I think it's great that more attention is being placed on our personal contributions to the climate crisis. It's about time we as a society began to look at our impact, and I'm happy to endorse any initiative which helps us focus our efforts. To most effectively harness the energy and enthusiasm for change, we should be certain that it is being directed towards areas which can result in the biggest gains.

Whenever someone talks about air travel, I look at its 1.5 percent contribution and wonder whether there are other areas we should be looking at which could result in even greater benefits

One such area is livestock, which are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions (more than from cars!), according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html).

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

I'm a meat eater and I fly a lot, but I have to wonder whether cutting back on one or two flights a year would have as much impact as, say, cutting back on one meat meal a week.

The cynic in me says it's easier for us humans to tweak technology we created than to change something as fundamental as our behavior and diets. But if we're serious about responding to the threats we face, we should also be serious about taking an honest assessment about how we live and what we can do to spur change. We may not like some the realities we face, but I suppose it's a sign of maturity to buckle down, make those changes, and get the job done.

Reading this story whilst overseas, the self-centered assumption implicit in the subjective personal pronoun "we" speaks volumes: I suppose there is only one "we" in the view of Empire.

I think it's great that the difference in preparation was laid out so clearly that it's obvious we're being sold a false sense of convenience. However, thinking about it from the convenience angle adds a couple more steps to the recipe:

Homemade

1. Boil water

1.5 Measure pasta

2. Add pasta

3. Cook pasta

4. Grate cheese

4.5 Measure amount of cheese (maybe this is 3.5?)

5. Drain pasta

6. Add pat of butter and stir

7. Sprinkle with grated cheese

8. Serve

So there are actually three steps that you have to do with homemade that you don't have to do with Annie's, two of which include simple math. (Yes, I'm skipping the steps for measuring water, milk, the pat of butter, etc. because they're the same in both situations.)

I'm certainly not sticking up for Annie's; I'm just trying to understand what makes Annie's attractive. And I find it fascinating that the idea that Annie's saves you time (i.e.: is more convenient) doesn't actually hold water when you actually stop and think about it.

More to the point, I wonder what this kind of marketing mojo could achieve were it turned from the dark side (so to speak) and applied to important issues like the climate crisis...issues which form the subtext behind a lot of these kinds of purchases.

"The fact is that we went to Iraq as a unified nation. Now that we are there, we have to figure out how to win for the Iraqi people."

I detect some truthiness in this statement.

The fact is, Mr. R. Allen King, that if unified means everyone, then you are incorrect: I did not want to go to war.

And another thing.

You're not the first person in support of the war in Iraq who I've noticed uses the word "win" so...ambiguously. Would someone PLEASE tell me what constitutes "winning" in Iraq? You seem to know, and maybe I'm a little slow, so could you please put together a checklist so that I can figure out whether we're winning or not? Thanks!