Get Ourselves Back To The Garden

I've noticed a few universities and colleges are going green. I mean in big way. They are offering full programs to learn how to go green and horticultural classes that focus on sustainable farming and forestry.

It makes a lot of sense. Our future here on earth depends on it. But why wait for someone else to grow our food? If you stop and think about it we as urban dwellers have absolutely no control over our food source. We blissfully go to the grocery store and pick up what we need. But what if there wasn't anything there? We take for granted that the farmers are growing our food, the truckers are hauling it to the stores, and the stores are monitoring its quality. There are a number of scenarios that could prevent any one of these things from happening.

Water. Fresh water sources are gradually, and in some cases rapidly, drying up. The underground water aquifers across the mid western United States are dropping in volume and not being replenished(apparently there is no mechanism for this to happen). The mighty Colorado river that feeds the south western states is in danger of becoming a mere trickle because of the mountain glaciers that feed it are shrinking.

In China, the Yangtze river in some years doesn't make it the sea. Vast agricultural areas around the world that rely on glacial melt or underground aquifers are in real danger of drying up. The reason for all of this is complex. It involves several factors such as atmospheric warm- ing, farming mechanization, and just plain waste. When was the last time you hosed off your driveway?

Fresh water doesn't just come from rain. Though it supplies our vegetation with immediate moisture, there has to be a source to get it through the dry periods. This means reservoirs, streams, rivers, and lakes. The primary volume of water for rivers comes from ice melt, not rain. The Red river in Manitoba, North Dakota floods each year due to river ice melting suddenly in the spring. The ice acts as a storage medium for water(just like icebergs in the arctic) during the winter and becomes a huge volume of water when it quickly melts and usually floods the land on either side as it flows south.
If only there was a way to redirect that excess volume of water into the underground aquifers or reservoirs?

So on the flip side of the coin for farmers dealing with a lack of water, sometimes there is too much.

Fuel. What if, and this is not so much if but when, there is a fuel shortage unlike anything we have ever seen before? Would there still be trucks hauling food to market? At what cost?

Power. California is currently experiencing a power shortage. It has to import power from other states and Canada. This could happen anywhere as the debate over how to best generate power goes on. Alternative sources aren't able to produce enough to relieve the hydro dams, nuclear plants, or coal plants of their duties just yet. As we become more technologically advanced our power consumption goes up. Grocery stores require a lot of power to store, display, and restock the shelves. Air conditioning may be the first thing to go if power becomes too expensive. Think about that in August in Austin.I think the alternative sources of power will eventually come along, but there will be a long period of adjustment as the global crisis sorts itself out.

In the meantime, we should be thinking about sourcing our own food. Many people have a few square feet of ground in which to grow some vegetables. Inner city dwellers turn to communal gardens where they share a plot of land. In the city of Vancouver(Canada) developers of new apartment high rises are encouraged by city council to include rooftop gardens. This not only helps provide oxygen but in some buildings is part of the heating and cooling system. Heavy rain fall is absorbed and released slowly. The city is also considering allowing vancouverites to raise chickens. Why not? It's been done elsewhere for as long as cities have existed.

I live in a townhouse with a few square feet of ground that we(mainly my wife) grows herbs and vegetables. I used to enjoy gardening when I was a kid. We lived in the country and I was closer to nature. But as a fully cityized person I've lost the nurturing instinct. I've gotten lazy because it's so easy to hop in my car and go the store for food. Damn me! But I'm telling you, me and you, that we need to get back to the garden....before it's too late.

Worry? What's to worry about?

The World needs more than an environmental overhaul

I recently saw 'Slumdog Millionaire'. I was shocked at the sheer scale of the ecological mess in the slums of India. Clearly the population expansion was too fast for planners to keep up, and of course the corruption that keeps so many living in the slums. It only outlined for me the problems we in the rest of the world may face as the world population grows over the next fifteen years. Our cities will get denser and denser as people from the troubled parts of the world migrate elsewhere. We can see the problems that face our large cities currently - crime, homelessness, pollution, traffic.

As water becomes more scarce in the southern hemisphere wars will no doubt break out as people fight over the little available. As temperatures rise, those that make their living in colder latitudes may also find it very difficult and will probably want to migrate to cities to find work. And, as you can see already, as cities increase in population so does the need for housing and usually valuable farm land is ploughed under for it.

So what can we do? Limit population? Sure, but can you imagine a world where having children is governed by, well, the government? China tried it. Now they have too few women, and too many single men(and single men get into a lot of trouble). Besides, just lowering population growth doesn't solve the problem. The population seems to grow over time anyway. What we need to change are the conditions under which people live. This will eventually allow population growth to reach an equilibrium state where families reach a sustainable size by choice. Prosperity will allow people to put their efforts toward making daily decisions that have a positive impact on the environment.

How can we achieve this? Well, that's the tough question. Not that the answer is out of reach, but that the answer is going to be hard for everyone to swallow. Our nature seems to get in way of the good that we try to do. When the massive tsunami occurred in Thailand in 2004, the wealthiest nations reached deep into their pockets to lend a hand. Unfortunately, many victims didn't get the help they needed due to mismanagement and corruption. The problem is greed.

Greed prevents us from truly helping those in need, in fact, there wouldn't even be needy people if greed was not part of our nature. Greed is behind the concept of financial and material growth. They will tell you that if your company is not growing, it's dying. That's clearly a load of horse-hockey. It just means your company is sustainable. So what we have to overcome is greedy behaviour. People will automatically take more than they need because they fear doing without. But greedy behaviour is like a virus. If others see you taking more than you need, they will do the same and then it snowballs. Next thing you know you have CEO's getting paid 10 million dollars a year while the people who actually do the work get less than half a percent of that. In many cases far, far less.

Now, I'm not saying that all the greedy people live in developed nations or are CEO's, but we in the developed nations can afford to do with less excess. We can also leverage the collective power in the developed nations to force corrupt leaders in poor nations to take care of their people. Bill Gates has given millions of dollars to pay for medicines that are needed in impoverished countries. Too bad the greedy behaviour in those countries prevents much of it from getting where it needs to go. It is said that roughly a billion people on earth are under nourished or starving and a billion are over nourished.

In the end, the answer to our environmental problems lay in a solution to our humanitarian problems. It starts with us as individuals, finding a peaceful and generous relationship with every other individual we contact. From this we can find satisfaction in human interaction and problem solving. We will need less stimulus from material wealth and finally put the myth of financial growth to rest and overcome our greedy behaviour. Sounds like Utopia doesn't it?

Remember, good actions have just as much chance of spreading around the world as bad actions do.