[S-C] Fwd: Sierra Club "True Cost of Food" Campaign

[Kevin Shrieve]

http://www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption/

THE SIERRA CLUB LAUNCHES ITS
"TRUE COST OF FOOD" CAMPAIGN

The United States, with less than five per cent of the world's people,
consumes over twenty five percent of its resources.

And that's not even the bad news: the really scary news is that the
rest of the planet is scrambling to catch up with our lifestyle.  If
all 6.4 billion people did so, we'd need four more Earths to
accommodate them.

In response, the Sierra Club Sustainable Consumption Committee is has
launched a new, national grass roots campaign.  It's focused on the
one major aspect of American consumption that's probably the easiest
to change: our dietary lifestyle.  American food production has a huge
impact on the environment:
 -- Agriculture is the largest source of water pollution in the US.
 -- Our industrialized farming poisons the soil, encourages pests, and
destroys biodiversity.
 -- Three fourths of the land in the continental United States is
devoted to agriculture or grazing, and much of the cropland produces
grain for cows, not people.

The Club expends enormous resources fighting the symptoms of
unsustainable agriculture, from water pollution and toxins in the food
chain to loss of habitat and species.

What the Club has not previously done is to seriously challenge the
root cause of the above: American food consumption patterns. By and
large, our diet is so unsustainably produced that it jeopardizes not
just the environment but also our health.  Our diet completely ignores
the true cost of food.

That's about to Change.

We're responding with the "True Cost of Food" campaign to make the
Club a leader in sustainable eating:  Our goal is an America that
eats:
 -- Low on the food chain.
 -- Organically produced food.
 -- Locally grown food when practical.

The first prong of this campaign is building a nationwide network of
activists who will target local markets to provide more food that is
organically grown, locally produced, and reasonably priced.  These
goals are practical and doable.  There already exists a pent-up public
demand for organic.  Rapidly growing numbers of local farmers want to
give up their dependence on poisons.  And the Sierra Club already has
the ideal structure and experience to galvanize this movement.

The second prong is educational.  We're producing brochures and fact
sheets for activists, and articles for local newsletters.  We're
completely redoing our website:
http://www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption. This campaign has
one special advantage: It shows environmentally minded people how they
can immediately start making a big difference in their everyday lives.
That's empowerment.  And empowered people are already halfway to
becoming activists.  Consider the value of this one fact on someone
who is already trying to conserve water:  It takes 2500 gallons of
water to produce a pound of beef.  This equals a five-minute shower
every day for six months!

The third prong is a concept we are popularizing: "Sustainable
Tuesday." On Tuesdays, we encourage everyone (not just activists) to
make a fun-filled effort to live more lightly on our Planet. It might
be a group outing for a prearranged sustainable meal at a local
restaurant or an intimate sustainable potluck family dinner. We could
turn the thermostat up or down, depending on the season.  We cold walk
or use alternate transportation if possible.  Maybe we could hike in
the park with a friend instead of going shopping. The main thing is to
make it fun!

Our "True Cost of Food" campaign can potentially bring a whole new
class of people into the heart of the Club.  There are thousands of
environmentally sensitive folks who don't gravitate to our more
traditional efforts on land use, pollution, and so forth.  But they
will warm up to a campaign like this.  We can find countless allies in
the following communities:

 -- The organic food or vegetarian movements.
 -- The health community.
 -- The simple-living movement.

The Club's traditional work on forests, habitat, clean air, and so
forth must be strengthened.  And few things will help more than
addressing one root cause of these problems, the wasteful and
excessive consumption in our society.  That's where the Sustainable
Consumption Committee comes in.  Switching consumer demand to
low-impact food is our current focus area, but we will also educate on
sustainable wood production, energy use, water consumption, and
related issues.  Furthermore, we plan to talk about the
Madison-Avenue-driven, buy-and-consume craze that has virtually become
our national religion.

We'd love to have you get involved at any level of activity you're
comfortable with.  Please contact our volunteer coordinator, Gordon
LaBedz at GLaBedzMD@aol.com.

Are you a Club activist with too much on your plate?  Here's an easy
way to help!  You probably know someone that has an interest in
sustainable food or belongs to one of the above-mentioned communities.
 This person ought to be delighted to find out the Club is working on
this, and should be encouraged to contact Gordon.