Generation Hot—Why Aren’t Parents Fighting Climate Change?

Mark Hertzgaard’s recent article, “Parents Need to Act Against Climate Change,” in the Daily Beast, is a moralistic diatribe against parents’ apathy in response to climate change. Since the worst effects of climate change are only just beginning, our kids will be inheriting a lifetime of catastrophic storms, heat waves, droughts, famines and economic hardships. Therefore, he argues, parents should be terrified, outraged and aggressively fighting to reverse the crisis. Yet for the most part they are not.

The current U.S. heat wave—the worst in 56 years—has now encompassed 1,000 counties and is affecting fully one-third of Americans. There have already been nearly 100 deaths (which is significant, but still miniscule compared with the 70,000 who died in Europe’s heat wave of 2003). Ranchers are considering selling off their herds for slaughter early because they cannot afford to feed them. Food prices are expected to rise dramatically. And scientists are claiming that the heat wave, drought, fires in the Southwest and other extreme weather events of the past few years are what climate change looks like.

Climate change is indeed the most significant issue of our day as it threatens life on the planet in the long-term and our living conditions and material wellbeing in the short-term. Hertzgaard is correct in his assessment that American’s are relatively apathetic on this issue. He is also correct that our children, whom he dubs “Generation Hot,” will inherit much more serious consequences than we are currently experiencing if the trend is not reversed.

However, people (parents, children and everyone else) cannot be beaten into action with moralizing and guilt tripping. They will not suddenly jump to the barricades because Hertzgaard, or his organization, have made them feel guilty about leaving a moribund planet to their children.

Nor will partial or inaccurate analyses lead them into action. For example, Hertzgaard suggests that parents “don’t know, or choose not to believe,” the science because the media covers climate change through “political rather than scientific lenses.” This overly simplistic analysis deemphasizes the role of the heavily funded PR machine that the coal and petroleum industries have used to deliberately mislead and confuse the public about the facts, much like the tobacco companies have done to try to convince the public that tobacco is safe.

There are other problems with this analysis, too, like the assumptions that if the media talked about climate change “through a scientific lens” the public would necessarily understand the science, its implications, be outraged and take action. None of these assumptions is necessarily true. The facts about tobacco’s health consequences encouraged some to quit. However, increased regulation (e.g., tobacco taxes, mandated warning labels, laws regulating where and how tobacco could be sold and advertised) together with public health outreach campaigns, have contributed to significantly more dramatic reductions in tobacco usage.

Hertzgaard also suggests that the facts are just too depressing for many parents to face, leading many to ignore them or pretend climate change is not happening. Of course the facts are depressing, while the only solutions likely to reverse the trend involve dramatic reductions (or elimination) of fossil fuel consumption and significant reductions in overall consumption seem hopelessly unlikely in our current economic and cultural climate.

However, I Hertzgaard’s analysis here is dismissive and disparaging. Parents are not the cause of climate change. They are its victims. And while we are all complicit in it by continuing to consume polluting products and services, we have little choice in the matter. We need to get to work and heat our homes and eat, and these are all heavily dependent on greenhouse gas emitting technologies. Changing this requires massive regulation, which depends on the goodwill of a political and economic system that benefits handsomely from the status quo, or dramatic socioeconomic changes that are unlikely to occur without considerable violence and suffering.

Furthermore, while climate change may be the most significant issue of our day, it is still largely a long term problem in most people’s eyes, particularly when juxtaposed with our day to day needs, like putting food on the table, which for most Americans has become much more difficult as a result of the economic crisis. It may be that Americans do indeed recognize the gravity of the climate problem and are not simply shoving their heads in the ground. Rather, they also recognize the socioeconomic challenges of fighting it and the urgency of their own material needs, and choose to go on with their lives with as little disruption and stress as they can.

In many respects, climate change is just another front in the class war the ruling elite has been imposing on the rest of us for generations. The primary beneficiaries of carbon pollution are the industries that are allowed to dump carbon into the atmosphere or sell polluting products without charge (e.g., petroleum, coal, shipping, automotive, construction, owners of large buildings, big agriculture, etc.) They increase their profits by externalizing these costs onto the public. Regulation has not been possible because these beneficiaries of carbon pollution have spent billions of dollars on PR, ads and lobbying to convince the public there is no problem and to convince politicians not to regulate them. Convincing parents to get angry and get into the streets is no more likely to change this than the Occupy movement was in getting Congress to regulate banking.

Of course regulation alone cannot solve the problem. We don’t simply need better rules governing how industries pollute. We need social changes that dramatically reduce or eliminate carbon pollution combined with heavy investment in carbon neutral technologies combined with dramatic reductions in overall consumption combined with stiffer penalties and better policing of industrial pollution. Most of these enormous long-term socioeconomic changes will require directly confronting the ruling elite and capitalism itself and therefore also require comprehensive community and workplace organizing. This is most effectively done by getting into the streets, communities and workplaces and talking to people one on one and listening to their concerns, not by getting on your high horse and talking down to them.

Gutting Regulation Sickens Your Guts

By now, with the regularity of food recalls and epidemics of food-borne illness in the U.S., one might have good reason to agree with Der Spiegel’s reclassification of the U.S. as a third world banana republic. After all, everyone knows you shouldn’t eat unwashed fresh produce in Honduras and Guatemala.

Of course the difference between poor countries and the U.S. is that we actually have the infrastructure to deliver clean food and water. However, with the growing percentage of agricultural land being gobbled up by corporate factory farms that cram together tens of thousands of hogs, chickens or cattle along with speedups and lax oversight and cleanliness at processing plants, it is inevitable that illness provoking germs would increasingly find their way into our foods.

The problem has only been worsened by the gutting of federal oversight, which has reduced the number of available agents to inspect food producing and processing sites.

Giving Corporate Crooks A Free Pass

According to Democracy Now, federal officials have now acknowledged that they knew about the dangerous bacteria found in Cargill ground turkey products well before this month’s recall, one of the largest meat recalls in U.S. history. This is no trivial blunder, as one person has already died from Salmonella, and 76 others were sickened from turkey products traced to Cargill’s processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas.

A dangerous form of Salmonella was discovered by the USDA in Cargill turkey at least once last year and another four times this year. Despite the risk to the public, the USDA allowed Cargill to continue to sell potentially tainted meat until the recent outbreak occurred.

Our Product is Sowing Doubt

Big Tobacco was caught with their pants down when a memo was leaked suggesting they were in the business of sowing doubt about their product’s safety. Many industries, however, have been engaged in a similar game. For example, they hire their own scientists to do biased studies that appear to draw into question accepted scientific facts. Their lobbyists then use this data to gain watered down regulations and allow them to sell dangerous products.

It would appear that poultry producers have done the same. According to Democracy Now, the USDA claims that according to their own rules they do not consider Salmonella contamination as a health risk until the meat actually sickens or kills someone.

Lunch Law Lards Commodity Food Producers, Does Little to Fight Obesity

Image by fsgm

On Monday, President Obama signed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, providing an additional $4.5 billion to the school lunch program over the next ten years. Obama praised the bill as a rare example of bipartisan cooperation, which should have alerted everyone that it was really just a big giveaway to corporate America.

The bill’s supporters believe that it will provide kids with more access to whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables. It allows the USDA to set nutritional standards for all food, whether in cafeterias or vending machines, paving the way for the ultimate elimination of candy and other junk food at schools. It will also expand free school meals to an additional 115,000 low income students.

Much Ado About Nothing

Chidorian

While these are all good things, they are unlikely to happen. The legislation only provides a paltry six cent increase for each meal served, just enough to spread a few whole grains decoratively around students’ plates. Schools will be allowed to raise prices for students who can afford it, but there is no guarantee that students will be willing to pay more for a plate of “healthy” food, especially if it is still mass produced and heavily processed swill. Even if the more privileged students do pay more, schools still won’t be able to afford to hire sufficient cooks to prepare fresh meals on site, and will continue to rely on a few underpaid servers to hand out prefabricated meals produced by corporate giants like Sodexo and Marriott.

The pathetic six cents per meal subsidy will only be provided to schools that implement the new stricter nutrition guidelines. Considering that schools were already losing money on federally subsidized school lunches, even when resorting to prefabricated corporate factory foods, how will an additional six cents allow them to provide fresh fruits and vegetables? It’s unlikely that many schools will take advantage of the new program without making cuts elsewhere.

In my school district, the food is so horrendous that few students were buying it. However, our district had negotiated a deal with Marriott guaranteeing them a profit, which they weren’t making, obligating the school district to pay the difference. In an attempt to save themselves money, the district required schools to implement a brunch period, forcing us to change our bell schedules and cut several minutes of instructional time from each class, in hopes that kids would purchase more.

Robbing Peter to Pay for Paul?

Half the funding for the lunch bill is set to come from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which will provide kids a few cents more per meal at school, while reducing the amount of food stamps their parents would get to feed them at home. President Obama promised to replace the money taken from SNAP from some yet unspecified source. However, in this time of budget slashing and Republican rancor, he is unlikely to make good on this promise. If he fails to secure the funding, school may become the only place where poor kids get to eat. At home they can watch their parents starve.

Opening the Larder to Corporate Plunder

Both the First Lady’s organization, Let’s Move, and the new federal lunch law, were heavily backed by the largest food processing and factory farming groups in the country who hoped to win some of the $4.5 billion of taxpayer dollars allocated in the new legislation. Simply signing on as a supporter is great PR, as it allows these companies look like cheerleaders for children’s health while they continue to push their heavily salted, larded and sugared junk. The tactic is known as “cause marketing.” Joan Chow, chief marketing officer of ConAgra, a big supporter (and potential beneficiary) of the bill, said “We’ve found that consumers feel better about brands that they believe in.”

The biggest benefit to food corporations, however, is that the USDA has 18 months to determine the final nutrition standards, giving their lobbyists plenty of time to haggle, manipulate and massage the new rules to their liking.

Sodexo picket by SEIU Local 1

The school lunch program was already big business, even before this legislation. The largest supplier of school lunches, Sodexo, made more than $1 billion in profits last year, an 8.1% increase over the year before, much of it from school lunches. The new bill virtually ensures that more federal bucks will pass their way. Despite their huge profits, many Sodexo employees made only $7.50 per hour, qualifying them for SNAP (if there is any of it left), and making their kids eligible for free school lunches. Additionally, two-thirds of their non-managerial employees lack health coverage.

Other supporters of the legislation included the American Fruit and Vegetable Processors and Growers Coalition, ConAgra, Domino’s Pizza, International Dairy Foods Association, Mars Inc., Nestle USA, Coca-Cola, and Tyson Foods.

Fighting Obesity?

Proponents, especially the First Lady, claimed that the bill would fight obesity, a laughable notion considering the bill does nothing to increase kids’ physical activity during the school day. On the contrary, schools across the country have been reducing physical education due to budget cuts and the need to provide more academic support classes to help kids pass their numerous state and federal standardized exams. If the First Lady and congress truly care about making schools healthier, they need to abolish NCLB and provide sufficient funding so schools can retain PE teachers and provide students with at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise daily.

The bill also fails to address why kids today are eating so much junk food. It’s not just that parents and schools are ignorant or irresponsible. The fact is that junk food is much cheaper and easier to obtain by overworked, stressed out parents. One reason for this is that government subsidies make it much more profitable to process corn and other commodity foods into unhealthy products that are much cheaper than healthier alternatives.

The Big Ag Deception

In reality, it is an illusion. That 2 liter bottle of coke seems like a good deal, but it is artificially cheap because the high fructose corn syrup came from subsidized corn, paid for out of our tax dollars. We are actually paying twice for that coke, once in the form of a smaller paycheck and again when we actually purchase the bottle at the am/pm.

A more expedient strategy for reducing obesity is to end the subsidies for big factory farms. As long as we subsidize corn and other commodity foods, growers and processers will be encouraged to produce highly processed, sugary, salty and fatty foods. The money saved could be used to help pay for healthier school lunches.

Another effective solution is to heavily tax junk foods, like we do tobacco. This would not only bring in revenues that could be used to improve the quality of school lunches, but it would also reduce consumption of junk food outside of school, with much greater impact on obesity. Higher taxes mean higher prices, forcing people to think twice about their purchases. The tobacco tax has been particularly effective at reducing consumption by children and a junk food tax would likely have a similar effect.

Kids Suffer? (As Fewer Smoke)

“Kids Suffer As Fewer Smoke,” was the headline from an October 28 article in the San Francisco Bay Times, a ludicrous statement, as children suffer greatly from second hand smoke. Any decline in smoking is a good thing. Since 1998, 50 cents from every package of cigarettes sold in California has gone to the First 5 program, which funds children’s medical, dental, mental health, literacy, and special needs programs. The article argued that, as fewer Californians smoke, revenues for the First 5 program have declined. Last year, cigarette sales dropped 8.1%, a $42.5 million loss to The First 5 program.

Cigarette smoking has declined mostly because of increased taxes and effective advertising against the tobacco companies. This is good for everyone, particularly children, who have no control over the amount of secondhand smoke they inhale. Cigarette smoking is related to birth defects and low birth weight, both of which can impair cognitive ability and lead to learning disabilities that hamper academic achievement. They are linked to asthma and other life threatening respiratory conditions that cause children to miss school and diminish their quality of life.

Children's health and education should be funded abundantly, securely and consistently by society and not be dependent on the addictions of grownups.