A new academic paper (Read it here…) points to the fact that we are all writing the climate change story. For example; if we drive less, and seek out climate friendly cars, we provide less financial support for oil and gas companies and conventional car manufacturers. Our choices will portend a new future, leading key players to hesitate before investing in conventional fuels and cars.
If we choose organic, (chemical and gmo free) foods, we incentivize capital to flow toward organic food and away from processed and artificially engendered foods. “Real food”, sourced nearby and prepared in kitchens instead of factories, can put the stopper back in the bottle of climate change.
A “sensitive intervention point” currently exists around local food systems. Building and actively supporting local, clean, non industrialized food systems may be the one crucial thing we all can do to bring our situation back from the brink.
Locally sourced unprocessed ancestral or “real” food has a tiny carbon footprint compared to industrialized food. Food transportation’s climate change impacts now include (for example) the climate cost of shipping a salmon caught in Alaska to China for processing there, before returning that same salmon back to the US for sale. This may seem like an egregious example, and it is, but where and when and how we buy salmon will either fund or defund the madness.
The same principle applies to everything you eat. Support for small organic farms in our immediate surrounding area gives farmers the ability to continue growing food in a manner that allows the soil to sequester carbon. Farms that pasture grazing animals, as well as those growing produce, deserve support. Grazing animals greatly enhance carbon sequestration. More farmers will be inspired to undertake small organic farms and animal pasturing operations when they can provide a living wage for a family.
And if we do it here in Davis, others will see that it works and that it tastes good and can be made affordable and feasible for everyone. It will happen elsewhere and each community will become stronger as it meets its own challenges and finds its own rewards.
Groceries are not just groceries and food is not just food. And you are not just a consumer. Everyone here today writes the story of tomorrow. How we put the pieces together today, with the storm clouds on the horizon, shapes the future of humanity.
We shape our economic forces. We decide who wins and who loses. Basically, if we don’t feed money to destructive forces, they can’t survive. Everybody eats and food is Big. We can, collectively, either take back our climate balance, or destroy it. The “sensitive intervention point” is here right now.