A critical hurdle was just cleared in California where the threat of raw milk becoming illegal (as it already is in many states) was looming. The Assembly Health Committee voted unanimously for SB 201, the Fresh Raw Milk Act of 2008. They are also close to passing legislation that will codify making it safe and legal, hopefully to be used as a template in other states.

It's a big government report, with charts and graphs. If you've ignored every other technical paper from an agency with a long name, it sure looks like you can cheerfully deep-six the one released last week, since it contains phrases like "World marketed energy consumption is projected to increase by 57 percent from 2004 to 2030. Total energy demand in the non-OECD countries increases by 95 percent, compared with an increase of 24 percent in the OECD countries."

What's an OECD country?* Who cares, right? But actually this report from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) is kind of a big deal, because of what it says about the collision course between business as usual and our climate and peak oil realities. The report makes a lot of assumptions, among them continued rising energy demand for the next two decades, mainly from the Third World (and especially China). It says that those cries of "Oil! Oil!" will push prices to $186 a barrel. What's more, coal will stay on the front burner as our largest source of electricity.

This is plainly impossible, both from the planet's point of view and the cold facts about our energy economy.

Coal is the biggest global warming aggravator, and climate visionaries such as NASA's James Hansen, not to mention myriad and increasingly vocal college students, are calling for "No New Coal." Soaring oil prices have already put a big crimp in demand, and it's far from clear we would even have it to pump if EIA's projections bear out.

The federal government needs to do energy outlooks, but this one is likely to be far off the mark. For instance, on June 19 China (the second-largest oil consumer today) announced steep 17 percent hikes in gasoline and diesel prices "to rein in energy consumption," according to Bloomberg.com. Electricity is going up, too, which should at least dent coal use.

I was giving an eco-parenting talk last week when a pregnant-with-her-second-child mom asked me if it were true that all chicken is bathed in chlorine as part of its slaughterhouse processing. I was grossed out, appalled, and stumped. I wasn’t, however, surprised. Conventional meat is about as grim and questionable as it gets. The slaughterhouses must have some serious gunk in need of disinfecting, especially as it is done in (potentially cross contaminating) bulk. I haven’t personally used chlorine bleach in years and years and clearly would not want the food I feed my family to be dunked in it.

When I got home, I immediately started researching her query. I personally get chicken from three places: my local farmers market, a pastured meat and poultry CSA I belong to, and a butcher shop near my parents’ place in upstate New York called Fleisher's. I have never smelled anything even remotely chlorine-y about any of these birds. But apparently a lot of people have smelled the chemical on theirs.

My first mode of action was to email my CSA contact to find out what they do to “clean” poultry, and to see if they could help get me up to date on what USDA organic regulations are when it comes to chlorine (I highly doubted they permit such a caustic chemical). Then I started reading everything I could about chlorinated chickens. I had given the mom who asked my email address and she forwarded me some links. One article she sent from Britain’s Daily Mail lamenting a possible lift of a ban against US chicken pointed out that it “would have to be labeled as 'treated with antimicrobial substances' or 'decontaminated by chemicals'.” Would that we had such labels here! ...

I’m trying to think of inventive ways to make teeth brushing fun for my daughter (who at this point just wants to suck down the toothpaste) because I worry about her genetic inheritance in the teeth department. At one point in my life I probably had 25 silver fillings in my mouth. I remember when my old roommate had her amalgam fillings replaced-- she said she felt much “lighter” after, but I’ve never had the money or motivation to electively remove the mercury from my system. (In the left hand corner of my mouth, where my lips meet, there’s some purple-colored residual mercury under the skin. Pretty gross.)

Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Japan have all banned amalgam in fillings (composed of 40% mercury and a 60% silver, tin, copper, and zinc combo), but it’s still anything goes here. Lots of dentists have upgraded to resin composites or porcelain (only a couple of my silver-topped teeth remain), but amalgam’s cheaper and easier to deal with, and the American Dental Association (ADA) has always maintained that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with chomping on a neural toxin for years and years anway.

That is, until now.

Last week the Food and Drug Administration changed the language on its website from worry-free to more cautious, apparently because of this lawsuit. ...