I came across a lot of interesting articles online this week. Here are the highlights:

• Everything I Want to do is Illegal (Joel Salatin) – On the frustrations caused by excessive and misguided government regulations; he also has a book by the same name coming out soon.
• 52 Weeks Down – Week 19 – Reconsider What You Eat (Sharon Astyk) – Sharon is writing a weekly series of articles about decreasing one’s environmental footprint. This week’s article is about food. Sharon’s blog is one of the best out there on sustainability, in my opinion.
• Fred’s Footprint: Offsetting This Blog’s Emissions (NewScientist.com) – Some interesting tidbits about the carbon offset industry, about which I am pretty ignorant.
• Free-Lunch Foragers (Los Angeles Times) – “Freeganism” is not a lifestyle that everyone can follow, even if they wanted to (after all, if nobody bought food and threw some of it away, what would dumpster-divers eat?). However, it fills a similar niche as people who convert restaurant waste oil to biodiesel – making use of society’s waste and thereby reducing primary consumption of a resource (in this case, food).
• Mali’s Farmers Discover a Weed’s Potential Power (New York Times) – On the expanding cultivation of Jatropha for biodiesel production. I am generally opposed to biofuel production, but I accept that it might have a limited role in a sustainable economy. Jatropha seems to be a much better biofuel feedstock than anything else I’ve heard of, but I’m still skeptical of its true usefulness.
• Is Eating Local the Best Choice? (Grist) – A discussion of the environmental and social implications of local eating.
• The Innovation Fallacy (The Archdruid Report) – Why our faith in the ability of technological innovation to save us from societal collapse is based on a logical fallacy.
• Hog Futures (Grist) – “How the meat industry thrives, even as costs rise”.
• Rising Petrol Prices Could Force Obese Americans to Hit the Street (The Independent) – Peak Oil will be the ultimate WeightWatchers plan.
• An Arid West No Longer Waits for Rain (New York Times) – The western U.S. is drying up at the same time that population is exploding.
• Warming May Trigger Agricultural Collapse (IPS) – Global warming may improve agricultural conditions in some places, but taken as a whole it will wreak havoc with our food production systems.
• Wild Foods to Alleviate Poverty (Wild Food Plants) – Harvesting wild foods can save a lot of money.
• Parking Spaces Outnumber Drivers 3-to-1, Drive Pollution and Warming (EnergyBulletin) – The U.S. is becoming a giant parking lot.