Real Food, Real Snow, Real Love

After a successful real food summit workshop we decided to set up a sort of question/answer network for people working for 'real' food at their college campuses, high schools and communities, we may need to get in touch with the real food organizers, but I was thinking we could start small and see where this takes us: basically we need a google group that can post questions and answers, issues and thoughts on the subject of increasing food quality, food justice and environmental justice at all levels of human existence: Megh and I are in the process of putting that together, so y'all have something to look forward to.

Some general thoughts about people's experiences were that we all seem to be following a fairly similar course of action: from food production to food consumption... while this may seem like a closed loop, we forget how many other inputs typically go into the agricultural systems we participate in, never you mind our dollars and sense, but time, transportation and most importantly (in my mind) land use: I think one of the stronger arguments for changing our food system, besides those of concerns of immediate human health and well being are those of a more fundamental nature: we cannot afford to destroy any more arable land on this planet, and by destroy I mean desertify (undergo the process of desertification, and not the sweet one either), salinize (I may have made this word up, but I think you get the drift), render toxic, nutrient imbalanced or depleted. In addition, our agricultural systems are tightly linked with our overall environmental health both in the bio-geo-chemical sense: as they leach tremendous amounts of nutrients and pesticides into surrounding bodies of water, effects that cascade and aggregate into toxic algal blooms and anoxic zones in such places as the Chesapeake bay, Gulf of Mexico and many others (check out this link to a Nasa site), as well as contaminating ground water, eutrophying local water systems (and contributing to species invasions and the collapse of local fisheries), but organismal/ecological as well: our agricultural systems should be repositiories of biodiversity and aggregate human knowledge (seeds have been passed down for millenia, and were priorly selected upon in a myriad number of ways), as well as partnerships with plants and animals that naturally control "pests," increase their resilience (the agricultural system's), and provide medicine as well as food, and finally economic: fertilizer runoff, excess -cide usage and soil erosion all directly translate to the wastage of millions of dollars per annum (sorry about the long sentence, special apologies to the text/instant mssg generation). However, all is not lost! There exist a large number of solutions to our general method of agriculture, available to anybody with an internet connection (there are too many links to list here, check google on your own (though the Land Institute, and some of Vandana Shiva's work are good places to start, as is "The One Straw Revolution" by Masonobu Fukuoka), from no/conservation/reduced tillage, poly/permi-culture, ecological and organic farming practices to IPM (even the EPA is clued into this), and the use of vegetative buffers to protect waterways. The overall point is to increase the total health of the ecosystem in a manner that allows us to practice sustainable methods of agriculture (which, when you really think about it, is in Everybody's best interest, in the long term).

On a lighter note, I skipped school on Monday (stayed Sunday night in a wood heated cabin with no electricity) and went skiing for most of the daylight hours, I had to quit around 2. 'Twas an absolutley phenomenal day at Mt. Snow USA. From being waist deep in the drifts on Ripcord and the Plunge, to a constant snowgasm on practically any trail I went down, I felt that I am exploring my true love for spaces relatively unspoiled by the works of man (for some info on why you should use non-toxic ski wax check out enviro-mountain sports). 1 late day 5 later, I feel ready to get serious into the reportage on the Quest For Fresh Air (more on this later), but alas, for now, the requirements of the academe curtail my ability to spread my enjoyment of the deep snow and clean sky. Let it suffice to say, for now, that our internal motivations should always outweigh our external motivations, if we are to find the peace that makes life on this planet worth living. Then again, if we did so, the entire contemporary system of human relations (en masse) may just collapse, but if you are at all like me and have spent the last two days either listening to Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth," skiing, eating local foods, drinking local brews, taking snow baths or sleeping, it might not seem to bad after all...

Obama on mercury and hot spots

In the windy city and I get an email from friend Christian asking me what I think about Obama's recent decision to enforce tighter controls on mercury emissions to avoid hotspots that may occur under a cap and trade system: here's what came to mind:

I honestly don't like cap and trade for that very reason: there is no guarantee that capping and trading leads to real emissions reductions: and no guarantee that the price per unit C is reflected in the damages that it causes: i.e. the price is arbitrarily decided by the market: i think a national policy that sets a national cap on CO2 however may be somewhat effective:

I also think that mercury and CO2 are somewhat different, b.c mercury contributes to fairly serious health disorders: however, the linkage between the two should not be overlooked: I think it would be more appropriate to revamp the clean air act with legislation that addresses CO2 emissions as a pollutant, Past a certain level: fundamentally a carbon tax would have to tax people on certain levels of emission, or else all mammals and other aerobic respirators would be taxed (or tazered)...

what the Europeans seem to be doing is regulating pollutants and CO2 separately, but i also think this is because they have had a tighter control on pollutants (though Scandinavian countries still have a pretty serious issue with heavy metal contamination of the atmosphere, as does much of the old eastern bloc, and pollution persists in all major industrialized areas)...

where I'm really going with all of this is towards a systematic shift in addressing ecosystem services: of which Climate regulation is a subset: if we want to have earth's ecosystems regulate our climate we will have to acknowledge the holistic ways in which they do so: i.e. regulating weather patterns, water movement, Nitrogen and Carbon cycling, etc...

a policy that treats technology as separate and distinct from ecosystem services is sort of doomed from the get go: as it is drawing an artificial boundary between industrial and ecosystem processes: Now: to incorporate this into some sort of public policy is tricky, and not even being thought about (to the best of my knowledge)... we should really be taxing people on polluting the air period: and the overall tax a function of the types of different pollutants being emitted (i.e. there are different costs to emitting clean CO2, and emitting high particulate, NOx, SOx, Hg, etc....) then, there has been quite a bit of scientific study on the movement/cycling of these pollutants in the environment: and using this information it would be possible to set prices based upon the real consequences of emitting each type of pollutant: That would be science and policy, hard to hammer out a consensus on: but once agreed upon, it would be fairly robust, and technically heavy (i.e. harder to legally wrangle out of)...

the idea of trading emissions seems to me a way of people who are in the C intensive industries to capitalize on their activities: the requirement of additionality basically translates to "if you can make money on the carbon market by undertaking this procedure (as versus making money on the manufacturing, or direct operational side of things) then this project is additional" i.e. emit a little less than you were before, and now get paid to emit.... which is a strange way of looking at it I admit, but then again, I'm not running a cement plant...

However, the payment system makes sense from a psychological point of view: as you are rewarding people who emit less than they formerly did, i.e. there is reward associated with a directional activity: reducing one's GHG emissions. And we come full circle to price: a cap and trade system will only be effective if two criteria are met: a) caps are set at meaningful levels and increase periodically to meet a well defined long term goal, and b) the price per unit is regulated and agreed upon by environmentalists, economists and industry, all having an equal say.

Ideally this would work out through some fantastically complex model that takes into account the environmental costs associated with certain rates of emission and sets prices accordingly: i.e. should emissions continue at this rate the risk of property loss, damage to human health, etc.. is in this range: and therefore prices should be set in this range: however this concept would need to be developed.

I see at present at least one way in which the energy market in the States

The current energy grid operates off of the principle of economic dispatch, in that baseline load (of the grid) is met by the most efficient plants that can afford to run at the lowest price per unit of energy. As demand increases, other plants come on line that can only afford to operate at higher per unit prices, the final plants coming on line being those that operate at the least cost efficiency. Now, there is no strict correlate between price and GHG emissions in that scenario: but that would change if prices reflected GHG emissions either via cap and trade or a carbon tax.

older thoughts looking for extension into global mind space...

in the effect of: you can't just sit and think, if you're going to sit on what you think, here are some recent thoughts on Carbon sequestration methods:

Political realization of local desires is what leads to sustainability: due to an alleviation of tension between global market forces and on the ground land use changes. Fundamental to this goal is understanding the socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the target population (CCB, 2008), however, understanding a people’s need for self-legitimization as well as the socio-economic concerns currently operating on the region are a key aspect of sustainable development that is often overlooked. The central question here is what exactly is development? Who decides who needs to be developed? If we look at Quality of life, rather than just economic metrics to define development: I really think we need to address this question qualitatively if we are to not devise the same set of “development” standards to which American and European societies have conformed. A rise in purchasing power, per capita income and technological sophistication are not defacto measurements of social and environmental development. To get a true measure of in which way people wish to develop I think the solution is relatively simple: we need to ask them. Fortunately, we have a basic framework that is somewhat adapted to local conditions, the World Health Organization Quality of Life evaluation (WHOQOL), which is accepted by the United Nations, and should be involved in any so called social development projects accepted by the CDM.

A more radical but also more practical and locally sensitive solution is to determine the current structure of landholding, identify capital and service flows into and out of the area, and make sure that they reach a truly equitable level: i.e. there is an equitable amount of capital flow in to service flow out: and there is an equitable amount of capital remaining in the area: i.e just compensation.

Presently, many problems still stem from a fundamental iniquity in the distribution of capital around the planet: We tend to have high amounts of financial and institutional capital in areas that have had depleted natural capital (i.e. one has been transferred to the other) and hence a subsequent cycle of the depletion of natural capital in other regions of the globe in order to continue an unsustainable method of development: unsustainable being the inability to balance energetic and material budgets within the zone of influence.

Extension of information networks will contribute to project success:

However, the real goal of disseminating information is to spread the necessary skills, tools and knowledge for individuals interested in developing such projects for themselves. This may be the role of an NGO or developmental entity/entrepreneur, but the end goal would be to disseminate a) knowledge of the possibility of true clean development projects, b) the necessary steps to implement such a project, and c) a realized connection to the global community which allows for further dissemination of methodology as well as registry (input from global capital flows) , and representation in the globa l decision making body.

Two conflicting problems: 1 is the constant involvement of the CDM executive board; which can not hope to thoroughly evaluate all possible projects: the second is a lack of trust or real independent verification process; as both validator, verifier and project developer have a vested interest in the voluntary market (TNI). The second becomes an issue when you cannot trust ‘lower level’ validation or verification procedures: if there were smaller more efficient teams that adhered to CDM standards (which themselves are evolving) they could validate and verify projects with the implicit trust that they adhered to the overall executive procedure: if they did not, there should be an efficient system for registering complaints (from any stakeholder) all the way to the executive board. In this sense, the executive board would serve more in an oversight capacity than in an actual executive capacity, greatly alleviating the bureaucratic burden and time lag of project approval. However, a large caveat comes with such a proposed process; it will simply not work unless there is a complete disambiguation of financial interest between the validation and verification entities, and the project implementers. Again though, this necessary elimination of shared financial interest does not mean there is no vested interest in for the project implementer, verification/validation entity, national government and the CDM Exec. Board; quite the contrary: it is in all parties best interest to generate projects that meet social, environmental and economic goals. The only reason to disambiguate financial interest is to prevent corruption from significantly altering the project process. In order to achieve the financial separation of operational entity and project implementer; there should be a set rate for validation and verification process which is funded by either a national carbon tax that goes into a pool specific to energy efficieny/environmental and social development projects: or a set percentage of profits from the sale of all carbon credits within the specified registry; this model may actually be a better idea because it cuts out funneling money through unstable and potentially corrupt institutions, and it makes the registry an entity with integrity (though this may be a naïve hope)…

reasoning behind skiing cont...

Oddly enough, it seems like in a few days you can sample a wide variety of the twists and turns the ski world has to offer, a hike up an unnamed abandoned resort in affords all the early season powder you can stomach in southern Vt, take it as a precursor, or trial of the true backcountry. or as a way of attaining true peace and quiet...




To get almost the exact opposite effect, get up really early to drive even farther north to make it to the races by 7.30, so that night your friends can pour cheap canadian whiskey from the balcony of a house down your throat (while you wear ski goggles), or shotgun beers out of an old ski boot (pics edited out,,,) so the next morning, 8.00 am in Ascutney Ville you will find yourself:

Music roaring, the vacuum cleaner sucking up the detritus of early early morning fun, the peace and quiet must out there somewhere; gazes shell shocked from the night before sit in deliberation, coffee brewing, a strong stomach wrenching pot takes the place of breakfast; Not a race day for the URI ski team due to an insurance mix up provides Max and I with free tickets on 6 to 8 inches of freshies... It could be an opportunity for all to get back in the roots, but new jersey, new york and rhode island beckon on a long humming ride home... Spirits are high on one end of things, and very low on the other. We get ready to depart the nightmare of a Taoist sage ("in the time of ruin the lord's children shall drink and make merriment long into the night while the lands are ravaged, the granaries full and the people hungry...")

snow the night before, around 2 am:



The deep spruce woods on the peak of Ascutney mountain are far from ravaged, and the land flush with prime real estate, cold and lovely. Last night served up a particularily lovely dinner from the Seedhouse cafe (http://www.bennetts1815.com/), is still going strong in this boy's belly. The food was delicious to the point of absurdity, served by a man named Peter who sported full chef atire and a Harvard Class ring (reason's for going North included straight economics, as well as a need to get out of the partially megalomaniacal metropolis of Boston/Cambridge). Twould be hard to find a more well traveled and rounded restauranteur, or one willing to cater in such a fine manner to two very grungy looking ski bum types... He did however seem grateful for our company, on a cold and rather empty Saturday night, but then again, everything about the place spoke low key: I feel this is somehow integral to the driving vision; i.e. people willing to go to great lengths to obtain a particular quality of life, or a quality of experience...

The Reasoning Behind (or in front of) Skiing

Just sitting down after a few weeks in serious flux, in between CT and VT, the computer a slightly foreign creature tugging at my attention like a tenous internet connection, it occurs to me that I would still rather be skiing.

As fascinating as the world's problems may be, and as attention consuming the solutions likewise are; it does not fail to amaze me the number of solutions and efforts appearing on the global and local scene like mushrooms after a rain. I only hope that the same ethic that drives me into the snow covered forest can find footing in a tumultous global situation that somehow manages to stave off global chaos with well thought out changes in human lifestyle and ambition. Rather than the ceaseless quest for more we shall engage in a fruitful quest for quality of life which acknowledges the value inherent in a) not creating larger amounts of suffering in the world to satisfy material needs and wants but also b) to engage with the world in a way that increases the positive, even evolutionary, impacts of our daily decisions.

Alas the sun is shining and the shiny box has held me answering emails for too long on such a day and I must away, though I shall return to finish an essay detailing the original subject of this post...