Obama on Food; An Understanding of Systems
Oct 23rd, 2008 | 6 responses
Barack Obama, from an interview with Joe Klein:
Whatever else we think is going to happen over the next certainly 5 years, one thing we know, the days of easy credit are going to be over…. And what that means is that just from a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy.
I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation.
Via Ezra Klein:
There’s no doubt that macro policies like carbon pricing are huge here, but it’s really good to hear Obama telegraph an understanding of the role systems play: The food production system, the transportation system, the construction industry. All these sectors operate under heavy, and frequently ad hoc, government regulations and mandates. And so we do have a food policy, and we do have a buildings policy, and we do have a transportation policy. It’s just that the collection of laws and subsidies and regulations that make up those policies weren’t built in any particularly coherent way, and certainly aren’t fit for an age when there’s a pressing national interest in reducing carbon consumption and childhood obesity. It’s important that the president realizes both that the government already exists in those sectors and that its efforts need to be reformed, redirected, and rendered coherent.
6 Responses to “Obama on Food; An Understanding of Systems”
Can anyone imagine GWB taking an interest in (or wrapping his mind around) this interrelated concept of agriculture, energy, security, health? What a contrast in minds! The possibility of having an alternative to the dreary “leadership” we've suffered under for so long is like opening a window and feeling the first hint of fresh air come into a room.
This is why I am voting for Obama
I said before and I'll say it again. Food will be the new focus for America. It's what we have, besides cars, that the world MUST HAVE.
So…
We need to break down huge mega-farms that are so dependant on fossil fuels and get them to alternative energy ASAP to run their farms. Organic, intercropping and crop-rotation are just some of those solutions.
And we need to encourage victory gardens. Anyone reading here old enough to remember what those are? We need to have community farms and encourage less paving over of farmland. Our rich topsoil areas will be our new wealth. The same wealth we've always had and decided to ignore in favor of urban sprawl..
so many important interrelated concepts — energy independence, better density style urban planning, removing transportation as much as possible from agriculture to reach towards village/town center concepts. Very cool to see his intelligence and grasp applied in this direction, difficult to transition though.
On the other hand we could also try this.
Silhouette, if you missed it you might enjoy reading Michael Pollan's piece last April, Why Bother?, in which he argued that each of us should grow some of our own food. In it he cites the Victory Garden too: