Pirate's Cove

As someone who’s spent some time in hospitals for a broken ankle and then a broken leg, I’ve experienced hospital food. No one would give me good Eastern NC barbecue, even though one of the great joints, B’s, was right near the Greenville hospital. The food is not great, right? Here’s how to make it worse for a scam

Hospitals put climate change on the menu

Each year, hospitals across the United States dish up billions of meals. Those responsible for feeding thousands of visitors, patients, and employees every day contemplate numerous issues, from nutrition requirements to skyrocketing expenses.

But increasingly, they also focus on another significant concern: the environmental impact of what they serve and how.

That makes sense given the role that food plays in helping or harming the planet. For example, 34% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide are food-related, according to a 2021 Nature Food article. What’s more, health care has a significant environmental footprint: If the global health care sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest contributor to GHGs. And a large chunk of hospitals’ environmental impact comes from their food services.

This reality worries health care leaders who want to avoid contributing to environmental problems that can cause or worsen health conditions for the patients and communities they want to protect.

Are these same leaders reducing their own “environmental impact”, or, are they like most climate leaders who have massive, outsized carbon footprints? And why can’t they mind their own f’ing business? Worry about themselves, stop mucking around with other people’s lives.

Hospital leaders are approaching the issue from numerous angles, including how their food is produced, transported, prepared, packaged, and discarded. Often, they focus on three key areas: swapping plant-based food for meat, buying locally and responsibly, and discarding waste in more environmentally responsible ways.

“We look at how we can reduce the environmental impact from food at every decision point,” says Diane Imrie, RD, MBA, who oversees the production of 2 million meals annually as director of nutrition at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) in Burlington. “This adds up to a big enough effect on the environment that if we were ignoring it, we would feel we were not living up to our commitments to our patients and to the planet.”

I’m totally not against locally sourced: I buy as much locally sourced food as possible, mostly veggies and fruits. Taking away meat? Stop right there. Don’t make the hospital experience worse. Let the patients have some joy. Or, considering hospital food, sorta-joy. Of course, what all will this cost? Because we keep seeing that all this climate stuff is expensive, and hospitals are already expensive.

But making such changes palatable to patients and cafeteria customers isn’t always easy.

“Food is near and dear to people’s hearts. If you start messing around with their options, it can be tough,” says Kyle Tafuri, vice president for sustainability at Hackensack Meridian Health, which has reduced meat-related GHGs at its 18 New Jersey hospitals by 39% in recent years.

Hackensack culinary staff worked to develop some mouth-watering options. For example, beet greens don’t simply get chopped and boiled; they instead appear in a salad with candied walnuts and a citrus dressing. Other hospitals try small steps, like swapping a 100% beef burger for a version that’s 70% beef and 30% mushroom.

Stop forcing your cult on everyone else.

Meanwhile, from Watts Up With That?:

Politco: Hospitals Turning into ‘Climate Change Fighting Machines’ – Limiting water with ‘timers for operating room sinks’ – ‘More Earth-friendly drugs’ – Reducing ‘anesthetic gas’ – ‘Decarbonize U.S. health care’

Read: Good News: Climate Cultists Look To Make Hospital Food Worse »

The question now is “will the judge buy into the scam?”

Young plaintiffs’ attorney closes Montana climate change trial with call for action

An attorney for 16 young plaintiffs urged a judge Tuesday to strike down as unconstitutional a Montana law that prohibits state agencies from considering the environmental effects when it weighs permits allowing the release of greenhouse gases.

Attorney Nate Bellinger made the plea in his closing argument at the end of a seven-day trial. Plaintiffs say state officials violated their right to a clean and healthful environment, part of the Montana Constitution, by allowing companies to build power plants and expand coal mines, among other things.

“Like other monumental constitutional cases before, the state of Montana comes before this court because of a pervasive systemic infringement of rights,” Bellinger said.

During the first-of-its-kind trial, plaintiffs testified about how increased heat, smoke from wildfires and drought affect their activities and mental health. Native Americans said climate change affects their ceremonies and traditional food sources, and climate experts warned the window to address the environmental damage is rapidly closing.

Montana Assistant Attorney General Michael Russell said in the state’s closing Tuesday that the climate change issue is much larger than Montana can address on its own.

He said calls by the plaintiffs for the state to take the lead in addressing climate change was a social statement, not a legal argument. The case put on by the young plaintiffs was a “weeklong airing of political grievances that properly belong in the Legislature, not a court of law,” he said.

If you’ve paid any attention to this suit, you notice that the plaintiffs were long on politics, fearmongering, personal stories, and demagoguery, and short on facts, law, and Constitutional reasoning. It belonged more in opinion pieces in the local papers, not a court of law.

Emily Flower, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Austin Knudsen, described the trial as a “publicity stunt staged by an out-of-state organization that is exploiting well-intentioned children.”

The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys for Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon environmental group that has filed similar lawsuits in every state since 2011 and raised more than $20 million in contributions. None of the previous cases had reached trial.

Again, it’s yet another astroturfed suit, where a big money climate scam group enlists a bunch of young folks, has them trot out some sob stories, then does their cult stuff. BTW, since the kids are so against power plants, when will they stop using all that power for their smartphones, streaming videos, uploading videos, streaming shows on their TVs, and so forth?

Read: Lawyer Makes Social Statement In Closing Argument In Youts Climate Case In Montana »