John Seed was in Guelph town on Friday and had some interesting observations to make about climate change. John is a student of Joanna Macy who has a book out called Coming Back to Life.

A couple of the big insights I took away were:

1. If the US reduces the speed on their highways from 70 to 50 mph then there would be a savings of a billion barrels of oil a year. That, said Seed would keep things like the Iraq war from happening. That is a phenomenal idea!

2. Ruminate animals cause more greenhouse gases than all the cars on the planet. We need to eat less of that kind of meat. It isn't surprising that our agri business is as bad for the environment as our industrial practices.

One of the attendees of the conference said that he had just been at an environmental trade show and that there was a vendor there with a label for products that indicated the ecological footprint that was involved in manufacturing that product. There is a cool idea, let people decide how they spend their dollars based on that kind of information.

And finally, I don't have the article but a bunch of people were talking about a great article by Paul Hawken. I've read a Ecology of Commerce by Paul and it was great so want to track down this article that everyone was talking about. Fortunately I can just go talk to Stan Kozak down the street from me and ask him what it was. He sent it around.