Author Archives: alpk

Fixing the Climate is NOT a One Person Job

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For a lot of my life, I thought the idea of voting with your dollars was brilliant, especially when it came to the climate. Whether it was buying organic every now and then or carpooling, I lived by that idea as much as I could. Over time, I learned this method is not the best at fixing the climate, but how effective it could be was something I still wondered.

After reading Michael Maniates’ piece on individualization, I was primed to understand that working alone at the individual level is futile against the power of private corporations. These companies work under the radar and through the consumer subconscious to gain profit under the guise of going green. In doing this, they seek to pin the blame and responsibility of climate change on the people who have the least power to create lasting change (Maniates 43).

Targeting transportation and electricity were of the biggest parts of Our Climate’s Evergreen New Deal. Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-state-carbon-emissions-spiked-6-percent-in-most-recent-tally/

And when I worked with Our Climate for this course’s action project, I gained crucial, direct knowledge on the capability and power of collective action while going directly to policy. On one hand, you have corporations selling you easy activism and pocketing the same money they would have made before green movements. On the other, you have NGOs pushing for policy to the people who the most power. The former has never permeated culture to the point where it makes large or lasting change, but looking at what Our Climate has done in just the last legislative session by updating old carbon laws, impacts will affect this and future generations. Furthermore, we could use votes on previous climate policies to garner even more support for future policies like the Evergreen New Deal.

When we lobbied to Representative Tina Orwall as the final task for Our Climate, I saw how receptive she was to new ideas and policies like the Evergreen New Deal, and it emboldened me. Other fellows told us their experiences were lukewarm. Their representatives were not very approachable and rejected the climate policies. While Representative Orwall wanted to know more about the Evergreen New Deal, beyond that it was broadly for transportation and to hold corporate polluters accountable, she was very interested in learning more when the policy was more solidified, and even connected us to more people who would also want to hear what we had to say. Coming from that, I felt like coming together was more powerful than fractured efforts that end up making the same big corporations richer, confirming what Maniates taught me.

Works Cited

Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics, vol. 1, no. 3, Aug. 2001, pp. 31–52.

When More Food Means More Hunger

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Response to: “Feeling Hunger: an Exercise in Mindfulness (Contemplative Practice 5)” by dakotajh

The hunger knowing you have food in your pantry is starkly different than hunger knowing you may not eat for days. Hunger and the contrast of populations deciding what to eat and whether it is possible to eat was highlighted in a post by dakotajh, scratching the surface of how our act of unmindful consumption impacts individuals across the globe.

It seems like a simple idea: reduce waste, redistribute food, end hunger. But reality is more complicated than that. Even if developed countries reduced waste and brought food to the markets that need it most, more damage could be done if local producers do not survive. On one hand, the redirected waste may be too costly, and the fight against hunger will go on. On the other hand, the food we trade could be cheap and accessible, but cost the jobs of local producers who need money to buy it. This latter example displays how integral local producers are to the sustainability of hunger solutions. India learned this firsthand, as Vandana Shiva explained, when they opened their borders to trade. Peasant farming collapsed, and millions lost their source of income. What can food in a market do without money?

Agricultural workers process mangoes. Source: https://www.tripsavvy.com/mango-farms-and-festivals-india-1539678

Dakotajh mentioned that here in the US, with food readily available, hunger is a quick fix. This is almost translatable to a global scale with one addition. Evidently, when food is readily available, hunger is a quick but temporary fix. Because to feed the hungry, available food and the jobs people must have need to be sustained. The best way to do this in a largely agrarian country is to increase the number of local farms, killing two birds with one stone. More people will be employed, incomes will rise, and there will also be local food available for everyone.

Drowning and Deep Breaths

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Image: https://www.tga-ins.com/Newsroom/ArticleID/483/How-to-know-if-someone-may-be-drowning-Learn-the-signs

As I close my eyes to contemplate, every attempt to clear my mind brings rushing thoughts. My mind does not join my body in calm. Focus, focus, I tell myself. Why is this so hard? That is how many of my contemplative practices start. I am deeply meditative on my own self, but I never thought to bring my meditation to a global level. Was that even possible? I opened my mind and changed my perspective from the self to the world system. My experiences are like a coin. On one side, I find myself plagued by despair. On the other, I can achieve great calm.

In the hunger contemplative practice, we held an exhale for twenty seconds. My lungs screamed for breath. Every second, I told myself to wait a little longer, a breath would come, and finally, I breathed deeply. But as I breathed in deeply, a thought intruded. Could others? For people severely affected by COVID-19, their breathing is more like drowning. Every unassisted breath they take is never quite sufficient, and they are left with desperate lungs. These unresolved thoughts left me disturbed even after the practice ended.

On the flipside, contemplative practice can bring stillness, quiet, and calm. Our first in-class practice made me realize how tense I was the moment we were asked to relax. Every deep breath felt like releasing a burden off my shoulders. Then we were asked to feel our weight in our seats, to just know we exist. Framing the practice in that way made it much easier to remember that we are living, breathing organisms. We are not cogs in a machine. I learned that I have always stared at the vast sky, where I want to be, but I forget I am walking through a field of roses.

Uncovering a Crumbling Food System in a Global Pandemic

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Rice paddy in Vietnam shows prominence of staple crop, one of the most desired goods in the Coronavirus pandemic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/vietnam-s-rice-trade-thrown-into-turmoil-on-export-halt-muddle

In the 1970s, the US increased production of agricultural goods drastically to add to their exports. Today, Chuck Abbott’s article, “Agriculture feels impact as pandemic reshapes U.S. diet, rattles producers,” outlines the current state of domestic agriculture and the impacts of the global food system. Since the year began, not only has the country’s ability to export declined, but imports and domestic sales have been affected as well. Families are buying chicken for easy home dinners, but beef is left on shelves with their businesses seeing food waste and closure; rice prices skyrocket because Vietnam plans on shutting down exports. What this illustrates is how fragile the US and global food system has become, and how a wide-reaching pandemic can cause them to crumble.

Widespread cornfield monocrop. https://www.agweb.com/article/proven-nitrogen-source-no-matter-weather

rom an economic perspective, the way food is produced around the world is efficient and makes the most people happy with the least sacrificed. The theory says that you take your most efficient products and make more and more and more. Production goes up, price goes down, consumption goes up, making production increase again. This cycle engenders specialization, bringing everyone the best goods at the best prices as countries trade.

But if consumer taste or world trade changes at the drop of the dime as it has with the current pandemic, will our current food infrastructure of monocrops and extreme meat production collapse? The surplus of domestically produced meat and the scramble for imported goods like grains are telling. As with the web of biodiversity in times of change, the most overly specialized will fail first. These past few months have only revealed how crippled the world has left its built food system. It no longer resembles a resilient web whose manifold connections sustain it for infinity, but a linear chain riddled with disintegrating links.