Ch. 2 - The Year of Eating Locally

RaulRamos · Eligible to vote! Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 19 Gender:

I have just posted a comment on the Chapter 1 thread where I defend that apart from the question of how to make McKibben's suggestions true there is the question of whether we all want to see his suggestions become reality. I see in this thread that you also concentrate on how to implement the changes necessary to make McKibben’s vision true and I assume – I may be wrong – that it is a vision you identify with. I look forward to the discussion in the following chapters, where I would like to object to the idealized version of a community he presents us with.

Apart from that, I would like to comment a couple of points:

Quote:
Again, I think an important part of this conversation will have to include Religious Environmentalism, as it will connect the deepest notions of identity, moral obligation, and spiritual practice to care and love of Creation. (DH)

Before reading the following comment please bear in mind that I will refer to change regardless of national borders (I know McKibben centres on the US, however, his discourse can be applied to a certain extent to any part of the rich world.)
I agree that even though some of us might not be sympathetic to a vision of life that is tainted by religious belief, we must admit that an important part of the population does, and that the solution to some problems can only be reached through the implication of all of us, whether religious or not, and that to mobilize us we will have to ‘speak the language’ of each other, i.e. we will also have to resort to the framework of thinking characteristic of religious people to convince them that their religious view of the world is more compatible with an alternative way of organizing our use of resources. However, what I would like to point out is that notions of identity, moral obligation and spiritual practice to care and love of Creation is not exclusively linked to religious belief. Just change the word Creation for Nature or Life, for example, and many non-religious a person will make those notions their own.

One more point, related to care and love of Life:
I would have liked McKibben to concentrate not just on how harmful the present system is for humans, but also for other animals ::38

. His talk about ‘chicken being produced’ (p. 52) and how their farmer acquaintances relished when eating poor old Moose and Charlie (p. 50) did not really please me. True, at a certain point he mentions those ‘miserable animals’ (p. 61), but I would like to have seen a bit more of how unjustly we deal with animals as our food source. I would be glad to read somewhere that the eating revolution he advocates for contemplates a fairer use of animals, and an increased intake of vegetables on our side.


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