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Doing The Right Thing For Justice, Peace Costs
Offer me a helping of potatoes and sugar snaps from a local farmer or a plate full of war and carnage, and I'll take the vegetables, thanks.Invite me to sit on a cushion in a chair made locally from willow branches or let me settle softly into plush slave labor and environmental degradation, and I'll choose the rustic chair and cushion.
None of my friends or family actively seeks to support war, impoverishment, or desecration of the earth. But what is indisputable is that most any product I purchase, unless I know its maker, has long supply chains in its manufacture that do just that.
My point is not that farmers, even those in industrial production, support war or use practices that knowingly harm others or that furniture stores harm the environment or workers. They may or may not. But behind virtually every purchase, there are profound impacts, sometimes for individuals, but overwhelming for the broader society.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science says that of 20 major traded commodities, our nation consumes the greatest share of 11 of them: corn, coffee, copper, lead, zinc, tin, aluminum, rubber, oil seeds, oil and natural gas. Some of that consumption is obvious and wasteful, such as the 6 tons of rock mined to produce a pair of typical gold rings or the approximately 330 kilos of paper (around five trees) the average American uses each year. But much is hidden, because products are too complex to discern the impacts of our purchases.
Cars, for example. It's not just the loss of life of miners in China and elsewhere or environmental havoc created to obtain metal for the car. Or the wars our nation fights to protect supplies of petroleum used to make plastics in the car. Or the labor abuses in developing countries used to assemble them. There's no practical way to assess the environmental impact of one manufacturer over another.
We don't understand the hidden world of power behind our purchase, and so we buy the model that looks best, drives most smoothly, and perhaps has good gas mileage.
From computers to clothing to musical CDs, the list of consumer products whose components have unknown environmental and social impact is virtually endless. Even some peace groups sell bumper stickers, mugs, key chains and computer mouse pads but give no information about the resources used in their manufacturing.
Where does this leave us -- in guilt, passivity or self-reproach? Mostly we seem to ignore it and accept without question the marketing systems that obscure the impacts of what we buy.
I spent last week in a spiritual community with 1,500 Quakers at an annual gathering. I sang and ate with new and old friends, contemplating throughout the week the question of "Who is my neighbor?" For me, this has translated into a question of how to make consumer choices that support not only an environmentally sound but also a peace-based world.
My first decision must be forcing myself to decide whether I really need to purchase something. Can it be shared or done without? Second, given how well my junior high school home economics class trained me to seek the best dollar value for what I buy, I have to accept that not harming others I don't know will cost more. Every time I buy a more expensive item whose provenance I know and support, I need to remind myself that I am buying healthier lives for others, a hope for environmental relief.
Current marketing doesn't make this easy. Fair trade campaigns, organic food, and other certification programs are a first step in creating the peaceful world we want. And like "Build it and they will come," I place my faith in the belief that if consumers communicate a desire to know, marketers of responsible goods will enter the marketplace to help us take more control over our impacts on neighbors across the world whom we will never know.
Margaret Krome is a Madison resident.
© 2007 The Capital Times
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Show AllWe, as citizens in the grassroots & netrooks, can join and support progressive efforts to end global corporate trade agreements and special rights for giant corporation granted by court decisions & legislation. Join Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy, United for a Fair Economy, Alliance for Democracy, Corporate Accountability Int'l, Public Citizen, etc. We have power if united.
"My first decision must be forcing myself to decide whether I really need to purchase something."
Transmute desire to serve need.
We, really, do not need much.
Perhaps It's Time to Revisit Victory Gardens
Let's declare victory, get out of Iraq, give up on Pax Americana, and plant gardens instead.
Growing our own food in backyards, patios, roof tops, or community gardens, buying our food at farmers' markets and roadside stands, and/or becoming shareholders in a CSA (community supported agriculture--I highly recommend joining one) are far better investments than trying to figure out if the massive amounts of food that are imported daily come from reputable sources. Not only is local food far safer than imported food, buying locally protects and supports our family farms and thus ensures food security for future generations.
Plus you keep your money in your community and help to improve the local economy. A dollar spent at a locally owned business gets respent five times in your community before it moves on while a dollar spent at a large chain leaves your community immediately.
It is very difficult to gain any ground against powerful corporations, but we all can opt out and choose alternative goods and services whenever possible. Don't look at it as cost--it's an investment in a better future for all!
Are you willing
to stop the killing?
Then want less
And pay more.
Are you trying
to end the dying?
Then use less
And save more.
Are you offering
to ease the suffering?
Then take less
And give more.
Your vote may no longer count since the billionaires now own most of the politicians.
However, every dollar you spend is a vote cast in the marketplace.
Madison has one of the best farmer's markets that I've heard of in the Middle West. That is the sort of thing that allows you to MEET the very people who are producing what you consume. It gives you a chance to get to know the people, and to find out what they need, as well as to let them know what you need. A greater number of our local growers have turned to organics over the last several years, because that's what they hear at the market: we want food that is pesticide and chemical fertilizer free. Where I live, we also have the luxury of the best cooperative grocery store I have ever seen. We have choices of local, local organic, organic and conventional produce, so we can decide precisely what is important to us. Because this grocery store is so popular, our local orchard has gone organic in order to sell to this market. Our coop has spent our money to support a local theater, has rescued a favorite restaurant (and turned a great number of the dishes served organic), and numerous other local projects. The power can be in our hands if we BUY LOCAL. Nice article.
You are trying to undermine the long American tradition of spending money in such a way that you destroy yourself.
nice thoughts, but how much power do individuals making more enlightened consumer choices have? "vote with your dollar!" sounds nice, but the top 1% of the population has more than the bottom 50%, so where does that get you? when you are in that bottom 50% you practically have to shop at sweat-shop labor environment degrading walmart type stores?
just love those boojoisee telling us to make more effective life style choices. yeah! jump if you want to save the earth, as madonna said at live-aid.
i like kathy bates in misery better: i've got a gun. think i'll put some bullets in it ;)
bartleby a scrivener
The top 1% eat only a small amount of the food and almost none of the carbon monoxide treated meat at the Walmart Supercenter. The CO treated meat appears bright red fresh even after it has spoiled.
The top 1% doesn't buy enough of any particular product to make up any commodity market in food. What would they do with it? Feed it to the poor. LOL
I can't change anybody's world but mine. Changing your world is your job. I believe in keeping my money and purchases local as much as I can. My wife and I check out the farmer's market every Saturday morning before going to the store. We have a nice garden fed with a lot of horse manure. We buy range-fed chickens and lamb and eggs from close friends. We do not try to change the world, only our little corner of it.
Sometimes doing what right doesn't cost anything at all: perhaps organizing large-scale boycotts.
Ordinary consumers, like powerful politicians, are being bribed all the time. We're bribed to buy from the more egregious producers (whether food or manufactured goods) because they enjoy subsidies, loopholes, etc. that others do not. It's cheaper to buy products produced by near slave labor, or subsidized coercively by taxes -- even if it means they need to be shipped halfway around the globe.
We have a long-running Farmers' Market in St. Paul, MN. Not only do I get a lot of produce there in the summer, but I've gotten many tips from growers on how to tend my own gardens.
Ecology Action
http://www.growbiointensive.org/
Acres USA
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/magazine.htm
City Farms
http://www.journeytoforever.org/cityfarm.html
Small Farms Library
http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html
Terra Preta
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060222_amazon_soil.html