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EDITOR’SNOTES
By Bill Dimmick
THE MILK PRODUCER
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Endangered species
Let’s make sure our cows don’t join polar bears on this list
The polar bear has become the poster critter for the green movement.
Concerted efforts by American environmentalists convinced the U.S.
Department of the Interior to classify polar bears as “threatened” under
the Endangered Species Act last May.
The threat to polar bears comes from a shrinking habitat. Global warming
is melting sea ice where polar bears routinely make rest stops while hunting.
Unable to find a convenient ice flow when out to sea, the bears drown.
In announcing the polar bear’s new designation, Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne acknowledged this fact. However, he clearly stated his
department was not going to start regulating greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions blamed for global warming.
A month or so before Kempthorne’s announcement, I read an in-depth
magazine article about the plight of Alaskan polar bears in a respected U.S.
magazine, Vanity Fair. The editor had devoted most of that issue to so-called
green issues. A major American publication devoting that much space to
these issues only reinforced my view that environmentalism is no longer
monopolized by hard-core tree huggers.
Anecdotal evidence abounds. This spring, my wife and I joined about 140
neighbours to spend a sunny Saturday morning picking up garbage that had
accumulated in the parks and roadsides of our community. In the same
neighbourhood, not taking your reusable cloth shopping bag—made from
recycled materials—to the grocery store is almost considered a crime.
Now, a neighbourhood cleanup and cloth shopping bags are hardly going
to save the planet. But they reinforce this point: people care about the
environment more than ever, and that includes drowning polar bears.
The bears weren’t an issue when I first wrote about global warming and its
implications for the dairy industry four years ago. Since then, environmental
implications have become much more serious. Consumers have started to pay
more than lip service to global warming. They are demanding action by the
way they spend their money.
This has led to a greening of businesses and industries who want
consumers to view them as being environmentally responsible, that they care
about saving the planet for our children and grandchildren. In some cases it’s
just green-tinted smoke and mirrors, or what’s known as “greenwashing.”
Others, like the dairy industry in Canada and elsewhere, have taken, and
continue to take, concrete, responsible action to curb GHG emissions. Our
cover feature, starting on page 20, describes some of these efforts.
We have to continue taking this issue seriously. If consumers decided our
products were no longer green enough, our
nation’s dairy cows, like Alaska’s polar
bears, would become an endangered species.
4 | July 2008 | MilkPRODUCER