Environmental Crusaders Strike Our Tummies

So the food police was out in full force today.

They scrapped our plates and trays into buckets of waste and then weighed our food. (Fortunately, at Claremont McKenna, we still have trays! Take that Pomona!)

Malthus must be very proud! (Good thing I had my beard on.)

I was tempted to get food that sticks to my plate before they handled it, but I didn't. I just walked past them and put my tray on the back. The un-elected Environmental Crusaders have no mandate to watch what I eat. Thank you very much.

Of course, the best way to reduce food waste weight would be a "pay as go" system where you pay just for the food you want to eat. That way, there would be no incentive to waste food and we wouldn't have to deal with the thought -- er... food -- police.

But the self-described Environmental Crusaders believes they can politicize what we eat, even if they aren't accountable to us and our choices.

The Environmental Crusaders puts their politics above our right to use the services for which we paid. They haven’t the right and they ought to be held accountable for those clubs which they purport to represent.

Of course we reject that self-appointed power, but if we have no chance and no right to be left alone, we need to ask if those food politics help or hinder us.


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Emily Meinhardt stood front and center scrubbing our plates into the waste bins. It shouldn't surprise us that Ms. Meinhardt wants to politicize the day before Earth Day. (After all, she gave some "green" gift suggestions for Father's Day.)

Ms. Meinhardt is a member of the environmentalist group, Sierra Student Coalition, which is a splinter group of the Sierra Club, and is their point person for Earth Day related activism.

The Sierra Club, where Ms. Meinhardt worked as an unpaid intern this past summer, is the same Sierra Club that may have led to the deaths of fellow Americans during Hurricane Katrina.

According to Joe Berlau, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, writing in National Review,“the national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.”

Given what we know of the efforts to replace some of those levees and how they were so in need of repair, was that a good idea?

To be fair, it’s unlikely that Ms. Meinhardt knew that she was interning at a group potentially responsible for the deaths of people who dwelt near the Mississippi River.

But if Ms. Meinhardt wants to suggest that our food can be sacrificed for her politics and the nebulousness of global warming, then it seems fair to hold her accountable for the very real lawsuits her group advocates.