America: Organic & Green
The Ultimate Challenge of Our Generation
Contaminated food and grotesque factory farms; billions in misguided subsidies for industrial agriculture and genetic engineering; a massive biofuels boondoggle ravaging wetlands and tropical rainforests and expanding the acreage for chemical-intensive corn, soybeans, and palm oil; a frightening onslaught of global warming-induced drought, forest fires, melting glaciers, and pestilence; a bloody trillion-dollar war for oil in Iraq; degraded soils and contaminated waterways; depleted species; a spiraling epidemic of environment and diet-related diseases; out-of-control corporations, politicians, and technology; a pervasive cultural and spiritual malaise...
Connecting the dots in a series of inconvenient truths, more and more Americans are moving beyond "Business as Usual." Millions are purchasing organic foods and a wide range of green products that are healthy, locally produced, fair-made, and eco-friendly. Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Pesticide-free lawns and gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, "buy local" networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass is waking up to the fact that we must green our diets and lifestyles, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas pollution, re-stabilize the climate, sow peace instead of war, take back control of our political system, and heal ourselves-before it's too late.
For 10,000 years, local indigenous farmers managed to grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and energy-intensive irrigation, processing, and long-distance transportation. In 1945 most of America's six million family farmers were still rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost, and, in general practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned from their parents and grandparents. In 1945, frugal and health-minded Americans were growing a full 42% of their vegetables and fruits in backyards, schoolyards, and community Liberty Gardens. The nutritious, generally non-processed foods that they cooked for their family's meals were purchased from locally-owned grocers, who stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items typically raised within a 100 mile radius of their communities.
In the 1950s the average American household spent 22% of their household income for fresh, locally produced food. By today's standards this post-war generation was relatively healthy in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer (now striking 48% of US men and 38% of women), heart disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and learning disabilities.
Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation spending a mere 11% of our household income for food, over consuming meat and animal products, gorging ourselves on the industrialized world's cheapest, most contaminated, and environmentally polluting fare, destroying our health with highly processed, high-sugar, high-cholesterol foods. This evermore-deadly diet is subsidized by billions of taxpayers' dollars going to corporate agribusiness in the US, or else imported from overseas by the food giants and Big Box chains from low-wage, environmentally destructive farms and processors. Industrial scale, energy-intensive agriculture, factory farm livestock production, and long distance food transportation and processing currently generate 20-25% of all climate destabilizing greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide).
Another 25% of greenhouse gases are a direct result of deforestation, whacking down the world's remaining rainforests to clear the way for industrial scale soybean, palm oil, and cattle plantations. Meanwhile scientists warn that the killer droughts and unpredictable weather now plaguing the US and much of the world will reduce crop yields and increase world hunger and malnutrition by 30% over the next two decades.
The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Making the time-tested practices of local, organic food and farming the norm, and preserving our forests and wetlands, will go a long way toward restoring our health and preventing climate chaos. Organic farms use 30-50% less energy than industrial farms. Organic farms, along with intact wetlands and forests, safely sequester enormous amounts of greenhouses gases in the soil.
Of course organic food and farming are not enough. As the world's climate scientists warn us, in order to avoid catastrophic global climate change, we must keep atmospheric greenhouse gas (primarily CO2) pollution below 450 parts per million, and keep global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. To do this will require that we slash greenhouse gas pollution by at least 10% in 2010, and 90% in 2050.
To accomplish this monumental task, we must stop the trillion-dollar war for oil in Iraq, end the White House's crazed campaign for world domination, and cure America's addiction to fossil fuels. We must redirect hundreds of billions of dollars in annual military spending to research and development on green fuels, rebuild our nation's infrastructure, train millions of disadvantaged inner city youth and Iraq war veterans for the urban "Green Collar" jobs and rural organic farming jobs that we need, and then green and retrofit every business, farm, home, apartment building, parking lot, lawn, and roof in America. Please join the OCA on this "high road" campaign for an Organic and Green America. Time is running out.
  Infinite Health Resources does not at any point, for any circumstances suggest that you do not follow or stop medical advice of your physician. We do not advocate any drugs that has not been prescribed by your physician, nor suggest that we are medical doctors nor are we giving medical advice. Infinite Health Resources is here purely as a resource. |
