Some of the leading voices in the movement for a sustainable agriculture system stood together Thursday to unveil the "Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture," a 12-point set of principles for reorienting American food away from corporate farms and long-haul delivery to local producers and land stewardship.
The luminaries, including movement bigwigs like Alice Waters, Dan Imhoff, and Marion Nestle, stood together inside San Francisco City Hall to read the declaration. The event was held on the eve of Slow Food Nation, a three-day gathering that promises to showcase talks on food policy, the food of great chefs, and the farmers who, at the end of the day, are the ones filling the country's foodbasket.
The declaration remains a draft document. The organizers are soliciting public input for 90 days, with the hope of delivering a final document to the nation's policymakers early next year and shaping debate over the next farm bill.
Grist is in San Francisco and will be filing updates over the holiday weekend. In the meantime, here's the full text of the declaration unveiled on Thursday:
We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.
Alice Waters signs the Slow Food Declaration.
These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.
Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation. Individuals, producers, and organizations have a duty to create regional systems that can provide healthy food for their communities. We all have a duty to respect and honor the laborers of the land without whom we could not survive. The changes we call for here have begun, but the time has come to accelerate the transformation of our food and agriculture and make its benefits available to all.
We believe that the following twelve principles should frame food and agriculture policy, to ensure that it will contribute to the health and wealth of the nation and the world. A healthy food and agriculture policy:
1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.
2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.
3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.
4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.
5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.
6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.
7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.
8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.
9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.
10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.
11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.
12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.
Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic lines. We pledge our votes, our purchases, our creativity, and our energies to this urgent cause.
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Comments
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Jonas Posted 6:41 am
29 Aug 2008
If you alter the current food system too brusquely, you could be throwing hundreds of millions into poverty and damage the planet more than you intended.
The whole slow food idea must be implemented very, very slowly, to minimize economic, social and environmental risks.
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Russ Posted 7:06 am
29 Aug 2008
If the goals are intrinsically desirable (and you agree that they are), we simply must fight to implement them. The goal is the good of the earth and of all peoples. The way to achieve the goal is to win the war as soon as possible.
Of course there's the likelihood of some people being harmed - robber capitalism always holds plenty of hostages. But it's only the atavistic struggle of the greedy to hold onto their power which spreads pain. Let them relinquish their illegitimate goals (just read the list - for each item it's clear who the enemy is), and there might just be time and energy to transform civilization before it goes down. Any such action is hard enough where there's full will to action. Anyone who counsels further delay is simply against the act itself.
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Chris McMasters Posted 1:24 pm
29 Aug 2008
But the list has got to be more specific. Read 'The Omnivores Dilemma' and let me know exactly how we are going to interrupt the debacle that is American corn.
Silly me, I thought buying organic was a grand solution. Far from it. Industrial organic is not all pure and wholesome.
Inspiring movement though.
Chris McMasters
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MAD MAC Posted 8:41 pm
29 Aug 2008
Let's get down to brass tacks here. EXACTLY what are you advocating and WHO EXACTLY are you advocating does it?
Victory in Pattani
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Jonas Posted 11:38 pm
29 Aug 2008
If we emulate them, we do exactly the same thing as the thing we're trying to change.
I just think you have to be very careful with disrupting the global food system, without studying the effects of your action.
This doesn't mean a delay in time. Going about 'slowly' just means going about more sensibly.
I don't want to be responsible for destroying the jobs of the millions of small farmers who depend on their exports within the global food system.
We first have to explain them that we will be changing their market, and that we will help them so that they too can benefit from another system. We will, if needed, even provide alternative livelihoods to them, because the slow-food market will undoubtedly (initially) lead to massive jobs losses in the agricultural sector in the developing world.
That's what I meant with implementing things 'slowly': i.e. not repeating the aggressiveness of the current system.
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Russ Posted 12:32 am
30 Aug 2008
Also, I hardly believe even the fastest, most aggressive implementation of anything is going to be fast or aggressive enough to hit anyone like a bolt out of the blue.
After all, like I said, the ideas have been around for a long time. So all the actors know this agenda might possibly come into being. How much more preparation do they need?
We first have to explain them that we will be changing their market, and that we will help them so that they too can benefit from another system. We will, if needed, even provide alternative livelihoods to them, because the slow-food market will undoubtedly (initially) lead to massive jobs losses in the agricultural sector in the developing world.
(This sounds alot like an argument I've heard against getting off fossil fuels - that we somehow owe it to the petrostates to remain their slavish clients, because without us what will they do?)
The truth is, I don't know if you're right that there even exist all these small farmers in developing countries - I've read the opposite as well.
But let's say there are - I hardly see how these reforms could harm small farmers even a tiny fraction as much as agribusiness and globalization have.
Measures which disempower mega-agriculture can only help small farmers.
The fact is, we don't have time for going more slowly than as fast as politics makes possible. That's probably going to be way too slow anyway, and then everyone, small farmers included, is going to get hit simultaneously with the quickly intensifying effects of climate change and energy descent.
We have a small time window, and our ideas are as tested as they're ever going to be short of deployment. This is true in energy and its true in agriculture.
(Even if you're not as convinced as I about civilizational descent, the precautionary principle still demands the same outlook.)
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Russ Posted 12:35 am
30 Aug 2008
I'll start from the simple facts that energy and environmental factors militate that far more of us (in all that follows I'm talking about America) become farmers; that even today smaller farms are more productive, more energy-efficient, and as a rule more environmentally friendly; and that looming Peak Oil and energy descent will mandate that we get small or get dead whether we want to or not (and this is leaving aside whether or not one cares about ghgs - if you do that renders agricultural reform all the more pressing).
I'll just select one item from this manifesto:
3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.
With agriculture, we have the same situation as with energy: just as with fossil fuels, industrial agriculture has been heavily subsidized and empowered in many other ways, while just as with renewables, alternatives to the agribusiness model ("get big or get out", monoculture, heavy use of fossil-fuel based fertilizer and pesticide, GMOs and patenting of seeds) have been neglected where not actively assaulted.
What is the overarching feature in both cases is large, centralized structure dependent upon cheap, plentiful, ever-growing supply of fossil fuel.
The result in both cases is a heavily tilted playing field.
So in both cases I would strip away all such government steroids for the already engorged, while deploying massive public investment in transformative technologies, practices, structures.
In the case of agriculture this would mean such things as tax credits and loan guarantees for small farms, perhaps various carrots and sticks for states and municipalities to adopt policies more friendly to decentralization, organics, CSAs, single-plot gardening (why shouldn't this get the same tax incentives as e.g. a home office?).
I would abolish corn ethanol subsidies and mandates. As for cellulosic, I've become a skeptic about that, but I suppose I might still make some R&D money available. "Don't pick winners", right?
I read in the newspaper this morning that a court just allowed the Administration to forbid a small meat packer to test all its cattle for mad cow disease and publicize this, because that would put pressure on the CAFOs to do the same. So much for the "free" market. (Indeed, anti-public government/corporate bullying seldom gets more brazen than this.)
It hardly needs saying, I would allow and encourage all pro-public practices and all true labeling.
As for CAFOs, although I'm not really an animal-rightser, still this is prima facie cruel. All the policies I'm enacting here would favor lower-impact, humane husbandry and disfavor high-impact cruelty.
What's more, I'd subject CAFOs to the full force of the CAA, CWA, and any other applicable laws, as they should be today.
Most of all I'd see to it that the externalities be fully internalized, just as for every other industry.
Farm workers would benefit from a restored safety net in general; that takes us beyond the scope of what I'm writing about here, but I can say that I'd restore OSHA oversight, have union-friendly policies, radically better pesticide regulation, etc.
Since the biotech companies themselves claim genetic modification is indistinguishable from age-old hybridization techniques, then it follows that they shouldn't be able to patent genes or organisms.
What's more, since the food supply is a social good and a strategic element, it shouldn't be held hostage to any corporate interest at any point. The genetics of the world ecosystem are public property, and no one ever had a right to enclose them or allow them to be enclosed. So right there all such patents are invalid and vacated.
The fact is, man does not need GMOs, just like it didn't need monoculture in the first place. Diversified cultivation of wild varieties has always been more productive for local and regional populations. It was only corporate globalism which wanted and needed to build the Tower of Babel of monoculture, fossil-fuel fertilizer and pesticide, and growing global distribution, these three always circulating in an ever-intensifying loop.
So this is part of the array of what I'd do if I had the federal power at my disposal. Is there an irony in using this central power structure to seek decentralized agriculture? If so, it can't be helped - these are the only structures we have right now. While I distrust all large structures, government at least in principle is accountable to the public, and if I had the power I'd make it so in practice for once.
Besides, energy descent is imminent, and I fail to see any other structure which could possibly undertake the crash course needed if civilization is going to effect any kind of transformation which could still preserve part of this vaunted modern standard of living.
Everything I said here would of course be within the context of a general programme which would seek everywhere to remove our adversarial relationship with nature, lead us beyond and above fossil fuels, and ameliorate if not end social exploitation, domination, and cruelty, largely through the disempowering of large structures and the empowering of smaller forms.
I believe nature is going to force us to do this anyway, so it would be better if we did it according to a plan, instead of heedlessly partying our way right off a cliff.
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Jonas Posted 1:14 am
30 Aug 2008
I doubt that anyone is advocating anything new, or anything which hasn't been studied to death already. Rather, they're advocating that existing ideas finally be implemented.
... is not really correct.
There have been no comparative studies on the large socio-economic and ecologic impacts of the two production systems (slow, local, organic food vs. industrial food). None whatsoever.
And the few studies that have been conducted, point to some troubling news.
-For example, we now know that organic food is not 'healthier', nor more 'nutritious'. The first comprehensive study on this ever to appear, appeared only a few weeks ago. So it's not true that all these things have been studied to death. None of them have been studied even superficially.
-We also know that organic farming is not the most optimal form of land-use. The first comprehensive study pointing this out appeared only very recently.
-The other aspects all need to be studied much more in-depth as well.
And then we have to get all these studies together and create one big meta-study to look at the effects of a scaled-up local/slow food universe.
It's just that I don't want to rush into yet another new ideology that remains, until this day, basically an ideology, not based on scientific fact.
About the small farmers in developing countries. Hundreds of millions are dependent on producing for international markets. From baby maize and christmas tomatos, to avocados, honey, coffee and cacao, to palm oil, bananas, cotton, flowers, and tea - you name it - millions and millions are involved. The only sectors which have pulled millions of small farmers out of poverty, have been the ones that connect them with global markets.
The only non-industrial farming experiments with poor farmers in the South, - which have not led to poverty -, are experiments such as the Millennium Villages, which are costly and heavily subsidized (or based on charity).
Sorry, we have to study the global social effects of a localist, slow, organic food industry much more in-depth, before we implement it. We have to ascertain that it will lead to prosperity, instead of poverty. We have to study the environmental effects (because if it happens that the new concept leads to more poverty, then this will have environmental consequences).
Basically each single one of the 12 points mentioned in the pamphlet has not been studied yet. So let's do this first.
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MAD MAC Posted 1:30 am
30 Aug 2008
Victory in Pattani
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MAD MAC Posted 1:33 am
30 Aug 2008
Now why can't you write like this all the time, instead of some sort of reconstituted Maoist.
Victory in Pattani
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Jonas Posted 1:36 am
30 Aug 2008
I agree that over the very long term, humanity needs to become far more sustainable, and that - as far as food production is concerned - this means a transition to such systems as the one advocated by the slow/local/post-industrial food movement.
But think of this: who is this movement? Who is speaking? Which are the material and social conditions that have to be in place for such a movement and discourse to emerge? (Classic "marxist" questions). The answer is: such a movement can only occur in high bourgeois societies, with members who are well off and have lots of cash and free time to spend on new ideas, and who live in societies with large middle classes, all living in urban areas, and enjoying low fertility rates.
These bourgeois societies emerged after a very long process of modernisation. Only now, now that immense amounts of wealth have been accumulated, do members of these societies have the time and luxury to call for more environmentally-friendly production processes.
Now I wish the developing countries could go through a similar transition - away from food-insecure agrarian societies to food-opulent post-industrial bourgeois societies - so that their members too can create such sensitive discourses like the one presented above.
Because let's admit it, it's not poor African farmers who have come up with this 'slow food' or 'local food' idea. It's wealthy urbanites from Rome, New York, Seattle and Brussels.
The ultimate question is: can a slow food paradigm be reconciled with modernisation in developing countries?
Just study whether a slow food production system can bring about the same progress towards Modernity: that is - a rapid urbanisation, the emergence of a middle class, declining fertility rates.
My bet is that it is very, very difficult to prove that this is possible.
I don't really believe in "leapfrogging". Developing countries may be best served by industrial agriculture, so that at least they can become food secure, become more urban, industrialized nations, with middle classes, lower poverty and lower fertility rates. Once they reach this status, they too can begin to dream of more sustainable production paradigms.
So let's try slow/local food in our wealthy societies. We have the luxury to experiment, and if it fails, it's no disaster. But let's not be so crazy as to tell food-insecure, poor, agrarian developing countries that they should implement the same ideas, unless we are absolutely 100% sure that this can lead to modernity for them. If we do tell them they should listen to us without being sure of the effects of this ideology, then we might well be 'green imperialists'.
To avoid this, we need to study, limit the effort to experiments here at home in our wealthy countries, and make sure that we limit any negative social effects on the poor. Then, if the studies show clear benefits, we can gradually help developing countries with implementing similar experiments. We then need to study the effects of the system in this new context. And then we can take things a step further.
We must be very, very carful, and go about very, very slowly.
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Russ Posted 2:44 am
30 Aug 2008
But think of this: who is this movement? Who is speaking? Which are the material and social conditions that have to be in place for such a movement and discourse to emerge? (Classic "marxist" questions). The answer is: such a movement can only occur in high bourgeois societies, with members who are well off and have lots of cash and free time to spend on new ideas, and who live in societies with large middle classes, all living in urban areas, and enjoying low fertility rates.
These bourgeois societies emerged after a very long process of modernisation. Only now, now that immense amounts of wealth have been accumulated, do members of these societies have the time and luxury to call for more environmentally-friendly production processes.
This puts me in mind of an essay I read just yesterday, linked from Energy Bulletin. It's on how the famous "tragedy of the commons" is really a myth; how there is no evidence that pre-capitalist herding saw this kind of dog-eat-dog selfishness, and lots of counterevidence vs. it; how on the contrary the assumptions built into the thesis are capitalist assumptions, and already assume an existing capitalist system. So the whole thing is circular reasoning - you preassume capitalism, and then discover capitalist relations prevailing. But that doesn't mean that's how things always were.
So similarly here, the world is fully immersed in the capitalist stage, and you look around and assume everything based upon that perspective. If the West followed a certain historical path, so must the rest of the world.
But the ideas we're talking about here did not originally lie in some "future", they were always latent and were often realized, prior to capitalism. Here, like in many other places, "post-industrialism" looks a lot like pre-industrialism. People don't need to evolve through all the stages of industrialism and its concomitant social organization; rather, they can, if they have the political will, have a true revolution in the classical 18th century sense of the term - a revolving back to sustainability following a wrong turn.
Because let's admit it, it's not poor African farmers who have come up with this 'slow food' or 'local food' idea. It's wealthy urbanites from Rome, New York, Seattle and Brussels.
I'm sick of this notion that ideas like these are typical consumerist lifestyle accouterments, "fashions". Yeah, there's a lot of posers out there, and a lot of stupid "features" in the MSM, but this has nothing to do with the integrity of the idea itself.
You know, that slavery is bad is also a late, "luxury" idea. Perhaps a fad.
So let's try slow/local food in our wealthy societies. We have the luxury to experiment, and if it fails, it's no disaster. But let's not be so crazy as to tell food-insecure, poor, agrarian developing countries that they should implement the same ideas, unless we are absolutely 100% sure that this can lead to modernity for them. If we do tell them they should listen to us without being sure of the effects of this ideology, then we might well be 'green imperialists'.
I confess I don't see how you decouple the two. We currently have global agriculture, and to whatever extent wealthy societies ascend from globalism, developing countries will essentially be left to their own resources. We don't need to tell anybody what to do, but we'd be saying, "We're headed this way".
Anyway, as you know, I don't believe there's going to be any choice in the matter, other than how organized the attempt at the next stage is. There just aren't enough fossil fuels for the developing world to develop the way the West did. So not only should the West be undertaking this transition now, and not only should the developing world, not "leapfrog" as you put it, but take a side path - neither really has any choice for much longer.
Mac - I do often get very angry at the injustice and ugliness of modern civilization. So that's why I sometimes express myself the way I do. We're hardly writing dissertations here, though for what it's worth if I was writing for publication I'd always be on my best behavior. :)
As an enemy of all large structures, I'm hardly a Maoist. As you read above, I'm not a historical determinist where it comes to socioeconomic organization, except where the latter must follow the physical facts of energy availability.
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MAD MAC Posted 2:54 am
30 Aug 2008
And don't knock large structures - both physical and political - there's something to be said for them. You can't do anything about them anyway.
Last but not least, plenty of people read Grist and they walk away from it thinking Greens are whackos - hell I think that myself.
Victory in Pattani
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Jonas Posted 4:17 am
30 Aug 2008
No, Russ, I'm only asking which might be the most optimal route to achieve certain goals (global sustainability, social welfare, genuine peace). Much evidence points to the fact that a Western development model is quite efficient, but then again, nothing is predetermined, and each model has its drawbacks.
We have plenty of examples and material from the past, to base our scrutinizing on, and to project the most efficient pathways for the future. I believe that we can learn from the past.
-For example, we know that autarky in today's global economic system is catastrophic and leads to the death of quite a lot of people (examples: North Korea, Zimbabwe).
-We also know that uncontrolled free trade can sharpen poverty instead of relieving it (see the World Bank and the IMF's mea culpa).
-There's some evidence that, if you have many partners pulling the same rope, more communist systems can work too (see for example Cuba or North Korea, who fared quite well as long as they were part of a global communist economic system; once this network disintegrated, the individual members' economies disintegrated, unless they switched to capitalism)
-More extreme left-wing programmes, like Mao's or Pol Pot's ruralist agenda have proved to be rather obscene.
-There's plenty of evidence that free market economies with lots of social rules and strong governments, in combination with well guided free trade rules (i.e. European social economies), fare very well, and that the model can be copied by developing countries (e.g. South America's new democracies).
I'm sure we can poor all the parameters of these different systems, and data about the efficiency of different agricultural production systems, into a computer program and calculate some outcomes on social, economic and environmental matters.
For example, recently there was a study by some think tanks which showed something very counter-intuitive. They found that countries who make heavy use of their natural resources, are less mired in conflict than countries that do not exploit their natural resources and conserve them instead. The strange conclusion of the researchers: 'green peace' is an illusion, countries who work for the environment risk more social and military conflict than countries who don't.
Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Indra de Soysa, Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961-99", Population and Environment, Volume 28, Number 6 / July, 2007, DOI: 10.1007/s11111-007-0053-6
Helga Malmin Binningsbø1, 2 Contact Information, Indra de Soysa1, 2 and Nils Petter Gleditsch1, 2
(1) Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
(2) Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW), International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway
Published online: 23 June 2007
Abstract
The proposition that environmental scarcity causes violent conflict attracts both popular and academic interest. Neomalthusian writers have developed theoretical arguments explaining this connection, and have conducted numerous case studies that seem to support the view that scarcity of biological assets such as land and other renewable resources causes conflict.
So far there have been few systematic quantitative or comparative studies, and the few that exist have focused on particular forms of environmental degradation or on a small subset of resources, particularly mineral wealth.
We test a more general argument about the effects of resource scarcity by examining the most widely-used measure of environmental sustainability: the ecological footprint. <bold>Contrary to neomalthusian thinking, we find that countries with a heavier footprint have a substantially greater chance of peace. </bold>
Biocapacity and the ecological reserve also predict to peace, but these results are more fragile. Separate tests for smaller conflicts, for the post-Cold War period, and with additional control variables do not yield stronger support for the scarcity thesis. On the whole, the neomalthusian model of conflict receives little support from this analysis. We cannot exclude that erosion of the earth's carrying capacity can increase conflict in the long run, but an empirical analysis with the ecological footprint measure does not provide any support for such a position.
This is the type of research we need to apply to different farming ideologies. Do they lead to social conflict? Do they help make countries food secure? Do they really benefit the environment? What's their effect on population trends?
In any case, simply saying that the slow/local food idea should be implemented universally is a purely ideological statement, the value of which needs to be corroborated by science.
But the ideas we're talking about here did not originally lie in some "future", they were always latent and were often realized, prior to capitalism. Here, like in many other places, "post-industrialism" looks a lot like pre-industrialism. People don't need to evolve through all the stages of industrialism and its concomitant social organization; rather, they can, if they have the political will, have a true revolution in the classical 18th century sense of the term - a revolving back to sustainability following a wrong turn.
Russ, in 1800 there were 1 billion people on this planet. Today there are 6.5 billion.
It would be entirely naive to believe that you can take an idea that perhaps worked in the 18th/early 19th century, and just assume that it will work in the totally different universe of today.
The material circumstances of today are of an entirely different order than those of the 18th century.
"Going back" to these 18th centuries ideas as such, is obviously totally not an option. It would even be outright dangerous and a recipe for catastrophy (purely given the demographic conditions of today). The 18th century realities can act as a romantic, symbolic guiding principle, but surely not as a real model to follow.
I see more sense in the model of the "Greener Revolution" - a continuation of the Green Revolution, but making it more sustainable by drawing on even more scientific insight and technological progres, instead of dumping science and going back to mere ideology and good will.
I would agree, though, the urging to build a model on pure science, is an ideological choice too. But it is one I would prefer to follow.
We need more science and technology in agriculture, not less.
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Wolverine Posted 4:52 am
30 Aug 2008
You've got to be kidding. Industrial agriculture has done so much harm to the Earth in so many ways that I won't even bother listing them. Removing artificial chemicals and producing food for local consumption instead of shipping it long distances can only provide positive results. What will cause great harm is to continue the so-called green revolution.
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Jonas Posted 9:22 am
30 Aug 2008
The planet is here, for sure, but it's a planet inhabited by people.
So let's first make sure that immediate needs are relieved - and for developing regions, especially for Sub-Saharan Africa, this means the rapid implementation of a Greener Revolution.
After we succeed in relieving these immediate needs, and once global wealth has reached a level that allows people make fewer children, then, perhaps, we can switch to more sustainable systems.
I prefer a planet that has been mildly polluted, but living full of happy people, rather than a planet that is pristine and clean, but full of miserable lives.
Eventually, the happy, wealthy people (like these of the slow food movement), will crave for a cleaner environment, and, importantly, they will have the prosperity and the means to spend money on achieving this aim.
Put differently: you tackle the global population problem, by rapidly modernizing societies. Keeping people in poverty and hunger, - with high fertility rates as a consequence and even more hungry and poor people as a result - is ultimately much more harmful to the planet.
-
Just compare these two: deforestation in the Amazon is now largely driven by agro-industrial interests. But deforestation in the equally important Congo Basin forest is largely driven by poverty and people who make lots of children out of survival. The end result is the same: an equally large amount of dead forest.
I prefer a dead forest sustaining small populations of happy, wealthy, healthy people, over a similar dead forest the deforestation of which only helped to sustain unhappy, poor, unhealthy lives.
I think that with science and technology it is possible to decrease the rate of destruction, and still bring people to modernity. That's possible with a Greener Revolution.
The localist/organic/slow food concept cannot guarantee this. At least, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever supporting the idea that it can.
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Jonas Posted 9:31 am
30 Aug 2008
Where you and I differ is in the view on how to scale, phase and implement such a more sustainable form of agriculture.
Let's first prove that a localist/slow food concept works in extremely wealthy regions, who can take the risk of experimenting, before we risk gambling away the lives of the poor.
Just remember that the poorest people on the planet - the farmers in the Congo - are already fully applying your system of no-input, autarky-based, localist food production. And quite frankly, it is totally catastrophic. What they really need are fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, infrastructures, market access and trade - so they can produce more than what's strictly needed to feed themselves (which most of them are even incapable to do.)
You go tell them to stick to their current concept. I will go and sell them inputs, market access, infrastructures, trade opportunities. I'm sure your farmers will survive but only by making many children who will live in poverty and who have to work on the farm; whereas half of my farmers will leave the country-side, go to cities, slash their fertility rates in half, whereas the other half remains on farms, feeding their urban fellows, with both groups being better off in the process, living longer, healthier and happier lives.
That's the test.
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Wolverine Posted 6:22 pm
30 Aug 2008
If the so-called green revolution, which should really be called "poisoning the Earth," had never happened, there would almost certainly be significantly fewer people. And there definitely would be a cleaner planet.
And here's another area where we totally part ways: the planet is not mildly polluted, it's extremely polluted. Humans have managed to pollute every inch of land, air, and water, which is actually quite a feat. The decades old discovery that polar bears had been poisoned with PCBs was proof that human chemicals were totally out of control and need to be eliminated.
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MAD MAC Posted 9:04 pm
30 Aug 2008
Capitalism has been the primary economic global system since the beginning of trade. People talk about it now like it's something new.
There are two possible economic systems:
A directed system
A free market system
Pick one.
Wolverine is a nut case. His viewpoint is meaningless, because nobody in their right mind would pay attention to the idea that we are going to turn the clock back ten thousand years and become cave men again.
Russ can be reasonable, or he can be a nutcase. When he starts talking about Revolutions, he loses me. When he starts talking gradual shifts to more ecologically sound and sustainable systems, he's OK.
Victory in Pattani
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amazingdrx Posted 1:34 am
31 Aug 2008
This nutty myth perpetrated by economists, media, and politicians, in the employ of these same monopolistic forces, is subjecting comsumers worldwide to virtual serfdome, in this corporate feudal fiefdome planet earth is becoming.
That "free" market system in nearly every globally traded commodity is now being extended to reach right into every community, controlling nearly every job people used to depend on to make a living.
Go local with energy, food, agriculture, and services before it's too late. The very capacity of humans to survive and provide the basics of life are falling into the hands of corporatist power taking over government completely.
For this re-evolution in energy and agriculture to proceed, it needs to replace the corporatist power structure at the top of the most powerful nation in the world in two short months. It is imperative that everyone volunteer for the Obama campaign yesterday.
Become this change we need to see in the world. The american revolution needs to be revived and repeated. It is is the emergency room with corporatist monopoly standing on it's chest right now.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:43 am
31 Aug 2008
Jonas, read "Dirt: The erosion of civilizations" by David Montgomery. It's not a question of expanding the current global agricultural system. That system has a limited life span. It will collapse. Then what? Now is the time to move, as quickly as possible, to farming systems that conserve/build up soil and use water sustainably. Otherwise billions of people will be threatened.
For instance, we might start with taking down the Aswan dam, which has converted the area that fed the Roman Empire into a country totally dependent on imported grain. And how about those flowers? You can grow flowers when you kick thousands of people off of land that they've been sustainably using for thousands of years, then make the tables of the rich countries prettier by destroying the soil, while the elites get most of the money. So -- slowly but surely, with plenty of planning -- replace the flowers with real, sustainable food production.
There has been plenty of work done in the past few decades on how to grow more food per acre/hectare than with an industrial agricultural system. Unless you want half the planet to be dependent on the grain exports of the US, Australia, and New Zealand. And who knows how long that will last.
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Russ Posted 4:31 am
31 Aug 2008
Russ, in 1800 there were 1 billion people on this planet. Today there are 6.5 billion.
It would be entirely naive to believe that you can take an idea that perhaps worked in the 18th/early 19th century, and just assume that it will work in the totally different universe of today.
The material circumstances of today are of an entirely different order than those of the 18th century.
"Going back" to these 18th centuries ideas as such, is obviously totally not an option. It would even be outright dangerous and a recipe for catastrophy (purely given the demographic conditions of today). The 18th century realities can act as a romantic, symbolic guiding principle, but surely not as a real model to follow.
First off, just to correct your reading comprehension, "18th century" referred to the provenance of the term "revolution", and I was citing this classical definition as opposed to its modern connotation.
I wasn't referring to 18th century socioeconomic conditions in particular as being the desired destination of this revolving back.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'll say that what's "entirely naive" is to think that the unique, irreplicable, and temporary conditions of the fossil fuel era (just a blip in man's history) are somehow "the" conditions which can and must be sustained, that this was somehow mankind's fated metaphysical destination.
(Talk about being a historical determinist, if you believe that somehow this state of civilization is going to be magically sustained.)
I'm not proposing anything which nature isn't going to force anyway. All I can do is propose that with quick, organized action, we can perhaps have a controlled descent rather than plummet and crash.
For example, recently there was a study by some think tanks which showed something very counter-intuitive. They found that countries who make heavy use of their natural resources, are less mired in conflict than countries that do not exploit their natural resources and conserve them instead. The strange conclusion of the researchers: 'green peace' is an illusion, countries who work for the environment risk more social and military conflict than countries who don't.
In other words, the countries who had a plethora of resources to exploit in the first place, who were able to smash the earth with tremendous impacts, and become rich in the process, have not had as much call to fall apart internally or go to war externally, while those who had little to exploit have sometimes rended one another over carrion - well, that's certainly surprising.
That's of course what we're talking about here. "Green" countries, those which have consciously enacted significant environmental policies, have seen no conflict - unless of course you count American oil-seeking aggression.
But there we'd have an example of scarcity driving conflict.
As for markets, as soon as structures grow beyond barter dimensions, and especially once they become capitalist, they can never be "free", but are always directed by something.
The default directing force is the law of the jungle - bullying and brutal. Government can either reinforce might-makes-right (actively or tacitly), seek to ameliorate it, or seek to override it.
Those are the only options. As for the benevolent "invisible hand" (which is what I assume is what is meant by this mythical term "free market"), that only exists in economics textbooks.
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Jonas Posted 11:12 am
31 Aug 2008
Allright, I will gladly admit that I'm not such a stoic like you. When I see thousands or millions of people on the brink of starvation, I have this strange reflex that pushes me towards wanting to help. At the time, the Green Revolution was a successful way to literally save millions of people from certain death.
The consequences were immediate, and of a nature that many humans would call 'good'.
Obviously, the Green Revolution has brought its share of problems, and it might be interesting to start to reduce global populations.
The question is: how do we do this?
I would want this to happen with as few human casualties as possible (i.e. by taking the modernistic pathway); you do not care about humans (or at least, not more than you care about microbes), so I fear that you wouldn't find it that horrible that human population reduction would happen in bloody ways.
In any case, so far, we have only one successful model that succeeds in reducing human population levels, in a "human-friendly" way. And that is by creating more wealth. See what's happening in Europe and Japan, we have a strong decline in fertility rates there. This is so because these are the wealthiest regions on the planet. They also happen to be totally invested in Green Revolution, science and tech-heavy agriculture.
I'm not sure whether your slow food agenda could offer the same results, i.e. human-friendly population decline. On the contrary, I think. It might lead to hecatombes.
In any case, maybe some of us are too human indeed, and we need to be reprogrammed so that we can dehumanize ourselves and put all species on the same ladder of value, so that, like you, "we don't have to care more about humans than we do about microbes".
Do you have any advice on how we can reprogram ourselves? Are there any chemical substances we should swallow in order to become more nihilistic or stoic, so that we don't have to care about humans all that much?
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Jonas Posted 11:21 am
31 Aug 2008
But Jon, I think I am not expressing myself well.
I fully agree that current agribusiness is not sustainable.
The only thing that bothers me is this idea that we can suddenly stop the clock, implement a totally new system, and think that this won't lead to big social problems.
My whole point is that, in order to phase out filthy agribusiness, we must push it just a little bit further, so that all people on the planet have achieved a basic level of wealth, so that they too can consciously appreciate, understand, and support the need for less materialism and more sustainable production systems.
But many people in developing countries simply need and want to achieve a basic level of wealth, so that they can survive in decency. That, to me, is still a priority.
I feel that slow food/localism cannot meet this need, and that agribusiness can.
So to get things straight: I'm just trying to understand how you can scale up a localist/slow food system and take it globally, without it resulting in social mass graves or without setting the clock back.
If - and this is wholly conditional - slow food/localism can meet the entirely legitimate desires of the world's lower classes in the developing countries, then I would want to hear this, and see some evidence for it. And if this evidence is convincing, then I'm all for the model.
If there is, however, evidence to the contrary, I prefer to stick to efficient Greener Revolution strategies, for the time being (i.e. until these basic needs have been met).
But that agribusiness as such is not sustainable, that I can fully appreciate.
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Jonas Posted 11:44 am
31 Aug 2008
The broader question, underlying this symbolic figure, is whether you are a progressivist (say a modernist), or whether you have problems with modernity and 'progress' (as classically defined by historians) and so can be qualified as a reactionary, conservative.
From what you write, I think you are uncomfortable with the achievements of modernity, and that you might be science- and technology-averse.
See, to come back to agriculture: all the agronomic progress made over the past two centuries can be sustained, simply because science and technology-minded people bring modernistic solutions every day. The idea that when the oil runs out, the system will collapse, is nonsense, because synthetic fertilizers can be made without a drop of oil or gas, and all transportation can be powered by renewables.
In the meantime, the gigantic productivity increases achieved over the past centuries, continue to be strengthened on a daily basis.
For example, in the past two weeks alone, two research teams reported two breakthroughs in plant biology, relating to corn (but applicable to many crops): one team found the key to cold tolerance (meaning you can now grow tropical C4 crops in much higher latitudes or lengthen growing periods in existing ones), whereas another team found the key to drought-tolerance for corn, equally important. Past two weeks.
This is just an example. Millions of smart people are achieving similar results. Our knowledge is expanding exponentially.
Now to wrap things up: I believe that all these scientific steps are exciting, and somewhat debunk your doomerish story about agricultural collapse. The fact that I believe in scientific and technological progress also puts me on the side of modernity. I think this progress will make sustainability achievable, without sacrificing humans in the process. I think this modernism will make use happier, healthier, and clean up the planet.
You, however, seem to be very impatient, anti-modernist and want to revert to pre-scientific agricultural systems and logic - which might well be too simplistic a view, throwing away all our achievements.
It's a key philosophical difference, and one that cannot be bridged. I'm a careful optimist, with a firm belief in the strength of our collective intelligence and our past successes; whereas you seem to be a pessimist with an aversion of all the achievements of modernity, willing to turn the clock back to a romantic, idyllic pre-modern era - which reads like a fantasy story.
Or perhaps this is painting things too much white and black?
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:28 pm
31 Aug 2008
As for how to get from here to there, that's a very good question, and I have tended to follow the ideas of Frances Moore Lappe's Institute for Food and Development Policy. They have focused on the problems of the developing world from the beginning, so I'm confident that they wouldn't suggest something dangerous.
I would seem to me that that old idea, land reform, would be an ideal place to start -- not that that would be easy. Obviously it would help if the developed countries helped set up soil-preserving practices, considering that they have done so much to destroy the soil in the first place.
The technological advances that I find most interesting are in the areas of permaculture, etc., ecosystem research really, trying to understand how to pack as much food as possible, sustainably, in a small patch of land, while preserving the soil and water. I would prefer to see research in those areas, of course focused on the particular problems of the locality (Congo vs. Somalia, for instance).
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:48 pm
31 Aug 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:46 pm
31 Aug 2008
The four steps they call for are, "Reactivate the peasant sector in the Global South", "Moratorium on agrofuels", "Rebuild national food economies", and "Prioritize agroecology"
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Colin Wright Posted 3:48 pm
31 Aug 2008
For instance, George Monbiot of the Manchester Guardian has a powerful new essay on the new threats of resource exploitation of the rich countries on the developing ones. He gives examples such as the European fishing fleets, having exhausted their own fishing grounds, are now depleting the seas off West Africa.
Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term at any rate - we will hardly notice. The rich world's governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve.
Surely as well as the Food First recommendations, we need new international structures of government to protect the weak countries from the most powerful. And how about a new ethic of cooperation? For that, we cannot move fast enough.
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MAD MAC Posted 5:23 pm
31 Aug 2008
Victory in Pattani
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Russ Posted 7:10 pm
31 Aug 2008
To begin, I didn't know anyone still believed in "progress", or at least used that term. That seems downright quaint. We know that there's no progress (if that term means, getting better) in any area.
To go with our current example, science and technology may "achieve" (I'll get to your rhetoric shortly) lots of things that most people consider good, but this has gone hand in hand with ever greater harms.
Man has become more comfortable? He's also become more harried and overworked and stressed. Medical technology has advanced? So has killing technology. We have this information cornucopia? Yes, and its core character is creeping totalitarianism. Man's technology has empowered him to remold the earth - yes, and destroy it.
You're right, I am, not "uncomfortable" with modernity (way beyond that), but opposed to it.
The fact is, I don't regard most of these alleged goods as good, and those which, taken in isolation, I would call good, don't come remotely close to all which is bad.
Modern technology is the destroyer of both the environment and the human spirit. There was a time, and I hope in the world beyond fossil fuels there will come a time, where human beings walk the earth, not rump appendages of machines, marking time for their existences in the ICU.
Here's a question I often ponder - what does it even mean to think anymore? Given that a necessary attainment to become human is that one has the capacity for real thought, if from an early age your every moment is squandered in the bombardment of gadgets, electronic toys, idiotic texting and cellphone jabbering, when do you ever even learn how to think in the first place, let alone have time for thought? What kind of ICU zombies is this civilization processing?
Another point - no honest person can deny the fundamentally totalitarian inertia of technology. This inertia is its core quality and is operative even in the absence of bad faith on the part of governments and corporations (though as we know this bad faith is almost always present as well). Look at how today's world accepts as the norm levels of intrusiveness and domination which would have immediately triggered a revolution fifty years ago. People stupidly say, "Orwell was wrong", when of course we're 99% there. All that's lacking is for the powerful to intentionally use the technology that way, and everywhere you look you see this will to use "progressing". 9/11 only accelerated this process, which was already well advanced.
To put it a different way, if a full-blown totalitarian system would be the car driving down the road, what we have now is this: the road and the car are fully built, the tank is full and the engine's running, and America is sitting behind the wheel. All that's lacking is to put it into drive and go.
If you think that's still the salient step not yet taken, just think to yourself, if you wanted to go for a drive, and nothing needed existed yet, what would be the main step - to build the roads and vehicle, and procure the fuel? Or to simply get in and go once all that was done?
Well, modern technology has done all the real work. All that's left now is the political mopping up.
Any lover of freedom hates a world of omniscient databases and omnipresent surveillance. It's odd - in America we have so many who claim to revere things like the Boston Tea Party and the Underground Railroad, even as they also celebrate technology which would've made these things impossible.
Technology militates that the will to freedom itself was only a passing mood. Who still loves freedom today? It has nothing to do with material luxuries, with "consumerism" (which is what most Americans seem to mean when they use the word "freedom") - most of all you have to be free within yourself, but a slave to machines is the most condemned of all slaves, for there can never be even the thought of escape.
As for technology's ravaging of the environment, I guess I don't have to go into detail for anybody here. I'll just say that modern fossil fuel-empowered technology has enabled man's runaway proliferation which is the ecological problem underlying and driving all others, and which has so far defied all of nature's attempts to impose a correction. It'll probably be only the depletion of fossil fuels which can finally start restoring a balance.
This brings us back to you, Jonas:
See, to come back to agriculture: all the agronomic progress made over the past two centuries can be sustained, simply because science and technology-minded people bring modernistic solutions every day. The idea that when the oil runs out, the system will collapse, is nonsense, because synthetic fertilizers can be made without a drop of oil or gas, and all transportation can be powered by renewables.
Probably the craziest idea I keep hearing from enviro-types is that we're somehow going to (1) transform the West's entire automobile fleet to plug-ins, (2) do the same for the putative auto fleets of the developing world,
(3) do all this with renewables, (4) at the same time as renewables are also maintaining the accustomed energy consumption in all other areas, again for both the West and the developing world.
If that's a caricature, if people are actually somehow assuming far fewer aggregate cars, please tell me, but that's what I understand the dream to be.
As for renewables powering huge cargo ships, my understanding is that this can't be done, that ships, and therefore trade volume, will have to be much diminished (they're even talking about reviving sail technology to assist ships). As for planes, at anything approaching the current volume, forget it.
synthetic fertilizers can be made without a drop of oil or gas
Now this I've never heard before. Please elaborate - how do you generate massive quantities of fertilizer, transport it and apply it, and then harvest and transport the mass monocrop, without fossil fuels?
For example, in the past two weeks alone, two research teams reported two breakthroughs in plant biology, relating to corn (but applicable to many crops): one team found the key to cold tolerance (meaning you can now grow tropical C4 crops in much higher latitudes or lengthen growing periods in existing ones), whereas another team found the key to drought-tolerance for corn, equally important. Past two weeks.
I've often expressed my opposition to GMOs. I'll just focus on two points here.
1.The reckless rush to deploy GMOs in the ecosystem without even the slightest idea what kinds of effects they will have (and with a concerted assault upon any regulatory attempts to impose any sort of control and prudence) is a radical repudiation of the precautionary principle, which is one of the two or three absolute core principles of environmentalism. This is why it is simply not possible to be an environmentalist and yet support GMOs, at least the way they've been and are currently being deployed.
Jonas - you had a lot to say earlier about taking things slow. Why does this suddenly not apply here? But this sort of reckless drunk-driving haste is all too typical of technophiles like you.
2.Where it comes to GMOs, whatever kind of high-falutin rhetoric about prosperity and liberation we're treated to, what it's really about is patents and profits. Monsanto has openly declared its goal is domination of the food chain. Both morally and socially this is unacceptable. If the biosphere's genetic code, upon which all biotech work has been done, belongs to anybody, it belongs to mankind as a whole, and can never legitimately be enclosed. The idea of a patent on an organism is on its face invalid.
What's more, the food supply has to be seen as first and foremost a social property. Even if you're not impressed by moral arguments for this, there remain considerations of sociopolitical stability and national security. These demand that the integrity of the food supply not be a hostage to sociopathic corporations, that we not be reliant on one strain of genetically modified monocrop, and indeed that we rediversify way beyond monoculture in general.
You, however, seem to be very impatient, anti-modernist and want to revert to pre-scientific agricultural systems and logic - which might well be too simplistic a view, throwing away all our achievements.
There's no such thing as "pre-scientific logic", as opposed to "modernist logic", I assume. There's logic and then there's many forms of illogic. I believe that, for all the reasons I've given, and because while all of this goes on Peak Oil stands at the door, mine is the logical position, while blithe cries to the clouds for some deus ex machina, "technology will save us!", represent the most pernicious illogic.
It's a key philosophical difference, and one that cannot be bridged. I'm a careful optimist, with a firm belief in the strength of our collective intelligence and our past successes; whereas you seem to be a pessimist with an aversion of all the achievements of modernity, willing to turn the clock back to a romantic, idyllic pre-modern era - which reads like a fantasy story.
You're a "careful optimist"?! Let's look at your rhetoric: "progress", "achievement", "science and technology-minded people bring modernistic solutions every day" (is this copy for some triumphalist ad or corporate report?), "gigantic productivity increases" (now whose rhetoric is Stalinist?), "breakthroughs", "exponentially", "exciting", "firm belief in the strength of our collective intelligence and our past successes" (for a speech by some booster politician?).....
It seems to me that you're way beyond even being an optimist, let alone a careful one.
That's what I believe is the fantasy story. As for where I'd like to go, I'm not "romantic" about that, and I certainly don't think it will be "idyllic" (except by contrast with what we now have), but I think you're extremely romantic about the present moment and where things can go from here. Indeed, you seem to be living in an idyll.
Like you said, it's an unbridgeable philosophical chasm. As for who will turn out to be right, I'll just leave you with this.
My world view recognizes limits. Yours does not. So far, I'll grant you, your side has been right more often than mine.
But your gains become ever more marginal and ever more expensive. Both EROEI and EROI get worse and worse. Meanwhile the possible corrections - energy descent, climate change, and so many others - loom more and more large. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So far man has managed to hold off the reaction, even as the sum of his action becomes ever more monumental.
Do you really think you can keep it up forever? Do you really think your Tower of Babel will make it to heaven?
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MAD MAC Posted 8:23 pm
31 Aug 2008
And do you honestly think that the societies that would emerge from the rubble would be freer or more egalitarian? There is no historical precedent for that and no reason to assume that's how things would unfold. But there are plenty of good reasons for believing that the wars resulting from the breakdown of social order would devastate the planet and humanity and that warlordism would be the type of governance you could expect in the aftermath.
Mankind moves forward technologically, or in all likelihood we face nuclear Armageddon and the total destruction of the planet.
Victory in Pattani
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amazingdrx Posted 10:04 pm
31 Aug 2008
Look at what is happening to aquifers right now.
Modern? What is modern? Bucky Fuller designed a water system that would save civilization threatened by water shortage. It is so modern almost no one knows about it yet.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Russ Posted 1:30 am
01 Sep 2008
I don't conceptualize things according to this Judeo-Christian/technoscientific "progress" linear time scheme. To me the spirit of antiquity lives also in its cyclical view of time.
So I don't look at the "past" behind us and the "future" ahead of us, and that it's a question of "backwards" or "forwards". That's why I try to rehabilitate the term "revolution" in its original, cyclical connotation, whereas today it's firmly embedded in the linear world view.
So, using backwards and forwards only as terms of expression, I say that these have a rich dialectical interplay. Where it comes to energy and technology, there will be no clear distinction between going forward and going back, between redeeming what was good in the past and capturing what will be good about the future.
Fossil fuel civilization was an anomalous blip, and just as we arose from the ante-fossil civilization, so we must move on to the beyond.
It is this state of the absence of fossil fuels which is enduring. That's why I see no point in terms like "backwards". It's a restoration.
The common term is "energy descent", and so it must be at least quantitatively, in terms of quantity of energy consumption.
Whether it must be qualitative descent as well, or whether energy descent can help trigger spiritual ascent, is I suppose my major preoccupation.
Those are the ideas I'm gathering, trying to decide upon the right mode of expression. I'll probably start with a novel.
And do you honestly think that the societies that would emerge from the rubble would be freer or more egalitarian?
I don't assume anything. I don't know what will emerge.
Mankind moves forward technologically, or in all likelihood we face nuclear Armageddon and the total destruction of the planet.
Well, if America insists upon bunker-hunkering, on this new Great Game for every last drop of oil, and if Russia goes beyond protecting its own sphere (what it's done so far) and seeks new expansion, I suppose a new cold war and threat of nuclear war are a possibility.
But that wouldn't be an outgrowth of my world view. On the contrary, it's an extension of the ideology of growth and technological progress, just what I protest.
I'll say again, I don't "want" total collapse. What I want, and would seek if I could, is an organized transformation beyond fossil fuel civilization, to salvage what can be salvaged and is worth salvaging, relinquish without rancor what's not, and as the cycle begins anew, try to build a new way of seeing and living. We don't have to say "better", but new.
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Bart Anderson Posted 2:02 am
01 Sep 2008
We just posted an article on the conference by Shepherd Bliss for those who are interested:
Slow Food Nation Attracts 50,000 -- Beneath The Surface.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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Wolverine Posted 4:26 am
01 Sep 2008
The leftist B.S. that creating wealth lowers birthrates was proven false two or three years ago. The latest studies showed that it was the empowerment of women, not their individual financial circumstances, that lowered birthrates. Look at Russia, with a fertility rate of 1.4 children. There has actually been a decrease in wealth since the Soviet Union collapsed for the vast majority of people. And China's one-child-family policy has also proven quite effective, reducing its fertility rate to 1.77.
Your assertion that the only way to reduce human population is to further destroy the planet with more overconsumption is a damning critique of the human race. Fortunately, it's not true. But if it were, it would mean that the only solution to the ecological problems caused by humans would be the complete elimination of them. We of course know that this is false, because hunter-gatherer societies, once they got past killing every animal in sight, did not and do not harm their environments, proving that humans can live in harmony with nature, or as Mac puts it, can be part of nature instead of being parasites looking in.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:07 am
01 Sep 2008
Not simply an incease in raw consumption.
Combined with reproductive (and all other) rights for women, this does seem to be a non-violent method of voluntarily reducing human overpopulation.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jonas Posted 9:31 am
01 Sep 2008
These crops are non-GMO. So let me repeat this: the crops have not been genetically modified, they have been bred the classic way.
Some other nuances:
Probably the craziest idea I keep hearing from enviro-types is that we're somehow going to (1) transform the West's entire automobile fleet to plug-ins, (2) do the same for the putative auto fleets of the developing world,
Not overnight, but eventually, yes, there will be only electric trains, EVs, biohydrogen fuel cell cars, etc...
Several developing countries can 'leapfrog' us. Brazil would be a case in point, with 85% of all new cars sold there already being flex-fuel cars, a transitional technology.
Of course, switching to new technologies takes some time, but market conditions (high oil prices) and policies (carbon accounting) can speed up this transition.
(3) do all this with renewables,
Obviously this is entirely feasible. Renewables can replace all coal, gas and nuclear many, many times over, at an equal or even lower cost.
Again, it will take time to build infrastructures, but not that much.
(4) at the same time as renewables are also maintaining the accustomed energy consumption in all other areas, again for both the West and the developing world.
Enhanced Geothermal = several thousand Exajoules.
Concentrated solar = several thousand Exajoules.
Biomass = several hundred Exajoules.
Wind = several hundred Exajoules.
Seriously, the renewable potential is gigantic.
As for renewables powering huge cargo ships, my understanding is that this can't be done, that ships, and therefore trade volume, will have to be much diminished (they're even talking about reviving sail technology to assist ships). As for planes, at anything approaching the current volume, forget it.
Well, SkySails, for example, is a dead-simple, giga-cheap technology that cuts fuel consumption of the heaviest ships by up to 40%.
Fuel cells will do the rest.
This is a rather easy technological challenge.
I see more problems with air transport, which could be considered to be a luxury.
synthetic fertilizers can be made without a drop of oil or gas
Now this I've never heard before. Please elaborate - how do you generate massive quantities of fertilizer, transport it and apply it, and then harvest and transport the mass monocrop, without fossil fuels?
Well, the only range of synthetic fertilizer that is made from hydrocarbons is nitrogenous fertilizer.
All you need to produce this is a source of energy, a source of hydrogen and a source of nitrogen. That's basically air, water and energy.
Norway has been making nitrogenous fertilizers this way by relying on hydropower. There are numerous other examples.
You can make nitrogen-fertilizers entirely from renewables. There's some good research and investment going into this (with, e.g. wind power using excess electricity for electrolysis of water into hydrogen, which can then be used to produce N fertilizer, easier to ship out than hydrogen itself).
The reason we currently make it from natural gas, is because this is cheap and not penalised for its carbon-emissions.
More problematic are the other fertilizers which we get from rocks, but reserves of these are big enough to get us beyond 2075, when the world's population plateaus and, a few decades later, begins to decline.
So I don't see how any of what you consider to be insurmountable problems, are anything of a trouble. There's no technological or scientific barrier that keeps these technologies back. There is only the barrier of political will, correct carbon accounting, and investment risk.
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MAD MAC Posted 4:18 pm
01 Sep 2008
Now on to water and food. I want to make a roof top Garden to grow vegies I can't normally purchase here or only for high cost. Also think it would be a nice place to chill at night with my chica......
As for Water, I plan to have a well dug in the kitchen (I live in a chinese shop house with no property save what the building is physically on). That's on the list after the roof top garden. Then the house will be self-sufficient.
So yes, it's possible to do this and save money RIGHT NOW. I live on a few hundred dollars a month and I live good. Of course, I live in provincial Thailand...........
Victory in Pattani
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Jonas Posted 4:57 am
02 Sep 2008
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MAD MAC Posted 5:48 am
02 Sep 2008
All I am saying is that it is possible to run your existence, or most of it, off of solar power in at least some areas of the world - contrary to Russ' assertion that this is not possible. It's at least possible on a small scale, and I remain convinced it's possible on a large scale.
Russ and Wolverine want civilization to crumble - that hopelessly taints their analysis of possibilities.
Victory in Pattani
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Wolverine Posted 6:39 am
02 Sep 2008
Mac says that Russ and I "want civilization to crumble." I can't speak for Russ, but I want civilization to end, "civilization" being agricultural societies.
While the end of civilization sounds harsh to most humans, the reason is that they don't consider the massive harms that civilization has done to the rest of the planet. EVERY OTHER FORM OF LIFE would be very happy for civilization to collapse due to the immense harm it has caused to them.
Jonas thinks that it's OK to have a grossly overpopulated number of humans consume like Americans, which is as unrealistic as it is immoral. It is unrealistic because we'd need several planets in order to provide the resources. It's immoral because overconsumption is very harmful to other forms of life; take what you need and leave the rest for others, and don't kill except to eat.
Bottom line: be a real environmentalist and have some empathy with other forms of life. Humans are only one of millions of species on Earth, yet they are destroying life as we know it. All life, including the air, land, and water deserve equal consideration. After all, we're all equal parts of the web of life, entitled to live out our lives without being killed or unnecessarily harmed by humans for selfish desires or mere convenience. You want advancement and happiness for humans? Study Buddhism and Taoism and promote spiritual evolution, not massive consumption of needless crap and overbreeding.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:00 am
02 Sep 2008
The bad news is, humanity at the moment seems to have the collective intelligence of algae in a pond -- use everything up as quickly as possible, even though it will obviously lead to total collapse eventually.
The good news is, for the first time since agriculture started, we seem to have the technology to actually live on the planet sustainably (we haven't been living sustainably since agricultural started, since agriculture tends to degrade the soil and water needed to grow food). We have solar and wind and geothermal technology, rail technology, zero emission housing technology, and even, soil-enhancing farming technology.
Does that mean that we'll avoid collapse? I'm not betting on it, but the only moral road, it seems to me, is to try to get to that better place, both for humans and for the other species on the planet.
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Russ Posted 7:56 am
02 Sep 2008
There's a huge difference between what one relatively rich westerner can do with personal solar and what whole societies can do with it.
You were enthusiastic and willing to put in the money and effort. So far not even rich societies show any such tendency. It's an excruciating process to get congress to even renew from year to year such an absurdly meager measure as the solar tax credit. But they have very little time to find that enthusiasm.
You "remain convinced its possible on a large scale"? - And your evidence is?
Now who's just spouting the things he "wants" to be true?
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MAD MAC Posted 9:11 pm
02 Sep 2008
Actually I didn't do it for some altruistic reasons, I did it for practical reasons. The solar pays of itself worst case in 15 years......... and something on order of ten to twelve is much more probable. Also, it guarantees I have power even if the price skyrockets or there's a major power outage.
"You "remain convinced its possible on a large scale"? - And your evidence is?"
Look through the pages of Grist. They are dripping with evidence. How fast it happens it up to debate, but with peak oil looming, it's going to happen.
Civilization is not going to fall apart - keep on hoping.
Victory in Pattani
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