ecoyear

The question arises, especially when you come down to these later steps, about what it means to make exceptions and exemptions.

The way I see it right now, it is better to do as much something as possible than to throw in the towel because you can't stay away from oranges, for example. It is kind of like dieting - so OK, you had ice cream today, but you don't give up on your diet entirely! You dust yourself off and pick up again tomorrow where you left off.

The difference between a 100-mile diet and a weight-loss diet is that unless you sustain your weight loss choices daily and for many weeks, the pounds won't come off. In contrast, each 100-mile choice you make, such as reaching for local potatoes at Whole Foods, for exammple, instead of the cheaper Idaho potatoes, has several repercussions: you vote for the item that has emitted less carbon, you support the local economy, you influence the buying patterns of Whole Foods, and you may even get a fresher product with more nutrition.

We don't know, at this time, what level of carbon emission would save the Earth. It is probably less than we think. We do all have to do more than we are doing. And we have to talk to each other about it, because there is nothing worse than that sense of futility that comes from depriving yourself for nothing.

So which exceptions should you choose?

I have a sense that (just as for health or weight loss) making stepwise changes in the right direction that you can sustain "forever" is the right way to go. Sure you could eat 100% local for a week. You'd get hungry, you'd think "this is for the birds!", you'd eat too much beef, and if you picked your month right, you wouldn't really miss anything crucial.

But if you make changes this month, such as eating only market vegetables, then keep it up next month because it was fun and delicious, and the month after that because you know the farmers depend on you, etc... then eventually the food system will change. And if then next month, you find a source of local oats, barley, millet and buckwheat, and cut back on rice by 80%, again you have changed Big Agriculture, and you have impacted the forces that would have us all eat genetically modified corn and soy in three hundred different forms.

This is what I am doing: I am using as exceptions the foods that allow me to drastically cut down on processed foods, out-of-season foods, and non-local foods. For example, peanut butter is how my picky 6 year old deals with the fact that he can't/won't fill up on asparagus, or quiche, or onion tart... The California-fruit-of-the-month (strawberries in May, cherries in June) is how we deal with the fact that I have cut back on boxed breakfast cereals drastically (75% or so). Then there are a host of non-local products I still buy because I don't have my act together (cooking oil, bread, sliced turkey, California leeks, yogurt, popsicles...). These are things I could learn to do without, get better at baking myself, spend more time cooking and slicing, grow myself, and make myself - it makes me dizzy just to think about it! Nevertheless, it is happening little by little.

But most importantly is what I do - each summer week, I give $50 to Cure Farm in vegetable and fruit shares, plus eggs, and another $50 to market vendors on Saturdays. That's easily the majority of our food dollars spent in Boulder County. This is so powerful that if everyone in Boulder made the same decision, we would simply run out of food. Hah! If that doesn't preserve farmland and help the local economy, I don't know what would!