Why Bother?

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by Michael Pollan
The New York Times Magazine, April 20, 2008
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"Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart."

I can relate exactly to the discouragement he's talking about.  Reducing, reusing, recycling and composting have become second nature, my car is energy-efficient and driven only when necessary, and yes, most of the bulbs in the house are fluorescent.  My diet more and more consists of whole foods, locally and sustainably grown (to the extent that that's possible during the winter).  And as Michael says, there is some virtue in reducing my personal footprint, and the feeling of doing something positive, however small, is incredibly satisfying.  But still, with the global environmental situation deteriorating at an ever-increasing rate, I wonder if it's really making any difference other than for me personally. 

But that personal connection is precisely where it has to start. Wendell Berry believed that nothing was likely to change until we healed the split between what we think and what we do...

For Berry, the “why bother” question came down to a moral imperative: “Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.”

Michael offers some really good suggestions for how we might answer the "why bother?" question, but the one he is most passionate about is growing some - even a little - of our own food.

Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind...

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit - will you get a load of that zucchini?! - suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Here's the link again to the full article.  I find Michael Pollan a delight to read.  He shares his truth with compassion and humor and I like how he talks more about soul and spirit than about science.

And in case you think it's too complicated, too much trouble, you don't have room, blah blah, here are some pics of my "world's smallest organic vegetable farm" I started a couple of years ago.  I had to move it up onto the deck because critters ate most of the produce when it was down at ground level.

Strawberries, cucumber, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, beets, red potatoes, snow peas, sugar snap peas, pattypan squash - green onions, garlic and herbs are on the back steps.





Pattypan squash just starting to form - each one begins as a huge yellow flower.







This year will see more of the above and some new varieties - Pak Choi, romaine lettuce, spaghetti squash (all dwarf varieties suited to containers) and Blue Curled Scotch Kale.  Purple Ruffles basil, cilantro and the first crop of broccoli have started indoors, will plant out late May.  Might go totally wild and crazy and plant some corn too.  Take that, Monsanto!

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Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
- Wendell Berry
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Why Mow?

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From Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
by Michael Pollan
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"Mowing the lawn, I felt like I was battling the earth rather than working it: each week it sent forth a green army and each week I beat it back with my infernal machine.  Unlike every other plant in my garden, the grasses were anonymous, massified, deprived of any change or development whatsoever, not to mention any semblance of self-determination.  I ruled a totalitarian landscape.

"Hot monotonous hours behind the mower gave rise to existential speculations.  I spent part of one afternoon trying to decide who, in the absurdist drama of lawn mowing, was Sisyphus.  Me?  The case could certainly be made.  Or was it the grass, pushing up through the soil every week, one layer of cells at a time, only to be cut down and then, perversely, encouraged (with lime, fertilizer, etc.) to start the whole doomed process over again?  Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in the lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed.  Lawns are nature purged of sex or death.  No wonder Americans like them so much...

"Gardening, as compared to lawn care, tutors us in nature's ways, fostering an ethic of give-and-take with respect to the land.  Gardens instruct us in the particularities of place.  They lessen our dependence on distant sources of energy, technology, food, and for that matter, interest.  For if lawn mowing feels like copying the same sentence over and over, gardening is like writing out new ones, an infinitely variable process of invention and discovery.  Gardens also teach the necessary if un-American lesson that nature and culture can be compromised, that there might be some middle ground between the lawn and the forest - between those who would complete the conquest of the planet in the name of progress, and those who believe it's time we abdicated our rule and left the earth in the care of its more innocent species.  The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway."

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Michael Pollan is currently the editor of Modern Library's gardening series, a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine, and on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.  His other works include The Botany of Desire, A Place of My Own, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules and In Defense of Food.
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Trust or Fear - A Lesson in Accounting

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From The Tribes of Eden, by Dr. Bill Thomas
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Tribes of Eden is a compelling adventure story that begins in the not very distant future.  Here's a very short synopsis from one of the book's sites:
On the run after America's sudden and total collapse, a family finds sanctuary in the heart of a community thriving "off the grid".  But when the lure of a virtual new world order divides the family, the elders of the community recognize that humanity's fate rests with a chosen girl and a surprising alliance between the least powerful - the young and the old.


In this scene two young brothers, Zach and Virgil, have ridden on horseback through the night to seek advice from Professor Ned Wolff, their uncle, who now lives within the walls of a Demo (demographic unit) set up by the GRID on the former university campus.  Ned's talking about the "old system", before The Fall...

"The whole system was built on just two things: trust and oil"

"Then the oil ran out", Zach volunteered.

Ned shook his head.  "Not really, there's still plenty of oil in the ground.  The problems started when cheap, easy to get oil ran out.  Even so, the old republic could have survived, even till today, if it had kept people's trust.  The old republic was founded on the idea that people in search of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' could solve even the biggest problems.  In order for it to work, people needed to believe in each other, trust each other, work with each other.  You know...", he prodded them, "We the people...".

The brothers stared blankly at Ned.  Rusty mantras from the old republic's glory days didn't matter, not any more.

"OK", he sighed.  "You want the take-home message?  Someone or something, I'm not sure who or what, decided to transfer assets from the trust account to the fear account."

Virgil nodded.  "Xenos are afraid.  As far as I can tell, that's the whole point of the GRID."

"I think it started when those lunatics flew airliners into the World Trade Center.  They acted with the intention of creating fear - terror.  Here's the thing, though.  They also provided a world-class lesson in how thin and brittle trust could be.  For the first time, the old republic abandoned its faith in people, its trust in trust - it surrendered completely, totally and without reservation, to fear."

"Yeah", Zach said, "they scared the airplanes right out of the air.  That was the first time I saw the blue sky without the white streaks."

"Contrails", Virgil added for the sake of accuracy.

"Right, contrails."

Ned Wolff took a deep breath.  "I've been thinking lately about the last days of the old republic.  You fellas probably don't remember that much about it but it was a great thing, a fine thing, and it lasted more than two hundred years.  Then it was gone."

"The old republic was a mess, didn't deserve to survive."  Zach spoke with certainty.

"Lots of people say that", Ned agreed, "but I don't think it's true.  I've been reading about this, really digging in."

"I don't think the old republic fell - I think it was pushed.  Powerful people decided their investments would be more profitable if they transferred them, so to speak, from the trust account to the fear account."

The Master Herdsman leaned forward. 

"How'd they get away with it?"


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Dr. Bill Thomas is an international expert on elderhood and geriatric medicine. He is the founder of the Eden Alternative and Green House Project, a writer and musician.
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