PepsiCo, feeling the (ever warmer) winds of change ruffle its hair, has decided to be proactive in measuring its own carbon emissions. Its test case is orange juice - how much does a glass of Tropicana contribute to global warming?
The company hired experts to measure emissions in every part of the orange juice-making process: Fertilizing the field, transporting orange cartons, running the factory. Turns out, growing is the single biggest source of emissions, as the nitrogen fertilizer used on citrus groves needs a lot of natural gas to make, and turns into a greenhouse gas when spread on the fields.
The final number? About 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted for each half-gallon carton of orange juice.
While that statistic is fairly meaningless without any context, the fact that PepsiCo is calculating its carbon emissions means that other corporations are likely to follow in its footsteps. And as emissions numbers become more widely known, consumers will be able to choose to buy products from companies that make a concentrated effort to reduce their footprints.
Check out the original New York Times article for a slideshow on tracking the carbon footprint of the orange.
If you were planning to break the records and live well into your 100's, you might want to rethink that plan. USA Today reports that there's a new doomsday study making waves from Science.
Basically, the study states that the Earth will keep warming to the point where our hottest seasons on record will become the norm, and thus drastically reduce crop yields -- meaning a "disastrous food shortage for billions of people by the end of this century."
The piece does include naysayers, but even they don't necessarily offer a future-full-o-food scenario. Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute says that the agriculture industry will adapt -- citing the US increase in crops as temperatures rose. And Linda Mearns, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it will be "less grim."
Said to have aphrodisiac properties, this fragile species is suffering from drought on Southern European farms and will continue to suffer if predicted temperature increases come to fruition.
But as Southern farms are suffering, some Northern plantations are thriving from the increase in temperature (truffles are very sensitive to both frost and drought). But by the end of the century, scientists predict that in Toulose, France, temperatures will exceed 95 degrees F on 25-55 days out of the year (currently, it's only that hot about four days out of the year).
We're in the thick of the maple syrup harvest season right now, but high fuel costs will likely lead to price increases of around 30 percent, according to an article in the Boston Globe.
Fuel prices - sugarmakers use fuel oil to boil the harvested sap into syrup - combined with already low syrup reserves from several poor harvest seasons are driving up retail prices. Warmer winters due to climate change have shortened the season, causing historically low output. Plus, there's an increased demand for maple syrup as consumers grow increasingly hip to its superiority over the faux corn syrup-based pancake syrups.
I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, so I don't know if Al Gore covers this, but it looks like one of the biggest contributors to global warming is the food we eat and the processes that give us that food.
According to this press release from the Bon Appetit Management Company, "the average American creates 2.8 tons of CO2 emissions each year by eating - even more than the 2.2 tons each person generates by driving." The company is pushing a "Low Carbon Diet" and trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The first "Low Carbon Diet Day" will be held next April.
So the moral to the story? Just stop eating completely and drive your car more, you selfish jerks!
Yep, you read that right. There's a new "low carb" diet being touted out there, but thisone has absolutely nothing to do with your health. It has everything to do with the health of the environment.
Instead of calories of carbs, this diet has you counting carbon. That's right. The Low Carbon Diet is one in which you calculate the "carbon cost" of your food to help reduce the emissions that cause the greenhouse effect and global warming. The goal of the diet, which is actually a program that is being tested by a company called Bon Appetit, is to make people "realize that their food choices can have an effect on climate change."
What does this mean for us? It means that instead of eating a tropical fruit that took a lot of energy to transport to your grocery store, you go to your local farmers' market and buy what's been grown locally.
Luxist reports that a recent conference on Global Warming and Wines found that traditional
wine-making areas may be at risk of losing their wine-making abilities,
including the Catalonian regions of Spain and Bordeaux region of France. If current warming trends continue, one
speaker at the conference argued, this could be a reality "within the next 40 to 70 years." Grapes in those
regions could suffer not only from an increase in temperature, but from a change in the amount of rainfall they
receive. Increasingly dry areas may face water-restrictions to conserve water, while other regions may face heavy
rains, since many scientists predict changing weather patterns will accompany global warming. On the plus side, some of
the areas of the world that are now too cold to successfully cultivate wines on a large, commercial scale will probably
be warm enough to grow grapes, leading to new varieties and blends for connoisseurs to enjoy, drowning their sorrows to
forget the loss of their favorite Bordeaux.
It appears that global warming may not be that bad on our food plants. According to New Zealand
scientists, who are writing a report for the UN on ozone layer depletion and its consequences, plants are developing a
protective layer.
This poisonous layer acts as a shield against harmful ultraviolet rays. It is a pigment that can be toxic to
predators and help with disease prevention thus reducing, they suggest, the use of pesticides and fungicides. They are
are not sure if these toxins have a negative effect on us and what effect they may have across the whole food chain; so
maybe not that good.
Like everything connected with global warming no one seems to know for sure. What most agree on though is that
while the pollution that causes ozone depletion is declining, the warming of the atmosphere will see a
continuing thinning of the ozone layer across the world.
If you were planning to break the records and live well into your 100's, you might want to rethink that plan. 
We're in the thick of the maple syrup harvest season right now, but high fuel costs will likely lead to price increases of around 30 percent, according to an article in the 
I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, so I don't know if Al Gore covers this, but it looks like one of the biggest contributors to global warming is the food we eat and the processes that give us that food.
Yep, you read that right. There's 
It appears that global warming may not be that bad on our food plants. According to New Zealand
scientists, who are writing a report for the UN on ozone layer depletion and its consequences, plants are developing a
protective layer.
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