The American Chestnut Foundation Needs Citizen Scientists to Test Potentially Blight-Resistant Chestnut Seeds

ASHEVILLE, N.C., Feb. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF®) has taken an unprecedented step toward the restoration of the American chestnut tree by offering a limited number of its most advanced and potentially blight-resistant seeds to both new and existing sponsor members for planting and testing. This is the very first time any of these seeds have been made widely available to members and it comes on the heels of over 26 years of intense evaluation by scientists throughout the natural range of the chestnut. Members can test these seeds for blight-resistance and American growth characteristics.

When the chestnut blight came through the eastern US in the first half of the 20th century and killed nearly four billion American chestnut trees, all seemed to be lost for this once mighty species. Since 1983, TACF has remained focused on a seemingly impossible goal: to restore the American chestnut to the eastern United States.

With this seed distribution program, TACF is one step closer to the restoration of this crucial species but there is much more to be done.

TACF President and CEO Bryan Burhans said, "TACF wants to share this milestone with our members that have worked so tirelessly to get us to this stage. For too many years we've had members call us, wanting the opportunity to plant these trees in their fields and backyards.  We now have a limited number of seeds available for testing and evaluation. By planting these chestnuts, you become a citizen scientist for TACF. It is such an exciting time to be a member."

Burhans notes, "This is just an early stage in a very long process. There is no guarantee that these seeds will have adequate resistance to the blight, although we are hopeful.  Testing by our members will help the organization evaluate resistance across a wide geographic range under diverse planting conditions."

In spring 2008, TACF, in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and University of Tennessee-Knoxville, planted five hundred potentially blight-resistant chestnuts on three national forests in the southeast. After one year, the seedlings are thriving in a forest setting.  The availability of these very same seeds to both long-time TACF members as well as new sponsor members is another step in a $16 million program that includes more than 60,000 trees and encompasses six generations of breeding.

For information on becoming part of this exciting new venture, please contact TACF at (828) 281-0047 for membership particulars and benefits.

About TACF

The American Chestnut Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization headquartered in Asheville, NC.  It has nearly 6,000 members and chapters in 17 states. The demise of the American chestnut tree due to chestnut blight has been called the greatest ecological disaster of the 20th century.  TACF was established in 1983 with the sole purpose of restoring this majestic tree to its native forests in the eastern United States.  Today, TACF's research farms encompass nearly 160 acres and more than 60,000 American and Chinese chestnut trees which are part of its national breeding program.  For more information about TACF or volunteering to help restore the American chestnut, visit our website at www.acf.org

Contact:  Meghan Jordan
The American Chestnut Foundation
(828) 281-0047
meghan@acf.org

SOURCE  The American Chestnut Foundation
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-american-chestnut-foundation-needs-citizen-scientists-to-test-potentially-blight-resistant-chestnut-seeds-83599327.html

Corruption, collusion, or legal thievery

By Henry Lamb
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 

Canada Free Press

www.canadafreepress.com 

 
In 2008, the Forest Service issued a land use plan that environmental organizations didn’t like.  The Earthjustice Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of four environmental groups.  The suit took 15 months.  The bill to the federal government from Earthjustice was $279,711.40. The Western Environmental Law Center filed another lawsuit challenging the same land use plan.  They represented 15 environmental groups and sent the government a bill for $199,830.65.  These two outfits claim that seven attorneys spent more than 930 hours (working full time, that’s 116 days), at rates between $300 and $650 per hour.

That’s good work if you can get it.

Think that’s bad?  Read on.

In September of last year, the Wildearth Guardians sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency, asking the court to prohibit FEMA from issuing flood insurance to private citizens on 52,535 structures that may lie within the range of an endangered species.  The group could not sue individual land owners unless they could prove that the structure caused the death or “harm” to any endangered species.  This suit is designed to block the use of privately owned land, and to collect a handsome fee from the government for doing it.

The government keeps no record of these “environmental” lawsuits.  Payments, however, are made from a single budget line item called the “Judgment Fund.”  The Budd-Falen Law firm in Cheyenne, Wyoming has done a yeoman’s job in researching payments made from this fund to environmental organizations. They include:

2003	10,595 payments made	Total paid: $1, 081,328,420
2004	8,161 payments made	Total paid:  $800,450,029
2005	7,794 payments made	Total paid:  $1,074,131,007
2006	8.736 Payments made	Total Paid:  $697,968,132
2007	6,595 Payments made	Total paid: 1,062,387,142

During these five years, tax dollars have funded environmental groups to the tune of $4.7 billion dollars in attorney fees alone.  Another $1.6 million was paid between 2003 and 2005 from the Equal Access to Justice Act.  These funds come directly from the agency that loses the suit. This doesn’t begin to include all the direct grants and contracts that are awarded to dozens of environmental groups.

A closer look at the nature of these lawsuits is also instructive.  Between 2000 and 2009, the Western Watershed Project filed at least 91 lawsuits and 31 appeals.  They were awarded more than $1,150,528 for such things as failing to list certain grass species as “endangered,” and failure to waive photocopy fees for mass document requests.

During the same period, the Center for Biological Diversity filed at least 409 lawsuits and 165 appeals.  They didn’t win all the cases, of course, they just cluttered the courts and walked away with $941,332, for such things as Endangered Species Act (ESA) challenges for failure to list the killer whale, a butterfly and an earthworm as “endangered.”

These lawsuits are not confined to western environmental organizations.  The Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the National Wildlife Federation have filed a total of 2,034 cases.  These lawsuits are often based on alleged procedural wrong doing, rather than on substance.  An example of what the greens call “strategic litigation” is the petition entered by the Wildearth Guardians to list 206 species as endangered.

At the same time, the Center for Biological Diversity entered a petition for 225 species to be listed as endangered.  There is no earthly way the EPA can issue a finding on 431 species within the 90 days required by law. 

This is another classic example of the Cloward-Pivin strategy that seeks to demolish a system by overwhelming it.  In this case, it is an extremely profitable enterprise for environmental organizations.

It is way past time that Congress put an end to this corporate welfare.  Many of these environmental organizations boast assets and income in multiple millions, and pay their executives salaries greater than the CEOs of most for-profit corporations.  The president of the Environmental Defense Fund, for example, takes home a total of $496,000 per year.  The president of the World Wildlife Fund takes home $486,000.

These organizations represent what appears to be the worst kind of corruption or collusion, but apparently, it is legal.  To the people who pay the taxes, it looks a lot like legal thievery.  The people who believe that environmental groups can do no wrong - are wrong; flat wrong.  Environmental groups are the worst kind of corporate welfare, feeding at the government trough while doing everything possible to put brakes on economic development.  These groups then have the audacity to beg for public donations, claiming to be the only salvation for the future of the planet.  Hogwash!

Congress should immediately launch a thorough investigation of every environmental organization that has applied for legal fees or federal payments of any kind, to assure the tax payers that their money is not being frittered away just to line the pockets of those who run the wealthy green groups.

Forest wars finally end?

Ag secretary’s visit showcases alliance between environmentalists, timber companies

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (center) expresses his appreciation for being given the opportunity to tour and learn more about Arizona’s groundbreaking effort to restore forest health and protect fire-threatened communities. Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick (left) and various local and forest officials accompanied Vilsack on the tour. 

By Pete Aleshire
Payson Roundup
Payson, Arizona

February 2, 2010

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (left) gets a briefing on forest restoration by Regional Forester Corbin Newman in Christopher Creek.

The forest wars are officially over, declared a blue ribbon panel gathered to greet U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in Christopher Creek Saturday as he toured a groundbreaking effort to restore forest health and protect fire-threatened communities.

“This is great work, great work,” said Vilsack of the years of effort that have forged a consensus on the need to restore forest health by reinventing the timber industry to thin millions of acres in four national forests between Williams and Alpine — including all of Rim Country.

Local officials led by Payson Mayor Kenny Evans and First District Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick triggered the rare visit by the head of a major federal agency. Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, now heads the federal agency that administers the Forest Service, which owns most of the land in Gila County.

Vilsack said the collaboration between environmentalists, Forest Service administrators, and both state and local officials will serve as a national model.

“I’m hoping to look back on this day as the official end of the forest wars,” said Todd Schulke, an analyst for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the most aggressive environmental groups in blocking logging in old growth forests. In a nod to Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin, also on the panel, Schulke quipped, “Maybe Tommie can put up an historical marker.”

Kirkpatrick, a first-term congresswoman and former Flagstaff prosecutor and state lawmaker, pushed hard to get Vilsack to make the trip, hoping to win high-level backing for the ambitious effort and for federal funding for thinning projects to protect fire-menaced communities.

“We all know a healthy forest means a healthy economy and healthy families and we’ve all seen what wildfires can do. So this is the end of the timber wars and it’s been years and years in the making,” Kirkpatrick said.

Vilsack, who admitted he grew up in Pittsburgh, said he’d had a crash course in the importance of the nation’s forests, which get some 260 million visits annually.

“When I got this job, I realized that for far too long, the Forest Service has been a kind of stepchild and I wanted to figure out what we could do to change the dynamic.”

He said the local efforts to figure out a way to use the timber industry to restore the forest provides just such a dramatic shift.

“I’m going to tell President Obama that we really do need to figure out how to leverage this resource — as you all have figured out. We do believe you are onto something.”

The so-called Four Forests initiative involved a years-long series of studies to forge an agreement on how much wood a refocused timber industry could take out of the region’s forests. In that vast area, tree densities have risen from perhaps 50 per acre to more than 1,000 per acre after a century of grazing, logging and fire suppression.

Now, with the remaining big trees beset by debilitating thickets of saplings and forest communities menaced by the threat of monster wildfires, the formerly warring factions have agreed on ground rules that could guarantee timber companies millions of trees annually if they can build mills and biofuel plants than can make money on little trees.

Only such a reinvention of the timber industry can offset the otherwise ruinous cost of hand-thinning — a cost of more than $1,000 per acre.

“The answer’s in the economy, not the treasury,” said Martin.

Corbin Newman, regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service, said his agency has invested $2 million in this effort to “rewrite the rule book because there’s not enough money to do this the way we have in the past.”

The new approach is already on display in the form of the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, a long-term contract with a timber company that has built a mill to handle small trees.

The Forest Service has guaranteed the right to harvest 5,000 to 15,000 acres annually, in return for a focus on thinning buffers around forest communities at dramatically reduced cost.

A study that brought together forest managers, environmentalists and timber industry representatives reached remarkable agreement on the wood that could be harvested on some 2.4 million acres in the Coconino, Tonto and Apache-Sitgreaves forests.

Only about 40,000 big trees greater than 16 inches in diameter remain. Such big, fire-resistant trees were long the mainstay of the timber industry, but also vital to forest ecology. By contrast, that area now has some 850 million board feet of wood in the form of smaller diameter trees and 8 million tons of brush and wood that could be burned in energy-producing power plants, the study concluded.

That would provide more than enough wood to supply power plants and the timber industry for the next 20 years.

Researchers from Northern Arizona University’s Ecological Restoration Institute have estimated that using the timber industry to thin just half of the overgrown land in the study area would produce 13,000 jobs and forest products worth $1.1 billion.

Originally published at: http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2010/feb/02/forest_wars_finally_end/

Emerald Ash Borer threatens national pastime

Ledger Independent

Maysville, Kentucky

By WENDY MITCHELL, Staff Writer | Posted: Thursday, January 21, 2010 11:00 pm

Officials across the region are taking a swing at stemming the spread of Emerald Ash Borer insects.

The ash trees destroyed by EAB infestations are the same tree species used to make Louisville Slugger baseball bats.

According to www.slugger.com, the bat maker 's Web site, "At this point there has been no impact on the bat industry or (Major League Baseball). The insect has not reached the area along the Pennsylvania/New York border where Louisville Slugger harvests trees to make baseball bats. However, there is reason for serious concern. The EAB was discovered in western Pennsylvania in the summer of 2007. At the current rate of progression, the insect very well could impact the forests where timber for bats comes from within a few years, if not sooner."

Creeping into Ohio in 2002, Emerald Ash Borers have placed dozens of counties in Ohio and Kentucky under quarantine conditions.

Ohio officials recently added Adams, Brown and Highland counties to a list of Ohio counties which, though not containing the damaging insects, are close enough to affected locations to warrant caution when working with timber and firewood transportation.

A federal law makes it illegal to take ash trees, parts of ash trees and all hardwood firewood from any quarantined county, out of Ohio, officials said.

Similar rules are in place in Kentucky, Kentucky Department of Agriculture officials said.

According to a notice from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, "... the quarantine makes it illegal to transport ash trees, parts of ash trees and all hardwood firewood from any quarantined county into or through a non- quarantined county without a compliance agreement from the Ohio Department of Agriculture. Violation of this quarantine could result in fines up to $4,000."

Ash trees infested with EAB typically die within five years.

Believed to have come to the U.S. on wood packing materials from Asian countries, EAB have been identified as infecting ash trees in a dozen U.S. states and part of Canada, officials said.

EAB belong to a group of metallic wood-boring beetles. Adults are dark green, one-half inch in length, one-eighth inch wide, and fly from early May until September. Larvae spend the rest of the year beneath the bark of ash trees and leave D-shaped holes in the bark about one-eighth inch wide when they emerge as adults, officials said.

Discovered in Kentucky in 2006, EAB identification in several counties and quarantine regulations in nearby counties prompted 31 Kentucky state parks to issue a ban on firewood purchased or brought in from outside the county where each park is located, officials said.

Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Grant, Gallatin, Owen, Pendleton, Harrison, Bourbon, Carroll, Fayette, Franklin, Henry, Jefferson, Jessamine, Oldham, Scott, Shelby, Trimble, Woodford, Fayette, Franklin, Jefferson, Jessamine and Shelby counties, have been identified as locations with EAB, officials said.

In 2009, the only exception in both states was bundled firewood which had been stamped by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as clean wood.

For the 2010 camping season, the Kentucky Department of Parks will implement an all inclusive ban on the import of fire wood into the state parks unless it is bundled, stamped USDA certified clean wood, park officials said.

If the ash trees for baseball bats are decimated, officials are already looking into alternative woods for their products.

"Louisville Slugger's timber division is working closely with the USDA and the state department of agriculture in Pennsylvania and other states to monitor the situation as these government agencies try to stop the emerald ash borers spread," officials said.

Louisville Slugger officials had one suggestion for saving the ash trees, "Don't transport firewood."

For information on the Emerald Ash Borer go to www.agri.ohio.gov or call 1-888-OHIO-EAB.

In Kentucky, if you suspect you may have EAB in your ash trees, call 1-859-257-5838.

  

The Vexing Bugs in the Global Trading System

by Kris Maher
Friday, January 15, 2010

provided by



Perched on a platform 50 feet above the ground in a big hemlock named Fern, Geoff Elliott points to an unwelcome Asian import: a little bug known as the hemlock woolly adelgid.
Small fuzzy white nymphs cling to the undersides of hemlock branches throughout the grove of trees. Both nymphs and adult adelgids can work quickly to destroy hemlocks 150 feet tall.

"This tree is believed to be somewhere between 200 and 300 years in age and can be taken out by the adelgid in as little as two to four years," says Mr. Elliott, a tour guide for Adventure West Virginia Resort LLC, which operates zip-line tours through the treetops. The company is trying to educate visitors about the dangers of the invasive insect as it diminishes the landscape the business relies on.

"Without any action we could lose the species," said Mark Whitmore, a forest entomologist at Cornell University. He described the hemlock as a "keystone species," because it provides shade that cools streams so fish can survive as well shelter for birds and animals. Losing it would be like "having all your front teeth fall out," he said.

As global trade has mounted, more goods are coming in from overseas, sometimes bringing with them the accidental cargo of destructive bugs and plants. An estimated 500 million plants are imported to the U.S. each year, and shipments through one plant inspection station doubled to 52,540 between 2004 and 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, about 30 new invasive insects are discovered annually in the U.S., up sharply over the last decade, the USDA says.

The yearly economic impact of invasive species in the U.S. is estimated at $133.6 billion, according to a study in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review in 2006. That includes the cost of control and prevention such as pesticides, inspection programs at ports and damage to crops.

An estimated 50,000 plant, animal and insect species have been introduced into the U.S. throughout history. Many plants are initially introduced as food or ornamentals, while animals are occasionally introduced to control other pests. The English sparrow was brought over to control the canker worm on crops in 1853. But by 1900, it was considered a pest because it introduced diseases.

Among the most damaging are weeds that affect crops or destroy animal habitats. The Asian purple loosestrife, for example, was introduced as an ornamental plant in the early 19th century and now invades some 284,000 acres per year in the U.S., crowding out native plant species that help support duck, geese and muskrat.

More recently, invasive species can be directly traced to increased trade. The Asian longhorned beetle hitched a ride on shipping pallets to Brooklyn, N.Y. from China, while others like the zebra mussel have arrived in the Great Lakes in the ballast water of ships from Europe, having spread there from Russia.

Once invasive species take hold in regions where they have no natural predators, it is often impossible to eradicate them. The emerald ash borer, a shiny green beetle from Asia believed to have arrived on packing material, is attacking ash trees. In the northeast, the Asian longhorned beetle has killed thousands of maple trees and other species.

The U.S. also has exported some unwelcome organisms. The gray squirrel, native to the eastern U.S., is causing havoc in Britain and Italy, where it is larger and more aggressive than the red squirrels it is displacing. It is believed that the gray squirrel was accidentally released by the London Zoo near the turn of the 20th century. The Colorado potato beetle, which attacks crops, turned up in Bordeaux, France, during World War I and has spread throughout Europe.

There are U.S. laws to prevent the import of invasive species, but they haven't been significantly revised since 1918. Last year, the USDA proposed new regulations that would ban imports of certain plants pending analysis ensuring they wouldn't host pests. It cited a 20-fold increase in seed imports in the last decade.

"Inspection is approaching, or may have reached, the limits of its operational efficacy," a USDA statement said.

The adelgid is thought to have first arrived in Richmond, Va., in the 1950s on nursery plants from Japan. It has since reproduced to a population that has devastated hemlock stands in the eastern U.S. They have destroyed an estimated 95% of the hemlocks in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park.

A single insect produces 100 eggs twice a year. That means a single insect and its offspring can spawn a total of 10,000 insects within a year.

Experts say they can only prevent the death of select trees. Each of the hundreds of thousands of infested trees must be treated individually, with an insecticide that can be injected into the soil, into the tree or sprayed on the trunk. Several groups also are experimenting with releasing predator beetles.

"It's labor intensive, but we are keeping them alive in those particular areas," said John Perez, a biologist at the 70,000-acre national park called New River Gorge National River, near Fayetteville, West Va. In the park, 5% of trees are hemlocks.

A less direct approach is trying to educate the public who unwittingly transport invasive insects in firewood or nursery trees and can take steps to protect hemlocks on their property.

Will Blozan, an arborist in Asheville, N.C., surveyed and measured thousands of hemlocks between 2005 and 2007 throughout Southern Appalachia to document the species before it was killed off in vast areas. Some trees are 500 years old, and he identified the 15 tallest and 15 biggest in volume, all of which had become infested. In spite of their mass, only one survived, and that had been treated with an insecticide.

"I've gone from very, very rarely seeing adelgid in 2002 to utter destruction," said Mr. Blozan, a former National Parks Service employee.

Hemlocks aren't a major timber product outside of rustic fencing. But they are considered vital to tourism. And dead trees, which are hazardous, are costly to remove. Some scientists fear the loss of hemlocks could allow invasive species like the tree of heaven, native to China, to thrive. It could crowd out other species that are more vital to the state's economy.

Forest products is second only to the coal industry in West Virginia, contributing about $4 billion to the state's economy through taxes, revenue and roughly 30,000 jobs.

"The woolly adelgid is a flagship for a bigger problem," said Rodney Bartgis, director of the Nature Conservancy in West Virginia.

Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com
  

Speaking off the top of your head?

News & Observer
Published Sun, Jan 17, 2010 02:00 AM
Modified Fri, Jan 15, 2010 07:03 PM

At the end of the day, it's important to achieve a win-win solution. Be sure to think outside the box to demonstrate thought leadership. And harness key learnings to change the game on that mission-critical project.

Confused? You have company.

Many workers say they're fed up with business jargon and corporate buzzwords.

Every industry has its own lingo. In technology, employees use "bandwidth" in conversations that have nothing to do with the Internet, saying things like, "I don't have the bandwidth to deal with this situation."

In finance, workers toss about terms such as "best-in-breed" when referring to investments.

And young attorneys at large law practices like to say they're "underwater" when they're busy, said Bob Knaier, a senior associate at a San Diego firm.

"It's a nice example of how attorneys want to make things sound much more drastic than they are," Knaier said. "'I'm not just busy, but my life is at stake; I'm drowning in work.'"

Business speak does have some up sides: for example, creating a sense of camaraderie among co-workers. But many people still feel it can go a bit too far.

Business people use jargon, thinking they're showing off their intelligence or trying to win respect from their peers, even if it doesn't work that way, said Michael Sebastian, a Web editor at Ragan Communications, a Chicago publishing and training company.

Others turn to jargon to avoid offending people or appearing politically incorrect, said Chelsea Hardaway, the co-author of "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots."

So they'll use terms such as "right sizing" for layoffs. Or, Hardaway said, "my plate's pretty full," is a way workers avoid saying they'd "rather die than take on your project."

Jargon can come out of pop culture, too. Business people may not want to acknowledge that much of their work consists of mundane phone calls and e-mail messages. So, they'll glamorize their tasks by using terms such as "mission critical" or "centers of excellence," she said, to make every project sound like a "James Bond mission."

Of course, jargon often muddles a point and forces people to explain themselves in simple terms. It can also lead to situations where entire offices fear saying anything real, Hardaway said.

Good jargon, bad jargon

Sometimes, it can help to use the same bloated language as your boss, because it often makes you appear part of the group.

"You want to be able to speak the language that people in the corporation are speaking," said Robert M. McCann, an associate professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. "If you cannot speak the lingo, that could hurt you."

But, at the same time, jargon can frustrate, annoy or intimidate colleagues. And it's important to realize that.
Kristina Hajjar, the director of communications for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said the fire service creates acronyms or abbreviations for almost everything. Her boss, the fire chief, is the "FC," for example, and a key handbook is known as the "FOG," for the field operations guide.

She understands the terms now but said she was at a loss when she was hired 12 years ago.

"It was just like entering a different world," she said. "I felt like I was really in a foreign country."

Moreover, that's how outsiders can feel if they're visiting a company or getting a sales pitch and they don't understand everything an employee is saying.

How to speak plainly

So, if you find yourself speaking a lot of corporate gobbledygook and think it's getting to be a problem, here's some advice.

First, ask yourself whether you'd speak the same way at home as you do in the office.

Sebastian, the Ragan Communications editor, jokes that you'd never say: "'Hi honey, you really thought outside the box with that dinner - those deliverables with the fresh vegetables were outstanding.'" So why talk that way in the office?

If you need help to break the habit, ask a friend or colleague to hold you accountable.Every time you say a jargon word, agree to pay a penalty that goes toward a happy hour fund or some other purpose.
At the public relations firm Melwood Global, for instance, employees are fined $5 for using the jargon phrase "at the end of the day."

"We use it way too much," said John Boit, a co-founder of the company. "It's a totally senseless and stupid phrase."

All the jargon money goes to support an orphanage for girls in Kenya.

It can also help to create a list of words to ban, or at least reconsider, in your office, Sebastian said. Enlist the help of your colleagues, and reach out to managers in other departments to get their opinion, since every work area has its own form of jargon. But be careful you don't go too far - remember that some people like their jargon.

Sebastian's recommendation: Eliminate "optimize," "synergies," "deliverables" and "actionables."

Other possibilities are "stimulus," "toxic assets" and "too big to fail," recently added to Lake Superior State University's List of Words to Be Banished because they're overused.

Workers who stop using those trite phrases may find there's a big payoff, Hardaway said.

"You start to become respected," she said, "and start to become the only clear voice in this sort of sea of monotony."

Here we go...

Will Vegetarian Humans One Day 'Emit' More Carbon Dioxide & Methane Than Cows?

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/will-vegetarian-humans-one-day-emit-more-carbon-dioxide-methane-cows.php

The moral of the story? Grow more trees!