Sustainable Is Good

I was thrilled to hear that Sustainable is Good recently featured our e.a.t.^® product line. Part of Martha Stewart's "Martha's Circle" collection of lifestyle internet sites, Sustainable is Good regularly explores the world of sustainable lifestyle from a consumer's perspective often focusing on the role design plays in producing a sustainable product and its packaging.

Adopting a sustainable perspective is indeed good, although I'm the first guy to admit that the word "sustainable" is not often the most image friendly. Particularly in its association with ecological issues, it seems that "sustainable" has only recently become a regular part of our modern consciousness and lexicon, and is sometimes used in a negative context.

For sure, implicit in the word "sustainability" is a complex history evoking radical theories, thoughts of major societal transformation, long term commitment, sacrifice, and often times confusion, among other things. We're creatures of habit after all, and partly because of this the inevitable question as to whether most of our habits are even sustainable has been forced upon us.

Peter Senge of MIT’s Sloane School of Management argues the term is akin to “survival” — that it motivates by fear and that that’s not a sustainable emotion.

"On another level, it’s just a bad word. It’s technically what we would call a “negative vision.” We don’t want the unsustainable, we don’t want civilization to collapse, we don’t want the human species to fail. Well, of course we don’t want that, but those images don’t move people. “Survival” is not the most inspiring vision. It motivates out of fear, but it only motivates for as long as people feel the issues are pressing on them. Soon as the fear recedes, so does the motivation."

Senge proffers a good substitute for "sustainability" is: "All about the future".

I agree and so does Gary Locke. In a bold and prescient move hailed by environmentalists and industry representatives alike, Obama administration Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke recently approved the Arctic Fishery Management Plan, which was prompted by changes in the Arctic that have come with global warming and the loss of sea ice. This plan would prohibit an expansion of commercial fishing in the Arctic, at least until more is known about the area. Locke said the goal now is to come up with a sustainable fishing plan that will not harm the overall health of the fragile Arctic ecosystem.

Sustainable is good when it's all about the future.

The Future of Food - Part I

This is where it all started for me, Angler's Seafood House in Key West, Florida. That's me above, standing in front of our restaurant. My wife and I moved down in the early 90's to escape the cold weather up North and jump start my culinary career. If you've ever been down to Key West, it's pretty obvious how close to the ocean it sits - a tiny 4 x 2 mile island at the southernmost outpost of a chain of tiny islands "keys" perilously straddling the Straits of Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean on either side.

Local before "local" was much of a buzzword, most of our seafood was sourced from the shrimpers and commercial fishermen who unloaded their catch daily just outside Key West on Stock Island. Fresh Florida Keys shrimp, lobster, stone-crab, mahi-mahi, swordfish, grouper, snapper.... you name it. The beef we served also came from Florida with primal cuts of Shortloin, Striploin and Tenderloin brought in weekly to be trimmed, cut and prepared to order. Even our tomatoes came from Homestead at the top of the Florida Keys, and the rest of our fruits and veggies from throughout Florida for most of the year. For a chef, it doesn't get much better than this.

Ironically, one of the hottest items on our menu was not "local". Our endlessly popular Conch Chowder was made with Central American conch. A regional delicacy for many generations (hence the nickname "conch" for Key West inhabitants) that was previously abundant in the Florida Keys, Queen conch eventually declined in population due to overfishing and Florida closed its commercial conch fishery in 1975 ultimately making it illegal to possess any conch from Florida waters. Conch is now a critically endangered species throughout the Caribbean basin and not recommended for consumption. With conch fisheries management either ineffective or non-existent in Caribbean conch-fishing nations and illegal fishing and poaching rampant, the depletion of conch stocks serves as a prime example of what happens to a previously abundant species without committed stewardship.

Incredibly visitors to the Florida Keys continue to ask for conch delicacies such as conch chowder, conch fritters and "cracked" conch generally unaware that it has become unsustainable. It is almost impossible to separate the conch legend, so interwoven with local custom, folklore and history, from the sober reality. Although market prices have skyrocketed due to scarcity, most restaurants remain either intentionally, or ignorantly, oblivious to this fact and continue to sell conch specialties. ...Which is unfortunate, because my entire chowder adventure culminating in e.a.t.® Sustainable Gourmet began with our 'Award Winning' Key West Conch Chowder. "Back in the day" visitors to our restaurant couldn't get enough of this spicy tomato based delicacy, routinely bringing their thermos' and tupperware in to be filled for their return journey up the Keys and back home.

Every Day Is Earth Day

It’s hard to believe that Earth Day has been around for almost 40 years. That’s right. 40 years, 4 decades… almost half a century! First launched in 1970 as a “grassroots” environmental awareness event in the United States, Earth Day was created to focus concern on broad environmental problems (global warming was not well established at the time).

Earth Day is celebrated as the birth of the environmental movement and is now the world’s most widely observed secular holiday. Originally founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, and coordinated by Dennis Hayes, the original Earth Day saw some 20 million Americans participate – thousands of colleges, universities, primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities.

Yet, sitting here writing this blog post I find it equally hard to believe that we still find ourselves in such dire ecological straits.

Earth Day comes and goes, inciting numerous campaigns and “marketing events” seemingly cast towards a fleeting moment of public awareness that generates little inertia, but lots of greenwash. The critical issue of sustainability has taken root in the popular media only recently, spearheaded by the call to reduce Global Warming.

Meanwhile, our habitual mode of living, consuming and wasting, has not really changed. As Michael Pollan once observed in an article for the Sunday New York Times Magazine, “for us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice.”

Maybe we are looking at these environmental issues from the wrong perspective, and perhaps that's why initiatives to create lasting change fail to take root with the majority of people in a meaningful way. Global Warming, for instance, is still regarded as a scientific and environmental issue. Many scientists believe that this is a major mistake and that climate change is more a symptom of “dysfunctional social and economic practices and policies”.

As hard as we might wish to virtually transport ourselves out of these issues, it isn’t likely to happen. Especially now that we are in the midst of a world economic downturn.

Earth day is every day. If it isn’t, it should be.

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With Earth Day fresh in my brain, I am going to add the Rainforest Foundation to our e.a.t.List list of links to the right of our page, and urge you to visit.

Originally founded in 1989 by Sting and Trudie Styler in response to a request for help from an Amazonian Kayapo Indian tribal leader in Brazil, the Rainforest Foundation has grown into a network of organizations working in a dozen countries around the globe helping indigenous communities gain fundamental human rights, territorial ownership and sustainable local development, among other initiatives.

Everyone knows Sting as an accomplished solo musical artist, actor, and former member of the Police. However, not many people will know that his wife, Trudy Styler, is also a film producer. Her latest project is Crude, a critically acclaimed documentary film that tells the story of one of the most controversial environmental lawsuits in recent history. Check it out.

We Are A Test Tube

Here is a short video of David Suzuki offering an interesting analogy regarding our relationship to this planet at a recent speaking engagement in London. In this analogy the Earth is a test tube and we are bacteria. One bacteria is dropped into the test tube and it begins to divide every minute - exponentially. At "time zero" there is one bacteria, at one minute there are two, at two minutes there are four, at three minutes there are eight, etc. At sixty minutes the test tube is completely packed with bacteria and there's no food left! When was the test tube half full? At fifty-nine minutes...

A big "Thank You" to "canadianironwoman" who took the time to take and upload this video to YouTube.

Delay is No Longer an Option

Jesus just left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans.
Well now, Jesus just left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans.
Workin from one end to the other and all points in between.
- ZZ Top

Let's pretend for a second that we don't really know there is global warming. We don't have access to newspapers. No internet, no scientific consensus, no coalitions, no Eleventh Hour. We're not aware that the average surface temperature of the earth has increased by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900, or that the molecular structure of organic matter in soil is changing because of global warming. Imagine that we've eliminated the pretext for environmental stewardship based on radical geophysical concepts, embraced sustainability as a matter of common sense (respect for nature?) and have become profoundly aware of our actions and their consequences on each other and our surroundings. What would happen? Would our present mode of living be sustainable? Would it even be desirable?

Of course, I am oversimplifying to make a point: We know the difference between right and wrong behavior. Why wait for a call to action? We've been lulled into complacency by the sheer momentum and convenience of modern living where we're used to sweeping "stuff" under the proverbial matt, into toxic pits, somebody else's back yard, or our water.... out of site, out of mind. We've known the secret history of lead for quite some time, yet continue to sell this same legacy to our children. Like the saying "garbage in, garbage out" referring to the incorrect input of computer data, we consume and waste mindlessly.

To paraphrase Dr. David Suzuki from a lecture at the University of Western Ontario earlier this month, "before man came along, there was no future. The future is a concept that man created". Why then, Dr. Suzuki seems to be asking, among all of the possible futures we could have envisioned, have we created this one for ourselves... and our progeny. It is as if some forgotten crime, neatly perpetrated by the masters of our industrial miracle, has propelled us into an uncertain destiny without any meaningful direction, where an unrecognizable and horrific ending awaits us.

“Few challenges facing America — and the world — are more urgent than combating climate change,” U.S. President-elect Barak Obama told the recent Governors' Global Climate Summit in California via a taped address. “Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious.”

Indeed, Jesus just left Chicago.

What Does "Sustainable" Mean?

The media is telling us uncertain times are ahead. The polar ice cap is melting, the economy is collapsing, the stock market is crashing, we're not sure what's going to happen next. We've screwed up above and below. Even the shrimp seem to be running from all of this. We're at a turning point that's hard to figure out, and even harder to articulate.

Welcome to e.a.t.Blog^TM. An oasis of communication in a sea of noise. The middle ground, between the extreme and the apathetic, inhabited by most of us.

e.a.t.^® stands for environmental and tasty, which really sums up what we're going to talk about in this blog. Along with my regular posts and the help of occasional guest bloggers, my hope is to create a conversation with you, the consumer, on a full range of topics that relate to issues of sustainability, health, the food we eat, social and corporate responsibility and responsible consumption, among other things, and how these issues impact our daily lives.

Perhaps we can explore the 'idea' of sustainability using a little ancient wisdom which tells us that our 'tragedy' is that we must fit into a world not of our own making, yet must care more what we do to it than what it does to us... wisdom which says how we choose to live our lives expresses a fundamental choice about the kind of world we want to live in.