i would add to this video with my own commentary, but RAN says it all for me... especially with my previous post on food shortages, and the riots that are happening because of it. We need to boycott fuel companies which are using Ethanol and taking food away from hungry people to power our cars. What we need is an electric car.

Take it away!

Ecoholic 2

one more thing about Ecoholic:

in discussion of the eco-friendly options for birth control, i was disappointed to see that the diaphragm was not mentioned.

The diaphragm is the ultimate eco-friendly birth control option... almost no waste

she spends significant time talking about the environmental impact of the hormone residue from hormonal birth control, and ignores the health implications the birth control has... she mentions the other poisions we find in our makeup, our skin cream, or bug spray, but does not discuss the health problems that can come from hormonal birth control...

Essentially, vasil lists off the problems with hormonal birth control but does not offer the diaphragm as an option... of course, there could be problems with the spermicidal jelly. I'm not too sure. However, the diaphragm itself is excellent with respect to waste.

"A Green Veneer on Business as Usual"

Remember this post??

Checking out my Youtube subscriptions I found this video, and I am eternally grateful.


Go RAN.

Peace, Love and Clean Air

Ok, I've done enough blogging for a while now...time for a nap :)

fuck yeah stephane dion

I heard on the news this week that everyone in Alberta is flipping out because Stephan Dion is implementing a carbon tax and it is going to be a "massive blow" to the economy.

Ok. News flash world: all environmentally responsible changes are not going to be profitable. This is a time where ethics has to come out on top of the almighty dollar, which I know will be difficult for Alberta to swallow because they thrive on oil sales.

So fucking right Stephane Dion. You implement that carbon tax and you stand your ground.
An excerpt from the article:

The Grit boss, in the city for Stampede festivities, argued neither the Harper government nor the government of Premier Ed Stelmach are doing enough to fight climate change, and that it's his job, as a federal leader, to forge ahead with aggressive policies that ensure a healthy environment for future generations.

and I agree 100% with Dion... Harper is definitely dropping the ball on the environment, and Alberta seems to have little to no interest in environmental responsibility given the circumstances.

While out in Southampton, I heard this on the news and rejoiced inside! I am so happy that Stephane is taking this initiate! Happy Planet!

First post in a series on the Environment

After reading that Newspaper article in the National Post I talked about a couple days ago, I just finished reading the 100-Mile Diet written by Alisa Smith, and J.B. Mackinnon in order to begin to put into perspective considerations for the future when it comes to our environment and food. Considering the riots around rice, there's no time like the present to begin a foray into local eating. The book was an extremely well written, thought-provoking chronicle of the experiment of eating locally and I throughly enjoyed it.

Now the question is, how does one go about writing about everything in a book within the scope of this medium??It certainly is agood question and I'm not really sure of what the answer is, so I'll do my best to cover the main points in some coherent fashion.

What I thought was of significant note was the author's acknowledgement and understanding that the efforts of two people to eat locally are not meant to save the world, nor would they ever be successful in doing so, but rather, reveal some very important facts about today's consumption habits and, more importantly, the missing factor of traceability of where our foods come from. What I truly hope will happen, is that by many people reading The 100-Mile Diet, not only will the earth become healthier, but this book will inspire thoughts of sustainability and the manner in which it is becoming less and less apparent, particularly from a Canadian perspective.

What I found myself thinking about constantly was the fact that Canada was once a self-sustained country, and now, so much product is imported and exported daily, that we are slowly losing our independance as a country. We are very quickly becoming more and more dependant on other countries to provide us with even simple things such as our produce, when Canada is so abundant with food!!

I once knew someone (who ironically was working towards an enivronmental studies degree) who bought three individual slices of watermelon in February and said "I like me a slice of Watermelon any time of the year!"

Each and every time I think about local eating, I think about this particular example. This person had no idea or consideration for how far those three slices of watermelon had travelled to end up on her plate, which is the scary part. The implications of the likely underpaid labour, and the emissions alone should be enough to force someone to stick to seasonal, local vegetables. Moreso, I would think that the lower quality of product would also play a part. Since the move towards globalization has become so rapid, it is the traceability of our food that has become so distant, as well as the quality. Mackinnon talks about traceability, and said some things that I think are worth quoting:

It's no secret, that we, as a society, have been losing the traceability not only of our food, but of every aspect of our lives. On any given day, chances are high I will have no idea what phase the moon is in. I cannot reliably list my brothers' birthdates, and I regularly use products that work according to principles that I cannot explain... Fifty years aglo, there was still widespread connection to food and the places that it comes from. In the United States, 40 million people lived in the countryside. Many people kept kitchen gardens, raised chickens, or knew a beekeeper... now...legions of modern children have never seen a cow. (55)

How can kids never have seen a cow? How has the cow become the absent referent to the production of milk? The meat on our plates? How have we lost so much connection and understanding of our food?? How have all the things we eat become so disembodied or disconnected? The answer of course is our desire to have everything when we want it, not when it is in season or available. But rather, on demand. It is this "on demand" attitude that is causing us to deplete the earth's resourses at astounding rates...

The average Canadian's food has about 2, 500 kms of travel total. This is truly atrocious. Tomatoes are picked off the vine while they are still green even though the peak time to pick tomatoes in order to ensure the freshest nutrient rich product, is, like other produce, when the fruit or veggie is at its peak ripeness. So, in the effort to have whichever fruit/vegetable whenever we want it, we compromise our earth, which is highly unethical, and we compromise the nutritional value of the food we are consuming, which is just plain stuid.

In fact, a line from Ani difranco's Song Half-Assed says it all:

"Spring is super in the supermarkets/and the strawberries prance and glow/nevermind that they're all kinda tart and tasteless/as strawberries go/meanwhile wild things are not for sale/anymore than they are for show"

Now, at any time of the year, one can find any type of produce in the supermarket, and it is so normalized, that consumers would never even consider how much these purchases damage the earth, and themselves. There is truly a difference between fresh picked strawberries and strawberries shipped from California, but the sad part is that we are beginning to forget that tangible and important difference: Ontario strawberries are infinitely juicier and sweeter than California strawberries. They are a brighter red, they are strawberries the way strawberries were when we were kids and we went with our moms to pick them. The lesson of The 100-mile diet is this tangible difference that we cannot forget, or we will lose our local farmers, and produce, we will lose our self-sustainability.

However, part of the problem is that not everyone even recognizes the problem with eating imported foods and, specifically "non-foods" which have become the dominant discourse of our eating habits. The fact is that these eating habits, (ie: being able to access watermelon in the winter with little to no effort) are becoming normalized, and it doesn't even occur to the average consumer to consider how a product made its way into the store. The 100-mile diet provokes me to consider how every item I eat ended up on my plate, which causes me to make better choices for my health and for the earth. Essentially, because the supermarkets and corporations are taking over everything, we are losing a sense of the possible, and this is very sad indeed.

Mackinnon again:
The garden is a constant reminder that our depleted global environment is linked to the gap we have constructed between our food and ourselves, but a deeper truth is rooted in paleoecology. The science bears witness to changes enormous in scale, the fact that even the continents are work in progress. It can make a person's brief existence seem meaningless; more than that, though, it staggers the mind with the duty of care in our everyday lives. The universe seethed a billion years to give us a row of cabbages, or a quail's egg, or a broken heart. (pp146-146, emphasis mine)

So, I will conclude this post because it is getting excessively long, but not before I say just a couple more things:

• Alisa and J.B. wrote often in their book how 100-mile eating was like adding another part-time job to their life- it's actually sad that it has become so difficult to purchase locally, and so they don't maintain that everyone should strive completely to eat locally because it is a lot of extra work, but to make a conscious effort to make wise consumer choices
• In all of our consumer choices we need to make a concerted effort to choose foods that are good for ourselves and the earth- which I have begun to do in everything I purchase, particularly with all these "non-foods" disguised very sneakily as food
• For anyone in the K-W area, I have found a "Year-round guide to local food" which provides a link in order to help everyone purchase locally: Foodlink Waterloo Region
• Read the book. It's an "easy" read, but makes very important points about the state of the earth and self-sustaining countries. Eating locally with preserve the self-sustainability of Canada as well as help save our local farming, and in the end save farm country world-wide- a real eye opener that I reccommend 100%

Coming up:

• In Defense of Food- I'll take a look at "food" today (think: Oreo Cakesters, which only have 4 real food ingredients out of about 20 on the list, McDonalds, MSG in just about everything)
• The Sexual Politics of Meat- Animals and Women as an absent referent, the connection between the abuse and slaughter of animals and the abuse and butchering of women... an argument as to why every feminist should be a vegetarian. (I've read a couple chapters already, it's pretty convincing)

Enivronmental Research: 100-mile diet, reducing your ecological foot print, conspiracies of the food industry- MSG

"No nation feeds itself anymore. We all stand in reference to the same global food system." (32)

This is a quote from "The 100-Mile Diet" a book that I recently ordered from Chapters that is going to begin my research into thost big questions: how do we reduce our ecological foot print? Will bike riding and local eating make any difference?

I also plan to read "In Defense of Food" and "Cool it: The skeptical envionmentalists guide to global warming" to help me bring it all together. The author of "Cool it" maintains that all the little steps we take will in fact, only lengthen the earth's life by 7 days. What does he propose as an alternative?? We'll find out soon!

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.