That shift, according to "Earth Days," a documentary currently screening at the Siskel Film Center in the Loop, spurred the modern environmental movement that has been questioning how, and at what cost, we fuel our cars, heat our homes and feed our families, since the 1970s. Weighing the short term gains and long term consequences of everything from spraying DDT and other pesticides to placing solar panels on the roof of the White House, has led to some amazing innovations, and understandably, the sobering realization that "healing" the planet will take a lot more work still.
The environmental movement was one strong voice among the readings I was assigned in Losing the Farm: the Globalization of Food Production in the 20th century, and will inform my final paper for that class.
A photo I took of farmer Steve Tiwald, founder of the Green Earth Institute, with a row of dino-kale, while on a Losing the Farm field-trip. I love kale!
Are we chemists, taming the natural world with new technologies like genetic modification that can increase yields and farm efficiency and cheapen the cost of mono-cropping, or is it time to "make peace with nature," as President Richard Nixon (who surprisingly signed the Clean Air Act into law) advocated in early 1970s?
Is a new era of innovation just around the corner, promising to increase the urban standard of living by exponential degrees, or is the future of a prosperous and healthy human race actually tied up in the trope of the New England village, where everyone knows their neighbors, has a real stake in community affairs, and strives for communal sufficiency?
These are a couple of the very difficult conceptual questions this movie and my class are concerned with. Answering them is a tall order (made taller still by the pressing issue of over-consumption--Uh, can I super-size that conceptual question?) I'm writing my final paper about the farmers' market as a tool to reconcile the community, environmental and personal health benefits of receiving locally-produced goods with the autonomy of the urban sprawl. To have your city, and eat your farm too, so to speak. I'll post my findings later.
Regardless, I took away from this movie that it's time to change the rhetoric of sustainability from "Stop what you're doing, you bad person, you!" to one that is constantly and non-judgmentally suggesting alternatives, suggesting that yes, you really can drive an electric car around the world; yes, we really can reduce air and water pollution without sacrificing our quality of life.
It amazes me how much I am, especially at the University of Chicago, limited by institutional imagination, or lack thereof; there are so many aspects of life directly tied to mental and physical well-being here I would change if I could, but how often do I question that they don't necessarily have to be so? For example, I have a lot of criticism about the Core curriculum, which I hope to write about after finals week. Well, Femmaj, one of the RSOs in which I'm involved, is starting a campaign to change diversity in the Core, which we believe is riddled with tokenism and unimaginative curricula for engaging with big picture concepts like "Power, Identity and Resistance." What made me think I couldn't criticize this before now? What makes me think there are other parts of this University that are immutable, like the almost-universally decried dining hall food?
A University with this kind of intellectual clout, money and resources should not be stuck with archaic practices, like the mass-waste generated by 3 inefficient dining halls that serve low-quality, conventional produce and over-processed frozen foods. Could change really be as simple as standing up and suggesting an alternative?
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