February book selection: Deep Economy

On March 6, JUST Books will discuss Bill McKibben's Deep Economy at a location to be determined. For more information, contact justbooksbemidji@gmail.com

The following is from the book jacket:

The bestselling author of The End of Nature issues an impassioned call to arms for an economy that creates community and ennobles our lives.

In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, "more" is no longer synonymous with "better"—indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value.

McKibben's animating idea is that we need to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. He shows this concept blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems; for those who wonder if there isn't something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to think about one's life as an individual and as a member of a larger community.

McKibben offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future. As he so eloquently shows, the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.

The China Study

The China Study

Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health

T. Colin Campbell, PhD & Thomas M. Campbell II

This book isn’t on the reading list for JUST Books, but I did mention it at the last meeting. I’m including it in this blog because I think it’s too important to keep quiet about.

A few months ago, my friend Lou stopped me on my way home from work. I was riding my bike on the bike trail along Paul Bunyan Drive. He drove by, heading in the same direction and made a U-turn and stopped near me. Lou jumped out of his Volkswagen and ran over, very excited about a book he had been reading. He said it was The China Study and that I really should read it.

Lou is a vegetarian who has elderly parents. A few years ago, he got his parents to switch to a vegetarian diet. It was inspiring to hear his account of their improving health. Chronic disease symptoms they had learned to live with were just slipping away. His message was that the human body really wants to repair itself, even at an advanced age.

Despite Lou’s enthusiastic recommendation, I was busy reading at least two other books, and didn’t get around to checking out The China Study. A few weeks later, I bumped into Lou at Harmony Natural Foods Co-op. He was excited. He said he had become a vegan, and he couldn’t believe how good it felt. Again, he mentioned The China Study and urged me to read it.

I stopped at Book World that day and looked at The China Study, not sure I was in the market for another self-help book. After a quick scan, I decided to give it a read. Partly, the decision was based on a recommendation by Dean Ornish, MD, on the cover (who I’ve referred to as my cardiologist, although I’ve only read his books, never seen him during office hours) and the forward by John Robbins.

The China Study is further documentation of observations like Lou’s experience with his parents. It explores the ‘constitutional nature of disease,’ the result of multiple systems throughout the body breaking down. The ‘breakdowns’ are diseases of affluence, such as heart disease; obesity; Type 2 diabetes; cancer; autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, and multiple sclerosis; osteoporosis; kidney stones and Alzheimer’s disease. Such ailments, which are common in the US, are uncommon in rural counties in China where people live on whole foods from plant sources.

The authors, a father and son team, delve deep into the science of the human body, but are able to do it in a very easy reading style. I enjoy knowing about life’s functions, but I appreciate even more when I can understand about them. The authors create that understanding. As I read, I came to regard this book as an owner’s manual for the human body.

The China Study offers convincing arguments that cancer, heart disease, and most other chronic illnesses can be prevented, stopped and reversed with a diet of whole foods from common plant sources. Equally enlightening are their explanations of how the nature of most medical science, food and drug industries and the government mislead us about nutrition, vitamins and drugs.

I thought I knew all of this stuff. I’ve carefully watched my diet for twenty years and have been a vegetarian for most of that time. Now, I realize that I was duped by the drug industry into wasting hundreds of dollars a year on useless supplemental vitamins and minerals. The China Study has convinced me to trust food, whole foods from plant sources. Like Lou, I’m excited about making a few changes in my diet. Also like Lou, as I read this book, I kept thinking of people I want to tell about this book and wishing I had more copies of it to lend out.

The China Study’s message is one that you won’t get from your doctor, from school, from the government, or from any food industry promotion board. Unlike the messages you get from those sources, I think this one contains the truth. It could save your life.

Books we have read

2006 Reading List:

February

What’s the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank (How the Republican ‘values’ party captured the Midwest.)

Confessions of An Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (American corporatocracy of

countries that can’t repay their burdensome loans.)

March / April

Blue Gold by Maude Barlow & Tony Clarke (Researching the crisis and corporatization of the world’s water supply.)

May

Chavez, Venezuela and the New Latin America. An Interview with Hugo Chavez by Alieda Guevara (daughter of Che)

Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution by Richard Gott

June

Film presentation: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (documentary on the attempted 2002 coup to remove Hugo Chavez from office.)

July

Continued discussion on the Latin American Socialist Movement

August

Plan B 2.0 Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble by Lester R. Brown (Effective management solutions offered for the current global economic path that is environmentally unsustainable.)

September /October

Last Child in the Woods, Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv (Making a case for linking ADHD with our disconnect from nature.)

November

Topic for discussion: Electronic Voting Machines / Election Fraud

December

Jimmy Carter, choice of books:

Non-fiction; Our Endangered Values, Hour Before Daylight, Talking Peace, Keeping Faith, Blood of Abraham

Fiction; Hornet’s Nest

2007 Reading List

January

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (blue collar job seeking reality)

Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich (white collar job seeking reality)

February

Bill Moyers, any and all books, essays, and speeches.

March

Film presentation: Loose Change (was 9/11 an inside job?)

April/May

American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips (Bush family)

American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips (influence of the religious right)

June

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962 bestseller about our ravaged environment)

Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert (today’s environmental account)

July

Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva (a perspective on justice, sustainability, and peace by one of India’s leading physicists and environmental activists)

August

Film presentation: !Salud! (Cuba’s health care system)

September

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (the story of a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures)

Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (the quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, an American doctor, his life and mission in Haiti)

Summer issue of Yes! Magazine.

October

Continued discussion of Health Care Systems

November

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (one man’s mission to promote peace, one school at a time, in Pakistan)

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, (a novel, coming of age in Afghanastan)

December

Film: Charlie Wilson’s War (1980’s U.S. Congressman orchestrates covert funding of the mujahedin in Afghanistan)

2008 Reading List

January

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver (a family’s journey away from the industrial food pipeline to a rural life of growing and buying local food)

February

Deep Economy, The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben (exploring the consequences of economic growth, more no longer equals better)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Barbara Kingsolver

This is the book that brought the local food diet into the public spotlight.

It is a memoir of a family who moves from Tucson to Appalachia, from a city life where even the water is brought in from somewhere else to a rural one where most of their food comes from their own land and labor. Fortunately for us, at least one member of that family is a talented writer.

Barbara Kingsolver has a way with words. She seems to always find just the right phrase, the right analogy. She is smooth. The reader makes a transition from anecdote to documentary, to commentary and on to another anecdote without feeling preached to or losing the feeling that they are being entertained. I keep thinking, “Why can’t I write like that?”

She is also sentimental. Her family’s life on the farm seems idyllic. Her tenderness often had me chuckling with tears in my eyes.

This book is motivating. Before I finished, I’d made up my mind to try to be more like them, at least in some ways. I already grow most of our own vegetables and shop where I can identify the origin of the rest of the produce we buy. But, I’d like to eat less food that comes from a box or a can. I’d like to gather more wild foods and preserve them for use through the winter. I’d like to buy Minnesota or Wisconsin apples and dry them or make applesauce, rather than eat apples from the west coast (which keep better) in the off-season. I’m no longer content buying organic malted barley for ale making that starts out in Wisconsin, gets shipped to California, and then back to me in Minnesota. I’m going to find a way to eliminate the California connection.

I don’t plan to follow Kingsolver in her transition from vegetarian to omnivore, however. Her family had been vegetarian for humanitarian reasons. They had decided if the only meat they could find was from factory farms and feedlots, they wouldn’t eat meat at all. I commend them for that. I became a vegetarian for exactly those reasons when I was a teenager. It only lasted a few years for me, too.

Kingsolver’s arguments for a return to meat eating were unconvincing. Sure, anyone who has tended a garden will admit that lives are sacrificed for a vegetarian’s benefit. Even if you decide to take your losses and let the Colorado beetles have your potato plants, you can’t avoid the occasional worm that gets sliced by the hoe. That was one of my arguments, too, for a return to the meat that I craved in my youth.

Some of her arguments reminded me of an old lumberjack that I cared for in the nursing home. He told me that he would like to give up chewing Copenhagen, but there are a lot of poor people working for the United States Tobacco Company who would lose their jobs if everyone quit. The lumberjack and I both knew he was bullshitting. Kingsolver is serious. Somehow, I can’t imagine the world being overrun by beggar cows and pigs if we gradually stopped eating them.

She has a valid argument that human life would be impossible without meat consumption in many environments. The Inuit of the far north and Nepali communities at high elevations rely on animals to garner what nutrition they can from the stark landscape and concentrate it for human consumption. I don’t live there. I appreciate the luxury of living in a temperate climate where vegetarianism is possible.

However, Kingsolver doesn’t dwell on the fact that owning as much land as they do is also a luxury that few can afford. She doesn’t mention the fact that many experts agree animal husbandry and meat consumption is the greatest factor in global warming. Raising your own animals the way she does is much closer to carbon neutral than feed lots, but again, that luxury is not afforded to us all. All meat eaters cannot raise their own livestock and are not able to form a relationship with a farmer so they can be assured they are getting totally grass-fed beef and free range chickens.

A tighter argument could be made for harvesting wild game that, due to land use patterns, is destroying its own habitat and eliminating other native species in the bargain. Harvesting deer can be beneficial to the environment in many ways, provided you don’t use an SUV and an ATV and you don’t travel thousands of miles per year in that quest.

My reasons for vegetarianism, today, are based on health concerns, although I enjoy not having to be concerned with the environmental and ethical considerations of meat consumption. Kingsolver is either unaware or has chosen to ignore the health hazards of her diet. She should read The China Study.

Another reader remarked with admiration about how small this family’s carbon footprint must be. Perhaps he hadn’t yet read the chapter about driving their hybrid car to Canada or the one about their trip to Italy. If that is a sample of their annual travel budget, they are indulging in luxuries we can’t all afford, financially or environmentally.

Nobody expects us to reduce our carbon footprints to that of Somalian peasants while living in middle class America. Making the necessary changes so that human life can persist on this planet can hopefully take place in an incremental fashion. Kingsolver is helping to lead the way. Matching the accomplishments of this family will provide personal challenges for most of us. In the spirit of American competitiveness, let’s not use her shortcomings as justification for permitting extravagance in our lives, though. Let’s see if we can surpass her example of living in tune with nature.

This is a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable book. Her story about the mating habits of turkeys (or lack thereof) is a hilarious and poignant illustration of how our food industry has distorted even the most basic natural functions. I heartily recommend Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.