So today I spent all day in a Jeep with my sister Ruth and my mom, zooming from mall to Wal-mart to Dick's Sporting Goods and back again; a last-minute shopping extravaganza. It was terrifying; after months and months living in the bike garage and backyard of self-proclamed anti-captalists and spending all of my time with anarchists and birth activists, it was like being in a foreign country (as it always feels when I'm "home",) and I always suffer from a type of culture shock. I didn't buy anything; instead, between this big box store and the next, I read to my family about third world healthcare and the coho salmon dying because of the warm water in the Kalamath River, due to dams, pollution, etc. Mostly I read to myself, because I know that they have no interest in hearing my evangelical environmentalism, but when something really stuck out to me, I preached the word.
Picture it; you just finish reading a paragraph about massive amounts of coho salmon turning around at their traditional run because the water is too hot. They went back down the river until rain started to cool the river off, then they turned around and headed back to their run. By then, however, many of them are sick and weak and unable to make it up the run. Unable to make it, unable to spawn and reproduce, they end up dying in massive numbers, thousands and thousands of bodies washing up onto the banks of the Kalamath River. You just finish this paragraph and you find that your sister has parked in the Superstore Wal-Mart parking lot. As you get out of the car and head inside, you are struck with the horror of it all; this massive building, filled with shit (most of it unusable, from a purely practical sense,) which was made from natural resources in a factory somewhere, where people worked for starvation wages, is helping to contribute to the scene you just read about. The global warming, the pollution and the dams that are killing the salmon that cannot spawn because we want some ugly santa doll that sings jingle bells when you squeeze it's belly, or soda or a battery operated toy that shoots little plasic balls out all over the place for toddlers to chase. We work hard for, and buy this riduclous shit, and meanwhile the world burns. When we entered the Wal-Mart, my sister said something I often think of in very large buildings "I wonder what it takes to heat this place..." My mom shuttered in response. My brain flashed on the salmon dying; I thought, "we can't even really think about what it takes to heat this place or we'd have to make our entire way of life obsolete."
I watched the faces of all the people shopping in all of the stores we went into; with the exception of a few very small babies, nobody looked happy; instead most people I glanced at looked stressed to the max, tired, worn out, bored. I wanted to scream "look at yourselves...you don't even want to be here, buying this ridiculous shit! Why the hell are you here?" But I was there too, trying to spend time with my family, but instead, feeling very disconnected from them and weird, as though I'd landed on some alien planet. My mom, who used to be very anti-consumerism herself, insisted on spending large amounts of money on everyone in the family, even people for whom she had no clue what to get for them. My motto is that if you don't know someone well enough to know what they'd want or need, you shouldn't get them anything.
I will admit, I have purchased a few presents for Christmas this year; most of my gifts have been handmade, but I also bought an edible plant guide for my dear Holly and a few used movies online for my sister Ruth. But that is it; and even that feels a lot excessive to me. Next year everything is going to be handmade, or maybe I won't give presents at all, period.
The best time to give gifts, in my experience, is when they are completely unexpected, not on a birthday, or a holiday, just randomly, whenever you want to show someone you really love them. When I think, suddenly, of someone who needs a little extra of my apprieciation, I might make a handmade card or write a letter to them, or suprise-visit them, or send them a note via someone else. You get the best reactions from people who don't know they are going to get a picture you drew them, a bunch of flowers picked from the park, or a sandwitch saved from Food Not Bombs. Those are truely the gifts that have gotten the best reactions for me, and have been the most apprieciated.
Love ya,
Carrot
I don't see how it has much to do with salmon but I agree with a lot of what you wrote in this blog.
Much of the stuff that is bought, sold and given at Christmas is useless and un-needed shit. I hate the Christmas commercialism and with the exception of my young nieces and nephews, I mostly refuse to participate.
The salmon thing is caused by water shortages and competition for water between agriculture, rapidly growing cities that need ever more fresh water and of course the fish. It is a population problem. The fish would be out of water regardless of whether we had a capitalist economy or a subsistence economy. There are just too many people who want to eat and drink and both mean that the fish get short changed.
to know that while carrot might collect foodstamps, she is also a very responsible (non)consumer. Most people on foodtamps still manage to buy a bunch of un-needed shit for the holidays.
also, I don't see how your explanation about a water shortage explains the temperature of the water which carrot identified as the main problem.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
As far as I know, river water shortages alter the flow of streams as well as the temperature and parts per million dissolved oxygen. Dams, degraded riparian zones and many other river impediments contribute to low flow of rivers and streams. Hope that helps.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
The amount of water flowing down a river and the water tempurature are closely related. The less water flowing, the warmer the water gets. Also warm water holds less dissolved oxygen. I don't know too much about salmon but I know that trout (which are closely related) become severely stressed if the water tempurature rises much above 50 degrees. It is not so much the tempurature but the lack of oxygen.
In the Kalamath situation the river is dammed, Historically the dam was for agriculture but I believe the river is being tapped more and more to provide fresh water for the teaming west coast hoards who refuse to control and limit their population numbers.
There was either no water behind the dam to release because it had already been consumed or it was being held back for humans and the fish suffered.
The dam has been there for several decades and the fish and the humans have managed to co-exist. What has changed has been relentless human population growth mainly driven by excessive immigration.
For once you admit that we have a population problem here, as well as in developing countries...the West Coast is terribly crowded, as I can confirm. I'm not sure this is due to excessive immigration; since where I live the overcrowding seems to be due to excessive Americans, but anyway...
As I understand it, the Kalamath river problem is mainly due to:
1) agriculture. But much of this agriculture isn't necessarily food production; it is more wine vineyards and the like.
2) dams to generate electricity. I'm not saying we need to necessarily get rid of electricity, but I believe without excessive consumerism, we could get rid of a lot of our factories, which is where most of our electricity usage goes. We might be able to generate enough electricity with renewable sources, such as wind, for home-useage. I'm certainly not sure about this, but I bet we could get a lot closer.
Love ya,
Carrot
ps. I definately believe overpopulation is the main environmental problem we face; 7 billion people is just way too many for the earth to handle.
For once you admit that we have a population problem here, as well as in developing countries...
Did I miss the note of sarcasm?
If you read any blog on this site about immigration you will likely find me on it making comments like: "85% of our population growth is driven by immigration" and "we are on track to have 450 billion people by 2050 which would be 50% growth in just 40 years" or "we are on track to have almost 1 billion people by 2100 and will our kids still be singing America the Beautiful when we have that many people trying to use our already overcrowoded parks" or "every single problem we have whether it be bad schools, environmental degradation, crime, congestion, energy dependence, corruption, poverty, etc gets harder to solve as we add people and this is doubly true if they happen to be poor ignorant people from the third world who will consume more from the Treasury then they contribute."
You've totally missed my writing if you think that I favor our current runaway population growth.
You should watch this video:
Immigration by the Numbers
I seem to remember that you and I have discussed immigration before in reference to a handsome Irish boy that you blogged about maybe a year ago. You were arguing for increased population growth and I was arguing against.
I think you have finally hit on the truth though. You rally against our modern economy and the damage it causes. You do realize that if the economy were to end and all those teaming millions of people (35 million in California and I'm not sure how many more in Oregon and Washington) that they would rape the land in a desparate effort to feed themselves far more thoroughly then anything that is being done by the modern economy? Most would eventually die (many in violent and horrible ways) and those that were left would probably resort to some sort of feudal economy (lords and vassels, rule by the strong and the cruel) but in the process of dying they would destroy everything about the environment you cherish.
The enemy is not the modern economy. The enemy is the relentless population growth. You need to look at root causes. Every new house, every new MacDonalds, every new big box store, every new highway is driven by population growth.
agriculture. But much of this agriculture isn't necessarily food production; it is more wine vineyards and the like.
I seem to remember you blogging more than once about alcohol consumption. I'm sure you realize that the majority of whatever your poison of choice happens to be, it is the product of modern agriculture including things like water stored behind dams.
Humans have long placed a HIGHER value on alcohol then on food. Bootleggers turned their corn crops into moonshine because it was MORE VALUABLE as liquor then food. Johhny Appleseed is an American legend for providing the gift of alcohol across the West. (Being an upstate New Yorker, I'm sure that you know that you can't grow eating apples from seeds because there is too much genetic variability. You have to graft. Johnny's apples were only good for liquor.) Fur traders used to trade rum for furs in the islands off the Pacific Northwest and the natives would literally cease food gathering in favor of fur hunting to get more Rum to the point where they literally starved to death. The list of alcohol being more highly prized then food goes on and on.
Wine production is perfectly valid agriculture and there is a REASON why people will pay $10 to $50 a bottle for the stuff they make. It is better than food.
If you are wanting a successful self-sustaining community you had better make sure that alcohol production (and maybe some pot too) is included in your plans or you'll have a very unharmonious place.
I'm guilty as charged. I often drink wine that is grown in the very areas that take water from the dams I rage against. I was thinking a lot about that while reading the article about the Kalamath River and came to the conclution that it is time for me to stop being a hypacrite at least in that area and to give up the local wines I love...I tend toward overdrinking anyway, so this would be good for me.
As for the overpopulation problem; I've always felt overpopulation was the driving force behind many of our environmental/lifestyle problems. But I'm still torn about limiting immigration; it still seems wrong to me to say some folks can enjoy this wonderful country while others can't. I don't know what the solution is to this...I myself will probably chose not to reproduce, but this won't obviously steam the tide of the "huddled masses" who are still yearning to breathe free.
Love ya,
Carrot
that the best gifts are ones that are "just because."
I have protested so many Christmases in my family by saying, "Please don't buy me anything because I am not buying you anything." they still buy me crap. and it's crap I never ever use. Then I feel guilty and end up buying them something next year, and I know they don't know what the hell to do with it either.
this year I am only giving cards with our family picture on it and to some a cd of my daughters last photo shoot in november.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude