Goin' Green on St. Patrick's Day

Crossposed from Wiretap

There was an interesting piece in the Fashion section of the NYTimes this Sunday that is a little weird but it gets into some pretty fun stuff.

The piece follows a kid from Brooklyn who is hell bent on becoming an organic farmer. Trucker hats, Carhartts, and Pabst were the fashion but now some are putting the heart behind the fashion and finding the funk in farming.

"The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,” she said. “Our rock stars are ricotta makers.”

The same is true for Sarah Love, an Oklahoma University political science graduate and sometimes young Clay Pope a former DC staffer turn conservation lobbyist who have formed an organization that helps farmers become more environmentally friendly and companies to offset their carbon emissions.

Pope says he doesn't know about New York farmers but in Oklahoma the coolness of farming just brings the same stream of folks. "But stuff like that usually starts on the coasts and works its way inward." "Boutique farms in Oklahoma would go a whole lot further if you legalize marijuana, though," Love laughs. "I see a lot of kids getting involved then!"

Kidding aside, they hope to increase the interest and financial availability to small farmers and new farmers by providing financial incentives to those who run environmentally friendly operations.

"There are a lot of ways that farms hurt the environment over time," Love tells me. "With someone providing incentives to be more eco-friendly more people are happy to do the right thing for the environment."

Their plan is three fold.

1. Switch to no till farming methods. Traditional farming methods have you work the land, turning over the soil to get rid of weeds and work in fertilizer. When you till the soil, however, carbon dioxide escapes from the ground into the atmosphere. The best way to get the soil to chill out is to let it sit for a while and let grasses grow over it which converts the carbon dioxide into oxygen via photosynthesis. You can let your cows graze on it and plant the next year. This is what people mean when they talk about carbon sequestration through the natural terrestrial cycle.


2. Pasture land management is the next idea. This is what is mentioned a little bit above. The more the land sits and the the grasses can grow and suck the carbon out and change it to oxygen. Reducing production and using it for livestock instead lets the grass do its thing.


3. Buffer zone repairs. In places like Oklahoma there is a lot of water. Tons of lakes, rivers, streams... just a lot of water moving around. And of course a lot of farmland and grazing lands bump up against these waterways. With cows grazing so close to them you have them pulling the grass out of the banks reducing the vegetation that is holding the soil in around the waterways. As a result the land falls into the water... as does everything that is on the land... which means... cow poo too. That pollutes the hell out of the rivers and streams and lakes.
   
   So we have a couple of choices here. Move the buffer zone back 75-300 meters from waterways and it saves the grass. For the waterways that have already been compromised you'll allow the grass to regrow, or you can do what is called active re-forestation and plant trees and grass along to hold the soil together.

What Love and Pope do is work with companies to offset their own carbon emissions by contributing to farmers who do this kind eco-friendly farming and adopt some of these practices.

Organic is hot farming, but here's another way that new farmers can do their thing while also making the environment better and be adequately compensated for it. And its a great way for companies to offset their own emissions in a homegrown local way.

New School Evangelicals

Crossposted from Future Majority

There was a great story on NPR yesterday that captured my attention. Pew recently released their extensive 35,000 person survey that examines the role of faith in daily lives and in political affiliation.

Here is a video that talks about it in an overview. I would embed it but there were issues.

It does a number of things that I consider notable. First, it does a great age demographic breakdown in Chapter 3 (pdf). 68% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves to be Christians. 43% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves to be Protestant but only 22% of those consider themselves Evangelical Protestants.

What is shocking is that more people are comfortable not only church hopping but are considering themselves to be unaffiliated with any religion at all. That number is on the rise according to the survey.

"A good percentage of folks in that group tell us that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives, but they have become disassociated from institutionalized religion," he says.

Among Americans ages 18 to 29, one-in-four said he or she is not affiliated with any religion."

When I think of the image of a Protestant Evangelical I see a young family maybe late 20's early 30's. Its actually old people 60-69 year olds consider themselves Protestant Evangelicals 29% and 70+ 30%.

Secondly, it deals with some of the smaller religions. When we talk about things like Evangelicals its a pretty broad group. Are we talking about Baptist Evangelicals, or Free Evangelicals, or non-affiliated Evangelicals? Most, (41%) of Protestant Evangelical churches are Baptist with 26% being Southern Baptist. And 64% of historically African American churches that are Protestant Evangelical are considered Baptist as well but they are more National Baptist.

This data is interesting when looking at retention rates from childhood. 60% of those who were raised in largely Evangelical families continued to identify as Evangelicals. But what is super interesting, is that a majority those who were less likely to stick around with traditional churches they grew up in were more likely to get involved in another "New Protestant" church. New Protestant Evangelicals are like the Rick Warrens and Joel Osteens of the world.

What they've seen too is that faith is no longer an indicator in voting preference. Where we saw a huge turnout for Republicans among Evangelicals in 2004 that is not necessarily the case anymore, according to reporter Alex Cohen.

"The new school of younger Evangelicals is big and getting bigger and they're not necessarily going to back McCain..."

According to Professor Clyde Wilcox from Georgetown University "Mega church leaders, you know, tend to be a little conservative, but in the middle. And they're not so afraid because they think their churches are doing just fine, so they are willing to enter into dialogue with all kinds of people..."

People, including Barack Obama...."

The piece goes on to tell the story about Obama's visit to Rick Warren's church in southern California in 2006 where he and Sam Brownback had an interesting exchange. Brownback welcomed Obama to "his house" and Obama later declared "This is my house too. This is God's house..."

As has been mentioned before both by Mike and by Zach Exley from Revolution in Jesusland, this is certainly Not Your Father's Religious Right. The "new school" is eager to deal with humanitarian causes, stopping genocide, creation care (i.e. global warming), and a slew of other issues where Republicans have faltered considerably.

The more Democrats become comfortable talking about their faith in a non-trite more genuine way and developing relationships with pastors in their districts or their states the less powerful I think the major old white guys will become.

In the end the cool thing is that Millennials are not merely changing the face of politics, they are changing the evangelical movement as well or they are simply leaving churches altogether which can put more "mainstream" churches into financial instability in the next 5-10 years.