Profile of Yvon Chouinard

Monbiot after reading Simon Fairlie's upcoming booking Meat: A Benign Extravagance.

"As with oil, it’s possible to envisage ‘peak food’ (the point of maximum production, followed by decline), ‘peak phosphorus’, i.e. the high point in the use of phosphate fertiliser (one estimate puts it at 2035), and, as the FAO suggests in its diplomatic way, ‘peak land’: the point at which the total area of the world’s most productive land begins to diminish (soil exhaustion, climate change) and marginal land comes up for reassessment."

"The inadequacy of the current regulatory system contributes greatly to the atmosphere of uncertainty. The Toxic Substances Control Act, passed in 1976, does not require manufacturers to show that chemicals used in their products are safe before they go on the market; rather, the responsibility is placed on federal agencies, as well as on researchers in universities outside the government. The burden of proof is so onerous that bans on toxic chemicals can take years to achieve, and the government is often constrained from sharing information on specific products with the public, because manufacturers claim that such information is confidential."

"Virtual water (also known as embedded water, embodied water, or hidden water) refers, in the context of trade, to the water used in the production of a good or service."

Justin Rowlatt "explores the philosophical roots of a way of thinking that developed decades before global warming was an issue. He also examines some of the ideological baggage that environmentalists have brought to the climate change debate, from anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism to a suspicion about technology and a preference for natural solutions." Transcript at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_104.txt

One interesting point is the reducing water consumption is only half the story. Gary Woodard, at the Sahra Center, talks about the "water-energy nexus": "the idea that it takes water to produce energy, and energy to take advantage of water. That is, supplies of water and power are interdependent".