Say it Ain't So-bama!

You know those SNL sketches: Really?!? with Seth and Amy?

Well, I want to say, Really?!? Barack?

Today, President Obama announced that he's proposing the opening of great swaths of America's waters for oil exploration. News reports suggest this was a concession to Republicans, in hopes that they'll support a more comprehensive energy bill later on.

Haven't we realized by now that Republicans won't support something they don't believe in just because you once gave them a cookie? And many, many Republicans don't believe there's any reason why we should reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

The President said this is "... part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy."

That's like saying war will move us to peace, or eating pie will move us to being skinny.

Beyond the obvious damage this could do to our fragile oceans, to beautiful creatures like polar bears and orcas, and to the push for cleaner energy; this proposal doesn't make the energy industry happy either. They say it doesn't go far enough. So not only is this an environmental fail, it's a political fail as well.

We don't need more oil. We need more clean energy.

Really.

*Photo courtesy of Chad Teer, and WikimediaCommons. Chad doesn't endorse this site, but he's nicely made his work available to those of us in internet land.

Auntie's PB & J Cookies

Kids love treats. Heck, I love treats too. Unfortunately, many of the treats that you can buy at the store are filled with partially-hydrogenated-this and high-fructose-that. Not only are they bad for you, but they're bad for the earth as well, filled with corn and soy products that are fArmed in non-sustainable ways. Andsince some types of treats (such as a yellow cake with a white filling inside which I will leave unnamed) don't rot, if they go into the landfill they are going to sit there forever.

Ugh.

Now, I'm not saying that given the choice between Airheads and these cookies, kids will choose the cookies (in case you're curious, click here to see the ingredients in Airheads, which are a favorite treat of every child I've ever met). And I'm not saying these are healthy. They are, after all, a treat. However, they are filled with recognizable ingredients, including whole grains, and they taste exactly like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but without the stuff that, you know, destroys the planet.

You could make a version of these that would not make Mama Earth smile, so I'm putting tips for using sustainable ingredients in parentheses after each ingredient. Enjoy!

Auntie's PB & J Cookies

Ingredients

3/4 c. butter (organic butter is the more sustainable choice, but it's expensive. Although butter gets a bad rap, I choose it over margarine, which is partially-hydrogentated vegetable fat, or cottonseed oil that has had hydrogen shot into it. Um ... I don't want to eat that.)

1/2 + 2 tbsp peanut butter (choose a kind that contains only peanuts and maybe salt - I use Laura Scudder's or O Organics)

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. firmly-packed light or dark brown sugar (organic sugars are readily available)

1 egg (go for organic/cage-free. Farmer's markets often sell local eggs, and in some natural markets you can find packaged eggs from specific local farms)

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour (there are lots of organic and sustainably-produced flours available, but you may have to go to your store's health-food section)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 - 2 1/2 c. quick-cooking oats

your favorite flavor of jam or preserves (check labels carefully. Even many "natural" brands contain high-fructose corn syrup or refined sugars. Look for those that are sweetened with fruit juice).

Step 1: Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter, peanut butter, and sugars together. Then mix in egg. You can use an electric mixer or wooden spoon to stir until it's all light and fluffy.

Step 2: Mix flour, baking soda, and salt.

Step 3: Pour the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Stir until well-incorporated.

Step 4: Begin pouring in oats. Stir after each addition. You don't want the dough to be too crumbly, so use your judgment to determine how much to add -- but it should be between 2 and 2 1/2 cups. If you want cookier cookies, use less; for oatier cookies, use more.

Step 5: Grease a cookie pan and form generous tablespoonfuls of dough into balls. Put it onto the pan and press your thumb into the ball. You want a deep well -- it should look sort of like a kid's volcano project. Take about a teaspoon-full of jam and put it into the thumbprint. (If you don't create deep thumbprints, the jam will melt and run all over the place.

Step 6: Bake for 13-15 minutes. Let cool for a minute or two and then transfer to a wire rack.

Step 7: Eat!

Interweb Round-up - Yeehaw!

Well, the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show is just winding down, so I thought you might like a little HOWDY! in your round-up today. So, let's begin the fun!

• One of the great things about the blog world is that you have the opportunity to learn so much from the people who are online. It's amazing all of the areas of expertise that converge electronically. Recently, I wrote about how I sometimes get tired of opening junk mail to get rid of the plastic windows in envelopes, and got this response in the comments from David: "You don't need to tear the plastic window out. Take it from someone who works in a paper recycling plant" Folks, you heard it here.
• I love owls. In fact, I have a collection of owl-related bric-a-brac. That's why this is the coolest thing ever - A livecam of a barn owl sitting on her eggs. I just watched the mom, Molly, dig into a half-rat for her breakfast. Yum! But seriously, it's amazing. And yes, I realize that it is affiliated with a hunting website. That being said, hunters ("sportsmen") are often big partners is conservation. It is because they want to kill the animals, but it's a complicated relationship. Never mind. Just watch the owl.
• My recipe for pumpkin-chocolate-chip bran muffins was featured in [1Thing]PDX. One of the readers said she made them for her six-year-old and I was psyched because healthy, delicious food for kids is so important. I've been playing with this recipe, and have come up with a couple of variations: 1) instead of pumpkin, you can use two containers of organic sweet potato baby food. So Southern! 2) Substitute 3 bananas, whirled in your blender with 3/4 cups of vanilla soy milk (instead of the regular milk) for the pumpkin; 3) don't like such a whole wheat explosion? Instead of using a cup-and-a-half of whole wheat flour, use 3/4 cup whole wheat and 3/4 cup regular all-purpose flour.
• Speaking of healthy food for our kids, I'm totally psyched for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, in which Jamie is going to try to change the eating habits of an entire American town. Jamie is a real evangelist for natural, healthy food, and totally gets that how we eat is inextricably linked with how we treat the planet. As a former first grade teacher, I was appalled but not surprised to see the clip below.

So watch and then go round-up some fresh food for your little ones.

... there's an app for that!

Let's say you're in line at Starbucks on an unseasonably chilly morning, and someone says, "Damn, it's cold! Guess there's no such thing as global warming."

Okay.

A) That doesn't make logical sense.

B) We know that global warming is happening.

But ...

C) Not many of us have the scientific expertise to swiftly counter crazy arguments against global warming and the human cause.

Thank goodness for Skeptical Science. On their website, they provide scientific counter-arguments for the most common claims lobbed against those of us who believe that global warming is happening. Not only do they have an easy-to-use website (just click on the skeptic's argument and get your response), but they also have an iPhone app -- for your spur-of-the-moment defenses of science.

And in case you're wondering what to say in the Starbucks line: Weather and climate are not the same thing. While we may have days of extreme weather, we are seeing an increase in daily record high temperatures. In short, in the big picture view, temperatures are increasing, even though we still get cold days.

Angel Vs. Devil

I have been a very bad blogger lately, but it's mostly due to the fact that I have been ridiculously busy for about two weeks now. And when I'm busy, not only does my desire to blog go out the window, but so does my desire to be green.

It's not that I don't want to be green, really. It's that the devil on my shoulder starts saying things like, "Do you really want to scrape the peanut butter remnants out of that jar so you can recycle it? Just toss it. You recycle way more than most people in Texas."

Then the little angel says, "But it's okay, it will only take a minute."

And then the devil says, "And while you're at it, why don't you throw away that junk mail, instead of opening it, discarding the plastic windows in the envelopes, and recycling the rest."

And then the angel does some kickass karate moves and takes down the devil - because usually, the angel wins. Unfortunately, however, when I'm so busy, this results in me being seriously ANNOYED at the angel, and really wishing it would just take a nap.

Here's the thing, though, if I didn't have the blog and know that at least eleven people are going to hold me accountable, then I probably would let the devil win. Thanks for reading and keeping a digital eye on me.

Put Your Stake in the Ground

My boss frequently says the phrase, "put your stake in the ground," meaning, lay claim to what you believe.

Well, today I want to put my stake in the ground. Even though I started this blog with the intention of being unpreachy, I think I've done pretty well at that, and so I want to go to church just a tiny bit.

Ready. Stake is going into the ground:

I BELIEVE GLOBAL WARMING IS HAPPENING AND I BELIEVE HUMANS ARE CAUSING IT.

If you read this blog, you might be thinking, well, duh. But a couple of recent events have conspired to convince me that those of us who believe in global warming (even the phrase "believe in" makes it sound like I'm claiming I believe in leprechauns or something) need to come right out at say that we believe in it and we believe it's caused by humans.

Event #1:

In a conversation on one of my favorite online communities, the question "Do you believe in global warming" was answered with a fair amount of equivocating although people generally seemed to be saying they did. Now, I happen to think this is simply a result of the fact that most folks who do believe in global warming also believe in a little thing called nuance, and they are happy to hold complex positions on issues. I am all for nuance and complexity. However, the fact that we are saying things like, "Well, even if we're not causing it, we should act like we are" lead to things like ...

Event #2:

The South Dakota legislature, as reported in the Rapid City Journal, among other news outlets, approved a resolution to urge teachers to teach "astrological" causes for global warming. Because I think it's always good to go to the source, here's the text of the resolution:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:

(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;
(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect [sic] world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and
(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena ...

Of course, a resolution is not a law. They are only "urging" that teachers tell kids that global warming is caused when Jupiter aligns with Mars and love will steer the stars.

This irritates me even more than the whole evolution debate, because this has a direct impact on the day-to-day habits of folks. Not only that, but unscientific thinking is creeping. Anti-intellectualism is bad enough, but anti-intellectualism that leads people to think that it's OK to continue to burn fossil fuels so they can keep a TV tuned constantly to Jersey Shore? -- that's just ... well, this is a family blog.

Right now, I'm not going to go into why I believe global warming is happening and we are causing it. However, coming up, I'll provide some links to folks that can explain the science much better than I (or Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK) can.

If you want to put your stake in the ground and say,

YES, I BELIEVE GLOBAL WARMING IS HAPPENING AND I BELIEVE HUMANS ARE CAUSING IT,

then write a comment below. And pass this link along to a friend. Maybe they want to put their stake in the ground too.