In response to popular demand (2 people asked me!), I think I should briefly explain my decision to quit Dairy products. Some of my Grandfathers have always been 'anti-milk', though more for ethical reasons - cow's milk belongs to its calf. But consuming dairy products in the US apparently involves far greater moral issues. I wish I had realized this a lot earlier.
Can you imagine the plight of a cow in the US which is brought up in a huge factory like environment, given hormones, in many cases fed meat of its own species (yes!), have its milk sucked by machines and finally mercilessly slaughtered to be served as beef. Agreed organic milk is an option. But that still treats cows as milk machines and nothing more. Instead of the famous 'got milk?' tag line, they should be saying 'got soul? quit milk!'.
The Vikatan Tamil magazine has recently launched a 'Green edition' called 'Pasumai Vikatan'. Good to know that among the 'Tamasha news' crazy Indian media, there are few left who care for the environment and farmers. Apparently there are some plants which drive away Mosquitoes. It made me remember childhood days when people used to burn neem leaves to achieve the same. In other news...few million people die of mosquito related diseases every year in India!
Any Green initiative invariably benefits the farmers. Can't India ban plastic bags altogether and make shops to give Cloth/Jute bags? Incidentally I don't take the recycled paper bags offered in the US. I wonder in which country are the trees felled to get the original paper here in the first place. Anyway using cloth bags in India is the least one can do to help the thousands of cotton farmers who will commit suicide in the future.
And finally I joined Greenpeace last week. Not that I went out searching for them. But when I met a volunteer on Beverly Drive, I couldn't refuse. Hope the small money I contribute will help him fight, to save the whales in Antarctica!
5 comments:
> 'got milk?' tag line, they should be
> saying 'got soul? quit milk!'.
wat a meaningful statement!
with the advent of technology, ppl will become more and more lazy,need more comfort,care less for others etc...
its an inevitable change thru time.
although its not totally bad, its just that instead of farmers growing cotton, now there will be more ppl producing machines.
saving animals and plants is necessary but not farmers(its thier choice. already many ppl are moving away from agriculture seeing this.transition will be tuff but has to happen acc to economy).
actually i think chicken is the worst...man can "create" tons of them in poultry and then kills it. i dont want to
waste that life. give respect to that sacrifice :D .But seriously they shud be banned.
no da, farming needs to be there. agriculture makes great economics too. Brazil for instance is considered the agricultural super power. with the advent of technology people will be producing more from less space. thats good.
world's economy is exploiting enormous natural resources and is giving very little back to earth. this cannot go on for ever. at some point we have to turn to agriculture (like ethanol for oil and using that to generate electricity etc).
Balaji.
hmm..i dont think agriculture make a great economy compared to industries for a given space. but agriculture cannot totally go away, since import maybe too expensive and quality questionable for many items.
but yeah i its true that less is being 'given back' . Have you watched 'An inconvinient truth' - if not watch it, its a pretty decent movie
isnt the whole point of using recycled bags being that the bags are recycled, so no fresh trees have been cut? If you get your grocery in plastic bags, isnt that worse since it is not bio-degradable?
-puru
recycling yes, but when Americans talk about saving resources, its just a sick joke! anyway how are recycled paper bags going to prevent further deforestation? we don't need paper bags in the first place. may be they should make recycled notebooks.
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