100-Mile Diet

We are still in the infancy of this revolution. As I have discussed in previous posts we all need to start making individual changes on a regular basis.

You want to do your part, but how? Are you still struggling with how to initiate this change?

Well, I recently stumbled across an interesting challenge that encourages a way YOU can make your local community more sustainable all the while still staying true to the capitalistic fabric of the red, white and blue.

It’s called the “100-Mile Diet” which means eating and buying foods that are grown and harvested within a 100 mile radius of your home.

Yes, it will be a challenge but it’s one worth investing in. Even if it’s just buying part of your grocery list from the local Farmers Market.

Alisa Smith and J.B. Smith the authors and founders of this process, started the process in 2005 while in their summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness. They took on a rugged way of living and decided to live off the land.

“Every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks”

As described on the website, “The 100-Mile Diet is about learning by doing... Understanding where our food comes from, and at what risk to our health and to the environment. Sorting out how we all ended up eating apples that taste like cardboard and cakes made with petrochemicals. It was a challenge, but a good one—a genuine adventure.”

The cliché is; that everything is better when you know the hard work that went into making it. That’s one of the reasons so many of us enjoy cooking, being fit, building and creating, etc. We love to see the fruits of our labor, or at least we used to.

“Most of us pay a big premium for out-of-season foods like cherries in winter or prepared foods like spaghetti sauce, usually with a long list of ingredients we might prefer not to have in our bodies. Eating locally, we bought fresh ingredients in season and direct from the farmer.”

How cool is it to shake the hand of the person who grew and harvested the ingredients to your meal? How much cooler is it having a conversation with that same farmer and realizing that he lives just down the road from you?

“A local diet is likely to involve lots of fresh produce and homemade meals, and not a lot of junk food, processed fats, additives and sugar. You’re also far more likely to know where your food came from, and what’s in it.”

This challenge echoes a theme from my previous post that we need to reduce our nation’s dependence—a foreign dependence that is prevalent in all industries. If we can start to live more self sufficiently and include our local communities’ economy instead of buying from the large corporations we are truly living in a more sustainable manner.

This challenge also raises interesting questions about how we’re consuming. Can we apply this thought of buying locally to more avenues of consumption?

Did you know that a regional diet consumes 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country or worldwide?

If we can contribute to our local economies instead of those of the corporate giants then the movement gains momentum—the exact kind of momentum that can set a more sustainable precedent.

This is exactly how YOU, as an individual, can start to make a difference: Buy local, eat local, shake your farmers hand because he may very well be your neighbor too.

1, 2, 3, 4 Action!

1. Visit your local Farmers’ Market and BUY SOMETHING! Then go tell your friends how good it tastes

2. Ask if your local grocery store can label the locally grown produce

3. Reorganize your meal planning and ingredient shopping process

4. Make the Farmers’ Market a community event and a more available and appealing to working professionals as well as families.

-GB

Note*

A revised version is to appear on EarthFromAboveUSA & the Picture Earth Collection

And I plan on attempting this diet as soon as I stop traveling...

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Sustainable Capitalism: The “Green Lining” in the Recession

Live as of yesterday everyone... stay tuned for more =)

http://www.earthfromaboveusa.com/blog/?p=334


Gordon Bengtson

Sustainable Capitalism

This is my latest article that will be posted on http://www.earthfromaboveusa.com/
I have begun my internship and will be contributing to their mission on a regular basis in various forms of media.

I will be traveling, and broadcasting to a degree, to help increase awareness about the issues. Aiming to contribute to the mission of Sustainability I will be attending lectures, visiting projects and talking with various organizations and people over the next few months. I hope to cultivate awareness, inform and inspire change by visiting with as many leaders as possible.

We need as many Green Awareness Advocates as possible,as this is our generations calling to do something great.
This is OUR revolution.
This is Americas chance to lead the world in innovation once again. We can no longer just borrow our way to prosperity in the future. This is a fundamental TRUTH we cannot avoid.

I hope you stop and think about how you can become an agent of change as well.
We all need to start living in a more sustainable manner and lose the anthropocentric way of thinking. Remember, The world does not belong to us... it belongs to our children.

A Kenyan proverb-
“We have not inherited this land from our parents; rather we have borrowed it from our children.”

Stay tuned y'all...





Sustainable Capitalism?

We are all being affected by the recession. The economic downturn is felt up and down the social ladder and across the globe. From individuals and families to corporations and countries—we are all “tightening our belts.”

The crisis has contributed a significant amount of change. From the way we live, how we spend and to how we save, we are all doing things a little bit differently than a few years ago. There has been an awakening to the reckless ways which we have lived so far.

Short cuts, low margins, inflated assets, fudged numbers, the exploitation of resources and markets all contributed to an unsustainable economy.

Ultimately, that way of life led to our current plight.

It took a drastic and widespread economic downfall for us to realize that we cannot continue down this path and that things do need to change.

Now, I hope we can learn from this mistake.

But first, let’s look at how we got here.
To put it simply and briefly, in the 1980’s the United States decided to change the way we would grow as a country economically. Following WWII, a manufacturing boom occurred in the U.S. We lead the world in all forms of production. The top of the line consumer goods were made here in the good ol’ US of A.

We shifted away from manufacturing and decided to grow through by consumer spending and asset inflation. We decided to outsource most of the manufacturing jobs to any part of the world that could do it faster for cheaper.

I don’t think we realized the magnitude of that decision.

This period of growth was enhanced by the exponential growth of the U.S. real estate market and the emergence of a larger middle class with more disposable income.

That bred consumerism on a massive scale and encouraged dependence on foreign sources.

We want the biggest, fastest and most expensive things because we have let them define our status for decades now. Over 70 percent of the US economy is driven by consumer spending and that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.

When that bubble burst just mere months ago, we lacked the paper wealth that allowed us to turn into the rapid consumers and spenders that we are today. And since the shift in the 80’s the U.S. we lack the infrastructure and no longer create the things which we consume.

So, that leaves us: jobless, cautious and most importantly, dependent on others.
Not self-sufficient or sustainable in the least.

We are dependent on the manufacturing district in South China.
We are dependent of the various oil regions in the Middle East.
We are dependent on the corporations for economic progress.

Growth is the guiding principle of capitalism. But is it a sustainable practice? This is the discussion I hope to evoke: Can Capitalism and Sustainability live together? Or are they opposing ideals?

Yes, in nearly all economic circumstances growth is good. It makes money and creates jobs. But what happens when an America corporation gets big enough to operate on a near sovereign manner in a global economy?

The rise of the modern day corporation and its relentless pursuit of profits created the ability for it to function, nearly, without limits.

Exxon Mobil operates with a budget larger than 180 nations.

The corporate sector now wields great economic and political power. Not only that but they also have a hand in nearly every level of your daily life.

You know why we have the price difference between organic and non-organic food?

The non-organic food lasts longer because it has preservatives and other chemicals. It will be sitting on the shelves, in front of the consumers for longer. Therefore it will earn the farmer more money. Simply put, more chemicals will equal less produce lost. More produce equals higher profits.

Go ahead and pollute the bodies of the everyday Americans—so long as you can make a couple of extra bucks, don’t sweat it.

Organic food is just one small example of the bigger picture.

The economic system does not work when it comes to protecting environmental resources because it takes away from the bottom line.

The political system does not work when it comes to correcting the economic system because the corporations have a strangle hold on our politicians.

When the political system sticks its hand in the economic system, you hear accusations of socialism.


Capitalism has encouraged growth on so many levels that now it doesn’t matter if we have to sacrifice jobs for Americans, sacrifice American’s personal health or the global environment.

Everyone is aware that this country has an extensive history of moral, social and ecological evils that were all sustained in the interest of economic growth. For most Americans and American companies, it’s all about the bottom line. No matter the detriment, we are evaluated by efficiency and profit making ability.

Capitalism is sewn in the fabric of our red, white and blue flag.

Ah, yes the “American Dream.”

The driving force of capitalism is also a main concern of sustainability. Exponential growth is in no way sustainable.

In a recent study conducted by Yale and George Mason called “Climate Change in the American Mind” found that an astounding 37 percent of Americans are not concerned about the environmental issues we face. I encourage you to look at their findings.

Bestselling author and N.Y. Times columnist Thomas Friedman thinks that is just what it might take. “For most Americans (climate change) is not an issue. That’s one of the problems there is no Pearl Harbor of climate (change)…Once there is we will have a broad consensus about it.”

He continued, “I feel that once the climate Pearl Harbor hits, it will already be too late.”

I hope it does not take something as drastic as this economic downturn, a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 type event to get people more concerned about the ecological and energy disasters we face.

Growth needs to slow for the sake of the planet. We can no longer sit back and ignore the issue just because it is prioritized lower on our “To Do” list.

A new consciousness is emerging about how we need to operate in the world—both economically and environmentally so you see the parallel. The growing sentiment is that there are major changes that need to be made so we can merge these two seemingly opposing ways of life and get them running on parallel tracks.

Action needs to be taken, policies need to be enforced and restrictions need to be placed on the giants who dominate the global political, economic and environmental landscapes.

It is essential that we draw conclusions from our past and apply them to resolving tomorrows unavoidable ecological train wreck.