One of my ongoing frustrations in trying to be a better consumer is that it’s pretty much impossible to judge what the best choice is without spending hours of research on every little purchase. I’ve blogged about this before. Try this: pick up something around you right now. Anything. What is it made out of? Where did the component parts come from? What inputs went into manufacturing it? Does it contain any chemicals? How were the people who made the item treated? What is required to maintain the item, and what are the impacts of that maintenance? The questions are endless and unanswerable, and apply to nearly everything. So we do the best we can with the information we have and hope for the best. Or we quit trying and just buy whatever we want.

Enter Good Guide! Imagine my delight when I read on their web site,

“GoodGuide strives to provide the world’s largest and most reliable source of
information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and
companies. GoodGuide’s mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green
products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC
Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent
“For-Benefit” company. We are committed to providing the information you need to
make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and
power in the marketplace.”

It’s a new organization. Apparently they’re aggregating all of this data and summing it up into product ratings. They seem to be working hard to ensure their data sources and evaluating teams are credible, and they’re considering not just health, or environmental, or social impacts, but all of them. Exactly what I need! My own extensive research is not practical, but looking stuff up on a web site is. This one has a long way to go; there are lots of products in the world in need of ratings. But it’s a start, and I’m sure glad to see it.

At David Creech’s suggestion, many of us ELCA World Hunger staff have gone vegetarian for Lent. (He explains why in previous posts, like yesterday’s.) Admittedly, I’m on the “vegetarian lite” plan – only abstaining from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. But even so, and even only a week into it, the experience has been educational for me.

I’ve never attempted to be vegetarian, but nor am I especially carnivorous. In fact, I find nothing appetizing about a steak or a roast; big slabs of meat kind of gross me out. At the same time, I really like most vegetables. I eat vegetarian meals regularly, though not exclusively, simply out of preference. So I didn’t think skipping meat two days a week would be particularly difficult – or even different – and I liked the reasons for doing it. I agreed to participate without hesitation.

And this is where the role of meat in my life and culture began asserting itself. I myself had no hesitation about an experiment in vegetarianism. Not so my family. I am the primary meal-maker in the house, and there was swift resistance to the idea of several weeks of a vegetarian menu. Not keen on preparing different food for myself and them, we agreed on the two-day-a-week plan. Lesson one: there is social pressure for me to eat meat, even in my own home. Or maybe especially there, since unlike a restaurant, we don’t each get exactly what we want every meal. My choices are tied to the choices of others.

I’m also learning that meat can be difficult to avoid. Compared to much of the world, meat here is cheap and plentiful, and therefore ubiquitous. It is on offer everywhere I go, and often, it’s no more expensive than non-meat choices. Last Wednesday, I consciously looked for vegetarian choices on a menu and discovered that there weren’t many. Lesson two: meaty meals can be easier to obtain than vegetarian ones. There’s a cultural expectation and incentive to eat meat every day.

Then there’s the challenge of remembering what day it is. It was sheer luck that I didn’t eat meat yesterday. At lunchtime, I opened the refrigerator and saw some leftover soup. I considered it, but decided that a leftover beet burger sounded better, so I had that instead. It wasn’t until I started thinking about dinner that I realized it was Wednesday and I almost ate Southwestern Chicken soup for lunch. Lesson three: when you live surrounded by a wide variety of plentiful food, it’s easy to be careless about what you eat.

All of this awareness in only a week! It’ll be interesting to see what else we learn – both individually and as a group – by the time Easter rolls around.

A few months ago, I read Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman. About halfway through the book, he describes what life will be like in the energy-efficient future. He tells about how your house has a Smart Black Box (SBB) that manages all of your home’s energy usage – lighting, temperature, appliances, TV, etc. The SBB can tell you how much energy each of your appliances uses, and each appliance can be programmed to run when you’d like. Many people choose to have them run whenever electricity is the cheapest – usually nights and weekends. This is possible because in the future, utility companies offer different rates and plans that correspond with demand and load. So it’s possible to keep your costs down by using you washing machine when demand for electricity is lower, and shutting them down when it’s higher. You win in cost, the utility companies win by spreading out demand and load, the environment wins because fewer power plants are needed and renewable energy sources can play a bigger role.

Imagine my surprise when I received an offer in the mail last week from my electric company offering me this service! I had no idea the future was so close!

Now, I’ve only summarized a small part of what Friedman describes in his book, and my electric company has offered me only part of my summary. But it was close enough to get my attention! For a small monthly fee, they will install a meter that records our hourly electricity usage. They will also publish online how much electricity costs each hour of the day. And while we can’t program our appliances to run at certain times, we can look at the rates and choose to run the washing machine when electricity is cheaper. If you sign up, you have to stay in the program for a year.

My husband and I looked at each other and said, “Should we do it?” Philosophically, we are both in favor, but I realized as we deliberated that the future is not yet here. There’s just not enough information. Our electric company can’t tell us anything about our various appliances’ current energy usage, so how big a difference will shifting our dishwashing hours make? Are we going to save a couple of cents? Several dollars? Will we save enough to make up for the monthly cost of the new, hourly meter? Will we end up paying more than we do now when, in August, the air conditioner runs pretty constantly and we’re stuck with high-demand rates during the day? Is this actually a stupid financial decision? Even though we favor the concept, we hesitated.

But in the end, we decided to try it. I like Friedman’s vision, and someone has to be an early-adopter on the path to the energy-efficient future. Why not us? If we’re lucky, it will save us money, too. So we mailed in the enrollment form. I’ll keep you posted.

Where our food comes from and how it’s produced is no laughing matter. But this video is just too much fun to pass up! Whether you agree with what the video has to say or not, it’s certainly an entertaining way to get a conversation started. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
-Nancy Michaelis

As you’ve no doubt been reading, David Creech is in Nicaragua learning about the effects of climate change on life. In keeping with that theme and bringing it closer to home, I have a suggestion: eat less meat. It’s not an original suggestion. Today, I’ve lifted it directly from The Sierra Club. They recently had a post on on their blog, The Green Life, which I thought made their case succinctly. You can click here to read the original, but I’ll quote the two paragraphs that I found most fascinating and actionable (and, actually, comprise most of the post):

For a quick understanding of lots of statistics, I find this page on BBC News interesting. It contains graphs from the UN’s 2008 Global Environment Outlook report, highlighting a variety of trends at the intersection of humans and the environment. In particular, the map of the world’s access to drinking water got my attention (you have to scroll down a bit). I knew parts of Africa have significant water issues; I didn’t realize that very nearly all of Africa had insufficient drinking water. Nor did I realize how much of Asia and South America are similarly troubled. The other graphs are interesting, too. A picture really does say a thousand words.

I think I can fairly say that the loss of biodiversity in the world is something the media reports regularly. We hear about polar bears and how many other animals face extinction. We hear about how much rain forest is being cut down each day and what a loss that presents not only for the animals and plants that live there, but also the future of pharmaceutical discovery.

What I personally have heard less about is the loss of crop diversity. Here’s something I came across today on the Web site of the Global Crop Diversity Trust: “…of the 7100 varieties of apple cultivated in USA 100 years ago, 6800 have disappeared forever.”

We’re down to 300 varieties of apples here. That’s nearly a 96% drop! Of something we eat! They also say that about 165,000 crop varieties (all types of food) are currently endangered. It’s not boding well for food security in the world.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust site gives several reasons that crop diversity is dropping, and one of them is climate change. Rising temperatures and drought are not helpful to many crops, especially in places that already trend toward the hot and dry.

There are lots of ways that climate change affects hunger in the world. Killing off the things we eat is the most direct one I’ve considered.

Today is the first day of fall. Technically yesterday was still summer, though the temperatures have been significantly cooler and the days noticably shorter for a few weeks now.

But inside certain windowless stores, there’s no telling what time of year it is. Well, maybe you can tell we’re in the back half. The clothing section included both short and long things, but darker shades indicate fall. September? A “Back-to-School” section implied August, but across the aisle were Christmas ornaments. November? December? A bit farther down were the Halloween costumes and lawn decorations. Ah, October! But wait – Thanksgiving-themed dishes. Back to November. I could safely narrow the time of year down to a 5 month range.

All of which had me thinking about how much stuff is available, how much we buy, and how we are tempted to do so by such appealing and long-lasting displays. You weren’t thinking about Thanksgiving here at the tail end of summer and beginning of fall? Well, let us remind you and offer you a lovely selections of things you might need in a couple of months…

I’ve written before about consumerism, and I’ve previously linked to The Story of Stuff, which provides an exellent explanation of some of the effects of consumption. It’s a topic that matters to ELCA World Hunger because our consumption patterns disproportionately affect those living in poverty. From the Global Policy Forum:

According to the World Bank, the 2.3 billion residents of low-income countries
accounted for less than 3% of public and private consumption in 2004, while the
1 billion residents of high-income countries consumed more than 80% of the
global total (See Figure 1.) In this same year the United States accounted for
4.6 percent of the world’s population and 33 percent of global consumption.

This matters because as we rich nations happily shop away, we are using a huge share of the world’s resources. As we exceed the ability of our own country to provide goods at a price we’re willing to pay, we look elsewhere. We buy minerals, fuel, crops and consumer goods from countries anxious for the income and willing to lower prices and regulations to get the business. Poor countries grow tobacco for Western markets instead of food for themselves. They offer cheap clothing at the expense of their employees. They accept shipments of garbage and even toxic waste into their countries because it’s a source of income. The result is often degradation of land and people, making it that much harder for them to succeed. We, in the meantime, wear the clothes for a season and then discard them for something new. In the process, we use even more resources, create more trash, and demand more from the world.

There is a capitalist argument that this is the global market. Whoever can produce an item most efficiently should. Not everyone should grow corn or tobacco or sew clothes. Countries should produce what they’re best at and trade for the things they can’t do as well. It’s good and right that some countries produce coffee beans and many more don’t. And this argument has merit – to a degree. But it requires that governments are functional and acting in the interests of their citizens, not just themselves. It requires that regulations exist and are enforced. It requires educational systems that adequately prepare people to participate in those economies. It requires equity in access to those educational systems. And it requires thoughtful management of resources – both natural and human – to ensure their sustainability. Until those conditions exist, people living in proverty will continue to work in deplorable conditions and exploit their environment because it’s how they can survive. And many of them will continue to live in poverty and to be hungry.

We in the wealthy nations can help by living more sustainably ourselves. We have to consume. Everyone does. But we don’t have to consume thoughtlessly. We can pay more for Fair Trade coffee and finance it by skipping the extra sweater. We can demand products made from sustainable practices (like certified wood) that are easier on the environment. Organizations like the Worldwatch Institute can help you figure out what those products are.

Consumption in and of itself isn’t the problem. It’s how – and how often – we go about it.

I read with interest Chris’ post about eco-overload. I think I suffer from one of eco-overload’s close cousins; I’ll call it eco-confusion. I want to engage in some more environmentally friendly behaviors, but I’m often unsure of what they are. It can be easy to change nothing for fear of doing wrong. For example, lists of ways to go green such as this one include the tip to use cloth napkins rather than paper napkins. Makes sense. After all, you can use the cloth over and over and not add to the landfill. But then I’ve also heard the arugment that using cloth napkins mean using more water, detergent, and electricity to wash them. And what about the bleaches, chemicals, trees, and fibers used to make either paper or cloth? Does it change the equation if you use paper napkins made of recycled paper? All this over napkins! I want to make good choices, but there seem to be so many variables. How do you make the right choice? Can you do it without dedicating your life to research?

In searching for some guidance, I kind of liked the advice I found at ECOnomically Sound. After they posed several both-sides-of-the-argument issues I hadn’t thought of (and thus reinforcing my confusion!), they recognized that making green decisions isn’t easy. They advised to do the best you can, and suggested that if everyone makes choices thoughtfully and with good environmental intentions, we’re bound to make improvements. It’s not an excuse for skipping research, but I do find it reassuring.

Hi, folks! My first post on “Hunger Rumblings” is very practical in nature, as it’s time to order resources for Lent, as Ash Wednesday is February 6. Help your congregation, Sunday School class, circle, committee or other group “take on” for Lent…a journey to feed the soul to gain courage and commitment to feed the hungry. Blessings on your heads! Sue-s

1. ELCA World Hunger and Disaster Appeal’s “God’s Math” 40-day plus calendar and coin box.
40-day calendar: Free. ISBN 978-6-0002-2015-0; 1 pkg=25 calendars.
Coin box: Free. ISBN 978-6-0002-2004-2; 1 pkg=25 boxes.
Request these and other ELCA World Hunger materials by calling 800-638-3522 or by visiting the ELCA Resource catalog online.

2. The ELCA World Hunger Lenten Fellowship Leader’s Guide, pp. 7–11 of the Advent 2007–Easter 2008 edition of ELCA World Hunger Congregation Connections. Request a free copy of Congregation Connections (800-638-3522) or by visiting the ELCA Resource Catalog online store.

3. Order Eco-palms by February 20 for Palm/Passion Sunday.
Visit www.lwr.org/palms to order.

4. Sign up and receive daily environmental Lenten devotions online.
Subscribe to the ELCA’s daily 2008 environmental Lentenreflections, “Living Earth: A 40-Day Reflection on OurRelationship With God’s Creation” at www.elca.org/advocacy
This is a limited subscription; the first e-mail will arrive onAsh Wednesday and the last e-mail will arrive Easter Sunday.