The disconnect

I've struggled to understand the disconnect between those who believe that global warming, et al, is a crock and those of us who know better.

First, re-read that sentence and pay attention to the verbs. "Believe" and "know". Had I used "believe" in both spots, that would have implied that global warming is something with room for belief or un-belief, as it were. There's a word for something that a person believes: an opinion. Global warming is NOT an opinion, nor is there room for debate. It is as close to a scientific fact as the Bohr model of the atom, Newtonian physics, evolution, or plate tectonics. These things are all "theories" but they are theories in the sense that any scientist worth his salt will never claim 100% certainty, and by the same token, they would never attack someone else's position because it is "just a theory".

Unfortunately, the denialists are not good scientists. Mostly they aren't even scientists- just people for whom the truth is too unpleasant to contemplate, who will suspend their reason to any extent if it allows them to salve their conscience and maintain their standard of living for even a little longer. To that end, they label this "belief", "religion", and fight for the right to equal time for their "side".

In the end, however, this is about belief versus science. The overall trend for centuries has been to roll back belief as science begins to find new things: flat-earth, the Copernican model of the universe, and the germ theory of disease, to name a few of the most egregious and least disputed. I guess the only thing to do is to hope that ignorance can be banished fast enough to save all our asses.

Food Ethics

After I sent the image at left to a friend, he suggested I check out some of the recent Burger King ads on Youtube. That precipitated the following consideration of food ethics, which I think neatly sums up the key talking points defining why Beth and I eat the way we do.

"I still eat meat, for instance. I’ve made the conscious decision that killing animals to eat is consistent with my moral code, contingent upon the way the animals are grown and harvested. Industrial feedlot beef and CAFO chicken are not okay by my ethic- these methods are too energy-intensive and are not okay to the animal. Eggs from cage-bound chickens are a no-no as well, as is milk, cheese, and yogurt from industrial dairy operations that “supplement” their cow’s diets with corn and “feed”, and use rBGH to stimulate production.

This means pursuing a largely vegetarian lifestyle, because I can’t always get meat grown and harvested to my ethical standards, and not going out to eat all that often because only a small number of restaurants apply any scruples at all to their food sourcing. The benefit to this is that I never, EVER have to worry about whether my food is “safe” (OMG peanut butter) or healthy. I know a lot of the people who made it- I’ve shaken their dirty, calloused hands. I know the food didn’t pass through some factory somewhere that has rainwater running through pigeon shit on the roof and then dripping into the machines (that’s the sort of thing that causes most foodborne illness these days, not inherent pathogens in the growing process)(and what caused the peanut butter contamination).

And yes, I do spend more money on food than you do. But consider that, for a second- is the very stuff of your organic being, the material that your child will be assembling her body from, the manna that fills your belly and provides for your sustenance, is that REALLY where you want to be shaving dollars? And remember, the real price of that cheap food is paid by the bodies of the extremely poor, people who work in slaughterhouses where the constant exposure to brain matter mist from the cleaning of pig heads causes mysterious neurological ailments, which the company then refuses to pay worker’s comp for. It’s paid by Mexicans bent double in fields working for a few dollars a day picking tomatoes for Burger King, who repeatedly and steadfastly refused to increase the price it pays for tomatoes by ONE CENT per pound to improve the pay rate of those workers (think about that- it’s like .25 cents per $4 Whopper with cheese). It’s paid by obese children whose parents can’t afford vegetables and fruits because they cost ten times as much per calorie as the processed junk foods our tax money subsidizes by paying farmers by the bushel for corn and soybeans produced, whether the market needs them or not. It’s paid by the farmer who works a job in town, then comes home and drives his tractor by moonlight and headlamps so he can get his crop in, because he’s farming at a slight loss but he just can’t stand the thought of losing the farm his grandfather built (it’s okay, though, because on average, that farmer is 57 years old now, so in a few years he’ll be out of the game no matter what)(but, wait, who’s going to grow our food then?).

Food production is the new garment sweatshops. Only it’s worse, because food should be sacred. It’s not like jeans or televisions or iPods, just another consumer product that we buy to fulfill some inner need- it’s the very stuff of life, the organic symmetry of organisms dying that we may live, the one process which is immutable, unchanging, and necessary for the continuation of the human animal.

If I sound evangelical, it’s because I am. This is the ONE THING everyone could do if they wanted to. Not everybody can ride the bus to work, put solar panels on their roof, donate to the Sierra Club, attend protest rallies, bicycle more and drive less, or do any of the other things I’d love to see happening more often. BUT, everyone can think a little more about where their food comes from, visit a farmer’s market once in a while, buy organic instead of industrial (even industrial organic is at least slightly better than plain industrial), and eat at Burger King less often. Anyone can make the decision that providing more support to the people who make it possible for us to not worry where our food comes from is worth digging into the pocket a little deeper- canceling that Netflix subscription, buying a couple DVDs or CDs less a month, stepping down to a simpler cable or satellite TV package. I just can’t be sanguine about choosing to allow another person to suffer just so I can buy more consumerist crap any longer.

And that’s really what our entire culture is about- we want to pay less for our stuff, so someone, somewhere, has to pay more."

THE metaphor

I've been accused of being overzealous, evangelical, and pushy in my pursuit of sustainability. I'm uncompromising, but I try to not be too forceful, because I don't want to alienate people.

One of the greatest irritants to me is when I point out the flaws in the system, especially to people who care, then ask them what THEY are doing to make things right, and the shrug and say "Eh, someone will fix it. Someone else will take care of finding a replacement for oil, and figuring out an energy source that doesn't trash the planet, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level."

I finally figured out just now why that bugs me so much: it's as though there's a flood coming, the water is rising, it's in our backyards, and I'm out slinging sandbags and knocking on doors to warn people, and they are shrugging and saying "Someone else will take care of it; why should I put myself out?"

This is the mentality that leaves people stranded on their roofs for days after a flood, waiting for someone to save them. And then people like me will be out in boats and hip waders and helicopters, bailing THEM out, working EVEN harder than we are now, and they'll expect us to feel sorry for them, not considering that if they'd joined us in the first place, putting down sandbags and evacuating when they first should have, none of us would be in the pickle in the first place.

Keeping up with the Joneses

I love this idea. Apparently, a utility in California has begun sending out bills to its users telling them how they stack up in power consumption to people in similar sized dwellings.

To me this is a brilliant application of psychology. The bottom line is, we are pretty hard-coded to compete. It's our genes, really- competition is how they get passed on.

The cool thing here is, the sort of person who is least likely to conserve on their own (the Hummer driving uber-con that thinks global warming is a crock and truly doesn't understand that "drill baby drill" isn't a long term solution) is probably also an ultra-competitive jerk who has to win. Being told he's a loser, even in a competition he didn't enter and doesn't believe in, will probably spur him to doing something to get closer to the head of the pack.

Sweet! Another reason to hate HFCS!

I really have it in for high-fructose corn syrup. It's in EVERYTHING, even the organic foods I get at the local co-op (although, to the best of my knowledge, it's NOT in the locally grown produce I get from the farmer's market or CSA). The average consumption per year of HFCS in America is around 140 pounds per person. In an age where even yogurt (a traditional "healthy" food) contains HFCS, it's unsurprising that, as a country, we're losing our "Battle of the Bulge".

So when I found this story on The Ethicurean blog about a study that found measurable quantities of mercury in about half of the supplies of high-fructose corn syrup they tested, I can't say I was surprised. HFCS is an industrial isolate, extracted at so-called "wet-mills" from corn using similar processes to any other industrial chemical, and with a constant drive to lower the price and increase the throughput.

One thing I note is missing from the whole affair is an idea of how much mercury we're exactly talking about here. Most people are familiar with the idea that mercury is found in fish and oceanic fish intake should be limited by pregnant women and small children, so I thought I should compare apples to apples.

First things first: the FDA recommends that high-risk persons (pregnant or nursing women, women who may become pregnant, and small children) limit their intake to 6 oz. or less of low-mercury fish per week. I'm going to use canned tuna for this comparison, because it typically comes in a 6 oz. can, and it's (arguably) the most commonly eaten fish type for most people.

Per the FDA, canned tuna contains about .118 ppm (parts per million) of mercury, or (I'm going metric here, because it's easier), which is approximately .02 mg of mercury per can of tuna. The HFCS study found, for instance, about 70 parts per trillion of mercury in Coca-cola Classic. Assuming that Coke has about the same density as water (1 kg per liter), we'll consider the amount of mercury in a two-liter bottle of Coke. Two liters is two million mg; at 70 ppt, that's about .00014 mg of mercury in a two-liter of Coke- about 1/140th as much.

So, it's a lot less than one would get from, say, fish. But it IS still a pretty potent neurotoxin, and how much neurotoxic material are YOU comfortable consuming? Or better, still, feeding to your kids?

CPSIA and you

Last year, Congress passed the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act. The CPSIA, among other things, mandates that all toys, clothing, and other products intended for use by children 12 and under be tested for lead (which sounds odd, but all those t-shirts with vinyl applique on the front that were made in China had the vinyl applique fixed with lead compounds and probably contain some lead) and certain phthaltes (which are used in the production of certain plastics and have some degree of toxicity). A certificate of compliance must be provided with EACH AND EVERY item, or resale of these items is illegal.

Unfortunately, the legislation makes no exemption for handmade toys and clothing. Nor does it allow a base materials labeling practice- it is not sufficient to provide documentation that all of the components that went into the item are non-toxic; the full item itself must be tested.

This isn't a big deal if you're a major manufacturer- you test a couple of items in the batch, make twenty million of them, and sell them cheap at Wal-mart. If you're a craftsperson selling handmade toys at a local boutique, you may only sell ten or twenty of a given toy (if that), and the cost of testing can be $500-$2000 depending on the product (at nationalbankruptcyday.com there are some examples of quotes from testing companies which far exceed these estimates; on quote is for $24,000 on a product which has had total sales of $32,000 in the last two years).

To put this into perspective, a law like this in the food industry would essentially shut down every farmer's market in the country.

So here's the pitch: sign the petition at change.org, visit the Handmade Toys Alliance website, call your members of Congress, and most importantly, tell your friends, especially any friends that own shops- they may not yet be aware that this will affect THEM. In 26 days this law will take effect, and we will essentially lose the choice to buy toys that didn't come from China.

Growth

At the heart of the sustainability crisis is growth. It is pure naivete to believe that we can continue to grow, either economically or in populace, unchecked, without consequences.

I could write a long essay about this, but here are two key conceptual points for your consideration, and a link:

First, if a population grows its consumption of a resource at a fixed rate, such that it completely consumes that non-renewable resource in a given number of years (call that number of years N), when 50% of the resource has been consumed, the amount of time left before the resource is completely gone is less than 2% of N.

In other words, if we started drilling for oil 100 years ago, and we've used up half the oil in the world, we're about 2 years away from running out.

Second, if we continue to grow the population at the current rate, in less than 2000 years, the mass of human beings would exceed the mass of the planet. Obviously, at some point, the growth has to stop- it's up to us whether we want to stop it through limiting the birth rate or through starvation, war, and epidemics.

Albert Bartlett explains the role of exponential growth better than I could- there are many of his videos available on YouTube. Note that everything at the heart of the crises of sustainability is caused by exponential growth: of population, energy consumption, greenhouse gases, land use...