Saving the Planet

In a recent post, I mentioned listening to Barbara Kingsolver discuss her new book about eating locally grown food, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. There is a movement afoot that promotes eating locally grown foods partly as a measure to lower carbon emissions created by the vast amount of food that is shipped across the miles. Did you know there's a name for people who eat only locally grown food? They're called locatarians.

In the New York Times there's an article that describes a study refuting this idea. It says that taking all aspects of food production into account, eating only locally grown food may not be the most responsible approach. This is completely counterintuitive to me, but that's why research is done, to discover the "truth" of what often seems to be a perfectly logical reason/answer/solution. Here's the address if you'd like to read The Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html?th&emc=th

In my efforts to help preserve the planet, I often find myself flummoxed by the contradictions and complications of responsible consumption. An ex-boyfriend told me he saw a study that found when reducing total carbon emissions is the goal, it is more responsible to throw away rather than to recycle. He made the point that since global warming is the single most catastrophic threat to the planet, recycling is a poor choice. Though this made some sense, it shocked me to think that all of us who strip labels off cans, flatten food containers, sort, squeeze and schlep are having an overall negative effect. I still recycle; it just feels wrong not to. So much for hard data.

In the radio program Ms. Kingsolver talked about eating meat that was "harvested" locally as less disturbing to her conscience that eating bananas grown in tropical climates and shipped great distances in order for her to enjoy eating them. When my daughter was visiting, she mentioned that giving up meat would be the most practical personal choice she could make for the environment, due to the many ways meat production negatively impacts the environment and the principles of efficient land use for food production. Giving up her daily commute of around 60 miles would be fraught with complications, but eating a vegetarian diet is something she feels she could do rather easily, as she's done it in the past for extended periods. It seems a kind of epic justice occurs when the mass production and slaughter of animals for human consumption harms the environment we humans depend on for our own survival.

When I visited her awhile back, a group of us were discussing the pros and cons of our various efforts to help protect the environment, and how we often felt confused about how to be responsible stewards. Her husband made a comment that struck me. He said the kindest thing a great number of us could do for the environment is to simply drop dead. Most of the people involved in that discussion weren't yet born when the book The Population Bomb was published in 1968. I thought about how having only one child was her dad's and my mostly unconscious contribution to zero population growth.

At least I did something right.