Pondering Pastor

I know it exists, but it’s missing from a lot of places.

In a quick trip to the bank and grocery store this morning …

• The driver of a vehicle at the bank drive-through (parallel lane) suddenly cut out in front of me after I had pulled forward to make a turn and was waiting for a vehicle to pass.  I don’t think she saw me or the other vehicle.
• A shopper at the grocery store was talking on the cell phone (in his outside voice) while shopping, all through the checkout lane, through the transaction, out the door, and into his car.  (The bank has posted a sign asking that while conducting bank business you are not to be on the cell phone.  I guess this isn’t common sense any more.)
• Shopping carts were left in the parking lot (not in the corrals) to drift with the wind and slope.

I know it all happens all the time.  Is it so hard to forget that other people live around me?  Consideration for others who follow me isn’t that difficult.

I did have some nice conversations in the grocery store, even though that’s not why I go.

Pondering Pastor

I’m a bit nervous.

Tonight our “Theology on Tap” men’s group meets at a local pub.  Our topic is challenging, “Creationism, Intelligent Design, & Evolution”.  But that’s not the half of it.  Two local newspapers are sending reporters.  I’ve already done one interview for the background material.  It will be interesting to see how the newspaper reports it.

Pondering Pastor

It seems that anything we can do to reduce the distance our food needs to travel before we consume it is a good way to reduce that food’s carbon footprint.  A new study described at LiveScience.com suggests that doesn’t play as important a role as the type of food we choose.

Substituting chicken, fish or vegetables for red meat can help combat climate change, a new study suggests.

In fact, putting these foods on the dinner table does more to reduce carbon emissions than eating locally grown food, researchers report in the May 15 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The production phase is responsible for 83 percent of the average U.S. household’s greenhouse-gas burden with regard to food, while transportation accounts for only 11 percent, the new study found. The production of red meat, the researchers conclude, is almost 150 percent more greenhouse-gas-intensive than chicken or fish.

“We suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than ‘buying local,’” the researchers write. “Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more greenhouse-gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food.”

Actually, it makes sense.

Pondering Pastor