Why do we have to fight for sustainability?

In Hollywood sci-fi dis­as­ter epics, when­ever Earth is threat­ened the pop­u­la­tion pulls together for the sake of com­mon sur­vival. Why isn’t this the case now? Why aren’t we all pitch­ing in to help cre­ate and be part of an enlight­ened, sus­tain­able cul­ture ris­ing from the toxic legacy of the chemical-industrial profit-over-conscience system?

The answer is obvi­ous but dis­heart­en­ing. We’re just not all on the same page. Some of us are try­ing to clean things up and get back to con­sum­ing fresh, local and organic food while oth­ers are hard at work per­pet­u­at­ing and pro­mot­ing the unsus­tain­able short-sightedness that got us in trouble.

There are too many tox­ins in our exist­ing agri­cul­tural envi­ron­ment being applied every day. We cer­tainly don’t need more. We need less. This par­tic­u­larly applies to the idea of genet­i­cally engi­neer­ing foods. We don’t know the long-term effects of these patented alter­ations, nor what these genes will do in com­bi­na­tion or how they will spread to other non-GE organ­isms. The Center for Food Safety has suc­ceeded in halt­ing the plant­ing of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied alfalfa and sugar beets pend­ing full envi­ron­men­tal impact stud­ies. GE corn is being exported to Latin America. A fast-growing GE salmon has been devel­oped and the com­pany behind it wants FDA approval with­out the fish being  labeled. These are just a few exam­ples, but you can be sure oth­ers are in progress and more are on the draw­ing board.

Clearly, in some quar­ters sus­tain­abil­ity is just some­thing that stands in the way of cor­po­rate prof­its. Hire a PR firm for some green­wash­ing and make it go away, or at least cre­ate a dis­trac­tion; mean­while it’s busi­ness as usual. Isn’t that insane? In a word: yes, par­tic­u­larly when act­ing in self-interest actu­ally harms the com­mon interest.

So, for the rest of us, you and I do have to fight for sus­tain­abil­ity. But isn’t the prize of our planet, our food, our health and future gen­er­a­tions worth fight­ing for? We think so.

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