Globally Green Living

Eww, pesticides have been found in Chinese dumplings. It sounds like they think it’s sabotage because Japan and China were getting along fine and trading more lately.

The strategy seems to have worked because all of Tianyang Food Processing Ltd. products are being recalled. Some stores will not sell any Chinese food products at all now.

One of the chemicals detected was benzene. It’s been banned in Japan for over 20 years so whoever put it there knew it would cause problems with China. Methamidophos was detected in several of the bags that were also punctured.

“Co-op said tests this week have found 110 parts per million of dichlorvos in the dumpling dough and 0.42 ppm in the filling. Japanese residue limits for the pesticide are set at one ppm in wheat and 0.1 ppm in cabbage - both ingredients of the dumplings.” (Chisaki Watanabe, Associated Press, Feb.6, 2008)

Benzene has been linked to leukemia as well as other illnesses but it’s also used to manufacture a variety of products such as plastic, rubber and paint.

Organic Food

Traces of pesticides are found in our food all over the world but not normally at the high levels that were found in the dumplings in Japan.

It’s still a concern though and it’s good idea to peel fruit and vegetables when possible. Turning to organic food is even better. There are more organic choices out there since the demand has grown. We have several local farms that grow organic fruit and vegetables.

I read that some organic food can even contain trace amounts of pesticides because the soil could still be contaminated from before. It does seem like a better bet to go with organic because it supports local farmers and lessens pesticide use.

When you think of environmentalists, you often think of tree-huggers or of people with money and education and who can afford to think of the rights that the environment should have according to their views. Thus the environmental movement is, in essence, an elitist movement. After all, all the energy-efficient appliances and vehicles are usually priced above the non-efficient ones. And although in the long run, it may make more monetary sense to have energy efficient stuff, most low-income people make decisions based on what is best for them in the short run (no wonder then all this big fuss about the impending collapse of the mortgage industry, balloon mortgages, the real estate bubble, etc. but I digress…).

I was rather surprised then when I read in the New York Times Tom Friedman’s column about an African-American man, who wants to convert African-Americans to the green movement. The man, Van Jones, says:

“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Mr. Jones. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.”

Jones views the environment as an opportunity for blue-collar workers to not just obtain employment but also to find a niche where they can specialize in and eventually move up the employment ladder. The premise of the success of this argument is that people will indeed see the opportunity and act on it. It all seems to make perfect sense.

But more often than not, the environment is viewed as a way of losing jobs (so much for Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” that Alan Greenspan so much loves). And I can’t wait for some people to start saying that houses that are retrofitted to be energy-efficient are more expensive and minorities cannot afford them and that is just another way of benefiting white people because they will be the ones saving on energy costs and so on and so forth…

And thus, I imagine that to prevent the white people from saving money on their electrical bills, we will prevent the minorities to climb the environmental and economic ladders, even if ever so slowly. Funny how humans are…

The top polluting countries in the world have gotten together to see what they can do to address climate change. The meeting was called by the U.S., in particular by President Bush who, a few years ago, was saying that there is no global warming or effect on climate, for that matter.

Now, after Katrina, you’d better not even utter the idea that global warming is a hoax. Although, it seems that some people also take it to the other extreme, where everything you do causes global warming, but let’s move on.

To fight climate change, the U.S. has “aspirational” goals. What does that mean exactly? Because I aspire to win the lottery but since I don’t play, I don’t see it ever happening. Is that it? Are good intentions sufficient to say you’re trying to make a change?

Let’s get real people. We live in a wealthy country! If the effects of climate change are such that natural disaster will be more likely to occur then the same natural disaster in a rich country vs. a poor country will cause a greater harm in the rich country. The rich country has more infrastructure, is more integrated, contains on average more educated people, and people on average have more assets. Thus, the more you have the more you can lose. That’s what Hurricane Katrina taught us. How long is it going to take for us to learn its lesson and fix our problems?

Or, as Alan Greenspan says, are we just too dumb to learn it the first time around? Do more people have to die and does more destruction have to happen before we do something about it? How long until we adapt and how much is our adaptation going to cost in unproductive activities?