> Mark: You said "Maybe I wasn't clear. If a corporation puts something into
> my body that
> is not invited it is a violation of property rights and human rights. It
> should and will be litigated like tobacco and bullets. "
>
Then Mike said:
> Go ahead, and while you are at it sue all industries that have even the
> slightest emissions into the air or water, regardless of how well they
> conform to existing laws. snip
> Your argument reminds me of the wildly disproportional response to the
> unfounded Alar scare. A lot of good people were hurt by the media's
> irresponsible "reporting" of a danger that never was.
Perhaps this is the point to recall that evocatively perceptive statement of
William McDonough, Dean of Architecture at Virginia - "Regulations are an
indication of design failure". He said that regulations were needed "so we
didn't kill each other too quickly". And just think about how many
regulations - and how much money is being wasted in managing, refining, and
monitoring regulations - complicate our lives today..
Before you are tempted to pooh-pooh this as wishful utopian thinking,
understand that McDonough also heads a design firm with clients who have a
combined annual income of $400 billion - who pay him to bring his brilliance
into action in their particular firm, whether it is a textile plant in
Switzerland or Nike or Walmart in the US. He walks the walk. Look for his
upcoming book - Cradle to Cradle.
At any rate, all this talk about chlorpyrifos and Alar (which was NOT a hoax
by the way; look at John Wargo's densely referenced text Our Children's Toxic
Legacy. Yale Univ Press (1996) - he is a wild-eyed radical masquerading as a
Yale university professor) is really rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
I am reminded of Steingraber's powerful text Living Downstream, which drew its
title from a hypothetical village, whose inhabitants noted an alarming
increase in the number of drowning people floating by their village. They
developed very elaborate and effective means of grabbing and resuscitating the
victims, but were so busy doing so that they had no time to go upstream and
see who was pushing them in. That's what all this verbage about chlorpyrifos
et al. is about.
Why should we (collectively, as a people) be allowing our creative energies to
be sapped by this pinhead dancing (is 0.0001 picograms too much? how much
more risk is 0.001 picograms?) when it would be so much more fruitful and
life-enhancing to design and operate production systems that didn't create the
niches allowing pests to proliferate to pestiferous proportions in the first
place? It is the flawed system design (corn-soy-corn-soy-corn-soy) or 3000
cow dairies or megahog factories that has encouraged the slide into dependence
on biocides.
We know this. This is not rocket science. Yet we keep getting diverted into
dead-end arguments and "it is toxic" or "it isn't toxic" or "risk is less than
being struck by lightening" or whatever - instead of pulling back and asking
the more fundamental questions - how to avoid the problems in the first place
instead of using chemicals or ecologically deranged production practices to
*fix* them after we've created them. We are talking about fixing self-created
problems here.
But is there another way? Can this be done? Of course it can - it is being
implemented every day by farmers who farm using ecological principles -
including but not limited to organic farmers - who probably never took a
course in ecology.
So, if it is so great, why isn't everyone doing this? Well the short answer
is because systems that internalize costs of production (e.g. full cost
accounting) simply have to *pay* more costs more than systems which
externalize (don't pay) some of the true costs of production (in contaminated
ground- and surface water, antibiotic resistant cattle,
salmonella-contaminated chicken etc.). This puts the former at an economic
disadvantage - until society realizes just how much damage is actually being
done to them and calls us to task - which they are already doing. Look for
more of this, in spades, in the near future..
Ecologically sound systems are also less dependent on input suppliers, which
makes them a threat to those with a vested interest in ecologically unsound,
inputs-based production systems. So, you won't see ecologically sound farmers
between the covers of Fantazmagorical Farmer, in between the Pioneer and John
Deere ads, and you will very likely find them the object of rejection and
ridicule from their neighbors in the local coffee house. Negative peer
pressure is a powerful disincentive to stepping over the traces and doing
something differently. You don't imagine that Avery and the like are gearing
up their anti-organic distribes just lately as a lark, do you? Count on more
of this blather in the near future.
Farmers who attempt to use ecologically sound design principles often don't
have an easy time of getting guidance, assistance, or solutions to production
problems that may arise during the season (as has been amply discussed on
SANET in recent weeks). This means that - unlike their conventional
neighbors, who simply call up the fertilizer salesman, seedsman, or
extension/university expert - ecological practicioners have to absorb the cost
and risk of doing their own research on their own farms, to address their own
issues. They don't have a multi-million dollar societal investment in govn't
and academic research waiting to service their needs. This puts them at a
further financial and managerial disadvantage.
But all of this is changing, in part because of the skyrocketing demand for
organic produce (now, why is that, do you suppose?). Look for more of this,
particularly if the US and Canada remain obstinately adamant that GE foods are
substantially equivalent to real food and require neither testing nor
labeling. So, next time you find yourself getting waylayed into one of the
"he said/she said" whine-olas about biocides, let the wisdom of McDonough or
Steingraber shine into your mind and keep you focused on the real issues. Ann
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