Why The Government Needs Changing

Because as much as changing your lifestyle might help you, personally, it only props up the same greenwashing edifice of consumerism and government by aristocracy that is in fact the real problem.

Because as much as changing your lifestyle might help you, personally, it can't stop increases in serious birth defects corresponding to conception during the spraying season (April-July), when farming and downstream communities are subjected to elevated levels of pesticides in their water supplies.

Because as much as changing your lifestyle might help you, personally, it can't make the government monitor pesticide levels in fruits and vegetables or report nationwide pesticide use figures.

I know that I do talk quite often here about consumer-oriented actions people can take to push the system. But I do so while knowing very well that back when I had a good paying job, I would have made much more of a difference by sending letters to Congress or helping organize activism around the environmental issues that I responded to almost entirely by changing my shopping habits.

Oh, hindsight.

As unprofitable as regret is, I like to think that I would have done things a little differently if I'd known then what I know now. But every food contamination outbreak, every factory farm-mediated disease outbreak, every discovery that agricultural pollution is worse than we thought or contributes more than we thought to global warming, each of those things is proof that the system itself must change.

For me, the path of lifestyle adjustments, ones that I've tried to stick to even as my income has steadily dwindled from its 2001 peak, did eventually lead to more active participation on my part. Taking even small actions steadily over time reinforced the importance of the issues, so that it gradually became more internally meaningful when I said these things matter to me. So when I suggest taking consumer-oriented action, I suppose I hope that it will lead to the realization that it isn't enough.

Because look, Monsanto and Smithfield don't give a flying f* about me or you or what we think. They do care what the congressional agriculture committees and executive branch bureaucracies think. There isn't really a serious question about where we could most effectively be focusing any leverage we have.

If all food was raised without toxic chemicals, if all the meat we ate was pasture raised, if all the transportation options were non-polluting, if our houses were all designed with local materials according to LEED standards ... we wouldn't be constantly having these conversations, which somewhat miss the target of where our society's ills are coming from.

It isn't the fault of people who are trying to be thrifty food shoppers that chemical dreck is sold to us as though it were wholesome and nutritious. The refusal of those who can afford to make a different choice at the grocery store won't stop that chemical dreck being sold.

So as Al Gore has said many times, go ahead and change that light bulb, but then make sure and change your leadership.

(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)