Considerations for the Future?

Today while I was sitting at work, I happened to find a copy of yesterday's National Post on the desk, with a cover article discussing the soaring prices of food and oil predicted over the next four years. (2012)

This article was very disheartening and horrifying to read:

- The price of rice jumped by 5% in Thailand ($1000/tonne)
- Walmart is beginning to ration rice as consumers begin to hoard in a panic about soaring grocery prices
- Wholesalers are being forced to raise their prices 15%
- there are riots because people do not have enough food

- BY 2012 the cost of oil is expected to soar to roughly $225 a barrel

The articles discussed these crises and the economical impact we can expect them to have:
- Car companies are going to see their profits dip dramatically as more people opt not to purchase cars, move closer to work, and ultimately aim only to purchase fuel efficient cars in order to deflect this inflation. So many people are now buying cars that there is not enough oil to go around.

It is truly a scary thought that we are coming to such a point in our consumption that there are riots happening because people don't have enough food/rice, and that gas will eventually soar to $2.25/litre.

This is actually horrifying.

I was really thinking that I may have to purchase a car, however, with these types of predictions, I will definitely be waiting until later for this; I hope to be able to purchase an electric car as my first car, and will probably be in my 30s before I actually am able to afford the costs associated with a traditionally powered car.

Eating habits are also going to have to change world-wide in order to avoid high costs for food: particularly, I will be buying The 100-Mile Diet and beginning my committment to local eating.

This was an endeavour I intended to follow through with this summer either way, however, it was propelled mostly by environmental concern. Now, it will be a combination of environmental responsibility as well as an attempt to save money.

I've also seen stories on the news about this food crisis, and restaurant prices will be soaring as well within due time. So, I will also have to more consciously begin to order food from restaurants which order locally.

I guess there is also no time like the present to commit to my decision to eat Vegetarian as well...

This truly is a horrifying situation that we find ourselves in, with a food crisis and the prospect of gas running $2.25/litre.

Hopefully consumers will take heed to this crisis and drive less, buy fuel efficient cars and be more conscientous in their food purchases in order to make this crisis become managable... and hopefully car companies are hasty with the introduction of electric cars on the market....

Update: More to come on this topic. After reading this newspaper article I picked up the 100-mile diet, In Defense of Food, and The Sexual Politics of Meat... I'd like to provide a "plan for action" at least for myself, that I can share as well

Who Killed the Electric Car: General Motors Crime Against Humanity and Mother Earth

Between watching Who Killed the Electric Car and The Corporation, I have gotten really riled up about branding and consumerism all over again. (and of course, ethics)

I am particularly pissed off at GM, and will never purchase a car made by them. Basically a brief synopsis of the documentary is that The California Air Resource Board (CARB) passed a law stating that a certain percentage of vehicles sold in California had to be zero emissions. This of course gave car companies two options: to comply, or to fight it.

In the beginning they complied, and GM came up with an electric car which as it turned out, everybody wanted. The car was sytlish, "sexy" and fast, with a excellent milage, something like 120 miles per charge. This car could meet the needs of 90% of the population and have zero emissions. This is exactly the type of car that the world needs, but of course, the almighty dollar and the oil companies got in the way. The cars were all leased out, but the contracts were not those with an option to buy out at the end of the lease.

So, what happens is a ton of complicated and corrupt stuff which I'll try to summarize as best as I can, though it may be incoherent:

- the car companies, not just general motors decided to sue CARB. They argued that there was not a market for the electric cars. (even though there were huge waiting lists for a product that wasn't even available) GM took the waiting list of 4000 people and managed to whittle it down to 50 people who were willing to actually sign on the dotted line. They said (paraphrased): "Once we explained all the limitations of the product, no one wanted to sign." Well of course no one wanted to sign, the company began with the limitations of the product. No company ever does that with a product they genuinely want to sell. As Naomi Klein illustrates in "No Logo," it's not hard to plant desire or want for a product in the mind of a consumer, particularly with advertising technologies available today.

- right around the same time that the car companies were suing CARB, the federal government in the US starts to push fuel cell technology. There are video clips of George Bush talking about how fuel cells are the way to the future etc. Well, this is so stupid, and has so many problems. First of all, hydrogen fuel cells are still a finite resource, second is that the infrastructure would be impossible to create to a level at which it wasn't inconvenient for commuters to fill up. There are gas stations everywhere, the infrastructure is there. Hydrogen cars will never become popular enough because the infrastructure isn't there and is prohibitively expensive to set up. So, the cars will never sell, so the industry will never have the resources to create the needed infrastructure. Further, a fuel cell car does not have very good mileage, and requires frequent re-fuelling, which, is prohibitive because of a lack of infrastructure. Hydrogen fuel cells are destined to fail. Even if the electricity comes from a carbon plant, it is still the best option with the lowest emissions. (If one had Bullfrog Power, then everything would be completely emissions free.)

- CARB ruled in favour of the car companies, and struck down it's clean air act, essentially "giving it away" by not forcing car companies to comply. The car and oil companies would end up losing profit through the electric car.

What happened with the electric car was that as soon as CARB ruled, GM started going around and collecting the cars (EV1). No one's lease had the possibility of the buy-out, and though the car owners begged and pleaded to keep the cars, GM reclaimed all of them, and took them to a junk yard to have the crushed and shredded.

The irony of all this is that now, there are a plethora of hybrid cars available. Japanese brands began to make hybrids because they feared a loss of profit if they didn't offer something comparable to the EV1, and GM and American car companies destroyed all their electric cars. After all of this, the Japanese and other imports began to outsell the American companies. So what do we have today? Nissan, Toyota, and (most annoyingly) GM, all with hybrid or electric models available. Car companies are touting the technology of the future when we had the exact car to solve our problems of global warming, and they took it away and destroyed it. That is so morally, and ethically corrupt, it just makes me want to scream. I don't want a hybrid car. I want the zero emission car that we had and then saw snatched away from us and literally destroyed.

It really does come down to the almighty dollar for the car companies. GM committed a crime against humanity and the environment by destroying a car with zero emissions, and now American car companies play the hero with their new technologies of "hybrid" vehicles. It really goes to show how corrupt the oil industry has made everyone. We digging ourselves a huge carbon grave, and yet, GM and all the others are still getting away with their facade of actually caring about the future of the earth. How can a company which claims to care about the future of the earth and climate change try to pass off the hybrid as the technology of "today" when, as was illustrated in the documentary, it is really the technology of "yesterday"?

Now, what really gets me and my hatred for GM, is the most recent issue of Green Living grabbed the last time I was at the Big Carrot on the Danforth. Here is a screen shot of one of the ads in the magazine, and please observe the irony. This is an ad for GM. Of course it is. Touting
their innovative technology for making environmentally friendly vehicles. In fact, I'm surprised that they actually advertise an electric car in this ad (also infuriated as well because they have literally come full circle, at the expense of tax payers money and purely motivated by greed). The amount of advertising that GM does in this issue of Green Living is vomit inducing. The facade that they actually care about the environment is overshadowed by their complete disregard for it about 4 years ago. I cannot view GM as a credible company at all, and do not trust that they *actually* care in any way shape or form about climate change or ethics.
I am reminded right now of Emmanuel Kant, who maintains in his essay "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals" that no action has moral worth at all if not driven by the intention to bring about a morally positive outcome. GM's marketing of electric/hybrid/fuel cell technology is nothing but an attempt to ensure that they do not lose any profit to the imports and nothing to do with an environmental conscience.

It was also infuriating for me to continue to flip through the magazine and find an article called "Giving cars the Green Light: Auto Makers are listening to consumers" which, ironically enough, featured GM; they were talked about first, and also had the largest picture of their car. (The page can be found here on page 19) This makes me question the politics behind putting together the magazine itself. How much of a role did GM pay in order to have this feature presented as independant of corporate influence? I wonder actually, how much of Green Living was funded by GM through these endorsements, and the amount of advertising they have in the magazine. Is Green Living a credible source for living a green lifestyle? Of course, all solutions in the magazine are figured through purchases and consumption. Is this magazine really just one gigantic product endorsement? Because that's the impression I get now that I analyze further. The prominence of GM advertising in Green Living is what set off the alarm bells, and now, as I "read" the magazine, I find it's a ton of ads intersparced with articles about the products advertised. It's advertising disguised as literature. This ad really helps to illustrate the illusion of "caring" that GM wishes to convey to the general product, about their values as a company. The representation of "car heaven" as something that actually does resemble the dominant understanding of what heaven is like devalues the notion of heaven along with deceiving the consumer into believing that GM is a company to be trusted. A company who truly does want to "improve air quality" and "protect the climate" would not create and market an electric car, and then take the car off the market and send it to "car heaven" when the oil companies put the pressure on to keep the money in the industry. A company that truly cared about the environment and a moral duty to do what they could to protect our environment would have done everything they could to sell as many of those cars as they could. Unfortunately, as I learned in the The Corporation today, corporations are literally by definition, forced to only consider the bottom line. The money. Apparently ethics has been sacrificed at the hands of the the corporation, and then, when the trends show that an electric car will indeed be profitable, then the marketing and branding frenzy begins again. It seems that this sudden availability of hybrid/electric cars has been driven by expedience. However, this is not to say that I don't think that Hybrid cars are exciting! However, it is just really annoying that corporations deceive the public like this. They have betrayed all of humanity and all of life by selfishly halting production of the electric car, and now that profits are there, the cars are available, marketed as "fresh" ideas, a conscious effort to save the environment. The CARB let down the world when they revoked the clean air act by essentially allowing GM and other American Auto industries to abandon work on electric cars, and redirect focus to carbon and oil.


I believe that I will end it here. But seriously, the documentary is amazing and I recommend that you watch it. It will truly open your eyes to the deceit that exists all around us, particularly with the perception that the technology for the electric car does not exist yet and is far off in the future.

A final note: The documentary shows us "car heaven." the reality is a lot less fluffy and feel good than the ad. It is a god-forsaken landfill essentially, where cars are crushed and then shredded into a million tiny pieces. It is dingy and it is sad to know that all those electric cars were just crushed and destroyed like that, when we had the answer to our problems at our finger tips.

Coming up next: A closer look at "The Corporation," revisit Naomi Klein's "No Logo," with a particular focus on the concept of sponsored individuals on university campuses.

I heart my family.

So, right now I'm at home, just relaxing and spending time with my family. (So, this should indicate to you that this this is not going to be a feministing post *sorry*)

Last night, we took out pretty much all of the photo albums from about the time that Sarah and I were 5-12. These pictures and talking about memories of the past was really fun, but surprisingly made me feel incredibly sad that we weren't still kids together.

Mine and my sister's life, for the first 10 years at least, consisted of playing together pretty much every day, and we had no other cares in the world. Then we got Candy and it became pretty much the three of us all the time. Candy is present in every event in our life, and now I look at the pictures of our childhood, and they truly seem like a time so far passed, and it's really quite depressing. While Sarah and I were looking at the pictures, I wished I could still be that young, where life was so simple, but now I'm starting to think about things, and how now I'm the same age as my mother was when I was born- it's funny how my life now seems to be overlapping with that of my mother's, and it scares me *a little* that now I'm the same age as my mother was when she was married and had given birth to her first child.

Now that Candy has died, it seems as though a phase of our life has ended, and now Sarah and I have to truly face the fact that we are becoming adults, and that we have to leave our childhood behind.

I keep thinking about the way things are changing, and its making me really sad. I mostly think that it is the death of my dog that is really causing me to reflect so deeply on the way that life is changing, but I can't help it. Being an adult, and turning 24 and losing Candy is really, really, causing me to reflect on both the past and the future, how everything had changed, and how it will all continue to change at such a seemingly fast and unstoppable rate.

Next year, Sarah will probably move to London with her boyfriend, and who knows where I will be? This will be the end of another stage of life, the one which we spent living together all the time- we've lived together all of our lives except for 3, and those 3 years we spent together at the same school. It will be sad to be an hour or two hours away from each other permanently, but we have at least one more year together, there is no guarantee that we will be going our separate ways at the end of the year, but it is a possibility that makes me sad.

I am just feeling so thankful for the family that I have and never want to move too far away from them. I have essentially "become" my mother as they say daughters often do, but I'm ok with it. Sarah has turned out to be like my father, myself like my mother, and we spend so much time laughing about it, it's just become a running joke.

But, more than a joke, I'm glad that we've all spent so much time together and grown to be like each other; I don't know why though, I just really love my family. I miss my childhood, but more than that, I'm glad that we sit around the dinner table for 2 hours and drink wine while we make jokes, talk about memories, and all around have a great time. My favorite part of my family is our dinners. Our dinners have become more than just a "fuel up" and now have become the central part of our family time. Literally, dinner is at least an hour, sometimes two, and I wouldn't change it for anything. We talked about food a lot in my "Bodies, Gender and Consumption" class, and my prof made a comment about the way in which awkward gatherings can be almost magically changed once food is introduced into the mix. In my European family, dinner is central. We have had family dinner from the very beginning, and it used to be *obligatory* especially in those teenage years, but our dinners have evolved to be the background setting for all of our conversations, debates, laughs and cries.

With the possibility that Sarah and I may no longer live together in a couple years, I am especially happy that (if I'm in the GTA and she's in London) we will have dinner together every second Saturday (at least) and that we will always have 50's summers together. (50's summers are the summers where we will go camping for whole summers with our kids while our husbands stay in the city and work and come up on weekends)

These 50's summers are the exact same summers that Sarah and I had for 10 years, and they were certainly the best summers we ever had as children, and we hope to do the same thing with our kids someday, so that we can give them those awesome experiences to remember forever. 50's summers were amazing, and to write about 50s summers would literally be an entirely separate post. I mean, as a feminist why would I want to have 50's summers in my adulthood? It's because my life was so shaped positively by those 50's summers, and they are nothing but happy memories. I honestly want to spend a lot of time with my kids someday, because I want to be able to give them everything my parents gave me, which was most importantly my sister, my dog, themselves, 50s summers, and family dinners where the wine flows freely. Candy is no longer with us, and we have outgrown 50s summers, but I love them so much, and they gave us the happiest memories I have in my life that I look forward to giving those 50's summers to my kids.

That is all. I heart my family. I'm glad that we're here this weekend together.

Bittersweet

Ironic, that this would also be the day that I'd receive my acceptance to Conestoga for Human Resource Management... almost cruel really, because I don't have the will to get excited or happy about it, it's really all overshadowed by the loss of my baby. I wish it would just go away, I wish this wasn't happening right now

I'll definitely try to change the tune to this blog by writing some feminist critique of something tomorrow or the next- I don't want to get too far off base of the point of this blog.

But I will still probably occasionally write about Candy because let's face it, it's literally like losing a family member. Which is killing me.

Welcome to: No Amount of Stoned Makes you feel ok

This post is part story, part mourning, and part reflection over the sudden death of my dog this weekend. Two days after her 16th birthday she passed away because of a tumour on her lower back which was paralyzing her. My parents had to make the hardest decision of their lives at 1am on Saturday night... she was too old to survive surgery, but she was such an independant animal, she could never live paralyzed. It would be unfair to her because you can't explain to a dog why they can't walk or sit or do anything that they want to do. My parents described that night to me, and the only thing I truly wish is that I could have been there to say goodbye to her.

How do you mourn the loss of your pet? I feel so lost, I have no idea what to do. I'm terrified of the upcoming experience of going home to my house for the first time ever and not getting on the floor to cuddle with my baby. She has been my friend and companion for the past 16 years. She was the person who would just sit with you and let you pet her to make yourself feel better. No words were ever needed, and just my hand on her fur would make me feel so much better. Every night after dinner, Candy came and Sat on my lap at the dinner table while me and my parents talked, and we would always give her a little treat. She was truly part of the family, and right now I feel a hole in my heart like I've never felt before... and I don't know what to do about it. The only way I feel like I can mourn her right now and do her justice is to sit with my sister, and publish this post so that any one of you who reads this knows just what a special animal she was, and how she truly changed my life forever.

We got Candy when I was 8 years old, and so a significant amount of my life and time involved Candy... she came on vacations with us, she raised hell all over the house... our house is right by the park path, and she was always on guard at the front window, watching for intruders and protecting her loved ones. She was never much for cuddling, but liked a good pet now and then, but always, always wanted a cookie. She had what we liked to called 'A Cookie Problem" and had to be given one every time went into the kitchen, talked to her, or petted her. She was conditioned to cookies, and it was part of her charm. Even in her last week of life my dog was still beautiful. She had slowed down significantly, but was still beautiful and still wanted to have kisses and hugs.

I am at least thankful that the last time I saw her was happy and we weren't fighting (that's right, even we would aruge in a funny dog-person sort of way because it was like we were sisters) rather, I took extra good care of her, and didn't leave the house without giving her a kiss or a hug.

I hope that when she died she wasn't too scared. I hope that she knew I loved her so much, like she was another sister and that I will never forget her. I wish that I could have given her one more hug, one more kiss, and told her that I loved her so much. I wish that she didn't have to leave me, but that is the curse of dogs life spans i guess. They come into your life and love you like there is nothing else in the world that matters, and then you are the one who is left behind.


My father is taking it really hard, and everytime I think about it it breaks my heart. We had to convince my father to get a dog, and when we did, he was not happy. She was only allowed in the kitchen. Then, she was only allowed in the kitchen and the front hallway. Then she was allowed everywhere except upstairs, until eventually she won my dad over, and she slept beside him every night, and woke him up each morning for breakfast. My dog has been such a companion to my parents, giving them someone to love and care for in a way that they no longer can with me and my sister since we have all grown up. My dog took us outside of our egoistic selves every time we saw her and though of her, and talked about her, and she truly made us all better people for having had the privilege of sharing her life with her. Every morning for the past 16 years my dad and my dog have gotten up together, had breakfast together and gone for walks together. Now, the house is going to seem so empty, so sad, with the glaring reminder that a member of our family is missing every time we walk through the halls... for months I will be faced with reminders of my dog when I find her hair on my clothes, and I will have to fight the urge to save it somewhere special as a reminder of the love she once gave me and I gave her.

It's really hard to tell people that your pet has died. People who have pets instinctively understand how devastating it is, but what about people who don't know? I fear that some people are not going to take my grief seriously and that I have to mourn by myself in waterloo when I wish I could just be with my parents...

I still have not seen my sister- she was in St. Catherines with her boyfriend when she got the news, and luckily, my boss told me that he would come into work at 8:30 for me and stay until close so that I might spend time with her. Words cannot express how thankful I am that he has done this for me. I don't know that I would make it through the night so devastated and feeling alone. I will always remember that he covered my shift for me so that I could have the time I need, and I don't know how to tell him just how grateful I am for this. I will probably try tonight and be reduced to a snivelling mess, I really just can't help it.

Candy's personality was one of a kind, and I hope that she is up in heaven right now so that I will be able to see her again someday... I miss her so much.

welcome to: no amount of stoned makes you feel ok
welcome to: the darkness into which praying people pray
welcome to: something like elation when you first open your eyes, just cause it means that you must have finally got to sleep last night