Bringing Back the Wolf

Ever since I read the book “Never Cry Wolf” by Farley Mowat, wolves have fascinated me. In this book, Mowat describes his work for the Canadian government on a project to determine the feeding habits of wolves in the wild. Caribou hunters had accused the wolves of decimating caribou herds, but Mowat found that in fact the wolves subsisted largely on small mammals, like mice. He tests the hypothesis that an animal the size of a wolf could exist solely on these rodents by limiting his own diet to mice, developing recipes like “Souris à la Crème”.

Wolves have always had a reputation as savage killers; chasing sleighs in rural Russia and eating the riders, for instance. The modern day equivalent of this drama is the attack by wolves on domestic livestock like sheep. After wolves had become an endangered species in the American west, largely because of loss of habitat and extermination measures, they were reintroduced in 1995, and sheep farmers have been up in arms ever since. Wolves are coming back naturally in Europe, and sheep farmers on this continent are similarly unhappy.

In a world in which wild and domestic animals generally inhabit separate territories, it is of course chilling to imagine one’s sheep herd as targeted prey to these wild animals. Why then reintroduce or encourage the wolf?

To answer this question one must consider the wolf’s effect on its environment in the wild. After its reintroduction in Yellowstone Park, the entire park ecosystem thrived. Greatly increased deer populations had decimated vegetation, and within a few years after reintroduction of the wolf, vegetation grew back again. This was, to be sure, partly the result of the wolves feeding on the deer, but was also a matter of the deer avoiding those parts of the park with the largest wolf populations.

With increased vegetation came flocks of birds, and beavers returned to build dams, thus benefitting both the groundwater supply and aquatic animals like waterfowl. Populations of rabbits, hawks, foxes and bald eagles grew. Because wolves are able to prey on large mammals, the increased supply of carcasses brought back scavengers such as the raven, the bear and the coyote. Herds of deer became healthier, as the wolves culled the weak and the sick. Within a few years, it was noted that because of the increased vegetation, riverbanks were less apt to erode and wash away.

The wolf is thus a keystone species, one defined as having a disproportionate impact on its environment relative to its abundance. This is, of course, small comfort to a sheep farmer who finds several dead animals in his flock, as wolves do leave the woods and venture into civilization. How then to reconcile the needs of an ecosystem such as a national park with the needs of livestock owners on private land?

Whereas ecosystem needs can be met using natural measures,

the needs of human beings and domestic animals often require ingenious human solutions. Trained dogs have been herding sheep since biblical times and are effective, but not ideal, wolf alarms. Dogs scare hikers, and recently it has been found that a hiker-friendlier animal, the llama, is a good guard animal for sheep. The llama is alert, good at herding animals and leading them away from predators, sounding an alarm when a wolf appears and chasing it away. Other solutions being tested are better fencing for the sheep and collars that sound a warning when a wolf appears.

There is no perfect answer. We see here a microcosm of the whole human situation, caught between cooperation and coexistence with the wild, on the one hand, and the satisfaction of the needs of civilization on the other. These needs include, however, the acquisition of knowledge and the use of imagination and ingenuity, all of which are most helpful in working out the problems of coexistence with our wilder fellow beings.

Collision of Values?

CERN, the atomic research facility in Switzerland/France, recently announced plans to build a circular particle collider much larger than its collider that was used to discover the Higgs particle last year. The cost of the new facility will be in the 2-figure billions of francs; the cost of the Higgs particle project was ca. CHF 4-5 billion. At the time that plans for researching the Higgs particle were announced, a friend wrote an essay asking if such a costly project was ethical, considering the number of starving children in the world.

This is a worthwhile question; given the fact that in West Africa alone, something like 1 million children are starving. It raises a host of other questions as well, questions about other huge expenditures in the world and why, in a world with enough food, people are starving. Let’s look at some of the answers to these two questions, starting with the causes of starvation.

First, there is the enormous problem of food waste. Something like 40% of the world’s food is wasted before it gets to the table. In developing countries, home to the majority of the world’s starving children, most of this waste occurs in the field because of the lack of efficient harvesting techniques, adequate storage and transportation. Globalization contributes as well, as too many people in developing countries are growing cash crops rather than food for themselves.

Two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, famine and war, ride roughshod over large areas of the world, leaving starving populations in their wake. Then there is extreme poverty, and rapidly rising food prices in the wake of speculation that sees food as just another commodity. Global warming means more crop shortages due to inclement weather and droughts. Another example of the law of ecology that says everything is connected to everything else.

We know about these problems; we read about them in the newspaper and see pictures of pitiful children with the swollen bellies of severe malnutrition and stick arms and legs. We know that various organizations are on hand with food distribution in crises, teaching programs for farmers, and Fair Trade implementations. Greater investment in infrastructure and transportation are needed. On a larger scale, peacekeeping missions and measures to slow global warming mean, among other things, less hunger in the world. All of these programs are very, very costly.

So here we have an enormous humanitarian problem in need of a lot of money, on the one hand, and a huge scientific project that will use a lot of money, on the other. Seems imbalanced. But wait; there are other sinks for huge amounts of money in the world:

Military spending: In 2013, the United States had a military budget of $682 billion, 39% of the world’s total.

Fossil fuel subsidies: These are estimated to be close to $2 trillion a year. In the developed world subsidies are mostly indirect, in the form of a dearth of responsibility on the part of the fossil fuel companies for the havoc wrecked by global warming, the negative health effects of burning fossil fuels etc. Direct subsidies in the developing world have contributed to a raised standard of living but created problems for the future (global warming, the negative health effects of burning fossil fuels etc.) Given the fact that fossil fuel companies are the most successful companies of all time, raking in enormous profits, one questions why such subsidies are given at all.

Bailing out Greece: The EU rescued Greece from financial meltdown at a total cost of €240 billion in two loans. The CERN project costs peanuts by comparison.

Super-high salaries: Small in scale compared to military spending and fossil fuel subsidies, these salaries are so out of proportion that they raise a moral question:

-Bankers’ boni: in the EU these are supposed to be capped at 100% of the salaries of top officers, but a loophole may make possible boni of up to 250%. Needless to say, the salaries themselves are out of sight.

-CEO, sports figures and entertainers’ earnings: the 2013 pay to Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, was $37.1 million, an increase of 18% over his 2012 salary. Golf pro Tiger Woods made $78 million and tennis star Roger Federer $71.5 million. Madonna was the highest paid figure in the entertainment industry, with $125 million for the year.

I would say that most of these examples are of inflated spending, money not spent wisely. And the CERN project? It concerns our most fundamental understanding of the structure of our world. In addition, basic scientific discoveries often lead to useful applications in the most diverse fields. Einstein’s discovery of the photoelectric effect made possible solar power, for example. The World Wide Web got its start at CERN. One can’t get much more basic than the discovery of the electron in 1897, and that has become the basis for all of our electronics.

 Let’s not forget that doing and analyzing the experiment are only the final steps in what is essentially a huge construction project, providing jobs for thousands of people, new techniques and smaller discoveries along the way. That part of the project money paid for these things gets plowed back into the economy.

Even with all the technical challenges, building the new collider will

be a lot easier than solving the problem of starvation in the world. Spending money on the latter can alleviate hunger but will not keep countries from going to war, nor make the weather less fickle or globalization less damaging. It is basically a human problem, not a financial one.

Believe It or Not

A friend with whom I was discussing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change vs climate deniers mentioned that one is always hearing conflicting “scientific” evidence in various fields. She commented that in the changing nutritional landscape, for example, where whole grains are the panacea one year and omega-3 fats the next, the great importance of vitamins has remained constant for ages, but just what vitamin is the answer to a nutritionist’s prayer varies considerably. Vitamin C ranked first for a long time, then it was E, then D, B12, folic acid….

In a day and age that prides itself on its scientific competence, how can this be? Can’t one do a big study once and for all and get the answer? Conversely, should we be as skeptical of the information in the IPCC’s reports as we apparently need to be in the field of experiments involving vitamins?

Let’s look at the process of experimentation itself as applied first to vitamins for human beings and second to the many aspects of climate change.

I. There are a number of scientific protocols that can be used in experimentation in both fields. Some are more expensive to use than others, more time-consuming, more difficult. Some are more accurate than others. In addition, there are various types of statistical analysis, and the laws of statistical analysis as applied to large samples are complex.

II. Then we have the subjects themselves. Mice are frequently

used to test substances that are given to humans, and one would think one could control their lives rigidly. But only in the last few years has it been found that the temperature at which the mice are kept and the design of their cages have appreciable effects on the outcome of experiments. If studying mice is complex, consider studies done on people. The lives of the people taking part in a study cannot be controlled; we are not kept in cages in a laboratory. There is much reliance on the answers of the participants themselves, not always as accurate as one would like. It is know, for example, that study participants’ estimates of the amount of exercise they get in a week is usually exaggerated. In addition, the human body is so much more complex than, say, an iceberg, that it is difficult to use the scientific method, in which only one variable changes. To be sure, there are factorial experiments, involving more than one variable, but one must know what they are, not always the case in human beings.

Now let’s consider the subjects used for climate change research. Atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, sources of greenhouse gases, sea level rise, degree of melting of arctic ice etc. also involve enormous quantities of data, but they are much more straightforward and controllable than are people.

There is another complication in experiments involving people, that of ethics and legality. One is not worried about an iceberg’s rights or perhaps harming it during the experiment.

III. The experimenters: It is not only the subjects in experiments on people who are human, those sponsoring the testing are, too. In the case of vitamins, the sponsors are often pharmaceutical companies, with a vested interest in the outcome. It is easy enough to manipulate the experiment itself, the analysis thereof or the reporting so as to present a result favorable to the company. Most notable in this regard are probably experiments done in another area, that of the effect of smoking on one’s health. It is know that tobacco companies skewed their research results for years so as to present their products as harmless.

By contrast, those doing research cited by the IPCC’s fifth report are mostly at universities and research institutes. They are not in the business of selling anything. Anyone getting grant money is under scrutiny and must publish all the data if he wants to be taken seriously as a researcher.

IV. Money: And then there is money. Experiments are extremely

expensive, and who has the money to experiment on vitamins? Pharmaceutical companies. Who is paying for climate research? Government and university laboratories, without the vested interests of corporations. Businesses are not interested. An exception here is renewable energy companies, but they are still very small, and focused further down the line; convincing homeowners to buy their products, for example. They assume climate change, they don’t investigate it.

Returning to my friend’s question, it appears that there are a number of differences in research on vitamins, on the one hand, and research on climate change on the other. The IPCC goes yet further in adding up the results of many, many experiments done in a great many different university and government laboratories. It looks as if we can believe their conclusions.

The Heart of the Matter

Last week I was getting my blog post for the week together when I

realized that I was having an atrial fibrillation. This is a cardiac arrhythmia in which the heart beats too fast and irregularly. Unlike a ventricular arrhythmia, it is not dangerous in itself, as the blood continues to circulate, sort of, albeit in a reduced fashion. A problem arises if the fibrillation continues for some time, however, as eddies of blood move within the heart chambers and blood clots are formed that can leave the heart and travel to the brain, causing stroke. It is said that those of us with atrial fibrillation risk having a stroke at five times the rate of the general populace. In addition, long fibrillations mean that the heart is beating too fast for a prolonged period, and eventually it gets worn out, leading to cardiac insufficiency.

All this went through my mind as I marked off the hours during the evening; 4 and counting. Then I slept, hoping it would be gone like magic when I awoke, the usual case with me. No such luck, and when an early morning dose of medicine had not helped, I went to the emergency room. Surely I would be home in a few hours, I told myself, as I would be given medication to add to that I had already taken. Just in case, I packed my toothbrush.

Thus began what would become a four-day odyssey through the emergency room and then onto a ward. Dozing and then staring at the curtain in the little emergency room cubicle, I had plenty of time to reflect on why this had happened. Not in the “why me” sense, but understanding a bit about the emotional component of a fibrillation. I had this condition for years before it occurred to me that there was an emotional component. I began to understand that a fibrillation is a panic attack of the heart, really, in response to a particular emotional constellation. I began to converse with my heart, which proved very difficult at first. It is so easy to take it for granted, as it usually just quietly beats on and on. Not for it the more excited reactions of the gut, for instance. Its very dependability and regularity make it ho-hum. Only when I was able to compare the strength and rhythm of the beat with the hop, skip and jump or rapid but weak pitter-patter of a fibrillation could I see it as a bulwark and a protector that is also a partner in feeling: “matters of the heart”.

Three days of treatment with three different medications slowed the heart rate but did nothing to alleviate the irregularity. Finally came the welcome news that I would have a type of cardioversion, an electric shock to the heart that almost always restores normal rhythm. One is put to sleep for 2 minutes with an injection into the port of one’s IV drip, so one doesn’t even feel the needle. With such a short anesthesia one has few aftereffects. The worst part of the whole procedure was filling out the lengthy form for the anesthesiologist, probably the same form one fills out if one is having a far larger op.

To shock the heart sounds, well, heartless. What a way to treat the organ of love and feeling! But then one remembers that it is electric impulses that make the heart beat, and Eros shoots his arrows into the heart. Deep feeling is not namby-pamby. Neither was my feeling when I awoke and saw the lovely regular pattern of the EKG. It worked!

My regularly beating heart and I are now home, and I have a greater appreciation of this steady companion. We’re conversing regularly, and I hope that it will have little further need of panicking and fibrillating.

What I love

Last year I wrote about effective presentation in a post entitled Many are the Ways, and one of the websites I included is called “What I Love”, www.whatilove.org, created by The Climate Reality Project.

The name of this website alone conjures up emotion and individuality. It is not surprising that the site presents a multitude of possible answers to the question “What can’t you live without?” and great variation. There are the expected basics of nature: forests, mountains, the ocean; there are cities, beverages, foodstuffs, sports, hobbies, animals, people and values, all portrayed with lively pictures.

Why did The Climate Reality Project create this website? The expected future effects of global warming on each category are presented, most of them very threatening. For example, one of the items in the natural category is water. Just water, not rivers or the ocean. To be sure water is a very basic necessity of life, but as something to love? Maybe if one is an avid swimmer or sailor, sure, but…wait a minute, how about the bracing shower in the morning, the cooling shower after exercise on a hot day, the cold glass of water when one is very thirsty. Ah yes, one can have feelings about water. If one doesn’t, reading about the expected water shortages of the future and the wars that will be fought over water rights awakens plenty of emotion.

The cities category includes New York. Do I love New York? I wouldn’t go that far, but there is the experience of walking up Fifth Avenue on a crisp fall day, taking the ferry to Staten Island and admiring the skyline, lunching in Chinatown or shopping for lekvar in the German-Hungarian section of the city. Again, reading about the expected sea level rise and imagining the East River overflowing into the streets of the east side brings feelings of both doom and increased appreciation of the unique aspects of this great city.

Everyone loves certain items in the food category: cherries, for instance, chocolate, or how about maple syrup? The mouth waters, and then one thinks of the dying bee population, without which there may very well be no more cherries, or one is more aware of the rising temps that threaten maple trees and cocoa beans.

Those of us who live in CH are well aware of global warming and its threat to the ski areas, where already 40% of the snow is artificially made. The days when I would drive up to Horgenberg to ski cross-country on the prepared track for 45 minutes at lunchtime and then return to my computer are long gone. No more prepared track, for there is too little snow for it to be worthwhile. Not into active sports? Photography and gardening more your style? You’ll see changes every year through the lens of your camera and you’ll spend more time fighting insect pests in your garden.

Perhaps you have a dog or cat or ride a horse? Horses, the site tells us, are especially susceptible to heat exhaustion and dehydration. More than 400,000 pets were displaced during hurricane Katrina, and few were reunited with their people. Dogs are especially vulnerable to heat strokes.

Now we come to what are the most important categories for us human beings: people and values. Family, partners, friends. What do these have to do with global warming? The site points out how many people will die during extreme heat waves and violent storms, and we have only to think back to hurricane Katrina to recognize the truth of this statement. Such threats to life and limb are accompanied by threats to faith and hope, freedom and equality, particularly in poor countries, for they are more threatened by environmental disaster.

Because this is a site about what people love, it includes helpful and fun info as well. The best places in the world for chocolate, for instance (Zurich is one, naturally!) or how to handle your hedges if you are into gardening. Horses breathe 4 times a minute when at rest, we are told, dogs have 3 eyelids, a cat’s brain is more similar to man’s than is that of a dog.

No matter what you love, global warming is going to impinge on it in some way. It seems to me that one has only to think of the children in one’s life: one’s own, or one’s grandchildren, nieces and nephews, godchildren or stepchildren to want them to grow up and grow old in an intact world. What you love as an individual connects you to all of humanity.

Comeback

You’ve probably never heard of the town of Kivalina. It had only 374 residents as of the 2010 census and is located on a remote Alaskan island. But in 2008 Kivalina made history when it sued the Exxon Mobil Corporation and eight other oil companies, 14 power companies and one coal company in federal court. Threatened by coastal erosion and rising sea levels, the town plans to relocate, at a cost of between $95 and $400 million. In its suit the town claims that the defendants emitted sizeable amounts of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, which is causing rising sea levels. The suit went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided not to hear the case, thus effectively ending the town’s claim. The courts had already decided, in the 2011 case American Electric Power vs. Connecticut, that climate change damage is a matter for the executive and legislative branches of the government, not for the courts.

Was Kivalina’s court case thus simply another claim in the litigation-happy United States? Can one in fact pinpoint polluters and assess their individual contributions to global warming? Thanks to research published recently in the journal Climatic Change, we now have the calculations that show that only 90 companies, most of them fossil-fuel producers, have caused two thirds of all the man-made global warming emissions since the start of the industrial age. Half of these gases have been emitted in the last 25 years. We’ve known about climate change for longer than that. It could thus be argued that these companies have acted irresponsibly and should be fined or their activities stopped; not by bringing suit in federal court, but by act of Congress or by the EPA.

It is thought that the situation may be different in state courts, or in other countries with different legal systems. Suing the polluters might be possible there. As more and more companies are busy suing governments for lost earnings due to environmental regulations, they would get a taste of their own medicine.

Of course there is a catch here. Who has bought the fossil fuels produced by these polluting companies? You and I and the next-door neighbor. It can certainly be argued that Exxon Mobil and other oil companies would not be the giants they are, in both production and pollution figures, if everyone with an oil furnace and a car did not buy their products. Thinking in terms of court cases is perhaps not the point here. It is rather that these companies have lobbied and spent millions of dollars limiting our choices where energy is concerned. It is the consciousness-raising, the concrete evidence of just how gigantic these companies are and the dire necessity of getting away from fossil fuels that should motivate us. A David and Goliath story in which Goliath is pointed out as the bully he is.

And let’s not forget that David won. 

And Do You Wear the Green?

A version of this post originally appeared in the Round Robin, the magazine of the American Women’s Club of Zurich and is meant chiefly for those of you living in Zurich.

Some years ago I had the good fortune to see the “Monet’s Garden” exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. As I floated from picture to picture, drunk with the beauty of it all, it suddenly came to me that Monet was an environmentalist. His works are a paean to man’s constructive interaction with nature, both in the making of his gardens and in painting them. Because we’re conscious, we’re not just a part of nature; we bear a responsibility to keep it intact. But this does not have to be grim or self-denying; it can, and ought to be, joyful. It’s quite possible that you are an environmentalist and don’t even realize it. Let’s look at some of the ways those of us here in Switzerland may give a new meaning to the wearing of the green.

You may be an environmentalist

-if you eat food that is good for you. It is logical that pears picked yesterday in Thurgau and offered at your town’s market will provide you with more vitamins and taste better than pears picked several weeks ago half way around the world. As for the environment, transport over long distances contributes to global warming and air pollution. If you choose local, organically grown food you’re choosing a win-win situation for you, the environment and the local economy. And now comes the rub – what if you have to choose between organic and local? Here you may have to compromise, deciding which is more important in a particular situation.

Or let’s consider some of those European fish with lots of good Omega-3 fats: sardines, herring, and oysters. Guess what salt-water fish are not over fished? That’s right , wild North Atlantic sardines, European farmed oysters and MSC labelled herring. Then there is the well-known fact that we should cut down on red meat for the sake of our arteries – which thus releases grain to feed people instead of beef cattle. It takes between seven and 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, a practice that cannot be continued in the future, when food shortages will loom.

-if you like to swim in Lake Zurich and hike in the mountains. Swimming along, gazing at the Alps in the distance, you’re enjoying the fact that clever technology makes it possible for some half million people to live around the lake and not only swim in it but get their drinking water from it with a minimum of purification. The human mind is capable of creating amazing technology - needed in all areas of modern environmentalism. Or, as you stand in a mountain meadow and gaze at those same Alps, rejoicing in clean air. And then – you turn and gaze at Zurich down below, and what is all that smoggy stuff covering the city? We breathe that? Such a moment makes a far greater impression than all the statistics in the newspaper about the air pollution resulting from driving.

-if you serve your guests those parsnips, several tomato varieties and psychedelic striped beets belonging to the Pro Specie Rara vegetable line. They appear to be “designer veggies”, but are in fact old varieties being produced again, and are available at Coop supermarkets. By including them in your weekly menus, you are doing your bit for biodiversity, one of the most pressing needs of our time.

-if you wear eco-cotton because it is kind to your skin. Now you are ranging out into the world away from Switzerland. You’re literally wearing the green. The same thing applies to using body care products without perfumes, colouring agents and the like because your skin likes them. The environment appreciates them too.

-if you enjoy the works of Farley Mowat and Bill Bryson. Try Never Cry Wolf by Mowat. Written in 1963, this amusing (there is a recipe for “Souris à la Crème”), but also enraging and true tale is still relevant today, when sheep farmers in many countries, worried about wolves decimating their herds, are pitted against conservationists who want to protect the dwindling wolf population. Bryson has written at least 5 books of which Sarah van Schagen, writing in GRIST online magazine in 2005, says “…Bryson’s voice becomes a sort of environmental conscience for unsuspecting readers.” In a Sunburned Country describes the teeming, unique life of the Australian continent, A Walk in the Woods makes you think about land management, while A Short History of Nearly Everything discusses, among nearly everything else, human responsibility for taking care of the planet. I’m a Stranger here Myself was written after Bryson returned to the States after 20 years abroad, and is a wry look at such American foibles as blithely wasting energy and hating to walk anywhere. Bryson is always entertaining, even when he is at his most serious.

So what do you think – are you an environmentalist?

What if…

Sometimes the appalling food and agri situation in the world in general and in the USD in particular gets just too heavy. Then one must crawl into one’s cave for a bit or the opposite; indulge in a flight on the wings of fantasy. This week I’m opting for the latter.

First, let’s imagine that blueberries, nuts, sweet potatoes and kidney beans were subsidized in the US instead of corn and soybeans. We can start with the certainties, such as the fact that fast food and convenience food, meat and the hundreds of products made from corn would become more expensive.

Then one can let the imagination have free rein:

  Iowa might become known as the fruit and veggie belt instead of the Corn Belt.

  The Brazilian rainforest might be saved from being turned into soybean farms

  Toasted nuts might become the snack of choice. Dense in healthy fats, they also teem with valuable minerals.

  Chocolate-coated blueberries might replace chocolate-covered potato chips as another snack.

  Thai veggie soup and Pad Thai with lots of added veggies might replace pizza at the local fast-food restaurant

  Convenience food might mean precut and peeled veggies – fresh or frozen - in combination to make easy, inexpensive one-dish meals. Grocery stores already have a hot soup pot and a salad bar; surely they could add an inexpensive one-dish healthy meal pot? I’m thinking of chili sin carne or with a little carne, ratatouille and the like. Corner stores, at which many of the poor shop, could sell precut mixed veggies for stir-fries etc. Friday might be pizza day, with a bag containing a roll of pizza dough, the aforementioned pre-cut veggies and herbs, a small tub of tomato sauce and a ball of mozzarella. Customers could bring their own bags or tubs.

The certain results of all this? A healthier population, a decrease in medical costs, a reversal in the present shocking life expectancy trend, which is that the youth of today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Are such subsidies realistic? Not at present, with the enormous power of big aggie behind the present subsidies. More realistic, perhaps, would be a tax on fast food and sugar, like the tax on alcohol and tobacco.  

And now let’s suppose that fossil fuel subsidies were given instead to alternative energy projects. Some ensuing situations seem pretty certain:

  There would be political repercussions, as relations with states from which we import oil would change.

  Coal mining and fracking would slow down and then stop, as coal and oil would no longer be economically competitive.

  Solar panels might sprout on every roof.

  Air quality would improve and global warming would be slowed.

  Electric cars and bikes would become much more popular and less expensive. Those solar panels would be necessary to provide the juice for the batteries.

  There would have to be more and better public transport, company mini-bus solutions and the like.

 Once again, let’s imagine:

I have a picture of the following: very small electric carts – two-seaters and four-seaters – are stationed here and there throughout the community. One can call up one of these carts on the computer, whereupon it arrives automatically at one’s front door, perhaps on tracks laid in the street like tram tracks. Once aboard, one programs in one’s destination and is ferried there, again automatically. The system includes automatic braking in case of threatened collision. One pays via credit card. These systems would function mostly in the suburbs and countryside. One can dream…

  Big oil might become big energy, featuring a broad band of alternative technologies. The oil companies have money, clout, international presence and experience with marketing, all of which could be put to good use in the alternative energy field. As I say, one can dream.

From Commodity to Culture

Bridging the grocery gap

The other day I read an article praising large concerns in the food and agriculture sector. This is the only way to make food affordable, wrote the author, just as large-scale manufacturing has brought down prices in other sectors of the economy.

What is scary about this point of view is that it is quite right where processed food is concerned. Stable, with a long shelf - or freezer -  life, processed food is just another commodity to be centrally manufactured in huge quantities and shipped everywhere. Add in the subsidies paid to farmers to grow the basic ingredients and you’ve got a winner in the cost contest.

Compare this with its opposite situation; local, seasonal, fresh food. There is a lot of waste. No one cares about the imperfections in an ear of corn that will be used to make corn chips, whereas the shopping housewife will reject an apple with a few black spots, and a bunch of radishes with wilted leaves is a goner. The process of getting the crop from the field to the sales point must be rapid and temperature controlled in hot weather. Fresh fruits and veggies are mostly water; their weight means high shipping costs and they take up a lot of space. They need to be packed very carefully. Small shops in the inner cities are unwilling to stock produce that may or may not sell within its short life span. The result is that good quality, environmentally sound, healthy food sells at high prices to those who can afford it, while the poor nourish themselves on fast and processed food. The cost per calorie of energy-dense junk foods is about one tenth that of nutritious foods. An ethical, health and social scandal.

If you see food as just another commodity, you don’t see this as a scandal, you see it as a marketing opportunity. There are more fast-food restaurants in poor areas and a higher percentage of corner stores stocking processed food. If they stock fresh food at all, it is often of poor quality. Low-income families, and particularly their children, are exposed to more advertising for soft drinks and fast food. Speaking of advertising, how often do you see an ad extolling the virtues of tomatoes or apples? These ads are virtually non-existent in all the media, no matter the social class for which the advertising is meant. Tomatoes and apples are not products in the advertising sense; they don’t bear brand names. Besides, your local tomato farm, no matter how large as these things go, can’t afford the advertising fees.

At the most basic level, the US government policy of subsidizing corn and soybeans percolates up through all levels of food production and marketing. Corn, particularly high-fructose corn syrup, finds its way into hundreds of inexpensive processed foods, while both corn and soybeans feed beef cattle, whose meat thus sells at an artificially low price. That this same government promotes a healthy diet with its ChooseMyPlate program while slipping subsidies to corn and soybeans with the other is the height of absurdity and hypocrisy.

What is one practical social result of seeing food as a commodity? There are a substantial number of “food desert” counties in the US where all residents live 10 miles or more from the nearest supermarket or supercenter. According to the Food Trust, over 70 percent of food stamp eligible families in Mississippi are more than 30 miles from a supermarket. As these families often lack a car, they are dependent on the convenience store and the fast-food restaurant around the corner. Small wonder that Mississippi has the highest obesity rate in the US. Only slightly less shocking statistics can be quoted for poor areas everywhere in the States.

 Fortunately, fast-food purveyors no longer have quite the stranglehold on government that they have enjoyed until recently. Alarm at the horrifying climbing obesity rates in the country, social conscience and imagination are tackling the problem with growing success.

Green Carts and Healthy Bodegas

It is inspiring that the federal government is tackling this situation with its Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which seeks to help finance grocery stores in low-income communities, both rural and urban. It has been found that supermarkets are the most effective solution to the food-desert problem, as they have a wide choice of fresh food at reasonable prices, have long opening times and generally accept electronic benefit transfer (the electronic version of food stamps). Several states and cities are getting in on the act as well, participating in public-private partnerships to finance grocery stores in poor areas.

Less expensive and easier to implement are programs at the community level, like farmers’ markets and community gardens. Valuable also are the social aspects and the empowerment felt by the residents who participate actively in setting up local programs. In New York city, for instance, Green Carts seeks to encourage small food vendors to set up in poorer neighborhoods, while Healthy Bodegas brings fresh food to corner markets. Such programs create jobs and can revitalize dying neighborhoods, encourage other businesses to locate in the area and raise property values.

Heartening as these programs are, they do not touch the basic causes of the dire food situation itself. How would it be if the federal government stopped subsidizing corn and soybeans and starting subsidizing farmers who grow tomatoes, carrots and leafy greens instead? Novel as this may sound, it is no stranger than the fact that in the US today one must be fairly well off financially in order to eat healthily. Steak, lobster and caviar are luxury foods; kale and squash should not be. From the social, economic, health and moral points of view, a major overhaul of the basic facts of food production life is a crying need.