NYC Food and Climate Summit

In case you haven't heard yet, next Saturday, Dec. 12, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Just Food, and NYU will be hosting the NYC Food and Climate Summit. We are even lucky enough to be having HEN as a co-sponsor of the event, since HEN agreed to be a main contributor to making video messages possible from Vandana Shiva and Wangari Mathaai which will be shown at the plenary session and uploaded to websites afterward. The Food and Climate Summit will be happening smack in the middle of the Copenhagen (or "Hopenhagen") climate talks. It will even be held the day after 350 holds candlelit "Vigils for Survival" all across the world (these are on Dec. 11 - find one near you). In NYC, there will be one in Washington Square Park from 5-6 pm and one at Chelsea Piers from 6-8pm.

The Summit's registration was full within 36 hours of opening, which shows that it is guaranteed to be a successful event. Fortunately, as much information as possible from the conference will be posted to the conference website.

It is so important that NYC is making the connection between food and climate change, because food and climate change are so inextricably connected and it is not receiving enough attention on the global or even national scales in terms of climate change talk. Yes, Oxfam, tcktcktck, and 350, among other organizations, have been doing a great job of promoting the urgency of demanding action from our world leaders (such as limiting CO2 emissions to 350 ppm) - but as far as I can see there is not much talk here about agriculture. There are several main reasons to connect food and climate change. First of all, climate change is devastating developing countries' ability to produce crops on their own, leading to there being over a billion hungry people in the world. Climate change hits developing countries far greater than it impacts countries like the US (see some of my previous posts on Oxfam).

Second of all, producing "food" is a big contributor to climate change. If you've read Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, seen Food, Inc., FRESH, King Corn, or know anything else about the sustainable, local, organic, and/or slow food movements - then you might have an idea about the gravity of unsustainable agriculture and how it is contributing to health problems, economic problems, climate change, etc. The fact that it takes 1,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef...that is not good for the environment or our health. Monocultures are sprayed with pesticides and chemicals that make it really easy for resistant strains of bacteria to develop. Subsidies for corn and soy given to farmers are used to feed cattle and pigs with ground meat and corn. ...These are the things that contribute to the artificially low cost of unhealthy food (artificially because we do pay - later on, that is, in the form of healthcare costs).

All that stuff is unsustainable. As Michael Pollan & Joel Salatin put it, we are taking a solution - grass-fed cattle - and turning it into 2 problems: 1) unsustainable CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, where animals standing in their own manure only leads to bacterial infections and other diseases), and 2) nutrient-deprived farmland that needs to be sprayed with chemicals and harmful fertilizers (because it doesn't have the beneficial nutrients from manure).

Sign the NYC Food Pledge & Charter

Below are the session topics for the Summit next week. Visit here for more details. (And don't forget to check out the wonderful Partnering Organizations!) Be sure to help spread the word using facebook and twitter (@nycfoodclimate) Please use the hashtags #nycfoodclimate, #cop15, and #tcktcktck on twitter. Thanks!

Informational
Session 1: Introduction to Food and Climate Issues

Skills Building
Session 2: Faith-Rooted Climate and Food Justice Organizing
Session 3: Best Practices in Institutional Purchasing
Session 4: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 5: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 6: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet.
Session 7: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 8: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 9: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 10: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 11: Urban Agriculture: Community Gardens, Urban Farms, and More
Session 12: The Food Shed: Promoting Sustainable Local Agriculture
Session 13: Greening Food Infrastructure
Session 14: Setting an Agenda for Child Nutrition, School Food and Food Education
Session 15: From Farm to Landfill: Reducing Food Waste in New York City

Informational
Session 16: Understanding Your Foodprint

Skills Builder

Session 17: Cooking Up Climate-Friendly Change: Youth Lead the Good Food Movement
Session 18: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 19: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 20: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet
Session 21: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 22: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 23: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 24: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 25: Urban Agriculture: Roofs, Walls, and Other Under-Utilized Spaces
Session 26: The Food Shed: Harnessing New Yorkers’ Buying Power
Session 27: Institutional Procurement: Buy Local and Sustainable
Session 28: The Food-Collar Economy
Session 29: Structural Discrimination Related to Food and Climate Change

NYC Food and Climate Summit

Hello, world

Apologies for not posting in quite a while, this semester hasn't allowed much time for blogging due to the time constraints of a dietetic internship and classes at NYU. I have, however, continued to post interesting links and events on my twitter page, twitter.com/kellymoltzen.

Aside from everyday clinical dietetics, other activities I am currently undertaking:
-Working on a green foodservice project for the national VA - we are surveying foodservice directors and providing resources for them to green their foodservice production systems
-Learning about the awesome cultural transformation program of the VA
-Attempting to write a paper on the commodity system as an independent study with Marion Nestle (corn and soy subsidies lead to increased production of unhealthy foods by the food industry which leads to obesity)
-Taking an International Nutrition course
-Taking a course on Assessing Community Health Needs. Our group is looking at the issue of tobacco smoking within the Mexican immigrant community of Jackson Heights, Queens
-Trying to stay updated on all the other sustainability and food happenings of NYC (including with Oxfam Action Corps NYC, the NYC Foodprint Alliance, etc)
-Planning the beginnings of a student group of the DIFM DPG (Dietitians in Integrative and Functional Medicine Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association) (twitter: @adadifm) (facebook: ADA Dietitians in Integrative and Functional Medicine (DIFM))
-Trying to keep up with emails including the HEN DPG list-serve
-Co-chairing a task force on the issue of ADA sponsorship with the HEN DPG (should've seen that one coming)
-Attempting to plan an event with charity:water at NYU for the spring through the NYU Steinhardt Public Health Student Group

So, sorry I have not had time to post more often. Just wanted to update this blog during the month of October :)

Hello, world

The Yes Men Have Done it Again!

As ~1,000 "Earthlings" participated in Oxfam's Human Countdown event yesterday (guided by "tcktcktck" sounds being made by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan), the New York Post was getting ready to release an entire issue on climate change.

Or was it? This morning, The Yes Men and 2,000 volunteers distributed a New York Post look-alike newspaper about climate change entitled "We're Screwed". The paper contains all true facts - except for one: that nyc.gov released a report about climate change. Actually, all the facts in this report are true, too - but nyc.gov didn't write the it. The Yes Men wrote both the New York Post and the NYC.gov pdf report. They're geniuses!

This type of stunt isn't new to The Yes Men. In fact, they've pulled similar stunts on big corporations many times before - and lived to tell about it. You may have seen or heard about their previous move called The Yes Men, but they've recently made a new movie, called The Yes Men Fix the World. Its US release date is October 7. I encourage you to go see it - it's thought-provoking and hilarious! (I saw a pre-screening of it.)



All of this is part of a giant campaign to raise awareness about climate change, occurring in hundreds of cities across the globe from Sept. 20-26, 2009. You can see Climate Week NYC events here.

More about the Human Countdown:
In the Human Countdown, we formed a gigantic Earth inside an hourglass and fell through it like grains of sand, to tell President Obama and the UN that time is running out for us to save our precious Earth from catastrophic climate change. The people in green who represented the land funneled down to form the words "tck tck tck" while those of us in blue (the ocean) became panels on the sides in the bottom of the hourglass. At the end of the 1 min. 11 sec. video made exclusively for this event, we all became clocks counting down from 12:07 to 12:18, to represent the climate change talks in Copenhagen that will occur from December 7 through 18, 2009.

Here's a video by the producers of the Human Countdown describing the purpose of the event.

Here's a cut version of the filming, with interviews.

Here's a photo of what it looked like from above.

The Yes Men Have Done it Again!

Be part of history: Stand up for the principles of No Impact Man, and join the Human Countdown!

On Sunday, September 20, 2009, thousands of people will gather in Central Park to make a statement about climate change. The Human Countdown, as it is called, is a campaign being run by Oxfam America in collaboration with tck tck tck as a way to wake up humanity to the devastating effects that climate change is having on the world. In particular, climate change is seriously hurting many people in developing countries (even though developed countries such as the US do most of the damaging). From raising awareness, to on-the-ground fieldwork, to lobbying Congress for increased funding, international adaptation to climate change is one of the main issues Oxfam has decided to focus on. This means that "the US must invest now in adaptation projects, like elevated flood-proof houses and drought-resistant seeds, to help women and families build their resilience to these new and heightened risks." In case you don't know anything about Oxfam - Oxfam America is a part of Oxfam International, which is a "confederation of 13 like-minded organizations working together, and with partners and allies around the world, to bring about lasting change" and combat poverty and injustice. There is a climate change bill being worked on in Congress, and you can bet that Oxfam America is right there doing its lobbying. The US House of Representatives already has its version of the climate change bill written - which has some positive aspects - but we want the Senate to up it a notch when it comes to creating their version of the bill. Oxfam America and its partners are currently working to try and convince the Senate to include these goals in their version:

• the House bill (HR 2454) has 1% of money allotted for international adaptation funding; we are asking for the Senate bill to include 3%.

• 1% in HR 2454 is dedicated to Clean Tech Transfer; we want the Senate bill to dedicate 2%.

• We are also asking for the amounts of money for deforestation prevention (5%), domestic adaptation (1%), and CO2 reductions (17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050) to be maintained in the Senate bill.
  

This may not seem like a lot of money, but in the scheme of things they are reasonable "asks" - not so much that Congress will just laugh at us. So, tell your Senators you want to see these provisions in the climate change bill. And tell them to become a Sisters on the Planet Ambassador. Because once women like Shorbanu know that the devastation they are facing is man-made, they want us to do something about it.


To learn more about the NYC volunteer arm of Oxfam America and sign up, go to the Oxfam Action Corps NYC blog. (or find an Oxfam Action Corps in your city). Or if you're still in school, start an Oxfam America Club.

To participate in the Human Countdown, sign up here. You can also see the event on Facebook. And if you have access to bell-ringing in a church or other facility, ask for the bells to be rung on September 21 at 12:18 p.m. And if you're around NYC the morning of September 21, join The Yes Men for a stunt they plan on pulling. It's critical that we wake up the world to the effects of climate change, because already, results from the G-20 summit have not been satisfactory. Let's hope they are more satisfactory at the G-20 summit in Pittsburg September 24-25, 2009. It's a shame the United States never signed the Kyoto protocol; let's at least assure we contribute in substantial manner to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18, 2009.

We can make a big difference on an international scale when it comes to climate change by lobbying politicians to make changes that affect everyone. But we can also make an impact by decreasing our own individual carbon footprints. One family that has realized the importance of (and benefits of) decreasing their carbon footprint is the Beavans. Colin Beavan, aka "No Impact Man," spent a year of his life undergoing an experiment making as small an environmental impact as humanly possible while still living in mainstream society. Colin wrote a book about his experience and made a movie about it (using low impact filmmaking, of course) called No Impact Man. He successfully recruited his wife and daughter for the experiment and made it a family event, which will prove to make for an entertaining movie, I'm sure! I've only seen the trailer so far but essentially, they learned to eat locally grown food which helped him lose 20 pounds without going to the gym once and reversed his wife's pre-diabetic condition, did not use transportation that requires fossil fuels, and stopped using electricity (and therefore television), which helped strengthen family ties. It looks like a really good movie, and Colin Beavan is making an entire campaign around it, called the No Impact Project. I encourage everyone to check it out & see the movie, spread the word, and then apply as many principles to your own life as possible! I get upset when I see things in individually wrapped plastic, too.



Oh yeah and don't forget to contribute to Oxfam's international climate change awareness campaign by going out to Central Park next Sunday for the Human Countdown (that is, if you're already in the area! We wouldn't want you taking a plane to get here and waste all that fossil fuel in the process, now would we?).

Be part of history: Stand up for the principles of No Impact Man, and join the Human Countdown!

Obama's speech - guest post by Abe Young

Hey folks,

Here's a guest post by my friend Abe regarding Obama's speech last night. You can check out his blog here.

Obama did a good job in his speech making clear why we--as individuals & as a country--must succeed on health reform now. But since most people already understood that urgent need... even more importantly, his speech succeeded in eliciting exactly what this reform means for 3 categories of people--which together include all Americans:

1. people already w/ health insurance (majority),
2. Americans without health insurance (~30 million folks), and
3. (the following category overlaps onto category #1) those who currently pay the rising bills for the uninsured when they get sick.

Take a look at the speech yourself:
[jump ahead 5:00 min to skip the monotonous clapping]


As I was watched the speech together with a friend--and noticed that in one after another of Obama's statements, precisely 1/2 the chamber stood up and clapped, while the other 1/2 sat stoically across the aisle--she said, "OH that's why I hate politics!"

Agreed. It's as if these Representatives and Senators whom we all elected to act as leaders during this crucial time can't even think with their own brains once in awhile, instead they stick to "party lines" as if those lines were the only hardwired neuronal pathways they owned in their cortex.

Here is 1 suggestion I have to every single person in the health care profession, including myself as a student. The simple fact of our profession not only gives us & those we will serve a bigger stake, personally, in the outcome of health reform; but it also truly bestows upon us an added credence when we have something to say (I've seen the special attention paid by politicians to a doctor or nurse at a phone banking or rally for health care; also, see the YouTube below of the ER doc in the audience at a recent town hall). And what we can say, what we all can absolutely agree upon--but this still is in danger, not because of merit but merely because of political games--is that WE STAND BY THE NEED TO PASS HEALTH REFORM NOW, THIS YEAR. (Click here if you are willing to make this simple statement to your representatives, it will convince hesitant politicians that the will is there, and it will only take you 1 minute)

Aside from the 1 Senator who wants to block health reform because "it will break" Obama, every single leader and expert of all persuasions knows that achieving health reform is crucial for America's health, economy, and sustainability in the very near future. We are on an exponential downward path if we keep our current system and don't act now. And this is another thing Obama got right in emphasizing tonight: that 80% of the components within Health Reform already has bipartisan support (and these include drastic positive reforms such as outlawing insurance companies from denying care based on "pre-existing conditions"--see the last 2 paragraphs of my letter on "Where'd all the fear come from?" below). However, this crucial national effort is still on the verge of being sabatoged by people like that shameless Senator who wants to "break" Obama by breaking health reform.

What I respect about some of Obama's big speeches to date is that he (or his speechwriter) gets the precision to tweak out at the exact point of confusion, of our paralysis, the truer narrative of what has really been happening on a national landscape (he did this in his "Reverend Wright/Race" speech, and he did this to some extent here on health reform): "I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it."

Agreed. Whatever your political persuasions, whichever your thoughts on the remaining 20% of health reform still in debate, or even if you don't have opinions on either, let's get ALL OF OUR political leaders to work on improving the health care plan and get it passed, rather than kill it.

Click here it'll take you 1 min.

Obama's speech - guest post by Abe Young