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Making my steel cut oats this morning, it brings to mind a friend, trying hard to be green, who came into my office one morning to show me something really neat. It was a little plastic pouch with frozen steel cut oats pre-made that she got at Trader Joe’s. It looked like a birth control sponge. But frozen solid.
I looked at it, and ooh’d and ahh’d, and after she walked away, I wondered how it is that she couldn’t see
- The industrial oats grown for mass consumption
- The way Trader Joe’s is stealing customers from Bob’s Red Mill by growing its own brand
- The plastic, the hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic used to wrap each individual little sponge, and all Trader Joe’s products
- The big shiny machine running on god knows how much energy to package each little blob, perforate the little blobs apart from each other, rolling out sheets of blobs, then packaging all of those into cardboard boxes with pretty pictures on them
- The diesel fuel from the massive trucks used to transport the little sponges all over the country
- The electricity needed to keep those freezers humming in every TJ store to keep the little sponges from melting.
All of this because we don’t want to take ten minutes to boil oats?
Granted, Bob’s Red Mill Organic Steel Cut Oats comes in plastic too, a different type but still plastic. And is shipped from Oregon all over the country to so many stores as well as my little store out here in Pennsylvania. But my oats will require at least thirty-nine times less plastic than forty servings of TJ blobs. And machines are filling and sealing Bob’s is bags too no doubt. But it has no extra box, needs freezers, and so much less plastic, not to mention that I get to give my business to a much smaller operation that cares enough about quality to offer the oats in this fashion. Can I find oats here in PA though? Maybe it’s time to look.
To me, that ten minutes of boiling time at home is a gift. The steam rising from the stove, the cinnamon and walnuts and dried cranberries I add on my own are nothing like what I get with TJ’s. I take another ten minutes, sitting and looking out the window at the sun rays coming through the trees on one of our first chill fall mornings while I eat my steel cut oats fresh from the pot not from plastic – also a gift.
So you can guess I’ll never try the neat little pouches I can conveniently bring to the office and leave in the freezer until I want it. I prefer to just make three or four servings at home at a time and use reuseable containers to bring it to work on the days I can’t get to it at home. Even if you have your hands full with kids in the morning, and I do, is it really all that much trouble? I am convinced that it is only if you think it is.
I’m convinced that if you want to make a difference, then you have to do something different. Personally I think that’s what “sustainable living” means. But believing time is too short means you have made certain choices to fill up the time you have. And reaching for the “easy” thing is not always going to be a benefit in the end. Especially if we aren’t thinking about the chain of supply that brought us our little frozen sponges. So it’s important to begin making time not just to boil water, but to stop, and think, and wonder, and consider. And decide to take action.
Gotta go, the oatmeal’s done.
I’m watching Obama work his butt off to make things happen, but there’s a big problem. He hasn’t got any radical solutions, at a time when we need radical solutions. He can’t please all of the people all of the time, and more MOR solutions mean we’ll get Clinton-esque MOR solutions.
Well of course, he could never be radical even if it were in his personality, or John McCain would be president now. But I’m bummed mainly by one thing, which for me colors his actions on energy, economy, development, everything:
His dependence on Lawrence Summers.
I have two words for Lawrence Summers: Herman Daly.
If Obama were a true visionary, truly unique and not MOR , he’d have been consulting with Daly, and not Summers. If we’d followed what Daly wanted of the World Bank decades ago, we wouldn’t be in this fix right now. Daly is am environmental economist, a proponent of steady state economics, which is likely our only chance for the future. (If you haven’t read Daly’s book Beyond Growth – read it. He wrote it more than 20 years ago, and it’s now critical that we “get it”.)
I’ll write more on this in the coming weeks, as I’m working on a book on the topic and I want to post here for input and feedback. If you’re a fan of steady state econ, tell us more please.
It was just too hilarious, I had just gotten finished watching Sarah Palin “interviewed” by Katie Couric, and then flipped the channel to find the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy was playing on HBO. That’s the movie where people have become truly moronic in the future, with a professional wrestler as President. I wonder if John McCain has seen it.
My friend Greg Cryns has a great post linking to some articles about the nice men (and yes, they are all men) we are rushing to help because they so badly need welfare to make sure their mid-six-figure country club dues get paid this year.
I just thought it was interesting that along with its current drumbeat to bail out Wall Street, CNBC ran a special not too long ago called “Untold Wealth: The Rise Of The Super Rich” – complete with the episode about how hard it is being a billionaire. Just makes you want to cry. Just when you think you have it bad, there is always someone worse off than you,… or, something. There’s a link to a NY Sun article there too called “Take The Money And Make More”. Should be, “Take Everyone’s Money and Take More”. Wonder if they’ll do a show about the “Fall Of The Super Rich”, but somehow I doubt it.
I have an extra pitchfork I can lend to whoever wants it 
PS, I also had to laugh at Larry Kudlow telling Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that he’s for free markets “except in just a few cases” – like just the times when he’s a little bit pregnant. You probably won’t see a link to that interview on his web site.
Wondering what this bailout will do to efforts to invest green…
Here’s an idea;
Stop buying stuff.
Even green stuff.
I just saw a new product listed on CNET, for something called “Lunchopolis”. I hesitate to even link to it, since it’s just one of the things I think are all wrong with the way we are approaching changing our lifestyle.
It’s a new product being advertised as “green”, and is really not.
A new lunch box, expensive, plastic, which isn’t all that much different from the $9 reuseable lunch box you buy at the local big box store, or if you’re really goo, at the thrify store, except that it comes with its own Tupperware. Oh, did I mention it’s expensive?
OK, where’s the green here? I mean, anything different from using, say, any old $9 lunch box and your own reuseable plastic containers?
I don’t get it. Except that, one more product, not using any recycled materials, made in another China factory, with all it’s power implications, and simply glomming onto the “green” desires of moms and dads everywhere. I’m sure you’ll find it at your local Whole Food$, where they offer you products that let you feel better about your purchases. Not telling you that you might need to reduce your purchases, just that you can feel better about all the stuff you buy.
We need to be wiser than this, in order to stop global warming. Buying more stuff, no matter how prominent the “green” label, is not what we should be doing. Not uying more stuff AT ALL, except where necessary, is what we should be doing. Are we? Wiser?
I mean, can we stop? Can we just stop?
That’s really our only chance. Not to more “buy green” stuff. Just at least to stop being fooled, for a start.
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