Urban Food ForestFollow

When the hell did "carbon footprint" become not just a nutty extension of environmentalism, or even a part of environmentalism, but is now the defining characteristic? "Green" simply means any product or activity that is good for the environment. It's specifically in reference to the idea of organic growing things being "green" compared to stuff made via industrial activity. You're free to think that lowering carbon footprint helps make something green, but it's not even remotely close to the definition of green. That's just a crazy redefinition to fit a single current issue (and a pretty crappy one to boot).



I just found it strange that someone would think of one plant as being a "green alternative" to another. They're both plants. They're both quite similar plants in fact (cotton having nettles as well). The only thing that makes cotton less green is that it's easier to make into fibers suitable for making clothes out of and thus it's used more often in ultimately industrial processes. There's nothing stopping you from growing cotton in a completely "green" fashion, and you'd presumably get much more value out of it as a crop than growing stinging nettles. It's not the plants that make it green, but how much the plant is used by industry.

Wave a magic wand and make stinging nettles the plant used by the clothing industry, and it will become the less green option. It's not about the plant, so if we're debating which to grow in a small environment like this one, we should stick to the one that will be more productive and easier to harvest.



Honestly? I think you're responding to cherry picked information telling you which products are green and which aren't, in a completely inconsistent manner (except perhaps which industries lobbied the right politicians to get onto a list). Really? Polyester is green because we're recycling plastic? Other things are green because of water consumption? Yet others based on animal use? You really don't see how patchwork the results are?


I could probably come up with a reason why *any* product or process can be considered green. If we're going with such inconsistent terminology, that is. It really is a meaningless word IMO. May have meant something once, but today the label "green" has more value and weight than whatever actually makes something green.

That's his debate style: exhaust the opponent trying to dig out of mounds of bullshit and just drown in it instead.

Sure. But it's not the cotton that is not "green". It's the processes used to grown and harvest cotton in the large quantities required to keep up with world demand that make it so. I just think that sometimes people really need to step back from the labels and think about what the hell they're doing.

It's not the first time I've heard someone make a statement that seems to make sense based on labels and common understanding, but are pretty ludicrous if you step back and look at the whole picture. I remember listening to some radio show and they had some female celebrity on talking about organic foods. For the most part, what she said made sense right up until she started talking about how if more people bought organic, the price of organic food would come down and be competitive with the regular stuff in the grocery stores and wouldn't that just be wonderful cause then we could get away from all those pesticides and big farm equipment and whatnot!

Of course, the difference between what we label as "organic" in our grocery stores is entirely about the process of growing. And to grown enough food in sufficient quantity to provide for our population, we'd have to adopt the same "non-organic" processes used today. That's *why* they exist. What makes food "organic" is that it's grown in small farms, with no pesticides or hormones, and no preservatives, and using smaller farming equipment. If more people bought organic, then the price would go *up* not down, because demand would outstrip the amount of food that can be produced that way (or they'll just change the meaning of "organic").


That particular example always struck me because it showed someone praising the use of non-industrial techniques, while clearly failing to understand what that really means. Industrial processes benefit from increased scale. It costs less per unit of production the more production you have. Thus, costs go down as volume goes up. Non industrial processes do the opposite. As volume goes up, prices go up. But this spokeswomen seemed to think that you could "go organic", leaving behind the dirty industry of food production, while somehow magically retaining the volume price effects. I just always thought that was amusing, and very telling about how people often get so caught up in labels that they forget what the label means.


If you produce and harvest sufficient stinging nettle to be an "alternative to cotton", you will need to use the same techniques to do so, then it is no more or less green than cotton. There is no magic bullet. Just labeling something "green" doesn't mean you can just make more green products and magically avoid the environmental effects. It doesn't work that way.

Sounds like a great place for some anonymous gay sex.

He had his shins shot off when he was killin' fiddy men.

You know that that feeling when you get excited to read something and track down the original publication; only to have it torn away from you at the last second because your university doesn't subscribe to that particular journal?

Yeah, living that right now.


Edited, Mar 20th 2012 12:32pm by someproteinguy

Well, only if you think that chemical companies and pesticide companies are not trying to convince people to buy their products, regardless of whether they are necessary or not.

I mean, you would think that people wouldn't take anti-biotics for colds when it is a fact that colds are viruses and anti-biotics only work on bacteria - but lo and behold, people over use anti-biotics, often in cases where they do nothing at all.

It isn't much of a stretch to imagine that something similar could be at work here. Common sense is not so common, as the saying goes.

That, and yield isn't everything. A lot of it has to do with the overall way that industrial agriculture is structured, where organic practices don't fit in as well with the whole model of doing things (mechanization, structure of plots, mono-culture etc)

- And, don't forget that there are other input costs to take into account - so for example weeding using herbicides is generally less labour intensive than hand-weeding or mulching and other methods used by organic producers - so even with the extra cost of the herbicide - the industrial farm may come out ahead in terms of costs (especially since most of the harmful environmental effects of the fertilizers/pesticides are externalized - for example, borne by fisheries and those who depend on them)

"Organic" doesn't mean you just throw some seeds at the ground and come back in twelve weeks. I'd bet that a drum of malathion costs less per plant than citrus oils or bags of ladybugs or whatever organic farms use to control pests.