green journalism

I heard a story on NPR about greenwashing, the long-time bane of my existence. it almost made me want to start writing some thesis again. but anyways, one of the commentators was talking about "green journalism," and it made me think of this piece I read a long time ago by Jack Shafer, editor at Slate:

Often as sensationalistic as its yellow predecessor, green journalism tends to appeal to our emotions, exploit our fears, and pander to our vanity. It places a political agenda in front of the quest for journalistic truth and in its most demagogic forms tolerates no criticism, branding all who question it as enemies of the people. (read more)

dear amanda and scott:

I have been holding back for as long as I could, but I can no longer sit back and watch... I started to write this as a comment on Mike's blog, but it got a little lengthier than I originally planned, so I'm putting it here. fyi, people who don't read Scott's blog or Mike's blog, this is a response to this and later, this

a) Scott, let people comment on your blog so we don't have to bother poor Mike like this.

b) Amanda, that shit will kill you. Equal and 'dietary neutrality' do not belong in the same sentence together. Most artificial sweeteners are made from toxic and even carcinogenic compounds. But you knew I was going to say that. I won't bore you with the 'facts,' this is easy enough to read up on.

c) In reality, I see this as more of a political issue. Guess who owns Equal? Mon-fucking-santo. The same people who bring us radically persistent pesticides and GMOs and sue poor small farmers who have the misfortune to live downwind from them. They have revolutionized intellectual property rights in the worst possible way and represent everything that is wrong about agribusiness. Again, it would take too much space to go into all the reasons why Monsanto sucks, so I will leave it at that.

d) Splenda is owned by Johnson & Johnson, who some might consider to be slightly less evil than Monsanto. Either way, they recently bought up a bunch of negative domain names hoping to quiet the growing number of people who question the health effects of Splenda.

As far as what those health effects actually are, everyone knows I'm not much of a chemist so I won't pretend I'm an expert on this one. But I've read that sucralose is a cholorocarbon, which means that not only is it not as 'natural' as the 'made from sugar' tagline would imply, but also that it's, well, a dumb thing to put in your body. I welcome any corrections on all that.

e) Regarding wheat gluten... Obviously we do produce a lot of wheat here, and it's subsidized pretty heavily so we can get our greedy little hands into every developing economy that used to produce its own wheat, but now cannot due to signing up for some awesome "free" market trade agreement. So we are able to sell it for a low enough price that it ends up being cheaper for say, Uganda, to import U.S. wheat than to produce their own, resulting in food insecurity as well as over-dependence on the global commodity prices for wheat as well as whatever crap they decided to monocrop or manufacture instead. This is a whole other can of worms though.

As far as the competitive advantage is concerned, I can't think of a definitive answer, but maybe it has something to do with what the gluten is used for. A lot of times trade restrictions are meant to be prohibitive for political reasons (e.g. the notorious EU 'banana regime'... banana quality standards made it impossible for some African countries to sell their bananas to the EU, in order to protect prices/profits for corporate/evil plantations operating in Latin America and elsewhere).

Aaaaanyways, I think that this might be an issue of the return we get on food grade wheat gluten (as opposed to feed grade). We can make a better profit processing and exporting food grade wheat for certain purposes like bread and Oreos. Meanwhile, because China has industrialized so rapidly they haven't quite caught up with all the pesky social and environmental regulations that we subject our poor agribusinesses to, making their feed grade gluten pretty affordable (although of questionable healthiness). So to make a long story short, if I had to guess I'd say our food grade wheat is cheaper for them to buy, their feed grade wheat is cheaper for us to buy. The capital is flowing to where it gets the highest return, the agribusinesses win again, and there are a bunch of dead pets laying around.

untz untz untz

my interview was, technically speaking, f-ing awesome. this guy told me bloodcurdling tales of floor stripping woe: shoes destroyed, third-degree burns, legs lost... seriously, legs lost. while all of these things, coupled with his happier anecdotes about the switch to green cleaning, speak directly to what I'm trying to prove, I feel more than a little guilty for how I got at it. I mean, how can I be so selfish as to revel in these horrible things happening, just because it supports my goal of promoting green cleaning? I've always been a firm non-believer in the "ends justify the means" theory, so I'm hating myself a bit for even having recorded this thing.

Luckily, my own stupidity assuages a little bit of my guilt, as I accidentally turned my recorder speed all the way up to "fast" and didn't notice it until 45 minutes into the interview. I was too scared to review the tape, but I have a feeling it's going to take a lot of technology finagling to get this thing transcribed. On that note, I've completely embraced my nerdiness and decided that I want voice-to-text software for Christmas.

In other news, it's spring break! I'm not going anywhere fun, or even doing anything fun in Lowell - in fact, I'll probably sit around the library writing my thesis and generally being miserable all week. For some reason, though, just knowing it's spring break is enough to make me feel all vacation-y. I forsee a good amount of weeknight drinking and general irresponsibilty this week, not really different than any other week except that I feel somehow entitled to it since it's spring break...

q&a with patty, worrywart

So I was telling my friend Patty about his argument I got into with some pretentious plastics engineers about toxic substances in household products. This one guy basically tried to argue that if we didn't have brominated flame retardants there would be dead babies lying around everywhere. I made a feeble attempt to get into it with him, but eventually decided that there's no point in arguing with someone who just wants to win so he can feel better about himself. Anyhow, when retelling the story started to go on and on about how the toxics stay in the body for decades and how there are natural alternatives that are just as flame-retardant, etc...

Patty, always the pragmatist, pointed out that a lot of these issues could be solved if people had a little common sense:

"JUST DON'T PUT YOUR BABY NEXT TO A FIRE!"

Now that is what I'm talking about.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

As you may have noticed, I'm no Che, but I do have my own little idiosyncratic mission. Today's topic is the antibacterial frenzy - thanks to Brian for bringing this one back to my mind's front burner where it belongs. As an introduction take a look at the article he sent me, from the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times, which aspiring revolutionaries should not overlook on moral grounds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/fashion/05germ.html?em&ex=1162875600&en=b77c5ca96dea5ea0&ei=5087%0A

So these people are crazy, that's a given. But there are several larger problems I see with this trend (bullet points again - you LOVE it!):

• Society suffers when we keep finding more and "better" ways to distance ourselves from others. Spatial separation between people translates easily into emotional distance and a loss of feelings of community.
• This effect is enhanced, in my mind, by the reason for imposing the distance: germs. Germs have been around forever, and yes - modern medicine has saved a lot of lives by finding new ways to kill germs. However, the threat of germs is used and abused by companies that make cleaning and personal care products in order make us afraid. Fear has a long history in marketing strategies: we buy things we never knew we needed, hoping they will protect us from scary elements we never knew existed. Just like we bought this war.
• Furthermore, the more little doses of antibiotics we take, the less our immune system is able to battle serious diseases. When you are prescribed antibiotics or a similar drug in pill form, the doctor tells you to make sure you finish the bottle as directed, even if you're feeling better after a day or two. Why? If you take less than the whole dose, most of the bacteria may have been killed, but the strongest germs, those that were not killed by the drug, survive (in small enough numbers that you no longer feel sick). When you stop taking the medicine the remaining germs have the opportunity to multiply and make you sick all over again. This is called developing antibiotic resistance. One of the major contributors to this problem is that doctors tend to over-prescribe antibiotics, even when they suspect the symptoms may be due to a virus, not a bacterial infection. They aren't the only ones to blame, of course, people misuse antibiotics all the time...they are in the milk...we wash our hands with them...

• Getting back to antibacterials/disinfectants/sanitizers in the more concrete sense - they're just not good for you! Now that milk-providing cows are being pumped full of antibiotics (among other chemicals, a discussion for another day) we have built-in levels of the chemicals in our bodies. Then we slather on antibacterial hand gel, shower with antibacterial body wash, use products treated with Microban, and even spray sanitizers directly into the air in closed indoor spaces! For anyone who hasn't read Silent Spring (do yourself a favor and read it) I will make a huge oversimplification: germs are living organisms, and chemicals that kill them do so by attacking their central nervous systems. When these chemicals (biocides) are applied repeatedly to our bodies, they build up over time (especially when they are encapsulated in petroleum-based lotions). When we spray them into the air, we inhale the tiny killers into our lungs. When we wash them off, they go down the drain and into the groundwater, building up in our water supplies. I could go on all day, but you get the picture. These articles are a good introduction to some of the best reasons to QUIT BEING OBSESSED WITH ANTIBACTERIALS!!! NOW!!! Love, Anne.
  

http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/10-04/triclosan-article.htm

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/49/1/11

Enough righteous indignation for the moment, unfortunately I have to get back to my real work now...

lazy sunday

I'm committed to laziness today. It's all grey and humid outside, not the kind of weather that would be conducive to my original plan of riding my bike to the grocery store... I have 35,955 miles on my car and it's only under warranty until 36,000, but the jerkwads at Ira can't look at it until Wednesday. So not only is my car a bastion of all that is evil in the world, it can't even take me to Stop & Shop to buy some frickin organic pears.

So since I can't drive, and in preparation for the long car-less days ahead (during which the aforementioned jerkwads stare blankly at my car and try to think of things they can fix that aren't covered by the warranty,) I practiced my mass transit skillz today. It took me four and a half hours to get from Canton to Lowell, but I only spent $1.25.

After a much needed water + Tylenol + large iced coffee + supreme omelet (oh GOD yes) breakfast to assuage my hangover, Amanda dropped me off at the commuter rail in Canton. I had to get the T from Back Bay to North Station, and was literally a minute late for the commuter rail to Lowell. So I walked around the area for an hour, watched some people, listened to some tunes, and tried not to consider myself too much of a martyr for not driving myself last night, despite the fact that if I had, I would have been home by 2am last night and wouldn't have had to waste the whole day today. But is a day spent supporting public transportation really a wasted day? I'm telling myself it's not. So when I arrived at the Gallagher, which is conveniently located NOT DOWNTOWN, I watched as the one bus I needed pulled away, not to return for an hour. The public transportation sitation in Lowell is absolutely ridiculous - think of all the people who have to completely RELY on that crap to get around! I weighed my options: walk home or walk to my car and drive home. Having planned to accomplish tons of work today, I broke down and called Kate for a ride to my car, defeating the whole purpose of trying not to be car-dependent...

When we got to my car, I showed Kate the battery acid all over my car's inner workings (or whatever all that stuff under the hood is called.) She was duly apalled, and even suggested that I green clean it off with one of the many gallons of distilled vinegar I keep in my backseat. But I'm not a chemist, so I just drove home and hoped for the best :)

So when I got home I was all, "I just need to ride my bike everywhere I need to go, starting with the store." But then I sat down on my bed and all my aspirations melted away into a pool of extreme laziness. I know I'll have to go to the store at some point, because I don't have any milk for my iced coffee, and that's a problem. I think if I had an iced coffee holder on my bike I'd be a lot more psyched to take it places; maybe I'll invent one in my spare time. But for now I'm just superglued to the couch, plotting and planning how to make people do what I want without coming off like some crazy zealot. On a less insidious level, I'm also plotting something delicious for dinner. Macaroni and cheese? A healthy salad? No, macaroni and cheese. Don't fret, cheese, you'll always be my true love.

Speaking of being a zealot, may I remind you all to go see the Al Gore movie? NOW? I saw it for the second time last night, and although I missed the first hour, I'm even more convinced that WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don't do something soon. Can somebody lend me $35,000? I need a hybrid. I'll share it if you make the car payments - I'll even throw in gas money!