cows

I'm being a good little student and started on the (available for free) optional readings for my first course: Building Design for Low Carbon. The book Sustainable Energy with the Hot Air starts off, as with most books and lectures on this topic, justifying the reality of climate change. As in the physical phenomenal is happening, that there are "factual assertions" that are true. I find it a little sad that this premise is still required. The book also takes extra care to separate the "factual assertions" from "ethical assertions" which deal with why/how/what actions we should take. I'm glad that I took ENV221 and 222 in forth year as these two courses give a solid foundation for the ethical (most useful reading imo) and political issues involved in taking action.

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All the above text is really leading into the fact that I forgot to post a quotations from From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone:

People gain weight because they eat too many calories or are too inactive for the calories they eat. Genetics affects this balance, of course, because heredity predisposes some people to gain weight more easily than others, but genetic changes in a population occur too slowly to account for the sharp increase in weight gain over such a short time period.

My first thought after reading these lines is that it sounds so darn similar to evidence for asserting that anthropogenic climate change is real.

This book is also a good introduction to the subject of Food Ethics, and does a good job of explaining some basic ethics framework as well. Kevin and Eric's philosophy discussions make much more sense after reading the background chapters in this book.

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Another book I've read this summer on the topic of food is Food Politics (I also follow the author's blog). This book is another good subject introduction to the numerous conflict of interests that exist in the food system.

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Lastly, my personal reading goals for this year is to tackle most of Terry Pratchett's Discoworld series. Seems appropriate as I'm in the U.K. and I would like some fun reading to do before sleeping in hopes that I'll sleep better with some buffer between when I close my eyes and looking at a screen. I hope I'll enjoy his work as much as I've enjoyed Vonnegut's.