One of our favorite people, Michael Pollan has some things to say about this recent dispute over Whole Foods and healthcare. You probably already know but the CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey wrote an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing Obama’s Health Care Reform and saying people should simply buy and eat from Whole Foods.

Which lead many who support Healthcare reform to start a Boycott of the store.

While this is no doubt a pretty lame and thoughtless thing to say (since many people can’t afford to shop there and there’s still plenty of junky crap you can get there that would not necessarily lead you to good health), Mr Pollan says that the things Whole Foods does do to support local and organic agriculture make make it the best option regardless of the CEO’s opinions on health care reform.

Also it’s pretty hard to argue with this (from John Mackey’s article):

“Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat.”

This is certainly true. Simply eating right has a HUGE effect on the state of one’s health. As does regular physical activity. Often its these simple (though difficult for many people in the coutry to adhere to) solutions that work the best.

Both Carlos and myself practice a vegetarian and mostly-veg diets for these and a number of other reasons.

Fun little article about some creative problem solving here in Los Angeles on Environmental Graffiti. Apparently the reservoir has a high level of bromate and chlorine and when exposed to light and heat, causes a chemical reaction that can then cause cancer.

So what do you do? Cover the reservoir with black balls to soak up the heat. Pretty clever. But do the balls leach chemicals in to the water?

Seen on Clay’s CHOWDER.

Coal accounts for between 53-59% of our electricity here in the united states (where we use on average 3 times as much per person than do citizens of europe, whom themselves use twice the worldwide average). Remember also, that coal power accounts for 25% of the country’s water use, not including that water which is polluted in the process of getting the coal out of the gound.

Politicians will often point to the nearly 300 billion tons of recoverable coal we have as a nation. They say that it’s enough to last about 300 years, but they ignore that this is how we have to get it. I say we try to use some different sources, and cut back on our use in the first place.

Cell Phones, 2007, partial detail. 60×100″ Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.

Chris Jordan ‘runs the numbers’ for us, in two art exhibitions with digitally manipulated photographs like the one above. His goal is to begin to give us a kind of visceral understanding of the statistics we so often see regarding the amount of waste we create. More info in his TED talk: