We’re dooooooomed because of Halloween. Here’s Warmist Diana Donion at the Huffington Post
Trick or Treat? The Frightening Climate Costs of Halloween Candy
Americans will spend more than two billion dollars on candy this Halloween, making it candy’s biggest holiday.
This is fun for kids, great for dentists, and downright fantastic for the Mars family. But before you head over to the store to buy this year’s bowl of treats, you need to be made aware of a really scary, but not widely recognized, fact:
Many Halloween candies contain palm oil, the large-scale, monoculture production of which is driving deforestation, extinction, human rights abuses, and climate change!
Highly versatile and inexpensive, this vegetable oil is a globally traded commodity found in 50 percent of processed products sold in the supermarket — everything from laundry detergent and shampoo, to pizza dough and name-brand candies and chocolates. Listed using many different names, its presence is often difficult to detect. In the last decade, global production of palm oil has doubled, and given the rise of consumer power in India and China, palm oil production is expected to double again.
Um, you know something? Ms. Donion is actually kind of correct in the notion that palm oil production is actually bad for the environment. I’ve discussed it many times, along the lines of deforestation and the intentional slaughter of animals, particularly orangutans. In Asia they are clear cutting forests to create palm oil plantations, and paying hunters to kill the wildlife in the area.
It is also being produced as an alternative fuel, because of climate change hysteria.
Palm oil production is not responsible for “climate change”. Adding CC into the mix is just typical Warmist idiocy, but, it does have a negative effect on the environment, animal and human rights, habitat destruction, and is even driving orangutans into extinction. Why this need to gloss over real issues by adding “climate change”?
There are two ingredients I look for when I go to the market: MSG and palm oil. The first because I’m heavily allergic, the second because of the above issues. It’s not that easy with either, because you have to recognize the names. Here’s a handy one for palm oil. The Girl Scouts, after being pressured by members, did away with the use of palm oil in their cookies. Sometimes it’s the little things. And they haven’t stopped. Next time you buy something, check for palm oil. Think about not buying it. “Climate change” is stupid, but the other reasons are truly valid.
Everything we do has a CO2 cost. Where advocates on either side of this argument fail is in evaluating relative importance.
“Candy generates 1.3 billion tons of CO2!” someone may shout breathlessly, assuming we all think 1.3 billion is a big, big number.
“Toasting your bread releases 13 million kilograms of carbon pollution!”
Budget hawks use the same ploy. “We will spend $12 billion on blah-blah over the next decade” failing to note that this is 0.0000001% of the budget over that time.
We can ban candy and toast but the CO2 levels in the atmosphere will still increase, just 0.001% more slowly.
Diana Donlon did not put her concerns in context of the overall impact on atmospheric CO2.