The Wrath of Grapes - An Experiment in Denial

I like a good thought experiment every once in a while. But I discovered they can be a bit scary as well as instructive.

My favourite thought experiment was when I tried to picture being a big-time capitalist, someone for whom profit and money (and greed) are everything. It was fascinating. After I (in my imagination) let go of all the things I -- and many other so-called progressives, or lefties -- care about (you know, children, other species, future generations, just some small things), I was left with visceral excitement at the thought of making money. Truly, my imaginary profits made me feel like the winner in a game.

The thrill was an addictive feeling! Suddenly I understood why people who don't have a deep bond with the rest of Nature, who don't give much of a flying leap about their children's future, who wouldn't understand when I say "I love the butterflies" act the way they do. Because what the hell else do they have to live for? To them, life is a game, and if life is a game, then they might as well be winners rather than losers. And big winners, too. Sadly, this globalized attitude is making losers of all of us, but at least I understand it now.

Imagine my shock when I was the subject of an unintended thought experiment -- and learned viscerally what it's like to be a denier of a new truth. And I'm not talking about paid shills, touts, ringers, abettors and accomplices of the fossil fuel industries. No, I mean the people who deny the climate is changing (or that we're changing the climate) because they cannot abide the thought (it collides with what they've always known to be true -- I mean, things have been going along pretty tickety boo their whole life, haven't they?). [They probably don't even know that the climate has indeed been stable for the last 10,000 years, allowing the invention of agriculture to take hold and the population of humans on the Earth to increase dramatically.] They cannot allow in the possibility (it's too scary, for heaven's sake; just don't even go there; if we ignore it, it'll go away, right?). Nor do they use their critical thinking skills when presented with the evidence (that's because many of people never develop critical thinking skills or scientific literacy).

So here's what happened to me. We were enjoying a birthday lunch with a wonderful friend earlier this week. Somehow the conversation moved to the epidemic of food waste around the world and what some countries are doing about it. From there, we made our way to the topic of organic food and the notion that there are some fruits and vegetables one should never buy and eat unless they're organic. 

"Like grapes!" I piped up. I can proudly say, with visions of Cesar Chavez in my head, that I haven't eaten an un-organic grape in decades. 

"Grapes aren't on the list anymore," said my friend. 

That was it. As my stomach lurched, I went into a kind of out-of-body experience, watching myself go into full-body visceral denial. "Yeah," he continued, "the magazine Consumer Reports created a chart of which conventionally grown fruits and veggies we can eat if they're from certain countries." 

Najlah Feanny/Corbis

Yeah, sure, I thought to myself. Grapes? Those luscious orbs of sweet, delicious juiciness not dripping with pesticides? No way. If Cesar Chavez taught me nothing else (and there was much he had to teach), he taught me not to trust produce grown and harvested by oppressed, underpaid, gassed and poisoned farm workers. Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) union ... that was all happening during my most sensitive and absorptive years, my childhood and early teens. Something that was so inculcated -- that conventionally grown grapes poison not just the eaters but the planters and the pickers and their children, too -- well, it had to be true. 

And how could something that was so true then not still be true now? (See the acrobatics my mind and soul were going through to defend myself against this attack on a deep-rooted knowing?)

"Hmmph," was about all I could splutter. "Where's the evidence?" He made a copy of the chart for me, but my eyes couldn't focus on it. My mind was racing back through those years of not eating grapes when I could have. How long ago did this situation change? Worse, how could it have changed without me knowing? When did Cesar Chavez and the UFW win and I didn't notice? OMG, I didn't know if I was embarrassed, saddened, bittersweetly happy -- I just knew I felt challenged to my very core, er, pips. 

It took me days to work up the nerve to finally take a good look at the chart. Yup, according to Consumer Reports, I can trust the safety of conventionally grown (why is it "conventional" to spray poison on our food?) grapes as long as they come from Chile, Peru, Mexico or the United States. Peaches, nectarines, tangerines, apples (except from New Zealand), strawberries and cranberries; green beans, peppers (sweet and hot), sweet potatoes and carrots -- that's the list of ten foods to "always buy organic" no matter where they come from. This is produce you're better off not eating if you can't eat organic. And grapes are not on that shortlist. (By the way, the chart is found in a special report entitled Eat the Peach, Not the Pesticide: A Shopper's Guide.)

Please note: Organic food growers are not paying me to promote organics or to feel yucky about eating produce that used to kill farm workers. So I'm a garden variety denier -- with some critical thinking skills. I therefore decided to dig a bit deeper. I came across a USDA Dirty Dozen list that rates produce on a scale of least to most pesticide residue. I've known about this list for ages -- and always just assumed that grapes were on the list. Well, it turns out they are on the list: #11 - imported grapes. What? I can trust Californian grapes? Really?

"Why are some types of produce more prone to sucking up pesticides than others? Richard Wiles, senior vice president of policy for the Environmental Working Group says, 'If you eat something like a pineapple or sweet corn, they have a protection defense because of the outer layer of skin. Not the same for strawberries and berries.'"

Well, grapes are pretty thin-skinned. Okay, maybe not like berries, but still. (See what my denier mind is doing? Bargaining! One of the stages of grieving. Yikes.)

"Remember, the lists of dirty and clean produce were compiled after the USDA washed the produce using high-power pressure water systems that many of us could only dream of having in our kitchens."

Ha! There, see? (I'm cherry picking from a PBS blog there, looking for evidence to shore up my belief system.) Ooh, I would have made a good climate change denier, had I not spent the last quarter of a century living with one of the world's holistically sharpest minds on the climate science.

Anyway, folks, I just wanted to share with you that I have new empathy and compassion for deniers (of the unpaid ilk). It's tough, eh, when a new truth comes along that upsets the (organic or conventional?) apple cart of what you knew to be foundational truth. 

I think I'll probably keep paying the premium for organic grapes (who does it hurt?), but I'd like to encourage climate change deniers to hop on the apple cart and simply start learning and talking about climate disruption and what it is going to mean for your children and grandchildren -- and their food security.

And don't feed your loved ones peaches this summer unless you know they're organic!

from Consumer Reports Special Report: Pesticides in Produce

Let's Start Picturing How We're Going to Stand Up to Globalized Capitalism

Stephanie McMillan

While visiting a friend's place last week, I picked up a copy of New Yorker Magazine that was lying on the end table in his living room. I flipped to an article about Jeremy Corbyn, Britain's new Labour Party leader, and read this: "It is easier for people to imagine the end of the earth [Earth?] than it is to imagine the end of capitalism." 

I nearly gasped out loud. I'd heard before that Canadians "would rather die comfortable than live uncomfortable" (see this post), but this was the first time it had been pointed out to me so starkly that those made comfortable by capitalism are NOT going to bite the hand that feeds them, even if that hand is killing off their children's future.

The quote was attributed to Fredric Jameson, an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist, best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends. What he actually said was:

"Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world." 

Jameson makes a good point. Capitalism and "the end of the world" are rapidly becoming synonymous -- even if most EuroAmericans (and those we've globalized) can't picture any other economic system and therefore are willingly accepting the end of the world. (I call that a failure of imagination.) 

That "someone" that Jameson mentioned was Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic. And here is his exact quote:

"Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth [Earth?] disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on [um, climate chaos?]. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism." 
— from Zizek!, a 2005 American/Canadian documentary film by Astra Taylor 

It's true, isn't it? Capitalism (of the globalized sort) has become the metaphorical water we swim in -- so we can't see it for what it is ... unkind, unfair, exploitive, lying, inequitable, dangerous, dirty, carbon intensive and greenhouse-gas-spewing. We've created quite the mess, haven't we? It's led to what my hubby calls a "widespread de facto conspiracy to keep supporting the fossil fuel industry and its tacit support by the majority of governments, scientists and and NGOs."

According to Žižek, it's possible that all we need is a "modest radical change in capitalism." I like that: "a modest radical change" ... but a radical change nonetheless. 

I've written before that we don't have time to effect that radical change BEFORE we save the world, but many of the solutions do entail a tweaking of our capitalist system (see this post). As Naomi Klein explains in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate:

"We have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it -- it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free market' playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies and reclaiming our democracies."

"Free market" in quotation marks? Yes, that's because it's not a free market. We're actually subsidizing fossil fuel corporations with direct and indirect subsidies in the trillions of dollars per year. With our tax dollars. Which also pay for all the externalized costs of fossil fuel burning. So it sure ain't a free market for us!

Reining in corporate power? Yes, how about a change to the corporate charter? Making it law that corporations must internalize all their health and environmental costs before counting their profits and paying dividends to their shareholders?
 
Rebuilding local economies? Yes, after we've got solar fusion technology down pat, scaleable to small communities and building the renewable energy infrastructure. (We need energy-dense power to transition to renewable energy -- but we can't be using coal and other fossil fuels to meet that goal.)
 
Reclaiming our democracies? Yes, people don't realize just how many democracies (and those we have elected to represent us in our governments) are "owned" by Big Banks and the fossil fuel industries. (Here in Canada, we elected a party whose national campaign co-chair, who has since resigned, gave lobbying advice to a major Canadian pipeline company less than a week before the election. See what I mean?)

How about if we start clearly picturing how capitalism is ending life on Earth -- and then start imagining how we're going to stand up for the children and end the destruction?

I love this one! Ah, dear sweet Capitalism,
it was fine until you got greedy!

No to Climate Change, But No Time for System Change

We attended a lecture (we had to leave early, so missed the "public forum" part) the other night by Professor Richard Smith, Rutgers University lecturer, economic historian, member of the System Change Not Climate Change network in the U.S. and author of articles like "Green Capitalism: The God That Failed" and "Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans."

Professor Smith's visit was sponsored by the Social Environmental Alliance and the Vancouver Eco-Socialist Group, organizations that see capitalism as a root cause of the climate change crisis and who are calling for "system change" as the crisis deepens.

"Ecosocialists see this ecological crisis as a symptom of the underlying economic and social system called capitalism, whose basic operating features include: (1) the imperative of profit and competition-driven expansion without limit, (2) the treatment of human labour and the natural world as commodities for sale rather than having value for human well-being and ecological stability; (3) benefits to a small and privileged social class wielding inordinate political power, (4) deformed social priorities amongst humans, including in our relationship to the rest of nature."

The title of Smith's talk was No to Climate Change - Yes to System Change. It was interesting and in many ways, spot on. He sure understands the climate change emergency. He is calling for a revolution away from capitalism -- or at least the worst forms of our Western, industrial, globalized, capitalist economy (the pillaging sort of capitalism that doesn't give a damn about the consequences of habitat destruction, resource loss, pollution or climate change). 

The problem is, we don't have time for an economic revolution. We need to get going on what we can be doing now. And that's simple. Economists keep telling us that the market can solve our ills. The time has come for them to prove it. Let's see what that "invisible hand" does with the market once we've set the following in place. My guess is that investments will swing briskly toward renewables!

1. Stop all direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels.**

2. Tax carbon. Really tax carbon.

3. Charge for pollution. Let companies pay for the social (health) and environmental costs of their businesses, damn it. Seriously, why should taxpayers have to cough up when corporations should be paying these costs before calculating their profits and paying dividends to shareholders?

4. And what of the banks? Don't they have just a teeny weeny bit too much power ("credit capitalism")? With none of the responsibilities?


** Some people worry that removing all fossil fuel subsidies will be unjust for poorer people. In the short term, this could well be true. But long term, fossil fuels are going to kill all of us, whether we're rich or poor. However -- and I welcome your thoughts on this, as mine aren't fully formed yet -- I think that winning an international race to zero carbon will actually be easier for the least developed nations, as they have come late to the fossil fuel party. Climate justice is for future generations as much as for today's less fortunate.

Living Off the Interest?

Much talk of interest and investing and capital and capitalism and the economy in my life lately. Not only has my local little transition group given up the ghost (well, it's morphed into something less oriented to transformative change, even before we got around to relocalizing our economy), but I just had a meeting with my "green" financial advisor the other day, and I'm editing a series of (quite damning) reports on "socially responsible investing" by my favourite investigative writer. 

I'm pleased to announce that I'm now pretty proud of my investment portfolio (miniscule as it is by some standards) — or at least I was until I started reading the latest installment in Cory Morningstar's series (you can read Part I here; scroll down a smidge). Suddenly I realized that, well, many things:

• That by the sheer fact that I have money (from years of teaching and living fairly frugally) to invest, I am part of the world's 1%. I must remember to remember how blessed and lucky I am. I must remember the power and influence that money gives me, and put it to good use.
• That any sort of investing where I lose track of my money (ie, I'm not investing in my neighbours or my community ... yet), I am part of the economic system that is annihilating life on Earth, without conscience.
• That even an investment in solar, wind or geothermal energy might still be responsible for environmental degradation and displacing people and other species.

And that's just off the top of my head. Capitalism, by its very essence, along with the rules (crutches) we've developed to prop it up, is inherently dangerous. We allow business, as Bill McDonough explains, to get away with murder because we appreciate how speedy and innovative it is compared to government. We give it a free ride when it comes to the damage it creates, allowing corporations to keep all the benefits (aside from a few pesky taxes) while externalizing social and environmental costs. Through our taxes and other government income, we subsidize (to the tune of almost $2 trillion per year, according to the IMF) the most devastating and destructive companies on the planet (fossil fuel corporations). 

But here's what I really wanted to share with you today. It's an odd little message that I scrawled to myself while I was on vacation:

Build your sustainable economy from hair and nails and bellybutton lint. Once you start harvesting fingers and toes — or worse! — you know you're going to run out eventually. And not raw hair and nails, either. Value-added hair and nails!

I don't remember why that came to me. But it struck me one day that our capitalist economy is (and I'm sure I'm not the first to notice) rather cannibalistic. I got this picture in my mind's eye that it's like each of us is chopping off our fingers and toes (our "capital," a word that kind of eerily comes from the Latin caput, meaning head) to keep things chugging along, and you know how long that can last! 

So no, we need to be living off the interest, the bits that grow back, like hair, nails and, yes, bellybutton lint. My fear is that if we don't get this straight, we'll get to the end of our fingers and toes and start going for the organs.

And not only that, but we're losing some wonderful friends from our little community at the end of this month, and it's making me sad. They're leaving because they can't make a living here. They've struggled for years and they're tired and ready for some financial ease. Why don't we ever insist that industries can't ship our hair and nails and bellybutton lint away "raw" — they ought to be ensuring local jobs through value-added hair and nail products.

Okay, the metaphor has gone on long enough. At the very least, please could we start talking about these issues? Instead of pretending there's nothing wrong? Please?

A Movie to Depress You on a Saturday Night — So Do Something

We watched Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story at the community hall last night. I don't have to tell you what the movie's about, except to say that the subtitle is a tongue-in-cheek play on words.

Moore explains (and I'm never really sure if he knows how astute he is!) why Obama had to get elected in the USA — if he hadn't, there would have been a revolt against the nightmare of capitalism and a revolution in favour of a new economic system.

One of the film's finest moments came at the beginning of the credits when DO SOMETHING was flashed across the screen. I just visited the film's website (Capitalism: A Love Story) and discovered a list of five "somethings" that can be done. Note that the last one deals with the Earth.

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand nothing less, no compromises allowed. Click here to join the fight!

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for a preview of the ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ DVD extra, ‘The Socialist Bank of — North Dakota?’)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!! [Visit Moore's Do Something webpage to see his links.]

Now let's imagine a list like this for getting people to help mitigate the global climate change emergency! What five "somethings" would we ask everyone (or even just our elected officials) to do?