- Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson composed a sapient if not stirring op-ed in the New York Times about the need for a long-term, truly ecological Farm Bill:
For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.
- The huge coal ash flood outside of Knoxville was determined to be larger than estimated at first, and the TVA left something to be desired in testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (HT: John, Ben).
- President Bush granted monument status to 195,000 square miles of marine habitat in the South Pacific, which means he "has now protected more ocean habitat (333,000 square miles) than any of his predecessors." (I tried to make a joke about off-shore oil here, but then I decided there was no reason to be ironic about something praiseworthy.)
- The Wall Street Journal snickered at Guvnah Pardo's Go Fish Georgia Initiative, which if you've ever played "Go Fish" is pretty funny in its own right (HT: Kim). The state is spending $18-19 million to make Georgia a premier boating and fishing tourism destination. That's a fine allocation when you're not facing "the worst economic slump since the Depression," not to mention a record drought:
The governor -- who fondly recalls a childhood in which his grandfather took him fishing with a cane pole along the banks of Big Indian Creek in Middle Georgia -- said critics must not be fishermen. "They haven't seen a kid's eyes light up when he catches his first fish."
Others aren't so nostalgic. Last month, the Georgia Department of Veterans Services was forced by budget problems to close a housing unit for 81 sick or disabled veterans in the town of Milledgeville. "It's a shame that our veterans are being displaced so we can catch some fish," said Fae Casper, a retired Army sergeant who heads the Georgia chapter of the American Legion. "Revenue is important, but taking care of the people that allow us to be free is, to me, more important."
- In spite of the uproar from the Farm Bureau and the commercial farm industry, an EPA levied "cow tax" for gastrointestinal emissions is probably not going to happen. It probably was never going to happen and originated, as some have suggested, as an anti-regulatory scare tactic.
- Companies at the North American International Auto Show rolled out their green models.
- The Onion pointed out cogently that, at the end of the day, there is one thing we can all agree on.
And, when you really think about it, there's a lot to like about food. It tastes good and it's good to eat. That's all I can think of for now, but those two things alone make me like food. Furthermore, I just thought of something else: Food is probably the healthiest and best thing to put in your mouth. You can ask a doctor about that.
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