Social Responsibility

by Frances Moore Lappé

In 1969, as I tried to grasp the root causes of hunger, I struggled to absorb the shocking picture my simple research was uncovering: While world food experts cried “scarcity,” in truth we bright humans were—and still are—creating hunger out of plenty. We’d turned our food system into a scarcity-creating machine, and were undermining the Earth’s food-producing potential, too.

Those who have been following our site for a while know by now that this year I got our boys (5 and 7 at the time) into Beavers, which is the entry-level for Scouts Canada. It comes before Cubs, which comes before Scouts, which comes before Ventures. They did not have Beavers when I was that age, but I did go through Cubs and Scouts - and had a lot of fun while I was there. I'd been thinking that I wanted to start a lot of camping and outdoor activities with the boys, and figured I'd kill 2 (or even 3) birds with 1 stone and get them into Beavers, and volunteer to be a Leader. The year is winding down now, and we are already looking for Beaver, Cub and Scout leaders for next year. So if you are interested, please let me know. Our troop is in the Hintonburg/Westboro area of Ottawa near the Ottawa Bagel Shop if you know where that is. Beavers and Scouts meet on Wednesday evening, and Cubs on Thursday.

Next year I'll be returning as a Beaver leader, and since my oldest is moving up to Cubs I've also let our district coordinator know that I'd be game to be a leader there as well. I'm hoping I do get to do both because the Cubs should be a little less like herding cats, and I'll be able to do a lot more in-depth stuff with them. I have said many times this year that there was a good reason why Baden Powell started them at age 8 :-) Being in charge of the Beavers can certainly be challenging, but it is also an awful lot of fun! And by the time I get up into Scouts with my boys, we'll be doing stuff like what you see in this video. This was filmed last week at our troops' annual end-of-year picnic. It is a trebuchet that our Scout troop has been building for the last 18 months or so.

Repeat after me : I am responsible for the gulf oil spill. I drive to work every day in my own motor vehicle. Even if I am not the sole occupant of my vehicle, it still consumes a considerable amount of fossil fuel. Even if it is a hybrid, it still consumes a considerable amount of fossil fuel. I use my motor vehicle regularly to run errands for which I could easily walk. I heat my home with oil, or natural gas, or propane, or electricity that is produced with these or other fossil fuels like coal. I purchase goods and services that were made far away from where I live, and need to be shipped great distances to reach me, consuming a considerable amount of fossil fuel. Heck, most of the time I do not even bother to check where the things are made, which I buy. I fly in an airplane once a year or more. I engage in recreational activities which frivilously waste fossil fuel. I know that alternative electricity providers like Bullfrog Power exist, and are available to me, but I have never investigated them. Or have investigated them, and deemed them "too costly". I have no idea where my food comes from. I do not make an effort to purchase organic foods, and so I end up eating food which was produced with chemical fertilizers which are made from fossil fuels. I regularly consume beverages from single-use plastic bottles, which are made from fossil fuels. I often do not recycle these bottles. Even if I do recycle these bottles, I am still contributing significantly to the consumption of the fossil fuels from which they are made, since the beverage companies largely do not use recycled plastic to produce them.

My retirement savings and pension funds are managed by someone else, like a financial advisor, or my employer's pension plan, and I really do not care where that money is invested as long as there is enough of it in the end for me to retire. Or, I do care where that money is invested, but there is nothing I can do about it anyway. Nonetheless, I have never once looked to see where that money was invested. And even if I have looked, I have never even so much as written a letter to the portfolio managers to express my concern that it be invested in green initiatives. And I have never discussed the matter with coworkers, to try to make them care. Or, I make my own investment decisions, but they are made solely according to what will make me the most money, because money is all that really matters in the end. Because my personal future is more important than the planet's.

It was my last year of university, and I'd made friends with a great bunch of people who unfortunately are no longer in my life. My friend Matthew, his girlfriend of the time whose name I do not even recall, and her sister Anne who was a friend and classmate of mine who shared some Philosophy classes with me. There was some kind of "environment club" at the university, and we were all members. There was a lot of talk around the world of reviving Earth Day, which was something that had taken place 20 years prior to then, back in 1970, but somehow did not become an annual event. The planet was in trouble and needed our help - and we rose to the call. The four of us spearheaded the efforts in the local community, and after weeks of planning we proudly pulled off a pretty spectacular day to celebrate the Planet we call home - Mother Earth.

We started the day with a sunrise ceremony at the lookoff (pictured). Incidentially, the house that my wife-to-be grew up in is in that picture - though it would be a number of years yet before I would meet her. The little church we got married in is hidden amongst some trees in the foreground. Unfortunately I don't recall exactly what was involved in our sunrise ceremony - I've got a pretty terrible memory like that. I do recall that afterwards we all went back to my place for a pancake breakfast. And after this we had a full day ahead of us in the Student Union Building at the University - we'd booked the main level and had tables and booths set up over the whole area, for people and organisations to put on displays and talk about the environment, and concrete ways we could do something positive to help. My terrible memory fails me again as to just what this all entailed - I do recall that we had a dozen or more people set up in booths and tables, I just do not recall what they all were. I do recall there was one lady with a cloth diapering business who was giving out information on how much better cloth diapering was for the environment, than disposables. Incidentally, that link is to the blog of the woman who owns the store where my wife works - a cloth diapering store here in Ottawa. When our fist child was born 8 years ago now, my wife was dead-set against my idea of using cloth diapers. But I managed to convert her, and now she calls herself a cloth-diapering evangelist :-)

With Earth Hour just around the corner, it is probably time for me to sit down and write out this article which has been fermenting in my head for some time now. No, I won't be taking part in Earth Hour again this year. Just like last year. Why not? In part because I do not want to support any activity which lets people think they can shut their lights off for an hour a year, dust their hands off, and tell themselves that they've done something good for the planet. Also in part because I was already pretty happy with Earth Day, thank you very much. But I guess for most people, giving up one day a year for the planet was just too much to ask, so they had to shorten it to an hour.

And just for the record, we actively do quite a bit to reduce our 'carbon footprint', even if I do not give a crap about it. In part on the odd chance that someone is right and it does matter, I don't want anyone pointing back to me 50 years from now and saying I was part of the problem, not the solution. And in part because reducing one's carbon footprint actually has an indirect effect on some of the things that actually matter. For example, we switched our electricity to Bullfrog Power, which means I choose to pay more for carbon-free electricity for my house (and this website). And while we are not vegetarian, we get the vast majority of our meats directly from local small farmers. According to Diet for a Small Planet, feedlot beef consumes about 25 times the natural resources as getting the same nutrition from plants. However, grass-feed free-range beef like the stuff we get, consumes only about 3 times! Still not perfect, but considerably better than the run-of-the-mill feedlot stuff you buy at the supermarket. We are a family of 4 - soon 5 - and yet we live in a tiny house just shy of 1000 square feet. We could afford a bigger one, and this tiny house is certainly challenging at times, but we manage because it is responsible. We have a car, but we want to get rid of it. My number one goal on my job front is not a "better career", but rather, to get a job close enough to home that I can walk, and finally get rid of our 1 car.

The big problem I have with global warming is that it is too controversial, and there is far too much room for naysayers to debunk it. Meanwhile, there is rock-solid, indisputable science out there for a whole raft of other environmental issues that need our attention, and nobody is talking about them because our attention has been diverted by this nonsense.

The life of a parent is full of maintaining a fine balance and drawing fine lines. In this case we absolutely despise wasting food and avoid it at all costs, but this can be difficult to do when raising kids who can invariably be picky one day and not the next. We want to raise them with a proper respect for food, but at the same time to not want to be pandering to their every wish so that we are guaranteed nothing will go to waste. Another fine balance to maintain. We've used creative means like this for years now, to get the boys to eat. There was the "supper timbit" stage when we'd deep fry things in ball form to get the kids to eat them. It is like a "gateway drug" for them - if they'll eat a new food in deep-fried-ball format, you can often convince them they'll like it in other formats, too. Yet at the same time, our kids are no strangers to going to bed (or to school in the morning) hungry because they would not eat what was on the table. They are very used to hearing the phrase "this is not a restaurant".

In this case rather than be authoritarian and demand my son finish his sandwich, I decided to see if I could "slighly reformat" the sandwich and trick my son into eating it by making a big deal out of it, making it as fun as possible for him, and part of that was making a movie and telling him he was going to be a Youtube star. It worked so well that a little while after making this video the other boy asked for his uneaten sandwich to be turned into a grilled sandwich ;)

Here is a (slightly modified to remove some personal details) email that I just sent out to parents of the 24th Ottawa Beavers and Scouts. If you happen to be involved with the Scouting movement in Ottawa but are not a member of one of the below groups, yet would still like to get involved in this fundraiser, please feel free to contact me as we'd love to include you!

Otherwise if you just live in the area, please drop by and enjoy some hot chocolate, and make a donation to a good cause!

Last week I was sitting around doing nothing, as I often do, when I got to thinking about whether or not Haiti grows coffee, and if so, would I be helping out the situation there if I switched all of my coffee consumption over to it. So I did a quick search on my favorite coffee supply website, the Green Beanery, and found that Haiti does indeed grow coffee. And from the description provided, it even sounded like a pretty good bean, too!

Before I go any further I do want to say that I am not suggesting that Haiti needs trade instead of aid, because nothing could be further from the truth. Right now Haiti needs a massive amount of aid to rebuild after this disaster. But in order to be self-sustaining, it will also need to engage in some amount of international trade, and it seemed to me that switching my coffee consumption to Haitian coffee would be a pretty easy way for me to help out in that area.

With the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and all the talk of making donations there, I thought I would write a bit on why I will not be donating money to Haiti. In the process I'll tell a bit about where I do like to donate money. While some of what I'm about to write may seem cold, I hope you will not judge me for it just as I will not judge you for the donations you make to the charitable organisations of your choosing. I don't really think there is a wrong way to donate to charity, as long as you are doing it regularly, and ideally putting some thought into it. The latter is why I will not be donating to Haiti - I've put a lot of thought into my donations, and this simply does not fit into the "donation profile" that I have chosen for me. What you choose as right for you, is up to you of course.

Shortly after moving to Ottawa about a dozen years ago is when I first started making charitable donations of any meaningful amount, and at the time it was in the form of the Ottawa Food Bank. Every time we went grocery shopping, we'd pick up a generous amount of extras and drop them into the box they had at the grocery store. It was easy to do, and easy to remember, and it was also the earliest of my inklings of what would become my "donation profile". But more on that in a bit. It was after a few years of doing this, that a co-worker pointed out to me that with the amount of groceries I donate every week, it added up to quite a bit of money, and I'd actually be better off donating a cheque to the food bank and getting a tax receipt back. "Hey", I thought, "not a bad idea!". So that's what I did for the next while.

This week's Beaver meeting involved a lesson on trees, along with an associated craft. To prepare, I went around the neighbourhood picking leaves off the trees. While many had fallen, there were still lots left - some not even turned colour yet. As far as softwoods go, I only took in 2 samples - a small clipping from the spruce in our backyard, and another small clipping from our cedar hedge. The main reason for this was that the craft involved the leaves of the hardwoods. Speaking of which, I managed to get a good number of leaves from White Oak, Sugar Maple, Manitoba Maple (which I learned when looking it up, is actually a 'real' maple, contrary to popular belief), Red Maple, Corkscrew Willow, Service Berry (really nice red all year long), Mountain Ash (Dogberry), Chestnut, and yet another type of maple whose name I could not find in the short time I had to look it up.

I started the talk with a few words about the importance of Nature in the Scouting movement, and reminded the boys that our Beaver Promise is to take care of the world. I also painted a wondrous picture for them and said that if you took an experienced Scout and blindfolded him, and dropped him anywhere in Canada, he'd be able to tell you where he is based on trees, and other vegetation and animals that he saw around him. As an example I then held up the piece of Cedar I had, and mentioned that in Nova Scotia, where I am from, cedars are very uncommon.