voices from copenhagen
The International Conference on Climate Change concluded on the 19th of December. UN Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon offers a more compromising position on the meeting’s outcome:
We have sealed the deal. This accord cannot be everything that everyone hoped for, but it is an essential beginning.
Finally, a rather harrowing defamation from Lumumba Di-Aping, chairman of the G77 group of 130 poor countries:
[This] is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries. It’s a solution based on values that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces. (Guardian.co.uk)
Wow — the man evokes a Holocaust analogy. That’s quite inflammatory, but with 300,000 people dying every year from climate change, and considering the wealthy nations’ responsibility for causing global warming, is Di-Aping so far off? Di-Aping’s main complaints are that the so-called “Copenhagen Accord”, not to mention much of the negotiations themselves, largely omits the voices of the world’s poorest countries (grouped together in what’s known as the Global South).
Historical Context
What’s the take-home message here? Well, clearly this man was infuriated with the lack of progress at Copenhagen, and rightly so. He’s an African himself, intimately aware of long-standing power inequities between the rich, industrialized, mostly Western nations of the global north, and the poor, post-colonial, so-called “developing” nations of the global south. As an African, he understands that the Global North accrued the vast majority of its wealth at the expense of the South, via such oppressive systems as slavery, racism, and colonialism. (Why is Africa such a mess? Why has it taken so long for South America to provide basic necessities for its people? Why is India still gravely impoverished? Simple: the peoples of these continents have been subject to the global capitalist model – a model that benefits the few at the expense of the many. South American and African countries have had to weather the violent economic conditions set up by wealthy countries via structural adjustment programs; agricultural subsidies in the West have for decades forced small-farmers everywhere into poverty, and even suicide.)
At the same time the West has wrested the natural resources of the Rest, white countries have been spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an ever-accelerating rate. The United States, for example, is largely responsible for global warming – yet still its leaders, including Obama, are reticent to pay the country’s “climate debt.” Indeed, wealthy nations owe a massive debt to poor countries. Centuries of oppression, colonialism, and exploitation take form in climate change, as the poorest nations are most vulnerable to the phenomenon, and, of course, least capable to adapt to changes. The West’s hubris has never been stronger, it seems. And no surprise, for the governments of Europe and North America spawned the capitalist system, along with its oligarchs: the multinational corporations (MNCs), the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Wall Street, etc.
Danish Dunces?
Another interesting tidbit from the conference: behold, the slogan of the G77 nations:
One Africa, one degree. Two degrees is suicide.
What do they mean by degrees? The G77 countries created this slogan after a leaked document exposed secret meetings between Danish officials and other rich countries – two others, in fact: the United States and the UK. According to the Guardian, this text is
…a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks.
The Bottom Line
It seems as if those who represent a majority of the world’s population – leaders of peasant movements, landless people’s movements, and others in the Global South – stand irked at the Copenhagen Accord. The agreement is not only legally vacuous, it doesn’t even acknowledge the voices of the majority of humanity.
Wait, what about the argument that this was an important first step? If the leaders of industrialized nations were seriously committed to the welfare of all, they would have (1) admitted that a 2 deg. Celsius increase in global temperatures will wreak havoc on Africa, and (2) listened with an open mind to the sentiments of poor countries.
What’s in store this year?
What passed in December was the Cop15 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Another UN Conference, the Cop16, is set to be held in Mexico City during Fall of this year. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.
Mobile Phone Company Mobilizes 25,000 Against GMOs
Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Dick Casey seek to combat hunger through a new bill, the Global Food Security Act of 2009. Stressing the importance of long-term agricultural development, the bill marks a shift away from traditional aid methods in favor of enabling the hungry to feed themselves.
The legislation has not surfaced without discontent, however.
A recent backlash by civil society organizations decries the bill as deceitful, for though it purports to tackle food insecurity, it brandishes biotechnology as the solution. Several organizations, including the World Bank, United Nations, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have found GMO technology to be not only ineffectual on crop yields, but in fact unsuitable for the developing world. Food First Analyst Annie Shattuck takes it a step further, arguing that the bill is “simply more corporate welfare,” as it forces open foreign markets for the flooding of agricultural inputs and technologies.
Among the host of opponents to S. 384, traditional environmental organizations have an unconventional ally: Credo Mobile. Just last week, the progressive cell service provider gained 4,000 petition signatures for its campaign to strip the Casey-Lugar Act of its biotech mandate in the first hour. By July 13th, that number had climbed to 25,953 – an astounding achievement in only several days’ time. Calling itself the “greenest phone company” in the U.S., Credo supports and a variety of progressive campaigns, including the initiation of torture investigations and a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Click here to sign the petition and learn more about the issue.
Food First. Not second, or third, for that matter.
I’ve interned for little more than a month for the Institute for Food & Development Policy, better known as Food First, and it’s been a blast. We cook vegetarian lunches every day and eat them collectively. This builds bonds among us, making it feel intimate and familial. The staff especially have wonderful senses of humor, so not a day goes by without my laughing.
Food First, with only five paid staff, gets hella shit done. One of the paid staff, Alethea, is assembling a Food Policy Council for the City of Oakland, which would convene stakeholders from around the community to localize food systems. She has help from a couple of interns, but otherwise it’s all on her. And industrious she definitely seems: the Council’s set to meet within the next two months.
Annie Shattuck holds the position of Policy Analyst. You could also call her the local “jackette of all trades,” as her duties involve anything from flying to Seattle to meet with Gates Foundation officials, to reviewing & writing sections of Food First and other books.
Eric Holt-Gimenez captains this peculiar vessel – he’s our Executive Director. His duties include flying all over the place to talk about food sovereignty, agribusiness domination, small farmers, and a myriad of other food-related issues. Right now he’s attending a conference in Mali (Africa). Lucky!
Finally, we’re very lucky to have Marilyn Borchardt as Development Director. She maintains relations with the nonprofit’s funders, coordinates the interns, and pretty much anchors the ship. Marilyn is Food First’s veritable soul, as she’s been here since 1986.
So far, I’ve been responsible for updating Facebook and Twitter, writing blogs & articles for the website, and excitingly, researching the relationship between food sovereignty and urban agriculture.
More on such nerdy business later. Be well (:
Congressmen Support Sustainable Agriculture & Traditional Farming Practices
Michelle Obama’s organic garden, which she co-founded with a group of youth this March, has ruffled the feathers of agri-businesses. Voicing concern that she failed to recognize the importance of conventional agriculture in meeting increasing demand for food, the Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA), an agro-industry lobby comprised of Monsanto and DuPont executives, sent a letter of concern to the White House a few days after the garden’s debut. In their missive, the trade group contended that “technology” enables farmers to meet an increasing demand for food in a sustainable manner.
Despite this backlash, Representatives Jeff Fortenberry (D-NB) and Steve Kagan (D-WI), approve of the First Lady’s recent move. Through House Resolution 458 last month, the Congressmen voiced support for gardening and farmers’ markets, asserting that they enable self-sufficiency, build durable, local economies, and strengthen communities. The bill lauds a startling 19% increase in gardening from the previous year, as 43 million Americans said they would garden in 2009.
Fortenberry says that government need not over-regulate processes of food production – processes that have long evidenced “sound food safety and sustainability.”
Click here to view the Fortenberry Resolution.
Click here to learn how organic farming might “raise obesity rates.” Trust me, this one’s worth checking out. Heh.
Forging Fine Food: Michelle Obama Takes on Grub,.
What do you get by mixing one part First Lady, another part food crisis, and a dash of spunk? According to Huffington Post writer Paula Crossfield, this is a recipe for an “official leader” of the U.S.’s food movement. Enter our very own Michelle Obama.
It started in the White House’s very own backyard. This March, the First Lady led a group of students in planting an organic garden, which would double as a symbol for home-grown food and source fresh vegetables and herbs for White House consumption. Some in the nation’s “good-food” movement are hailing Michelle Obama as their de facto leader; one blog accredits White House garden as “a masterpiece of non-verbal political messaging.” Whether intended or not, the garden symbolizes such traditional American values as self-sufficiency and frugality, not to mention promotes food security and biodiversity.
In a notable speech to a youth group at a recent White House Garden harvest, Mrs. Obama articulated that nutritious eating is critical in the fight against chronic illnesses such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. These diseases cost the country $120 billion each year, and nearly one third of U.S. children are “either overweight or obese,” she said. Even more shockingly, experts warn that for the first time in American history, current generations of youth may have shorter life-spans as a direct result of the obesity epidemic plaguing the nation. Additionally, a surfeit of low-income and other marginalized families nationwide lives in food deserts, where there is no access to adequate fresh food. The First Lady condemns these food deserts as “barrier[s]” to good health. However, the U.S. boasts 1,000,000 flourishing U.S. community gardens, many of which are found in low-income communities, said the President’s wife.
We should view the White House Kitchen Garden and accompanying speeches by the First Lady as foreshadows of greater efforts to combat system-wide problems such as an ailing nation, broken food system, and poor educational performance. Indeed, a nation cannot succeed economically, environmentally, or otherwise if its people are sick.
sustainability news bit. the first.
Let’s cut to the chase.
For the first time ever, the U.S. Federal Government has passed legislation to raise automobile efficiency standards to the stringent levels California employs. ROCK! This milestone for the sustainable development (SD) movement in the United States (and by extension, abroad), which activates in 2012, mandates vehicles to achieve 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. This will render the U.S. car and light truck fleet 40% more efficient than today. One Daniel Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, calls this law “the single biggest step the American government has ever taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.”
My beloved source of optimistic (humorous) environmental news, Grist.org, provides a concise summary of the new law.
I welcome this news with elation, and recall that roughly one third (30%) of all GHGs originate from agricultural operations… (UN Food and Agriculture Organization)
will Obama get it right? part one,.
Let’s take into account the massive crises facing the United States right now:
- Health: Life expectancy is down for the first time in decades as Americans reel from being over-fed and undernourished.
- Economy: In the wake of one of America’s worst financial crises ever, the government fails to bring large greedy exploitative banks & firms to justice; the Obama Administration settles for word-lobbing rather than litigation. Red flag, anyone?
- Climate change & pollution: Notice where this point rests on the list. Third? Peculiar, as global climate changes combined with an acceleratingly polluted planet promise to exacerbate the other two crises, as well as intensify insecurity in every sector of civilization everywhere.
Indeed, I have a question for Obama. Has he come to the realization that the human race’s activity – the economy – is an engine operating on hot air? Does the President understand that the human economic system is a sub-system of the planet (a finite system), and that limitless growth is therefore impossible? But, say the global capitalist profiteers, If we can’t keep growing the economy, we won’t be able to take billions out of poverty. Wrong.
The bottom line: either President Obama comprehends the interrelatedness of health, economic, and social problems as intimately connected to environmental woes, or he has simply failed to make the intellectual leap and connect the aforementioned.
I thought we ordered a “green” president. But then again, perhaps we have; he might be hiding that side of himself until the time is ripe.
Indeed, it remains to be seen how eco-literate Obama really is.
Effecting a Sustainable Food System: What Would it Take?
I wrote the following policy memo for my Sustainability class.
Food Policy Recommendations for the Obama Administration and Federal Government
Synopsis. An obese populace, oceanic dead zones, community maldevelopment, and pest resistance. These damages manifest a high-magnitude relationship among social and environmental problems. In the United States, the cheapness of food and its abundance in poor quality reflect systemic problems attributable to domestic farm subsidies, corporate disruption of federal regulation, and a harmful culture of convenience. The aforementioned problems are symptomatic of a food system in shambles: the product of industrial agriculture and the centralization of food supply and production. In this case, government has the opportunity to employ one of the most significant preventative health measures of all time for both people and planet. Foremost, the Obama Administration must make sustainable agriculture a national policy priority. It must configurate the Farm Bill to subsidize organic farming, incent states to create local food economies, and re-establish the status of farmers as critical members of society. Lawmakers, you must catalyze food economies that are local, self-sufficient, and nourishing for farmers, consumers, and communities. These and other solutions, though pending, are no longer a matter of choice, for our nation’s very survival may depend upon them.
Modern Agriculture Poses Grand Challenges.
As a basis for analysis, I will provide a sampling of industrial agriculture’s detrimental effects on society and the ecosystems that support it.
Our life support systems are faltering. For example, biodiversity – the backbone of a functioning web of life – suffers massively from our enormous monoculture operations, which discourage natural ecology in favor of artificial pest control and managed ecosystems. Synthetic fertilizers pollute our soil, air, and water, causing respiratory problems in people, as well as oceanic “dead zones.” When nitrogen-based chemicals runoff farms into rivers and oceans, microorganisms flourish, hogging all the water’s oxygen, and asphyxiating larger marine animals. With humans’ present penchant for six crops to supply the majority of their calories, humanity has lost approximately 96% of crop diversity since 1880. Yet there may be hope for crop diversity, when we return to local food economies.
We must reduce animal product consumption. Livestock production consumes an astoundingly unsustainable amount of resources. It occupies 30% of Earth’s land area, much of which was pristine forest. It generates a vastly disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions. One pound of beef requires 12,000 gallons of water over a cow’s lifetime. Even more striking, the United States could feed 800 million people with the amount of grain it uses to raise livestock. Lastly, livestock accounts for 18% of GHG emissions worldwide. We simply must convert livestock feed to grass-fed – nature’s preference, and encourage less animal product consumption both here and abroad.
Divest from biofuels. “The current biofuels craze is neither clean nor green. Instead, it has disrupted food and commodities markets and inflicted heavy penalties on poor consumers,” writes Foreign Affairs contributors C. F. Runge and B. Senauer. Subsidies by EU and US governments have distorted food prices, forcing hundreds of millions more people into hunger. In 2009, the UN reports that 1,000,000,000 (one billion) people will be hungry this year. This is unacceptable by any measure; we must divest from biofuel production immediately as it is exacerbating socio-ecological crises. Yet there may be hope for population control, when we empower farmers to grow their own food as well as educate women.
There is a way out.
Let the following tentative policy framework guide your action:
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Initiate a progressive nationwide conversion to sustainable agriculture. In this model, the federal government would divest money from conventional agriculture, allocating funds instead to sustainable farmers as well as local Food Policy Councils to spur the creation of decentralized food economies. Another facet of this policy would phase out synthetic chemicals from the food system.
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Set a goal of reducing livestock production by 20% by 2020, and mandate a “Grass feed or No feed” policy for said industries.
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Create under the Department of the Interior a U.S. Farm Corps whose charge would be to facilitate public participation in sustainable farms nationwide. This would fuel a cultural shift whereby Americans would come to appreciate the value of real food, give back to the Earth, and improve their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being simultaneously.
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Create under the Department of the Interior a U.S. Farm Corps whose charge would be to facilitate public participation in sustainable farms nationwide. This would fuel a cultural shift whereby Americans would come to appreciate the value of real food, give back to the Earth, and improve their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being simultaneously.
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Integrate food production, nutrition education into curricula at all levels of schooling. It is imperative that people learn proper nutrition as well as the relationship between food and Earth.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Pope!
There’s something wretched about roughly 670,000,000 people on this planet. Have you heard? They’re queer, and they’re out to ruin straight, normal, pretty, rather fucking boring families. What’s more, I hear they’re betting on world domination.
More than their apocalyptic ends, queers are an abomination — just like Jews, or left-handed people, or Sikhs, or the heinous fucking indigenous tribes of South America. Have you heard? They’re all on the highway to Hell.
Old news, isn’t it? That the Catholic Pope would dare to publicly defile the dignity of hundreds of millions of people on this planet, that he would even THINK of analogizing planetary stewardship with what his words imply is a demographic cleansing of queers everywhere. Imagine how those of us feel who are not out or educated about queer issues? Imagine millions of questioning teenagers just diving into puberty who read his words! How much more UNlikely are they to reconcile their sexuality with themselves? Indeed, the Pope’s words may have a resounding thud in the hearts of all LGBT people cognizant of them.
Absorb his lunacy now -
“A sort of ecology of man is needed,” said the Pope. “The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”
To borrow from a prominent queer author,
What would Jesus NOT do?
In his recent statements, the Pope sought to imply that if the entire species were to become gay, we would die out. This, my friends, is not just irrational, it’s anti-rational. It’s as if the Pope was born in the thirteenth century and had never heard of Einstein, Newton, modern science, or knowledge. Regressives like this man must not be in power as they are prone to abuse it.
Fortunately, as more and more people are becoming educated, increasingly greater numbers will read the headlines and ask themselves, “What the frack is this guy saying? Is he effing insane?”
No, Mr. Pope, you are not so holy. In fact, you command one of the greatest Christian abominations ever: a colossal male-supremacist human political machine rife with corruption, fancy tall buildings, and materialistic obsession. Forgive me, but
What would Jesus NOT do?
Mr. Pope, astronauts can perceive your insanity. This and your inhumanity cascade through the masses, building power for your skewed relIGUlous – probably political – ends, leaving people bereft of one of the most important individual freedoms: free thought. May the atheist god Gouda bless your soul…
Sustainability or Bust?
This I wrote for my University and some local papers.
Hey, it's Mama Earth!
In the U.S., we’ve come a long way environmentally. Rachel Carson’s ground-breaking book Silent Spring practically sparked the environmental movement in the United States; now American non-profits such as GreenPeace and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have global prominence, influencing environmental politics as far away as Beijing. Thanks to increased awareness about humanity’s effects on the planet, recycling is commonplace in our communities, schools, and businesses. Fortunately, with the leadership of Al Gore and others, 83% of Americans view climate change as a threat. But still, anthropocentrism pervades our society. We forget, or haven’t learned, that all life is mutually reinforcing. Each species in a stable ecosystem plays a vital role, including humans. Problem is, we’ve lost touch with our natural mandate: to operate in peaceful coexistance with all life and the planet. Sometimes our spirituality dissuades us from appreciating the value of all life. As such, a number of questions remain:
Why are ordinary citizens are out of touch with nature? Why don’t we appreciate all life as having intrinsic worth? And why are people disconnected from the environmental repercussions of their lifestyles?
The answer is simple. We live in a throw-away society that has lost respect for the complex ecology that sustains us. Consumerism and short-sighted economic “growth mania” has resulted in a disregard for the quality of life – both human and otherwise. Through media, corporations and governments encourage us to consume, consume, and consume some more, as if the planet magically renews its reserves of oil or revitalizes its soil. Water and plastic are so cheap, for example, that we perceive them as basically endless, and we don’t pay a price for wasting them. What we’re left with is a world rife with pollution – of the air, land, animals, and, most troublingly, ourselves. To our mild misfortune, corporations have exceeded governments in power and wealth, harming our ability to mitigate environmental problems.
In fact, by prioritizing profit margins over all else (including the public good), corporations have catalyzed a planetary pillage of unprecedented scale. Their influence on governments is incontrovertible and far-reaching, which has resulted in poor environmental management – especially in the United States. And yet the fuel for such destruction lies in a long-standing philosophy of laissez-faire free-market capitalism. This philosophy is unsustainable in the long-term. We now reap the consequences of our capitalism: plastic so widely pervades our environment it is now finding its way through the food chain – from micro-organisms to large mammals. The plastics industry doesn’t make sense. Our rivers are so badly polluted with agricultural runoff, there are now tens of ecological “dead zones” in the world where literally no life can exist due to oxygen deprivation in the water. Industrial agriculture doesn’t make sense. Through our exploitation of fossil fuels, we’ve taken incredible amounts of carbon from the ground and shot it upwards, causing unnatural climate change which, the world now knows, is having dramatic effects on everything from our water supply to global extinction rates (they’re at 1000 times the normal rate). Obviously, a societal operation based on exhaustible resources doesn’t make sense. Our incredible pollution undermines both humanity and the complex ecosystems that support it.
Nature doesn’t pollute. In fact, the concept of waste is entirely anthropogenic – we humans invented it. Before humankind, there was a reliable balance of nature by which every bone, branch, and nutrient was recycled naturally and gracefully. Nature still renews itself, but it’s becoming less efficient as we fundamentally alter the Earth’s physical and biological infrastructure. We’re loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide (this chemical stays in the atmosphere for 200-450 years). We’re injecting the oceans with nitrogen, which causes micro-organisms to overpopulate and destroy marine environments. We’re allowing massive income gaps and resulting poverty; this exacerbates environmental destruction by forcing impoverished people to deforestation. Most tangibly, we’re piling both land and water with trash, especially plastic and wasted food. How can we as a species continue to use an economic model of capitalist growth when it accelerates the destruction of the very life-support systems that sustain us? Frankly, we cannot.
Is free-market capitalism compatible with environmental sustainability? Perhaps, but not without restraints. Indeed, there is hope (!). Problems of pollution and growth will only grow worse until we find a way to price goods by their holistic cost – environmental and social impacts included. Let’s do away with contempocentrism, the philosophy of short-sightedness that disregards the welfare of current and future generations, to whom we have a fundamental obligation. Also, our obsession with growth – the “growth fetish,” as it is known – must die. Contrary to the opinions of trans-national corporations and their employee governments, growth does not equate with progress. As such we should innovate static economic operations in which the goal is not standard of living so much as quality of human and other life.
Systemic woes aside, what can each of us do to usher in sustainability?
Lots! If you commute, first ask yourself if you could take mass-transit instead, or do what you can to carpool. You might turn your electronics off at night, especially your computers, and use natural lighting where possible. Science demonstrates that organic food is often considerably more nutritious than industrial-made, and hasn’t grown with toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Buy it? If you shop often, consider researching the businesses you patronize – have they paid fines for environmental mismanagement? Do they condone sweat shop labor or underpay their workers? Reduce your consumption by using a stainless steel mug and water bottle; you’ll reap health benefits as well, for conventional plastic water bottles (yeah, Nalgene™ included) leach toxic chemicals into the water, which can make you ill. And of course, recycle as much as possible!
These are only a small selection of the lifestyle changes you can make to help save the planet. Remember: we’re all in this together. And it is as a species united that we will overcome. Cheers, everyone.
