7th Gen Blog

Chrystie in our marketing department just forwarded an interesting article from the January 22nd issue of New York Magazine entitled Indulge Your Paranoia in which writer Susan Burton discusses her parental struggle to banish toxins from her Brooklyn family’s life. Coming from someone without a background in this stuff, it’s an enlightening take on the subject not so much for the information it provides but for what it tells us about what’s going on in other people’s minds as they think on the issue of playing chemical roulette in daily life.

Her main point is that in today’s chemically intensive world it’s hard to keep track of all the potential toxins around us and even harder to take preventative action on on each and every one. That’s pretty true. But I don’t agree with the throw-up-your-hands-and-surrender attitude that seems to creep in at the edges of the piece. And there are several places in the article where Burton lets myth and misinformation stand.

Bisphenol-A, for example, may not yet have been studied by the National Institutes of Health, but the jury is hardly out. In fact, the vast preponderance of the evidence that exists very strongly suggests that it mimics estrogen to dangerous effect in the body, and the case against it is “still being argued” mostly only by industry spokespeople. Elsewhere she comments on a mother’s worries about a (most likely totally safe) recycled fleece blanket even as she blithely watches her own child dubiously jamming (very probably toxic) “low-VOC” carpet samples into her mouth.

Once again, ladies, gentlemen and protagonists of all ages, here's Treehugger's own Jeff McIntire-Strasburg with this week’s look at the burning issue of our times.

Today is February 1st -- the last month of the entry period for Treehugger and Seventh Generation's Convenient Truths video contest. You've got 28 days... or four weeks, if you prefer... to make a video on your efforts to combat the climate crisis. No need for elaborate production plans, or storyboards, or scripts -- just get out your video camera (even the one on your mobile phone) and show us what you're doing to lower your carbon footprint. Keep in mind that the winners of the great prizes we're offering won't necessarily be the most polished videos, but the ones that provide the best content in the eyes of the contest's judges. And, finally, remember that to qualify for the EPIC International Prize, your video must focus on sustainable consumption (that means you, shopaholics!)

Last night, the star-studded Global Cool campaign kicked off its 10-year push to lower CO2 emissions by a billion tons a year with the release of a previously unheard song by the Doors. The "new" track by Jim Morrison and company has been remixed with music from ex-Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros frontman Perry Farrell (who's also a Convenient Truths judge) and his new band, Satellite Party. A press conference yesterday at the British museum featured actor Josh Hartnett and musician KT Tunstall calling on citizens worldwide to join this effort to "..empower a community of individuals to deliver the solution to the problem of global warming through positive collective action."

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine featured a great article by Michael Pollan about how hard it is to eat these days. By that he means that we’re flooded with information about our food choices even as those food choices proliferate, and more often than not as soon as we get used to one new idea about what to eat and why another study comes down the pike to refute it.

This, Pollan says, is the result of nutritionism, a new kind of dietary ideology that has us more focused on what’s in our food than we are focused on simply eating the right foods themselves.

It’s an interesting idea, and it seems like a good one. You know… if we just focused on the broad overview of eating a fundamentally healthy diet, the rest would largely take care of itself and we wouldn’t have to worry about omega oils, and phtyochemicals, and flavonoids, and folate etc. etc. etc. They’d just be there because we were eating the way nature intended. To help us, Pollan provides a great list of rules to follow that demands to be shared. Here’s a quick semi-paraphrasing:

Treehugger's Jeff McIntire-Strasburg is back with this week’s look at our rapidly warming world.

If you're keeping an eye on the Treehugger and Seventh Generation Convenient Truths video contest site, you know that there are only 35 days left to submit your video on your efforts to lower your personal climate impact. We've got more entries available to view on the main site, so take a look, and then get out your camera: we'd love to add your video to the mix! If you're an amateur videographer, or simply someone with a mobile phone camera and an idea, we welcome your submission -- no experience required!

The business world is quickly catching on to both the threats and opportunities presented by the climate crisis, and Monday's press conference by the newly-formed US Climate Action Partnership demonstrated that a range of business types are stepping up to address greenhouse gas emissions. The Partnership, which consists of ten major corporations and four environmental organizations, issued "A Call to Action" last Friday, which calls for, among other things, mandatory greenhouse gas regulation and the development of a "cap and trade" system. The timing of the press event on Monday wasn't accidental: the Partnership wanted to draw attention to its call in anticipation of President Bush's State of the Union Address. The president's speech addressed environmental and energy issues, but his proposed policies didn't include mandatory regulations. We'll be interested to see how the administration, and the new Congress, responds to this pretty bold request.