Barbie and I don’t have a lot in common. For one thing, I’m biodegradable and she’s not. But we do agree on one thing; math is hard. For example, how is it that Lisa Simpson’s been a vegetarian for thirteen years when she’s only 8 years old? Is it possible that an anti-oxidant-rich plant-based diet has the power not only to delay the aging process but actually reverse it?

But while eternal tweener Lisa’s the token treehugger in the Simpson household, it’s Bart who’s got the perfect prescription for how to cool Mother Nature’s fevered brow: don’t have a cow. Literally. The less meat you grill, the more you help the planet chill.

Now, before you dismiss me as some kinda free-range Chicken Little, clucking about the catastrophic consequences of our fossil-fueled food chain, you should know that I’m not the only one warning that burgers do more harm than Hummers.

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Oh, you car-crazy, meat-mad Americans, look what you’ve done now! Everybody else wants to live the way you do, wolfing down Whoppers behind the wheel. So they’re ripping up rainforests to grow more grains for cars and cows, and that’s just accelerating global warming, which is worsening the droughts that are ruining crops from Australia to Zimbabwe.

As Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, told NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday, the current global food crisis wasn’t caused by some sort of temporary setback such as crop failure, but rather “systemic change” due to increased worldwide demand for meat and the fool’s gold rush to produce more biofuels, which Brown cites as the proverbial last straw:

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Yes, there’s gloating galore in our Mac-happy household over the news that “even the briefest exposure to the Apple logo may make you behave more creatively,” according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.  No wonder we are just bursting with ideas that our cramped Manhattan apartment can barely contain; we’ve got more Macs per capita than you’ll find anywhere outside of an Apple store. My Mac consultant husband Matt would put one in the bathroom if I let him, which I won’t, because that’s my one tech-free haven in our hyper-wired world.

The study, conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of Waterloo, Canada, found that even a split-second glimpse of the iconic Apple logo is enough to inspire folks to “think different”  :

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America suffers from a collective case of do-gooder deafness: we have a hard time hearing a message when it’s delivered by a dorky academic or an unattractive activist. We’re all ears, though, when celebrities speak out about their pet causes, or their pets, or whatever. So, in acknowledgment of the fact that I, as a mere blogger, can only hope to influence so many people, I’d like to enlist the aid of some of our most oogled and Googled celebrities to help America combat climate change and overconsumption:

1. Britney Spears: Britney’s evidently on the road to recovery after some much needed r n’ r. Here are three more “r’s” I’d love to see Britney promote: reduce, reuse and recycle. Our landfills are overflowing with post-consumer crap and the oceans are clogged up with plastic; what better time for Britney to redefine white trash! Recommended reading/viewing: Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte; The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. Read the rest of this entry >>

Living well may be more of an art than a science, but living green is another matter; it turns out there are plenty of formulas and equations to help you pick the places that are more conducive to an eco-conscious lifestyle.  One of the best comes courtesy of Popular Science, which has tallied up the data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Geographic Society’s Green Guide for American cities of over 100,000 people in more than 30 categories, including air quality, electricity use and transportation habits.

Armed with these facts and figures, Popular Science created four broad categories in which to compare fifty American cities, awarding up to 5 or 10 points depending on the category:

Electricity (E; 10 points): Cities score points for drawing their energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric power, as well as for offering incentives for residents to invest in their own power sources, like roof-mounted solar panels.

Transportation (T; 10 points): High scores go to cities whose commuters take public transportation or carpool. Air quality also plays a role.

Green living (G; 5 points): Cities earn points for the number of buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, as well as for devoting area to green space, such as public parks and nature preserves.

Recycling and green perspective (R; 5 points): This measures how comprehensive a city’s recycling program is (if the city collects old electronics, for example) and how important its citizens consider environmental issues.

Here’s their top 10, including the ratings in each category:

1. Portland, Ore. 23.1Electricity: 7.1 Transportation: 6.4 Green Living: 4.8 Recycling/Perspective:  
4.8America’s top green city has it all: Half its power comes from renewable sources, a quarter of the workforce commutes by bike, carpool or public transportation, and it has 35 buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.

2. San Francisco, Calif. 23.0Electricity: 6.8 Transportation: 8.8 Green Living: 3.5 Recycling/Perspective: 3.9See how San Francisco turns wasted roof space into power, here. Read the rest of this entry >>

Everybody I know who’s ever been to Ecuador has come home with a most unwelcome souvenir: parasites. It’s a common problem in South America, where the physical and mental development of millions of South American kids is stunted by all kinds of insidious internal parasites: pinworms, roundworms, tapeworms, whipworms, and hookworms.

“Parasitic illnesses are currently among the top 10 causes of death among children under five,” according to the Christian Post, which notes that “a single pill, however, can make a difference.”

So, with the help of the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, Operation Blessing International (OBI), one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the U.S., is launching a program to distribute Albendazol, a cheap, effective drug that treats and prevents parasitic illnesses. OBI President Bill Horan announced the program’s inauguration in Honduras earlier this month:

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The bat problem’s gone from bad to worse since I wrote about it six weeks or so ago.  From today’s NY Times:

In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter.           

Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off in about 15 caves and mines in New York, as well as at sites in Massachusetts and Vermont. Whatever is killing the bats leaves them unusually thin and, in some cases, dotted with a white fungus. Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control. Read the rest of this entry >>

Politicians want to pick his brain, women want to play with his ponytail; as social movement movers and shakers go, Drinking Liberally co-founder Justin Krebs is a virtual whirling dervish of democratic dynamism (while I, alas, am a compulsive abuser of alliteration.)

He’s faster than a speeding blog post! More powerful than a local motormouth! Able to leap tall blowhards in a single soundbite!

In his spare time, when he’s not busy building community, defending democracy, and Living Liberally, the charismatic Krebs is a cultural impresario and all-around-stand-up guy (literally–in his spare time, he does comedic improv.) Justin also co-founded the non-profit performing arts space The Tank, a Tribeca mecca for grassroots good times and “an incubator of hip, indie, up-and-comers in the arts,” according to Harvard magazine .

It’s ludicrous how many lives this George Bailey-on-steroids has touched. He’s amassed a stockpile of social capital that politicians and entrepreneurs twice his age would love to have, and he’s not even thirty.

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The “Reverend Wright is Wrong” refrain has been repeated endlessly this past week as pundits on both sides weigh in on the racial and religious controversy that’s rocked the Obama campaign. Martin Luther King, Jr. touched on this not-so-divine divide 45 years ago:

“We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation.”   

Sunday morning in our household is, by contrast, the one time during the week when we suspend our secular segregation and tune in to the hot air from beltway blowhards on both sides of the partisan divide. On rare occasions, we even agree with an aside from George Will or a point made by Pat Buchanan.

But Wall Street Journal pundit Peggy Noonan literally gave us pause on Meet the Press yesterday when she responded to a question from Tim Russert about Obama’s seminal speech so reasonably that we had to grab the remote, rewind, and relisten:

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Not to be outdone by Aqua Colbert, Bill Maher’s got his own hot concept for the bottled beverage business. From last Friday’s “New Rules”:

“As far as I’m concerned, Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper still doesn’t have enough shit going on. I need Caffeine-Free Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper”no, no, no, I need Cool Ranch Extreme Caffeine-Free Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper. And baked. And, I want a sticker on it telling kids that drugs are bad.”

Maher’s mockery of marketing run amok raises a sticky issue: the fact that excess soda consumption’s doing more harm to our kids than drugs are, objectively speaking. And soda–even diet soda–is taking a toll on grown-ups, too. Read the rest of this entry >>