With The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan has become the evangelist for the ‘beyond organic’ movement. Although not preachy or pedagogic, this book is now a bible for people seeking to improve their health through the improvement of the health of our soils, animals, plants and of the planet as a whole. The ‘Beyond Organic’ movement not only questions industrial food productions systems, it also takes a hard look at what has become of the organic movement. And it is clear after reading Pollan’s brilliant, incredibly well-researched and so eloquently written book, that the essence of what made organic organic in the 70s has pretty much fully disappeared in today’s society. Instead, organic has become a marketing device, a method ignorant of its own carbon footprint that has succeeded (at least in the US) in applying many traditional industrial production techniques to a variety of new foods, under a new name, ideology and, of course, under a new price range. While still a better alternative than its traditional industrial counterpart (and Pollan has enough stories to tell about the rise and deceit of the industrial food production system to make one never want to eat industrial food again), organic today has little left of the ideals that once brought farmers and consumers together in an effort to return to a healthier and simpler way of obtaining and eating food.

However, this does not necessarily imply that a dismissal of all things organic is in order. There continues to be clear benefits to eating organic and to reject most so-called foods that are issued from the big industrial food machine: anything that comes in a shape or form that clearly can not be found in nature as well as anything that comes in a container or package as this is an indication of a highly processed food. Eating organic ensures with a relatively high degree of certainty that no chemical fertilizer and pesticides were used and that no hormones were injected into the meat you buy. Finally, it means probably more vitamins and minerals than the average non-organic food. But even more importantly than all of this, buying organic also means a commitment to a lifestyle and to a way of approaching the world that is badly needed today. And if organic is not the final destination, at least it is a step in the right direction.

This destination is the beyond organic movement with its slow food, permacultures, sustainable agriculture, farmers’s markets, and community supported programmes. It is a return to the eating of whole foods and to a renewed kinship with our planet. Pollan demonstrates clearly the link that exists between the various elements of a food chain, from the soils from which we grow our food to the insects that play a role in the growth (or not) of a plant which will be eaten by an animal which we will in turn eat (for those who still believe in the eating of animals). Humans are active at every level of this food chain, and whatever decisions we decide to make can have a negative or positive impact on this chain, and thus, on our own health. It is a symbiotic loop that is reminiscent of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, showing once again that human beings can not take the liberty of assuming that they are independent of the world they inhabit. Everything we do, the many ways we impact our planet and our ecological systems, the decisions we make regarding the plants and animals that surround us, all impact us and our health (mental and physical) directly.

While Pollan has become a bit of an activist, speaking against Monsanto and genetically modified foods, The Omnivore’s Dilemna set out initially to simply show a history of food and of our relationship to it. By placing the rise of industrial production firmly into the greater context of our evolution and of our historical relationship to food, Pollan is able to show how we have become deceived and brainwashed by the promises and cheap and instantaneous rewards of industrial food, a food that unfortunately has little left in common with the food that we human beings evolved to eat and assimilate.

As I have posted several times before, I believe in the benefits of technology in the long run. I believe that we will, at some point in the future, master enough knowledge to create artificial foods that taste good, that are beneficial to us and that are manufactured in a way which is at peace with the environment. However, we have not reached that stage. We are still living in a world in which corporations are pushing sugar and unhealthy processed foods down our throats, making false claims about the health benefits of their products, bribing government officials to get clearance for substances that are clearly toxic, abusing our environment in dangerous ways, using unimaginable cruelty towards the animals that are part of our food chain, and all in the name of profit. While the long term future of food lies clearly with the scientists and the nutritionists (hopefully without the pressure of corporations), the immediate and short term future on the other hand must imply a return to a more natural way of eating, one which is at peace with the planet and in harmony with the way evolution transformed us over millions of years.

I once submitted several questions to the online discussion platform for social and environmental change www.droppingknowledge.org (a platform which I helped build). One of these questions raised the issue of whether it makes sense to spend so much money on space exploration when so much needs to be done on earth. I asked the question because this theme is of interest to me, although I have never believed that reducing our investment in space programs would directly and positively affect problems such as poverty or pollution. It is not more money that we need to overcome these problems. It is commitment and sacrifices of another type. Nonetheless, I have encountered many social thinkers and environmentalists who see no purpose in space exploration and regard it as a waste of resources and while I can see their point to a certain extent, I remain fully convinced in the beauty and mystery of space exploration. I also believe that man’s destiny lies in the stars and that it will not be long before some of us begin to leave the blue planet behind.In the Shadow of the Moon is a outstanding documentary film on the Apollo Space Program (the Mercury Program is briefly mentioned, referencing The Right Stuff, the book by Tom Wolf, which was turned into an excellent film by Philip Kaufman in 1983), narrated by the small group of men who had the privilege, and courage, to be the first humans to step on an alien world. The film is remarkably well put together and adroitly combines the fascinating tales and emotional insights of the astronauts with some amazing footage from NASA. It all feels so real that one immediately forgets that the film is an assemblage of original footage taken 35 years ago by cameras in cockpits or attached to spacecrafts and lunar modules. This footage is so skilfully intertwined with the narrative that one could be forgiven for thinking that the film crew shot additional footage to serve the storyline. What can not be forgiven however, after watching this brilliant and intensely touching film, is to continue thinking that the moon landings were a creation of the US government and that they in fact never took place. I believe there is plenty of proof in In the Shadow of the Moon to dispel any such absurd notions.

But what stands out the most for me after watching this film is the spirituality that these men developed after experiencing not only the beauty of the cosmos but also the serenity and fragility of our planet as seen from space. Some of the shots of Earth taken by the astronauts during the various Apollo flights have become omnipresent in our media over the past 30 years and, more importantly, have become synonymous in certain circles with a visualization of our planet as the self-regulating homeostatic organism named Gaia. First proposed by Dr. James Lovelock (who incidentally started developing his theory while working for NASA) in the early 70s, but already hinted at by Vladimir Vernadsky in the 20s in his seminal book The Biosphere, the Gaia theory has been embraced by most people who feel empathy towards our planet and who regard it as a connected and living organism that deserves our respect and attention. And while Gaianism has been around for a while, and has even regained some of its momentum in the past few years in connection with the increased number of environmental issues facing our planet, a new belief has emerged, one that merges a deep respect for the Earth and all of its living creatures with a conviction in the powers of technology to help us overcome these issues and to, in the process, achieve a deeper spirituality and a global consciousness. Drawing, among others, on the work of the French monk Teilhard de Chardin who believed that technology would help us reach The Omega Point which is a higher state of global consciousness, these believers, and i am one of them, in TechnoGaianism tend to also be transhumanists with a social agenda and a democratic slant (James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg is a particularly good reference on this latter subject).

Perhaps we do need Space and to get closer to the stars to remind us not to forget our duties towards Earth. Where some people might detect an irony or even an incompatibility between space exploration and the preservation and love of our planet, I see an interconnectedness following its logical progress and taking the human race to its next step in evolution, clearly driven for the first time in history by Man itself and in agreement with a desire to see all living and non living creatures existing in perfect harmony with this or any other planet and thus, with the cosmos as a whole.

One would be hard-pressed these days to not notice the ever-increasing role that China is playing in all affairs of the world. The hunger of this industrial juggernaut for more consumption and production seems to be constantly rising, swallowing in the process so much energy and raw materials that an increasing number of people around the world are now asking about the human and environmental cost of this manufacturing escalation. Naturally, the Chinese are responding that these people should also question the same cost produced by their own countries over the past 100 years, that China has a right to augment its productivity and the ‘well-being’ of its people and that the country is doing more than any others to combat the negative environmental effects of its alarmingly fast entry into the world of mass consumption and production.
Still, the statistics are alarming: 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, coal production to double until 2020, 400 new cities planned over the next 20 years (including 233 Eco-cities, if the Dongtan model proves successful), around 14,000 people dying per year in industrial accidents (Corpwatch), about 60 percent (700 million people) of the population are poor peasants, the second largest producer of CO2 after the US, which it will overtake next year, the list goes on…
How can such an incredibly growth take place without triggering a chain reaction of negative consequences for many of the Chinese people, for the planet and thus, for all of us?

Edward Burtynsky’s fascination with images of nature transformed by man has led him to create stunning photography of mines, quarries, dams, and other human interventions in locations where only nature existed before…In Manufactured Landscapes, he takes his camera to China and attempts to create an ‘objective’ account of its industrialization. He refrains from bombarding us with information about the country in general and about what we see on screen. Instead, he lets his images, moving and still, do the talking, occasionally punctuated by a simple and short voice-over whose economy serves to trigger a thought process rather than to fill our heads with data.
The result is fascinating, beautiful to watch at times, and mind-boggling at other times when the visuals force us to confront the absurdity of a worldwide system that forces most people to react in a similar fashion in similar circumstances: more is better, even if it means exhausting all of our resources in the process. In his very informative book ‘Collapse’, Jared Diamond shows how societies keep on making the same mistake and will drain their resources until it is too late. In most cases, the intention is not to do so. It is simply usually too difficult to assess the gravity of the situation until it is too late, and, often, as is the case with China today, other demands are placed on the society that seem to take priority over anything else.

One of the more powerful segments in the film is about the 3 Gorges Dam. Burtynski’s photographs show a ruined and nightmarish landscape around the dam, where dozens of cities have had to be relocated to give way to the new river. Most of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by this dramatic redefining of the landscape were poor to begin with, and then were asked to dismantle their houses, brick by brick, and transport them miles away where they could be rebuilt. The valley now looks like it has been bombed, a frightening and eerie scenery that could have served as the set of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. But the irony of it all is that, only a few days ago, the news came out, after much suspicion on the part of environmentalists that it would, that the valley has become an ecological disaster (landslides, pollution and water contamination….) and that all houses, which the people have rebuilt brick by brick, must now be moved again, even further away from the river. The cost of the dam and of the various relocations of the inhabitants of the valley must now be approaching 30 billion dollars.

Manufactured Landscapes, although using China as a canvas, is a reflection on the future of the planet, on the course of action we humans decide to take, and whether we are strong enough to do what is necessary to alter the path of destruction that seems to be our preferred choice so far.

It was with great interest that I started watching this channel 4 documentary, a response to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and, really, a response to what the producers and director (a certain Martin Durkin, who, 10 years ago was chastised by the Independent Television Commission for misleading some of the people he interviewed in his anti-environmentalist documentaries, something he apparently did again in this case with Carl Wunsch, who claims to have been deceived) of this anti-propaganda piece of propaganda see as an increasingly dangerous global warming bio-fool movement.
Now, I happen to be one of these bio-fools, but with what I hope is an open mind. So if I hear that some people are saying that global warming is a hoax, I am interested in finding out why they are saying it.

The GGWS starts strongly enough, with some interesting, albeit not new, evidence proving that severe temperature fluctuations have been with us as long as there has been an earth. The documentary then goes on to show that CO2 emissions play only a minimal role in raising temperatures, and that, in fact, temperatures affect CO2 emissions rather than the other way around. Finally, the point is made that solar flares are the source of the current rise in temperatures and that man-made CO2 emissions have, therefore, pretty much nothing to do with the global warming of the earth.

What is the agenda behind this documentary? There is a belief in some circles that global warming and what it embodies is a scam, an effort by many people in this world to deceive the rest of the world, a desire by corporations and organizations to profit from the hype, and an attempt by some to slow down the growth of developing countries. And if we are to believe a certain Lyndon LaRouche and his cohorts of anti-environmentalists, man-made global warming is a hoax created to limit human potential, to control population growth and to curb the rise of technology. The more one looks into this issue, and the more one realizes that the idea of man-made global warming has a lot of enemies, and not only in the more obvious circles of right wing capitalistic ideology. Man-made global warming is now regarded as both a profit-driven conspiracy and, at the same time, the delusional ramblings of bio-fools who would rather save the planet than humanity.

Let us assume for a moment that all of the above points (I personally agree with the sad fact that global warming has become a profitable path for many, regardless of their true motivation) have various degrees of truth in them. Let us assume that the earth is going through a natural warming period, part of a cycle that started 4.3 billions years ago. Does this justify taking all responsibility away from what we are doing to the planet? Should Man be therefore fully exempt of accountability in regards to his action towards the environment? This is the message of this documentary. And this is a very dangerous message. Fearing for the future of the planet does not make one a Luddite, a preferred term of the anti-environmentalists. The impact of Man on its environment has never been so pronounced and profound. Even if solar flares are indeed responsible, so far, for most of the warming on earth, it does not automatically imply that we must ignore the role played by man, a role which we are only starting to understand. And the precautionary principle has nothing to do with this. There is evidence of direct harm to the planet, whether via CO2 emissions or deforestation or animal extinction. The director and producers of this documentary seem to want to encourage viewers, by putting all emphasis on the earth’s cyclical temperature changes, to believe that it is acceptable to ignore these facts.

Now, let us assume that man-made global warming is indeed true. If we believe this documentary, we can continue to do as we please, to pollute, to suck from the planet its resources and riches, to put man first and nature second. Again, assuming that we are responsible for what is happening to the planet right now, what kind of a future would you rather live in? Isn’t it worth being careful now? Some speak of the feeling of collective guilt that is being pressed upon the citizens of this world. What of it? Can’t the Western world deal with that guilt? Can’t the French, Germans, Americans, British and others learn to drive less, to switch light bulbs, to recycle, and, really, to be aware? That is not guilt. These are good manners for the 21st century. And when it comes to developing countries, we must clearly not hinder their growth by forcing upon them cost prohibitive measures, but rather we must use our own expertise, knowledge and financial resources to help guide them towards a growth that balances environmental concerns with in some cases, more traditional methods. This film would have you believe that the same type of pressure that is put on the Western world is applied to developing countries, but as pointed out by www.realclimate.org, the Kyoto protocol does not apply to developing countries (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/)

I do not partake in the idea that being an environmentalist means being anti-technology or being in favour of limiting human growth and potential. It is about finding a way to balance these forces so that everyone can benefit, on a healthy planet, from a healthy future where technology can play its part.