Sustainability and Your Consumer Votes

I am nearly finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and it is magnificent! Seriously... it should be required reading for ALL Americans!

I find it incredibly fascinating that people read it and then become either vegetarian or vegan! Wait... not fascinating... ummm... CRAZY! I am even more convinced now that eating a local, sustainable diet which includes animal protein is not only healthy for us... but healthy for the earth... that it is an integral part of the chain of life, the biodiversity of our planet, and our connection to it all.

Here is an excerpt I particularly love:

"The farmer would point out to the vegan that even she has a "serious clash of interests" with other animals. The grain that the vegan eats is harvested with a combine that shreds field mice, while the farmer's tractor wheel crushes woodchucks in their burrows and his pesticides drop songbirds from the sky; after harvest whatever animals that would eat our crops we exterminate. Killing animals is probably unavoidable no matter what we choose to eat. If America was suddenly to adopt a strictly vegetarian diet, it isn't at all clear that the total number of animals killed each year would necessarily decline, since to feed everyone animal pasture and rangeland would have to give way to more intensively cultivated crops. If our goal is to kill as few animals as possible people should probably try to eat the largest possible animal that can live on the least cultivated land: grass-finished steaks for everyone.

"The vegan utopia would also condemn people in many parts of the country to importing all their food from distant places. In New England, for example, the hilliness of the land and rockiness of the soil has dictated an agriculture based on grass and animals since the time of the Puritans. Indeed, the New England landscape, with its rolling patchwork of forest and fields outlined by fieldstone walls, is in some sense a creation of the domestic animals that have lived there (and so in turn of their eaters). The world is full of places where the best, if not the only, way to obtain food from the land is by grazing (and hunting) animals one it--especially ruminants, which alone can transform grass into protein.

"To give up eating animals is to give up on these places as human habitat, unless of course we are willing to make complete our dependence on a highly industrialized national food chain. That food chain would be in turn even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer, since food would need to travel even farther and fertility--in the form of manure--would be in short supply. Indeed, it is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. If our concern is for the health of nature--rather than, say, the internal consistency of our moral code or the condition of our souls--then eating animals may sometimes be the most ethical thing to do."

These few paragraphs very nearly sums up my own eating philosophy. Just think of all the places we live... all 7 billion of us... from Michigan to Peru, from Alaska to Australia. There is no way a vegan or even vegetarian diet could feed us AND the earth. There is not a single vegan in Boulder who can say they eat a sustainable diet... for what locally raised vegetable protein is there to be had in the mountains in December? I'll tell you. None.

The only family members I have who could potentially live as vegetarians and still be healthy... are my mom and brother in Kentucky... and only if they did a lot of canning and freezing for the winter. None of the San people of Botswana could survive. None of the Mongolians. None of the Inuits. None of the Aborigines. None of the New Yorkers.

While it is true that most of us should eat far LESS meat, it is also true that we can in good conscience eat locally and ethically raised animals... and SHOULD.

Every purchase we make is a vote. I swear, I'm going to tattoo that on myself somewhere visible to my own eyes! EVERY PURCHASE we make is a VOTE... for a product, for how it was made, for the corporation that made it, and for all the practices of that corporation.

When you buy Nestle products, you are voting for the 4.6 million acre/year burning of the Paradise Rain Forest in Indonesia, Malaysia and Borneo... and the death of endangered animals like the orangutan, Sumatran tiger and bird of paradise. When you buy an HP, Del, or Acer computer or any Nintendo, Fujistu or Microsoft product, you are voting for mercury and PVC poisoning in Third and Second World countries. When you buy Atlantic cod, salmon, sea scallops or halibut, albacore tuna, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy or grouper... you are voting for over-fishing and destruction of vast swaths of our oceans and the ecosystems of COUNTLESS other species. When you buy sushi in St. Louis, MO and/or ripe tomatoes in Toronto in November, you are voting for dependence on fossil fuels. When you buy a veggie sub from Subway, you are voting for Genetically Engineered foods.

Yes, it is HARD to be a mindful consumer! It's also expensive! Our society isn't currently set up to accommodate sustainability. That is precisely why your consumer votes are more important now than ever! Gross changes need to be made... and it is our consumer power that will make them!

Compromises inevitably need to be made, of course. We can vote for Chipotle because 35% of their meats are grass fed/free range and because none of their meats have growth hormones or antibiotics. But aren't we also voting for the 65% of their meat that is not ethically/locally raised?

And what about budget and convenience? If I can afford to spend $8 on a meal, should I drive an extra 5 miles in my fossil fuel dependent car to buy a small, locally grown salad at Watercourse, or should I walk across the street to Safeway to buy an apple from Washington and a hunk of cheese from Boulder?

We're so far from being able to be 100% sustainable that it can sometimes feel overwhelming... but the more demand we make for local, ethically raised foods... the more they will become available to us... and the cheaper they will ultimately become. It's simple supply and demand. So WHY are so few people demanding sustainable foods?

We've managed to remove ourselves from the land on which we depend. How many Americans know where their food was grown or how it was raised? How many people know what a CAFO is? How many understand the link between Monsanto seeds and Agent Orange? We are uneducated... and purposefully so... not only because ignorance is (temporarily) bliss, but also because the government is so utterly planted in the back pockets of the very companies who wish to hide their practices.

While reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I've simultaneously been reading Climate Cover-Up. The fleecing of America is not a myth... we have been fleeced... and how! Because of "fair and balanced" media coverage, Americans are fooled into believe that 50% of scientists believe in climate change and 50% don't. They don't see that the topic isn't truly up for debate because the fossil fuel companies pay millions of dollars to make sure of it... their think tanks release fictitious documents into the media... which then gives it equal air time in the name of "fair and balanced." In fact... if the media coverage of climate change and pollution were "fair and balanced," then 99.9% of all legitimate climate scientists would receive 99.9% of media coverage!

In an effort to uncover the truth about global warming, a survey of legit scientific publications was taken between 2003 and 2006. Over 900 publications were found and every one of them indicated that global warming is REAL and that it is caused by humans... NOT by the earth's natural cycles. There were NO legit scientific publications anywhere in the world which suggested otherwise. NONE!

Whatever you see in the media or online about the "myth" off climate change will have been written by someone who is NOT a climate scientist. In fact, the majority are written by the think tanks of huge fossil fuel companies and those corporations most dependent upon them.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

"Starting in the early 1990s, three large American industry groups set to work on strategies to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Even though the oil industry’s own scientists had declared, as early as 1995, that human-induced climate change was undeniable, the American Petroleum Institute, the Western Fuels Association (a coal-fired electrical industry consortium) and a Philip Morris-sponsored anti-science group called TASSC all drafted and promoted campaigns of climate change disinformation.

"The success of those plans is self-evident. A Yale/George Mason University poll taken late in 2008 showed that — 20 years after President George H.W. Bush promised to beat the greenhouse effect with the “White House effect” — a clear majority of Americans still say they either doubt the science of climate change or they just don’t know. Climate Cover-Up explains why they don’t know. Tracking the global warming denial movement from its inception, public relations advisor James Hoggan (working with journalist Richard Littlemore), reveals the details of those early plans and then tracks their execution, naming names and exposing tactics in what has become a full-blown attack on the integrity of the public conversation.

"Leveraging four years of original research conducted through (Hoggan’s) website, DeSmogBlog.com, (Hoggan and Littlemore) documented the participation of lapsed scientists and ExxonMobil-funded think tanks. Then they analyzed and explained how mainstream media stood by — or in some cases colluded — while deniers turned a clear issue of science (and an issue for public safety) into a partisan argument that no one could win."

And yet... so few Americans will ever read this book or pick up a legitimate scientific journal to find out for themselves! They will continue to watch Fox News and listen to their favored politicians, keeping the wool pulled tightly over their eyes.

It's so hard not to despair... not to just throw my hands up in the air and go hide in a cave somewhere until the end of the world. I'm so tired of holding up my shield against the "it's too late's" and the "I can't make a difference's." It is particularly difficult to keep my chin up when some of my own colleagues are undermining the integrity of an organization hell bent on making a difference! But...

There is a line I keep saying over and over again lately...

I will go down fighting!