Keystone of what?

SMOKE-> SMOG

An expected decision from the Nebraska Supreme Court on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline case has been delayed until next year, and this gives everyone, pro and con the project, time to regroup. The arguments in Congress have ranged from “wars could be prevented” (Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia) to visions of Shanghai-like smog in the States (Barbara Boxer D-California). One does not have to be as dramatic as Ms. Boxer to find that this project has essentially everything wrong with it, both environmentally and in human terms as well (not that the two are mutually independent). It is the keystone of an outdated and harmful structure. Making a list, one comes up with no fewer than 6 more arguments against this phase of the present Keystone project, which will enable tar sands crude oil to be shipped from Canada to the US Gulf Coast:

Keystone XL Tar sands crude is notorious for containing more impurities and producing far more C02 than lighter oil. It is expected to displace the lightest crudes. Burning this heavy crude will therefore increase air pollution, exacerbate global warming and contribute significantly to climate-change related costs. The Sierra Club has called it “the most toxic fossil fuel on the planet” (http://vault.sierraclub.org/dirtyfuels/tar-sands/).

BURST PIPE

Then there are the oil spills, inevitable in a pipeline system this enormous. Enormous also would be the size of the spills, given that Keystone’s leak detection system is apparently unable to detect leaks smaller than half a million gallons per day.

The project would mean that we will continue to use fossil fuels – dirty ones at that - at a time when renewables should be taking the place of these carbon-intensive fuels. It will keep the oil companies dominant in the future fuel sector.

Our credibility in international climate talks would be damaged. The US has pledged to lower C02 emissions; not increase them.

OIL SPILL

The pipeline would run through the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, one of the world’s largest aquifers and the provider of drinking and agricultural water to the middle third of the country. The aquifer is already being depleted by overuse. An oil spill in this remote area, which might go undetected for days, could lead to disastrous contamination.

Keystone XL has enraged property owners in Nebraska through whose land the pipeline would pass. Issues of eminent domain are involved and the project is in limbo until a court decision is reached next year in what has become a complex legal wrangle.

Meanwhile, the US Senate rejected the project in December, but the Republicans, who will assume control of both houses in January, have announced that a revote is at the top of their agenda. Their arguments in favor of the proposition are not new: energy independence, creation of new jobs, lower oil prices. It is interesting to note that all of these arguments can also be used as reasons not to build the pipeline. Dependence on homegrown, cleaner alternative energy sources would take care of the independence. As these sources do not build and install themselves, new jobs are created. Finally, it is argued that the project may actually increase gas prices. The pipeline would bypass western refineries, thus pushing up the present very low price of their oil.

In short, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that this fossil fuel project is a fossil in more ways than one. It is yet one more Big Oil dinosaur trampling on both ecological and human sensitivities, and those days should be over forever.  It’s time to find a new keystone of a new energy edifice.

HELP!

In an effort to delete an unsatisfactory draft of the latest blog post, I managed to delete all of the posts written so far in 2014 :-(.
After the holidays I will try to find out how to restore them. In the meantime, following is the last post of the year.

Happy New Year!

Asking nature for advice

Have you heard of biomimicry? It is both age-old and quite new. Biomimicry is the copying of natural processes and elements and using human imagination to put them to work in the form of sustainable technology.

This all becomes a lot clearer if we look at an example of this fascinating science. One of the most famous is found in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Eastgate Centre, a shopping center and office block built in 1996, is ventilated and cooled entirely naturally, using as a model the mounds built by termites. During the day heat is absorbed by the Centre’s materials. The temperature inside increases very little. At night, warm internal air is vented through the many chimneys, while cool air flows in through cavities in the floor. This passive cooling uses only 10% of the energy needed by a similar building with conventional cooling. The environment benefits also, of course, as fuel is not used for air conditioning and CO2 is not produced.

A number of aspects of this science are inspiring. Rather than ignoring nature or bashing it with technology, the two are working together. Nature is taking the lead, showing us how to do something that we then adapt to human needs. We don’t copy nature slavishly; we differ from the plants and animals whose techniques we adapt. Biomimicry is a partnership of the best that nature and technology have to offer. This has been summed up concisely by Janine M. Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, who said in an interview “I’d say that Biomimicry is asking nature for advice.”

What a dynamic paradigm! How applicable to other aspects of nature and technology! Let’s ask nature for advice in a few other areas, farming for example. From the beginning of agriculture up to the industrial revolution, farmers looked to the natural world to figure out how to grow their crops. By the beginning of the 19^th century, mechanization and fertilizer had increased yields and made farming easier. But then farmers began to forget that in nature everything depends on everything else. They began to favor monocultures with desirable traits like higher yields, for example, leading to the Irish potato famine and other disasters. Technology went to their heads, and into the long perfectly straight ploughed rows of crops in the American central plains in the 30s. These unimpeded lanes for wind-blown dust, lack of rain for several years and failure to apply dryland farming techniques combined to create the dust bowl of the 30s.

Another aspect of asking nature for farming advice? We humans want the sweetest fruit, the most tender corn, the most prolific berry bushes. One finds these things in nature sometimes, but it is hit or miss. Ask nature how it does it, however, and we find out some truths about plant genetics. Cross different plants with different desirable traits and at least some of the offspring will exhibit the desirable traits of both parents. We can control this natural process using a technology called selective breeding, which has produced, most notably, sweet corn from corn used for animal feed.

And now we must ask nature what it thinks of GMOs. While some species of bacteria are able to transfer DNA to other bacterial species, and mutation takes place frequently in natural organisms, the invasive manipulation characterized by genetic engineering is unknown in nature. In creating GMOs, technology is taking over. My feeling is that much of the resistance to GMOs among the general populace is a gut reaction (pardon the pun) to just this interference. Consideration of the dangers to health, the expense and other negative aspects comes later. The invasive character of the creation of GMOs goes further than the one-sided attempt at maximum yield that led to the potato famine and the failure to apply farming techniques that work with nature that marked the dust bowl disaster.

It took a while for nature to strike back in these situations, and then the results were devastating. Nature’s advice had been ignored. Are we heading in a similar direction with GMOs? If so, we will be contending with the fact that much of the world’s produce is already contaminated with GMO containing material, and the devastation will be widespread. Perhaps only then will we remember what Barry Commoner said in his book “The Closing Circle”: Nature knows best.

Gettin' old

Okay. I am going to rant. It’s one of those times. A time to rant and a time to be quiet – it’s one of the former. It all has to do with belonging to the group of senior citizens, retired persons - oldies in other words.

Every so often it seems to me that aging is chiefly a matter of three annoying experiences: first are doctor’s appointments and keeping track of one’s medications, the second is having to plan with an eye on one’s energy level and finally, the necessity of making adaptations to mesh with one’s infirmities.
Doctor’s appointments start out in our youth with the yearly checkup at the gyni and gradually add the ophthalmologist for the occasional eye checkup and the primary care physician for the annual flu shot. Reach retirement age and one’s calendar begins to fill up with appointments. One becomes a regular at the ophthalmologist’s because one has slowly-developing cataracts. 

The onset of an atrial fibrillation means that a cardiologist is added

to the list. One finds out that one’s cholesterol is high, so one foregoes the favorite cheese and ice cream and prides oneself on a really healthy diet for 3 months, and what happens? The cholesterol level climbs. Infuriating! One’s recalcitrant liver insists on making too much of the stuff. Return home from yet another visit to a doctor’s office and remember to take one’s pills, arrayed in a plastic box with 7 compartments. Thank heaven for this little box, because I am disorganized and forgetful and would either forget them or take them twice; Alzheimer’s setting in? I who hate taking pills, who consider myself an alternative type, am faced with the necessity of standard medications, three of them. I do not like.


As if this were not enough, there is the osteopath for the bursitis and the vitamins and minerals to down with meals, but not with grapefruit juice, which reduces their effectiveness. Calcium should not be taken with grains, various vitamins should not be taken together. Blimey. One needs a computer to keep track of it all. It gets worse if one is taking homeopathic meds, for they should be swallowed 20 minutes before one eats. Try that if you have come home late for lunch and can hardly wait to tuck into your feed. Which should start with fruit, which should be eaten half an hour before other food. The inner scheduler rebels.

Having to plan one’s life with a constant thought for the fading energy level is a nuisance at best. Can I go to Lugano on Thursday and the glass factory on Friday? Of course not; I would drag through Friday. Can I plan multiple activities on the same day? Not any more, and a day off at some point during the week to recharge the old batteries is a must. The to-do list gets longer and longer with all the leftover tasks that did not get completed when I planned to do them. A number of Sundays become sloth-out days, or shall we be more positive and say tanking-up days?

Finally there are the adaptations to the decline in sharpness of

sight, hearing loss and shaky balance. Arriving somewhere away from home I invariably remember that I have forgotten my hearing aids yet again. 30 years of wearing glasses for reading and only twice in all those years have I forgotten them. Really! But very nearly the opposite proportion is true with the hearing aids. Crowded restaurants are a racket of background noise and small rooms without sound-absorbing materials but with an echo are venues of frustration, while the dentist wearing a mask and asking a question might as well be speaking Chinese; lip-reading is a must. Why do I nearly always forget the little gadgets for my ears? Hmmm? Are we back at suspicion of senility again?

That’s enough ranting, Karen. Now that it is over, I feel better, and I go into the usual appreciation mode. Gratitude that I have not had a heart attack, a stroke or cancer. I ride my e-bike and walk without cane or pain. I haven’t had to have a hip or knee replacement. I do not have high blood pressure or diabetes. I feel pretty good. I enjoy life. I have grandchildren and friends and interests.

Underlying all of the above is gratitude simply for being alive. Not to be taken for granted, as I reflect while I cut an obituary for a friend out of the newspaper. This gratitude has been very conscious for the last two weeks, for I am now two weeks older than my mother was when she died. A very strange feeling and one that makes every day precious.

I will still fulminate, because it is unhealthy not to do so. Who knows, maybe getting all that exasperation out in the open will contribute to longer life, more passionate life, even more deeply felt gratitude. Something to look forward to.

There is always a solution

Before I gave up my car last year, I had moments of panic thinking about the situations in which I had always used my wheels – OMG, how shall I visit friends in out-of-the-way villages/ transport heavy items/ buy bulky items/ pick visitors up at the train station/ go cross-country skiing/do the grocery shopping? Ah, there is the most important one; one does eat 3 times a day. I had visions of daily trips to the supermarket and being reduced to crackers and packaged soup at times when I was under the weather.

I have missed old Huckleberry, my dark blue Corsa, although less than expected, and I have discovered something valuable; there is always a solution. Let’s make that the watchword for today: There is Always a Solution! Often there are two or three.

It’s clear that in public-transport-networked Zurich the train and bus are often the answer. Then there is my e-bike and the car-sharing organization Mobility. My front-hall bookcase is festooned with train and bus schedules and reminders to top up the bike battery. And hey - let’s not forget friends who kindly transported me to the garden center.

And then there is the quieter brother of transport possibilities: the

Internet. Like most of us I ask myself at least once a week how I ever lived without it, and to the e-mail and research possibilities are now added train schedules, Google maps with their directions printed out and carried with me, research into products that I then order and have delivered – all from my laptop – whee! Best of all is the online grocery store. Once a month I get out my list and peruse this fun site, with its descriptions and pictures of all the products. How about some goat’s cheese this month, and oh! they have butternut squash already and still have corn on the cob. These cookies are especially good and this British cheese is hard to come by in the grocery store and these dried tomatoes are juicy and not leathery.

All this in addition to all the heavy bottles of olive oil and vinegar and cartons of fruit juice and bags of oats and rice that are among the staples ordered every month. A chatty and friendly young man hauls the bags up the stairs and into the apartment, and frankly I enjoy this service no end. Ordering regularly brings the boon of coupons that largely defray the delivery charge. I enthuse about this service to everyone I know.

Now we come to Mac, the cart on two wheels that I drag after me

on trips to the farmer’s market. Mac (his large carrier bag is plaid) has become my constant companion, and not only fresh produce, but also plants for the balcony, items from the free exchange market, heavy trash bags and compost buckets, bundled newspapers for the old paper collection and books to and from the library have trundled satisfactorily therein. Mac combines especially well with the low-entry buses and trains, and joins the strollers, prams and wheelchairs jostling for position in the vestibule.

But then came the period when I used Mac especially heavily and managed, on a trip to the library in the city, to connect with two trains and one tram without low entry. To add insult to injury, the lift in the railway station was out of order, so Mac and I jerked our way up all those stairs. As this library rebinds all its books in what amounts to armor plate, this was not a good day.

Not surprisingly, I ended up with bursitis in my right shoulder.

Painful, inconvenient, and altogether too long lasting. But I remembered seeing an ad for a shopping cart that one pushes, rather than pulls. Surf the Internet, and there was the perfect solution – push or pull, and with swivel wheels. Not too common, those wheels. And then I began musing on these new construction or mechanical solutions: swivel wheels on virtually all prams and strollers nowadays and the aforementioned low-entry transport. What I would like to know is this: why are these only available nowadays? No new research and development was necessary, certainly, to figure out that the entry can be at platform level and people can sit on top of the train and bus wheels rather than the other way around. And haven’t swivel wheels been around for a very long time?

My new cart should arrive soon, and my shoulder will appreciate it. Faithful Mac will go to a friend of mine, and I am musing about a name for his successor. Then I will make another purchase – an electronic reader so as to cut down on those library hauls. I prefer reading an actual printed book, but my apartment would be jam-packed if I bought all the books I read. Not that that would be a problem, actually, as I would be in the poorhouse, having spent all my money on printed matter. I’m looking into online libraries with e-books. I will miss Mac and printed books, but I am looking forward to these new possibilities.

See what I mean? There is always a challenge…and always a solution.

From Farm but not to Fork

Food waste everywhere

Thanks to my sister-in-law, I am getting back to this poor neglected blog. This summer I have been involved with the PowerPoint presentation on Food Waste that I mentioned in "Little Table, Set Yourself. What I have learned is so compelling that I want to share it with you.

Food waste in the world apparently amounts to ca. 40% of all the

food grown. Before getting into the causes of this appalling situation, let’s look at what it means. Some billion people in the world are undernourished; many of these are actually starving. Morally and practically, we cannot afford to waste food. This is particularly true when one considers that although there is enough food now to feed the world were it better distributed, this will not be the case in 40-50 years, with 2 billion more mouths to feed and a growing middle class that will demand more resource-intensive foodstuffs like meat.


Then there is the fact that it is not only food that is being wasted. Agriculture uses more than ¾ of all the fresh water used in the world, and there are the other inputs as well: fertilizer, fuel, packaging, storage etc. Farming emits carbon dioxide and landfills emit methane, two greenhouse gases that are contributing to global warming.

Even more appalling is the fact that the causes of this miserable situation in the developing countries and those in the developed world can hardly be more different. The developing countries can be said to lack: protection from the weather, decent transportation, infrastructure, good management. Those producing a cash crop lack a guaranteed wage to protect them from the vagaries of the world market.Contrast this plethora of needs with a summation of the causes in

the developed world: extravagant and wasteful lifestyle. The developed countries grow something like 4 times as much food as they need, believe it or not, and immediately one asks where it all goes? Rather little goes to food programs to feed the needy at home and abroad, the rest is flogged by the food industry on all fronts.  Overfilled grocery shelves, super-size packages, two-for-one offers, snack food available on every corner; all mean constant noshing and buying too much. Eating too much also, of course, with obesity becoming an international epidemic.


Then there is the demand for perfect produce, perfect in appearance only; the taste may be essentially like wet sawdust. A perfect carrot is not a crooked carrot, a perfect tomato is one that fits the packaging, rather than the other way around. Bread must be sold the day it is baked and the baker’s shelves must be filled with every type of bread until closing time – clearly a recipe for a lot of wasted bread.

Well known is the fact that portion sizes have gotten bigger over the years. Large is now essentially small, having been overtaken by extra-large and jumbo and supersize. Even dinner plates are larger than they were 40 years ago. Most dangerous perhaps are all-you-can-eat buffets in restaurants, where the eye is larger than the stomach and food is left on the plate.
A few more shocking statistics: In the US food waste is now 50% greater than it was in the ‘70s, food waste dwarfs other waste categories and eliminating food waste would be the equivalent in environmental protection of taking 25% cars off the road.

It is clear that a cultural sea change is necessary in the developed

world. “Stop wasting food!” applies to all of us consumers. We need to regard food with the enjoyment and respect it deserves, care more about taste than appearance and value quality over quantity.


A big step in the right direction has been taken by the large supermarket chain Intermarché in France. Imperfect produce is purchased from the farmer and sold as “inglorious vegetables and fruits” at a 30% discount in the shops. A hugely successful marketing campaign has featured posters with one imperfect fruit or veggie pictured on each and a description underneath. The “failed lemon” is one and others are, for example, the “disfigured eggplant” and my favorite, the “unfortunate clementine”. New shoppers are arriving in droves, a boon for the shop as well as the farmer who can sell the imperfect produce rather than throwing it away and of course the consumer, who benefits from the large discount.

Imagination plays a large part in reeducating spoiled consumers.

Some restaurants in such diverse countries as the UK, Saudi Arabia and Denmark are fining customers who do not finish everything on their plate! Mother’s admonition raised to a new level. Tesco plans to print food info on shopping bags. The media have gotten into the act with effective articles and TV programs.

Finally, it will be necessary to alter the subsidy structure in many countries. In the US, corn is subsidized and finds its way into a multitude of foodstuffs, many of them unhealthy. Corn gobbles up a great deal of fertilizer and water, and of course uses land that could be used for growing healthier vegetables or as grassland.

Hardly anything could be a more worthwhile challenge than reforming the food system. We all have a part to play – you too!

Less is More

Here I sit on my greenery-filled balcony, reveling in the lushness.

The California poppies are thick with blossoms, the balloon flowers as well, the nasturtiums are producing leaves the size of saucers and the tomato plants reach out sprawling arms that need to be tied up every second day. The callas are nearly as tall as I am. But…it is all getting to be too much for me, particularly dragging home heavy potted plants in the spring to replace those that did not make it through the winter, even inside, and watering copiously every morning. I have worked out a cutting-back plan for next year that will still enable the reveling in the greenery and give me some more much-needed space out there as well.

Contemplating labor-saving strategies and what plants to do without, I thought that this individual process is like the necessity for each of us to live a sustainable lifestyle that will not overtax the earth. Both involve some sacrifice, both are done for reasons that we did not choose and do not like, aging in the one hand and severe overuse of the earth’s resources on the other. Both call on our ability to recognize what is really important to us as individuals. Seeing both as challenges to recognize our uniqueness and at the same time our common humanity is far more inspiring than moaning about what we have to do without.

What I like on the balcony that is good for my back and

energy level: Only two tomato plants next year, perennials that survive dependably through the winter, anything grown from seed, arraying those plants that flower heavily and are very thirsty along the railing to catch the rain.

What I like on the balcony that is not good for my back and energy level: I have to have a hydrangea and cross my fingers that the one I bought this year will survive better than its predecessor did. A very good friend invited me to go along to the garden center with her and carried in the hydrangea; a boon not only for my back but also for friendship and warm feeling!

What I like that is good for the planet: local seasonal food including doing without meat, which I don’t miss, my small apartment and public transport head the list. Certain habits are second nature at this point: turning off standby and unused lights, recycling everything that is recyclable, having a small compost box on the back porch and mixing fireplace ashes in with it, washing clothes at 40° and drying them on the line, keeping the apartment coolish in winter and wearing a sweater. Cutting back on my cache of stuff each time I have moved has been a lightening of the spirit as well as the list of goods; as a friend said, much of what we own is just so much ballast. I kept what was important to me; I chose it, so it is more meaningful.

What I like that is not good for the planet: the sauna, ice cream,

non-Fair Trade chocolate, my heavily-used computer, wild salmon from the Pacific northwest (Marine Stewardship Council approved, but think of the distance it has traveled). Do I need these things? Of course not, but doing without the computer would change my lifestyle radically for the worse. The others are occasional treats. There is also a human environment to be considered and I think we have to believe that if each of us does what we can as individuals to live sustainable lives, the planet will survive. This may change of course, but hey, let’s try it.

A Cooking Course with a Difference

There we were, 30 of us in a very small restaurant kitchen with 6 burners and very little workspace. Our task? Create a meal from the array of food laid out on the counter. All of this had come from Biorampe, a shop that sells organic food that is unsellable in the usual markets, because of damaged packaging, sell-by date in the very near future, or aesthetic deviations in natural produce; twisted carrots etc. All of us were there because we had heard about an exhibition in Zurich sponsored by the Swiss aid organization Helvetas. Called “We Eat the World”, the show features “enjoyment, business and globalization in the food world”. The cooking course in which I was taking part was one of a number of events surrounding the exhibition and was taking place in the Buffet Dreieck, a tiny restaurant that uses whatever food is available that day at the special shop. The chef creates imaginative dishes that vary every day and it was now our turn to do the same and then sit down to the feast that we had created.

Divided into 5 groups with varying assignments, we got to work

planning dishes that fit our assignment; ours was vegetarian. Much discussion ensued, and then groups began fanning out to the restaurant tables to do their mixing and slicing. One member of my group chopped up a plethora of veggies for an Asian dish, another made a veggie pastry with ready-made dough and I put together broccoli, garlic, nuts, smoky tofu and cayenne pepper. The restaurant chef and a helper steered us toward the proper pots and pans. With only 6 burners, cooking was a challenge, as you can imagine, but some groups were doing appetizers and salads, working in a much more peaceful atmosphere. Those of us crowded around the stove got to inhale the tempting aromas from other pans and chat a bit. I was by far the oldest, and only one of two foreigners. I heard about one man’s year as an exchange student in Texas and replied to the frequent question of how I had heard about the cooking course.

Finally, magically, the tables were cleared of chopped veggies and set with cutlery and napkins. The prepared food was dished into warming pans, wine was uncorked and we lined up to introduce our particular contributions. And then it was to the feast itself, an amazing buffet of 30 or so imaginative creations. The contrast with the usual cooking courses, with their carefully measured set ingredients and exact recipes, was great. The imagination and adaptability in evidence were so inspiring. The atmosphere was terrific! We all agreed that it should be an annual event. For sure we will meet one another at the restaurant, curious as to what is on the menu that day, or at the special grocery store, browsing with no particular plan through unfamiliar products.

For those of you in Zurich, the Helvetas “we eat the world” exhibition is taking place this summer at Sihlcity: www.wir-essen-die-welt.ch.  Here is the discount shop for organic food: www.biorampe.ch, and here the restaurant Dreieck: www.buffetdreieck.ch. Enjoy!

Little Table, Set Yourself!

Most people who write blogs write what is essentially an online diary or journal. Because some stimulating environmental events and some synchronicities have popped up in my life lately, I’m going to do the same today.

A stint on the nominating committee of the American Women’s

Club of Zurich, chaired by the woman who is also responsible for the philanthropic activities of the Club, led to my suggestion to her that the organization Tischlein Deck Dich would make a good choice for the Club’s charity this year. TDD, as we began to call it, is a huge Swiss-wide organization that distributes leftover food from grocery stores, food importers, bakeries etc. to those struggling to make ends meet. The name comes from the Grimm fairy tale of the same name. It seems that a tailor sent his three sons out into the world to become apprentices. At the end of their apprenticeships, each son received a present; the eldest got a small, plain table. This table had a magic property, however. When one said to it “Tischlein Deck Dich!” (little table, set yourself!), it was covered in the finest linens and china and the most delicious food.

TDD has indeed become the Club’s charity for the year. An organization that is both food-and-environmentally involved is right up my alley, of course, as is the fact that the Club will sponsor fund-raising events this year with items raffled or auctioned off. Enter another interest of mine – knitting! I’m on the way to finishing a second item for the raffle.

In the meantime, I read an article about worldwide food waste that said that 40% of the world’s food is wasted – never reaches our stomachs. 40%! Can’t be, surely a decimal point has been omitted. But no, almost half of the world’s food is wasted in one form or another. Appalled by this figure for several reasons, I did further research and one day mentioned it to the chairlady of the Global Concerns Group in the Zurich International Women’s Association. “Karen! Someone else in the group is interested in this topic and wants to give a talk on it.” And so it came about that this woman and I will give a talk on food waste in October. We are each interested in entirely different aspects of the problem, so our talk divides itself nicely between us.

Further discussions with the chairman of the Global Concerns

group led to the idea of showing the film Taste the Waste before or after our talk. Fast forward to finishing up nominating committee work and my telling the committee chairman about this film showing. Bingo -  we are now going to have a joint program with the American Women’s Club and show the film twice.

Heady with the fascinating info coming from our knee-deep involvement in research for our talk, we were delighted to get a flyer about an exhibition in Zurich in the near future called “We Eat the World”. The special events that are part of this exhibition include a cooking evening using leftovers, and I can hardly wait. Food and environment and imagination!

I’ve always found synchronicities amazing, and here I am in the midst of several. Of course food waste is the topic of choice in any number of organizations, but to have this theme playing a big part in my life right now is just marvelous. My own little table is practically setting itself!

Are you a clicktivist?

Or perhaps a slacktivist?

If you are like me, you open your e-mail and get all excited to see that there are a dozen new messages, then discover that 11 of them are requests for your signature on a petition and the suggestion that you pass the message on in Facebook or Twitter. I know about political and environmental petitions; I’m sure there are others.

This use of social media to promote a cause is defined in the

Oxford English Dictionary as Clicktivism, and is the subject of hot debate these days. The two opposing camps are quite volatile, with the clicktivists pointing to the enormous audience reachable through e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. The anti group accuses the clicktivists of being “slacktivists”, feeling good about themselves because they signed a petition, but who did nothing beyond that. The clicktivists are accused of identifying with marketing ploys, in which counting the number of clicks becomes a measure of the success of social change

It is important to distinguish between clicktivism and digital activism. The latter was what fueled the Arab spring. Volatile unrest already present in Egypt was sparked by a Facebook page, created by an anonymous activist, which featured the murder by Egyptian police of Khaled Said. He had apparently uncovered a case of police corruption and was murdered by policemen. Cellphone photos from the morgue and YouTube videos helped to get 130,000 people to join the Facebook page. Another page was soon created and the two pages together announced demonstrations. Faced with a country-wide protest

movement, pro-Mubarak got into the discussion but failed to deter the activists. Facebook and YouTube made it possible for ordinary people to join human rights advocates in organizing and mobilizing protest. They served as information sources in a country that practices news blackouts otherwise. Social media are instant and flexible. And – it is important to note – in this case they led to real concrete action.

This is a far cry from the armchair activism of those of us who click and then forget about the cause, who don’t even have to go to the trouble of calling our Congressmen. But once our click joins thousands of others, doesn’t the aggregate sum have an effect? Opinion is mixed. Sometimes the number of clicks is staggering, but apparently only individual messages – the modern equivalent of writing to your Congressman – really have an effect. Clicks that apparently lead to corporate contributions to a particular

cause are another example of action follow-ons. greatergood.com is one example, and you can click once a day for the rainforest, breast cancer, hunger, animals and a host of other  causes. The site sponsors will then contribute money to that cause. Another site is freerice.com, on which you play a game of identifying the correct meaning of words, with every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated through the U.N. World Food Programme. You can choose categories of words and it’s a fun way to build vocabulary.

So how about it, are you a clicktivist? A slacktivist? Or perhaps you belong to the sheeple, people who agree to do something without thinking it through or doing any research on it. if you are into programming, you can be a hacktivist. If you donate money through the Internet, you may be part of crowdfunding. Just keep in mind that to click is not enough; either you or someone else has to follow through with real, honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned action.

Hurrah for Vermont!

Vermont legislators have voted into law a bill that will make

labeling of foods produced with GMOs mandatory in the state, starting in 2016. It is thus the first state in the US to enact such a law, as passage of such bills in California and Washington failed after major food producers poured millions of dollars into campaigns against them. The Green Mountain State is not resting on its laurels, however, as it expects to be sued by major food producers.

Worry about the safety of eating GMOs is understandable, given that studies done on their effect on our health are done mostly by the major producers of these organisms and may or may not be reported to federal regulatory agencies. In addition, no long-term studies have been done.

The issues of the health and safety of GMOs are only the tip of the iceberg in this historic situation. Many lawmakers have said they are concerned about transparency and the consumer’s right to know what is in the food they buy. While these two considerations are the most often mentioned, one feels that the fact that over three-quarters of Vermonters favored the bill, and a vast majority of Americans in general want labeling of the GMOs in their food, reveals other reasons for such widespread unease. One has only to look at the details of GMO production in the States to note a number of disquieting facts:

Very few GMOs are engineered for extra nutritional value or

even resistance to disease; the vast majority are engineered to be impervious to herbicides or insecticides made by the companies creating the GMOs. Such herbicides end up contaminating the crops themselves, leach into the soil or show up in run-off water. This situation can only get worse, as resistant weeds and insects develop over time, with the result that more herbicides or insecticides are sprayed.

Many experts worry about pollination – GMO pollen does not

respect the borders of fields, after all. The fact that nearly 90% of all the corn grown in the US are GMOs is partly due to cross pollination of GMO crops with non-GMO plants. Extrapolating, we can see that at this rate there will eventually be no GMO-free corn.

GMOs are expensive to produce and are thus engineered by vast

agribusinesses that also own the seed companies that sell the seeds. The seeds are patented and farmers are forbidden to plant seeds from the resulting crop the following year. This flies in the face of centuries-old farming practice.

One of the most common GMOs in the US is corn. As it is estimated that corn is found in 3 out of 4 supermarket products, and the corn is nearly all genetically modified, the number of products found in the supermarket that contain GMOs is huge.

Agribusinesses are some of the largest in the country, and can

call up huge sums for campaigns against labeling and, of course, for legal fees. If Vermont is sued, the case will become a landmark case in corporations vs the people litigation.

All this makes one realize that more is at stake in the passage of the Vermont law than meets the eye. Projecting into the future, one can ask a number of questions:

Once the law goes into effect, will Vermonters who do not want to eat GMOs change their diets or order food on the Internet? Will such ordering be legal? Or will there be an inpouring of GMO-free food on the market, so that GMO-averse residents of surrounding states will flock to Vermont shops? Will major food producers put out lines of GMO-free products? Or will they simply ignore Vermont, which has the lowest population of any state except Wyoming?

Such idle speculation lightens a serious situation that is sure to strike an enormous blow to one side or the other. Vermont is a beacon, and it is hoped that other states will shortly follow suit in requiring labeling of foods containing GMOs. In the meantime, let’s give a cheer for this courageous state!