Every culture had its fuel, its driving force, and once it stopped or slowed, that society began to crumble. For ancient Rome, that fuel was imperialism, and once the empire could no longer expand, it began to deteriorate, and eventually collapse. The society on Easter island collapsed once they used up all of their natural resources for trial pursuits, such as moving statues with their lumber (instead of building ships or homes). In America, our fuel is oil and natural gas, i.e. fossil fuels. These fuels power just about every aspect of our lives and without them, it seems pretty clear that our society would crumble.
I feel like our society, much like the society of Easter island is trivial in its own way. We look only at the short term and refuse to look beyond what will ultimately be best for everyone. At some point we will run out of oil and we will need to find another source for power. Unfortunately we live in a country ruled by those who give the most money to the politicians that decide what we invest in and what energy we use to keep our country running. Because of that, we continue to rely on oil and gas because it is profitable for some, while in the scheme of things if we fail to find alternative energy, our society will collapse. I feel like we can only allow this to go on for so long before we decide that the value of our functioning society is greater than the profit of a few hundred people making billions off of the little oil that is left.
In class Andy told us about Entropy, a law of thermodynamics, which basically states that everything will eventually move towards a lower or equilibrium state of energy. I think that this can be applied to our society because once we have no more fuel for our society and no more momentum, society will crumble and reach a lower, equalized state. That is, if we allow it to. The theory of Entropy is only true when it is not being effected by outside variables, so if we put more energy into our society than no equilibrium state will occur, and our society will remain in tact.
The importance of the Easter island example goes far beyond the surface problem of waisting resorces, but deeper to; why they were waisted. The answer to that is also a parallel with our culture. The people of easter island cared so much about status (much like ourselves), that they used all of their resources up competing with each other to build the biggest and most wasteful statue. This is so similar to what we do today, its almost eerie.
To put this into simplified logic, a self destructive society cannot stand. If we continue to use Rolls Royce Phantoms (11/18 miles per gallon) and 35 room mansions (using immense amounts of power) to show and support our superior status levels, than we will eventually run out of the fuel to run anything at all. We have to make a choice, and quick; Social status, or society?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Collapse Assignment #1
After reading the chapter on Easter Island from the book "Collapse", I began to think alot about the similarities and more so, the differences between our culture and the culture of the people on Easter Island. Immediately their seemed to be a parallel with our society in terms of how their society collapsed once they used up all of their natural resources. The parallel of course was with the trees of Easter Island, and the Fossil Fuels used in America today. The basic idea here I think is the idea of luxury vs. commodity. I think that the problem with this comparison for the most part is that the people of Easter island used all of their trees as a way to transport their massive stone statues from the inland to the beach (a luxury), while we use fossil fuels as a way to power our vehicles, machines, homes, heat, and just about everything else (a commodity).
Looking back at the repercussions of using those trees for transporting statues to the other side of the island, it is clear that they could not last as a society after they had drained the land of the resource that they needed the most to survive. Had they used those trees to make boats that could be used to retrieve food from other islands, or build homes, they could have made much better use of their limited resources than they did.
Today, we are draining the world of fossil fuels and have since reached our peak level of oil (2006) meaning all that can happen now is we use up what little we have left until we adopt a new form of power before we end up like the Easter island residents with no resources left. This is basically the main idea of collapse, we use up what resources we have, and than are left with nothing. The only answer to avoid collapse seems to be to find an alternative, and until we do, it seems to me that the reality of the Easter island collapse isn't to far off for ourselves.
Looking back at the repercussions of using those trees for transporting statues to the other side of the island, it is clear that they could not last as a society after they had drained the land of the resource that they needed the most to survive. Had they used those trees to make boats that could be used to retrieve food from other islands, or build homes, they could have made much better use of their limited resources than they did.
Today, we are draining the world of fossil fuels and have since reached our peak level of oil (2006) meaning all that can happen now is we use up what little we have left until we adopt a new form of power before we end up like the Easter island residents with no resources left. This is basically the main idea of collapse, we use up what resources we have, and than are left with nothing. The only answer to avoid collapse seems to be to find an alternative, and until we do, it seems to me that the reality of the Easter island collapse isn't to far off for ourselves.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Final Food Assignment
In the 233 years since the founding of the United States in 1776, we have gone through a period of the US as a farm based nation, to a Slave based plantation nation in the early 1800's, to an industrialized factory nation in the early 1900's, to a modernized nation in the last few decades. In every form, our country has been producing the most it can given the machinery and technology available. What has changed since the days of small local farming to the factories of today, is that a natural process which we did not yet know how to speed up, has become an industrialized process lead by technology which has allowed production to become nearly exponential from 233 years ago.
This is a basic noticing about our country, but what has remained more or less the same in these 233 years, is that what is being used, the product, has not changed. Cows are not cloned, Tomatoes are not grown in labs from chemical compounds. Because of this, we have been successfully increasing the capability to speed up the processing of livestock in factories, but failing to increase the natural production of livestock. Now that the companies have fully modernized the capabilities of their factories, they are now trying to modernize their product (the animals, and vegetables). What this has resulted in, is the factory farms of today which use antibiotics, animal bi-products as animal feed, economizing of space (fitting alot of livestock into a smaller more "efficient" area), and assembly line slaughter houses. In the movie "Unser Taglich Brot" (our daily bread), we get a look at all of these things, with no people speaking about what is going on, just what is their. What I took away from it was a feeling of concern for the future and uncertainty about the direction we are headed in if we allow the industrial world to determine how our food is processed.
What I think really needs to be done, is create a whole new approach to how we use our technology to effect how we handle our food. We have newer technology than we use in our processing plants, but try and use it at a larger scale which requires more recent technology. Because we don't use a more natural and modern approach with our livestock, factory farms pump cows and pigs full of chemicals and ingredients (most of which are illegal in other modernized countries) which are directly associated with super strains of disease and sickness, which in humans have no cure.
One such disease is mad cow, which in other countries has been prevented through strict laws making chemicals and practices known to cause mad cow, illegal. In America, laws have been made with lethal loopholes allowing practices such as the use of cow and pig blood plasma as a supplement in the milk of baby cows, a process which is a leading and known cause of mad cow disease. According to the Organic Consumers Association, in an article on Jan. 16, 2004, the US Center for Disease Control had been writing off hundreds if not thousands of annual deaths symptomatic of mad cow (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease; CTJ in humans) as unexplainable and spontaneous cases of fatalities. This is really telling, because it shows just how much the US government cares about the health of its citizens.
In the video on the website chooseveg.com, it talks about how chickens are among the worst treated and most abused animals on the planet. One such way in which these animals are terribly treated is that they are pumped full of antibiotics and hormones which cause unnatural and rapid growth, so much so that it causes death by heart attack and starvation for these birds which are to big to move, so they die. This goes right along with what I am saying about how we use primitive and stupid methods of industrialized farming to screw around with nature to yield more of the product to meet the demand. Because we have the capability to process immense amounts of meat, companies use inhumane methods such as hormone growth and genetic engineering to breed enough chickens to use their machinery at its highest capability. What this causes is unnaturally grown birds which are low in health and cannot be properly maintained due to the shear amount of animals being farmed for meat or eggs.
To me, factory farms are one of the most ridiculous things in world history. It only takes one look at a pig farm where hundreds of pigs stand in crates side by side, or thousands of chickens stand with no room to spread their wings with dead and dying animals among them to realize that the ability to maintain this amount of livestock is simply not their. I feel like you need to be able to ensure quality of your food if you want to be a mass food producer, otherwise any jackass with a few bucks can be the owner of a factory farm, because its not very difficult to build a barn and put thousands of animals in it [as is the case today].
In Jared Diamonds article "The Worst Mistake In the History of the Human Race" he discusses the argument that the move from hunter- gather society to agriculture has historically been destructive to societies. I feel like this makes a lot of sense because it makes quantity the main concern and primary objective in food processing as opposed to quality which should be the main focus. The problem that I see with this as a comparison to today is that now we have the technology to move to a middle ground where quality and quantity are balanced, but because of the profit and industrial business aspect of the modern food industry we have not, meaning we are opting for a much lower quality of life in our society which in the past has proven to only have a destructive impact on the people's health in that society.
At the beginning of this food unit, I thought a lot about the food I ate and where it came from, but did not do much to change that in my daily life. I had always thought very narrow minded about how I could eat, either vegetarian or not. After this unit I realized that I just couldn't give up eating meat, but I could, and will give up eating non- organic meat, and non- free ranged meat.
This is a basic noticing about our country, but what has remained more or less the same in these 233 years, is that what is being used, the product, has not changed. Cows are not cloned, Tomatoes are not grown in labs from chemical compounds. Because of this, we have been successfully increasing the capability to speed up the processing of livestock in factories, but failing to increase the natural production of livestock. Now that the companies have fully modernized the capabilities of their factories, they are now trying to modernize their product (the animals, and vegetables). What this has resulted in, is the factory farms of today which use antibiotics, animal bi-products as animal feed, economizing of space (fitting alot of livestock into a smaller more "efficient" area), and assembly line slaughter houses. In the movie "Unser Taglich Brot" (our daily bread), we get a look at all of these things, with no people speaking about what is going on, just what is their. What I took away from it was a feeling of concern for the future and uncertainty about the direction we are headed in if we allow the industrial world to determine how our food is processed.
What I think really needs to be done, is create a whole new approach to how we use our technology to effect how we handle our food. We have newer technology than we use in our processing plants, but try and use it at a larger scale which requires more recent technology. Because we don't use a more natural and modern approach with our livestock, factory farms pump cows and pigs full of chemicals and ingredients (most of which are illegal in other modernized countries) which are directly associated with super strains of disease and sickness, which in humans have no cure.
One such disease is mad cow, which in other countries has been prevented through strict laws making chemicals and practices known to cause mad cow, illegal. In America, laws have been made with lethal loopholes allowing practices such as the use of cow and pig blood plasma as a supplement in the milk of baby cows, a process which is a leading and known cause of mad cow disease. According to the Organic Consumers Association, in an article on Jan. 16, 2004, the US Center for Disease Control had been writing off hundreds if not thousands of annual deaths symptomatic of mad cow (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease; CTJ in humans) as unexplainable and spontaneous cases of fatalities. This is really telling, because it shows just how much the US government cares about the health of its citizens.
In the video on the website chooseveg.com, it talks about how chickens are among the worst treated and most abused animals on the planet. One such way in which these animals are terribly treated is that they are pumped full of antibiotics and hormones which cause unnatural and rapid growth, so much so that it causes death by heart attack and starvation for these birds which are to big to move, so they die. This goes right along with what I am saying about how we use primitive and stupid methods of industrialized farming to screw around with nature to yield more of the product to meet the demand. Because we have the capability to process immense amounts of meat, companies use inhumane methods such as hormone growth and genetic engineering to breed enough chickens to use their machinery at its highest capability. What this causes is unnaturally grown birds which are low in health and cannot be properly maintained due to the shear amount of animals being farmed for meat or eggs.
To me, factory farms are one of the most ridiculous things in world history. It only takes one look at a pig farm where hundreds of pigs stand in crates side by side, or thousands of chickens stand with no room to spread their wings with dead and dying animals among them to realize that the ability to maintain this amount of livestock is simply not their. I feel like you need to be able to ensure quality of your food if you want to be a mass food producer, otherwise any jackass with a few bucks can be the owner of a factory farm, because its not very difficult to build a barn and put thousands of animals in it [as is the case today].
In Jared Diamonds article "The Worst Mistake In the History of the Human Race" he discusses the argument that the move from hunter- gather society to agriculture has historically been destructive to societies. I feel like this makes a lot of sense because it makes quantity the main concern and primary objective in food processing as opposed to quality which should be the main focus. The problem that I see with this as a comparison to today is that now we have the technology to move to a middle ground where quality and quantity are balanced, but because of the profit and industrial business aspect of the modern food industry we have not, meaning we are opting for a much lower quality of life in our society which in the past has proven to only have a destructive impact on the people's health in that society.
At the beginning of this food unit, I thought a lot about the food I ate and where it came from, but did not do much to change that in my daily life. I had always thought very narrow minded about how I could eat, either vegetarian or not. After this unit I realized that I just couldn't give up eating meat, but I could, and will give up eating non- organic meat, and non- free ranged meat.
Food Journal #8- Industrial Food
It seems that our culture has not changed in its dietary habits so much as it has changed in terms of how we meet the every increasing demand for these food products. The change from a farming society to a fossil- fueled industrial society has been about a greater need for pork, corn, tomatoes and beef, and not a new need for a different food. Since our population has grown in the United States from 5,308,483 people in 1800, to 281,421,906 in 2000, we basically eat the same stuff, but at a much larger scale. This is the basic concept of industrialized food.
The problem with industrialized food is that we tend to work off of the principal "quantity over quality" which allows us to increase the supply to meet the demand, but cutting back on the quality of the product. One way in which food manufactures cut costs is by spending less on the basic amenities of the livestock. While in my opinion industrialized food is necessary to meet the demands of a growing population, it is logical to say that their is always an alternative. That alternative is extremely simple. Instead of moving towards what seems to be the inevitable transformation of the food industry into industrial super- farms to meet the demand, we need to move backwards to regress, and simplify how our food is processed.
In "The Meatrix" video, it talks about how we need to move away from the factory farms and back towards family farms. I agree, because when quantity and profit become involved as factors in food production, quality and health concerns are what suffer. What really disgusted me the most was that the milk fed to baby cows has some cows blood in it. This specifically made me think about the whole way our food is prepared. I asked myself, what point does that serve? Than I thought about the real question; what cost does this lower? This is the real problem, that food has become an industry, and as we learned in the birth unit of our class, profit cannot be introduced to something or profit becomes the primary concern.
In the article "The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Three", it raises an interesting point that i feel is important to make about industrial food, that it is not as cheap as we are lead to believe. I think that what we need to realize is that just because something is bad doesn't always mean that it is better for someone else. Specifically the way in which industrial farms are run, how the animals are raised and fed are horrendous, but this does not mean that their is an equivalent upside to this for the producer. On top of that, costs which can be externalized, in most cases are, and left up to the US taxpayers to pick up the tab. Because we have been fed the idea that the more food processed, the lower the cost of the food, we assume that more local farming (less food processed) results in a higher cost to the consumer and is more of an elitist idea. I think that the image of the Whole Foods shopping, Park Slope living, Fixed Gear bike riding yuppie is what comes to mind when we think of shopping organic and Eco-friendly, but truthfully within this environmentally conscious world of food, their are much cheaper and more sustainable options for the every day person who wants to get away from the factory farmed food, and towards the healthier and happier option of local farming.
The problem with industrialized food is that we tend to work off of the principal "quantity over quality" which allows us to increase the supply to meet the demand, but cutting back on the quality of the product. One way in which food manufactures cut costs is by spending less on the basic amenities of the livestock. While in my opinion industrialized food is necessary to meet the demands of a growing population, it is logical to say that their is always an alternative. That alternative is extremely simple. Instead of moving towards what seems to be the inevitable transformation of the food industry into industrial super- farms to meet the demand, we need to move backwards to regress, and simplify how our food is processed.
In "The Meatrix" video, it talks about how we need to move away from the factory farms and back towards family farms. I agree, because when quantity and profit become involved as factors in food production, quality and health concerns are what suffer. What really disgusted me the most was that the milk fed to baby cows has some cows blood in it. This specifically made me think about the whole way our food is prepared. I asked myself, what point does that serve? Than I thought about the real question; what cost does this lower? This is the real problem, that food has become an industry, and as we learned in the birth unit of our class, profit cannot be introduced to something or profit becomes the primary concern.
In the article "The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Three", it raises an interesting point that i feel is important to make about industrial food, that it is not as cheap as we are lead to believe. I think that what we need to realize is that just because something is bad doesn't always mean that it is better for someone else. Specifically the way in which industrial farms are run, how the animals are raised and fed are horrendous, but this does not mean that their is an equivalent upside to this for the producer. On top of that, costs which can be externalized, in most cases are, and left up to the US taxpayers to pick up the tab. Because we have been fed the idea that the more food processed, the lower the cost of the food, we assume that more local farming (less food processed) results in a higher cost to the consumer and is more of an elitist idea. I think that the image of the Whole Foods shopping, Park Slope living, Fixed Gear bike riding yuppie is what comes to mind when we think of shopping organic and Eco-friendly, but truthfully within this environmentally conscious world of food, their are much cheaper and more sustainable options for the every day person who wants to get away from the factory farmed food, and towards the healthier and happier option of local farming.
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