Michael Janzen

This is a crazy paranoid conspiracy theory-like thought I had while watching the movie Food, Inc. tonight on Netflix. Could the government’s massive subsidization of America’s industrial food complex be a peak oil prep? Seems logical if you follow my logic… if the food supply were in fewer hands it would be easier to maintain at massive levels during tough times. So politicians may think that supporting these massive corporations is simply a hedge against hard times.

You can’t change our civilization overnight. Since most people don’t have the skills to feed themselves and only know how to push a shopping cart and choose between paper and plastic, the only way to feed them during a widespread catastrophe would be to build a centrally managed infrastructure that produced enough food for everyone.

Photo credit wikipedia commons.

This could also explain why our government supports and protects factory farming with subsidies and a wide array of legal shields. Our politicians might be thinking that they are protecting us by protecting factory farming and that all this manufactured food is actually going to be the thing that saves our lives when we run out of gas.

Some may say that factory farming would topple when oil reserves dwindle but my guess is the first industry to be given a disproportionately large fuel ration would be industrial food manufacturers. If things got that bad protecting factory farms would theoretically become a matter of national security.

Encouraging people to learn how to grow their own food is probably an unreasonable plan at this point in time simply due to the massive urban and suburban population centers we’ve developed. To move our people toward a truly sustainable lifestyle would mean spreading us out geographically so we had enough space around us to grow our own food.

Now let me take the paranoid conspiracy theory out of it.

The real question each of us should ask is what are we each doing to make happiness and prosperity more sustainable for ourselves, families, and communities? Here’s are a few ideas:

• Stop hoping that someone in Washington DC is going to fix this mess for us.
• Fix it for ourselves by choosing to live a more sustainable lifestyle.
• Become more self-sufficient and begin disconnecting from the industrial complex.
• Consume less so we can move more of our personal resources to things that support a sustainable lifestyle.
• Downsize and conserve because it saves money and reduces risk.

Making a simple happy life a priority isn’t crazy. Conspiracy theories will make you crazy. Try not to spend too much time dwelling on what might be happening and instead turn your energy toward fixing the problem which starts with a heart to heart conversation with the person you see in the mirror.

Self awareness or sentience is a tricky thing to measure. I read an interesting article on EcoWorldly last night about elephants passing a self-awareness test. It got me thinking and this morning I woke up with a strong sense that is not OK to be eating creatures that are self-aware. This is not a new idea, actually if you read the wikipedia article on sentience you’ll find that animal rights activists have been pointing this out for a long time.

Now I would not eat an elephant or gorilla but what about cows, pigs, and chickens? There are plenty of other reasons to eat vegitarian and vegan but this particular aspect of the whole matter of eating meat has got me thinking. I’m also going to try the test on my dogs. Don’t worry… I won’t be eating my dogs either… but I wonder if they would pass the self awareness test?

I had to run to the grocery store tonight to get a few items and saw this while waiting at the check stand. Would you eat this meat? I was extremely surprised to see that someone was actually trying to market beef jerky under the brand name “Crazy Cow.” I mean come on… doesn’t this branding just scream, “Mad Cow Diseased Beef Jerky!” I’m sure it’s not diseased and that they probably meant it to be a play on words and sickly funny… but if you want to sell something you might try NOT to advertising it could kill you. Call it “Wild Cow” or something.