DAY 97 - Three more days. The Mission 100-Mile Challenge ends Monday at the stroke of midnight. There’s something about an approaching deadline that slows down time--the pleasures of the moment fade into the background and the finish line grabs all your attention. I miss the challenge already, but at the same time, I won’t deny I’m ready for a locally brewed beer (with forbidden barley) with friends at a restaurant.

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One of readers wrote about her plans (as a family physician and married mother) to turn 2008 into a search for local foods and start an “ecoyear” blog called www.ecoyear.net. As you'll see from her note below, she has some concerns, but we think it’s going to go swimmingly.

Alisa and I visited the Boulder farmers’ market and walked away with some incredible finds, like heritage Yellow Indian Woman and Cherokee beans, as well as flour and popping corns, and other foods that are completely unfamiliar in our landscape.

When we visited the area last spring, many people in Denver and Boulder told us it would be “impossible” to eat locally where they live, given the high altitude and short growing season. They must have forgotten they were talking to Canadians. Spring in the Colorado Rockies was weeks ahead of even our relatively gentle coastal climate in Vancouver…and we’ve since met people managing to eat locally, and well, in places far, far to the north of us.

Here’s the reader comment: "We are in the planning stages for our 100-Mile Diet. I have read that it can be economically unsustainable, that it can take a lot of time, involve some hunger, and lots of time looking for local staples. With three little boys to feed, and a husband, I cannot afford to have this be a short-lived or a failed experiment. So 2008 is my planning year - I am discovering lots of places to go to find resources that will come in handy. The movement feels like it is about to lift off in the grandest way!"

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It hasn’t been easy to be Canadian over the past few days. Our prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been holding the world hostage as his empty and protectionist opposition to the emerging consensus on climate change blocks any meaningful new agreements. In a word: pathetic.

Whether or not you’re a Canadian, there is one simple action you can take. Sign the petition which will be accompanied by a national media campaign condemning the Harper government for their selfish willingness to gamble with all of our futures.

You might also consider signing Al Gore's petition - adding your name to the list of people worldwide who are calling for a more inspired and demanding approach to rapidly reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we produce. We have a choice: enter into an inspired era of invention as we change the way we do almost everything; or fight a million small battles against the effects of climate change. In other words, we can go for a cure or we can endlessly treat the symptoms. And as Gore shows, a more revolutionary climate change agreement may be much simpler than most us would think.

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A study by Cornell University crop and soil scientist Christian Peters found that the most sustainable local diet for residents of New York State would actually include some animal products. (And by some we mean not much: about 2 oz. per day; e.g., one egg plus a piece of meat about the size of an iPod.)

The research found that livestock can often be sustainably grazed over poor quality agricultural land that would require a lot of effort and energy to farm. You can produce more vegetarian food per acre on good land in New York, but if you raise livestock as well, you can draw food from a larger land base overall. It matters, too, how you produce those animal products. Free-range animals, besides being healthier and happier, are the most environmentally efficient; factory farming sends environmental costs through the roof.

The farmer and philosopher Wendell Berry once declared, "Eating is an agricultural act" - a reminder that real people and real places produce the food that seems to appear magically on our plates."

Today, we need to go further and say, "Eating is an ecological act." The Cornell study emphasizes that local conditions are what count when it comes to deciding the most environmentally sustainable way to eat. Some areas are surrounded by nothing but top-grade agricultural land: in those places, there’s little doubt that a wholly vegetarian diet would be the most efficient and sustainable. Meanwhile, the high-fat, meat-heavy diet that many people eat today isn't likely to be sustainable anywhere - it is the least efficient possible use of land and resources. Feeding New Yorkers this conventional diet would use up three times as much land per person as the preferred, low-meat (egg-and-an-iPod) diet described above.

That extra land isn’t available. While a more efficient diet could feed 50 percent more New Yorkers on local food, the study found that it would still only add up to 32 percent of the state’s population. We continue to believe that local food systems' productive power is consistently underestimated, ignoring the volumes of food that can be produced on marginal land and even in our cities. Nonetheless, New York appears to be an example of a place that must, for now, rely on food from farther afield. Which raises the question: What does it mean when the way we build our cities makes it impossible to live sustainably?

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