Executive Director Mia MacDonald has joined the Board of Directors of Green Belt Movement International-North America. Founded in 1977 by Nobel Peace Laureate and Brighter Green colleague, Wangari Maathai, the Green Belt Movement (GBM) promotes a bottom-up, holistic approach to development and environmental conservation.

The piece by Mia MacDonald, originally published in "Sanctuary," the newsletter of Farm Sanctuary, makes clear the connection between animal agriculture and environmental degradation, and spotlights city-level "green food" resolutions.

Presentations from Brighter Green and the Green Belt Movement's Copenhagen side event are now available. Click to view PDFs from Brighter Green's Mia MacDonald, Dupoto Forest and Wildlife Association's Samwel Naikada and The Green Belt Movement's Fredrick Njau. Interested in more? Here's Mia's blog on the side event.

Richard Greene, host and producer of a daily show on Air America, interviewed Mia MacDonald last night at the Klimaforum about "Meat World: China" and Brighter Green's work on the globalization of industrial animal agriculture.

Brighter Green's screening of Meat World: China took place last night at the Klimaforum in Copenhagen. The turn out was great, with the venue filled to capacity, and a lively discussion taking place afterwards. Read more about the event in Mia MacDonald's blog.

Citing parts of Samuel Naikada's presentation at the "side event" co-sponsored by the Green Belt Movement and Brighter Green on December 11 at the Copenhagen climate summit, the COP 15 Post (a daily paper on the summit proceedings in English) has published an article on Wangari Maathai, and climate change in Kenya.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development's Reporting Services has picked up on Brighter Green's and the Green Belt Movement's side event on Livelihoods, Forests, Livestock and Climate, at the Copenhagen climate conference. Read the full article here.

In addition to posting here, Brighter Green's Executive Director Mia MacDonald is also blogging from the Copenhagen climate talks for Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement. Read her blogs here.

Brighter Green has posted three new draft summaries (PDF)—of Ethiopia, Brazil, and India—of its forthcoming papers on the challenges to public health, environmental conservation, and animal welfare faced by these countries as they attempt to increase their production of meat and dairy.

Fall is winding down, and Brighter Green is getting ready for the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, beginning on December 7th and running for two weeks. Executive Director Mia MacDonald will be at the climate summit in Copenhagen, beginning on December 10th. Brighter Green was approved to attend as an "observer organization" (UN speak for NGO attendees). Read on to learn about our what we're planning for Copenhagen and our current projects.

Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling new book Eating Animals cites as a reference Brighter Green's policy paper "Skillful Means".

Brighter Green Research Associate Justine Simon is back from the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, and her presentation on the climate impacts of our diets - particularly in terms of meat and dairy consumption - is now available in PDF form.

Brighter Green Associate Stella Zhou's presentation from the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival is now available in PDF form. At the conference, Stella discussed China's embrace of factory farming and the missing role of farm animals in present-day public health discussions.

Stella Zhou was interviewed by the International Herald Tribune about her experiences in China for an article on meat consumption and its impact on climate change.

Mia MacDonald, Executive Director of Brighter Green, describes the effects of intensive animal agriculture on climate change and fossil fuel use in a video of a powerpoint lecture at New York University, convened during Climate Week NYC, September 25, 2009.

Mergers and acquisitions in the global fertilizer industry are on the rise, even as those among steel companies are slowing. Why? And why does it matter? According to Reuters, China's demand for meat will continue to grow, even as its demand for steel levels off. "The revolution of the stomach moves at a slower pace," the author informs us, adding that merger activity among fertilizer giants went "hog wild." Perhaps not the most original metaphor, but the point is made. China is the world's largest consumer of potash, a form of potassium that's used principally for fertilizer, along with animal feed. Predicting the future in a pile of potash? Focus on feed -- and the inputs to produce it. "As long as China's taste for meat increases," the article concludes, "fertilizer companies should continue to eat one another up." The absent referent? The planet, being eaten up, too.

As climate skeptics become more heavily outnumbered, concerned citizens are trading in their SUVs for hybrid cars, exchanging incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, and sorting their garbage into separate piles for recycling, compost, and waste. However, if you ask the average omnivore to give up meat for the environment, you should be prepared for a strong reaction. Human beings are very attached to their meat habits; as Americans, most of us eat meat every day, some with every meal—we consume an average of 200 pounds of meat, fish, and poultry per person every year!

So, why is vegetarianism such an unwilling sacrifice for most people? We don’t need meat to live or be healthy; I’ve abstained from meat for 10 years and I’m still standing. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, about one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to the production and consumption of livestock, a larger portion than the entire transportation industry. Many vegetarians base their dietary practices on personal beliefs, ethics, and health reasons; now, herbivores may use ecological considerations to support their choices.

Pericope (pronounced /pəˈrɪkəpi/) (Greek περικοπή, "a cutting-out") in rhetoric is a set of verses that forms one coherent unit or thought, thus forming a short passage suitable for public reading from a text....

Denmark has a year-round pig population of about 13 million, more than two pigs for every Dane and the highest pig density in the world, according to a report co-published by Friends of the Earth Denmark. Denmark's pigs, almost all consigned to factory farms, are fattened on soy imported from Argentina (where deforestation has accelerated as has the "soyanization" of Argentinean agriculture) plus home-grown corn. Welfare standards are low, giving Danish pork a price advantage in the marketplace, and export levels are high. Pork comprises half of all Denmark's agricultural exports. I didn't spot any live pig at the recent Copenhagen climate talks.

Floating, whether on water or air, sounds pretty appealing, doesn't it? But floating as a way for whole species to migrate sounds pretty far-fetched. Nonetheless, that's the conclusion of new research on why Madagascar, the island nation off the east coast of the African continent, has such a range of unique mammal species, all of them on the small side, like lemurs, those petite primates with the long noses and tails. Scientists now think that lemurs and other small mammals "rafted" to Madagascar, today the only place they're found, about 300 mile across the Indian Ocean from Africa on floating vegetation. This was more than 50 million years ago, and such migrations, accidental or intentional, continued for 30 million years. The flow of ocean currents during back then, unlike now, made such a journey possible.

Matthew Huber, who's a palaeoclimate modeller (who knew there was such a specialty?) at Purdue University in Indiana, explains: "What the model suggests is that occasionally, say one month in 100 years, the currents were strong enough to allow a raft, for example a large log, carrying a family of lemurs to make the journey in about three weeks." It's fascinating to consider this ancient migration route even as climate change is encouraging biologists to explore "assisted migration" for species whose habitats become inhospitable as temperatures shift. But the world's land masses are far more crowded than they were 50 million years ago. We're here, after all. If habitat loss or climate shocks required evacuation, and if the currents allowed lemurs to raft again today, would they find a new home? Maybe if they could fly.

Though the full extent of Haiti's earthquake Tuesday is yet to be truly understood, the images emerging from the country are heart-wrenching: bodies are piled outside an overflowing Port-au-Prince morgue, men, women and children sit, waiting - bandaged and stunned, a series of makeshift tents has sprung up to shelter the city's homeless - to replace the somewhat-less makeshift houses that many of them previously inhabited.

It was the current disaster in Haiti that framed last night's conversation at New York's Society for Ethical Culture, among Amy Goodman, Raj Patel and Naomi Klein. Together the three painted a picture of a Haiti impoverished by foreign economic decisions - from the early insistence that Haiti pay reparations to French slave owners for its country's independence, to modern day IMF loans whose conditions included reduced tariff protections for Haitian rice - turning it from self-sufficient in rice production to virtually dependent on American "Miami rice."

Henry Kissinger said, "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."

I was reading the other day that China is importing a large amount of soybeans from the U.S. and Brazil, to use as animal feed to meet its growing demand for meat. Kissinger’s words ring true when it comes to China's current relationship with soy - a relationship that reminds me of an ancient Chinese story, the classic Strategies of the Warring States.

During the Spring and Autumn Period in ancient China, there was a powerful state named Qi, with two neighboring states named Lu and Liang. The king of Qi first issued an order that his subjects must wear clothes made of silk. He also ordered that his state could only grow grains, no mulberry trees whose leaves are used to feed silkworms. The demand for silk thus soared in Qi. Seeing this, Lu and Liang stopped their grain production and shifted to plant mulberry trees so as to produce silk for profit. Years later, however, the king of Qi changed his order. He ruled that his subjects could only wear cotton clothes and forbade his state from selling food to the neighboring states Lu and Liang. Having abandoned the original agricultural production, Lu and Liang collapsed because of famine and civil disorder. Qi thus easily conquered the two states.

New Year, fast review. As 2010 gets going, I thought it was worth looking back -- well, just a couple of weeks -- to the Copenhagen climate talks and what Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai said about meat at the side event Brighter Green and Maathai's Green Belt Movement co-sponsored there. Here's her answer to a question from Lasse Bruun of Compassion in World Farming about why, despite all the evidence about the negative consequences, climate and more broadly ecological, people want to eat so much meat (and policy-makers don't seem to want to address the issue):

Globally when we have more money in our pockets, we want to eat more meat, even three times a day, which is why we have a crisis. Mia [that's me -- Wangari, I and two other colleagues were panelists] is a vegetarian, I’m a semi vegetarian…it must be psychological, this desire for meat. People say, ‘I can afford it. You hear that all the time.’ [Perhaps] we need to go back to where we were and not eat so much meat.

New Year, new Meatrix. Thanks, Wangari.

I’m spending a few days in Athens and it’s hard here not to ponder a concept like beauty, particularly after visiting the Parthenon. Why is something beautiful? Is it because we’re taught that it is (like classical Greek architecture), or because it simplyis, even if it’s hard to know why? What about an old square, like those I saw recently in the old Swedish city of Malmo, laid out hundreds of years ago? What makes that much more pleasing to walk in than, say, a generic modern shopping mall? Even when the snow is persistent and there’s a modern machine in the square, too: the Wheel of Malmo (a ferris wheel with heated capsules)? It just is. I don’t claim to have a coherent theory of beauty, or the discernment to know it all the time.

But ugliness? That’s much easier. And what marred two old squares in Malmo in close proximity was the visage of Burger King, all bright lights, blaring logo, vivid reds and yellows. Another Burger King—same look, same food—greeted me at the Malmo train station, just a few minutes walk from the old squares. All were ugly. Each seemed out of place, unnecessary, an intrusion. (And, of course, there’s lots of hidden ugliness at the center of burger business. How can there not be? One of the most recent: E. coli and salmonella found in beef used by Burger King and other fast food chains that had been treated with ammonia, said to kill nearly all the pathogens) I wondered why certain building codes in Malmo hadn’t, if not restricted fast food establishments entirely, at least curbed their garishness on the lovely old squares. Perhaps, though, garishness, too is in the eye of the beholder. When I arrived in London from Malmo, I was astonished to see this across a modified archway: “Welcome to London Victoria…Home of the Whopper” with the Burger King logo, bold and illuminated, at the center. I could only laugh ruefully to myself. Ugliness unseen? Fugitive beauty? Branding trumps both? I’ll leave it there. Happy New Year.

As always, I skipped the turkey and gravy this Christmas. However I was able to partake in every other part of the meal—the roast potatoes, the stuffing, the brussel sprouts, the homemade oat bread. Because I won’t eat meat, my family avoids products such as chicken stock, opting for vegetable broth instead. Every other guest who consumed our holiday feast is an unabashed omnivore, but no one seems to mind making a few allowances for me, the lone vegetarian at the table.

Although the Great Lakes boast a $7 billion/year fishing industry, there is one fish that's not welcome here: the Asian carp. The invasive silver Asian carp can weigh up to 100 pounds and eat 20 percent of their weight each day in plankton; they're capable of interrupting natural biological systems and interfering with chemical processes. This fish has not been sighted in the Lakes themselves, but they were tracked to the century-old man-made canal that connects the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River watershed.

“[C]rucial meeting with Premier Wen of China, and then 5 minutes to grab a steak,” UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown tweeted during the penultimate day of the Copenhagen climate talks. Less than five minutes: the time it took Dutch Party for the Animals MP Marianne Thieme to tell a packed audience at a screening of her global warming documentary, “Meat the Truth”, at the Copenhagen Klimaforum that all official dinners hosted at COP 15 by the Dutch environment minister were vegetarian. I wonder if Gordon Brown attended any. Five minutes: perhaps that’s what Thieme had to convince the Netherlands’ prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, to address the meat-climate connection during the high-level segment of COP 15. (She was meeting him at 11 p.m. the night of the screening.)

Less than five minutes: the time Thieme had to give a DVD of “Meat the Truth” to government delegates and heads of state she passed at the Bella Center. “Sarkozy was too quick for me,” she admitted. But, she told us, the Dutch government is studying imposing a tax on meat. It’s also apportioned six million euros to explore transitioning from industrial animal agriculture to something more sustainable. Less than a minute: what it took Thieme to wrap up her Q&A session with this: “To get rid of factory farming, that’s what I intend to do.” Estimated completion time: more, alas, than the five minutes it took Brown to eat his steak.

After an all-night session that stretched into the gray Copenhagen afternoon, COP 15, the climate summit, is over. A 12-paragraph agreement has been "noted," and government delegates, NGO representatives (who'd largely been shut out of the negotiations at the Bella Center in recent days), journalists and assorted others were packing, bleary-eyed, and making moves to leave the city. Few expected the two weeks of intense deliberations to end like this. I'd had several late nights this week, attending panels at the people's climate summit, the Klimaforum, and ruminating with colleagues about the prospects of a climate deal. Last night, as the deliberations stretched on, three of us followed the news on TV until just after President Obama gave his news conference around 11 p.m. He finished and initially we were silent. What had happened? What did it mean? Then the deflation set in; had all led up to this...just this, what Obama called a "first step?" The science of climate change, he admitted, warranted more action, but the political process simply couldn't provide it.

The small farmers' movement has been well-represented at the Klimaforum (if not on the many government delegations, where it appears agribusiness got the slots), making important points about the need to distinguish between "Big Ag" and small, more sustainable agriculture in the climate (and justice) context. Farmed animals aren't a focus of their agenda, but aren't entirely absent. A press release from Via Campesina, a self-described international peasant movement, includes this:

People have taken to calling it the “COP cold.” Many here in Copenhagen, waiting to see what actually comes out of the climate summit as the temperature drops outside, are suffering from it. That includes me, at least for the last 24 hours. The news from the Bella Centre isn’t definitive. We hear that a deal may be near, particularly now that Obama’s here (his arrival on Air Force one and short car trip to Bella was broadcast live on Danish TV). Others say that prospects for a deal are slipping away.

There is some good news, too, from Copenhagen: Brighter Green’s screening of “Meat World: China” Wednesday night at the Klimaforum was filled to overflowing with a multi-national audience, including lots of young people. The room could hold 80 people comfortably; others were likely turned away as Klimaforum volunteers enforced crowd size limits. The response after was really good. And during, when I turned to the audience, everyone I could see was keenly focused on the screen. No one, as far as I could tell, was bored. “Is that it?” someone asked when the film, currently about 27 minutes, ended—a good sign, I thought. I got confirmation later when a New York-based filmmaker said she’d like to see more, too. Several indicated they’d be keen to see similar films on the other countries for which Brighter Green’s completing case studies. A few requested DVDs of the film to show in their universities or with friends.