in city traffic? Ecologically we'd like to say yes. But how would traffic change if we started to see more than one or two pedicabs?

Despite their common eco-friendly underpinnings, pedicabs would seem unlikely to challenge the habits of public-transportation riders, what with their relatively high price. The most obvious industry that might logically fear the rise of pedicabs is that of carriage horses. The colorful, sometimes inaccurate Colonial tour guides compete as "novelty" transportation, have certain liabilities that pedicabs don't, and offer against that a sense of history - an Old City tradition dating back a full 33 years.

But for now, anyway, the costumes and clackety-clop are the draw right around Independence Hall, and if New York is any model, pedicabs won't suddenly knock that out. Outside of Manayunk, one could imagine pedicabs competing with taxicabs in and around that whole Penn's Landing / Society Hill / Independence Mall area, or perhaps University City, where quickly and safely navigating among often unpredictable crowds on both walkways and streets is called for - but then again, cities sometimes ban pedicabs in their most congested areas. A case could also be made for pedicabs concentrating in the parkway / Art Museum area. Hey, if it's good enough for the Segways...

At any rate, the regulation, once in practice, will tell the tale. How will licensed, city-certified pedicabs be identified? Will pedicabs be restricted to bike lanes on roads that have them? What non-car areas would they be permitted to serve? What kind of safety and/or maintenance rules will be in place to prevent the occasional fatal accident?

Council should look at these questions carefully, but now is the time to start looking and answering questions. Let's hope sometime soon the kinks get worked out and Philadelphia pedicabs can pedal us toward "Greenest City in America."

Michelle Obama poses for a photo at the White House garden harvest. (via Huffington Post)

Here are some new developments in stories you may have read about previously here at Earth to Philly - each one not worth a standalone post of its own, perhaps, but certainly worth keeping track of.

You'll recall that when the idea of a White House garden was proposed, at first jokingly it seemed, Earth to Philly was one of the biggest cheerleaders. Well, the garden was planted and worked throughout the summer and now has been harvested with the help of local students. As the Huffington Post reported, Michelle Obama "asked the students how much they thought it cost to plant the garden. They guessed $300, $800, $1000 and $6000 as Michelle acted as auctioneer. She then revealed the answer: 'Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land..... It [cost] about $180.'" Wow, that's some math we can all get behind!

More recently, we told you about a conference on cohousing, a system where neighbors plan their own neighborhoods around ideals of sustainability and walkability. That latter quality is now being quantified in an interactive tool from Philly's own Avencia. Their Walkshed scores neighborhoods based on your priorities for how close different amenities are - and closeness is in terms of actual walking distance, rather than "as the crow flies." Your walkability score is "based on the actual walking distance to each amenity, accounting for street connectivity and barriers such as highways and rivers."

The site explains how the score is weighted by personal preference:

Walkability means different things to different people. The empty nesters in Center City may enjoy a wide variety of restaurants. Families in Mount Airy might prefer easy access to Fairmount Park. Young professionals in Manayunk may like the nightlife of Main Street. All of these people love and value walkability, but they all have different preferences that shape it.

Using Avencia’s DecisionTree calculation engine, Walkshed is able to dynamically account for each person’s preferences by giving relative weights to each factor before combining the data.

And even more recently, we tipped you to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute stating that the greenhouse-gas contribution of livestock had been dramatically undercounted. A separate study a couple days ago by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studieshas lent credence to that claim in its finding that methane, famously produced by one end of a cow, has been underestimated in the proportion of global warming it causes.

In the journal Science, a team led by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York finds that chemical interactions between greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide cause more global warming than previously estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other efforts.

"The total amount of warming doesn't change, just the balance of gasses behind it," Shindell says.
Methane played a bigger role than expected, suggesting that climate treaties such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol need to consider it more carefully, the study says.

Animal agriculture is, of course, not the only anthropogenic source of methane, but it's a big one, and given its many other envioronmental and social liabilities (including yet another mysteriously late beef recall for E.Coli that's now killing people) it's something we might "consider more carefully" in general.

Image from the Worldwatch report "Livestock and Climate Change."

When the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization released its blockbuster report Livestock's Long Shadow in November of 2006, the authors cautioned that in some cases they were using more conservative figures than probably necessary to calculate animal agriculture's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Even so they generated the notable stat, which we've quoted here, that animals raised for food generate more greenhouse gases than all of human transportation, i.e. 18% of total emissions versus 14% for trains, planes and automobiles.

Yesterday the Worldwatch Institute released the findings of Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, who scoured the 2006 FAO report to identify and quantify the undercounted factors and areas, and whose report puts it bluntly: Livestock now accounts for at least 51% of greenhouse gas emissions. The raising of animals for food is a bigger threat to the planet than every other factor put together. This is huge.

At the opening of their article (from the November/December issue of World Watch), the authors explain that

[T]he life cycle and supply chain of domesticated animals raised for food have been vastly underestimated as a source of GHGs, and in fact account for at least half of all human-caused GHGs. If this argument is right, it implies that replacing livestock products with better alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change. In fact, this approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations—and thus on the rate the climate is warming—than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Later, they go into more detail on why the animal-agriculture sector is not just a bigger player, but an easier one to change quickly:

[R]enewable-energy infrastructure has both long and complex product-development cycles and capital-intensive requirements. Converting vehicle fleets and power plants is forecast to cost trillions of dollars, and to require political will and consensus that do not appear close at hand. Even if money and politics were up to the task, such solutions are expected to take more than a decade to implement fully, by which time the tipping point may long since have been passed for irreversible climate disruption.

Goodland and Anhang all but declare that there should be a shift of focus at the upcoming Copenhagen talks

Action to replace livestock products not only can achieve quick reductions in atmospheric GHGs, but can also reverse the ongoing world food and water crises. Were the recommendations described below followed, at least a 25-percent reduction in livestock products worldwide could be achieved between now and 2017, the end of the commitment period to be discussed at the United Nations’ climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. This would yield at minimum a 12.5-percent reduction in global anthropogenic GHGs emissions,which by itself would be almost asmuch reduction as is generally expected to be negotiated in Copenhagen

And in a supplemental FAQ they address the wishful thinking that maybe we can all just eliminate beef and everything will be fine...

There is little variability between types of livestock when it comes to livestock respiration, land used to grow feed, and most of the other factors discussed in this article, which are responsible for most of the GHGs attributable to livestock products generally.  The main factors involving significant variability are enteric fermentation, grazing, and amount of feed required to produce beef and dairy products.  However, the difference that these factors make in total GHGs attributable to beef and dairy products vs. other livestock products is relatively insignificant.  Therefore, eating chicken instead of beef (for example) would not result in any appreciable slowing of climate change.

With this newly-crunched data, the authors point out that it's now clear that

the dramatic expansion of the livestock sector in recent decades may imperil humanity, and that there may be no way to manage the climate risk of either the food industry or the world at large other than by replacing livestock products with better alternatives. 

»  More Worldwatch bombshell: #1 threat to planet: Meat

In the late-period Talking Heads song "Nothing but Flowers" David Byrne sings ruefully about an urban/suburban landscape that has, for one reason or another, returned to the wild, the joke being that it's a positive development but the singer only sees it as an inconvenience.

Well, Philly is certainly nowhere near that scenario, but there are promising initiatives to make parts of our area less concrete-based and more nature-based - in a word, "greener."

As reported in yesterday's Daily News, the Coalition for Philadelphia's Riverfronts has just launched a campaign urging City Council to createa greenway that would extend from the east bank of the Schuylkill down to the Delaware (near the airport), then north along the PA side of the Delaware. This would connect existing trails along both rivers and create additional multiuse trails.

And, extending that trail concept out into greater Pennsylvania, tomorrow the Appalachian Mountain Club will have a celebration at noon down at the Walnut Street Bridge to launch the PA Highlands Regional Recreation Map & Guide along the Schuylkill River Trail & Banks. You'll be able to get a free copy of the PA Highlands Map and check out the Hike the Highlands hiking cards we mentioned here.

The map unveiling also includes a workshop on "How To's for Outdoor Exploration including how to 'Leave No Trace.'" Speakers include Park and Recreation Commissioner Michael DiBerardinis. Current forecast is 63 degrees and sunny, so it should be a fun chance - maybe one of the last this year - to get outdoors in the city and learn more about the great outdoors.

Some people made a big deal out of it, but we here at Earth to Philly nothing against President Obama making a trip to Copenhagen to boost Chicago's Olympic bid (and though the city was knocked out in the first round, Rio's continental breakthrough was something of an homage to "Yes We Can"). It's apparent, though, that having done so increases the pressure on him to attend the Climate Change talks in that same city come December.

While politicians dither about which country should make the first or biggest move in cutting down greenhouse-gas emissions, the global indicators continue to worsen. The latest alarm bell is in the form of a study indicating that the Arctic Ocean is turning progressively acidic from carbon dioxide, and 10% of it will be "corrosively acidic" in less than ten years.

As reported by the UK's The Guardian over the weekend, professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, told an international oceanography conference last week: "We knew that the seas were getting more acidic and this would disrupt the ability of shellfish – like mussels – to grow their shells. But now we realise the situation is much worse. The water will become so acidic it will actually dissolve the shells of living shellfish."

Gattuso continued: "Over the whole planet, there will be a threefold increase in the average acidity of the oceans, which is unprecedented during the past 20 million years. That level of acidification will cause immense damage to the ecosystem and the food chain, particularly in the Arctic," he added, citing the 10% acidity by 2018, rising to 100% by the end of the century.

This is pretty strong stuff, and one hopes the president, as well as heads of other nations, are paying attention. "There is only one way to stop the devastation the oceans are now facing," says Gattuso, "and that is to limit carbon-dioxide emissions as a matter of urgency."

Don't miss this opportunity, Mr. President. The IOC may have voted already, but you can still go for the gold.

Here it is World Vegetarian Day, and the Daily News is celebrating in typically contrarian fashion, singing the praises of a sausage factory and explaining how to get your kids to eat things like pork, octopus, bear meat and lasagna - you know, the things kids really need to be eating and don't get enough of.

More seriously, all health authorities agree that what American kids, and adults as well, need to be eating more of is fresh fruits and vegetables. A new CDC report found our national average is under 10% of teens getting the recommended servings daily (we are meeting our daily recommendation for lasagna, however).According to this list, Pennsylvania is on the high end of the curve, topping 15% of teens adequately nourished.

This isn't all that surprising, as a report a few years back by the General Accounting Office found that the USDA spent less than 5 percent of its food-promotion budget on fruits and vegetables, despite these foods comprising 33 percent of the Food Guide Pyramid - which the GAO also suggested be updated "to better communicate the need for a variety of produce, especially deeply colored fruits and vegetables, to fight chronic diseases." Funding of meat and dairy promotion, meanwhile, was plentiful.

Today, though, saw a small step in a very positive direction for government nutrition programs, as the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program, which provides food vouchers to those who need extra help getting good food, has been significantly revised for the first time since its inception in the 1970s. For too long a dumping ground for commodity foods the government's trying to get rid of (in order to keep prices stable), the WIC program will now for the first time fund fresh fruits and vegetables.

This is a welcome move, even if it doesn't encourage anyone to go vegetarian, because it means millions of women and children will have a much better chance at meeting real nutrition needs. But given this auspicious occasion, it's worth pointing out (as some bloggers have) that there are clear, unassailable reasons to reduce or eliminate meat (and dairy) - especially if you're trying to live sustainably.

The reasons are clear enough that the Baltimore School District just announced it will go meatless once a week as part of the "Meatless Mondays" program, which "aims to get Americans to cut out steaks and pork chops on one day a week as a way of trimming the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the livestock industry and as a way of supporting locally grown foods."

According to this report from 6abc.com in Baltimore, the schools' staff "have been working with local farmers to provide fresh produce, and with its distributors to find local suppliers. the City Schools also introduced a teaching farm, Great Kids Farm, and is developing the resources to establish a garden at each of its more than 200 schools."

In addition to giving kids a better shot at good health from nurtitious food choices, this citywide move seems like a pretty significant step on the way to, dare I say it, "Greenest City in America." Too bad Philadelphia hasn't taken it... yet.