30 June 2009

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

Reality Sandwich: The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

It reminds me of the much passed around Stephen Colbert segment titled, appropriately, “The Word.” Specifically the one on Wikipedia. In it he points out that if everyone goes online and changes something on Wikipedia- for example that numbers of African elephants are in fact rising, not declining- then technically, for all the vast majority of the people in the world know- it becomes true.

The same holds true for all environmentalists. Our arguments have literally NO power- because we can say anything we like. We can talk endlessly about climate change, we can show a million charts and graphs and statistics, and the funny thing is, so can the other side. Everyone knows, nearly from birth it seems, that statistics can be manipulated to say anything you want. And so they have no power. You can list the tonnes of carbon in the air, spout percentages of increase until you’re blue in the face, and then someone will come along and point out that no, if you calculate the numbers in another way the increase isn’t so much, that there have been increases in the past, and so on and so forth until no one has the faintest idea who to believe. Another, less volatile example would be nutrition facts- we are back and forth from one year to another about which nutrients are good for you or bad for you and which foods you should eat and which leave out- to the point where most people refuse to believe any nutrition claims they hear, because they know perfectly well that they will change in the next few months, depending on the current fad.

This is not to say that some people won’t believe it- there are many who, among the constant barrage of messages, will cling to almost anything that comes into the mainstream media. Many people panicked over swine flu. But as the author of this article points out, many more just yawned and went about their lives. There have been so many crises- so many pandemics- so many scares about this and that, that it’s the least we can do to even pretend to pay attention to it.

So, if we are to supposedly to save the environment by changing the consciousness of the populace (as most of environmentalists will say- we can’t have change without changing the general attitude toward the environment), and at the same time the general populace is tuning out everything we say, how exactly are we supposed to bring about change? It’s something of a pickle. I think this is a rather valid point:
“When environmentalists focus on cost-benefit analyses and study data rather than real, physical places, trees, ponds, and animals, they end up making all the sickening compromises of the Beltway…Visit a real "mountaintop removal" operation and you know that there is no compromise that is not betrayal.”

It’s quite true. Visit the reality- put it right up in your face- and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get someone to pay attention. It doesn’t always work. I always wondered how anyone who had watched someone die of lung cancer- this was while I was in fact watching my grandfather suffer from the disease, the result of years of smoking- could actually smoke cigarettes. But I met people again and again who, despite looking the prospect of that debilitating, most unpleasant of deaths straight in the eye, weren’t in the slightest swayed from their determination to smoke a pack a day.

As the author points out, we fear that authenticity. We don’t want to look it right in the eye, because once you do, the elaborate web of illusions built up for you from birth begins to crumble, and your life becomes one mess of attempting to untangle reality from the “ubiquitous matrix of lies.” It’s not an easy task, and most people would rather stay in the matrix, though it leaves us with a sense of loss that can never quite be identified, and which we drown in via any number of mind numbing devices.

But there are some who are ready to hear- and it is to these people, the people who are tired of the status quo, tired of spin, tired of images and brands and the false tripe that’s surrounding you, everywhere you look, that we (if we wish to be successful as environmentalists) need to speak to- and not with more spin, not with more hype, but with the naked, simple truth- as plain and straightforward as possible, which means, as much as possible, without words (ironic to be writing this on a blog), but in the real world, where we can touch, and smell, and taste, and feel- the few senses that have yet to be entirely co-opted by others than ourselves.





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22 June 2009

Local Co-op(ted)

When Local Makes it Big

So I like to talk about local foods on this blog. When I use the term, I am thinking in my head of something like… oh, I don’t know, food that comes from Kent County. Maybe if I were to stretch it I would include food from the Western Shore- maybe all the way to Virginia, maybe as far as PA, but that’s really pushing it. I can get most of what I need from a pretty compact area.

But now the Frito-Lay company is marketing their foods as local. That’s right. The massive national conglomerate that brings you junk food galore is claiming that their potato chips are local- at least in the areas that are more or less adjacent to their processing plants.

Back up for just a second. My brain quite literally balks at this concept. Frito-Lay- a division of Pepsi, which is actually an international corporation- is making claims of locality?

It makes a certain amount of sense. People want to know where their food is from, especially as issues of food security become more prevalent in the news, as well as more and more press in regards to the numerous benefits of the local food movement. Big companies are going to want a piece of the market, just as they did with the organic label (as the article points out). But as a result, the organic label has been worn so thin it means next to nothing. Almost anything can be labeled organic. And now, it seems, the same will be done with local- a term that seems so straight-forward it’s hard to imagine any way in which it could be co-opted.

But let’s think this through. If, in some places in the country, Frito-Lay buys potatoes from farmer’s within a relatively local radius of their plant, this is at least preventing them buying potatoes from the other side of the country, shipping them to their plant, and then distributing them nationally. This article says nothing about whether the chips from a certain plant are also distributed locally, but regardless, matching local farmers to local plants is a step in the right direction, right?

Well…

Yes, it’s better than shipping potatoes back and forth all over the country, as frequently occurs with other products. Frito-Lay has also banned the use of genetically engineered corn and potatoes in their products, and that may be an even greater step toward sustainability. But can their products be rightfully called local? There are a few missing pieces- whether the chips are distributed locally, for example, or if the chips from one particular plant are still sent all over the country, whether the ads are only displayed locally or not. Not to mention the simple fact that Frito-Lay has plants all over the country, and most of them only produce a few of their many products, which then have to be shipped over terribly long distances…

It makes you wonder, certainly. As the article eventually articulates, local, in the minds of most people, not only means local (regional), but small-scale. “Local” seems to imply some sort of added value aside from the mere distance between the buyer and the grower. However, this isn’t inherent to the term, and I think when we’re talking about what we value in our food it’s important to be as specific as possible, and not presume that when we say “local” or even “organic” anyone will have the faintest idea what we mean. I know for me, the best part of buying local (from within Kent County) is that I’ve met the farmers face to face, and usually have a nice little chat every Saturday morning at the market. I doubt I could do this with any of the farmers who grow for Frito-Lay.

As a point of interest, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frito_Lay) the Frito company started in 1932 producing 10 lbs of chips per day, in the owner’s kitchen. I’m going to take a stab and guess that these were, in fact, locally distributed.





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06 June 2009

Der Markt

One thing, at least, Germany has in common with Chestertown. Well, again, sort of. Usually two or three times a week, every city or village has a farmer’s market.

The curious thing about the German farmer’s market is first, it’s size. Every one I’ve been to has been something of a crowded affair, with as many stalls as possible squeezed into a square that if you could see it empty would leave you with the impression a full out market could never actually fit into it later. And yet there are aisles of metzgerei (meat sellers), and gemuse and obst (vegetables and fruit) and always an apfelwein stand. You can usually, at least in the ones I’ve gone to, barely fit between the stands, between the narrow aisles and the many people with their oversized shopping bags and baskets and bikes.

The other thing, and this makes me miss my own farmer’s market despite the size and variety offered by the German markets, is that these are not my neighbors. Presumably they grow their vegetables in the vicinity of the city, but I wouldn’t know. For all I know they’re dragging their produce from the next state over. And, with my slow and careful German that apparently no one can understand, I have no way of asking. I prefer to shop from people I know by name, or at least by face, from having seen and spoken with them week after week.

I wonder where this bounty of German vegetables comes from. I suspect they are not all German, especially when we arrive at the market in early May to find zucchini, which in Germany’s climate really should not be ripe until at least August, and apples, which should not be ripe until at least October. Yet here they are, along with a wide array of other out of season vegetables that my friend’s mom tells me are probably from Greece. This is not the idea I have of farmer’s markets: the food is fresh, definitely, and maybe it is less pesticide laden or has traveled a shorter distance than the food in the grocery store (Greece is 2,100 km away, while New Zealand or Ecuador, where many grocery store vegetables come from, are more like 18,200 km). But I always come to Germany hoping to eat German vegetables, and other than spargel (asparagus- Germans love this stuff, especially the white kind, which we don’t have in the states), I am usually disappointed.

The same goes for other foods. Maybe I don’t notice it as much at home, where I’m not thinking about it as much, but looking for German cheese at the market came up with nothing (at least I found some from Holland, the next country over), and even the famous German bread, much to my disappointment, is baked from dough made somewhere else, in a big factory somewhere maybe, and only baked on the premises. It still tastes good, but with that in mind I start wondering about preservatives and artificial sugars, which at home I would avoid at all costs.

It makes me wonder. When I go with my friends to the store, they want to drink Italian wine, or Californian. I only want to drink German, because finally I have a selection of some of my favorite wines in the world, and they are grown and fermented only minutes away. But it really brings into perspective how seldom even someone who thinks most of the time about where her food comes from in actuality is eating locally. After all, I drink German wine when I’m at home.



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01 June 2009

And Some Things are Just Like Home

During move out a few weeks ago, I had the fortune to participate in Give and Go, a program developed to collect the leftover items students did not want to take home and donate them to Women in Need. I say fortunate, because although I hauled all sorts of furniture and boxes of random items all over campus on one of the first truly hot days of the summer, I ended up with a number of random things I had in fact been looking for. A floor length mirror, for example. I had been wanting one, and in one hallway there was not one, but two. I had my choice.

I also glanced in the dumpster, and was alarmed to realize that despite our efforts, there was still an array of usable items, including a chair and a relatively new bike. Alas. But this is fairly normal- spending all my time in the vicinity of Buildings and Grounds, I am privileged enough to constantly monitor the items that end up in the dumpsters, and scavenge any useful items I find.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised then to come upon the Mainz University recycling and discover a mountain. Mainz has a much larger university than little old Washington College- about 35,000 students to be precise. The majority of these students don’t live on campus, reducing, I suppose, your average student waste stream- clothes, books, the bizarre little things students tend to accumulate (plastic inflatable hands, anyone?). But here I found a mountain of computers, fax machines, printers, even typewriters, all waiting, I sincerely hope, to be recycled. When I say mountain I am not exaggerating. I could have climbed up the side, as it towered over my head. There was a similar mountain of office chairs. Nothing, absolutely nothing, except office chairs. Most of which looked to still be in good condition.

This in particular blew my mind. Ok, fine, obsolete electronics tend to get thrown out and recycled. I can accept that, even if I don’t like it. But office chairs? What’s obsolete about an office chair? Office chairs in the Custom House are at a premium, so even the one with the broken arm gets used. But here, before my eyes, was a cornucopia of office chairs. Not to mention the four, count them, four, accompanying trailers (as in, the back part of a tractor trailer) full of everything else you can imagine getting thrown away at a college. Wall sized maps (of Romania), planters, desks, lamps, the entire contents of a kitchen (oven, utensils, pans, plates, cake mix, spices), and rows and rows of mini fridges. Not just one. Rows.

And it’s not just the university. Walking around the city, I consistently see piles of what we translate to “big trash,” which the Germans call sparemüll. Furniture by the scores, working tvs and dvd players and just today, an entire kitchen floor, the planks of hardwood stacked on top of one another in an enormous pile. I think somewhere in my mind I imagined Europeans were simply more thrifty than Americans, and would therefore waste far less in terms of usable items. They tend to hang on to their cars until they fall apart, for example. But clearly I was wrong. While I’m sure there are some exceptions, I can hereby state that Germans are just as wasteful when it comes to consumer products as Americans. The evidence lines the streets. It provides a veritable (free) shopping mall for anyone with the time and energy to haul it away. And believe me, many people do, which may be the one difference between here and America.




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