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Javier E

Incurable American Excess - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...incurable-american-excess.html

consumption US self-help self-interest solidarity social individualism overconsumption lifestyle global warming obesity culture

shared by Javier E on 06 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • A few years ago, Americans and Europeans were asked in a Pew Global Attitudes survey what was more important: “freedom to pursue life’s goals without state interference,” or “state guarantees that nobody is in need.”
  • In the United States, 58 percent chose freedom and only 35 percent a state pledge to eradicate neediness. In Britain, the response was the opposite: 55 percent opted for state guarantees and just 38 percent for freedom. On the European Continent — in Germany, France and Spain — those considering state protection as more important than freedom from state interference rose to 62 percent.
  • Americans, who dwell in a vast country, sparsely populated by European standards, are hardwired to the notion of individual self-reliance.
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  • Europeans, with two 20th-century experiences of cataclysmic societal fracture, are bound to the idea of social solidarity as prudent safeguard and guarantor of human decency.
  • The French see the state as a noble idea and embodiment of citizens’ rights. Americans tend to see the state as a predator on those rights.
  • To return from Europe to the United States, as I did recently, is to be struck by the crumbling infrastructure, the paucity of public spaces, the conspicuous waste (of food and energy above all), the dirtiness of cities and the acuteness of their poverty.
  • It is also to be overwhelmed by the volume and vital clamor of American life, the challenging interaction, the bracing intermingling of Americans of all stripes, the strident individualism.
  • In his intriguing new book, “The United States of Excess,” Robert Paarlberg, a political scientist, cites the 2011 Pew survey as he grapples with these divergent cultures. His focus is on American overconsumption of fuel and food
  • Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the United States are about twice those of the other wealthy nations of the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. American obesity (just over a third of American adults are now obese) is running at about twice the European average and six times the Japanese.
  • A resource-rich, spacious nation, mistrustful of government authority, persuaded that responsibility is individual rather than collective, optimistic about the capacity of science and technology to resolve any problem, and living in a polarized political system paralyzed by its “multiple veto points,” tends toward “a scrambling form of adaptation” rather than “effective mitigation.”
  • Whether it comes to food or fuel, they don’t want measures where “voting-age adults are being coerced into a lifestyle change.”
  • Individualism trumps all — and innovation, it is somehow believed, will save the country from individualism’s ravages.
  • Rather than cut back, they prefer to consume more — whether fuel or food — and then find ways to offset excess.
  • With the strong policy measures needed to control excess consumption — taxes, regulations and mandates — blocked, political leaders are “tempted to shift more resources and psychological energy toward the second-best path of adaptation,
  • Easier, and potentially more profitable, to develop drought-resistant farm crops or improve coastal protection systems than tackle global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
  • His conclusions are pessimistic. The world should not expect America to change. Its response to overconsumption is inadequate.
  • On global warming, the country adapts but does not confront, content “to protect itself, and itself alone.”
  • On obesity, it shuns the kind of coordinated policy action that will help the less fortunate, particularly disadvantaged minorities.
Javier E

Why I'm Not a Vegan - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...why-im-not-a-vegan

vegan diet

shared by Javier E on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • we still have much to learn about the composition of plants and the aspects of them that are good for us[3] , although it’s becoming clear that they’re beneficial not so much as a combination of nutrients but as the right package of nourishment, which we might as well call real food. In other words, you’re better off eating a carrot than the beta-carotene that was once thought to be its most beneficial “ingredient.”[
  • there are non-dietary reasons to eat fewer animal products. Even if their nutritional profile were unambivalently beneficial, they use too many resources: land, water, energy and — not the least important — food that could nourish people
  • there are two other factors to consider: the industrial production of livestock is a major (if not the leading) contributor to greenhouse gases, and the rampant and nearly unregulated use of antibiotics in that production is making those drugs less effective while encouraging the development of hardier disease-causing germs.
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  • “why not go whole hog” (forgive me) “and advocate a strictly vegan diet?” Isn’t being a part-time vegan, the more strident demand, like being a little bit pregnant?
  • You might think of patterns of eating as falling on one point or another along a spectrum, and moving toward the plant-based end of that spectrum — as opposed to the end represented by Morgan Spurlock’s “super-sized” diet — is almost always beneficial.[7] It is about eating better, or well, not perfectly, and it must be said that “perfectly” has not yet been defined.
  • This much is known, now: We produce most animal products in deplorable conditions, and some of our health and environmental problems can be traced both to dominant production methods and our overconsumption. But we like to eat them, and they’re a pleasurable and even healthy part of many traditional diets and even sound agricultural practices.
Javier E

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-junk-food-really-cheaper.html

food health cost economics culture policy environment industry

shared by Javier E on 25 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • “Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all,
  • “It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is a lot better than none.”
  • The core problem is that cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch. “People really are stressed out with all that they have to do, and they don’t want to cook,”
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  • “Their reaction is, ‘Let me enjoy what I want to eat, and stop telling me what to do.’ And it’s one of the few things that less well-off people have: they don’t have to cook.”
  • The ubiquity, convenience and habit-forming appeal of hyperprocessed foods have largely drowned out the alternatives: there are five fast-food restaurants for every supermarket in the United States; in recent decades the adjusted for inflation price of fresh produce has increased by 40 percent while the price of soda and processed food has decreased by as much as 30 percent; and nearly inconceivable resources go into encouraging consumption in restaurants: fast-food companies spent $4.2 billion on marketing in 2009.
  • overconsumption of fast food “triggers addiction-like neuroaddictive responses” in the brain, making it harder to trigger the release of dopamine. In other words the more fast food we eat, the more we need to give us pleasure; thus the report suggests that the same mechanisms underlie drug addiction and obesity.
  • This addiction to processed food is the result of decades of vision and hard work by the industry. For 50 years, says David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and author of “The End of Overeating,” companies strove to create food that was “energy-dense, highly stimulating, and went down easy. They put it on every street corner and made it mobile, and they made it socially acceptable to eat anytime and anyplace. They created a food carnival, and that’s where we live. And if you’re used to self-stimulation every 15 minutes, well, you can’t ru
  • Real cultural changes are needed to turn this around. Somehow, no-nonsense cooking and eating — roasting a chicken, making a grilled cheese sandwich, scrambling an egg, tossing a salad — must become popular again
  • HOW do you change a culture? The answers, not surprisingly, are complex. “Once I look at what I’m eating,” says Dr. Kessler, “and realize it’s not food, and I ask ‘what am I doing here?’ that’s the start. It’s not about whether I think it’s good for me, it’s about changing how I feel. And
  • we change how people feel by changing the environment.”
  • Obviously, in an atmosphere where any regulation is immediately labeled “nanny statism,” changing “the environment” is difficult. But we’ve done this before, with tobacco.
  • Political action would mean agitating to limit the marketing of junk; forcing its makers to pay the true costs of production; recognizing that advertising for fast food is not the exercise of free speech but behavior manipulation of addictive substances; and making certain that real food is affordable and available to everyone.
brookegoodman

The Guardian view on fast fashion: it can't cost the earth | Editorial | Opinion | The ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...fashion-it-cant-cost-the-earth

economics crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Fashion operates on desire. How we dress feeds off cravings to be different as well as part of a tribe; to be en vogue but ahead of the pack. The message from the high street is that such wishes can be fulfilled, and fast fashion plays on the idea that hunger can be sated immediately. But to overcome such urges we need to reflect on the fragility of our planet. This means accepting that there is a better way to keep the pleasures of fashion open to all parts of society than promoting disposable clothes as desirable. This is not just about the high cost of the £4 dress; luxury retailers such as Louis Vuitton have offered small collections every two weeks.
  • Fashion shouldn’t cost the earth. But the industry has for too long promoted overconsumption as a good thing. About a fifth of mass-produced clothing does not even sell and ends up being buried, shredded or burned. Garments now account for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Synthetic fibres are being found in Arctic sea ice and in fish.
  • New research shows that 51% of Britons are opting to purchase expensive but longer-lasting clothes rather than cheaper throwaway items, up from 33% a year ago.
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  • At no other time in human history has fashion been so accessible to so many people. Technology will help to make fashion greener. Better regulation of supply chains will help too. There is a discernible shift from discarding clothes to repairing, reusing or even renting them. However, it is hard to see how this will be enough to make fashion truly sustainable if the industry still produces more and more clothes. Once normal service is resumed, we need to think again about the wisdom of fostering competitive consumption, which upholds the persistent demand for expansion, in our society.
Javier E

World 'population bomb' may never go off as feared, finds study | Population | The Guar... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...r-go-off-as-feared-finds-study

population forecast crisis history demographics

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • The long-feared “population bomb” may not go off, according to the authors of a new report that estimates that human numbers will peak lower and sooner than previously forecast.
  • on current trends the world population will reach a high of 8.8 billion before the middle of the century, then decline rapidly. The peak could come earlier still if governments take progressive steps to raise average incomes and education levels.
  • The new forecasts are good news for the global environment. Once the demographic bulge is overcome, pressure on nature and the climate should start to ease, along with associated social and political tensions.
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  • The new projection, released on Monday, was carried out by the Earth4All collective of leading environmental science and economic institutions, including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BI Norwegian Business School. They were commissioned by the Club of Rome for a followup to its seminal Limits to Growth study more than 50 years ago.
  • “This gives us evidence to believe the population bomb won’t go off, but we still face significant challenges from an environmental perspective. We need a lot of effort to address the current development paradigm of overconsumption and overproduction, which are bigger problems than population.”
  • Previous studies have painted a grimmer picture. Last year, the UN estimated the world population would hit 9.7 billion by the middle of the century and continue to rise for several decades afterwards.
  • But the authors caution that falling birthrates alone will not solve the planet’s environmental problems, which are already serious at the 7.8 billion level and are primarily caused by the excess consumption of a wealthy minority.
  • The report is based on a new methodology which incorporates social and economic factors that have a proven impact on birthrate, such as raising education levels, particularly for women, and improving income.
  • In the business-as-usual case, it foresees existing policies being enough to limit global population growth to below 9 billion in 2046 and then decline to 7.3 billion in 2100.
  • too little too late: “Although the scenario does not result in an overt ecological or total climate collapse, the likelihood of regional societal collapses nevertheless rises throughout the decades to 2050, as a result of deepening social divisions both internal to and between societies. The risk is particularly acute in the most vulnerable, badly governed and ecologically vulnerable economies.”
  • In the second, more optimistic scenario – with governments across the world raising taxes on the wealthy to invest in education, social services and improved equality – it estimates human numbers could hit a high of 8.5 billion as early as 2040 and then fall by more than a third to about 6 billion in 2100. Under this pathway, they foresee considerable gains by mid-century for human society and the natural environment.
  • “By 2050, greenhouse gas emissions are about 90% lower than they were in 2020 and are still falling,” according to the report. “Remaining atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial processes are increasingly removed through carbon capture and storage. As the century progresses, more carbon is captured than stored, keeping the global temperature below 2C above pre-industrial levels. Wildlife is gradually recovering and starting to thrive once again in many places.”
Javier E

Can you resist all the addictions modern life throws at you? Only if you're rich enough... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-you-only-if-youre-rich-enough

addiction modern life wealth protection

shared by Javier E on 13 Oct 24 - No Cached
  • hey are problems of success, really, these modern ills. Social media addiction, gaming disorders, the compulsive over-eating of sugar and processed gloop: they are products of a society with more than enough food, leisure time and boredom, and without the life-or-death excitement that kept our ancestors busy.
  • Only a species that is this superfluously good at survival could afford to hack its own anti-survival neural circuitry, targeting the pathways that instead make it more likely to die
  • But the troubling fact is that a large portion of the economy now runs on addiction.
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  • Problems of success are harder, not easier, to deal with, of course – you wouldn’t want to reverse the conditions that got us here
  • The path of incentives is easy to trace: an addicted customer is a reliable customer – and why settle for mere consumption of your product when you could get overconsumption instead?
  • David Courtwright calls this “limbic capitalism”: named for the part of the brain responsible for emotional processing. Global industries, he says, are starting to aim right at it.
  • In this country, we are at last regulating away some of the older vices, such as nicotine and alcohol.
  • many new vices are popping up in their stead. Food companies mine and refine their products for addictive properties: ultra-processed food, thought to encourage compulsive eating, now makes up two-thirds of the calorie intake of adolescent Britons
  • Gaming addiction is soaring. We hear less about workaholics than we used to, but perhaps only because the condition is so common – instead, we hear about burnout, the end result.
  • Then of course there are smartphones, teaching us to crave for the next ping of a message, or the bright notification of a retweet
  • These in turn link us to the thousands of addictive products being pumped out by the largest tech companies on the planet. There are gambling apps, gaming apps and one-click shopping apps – even addiction to fitness-tracker apps is on the rise. Then of course there is social media, to which almost half of British teens now feel addicted.
  • For a few, it is possible to buy your way out, back into old-fashioned reality
  • a new kind of luxury is emerging: freedom from cravings.
  • The ultimate example might be the rapid growth of semaglutide drugs
  • they also seem to reduce cravings for alcohol, nicotine and opioids, and perhaps even compulsive gambling and online shopping.
  • semaglutides such as Wegovy and Ozempic reduce the release of dopamine in the brain’s striatum, the region that motivates you to take another bite of something delicious but also to take another puff of your cigarette. They appear to act not on the digestive system, but on craving itself.
  • It’s hard to imagine – having a smartphone without needing to check it, putting down a tube of Pringles halfway through. For this is the major struggle of modern life: self-control in the face of addictive products. It’s becoming harder and harder to do
  • most cannot afford to anyway
  • Ozempic is mostly known as a “Hollywood phenomenon”, available only to the rich.
  • The income divide is there, too, when it comes to resisting online addictions. As time away from screens becomes a scarce commodity, some companies are monetising it in the form of off-grid digital detox weekends or curiously expensive dumbphones.
  • This summer, Eton announced it would ban smartphones – giving new pupils Nokia “bricks” instead. Meanwhile, children from lower-income backgrounds spend on average two more hours a day on their phones than their peers.
  • money shelters you from many of the conditions that encourage addiction in the first place. Junk food appeals most when you do not have the time, money or the emotional energy to access healthy alternatives: chasing their likely customers, fast food joints spring up in deprived areas. As do betting shops.
  • We sometimes pretend that resisting gambling, social media, sweet treats and retail therapy is mostly a matter of willpower – as if the economy weren’t built on pushing us these things. Instead, it’s becoming a privilege few can afford.
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