Monday, December 01, 2008

Downs and ups

It’s been a while since my last post, due in part to other commitments. However, I have to admit, I felt a bit despondent after reading the last couple of posts at monbiot.com. I’ve read his stuff for quite a while, and was always impressed by the optimism and can-do attitude but the last couple really quite scared me. The first was the blackest projection I’ve yet seen that it’s actually pretty much too late to do anything now. The second was the opportunities missed in the recent Climate Change bill. Faced with such a bleak projection, it's difficult to see where to go.
However, it’s important to take a range of views, and there’s great value in reading the no-holds-barred worst case scenarios. It can fire you up, make you angry, make you determined for change. And it’s also important to see the good around you.

And I’ve been inspired by a couple of things this week.

The first is the website of the East Anglian Food Link – a not-for-profit organisation promoting resilient food production. The thing I like about the site is the fact that it doesn’t start by highlighting a big problem and then revealing the magic bullet solution. Instead it states “The problems are relatively clear, the solutions more tentative” and provides evidence, discussion and debate. I was interested to learn that the evidence they have gathered does not support the notion that the answer is simply local food, and also that the Real Bread Campaign was launched a week or so ago on 26th November. I was amazed to find that, despite living in a medium-sized city, there are only two places near me that bake “real bread” (based on being made of only four basic ingredients, and without the use of improvers). The campaign’s website is, like that of the EAFL, engaging and clear.

The second source of inspiration is, of all things, soil… I’d been reading National Geographic’s September 2008 issue, all about where food comes from (no prizes for guessing it’s the soil!). But the thing that interested me most was the discussion around terra preta, the dark soil created in the Amazon thousands of years ago by indigenous peoples enriching the soil with charcoal. Not only does it create a microbial environment that improves crop yields, but, also locks away vast quantities of carbon. I’d already read an overview of this process in the book “What about China?”, so was really delighted to find that tantalising mention expanded upon in Nat Geo. While many in the developed world are looking for high tech solutions (seeding oceans, space mirrors etc), it’s a wonderful thought that a solution to global warming could be simple, centuries old, and under our feet all the time.




No comments: