FOE

Massachusetts voters go to the polls today to elect a replacement for the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, and the outcome could have serious implications for climate legislation.

This election will make or break the Democrats’ current 60-vote majority in the Senate, which is just enough right now to end a Republican filibuster. Much of the national discussion centers on the health care bill, which Republican candidate Scott Brown opposes. But a Republican victory also would likely mean defeat for cap-and-trade legislation this year.

As governments fret over how a finite amount of land can feed an ever-increasing population, new research released today suggests that a “more equitable distribution of meat and dairy” between the diets of rich and poor countries can help avoid the ecological impacts associated with factory farming and reduce global warming emissions.

“Agribusiness and biotechnology companies are aggressively promoting their model of high-input, intensive farming as necessary to address the food and climate crises,” said Friends of the Earth food campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran. "This research blows their claims out of the water.”

For the report, titled “Eating the Planet: Feeding and Fueling the World Sustainably, Fairly and Humanely”, Compassion in World Farming and Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland modeled different diets, farming methods and land use.

They determined that it is possible to produce enough food for a booming population using methods that are both humane and do not require clearing forests to make room for agriculture, a major contributor to climate change.

Succeeding requires a diet balanced more evenly between meat and other food sources and between the wealthy Western countries and the developing world. FOE and CIWF recommend eating meat only three times a week, as opposed to the typical European diet of five times a week.

“Dating back to our founding, FOE has spoken to the needs of the planet and its people, not to the needs of politicians for compromise. I am absolutely committed to that mission.” —Erich Pica

What comes to mind when you hear the word economist?

Conservative? Business booster? Probably not "hard-core environmentalist", but one economics and fuel subsidies expert is just that — and, at 34, he's the new president of the outspoken environmental leader Friends of the Earth.

Fifteen years ago, as Erich Pica was studying economics at Western Michigan University, he looked at how the United States measures its economic growth, how environmental destruction – mountaintop mining and the Exxon Valdez cleanup, for example – counted toward GDP, and he saw that it wasn’t sustainable.

“We have economic incentives established throughout our system that reward environmental bad behavior,” Pica says. “Our entire system is built on this once-through, virgin material to landfill that degrades the environment and uses it as an economic bedrock without replenishing it.”

The nation and its policies need to recognize that “the U.S. economy is not above and beyond the natural ecosystem.“

Friends of the Earth has been pounding that message home for 40 years. Pica now has the hammer in hand, and he intends to use it.