I am flat out tired of the entire “Save the Planet” movement. First off the planet is not in danger. We are. Through nuclear holocaust, toxic waste or just blatant stupidity we could do great damage to ourselves, our ecosystems, and other life forms on the planet. However with that being said all those things could be damaged and/or wiped out by an asteroid slamming into the earth or some other “natural” disaster. Guess what continues to rotate around the sun making an incredible journey through space. Yep you guessed it the planet.

So lets make the argument about more than warm fuzzies and abstractions that make no sense and never keep much traction. Lets build a movement based on common sense and a pragmatic view of humanity. Lets follow, dare I say it, a more Christian idea of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

We need to look at alternative energy because it is the right thing to do. We still use the resources on this planet we just use them with more than a profit margin as our guide. Don’t get me wrong I understand the importance of a strong healthy economy. I am no Pollyanna who believes that we can all rise to the top. There are winners and there are losers. Some people are born with all the advantages of wealth and screw it up; others are born with nothing and make positive impacts to those around them every day. You do not have to be rich to be important. Hell you don’t even need to be rich to be happy.

We need to build green because it makes sense. A green building costs less to operate, is more efficient and study after study shows that green buildings promote happier more productive occupants. Schools promote learning better, students have fewer sick days, and people enjoy being there. For business a green building is a healthier place to work. Nice place to be promotes better productivity, better attendance and better moral. A green home is a healthier home, costs less in yearly upkeep and energy costs. Makes people more comfortable. And yes all these technologies and practices are good for the ecosystems in which we live. So if you get your jollies off warm fuzzies there you go.

Now to that love your neighbor idea. This is of course one of the primary tenants of the teachings of Christ. It is actually a command from Christ. Sadly Christianity has fallen a bit short on that idea. Now before you go grabbing pitchforks and torches hear me out. I love my faith in Christ. I love the things I have learned through the study of scripture. I do believe that organizations from most faiths do the world a great deal of good and show love for our brothers and sisters around the globe. However, we do tend to try to bend religion to fit our own worldview. Often time’s politicians and theologians will use religion as a weapon to justify very un-Christian like actions.

If we truly take the worldview that we are to love each other and want the best for each other we have a paradigm shift. We go from making policies that are designed for us to take from others to have for ourselves. We design policies that are about making sure those people we love, you know everyone, have the things they need first and then we trade on the excess.

Energy and agriculture are the two main things to discuss here. Now they are not the only things to discuss just the main ones for right now. When we look at energy production we look at ways we have unbalanced the production of energy. Rather than the US doing what it should do through responsible sustainable business practices explore and extract oil. Instead we have made ourselves dependent upon other nations and in doing so we have allowed and often times even helped corrupt governments to hold massive amounts of power over their citizenry. In doing so we have fanned the fires of terrorism against us. What happens if every nation is encouraged to become self-sufficient and not dependent on others? They become successful and are better able to trade on the open market their excess rather than trying to trade away what they need to survive to other nations while starving out their own population.

Same goes for agriculture. I have made the argument in the past that we have sacrificed way to often at the alter of economic efficiency. We grow more corn in the US than we need which in and of itself is not a bad thing however we have gotten to a point now where we grow more than can be used so we try to force others to buy our corn and we spend fortunes on ways to grow more corn through oil based products when we would be much better off growing less corn and having farmers grow other cash crops for food and energy that don’t require as much energy input in the first place. Always blew my mind to think about using more and more petroleum-based chemicals to grow more corn to create ethanol in order to supplement our petroleum needs. Why not use the petroleum for the fuel and cut out the excess corn, which is not that, good, a feedstock for ethanol anyway. Again I must say that I am not against corn for ethanol. What I am for is a reasonable way to use biobased products in a way that is beneficial not detrimental. Other feedstocks that we have are far better for ethanol production; they just don’t have as efficient a lobby as corn does.

Now it may seem as though I have rambled on a bit about several different topics. But really it all comes down to what I started off with. Common sense, pragmatism and loving our neighbors, profits are good, greed is bad. Common Sense is not encouraged to grow through the use of petroleum-based fertilizer; it grows best in natural fertilizer by learning to cut through all the bullshit. Pragmatism becomes the foundation of the growing common sense and the idea of loving thy neighbor, well baby if that aint the best fruit for us to harvest I don’t know what is.

“Part of humanity dies?” You may now be asking your self “What is this tool talking about?”

Glad you asked.

When we, as a society, become so self absorbed that all we care about is being able to get our stuff from the cheapest source possible, we die a little or maybe somebody else dies a lot.

Now, I am not saying that buying the most expensive stuff out there makes us better. My point is when we lose track of what matters most, we die.

Know where it came from; understand the impacts on what you buy. Ecologically, economically, politically, humanly, there are costs. Not just the cost of the bag of chips or a bottle of water at the cash register. Know if the shoes you buy are made in sweatshops, or by slaves.
Now I am not telling what you should and shouldn’t buy, all I’m telling you is make sure what you buy is what you want. If you want a cheap pare of sneakers made by slave labor, by all means buy them. But, if you don’t want Christmas ornaments made by people not allowed to worship in their own way, then know where it came from. Our dollars are our only true voice. Business has no morals; industry gives us what we want. What we want has a price tag, understand that price tag. If we take that time to connect to the outside world if we put forth the effort to understand what we say by what we buy, then we become better for it and knowledge gives life.

We live in an interesting time. We have some nations whose wealth and technological advancements have so far outstripped other nations so as to make some cultures look as though they are still living in the Stone Age. In fact we do know of some remotely placed tribes of people that do indeed still live in Stone Age societies with no knowledge of the outside world. There are about 150 groups of people scattered throughout the globe who have yet to be contacted by what we might choose to refer to as the modern world. How should we view those Stone Age cousins of ours? Should we rush in with our iPads and cell phones and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century, or should we just leave them alone. Alone to practice their cultural way of life as they have for centuries untold. Do we leave them alone in their jungle homes or move them into new condos on Main Street. How can we decide what we should do? Sadly enough the lives of these primitive peoples is not often decided upon with the truly altruistic ideals we would like to pretend all humans have. To be honest if it was discovered that these primitive peoples live in areas that have some natural resource we feel we can make a profit from, we would already be there. They would have met us, been forced off their land, and in many ways forced to give up their traditional way of life and be forced to adopt that of the modern world. On the other side of that equation are the missionaries. Generally well meaning people who only wish to introduce these shamanistic pagan cultures to the beauty and love of whatever denomination gets there first.

So the question still stands. What should we do, and even more importantly why should we do it?

International Affairs and Administration is a fascinating field of study. As I have pursued my education in this field I have been amazed at some of the things we, as societies, place in importance. On one hand, those of us in the western world, tend to spout off great ideals of freedom and justice, as our primary desires for citizens of the world. Yet at that same time our policies are driven more on the grounds of political or economic benefits. We have taken our global economy built by decades of wealth building and technological advance into areas of the world that still live in the same way their families have for centuries. We have gone into scattered parts of the globe and convinced farmers that they would be better off if they stopped growing food for their own uses and produced goods that other nations are willing to pay for. Then we have entire regions that forsake their own food security and produce crops they don’t use to be sold to people they don’t know so they can get money to buy what they need from someone else. Why not just produce what you need where you are and send whatever extra to introduced to the global economy. Who knows maybe that crop that has sustained people for centuries might even become well regarded by the outside world. We have this bizarre tenancy to find things in nature that have been well suited to an ecosystem for centuries and we then try to replace it with what we want rather than learning the uses of what is already available and abundant. An example of this is when European cattle where brought to North America by early settlers. As the settlers moved westward they came upon the vast North American plains. On these plains the first thing they saw was this great grassland that was thriving with biodiversity. Grasses that grew taller than a man on horse back, rich soils that produced tons and tons of native grasses and a land that supported the North American Bison. Also known, incorrectly, as buffalo. Bison herds where enormous. The shear numbers of bison in a heard where simply staggering to these new settlers. These bison had supported native plains Indians for as long as there had been Indians on the plains. And what did our forefathers see in this great land of plenty? Stuff the needed to replace. We wiped out the great bison herds; nearly to extinction did we hunt the bison. Did we utilize them for meat? No we just skinned them and left the carcass to rot in the sun. We took a resource that native peoples had been able to craft everything they needed from tools to housing to trade goods and decimated an entire ecosystem for very little gain. We made big money selling buffalo robes to the wealthy, and we did defeat the plains Indians by driving their primary supply for almost everything to brink of extinction so we could replace the might bison with cows. Eventually we even tamed these grasslands that produced so much on its own to shape it to our wants. Many would say needs here, I however choose to disagree. The land supported many native foodstuffs. We chose to import our own. We have taken what was so abundant and replaced it with crops that require so much more of the land. Now we add chemicals and drain aquifers in order to produce one more bushel of corn to be sold on the world market. We punish the land and pollute our waters so we can open up new markets in foreign lands to send our products to them so they will stop producing for them selves and grow what we want over here. So tell me again why we don’t just grow what we need and sell what is left over. Instead we have gone from agriculture to agribusiness. We have stopped growing for survival and we grow for profit. We literally grow food in quantities we cannot hope to eat or sell to the point that we now must move into other markets to replace what they grow so they will need to buy from us what we produce. Where in anyone’s right mind does this make a lick of common sense? We destroy what Is there to replace it with what we want then we turn around and try to make others replace what they produce with what we produce and try to get them to compete with us buy changing what they produce to sell to others who really don’t need it any way? No wonder the world gets pissed at us sometimes.

Now to give you an idea of where we are coming from I should start by telling you that I live just outside of Joplin, Missouri. Joplin is a burg that most folks never heard of until May 22, 2011 when an EF5 twister tore through the heart of town leaving a path of destruction that left Joplin looking like it had been caught in a nuclear blast.
My home was not damaged, my family was not hurt, and I did not lose my job. The building I work in was severely damaged in the storm. We had folks working that afternoon and by the quick thinking of one of my managers no one was injured. Our building is being rebuilt and we have a temporary office set up in a near by town so we can get folks back up and working until we can get our old building rebuilt.

We have all been affected in this; we have friends and co-workers who have lost homes and family. We are part of an amazing community that has been full of people who have lent helping hands to people in need all over the area. From the second the need was known the helping hands have been there. I know many people who as soon as they came out have there shelter they began helping those in need. We have even had stories of people being treated in emergency rooms and then jumping off the table to help others in need.

The hand Mother Nature has dealt us has affected us all. From hurricanes to wild flooding to tornados. We have all paid some kind of price. We have been inspired by stories of heroism and devastated by stories of loss. So it just stands to reason we all have something to share.
If we all share the load the burden gets lighter so come on and share your stories.

Well now we rebuild, slower, but at least we are moving forward. We have expanded our original BFG goals and feel that Think, Talk, Trade (Triple T) is a better model to accomplish what we want to do.

Here on the Triple T web site you will start finding blogs written on a wide variety of topics, the topics here will be pretty open. We will have articles about legal issues, sustainability, politics, faith, music, art, pretty much whatever.

Our main focus will be articles and reviews over books, films and such that relate back to the concepts of Sustainability, or what my friend Dennis Weaver called Ecolonomics.

I hope you keep coming back and I hope you join us in this three-step process- Think, Talk, Trade.

The only thing left to do after that is act.

Thanks

Rob Wood

Monsanto is in the courts again. This time they are after the dairy industry. Monsanto has had a history of aggressively protecting the patents
for their GMO seeds. They are well within their rights to do so. However, their goon squads and thug-like tactics leave much to be desired. Monsanto is going after companies that label their dairy products rBGH-Free. Monsanto holds the patent on rBGH or recumbent bovine growth hormone. It is given to dairy cows to vastly increase their milk production. Many people, for various reasons, are not crazy about the use of this hormone. There are several dairy producers, marketers and retailers who have chosen not to use Monsanto’s product. These companies have been labeling their products rBGH-Free.

Makes sense to me that as a consumer I have the choice in the products I buy. Monsanto does not feel the same way. Just like their victory in keeping their GMO corn and soybean content off the labels. They are now in court arguing that dairies that choose not to use this product cant tell us they are not using it. Yes, if you are not aware of the fact that in the United States, supposed champion of the free market concept, a corporation has
influenced policy makers to prevent people from knowing about the GMO content in the products they buy. If you buy anything in the US that has
anything derived from corn or soybean it is a GMO. And the company that produces it is not allowed to label it.

This is something that regardless of political ideology everyone who buys food in this country should be up in arms. Monsanto has a right to protect
their patents. Monsanto has a right to make a profit. Monsanto has a right to protection under the law. Monsanto does not have the right to prevent me from knowing what I am buying. We all have the right to know about what products we buy contain. This is the very essence of free market capitalism.

The consumer is allowed to make a choice about the products they buy. We have the right to know what is in the foods we eat and the products we buy. When corporations become so powerful that they can do the kind of crap Monsanto is doing today it is time for people to get angry. Get angry and take action. Contact the FDA tell them you want to know what is in the food you buy. Contact your Congress people let them know how you feel. This is our government and it only works when we do.

I will start with an NPR report I heard earlier this week. The report referenced the state of Texas requesting a waiver from the federal government on the requirement to use ethanol in their fuel. For some reason the folks at NPR neglected to point out that this request by Gov. Perry’s office came after one of the largest poultry operations in country, Pilgrim’s Pride, made a $100,000.00 investment ... oops, sorry... donation to the Republican Governors Association. Did I mention Perry chairs that little group? This was all reported in the Houston Chronicle. Not some blogger or little known tabloid the Houston Chronicle.

To make things even more interesting, the folks at NPR neglected to point out that the waiver the Perry administration requested was put together not just by the good hard-working government employees of Texas, but by a group of Pilgrim’s Pride lobbyists and public relations people from the firm Public Strategies.

NPR did mention the Grocery Manufacturers Association joining with the fine folks of Texas in protesting the ethanol mandate. Of course the USDA and others have already discredited the GMA claims that all the cost increase of food has been caused by ethanol.

I am not really surprised when reporters get stuff wrong. They are reporters, not scientists or policy makers or even practitioners of the black
arts (you know: economists). They report what they see. I would request that if a simple blogger like myself can find this information that it is not all
that tough for them to get it right.

Aside from the failure of NPR to actually get even the facts of the Texas ethanol waiver story correct, I would not expect them to do much better
with the food-versus-food thing in general. Here at BidForGreen we have tackled this subject several times, and it looks like we have to do it
again. Ethanol is NOT causing food prices to skyrocket, and people are not starving to death because of ethanol. Ethanol, from corn, is not the perfect answer to our energy needs. It is however, a step we need to take.

Today many look at the world we live in and fear we are facing potential catastrophe on a global scale. Others argue that if we change our wasteful ways we can reverse our damaging course and avoid coming disaster. Others still see no problem or need to change.
In 1798 the reverend Thomas Malthus wrote of his concerns that humanity would soon outstrip our ability to feed ourselves. Malthus noted that unchecked population increases geometrically 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16 and so on. Based upon the numbers he saw in 1798 he could easily see that human kinds population was going to outpace its ability to feed itself.

A few hundred years later and several generations after Malthus predictions, Garret Hardin wrote his “Tragedy of the Commons”. Hardin felt that the only way to insure we avoid the Malthusian it would be necessary that the human race relinquish its freedom, as Hardin put it, to “breed.”
Obviously, Malthus missed his mark, at least for a time. Hardin’s Tragedy has not yet come to pass either. We have staved off the disastrous consequences as perceived by both men with advances in agriculture and technology. That has allowed us to produce far more food with less land than ever before. The “green” revolution that introduced chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides has not come without serious ecological cost. We have learned how to mitigate many of the inherent problems to chemical-based farming but we still have a long way to go.

Now we begin to lean even more heavily on our agricultural and technological abilities. Along with the necessary food and fiber production we must have from the land we throw in energy production. More and more we depend on those who can work the land. Farmers have always been able to find ways to battle the elements and the markets to bring food to the tables of the world. It is truly sad to think that today we have more accountants and stockbrokers than we do farmers. We have less land in production and more urban sprawl eating up potential farmlands around the world.

Amazingly, farmers today are able to do so much more with so much less than ever before. Many farmers are switching to more sustainable less intensive methods of farming whenever they can. Many opportunities for people to purchase locally produced foods from farmers markets and even directly from on farm sales have become available.

We are beating the dire predictions of the past, and we are doing so in common sense ways. Thinking globally and eating locally, pursuing a sound bioenergy future based on respect for the land and the people who work it is our only hope for a sustainable future. We are doing these things and taking great strides toward that goal of a sustainable way of life. We are taking great steps but we need to do more.

If you are not buying foodstuff from local producers you should. If you are not supporting biofuels in your area you should. If you have not already turned an eye to the future, you must. And what is the best way to accomplish these goals? Of course, we think it starts here. Start by becoming a member of Bid For Green and signing up on our rss feed. This is a great way to start finding the green and sustainable products you want to use. BFG is also a great way to stay informed about things going on in the field of sustainability.

It’s an exciting time; stay with us. Be a part of what we are doing; spread the word about BFG to your friends and neighbors. And finally, hug a farmer if you can. We owe them more than we could ever repay.