While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter? Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges.

>> That got some people to launch a boycott against Whole Foods.

>> The Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan won’t be boycotting Whole Foods (via Ethicurean):

So Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder. I haven’t examined the political views of all the retailers who feed me, but I can imagine having a lot of eating problems if I make them a litmus test.

>> Dave Murphy at Grist concurs with Michael. “A boycott of Whole Foods won’t make a difference on health care, and it might actually hurt something progressives care about — organic and natural farmers.”

I won’t be officially boycotting Whole Foods — but Mackey’s disgusting editorial’s grossed me out enough that I may just stick to shopping at Co-opportunity and the farmers’ market until the whole health care debate plays out in Washington.

However, I’m very lucky in that I live in a neighborhood with better shopping options for local, organic food than Whole Foods offers. I would hope that those living in less eco-foodie-friendly neighborhoods won’t feel like they now have to shun Whole Foods if that’s the best place they have to get local, organic food.

What do you think?

Poll closes Monday night.

Image via Whole Foods Boycott / Facebook

However, the round trip flight will cover 15,109 miles — and release 3,978 lbs of CO2 according to Terrapass.

Terrapass is happy to offset that for me for $23.80. But at the Blankspaces panel I was on, I talked about how the money you’d spend on buying an offset you’d have a hard time tracking may be better spent as a donation to a local eco-nonprofit whose work you support.

So which nonprofit should I donate to?

Poll closes at the end of the day on May 10, which is the day I’ll be flying back to LAX.

Image by ponte1112

Sometimes I like the new tagline; other times I don’t. What about you?

Oh — And if you have a brilliant idea for a new tagline, please share it with me! Poll closes at the end of Earth Day.

It’s because I started using CTRL, a skin care that’s like Proactiv but markets itself as being more eco-friendly. Why? CTRL contains no parabens or phthalates. And instead of benzoyl peroxide, the active ingredient in Proactiv products, CTRL’s active ingredient’s salicylic acid.

So I started using CTRL and my skin cleared up. Yay! But then I started researching it on Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database — to discover that salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide both score a 7 — a “high hazard” ranking. RLS at EcoStiletto doesn’t seem to care about that, saying salycylic acid just has a “bad rep by association” — but I trust the scientists at EWG more than I do the under-substantiated safety claims at EcoStiletto.

So I checked out acne treatment rankings on Skin Deep — to find that a few products that contain salicylic acid as well as a few that contain benzoyl peroxide have managed to attain low overall hazard scores — due to, I guess, the un-dangerousness of the other ingredients.

Neither CTRL nor Proactiv were in Skin Deep’s system though — and to make matters even more difficult for the anal would-be acne-free environmentalist, neither company publicly lists its ingredients on its website, as far as I can tell.

But I got CTRL’s ingredient lists with my products, so I tried putting its individual ingredients into the Skin Deep database. Most of the other ingredients stayed in the low risk range, with only 6 ingredients in the 4 – 5 range and no ingredients (other than the salicylic acid) scoring in the “high risk” range. I’m guessing that CTRL would score somewhere in the 3 – 5 risk range overall.

Many acne care products in the Skin Deep database score in the high risk category, with some even earning perfectly dangerous 10s for combining parabens, fragrance, and other scary stuff into one toxic mix. And while there are acne care products in the Skin Deep database that do score slightly lower, I remember from my teenage years that most acne products available at the drug store didn’t work for me….

This is a very long way of asking how you — presumably a fellow environmentalist — deal with break outs.

Poll closes at the end of the day on Wed., April 15. Feel free to opinionate and to dispense acne advice and product recommendations in the comments.

Where will you be turning off the lights tonight?

Poll closes when Earth Hour begins.