when the shit hits the fan

[sway2sway]

a look at what sustainabilty really means.
sustainability being one of those buzz words lately, attached to every socially conscious new project. It's like the sleeves on the emporer's (society's) new clothes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

I'll pick a few bits out cause it is a bit of an ogre, this article.

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends.


Then they go on to cite 2 examples of the unsustainable shit hitting the fan.
The first being the monstrosity that cheap plentiful MEAT is causing. Animals crammed together, with the only purpose to produce lots of meat, fast. To do this, they are pumped full of antibiotics because without it, the way the animals are bred, living, and treated would not yield maximum eatable product. The animals are developing superbugs, just like we humans are, some strains are crossing over between species.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals’ growth also commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the crucial fact is that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production practiced on the scale and with the intensity we practice it could not be sustained for months, let alone decades.



It goes on a fair bit about MRSA, which is prolific, in humans and also apparently in factory bred animals. When I worked in the hospital sometimes you'd have a whole unit in isolation. We'd joke that it was an unwinnable battle because probably half the people working in the hospital had it as well. (It's not usually an issue in people without compromised immune systems)

The 2nd example is about the little honeybees.

the lifestyle of the modern honeybee leaves the insects so stressed out and their immune systems so compromised that, much like livestock on factory farms, they’ve become vulnerable to whatever new infectious agent happens to come along.

an example given is the quest for the almond industry to get their plants pollinated.

The problem is that almonds today are grown in such vast monocultures — 80 percent of the world’s crop comes from a 600,000-acre swath of orchard in California’s Central Valley — that, when the trees come into bloom for three weeks every February, there are simply not enough bees in the valley to pollinate all those flowers. For what bee would hang around an orchard where there’s absolutely nothing to eat for the 49 weeks of the year that the almond trees aren’t in bloom? So every February the almond growers must import an army of migrant honeybees to the Central Valley — more than a million hives housing as many as 40 billion bees in all.
They come on the backs of tractor-trailers from as far away as New England.
In 2005 the demand for honeybees in California had so far outstripped supply that the U.S.D.A. approved the importation of bees from Australia.As one beekeeper put it to Singeli Agnew in The San Francisco Chronicle, California’s almond orchards have become “one big brothel” — a place where each February bees swap microbes and parasites from all over the country and the world before returning home bearing whatever pathogens they may have picked up.

the monstrous food system that has evolved really is fucked. And you could say, well those people they better figure all this stuff out, or look whats gonna happen....shit*fan. But, I think each person needs to start thinking about this stuff more, not that there seems to be much time left to catch your breath, let alone think about how you can eat in a more sustainable healthy manner, but still that's what I think.

We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in finding “solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they aren’t “sustainable.”

[tinkerlion]

i agree with you sway. it amazes me how so many people give no thought to what they put in their bodies. granted i was forced to change my diet, but now i find myself naturally going towards healthier foods. eric and i have also started shopping at harry's more (health food store,) that has a great selection for local grow/produced foods. it seems like a drop in the bucket in the scheme of things, but i guess it's better than nothing at all.

as for the bees, i think it'd be interesting to study the proximity/local of the disappearing bees to those that are rented out to this place or that. wonder what kind of correlation there would be.

[ragmop]

GREAT thread, sway. daunting and chilling topic. sustaining for the sake of sustaining. yikes!

[sauce.baby]

Joel and I watched a quick story on the local news last night [something we rarely do as local news us so full of useless fluff stories anymore] about Freegans (http://www.freegan.info/). They dug enough USABLE food out of the dumpsters of downtown Portland to make a 5-course meal to feed like, 8-10 people.

So, not only is there so much ridiculousness going on with trying to sustain the food industry, a lot of it is for naught in the amount that gets thrown away just because the sellers don't think it's 'pretty enough' to keep on the shelf and sell [when in reality, all it took was cutting off a couple little wilting leaves and viola, there's a whole new head of lettuce under there!] and/or the consumers are too picky/lazy to do the 'extra work' it takes to weed out the few little bad parts.

[sway2sway]

the author of that, Michael Pollan has a book coming out next month, In Defense of Food:An Eater's Manifesto. I'm going to get it. I'm interested, ready for change.

this was a review on some book site.


Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists-all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real." These "edible foodlike substances" are often packaged with labels bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. Indeed, real food is fast disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by "nutrients," and plain old eating by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals. Michael Pollan's sensible and decidedly counterintuitive advice is: "Don't eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food."

Writing In Defense of Food, and affirming the joy of eating, Pollan suggests that if we would pay more for better, well-grown food, but buy less of it, we'll benefit ourselves, our communities, and the environment at large. Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does not know about the links between diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about thequestion of what to eat that is informed by ecology and tradition rather than by the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach.

In Defense of Food reminds us that, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, the solutions to the current omnivore's dilemma can be found all around us.

In looking toward traditional diets the world over, as well as the foods our families-and regions-historically enjoyed, we can recover a more balanced, reasonable, and pleasurable approach to food. Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we might start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives and enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy.

[sway2sway]

hey sauce,
that freegan thing reminds me of one of the Ishmael books I read by Daniel Quinn. I think you read it too (?)
He talks about a society of tribes as being a better way to live, not primitive tribes, but tribes of specialization, which incorporate all we have learned and done.
He was saying the way we are now, we take offense, we're threatened when others aren't doing what we do, or don't believe what we believe.
For example, the dumpster divers, there are always plentiful reasons why the dumpsters need to be removed, need to be locked-- scares away the business, the food might not be safe, encourages crime, mess on the street, on and on. But he said, why can't there be a scavenger tribe, they serve a purpose, you don't have to be in it, let people do what they feel they should.

probably not the best rememberance of it, but I tried

this is from the book. I like it...."nothing fundamentally wrong with people", feels good to say it. In the book, he also is saying that we use that excuse 'humans are flawed-it's not our fault' to assauge our guilt over screwing up/giving up/giving in/flaking out/falling down. we use that one for every direction that the wind blows.
And it ain't true (I tell myself, sometimes half heartedly), it is the play we are in, not the actors-- we need a new script.
that's enough mish mash.


Theres nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now. (p84).

[sauce.baby]

Gah.. I haven't read Ishmael in FOREVER. I need to rectify that, thanks for the unintentional reminder ;)

[sway2sway]

here's another example of the unsustainable shit.

fish farms in china
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/asia/15fish.html?pagewanted=1

this is actually the 8th part of a series on china's huge PollutionProblem. growgrowgrowgrowBIG.

so it's a big nasty circle, sometimes circles are so infinitous and loving, yet other times they are limiting and hurtful ('if you love me, set me free')

china's exponential growth is causing mass pollution and scarcity of resources and they try stop gap this with unhealthy measures. It is not sustainable to feed fish pesticides and vet meds so they can live crammed together in filth, live long enough so they can be harvested and sold.





Fuqing is one of the centers of a booming industry that over two decades has transformed this country into the biggest producer and exporter of seafood in the world, and the fastest-growing supplier to the United States.

But that growth is threatened by the two most glaring environmental weaknesses in China: acute water shortages and water supplies contaminated by sewage, industrial waste and agricultural runoff that includes pesticides. The fish farms, in turn, are discharging wastewater that further pollutes the water supply.

“Our waters here are filthy,” said Ye Chao, an eel and shrimp farmer who has 20 giant ponds in western Fuqing. “There are simply too many aquaculture farms in this area. They’re all discharging water here, fouling up other farms.”

Farmers have coped with the toxic waters by mixing illegal veterinary drugs and pesticides into fish feed, which helps keep their stocks alive yet leaves poisonous and carcinogenic residues in seafood, posing health threats to consumers.

More than half of the rivers in China are too polluted to serve as a source of drinking water. The biggest lakes in the country regularly succumb to harmful algal blooms. Seafood producers are part of the problem, environmental experts say. Enormous aquaculture farms concentrate fish waste, pesticides and veterinary drugs in their ponds and discharge the contaminated water into rivers, streams and coastal areas, often with no treatment.

A possible solution to the water woes is to move aquaculture well out to sea, specialists say, with new technology that allows for deepwater fish cages served by automatic feeding machines.



check the last line there, good one, the possible solution is to spread the shit out in a bigger area, so the pollution will be temporarily diluted, giving the illusion of positive change.

[sauce.baby]

Man.. and here Mr. Sauce and I were thinking fish was a better alternative to all other meat products considering how cows/pigs/chickens are raised/what they do to the environment..
There's just no winning right now.

[sway2sway]

I think a start is eating food that originates closer to home and eat foods that are actual real foods (like in that guys book excerpt 'only eat foods that your great-great grandmother would recognize). Also eat less of certain foods, in exchange pay more for environmentally and socially conscious practices.
Sure access to food should be universal, but when was it decided that we should have whatever we want, at any time, in any amount, to the detriment of the world and cause suffering of other creatures?

[doubledown]

are microwaves the devil (http://www.mercola.com/2003/nov/5/microwave_food.htm) or is all this information really whats killing us?

we're all gonna die someday. the earth too.

do what u can to keep us all alive longer yes siree!

but face the inevitable. it's all bound to end one day. deal with it.

[ragmop]

debbie downer . . . *wah wah waaahhh*

[sway2sway]

are microwaves the devil (http://www.mercola.com/2003/nov/5/microwave_food.htm) or is all this information really whats killing us?

we're all gonna die someday. the earth too.

do what u can to keep us all alive longer yes siree!

but face the inevitable. it's all bound to end one day. deal with it.

it's not about the destination, it's the journey, right?
so I would say that if we all die and the earth too, if that's the way it plays out, so be it.
but there is no reason to rape/enslave/torture every other thing on this planet in the process.
if that is gonna be our destination, then all we've got is love - and that love needs to extend to the whole damn world, protozoa, rock, algae, fungus, flora, fauna, humana.

(Sucky Sway Sermon #2, ha ha, maybe these are the product of the SkinSo Soft bath oil I had in my tub this morning- a triple S transdermal impregnation, which mutated once it hit my lymphatic system, an unresearched anomaly of the bath)

[angischy]

debbie downer . . . *wah wah waaahhh*

This whole thread, and entire issue, is a downer, if you ask me, which you didn't of course, but I'm chiming in as usual.
It just doesn't seem like there's much we can do at this point. The world's already pretty much phucked. The past century or so and the 7-11 convenience store nature of everything has seemed to really ruin, cheapen, and exploit anything good.

And that, I do believe, is a downer.

BTW, where did microwaves come in to play? I mean, I guess they're just another way to ruin/harm/destroy any good in our food, but um, did I miss something here?

[sway2sway]

debbie downer X 2... *wah wah waaahhh*

perspective

[ragmop]

angi dear, i was referring to doubledown's post with my debbie downer reference. i love your chiming in . . . always. ;)

[angischy]

angi dear, i was referring to doubledown's post with my debbie downer reference. i love your chiming in . . . always. ;)

I know. And I think it's a downer!
Not just DoubleD' post but the whole thread!!!

Sustainability's great. Doing stuff to make a difference is great. But what about all the other people eating Burger King, drinking Mountain Dew and thinking aths' just fine?!?
How come the media doesn't get on top of something like How To Live Longer and Sustain The Earath and promote it?
Why just stories about how high gas prices are and that cop who supposedly killed not one, but two wives? (those are downers!)
I mean, hooray for news coverage and investigative reporting, but how about a little education? You've got a captive audience on the couches of millions of households nightly.
Educate em! We don't need Hollywood writers for that.

Now, if only I could found that soundbite! :p
http://readhead.files.wordpress.com/2006/10/downer.jpg
(DebbieDowner (http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=111272), DoubleDowner, coincidence? I think not! lol)

[sway2sway]

see that's perspective. I wasn't talking about it ending. My take is knowledge as ammuntion. My take is also, that even if one does view it all as unfixably screwed, then all you've got left is hope, compassion and love. Which may sound like it is contradicting, but that is what's gonna tip your perspective to the happy and fulfilled side. The result can be unchanged, but we are the master of the view.
I'd rather know, than not--- be it up or down.

[sway2sway]

and I don't mean to come off like, I don't give up now and again, cause y'all know I do; but I am starting to realize that if you let this shit bring ya down/give up, then it's like a double whammy. Once for the all the atrocities and then again for bumming you out and ruining your ride.

[angischy]

My take is also, that even if one does view it all as unfixably screwed, then all you've got left is hope, compassion and love. Which may sound like it is contradicting, but that is what's gonna tip your perspective to the happy and fulfilled side. The result can be unchanged, but we are the master of the view.
I'd rather know, than not--- be it up or down.

So...is the place we come to this?
The world's fucked, we're all gonna die, but instead of boo-hooing over that, and knowing that I can only control my own actions and reactions to things, is that where we should find the joy and happiness?

"Hey, at least I'm trying over here!" And with that, take a big bite of happy sandwich and go about our merry way? Instead of loathing/longing for everyone else to do what they probably won't?

(Be part of the solution, not part of the problem)

Yes, I suppose that makes for a smoother ride.
"Just do your best" I can dig that, don't even need a shovel.

[sway2sway]

I've got to add though, I think it's fixable. I think we can make change if we try. If I didn't, I wouldn't need to be stockpiling all this ammunition (knowledge). What I was speaking to in the above post, was what I try to hang on to when I start to get a little bluesy funk of my own going on. Trying to smooth out the valleys.
Those buggers can't own the world and our minds.