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Category Archives: counter-consumer

counter-consumer

United States Is the Laziest Developed Country in the World

Inspired by the Winter Olympics currently being played in Vancouver, the Daily Beast decided to give out virtual medals—for not the most athletic countries, but the laziest. Starting with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s member countries with extensive data available (24 developed countries), the site took four factors into account: calories per day, [...]

Social Collapse Best Practices

by Dmitry Orlov – 14 February 2009
The following talk was given on February 13, 2009, at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, to an audience of 550 people. Audio and video of the talk will be available on Long Now Foundation web site.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for showing [...]

How Aspartame Became Legal – The Timeline

From Rich Murray – rmforall@att.net
12-24-02
From Norfolk Genetic Information Network (Taken from Welcome to the Spin Machine by Michael Manville http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/2001/04/biotech/ http://www.freezerbox.com/ )
In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto [...]

The New Economics of Hunger

[P]rices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof… food [is] becoming the new gold…. For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara’s edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian [...]

Willie Nelson: Save Family Farms, Save America

[ Nelson argues that

[i]f you care about local and democratic control, demand a Farm Bill that curbs the power of factory farms and the influence of lobbyists for large food corporations. If you care about health and nutrition for children, demand a Farm Bill that puts more fresh, wholesome food in our cities’ schools. If [...]

How Much Fossil Fuel is in Your Food?

23 March 2006 | Tom Dispatch.com
The blurb from Organic Consumers Assn’s Organic Bytes letter runs:
An average of over seven calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that the average 2000 calorie daily diet requires approximately two quarts of crude oil to produce, process, [...]

Sweden Plans to Be World’s First Oil-Free Economy

[ This piece about Sweden's commitment to convert to fossil-free fuels shames the rest of the developed world. Sure, Sweden's got ethanol on the table as a possible part of its strategy, contra voices of sanity (like that of James Howard Kunstler), insight (like that of Richard Manning), and manifesto (like the editors of The [...]

Gas Guzzling Food: The SUV in the Pantry

grabbed from Sustainable Business.com on 1 Dec. 2005
by Thomas Starrs
I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to reduce my family’s dependence on energy, particularly energy derived from fossil fuels. I commute to work by bicycle or bus, install compact fluorescents when light bulbs burn out, replace major appliances with the most efficient [...]

One Roof at a Time

November/December 2004 | Mother Jones
by Bill McKibben
With no help from the Bush administration — but plenty from Europe, Japan, New York, and California — solar power is edging into the mainstream.
If you’re like most Americans, you’ve spent your life invisibly attached to an electric meter. When you wake up and switch on the light, you [...]

Proctor & Gamble “Buzz Marketing” Unit Hit With Complaint

19 Oct. 2005 | USA Today
by Bruce Horovitz
Is Procter & Gamble — the world’s biggest packaged goods marketer — breaking the law by enlisting teens to coax friends to try teen-tailored products?
One consumer advocacy group thinks it is. Commercial Alert on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that says P&G’s word-of-mouth marketing [...]