I've been remiss in not posting about a seven-week feature that's running in the indispensible Grist Magazine. Entitled Poverty and the Environment, it's a multi-media series of articles, photos, virtual tours, exploring the intersection of economic and ecological survival. We are in the third week of the series now, and those first two weeks were already jam-packed with material. From the Introduction to the feature:
Consider this central paradox of U.S. environmentalism: In much of popular and political culture, the movement is dismissed as the pet cause of white, well-off Americans -- people who can afford to buy organic arugula, vacation in Lake Tahoe, and worry about the fate of the Pacific pocket mouse. And yet, the population most affected by environmental problems is the poor.
Thus, the theme of Weeks 1 and 2, Land and People, does not focus on National Parks or pristine wilderness areas, nor on how and where to find the most enviro correct bamboo cutting boards and undyed organic cotton nightgowns, but rather on the places where the least of our brethren have no choice but to live:
The first two weeks (...) will focus on the land where we do live -- specifically, the land consigned to the poorest among us. This is a land where people live near the freeway or next to a power station or miles from public transit; a land where the neighbors include landfills, oil refineries, nuclear-waste repositories, factory farms. This is a whole different kind of environment -- but one that is no less American, and no less deserving of a movement to protect and transform it.
There is great stuff here, eye-opening material even for liberals who feel themselves to be well-informed. After you read the intro to the series, move on to Down for the Count, Facts and Figures on Poverty in the United States. Here's the first three statistics, a one-two-three punch right to the solar plexus:
$35,000 -- basic-needs budget for a U.S. family of four (two adults, two children), as calculated in An Atlas of Poverty in America 1
$19,157 -- poverty line for a family of four (two adults, two children) in the U.S. in 2004, as established by the U.S. Census Bureau 2
$19,000 -- amount spent by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's wife Columba during a five-day shopping spree in Paris in 1999 3
In various segments of Land and People we visit Columbia, MS, mountain mining communities of WVA, inner NYC, parts of the rural south devastated by factory chicken farms (and here is where I get right on the bus - Delaware is not technically the South, but it is indistinguishable from NC or Arkansas in its poultry industry, in the vile working/living conditions of the mainly immigrant labor force). Here's the index, updated daily, to the series. This (third) week's theme is Consumption, and it's enough to take your breath away:
Flat-screen TVs, iPods, plane tickets, supersized fries, tall skinny lattes, North Face jackets, motor homes, second homes: what (and how) we consume speaks volumes about our class background, our relationship to the environment, and what those two things have to do with each other. In week three of Grist's special series on Poverty & the Environment, we look at class, consumption, and environmentalism -- from the price tag of environment-affecting essentials to the difference between "simple living" and simply surviving. Plus: photos of trash (no, really!) and an artist's take on how the other half lives.
The consuming class throws away so much still-useful stuff that we have communities of people making livings by recycling what they snag from the trash. Follow Omar Freilla - founder of the Green Worker Cooperatives - around for some more ocular widenings.
Imagine this now: in a country where people are living under freeway overpasses, or in cardboard boxes, scrounging an existence from other people's garbage, we have this phenomenon simultaneously occurring: The Compact. Have you heard of this group? I first read about them in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle,
They call themselves the Compact. They have a blog, a Yahoo group and monthly meetings to reaffirm their commitment to the rule, which is to never buy anything new. "I didn't buy a pair of shoes today," said Compacter Shawn Rosenmoss, an engineer and a San Francisco resident of the Bernal Heights neighborhood. "They were basically a $300 pair of clodhoppers. But they were really nice and really comfortable, and I haven't bought new shoes for a while. But I didn't buy them. That's a big part of the Compact -- we show that we're not powerless over our purchasing."
"They were basically a $300 pair of clodhoppers." A $300. Pair. Of clodhoppers. And she feels so virtuous that she didn't buy them. "We show that we're not powerless over our purchasing." Unless, of course, we are a family of four living at or below the poverty line. Then we are pretty powerless over our purchasing. We just plain can't do much of it. Several blocks across town from Shawn Rosenmoss a family of four could have put food on their table for quite a while with that sum of money. Instead of working like fiends for social, economic and ecological justice, this group states its mission thusly, on the header of their blog:
Compact 1) to go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of U.S. consumer culture, to resist global corporatism, and to support local businesses, farms, etc. -- a step, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact; 2) to reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er); 3) to simplify our lives (as in Calm-pact).
So, I guess I'm off-topic here, sort of. But not really. To me, The Compact seems to be an example of the consuming class pulled Through the Looking Glass. I'm not suggesting that they give their shoe money, nor even their shoes, to a family living in a non-functioning Chevy, not even suggesting that they should feel guilty that they could afford a $300 pair of casual shoes. Okay, for right now here is what I'd like to suggest to them: (and maybe, through the amazing medium of blog-comments, I will) is that they read Poverty and the Environment. All seven weeks, every word, of it. These are probably good and decent people, this series may open the eyes of their souls to the reality of the world they live in. Or, rather, the world that many others live in.
