The Enigma of Organic

Amidst all the controversy of organic vs. genetically modified (GM) and natural vs. unnatural, my mind is beginning to feel like a pretzel. The pros and cons of each are compelling. Who wouldn’t want to eat organically grown, non GM food? Unfortunately ‘organic’ comes with a hefty price tag.

The pros of eating organic are clear. I don’t know anyone who would choose to ingest pesticides and consume ‘manufactured food’ if they gave it serious thought. On the surface it sounds like a no-brainer, but realistically, it’s complicated.

Feeding the world is a pricey yet necessary endeavor. But how do you feed the world with organic food? The answer is you can’t; at least not now. From the way things are looking, we may have trouble feeding ourselves. We’re paying the same price for GM food today that we were paying for organic last year. And although there is no hard evidence that biotech foods are harmful, we don’t really know the long-term effects.

The higher cost of ‘green’ is prohibitive for many Americans, no less than third world countries. However, Friends of the Earth asked the African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone in 2006 to recall the genetically modified rice our government sent. Though an estimated 14 million Africans, 2.3 of them children, were starving, the food was refused. Friends of the Earth, but not ‘Friends of Humans’, I guess. For starving people eating ‘dirt pies’ and facing death within the month, GM rice would definitely be the wise choice. Everything must be weighed relatively.

We have created for ourselves an artificial world with all the comfort and convenience we desire and are paying for it on many levels, including with cash and with our health. If you are wealthy, you can afford to eat organically, build yourself a ‘green’ house, drive a green vehicle, dress in organic fabric and purchase a clear conscience in the form of carbon offsets for any ‘carbon footprint comforts’ you find you can’t live without. But honestly, how many people in the world can afford to live that way? I’m in a quandary over economic survival vs. conscience that I share openly with my children. I won’t tell them they can live however they want, just buy organic and carbon offsets; I don’t believe that is necessarily living responsibly.
How can both the rich and the poor of the world live environmentally responsibly and healthily? This is the real answer the world needs.

Give someone a fish they eat for a day, teach them to fish, they eat for a lifetime.

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It Isn’t Easy Being Green

Food prices have gone up so much I’m in ‘sticker shock’ from my last grocery receipt.

Gas prices are rising as predicted and I have no doubt they could actually hit the unimaginable but predicted price of $5 a gallon by this summer. These price surges affect all of us, some more than others but there are other issues here as well.

Does anyone else see something dangerous evolving here? Having to rethink travel plans and re-budget for higher grocery bills is something most people can handle, at least for now. But where will this trend take us, how are the world’s people affected and where will it end? What heavy price are we paying and what are we getting for it?

Global starvation and poverty continue to gain a stronger foothold. In countries like Haiti, hunger is so extreme as to drive it’s poorest people to eat soil mixed with vegetable oil and salt and recently has led to riots.

As I mentioned in this blog post ‘Global Warming – A ‘Convenient’ Truth’, ethanol has little to no effect on reducing our need for imported oil, has the same if not more environmental issues that drilling our own oil and also contributes to soaring food costs and global hunger. When does the idea of ‘going green’ become unconscionable? When it’s just ‘a phrase’ and the world is paying a higher and higher price for something that is touted to be green but really isn’t.

We have created the world as it exists today by how we desire to live. Our ancestors were ‘green’ without giving it a thought. Today we have all the convenience and comfort of living in an America where we bathe, water our lawns, swim in and flush our toilets with ‘drinking water’. We heat and air condition our buildings, get in our cars and drive everywhere and fly anywhere we choose. We pay extra to buy green and to recycle our garbage. If people want to pat themselves on the back for being environmentalists they need to do more than pay for carbon offsets and buy their plastic wrap in recyclable boxes so they can continue to pollute without guilt. Planting a tree is not going to eliminate the carbon footprints from flying your private jet. That isn’t being an environmentalist. If it means that much to you, grow your own vegetables, don’t fly in your jets and don’t drive, ride your bike or carpool, don’t use paper towels foil or plastic wrap, air dry your clothes, use a push lawnmower, telecommute, buy a smaller home and buy used clothing.

What message are we sending our children about going green? That keeping America ‘beautiful’ and avoiding the temporary disturbance of wildlife in ANWR is more important than feeding starving people and our own poor? That it doesn’t matter that especially the elderly have to make a choice between buying food and buying medication because of the high prices of both? That if you have enough money you can buy yourself a pass on accountability?

I’m all for green, but not at any cost and not by modeling hypocrisy to my children. Green, like anything that is going to affect the world and its people, must be weighed realistically and be researched thoroughly in every sector. Think green before going green, by looking further than our front yard and our wallets for answers.

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