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News at Brighter Green

China and Factory Farming: Brighter Green Releases New Policy Paper 8/19/08

The challenges for China's people, and environment, extend beyond the Olympics, and are encapsulated in Brighter Green's new report (PDF). For a Chinese version, click here.

Brighter Green Presentations in Portland, OR 5/20/08

Executive Director Mia MacDonald gave two talks in Portland earlier this month on the links between the globalization of industrial meat production and the global environment, public health and food security.

Brighter Green on Portland Radio 5/10/08

Click here to listen to a podcast of an interview with Mia MacDonald on KINK radio in Portland.

Mia MacDonald on Air America 4/16/08

Mia MacDonald appeared on Thom Hartmann's Air America radio program today to discuss a world without meat -- and the world we actually live in.

Farm Sanctuary becomes bestseller 4/13/08

Farm Sanctuary by Gene Baur was number 12 on the Los Angeles Times' hardcover bestseller list for the week ending March 30, 2008.

Brighter Green Co-sponsors Earth Day 2008 Event: Climate Change and Green Energy 4/10/08

On Friday, April 25th, join Francis ole Sakuda and Daniel Salau of Simba Maasai Outreach Organization (SIMOO) in Kenya as they discuss the realities of climate change and solar and wind power for indigenous communities in Kenya and elsewhere. Co-sponsored with the Sierra Club NYC Group and Tribal Link Foundation.

Brighter Green at University of Chicago 4/9/08

Executive Director Mia MacDonald gave a presentation on Monday, April 7, at the University of Chicago entitled: "Meat World?: Current and Future Scenarios."

Farm Sanctuary Book Released 3/5/08

Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food, by Gene Baur, co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, has just been published by Simon & Schuster, with Brighter Green's participation.

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Welcome to Brighter Green

Brighter Green is a new public policy "action tank" that aims to raise awareness and encourage dialogue on and attention to issues that span the environment, animals, and sustainable development both globally and locally. Brighter Green's work has a particular focus on equity and rights.

On its own and in partnership with other organizations and individuals, Brighter Green generates and incubates research and project initiatives that are both visionary and practical. It produces publications, Websites, documentary films, and programs to illuminate public debate among policy-makers, activists, communities, influential leaders, and the media, with the goal of social transformation at local and international levels. Brighter Green works in the United States and internationally, with a focus on the countries of the global South.

Recently on Our Blog

Skillful Means: A New Report from Brighter Green

August 19, 2008 2:11pm
Breeding Sow

Breeding Sow in a Medium-Sized Farm, Eastern China (Picture: Peter Li/HSI/CIWF)

New York–based policy action tank Brighter Green’s new report, Skillful Means: The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming (PDF) explores the emerging superpower’s “livestock revolution,” which is having serious impacts on public health, food security, and equity in China—and the world. The Beijing Summer Olympics are showcasing a resurgent nation, which only two generations after a devastating national famine is eating increasingly high on the food chain. In the past ten years, consumption of China’s most popular meat, pork, has doubled. In 2007, China raised well over half a billion pigs for meat.

Given that every fifth person in the world is Chinese, even small increases in individual meat or dairy consumption will have broad, collective environmental as well as climate impacts. Increasingly, what the Chinese eat, and how China produces its food, affects not only China, but the world, too.

Food for Thought

August 12, 2008 10:24pm
Filed under:
Kangaroo meat

Kangaroo: How rare do you want it?

File this under "Suggestive Connection": In a report on the BBC, an Australian researcher is recommending a vast increase in the farming and eating of kangaroos in order to combat global warming. Because of their different digestive systems, kangaroos do not produce as much methane as cows and sheep (currently the main source of meat for Australians), and thus humans switching to a different sort of muscle to chew on would reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

In an unrelated—but perhaps not that unrelated—story, a team of scientists have discovered that many prehistoric species extinctions, including that of the three-meter tall giant kangaroo and marsupial lion, were caused not by natural causes, such as catastrophic weather events or habitat change, but by the newly evolved human beings. Apparently, we hunted them to death -- presumably, as many animals continue to be today, for our consumption.

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