Where is your food grown?

I just came across this cool map. It shows where organic farms, vegetable farms, dairies, and orchards are located across the U.S. 

It's not surprising that on the "total farms" map, western New York doesn't look particularly agricultural, but on the individual maps we're in one of the richest locations for locally grown and organic foods. Who knows? You probably won't live here forever, so enjoy it while you can!

Argument Outline 3

ETHICS OF ACTIVISM
Due Wednesday, May 13

Consider these activities of animal rights activists:

1. There have been several firebombings of the homes of research scientists in California in recent years. Although no one has claimed responsibility, the police believe that they are the work of animal-rights extremists. There have also been many cases of personal threats, harassment, and vandalism of researchers’ private property. For instance, last February six masked intruders tried to force their way into the home of a UC-Santa Cruz researcher during a birthday party for her young daughter. One of the researchers targeted by a firebomb is a neurobiologist who uses mice in studies of how the mouse’s visual system develops (see handout).

2. The anti-whaling organization Sea Shepard attempts to damage the property of whaling ships which operate in a legal grey zone or illegally. The organization has said, “"Yes we have sunk whaling ships, rammed whalers and drift netters, boarded poaching vessels and destroyed equipment used for illegal exploitation of the oceans.”

3. In 2004 animal activists illegally broke into a private egg production facility owned and run by Wegmans in Wolcott, NY. The facility housed 750,000 laying hens in battery cages and, other than being a very large farm, was similar to other egg farms across the country. The activists filmed the conditions, including dead and sick chickens in unsanitary conditions, and made the film widely available. The animal activists were sued by Wegmans, and Wegmans eventually sold the egg farm (though still uses it as a source of eggs).

4. A number of animal rights activists have created alternatives to animal dissections in schools and colleges. These include models, videos, and interactive computer simulations.

Pick one of these activities of animal rights activists and evaluate whether it can be ethically supported. If it cannot be supported, explain why. If it should be supported, evaluate whether doing so is an obligation or merely a consideration (that is, a nice thing to do but not a moral duty). Depending on the case you pick and your argument supporting it, you might need to distinguish whether your position is in the realm of personal responsibility (individual action) or public policy (collective action). Support your view with one of these ethical frameworks: Kantian deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, or the justice framework.

Keep your position and your support as focused and specific as possible. Also, be realistic about what is at stake and what various parties actually do. For example, although some academic researchers who experiment using animal models are contributing directly to curing human disease, many animal researchers have other scientific goals. Also, some animal dissections are used to train future surgeons, while most are performed by students in middle and secondary schools.

Examining Environmental Problems through Film

While I'm thinking of it, let me share a list of documentary films on various environmental themes. Ethics is amenable to learning through the film medium because learning to think philosophically is not just about amassing knowledge but about identifying and thinking through problems and observing how others frame ethical problems.

Here are some of my recommendations for films that are related to the issues raised in Deep Economy and other problems in environmental sustainability. Many of these have trailers available on the web. I’d love to hear your further suggestions!

About our energy economy:
Who Killed the Electric Car?

About climate change:
An Inconvenient Truth

About wildlife:
Being Caribou

About local economies:
WalMart: The High Cost of Low Price

About food:
The Future of Food
Super Size Me
King Corn

About industrialization and natural environments:
Manufactured Landscapes
Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi

Film on Food for Extra Credit

I found one final extra credit opportunity.

It's off-campus, and it's not free, but I encourage you to go see this film at the High Falls Film Festival about industrially-produced food. Plus, attending the film festival is a way of participating in Rochester's rich cultural life, centered on imaging and film.

FOOD, INC
Friday, May 15, 2009 6:30 PM
Little Theatre - Little 5

Documentary, US, 2008, 93 minutes
Director/Producer: Robert Kenner
Producer: Elise Pearlstein
Featuring: Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser

The processing of the food we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous ten thousand. That’s a direct quote from FOOD INC., and if it doesn’t make you stop and think, the rest of this revealing and disturbing documentary will. Filmmaker Robert Kenner exposes how the food industry, controlled by a handful of corporations, and with the consent of regulatory agencies, often puts profits ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers, and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, and tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli, widespread childhood obesity, and an epidemic level of diabetes. Featuring interviews with experts like Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirshberg, FOOD, INC. is the real “naked lunch,” the truth about what we do three times a day, told with elegance and verve.

Update: The schedule for the High Falls Film Festival also lists a movie called RIP: A Remix Manifesto showing at RIT on Friday, May 15 at 7:15. But I've been unable to find out more information about it. I would count attendance at this film for extra credit, provided that in your write-up you connect it to some of the themes in the course or in the book Deep Economy, such as support for local creative endeavors.

John Rawls and Deep Economy

John Rawls was concerned with what we call distributive justice and the question of what we should do about inequalities in society. Should goods be distributed equally to everyone? Should we permit vast differences in social and economic status? How are justice and socioeconomic opportunity tied to each other?

This is relevant to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy in two ways.

1. First, we can use the justice framework to make the case that our social system (that is, our system of social policy, ethics, and economic exchange) is conventional. We have a certain social/political/economic system and it produces certain results. But we don’t have to have that system. It might be the most just system, or it might undermine justice. If it does not produce the maximum degree of justice, then we should try to change it so that it is more just. In particular, we should always be working to try to improve the status of those that have the least, and we should always try to give people equality of opportunity.

This observation supports McKibben in his attempt to rethink economics, and in particular in his attempt to replace some market trends with a deeper concern for community. He argues very much like someone in the justice framework would: he argues that deeper and more robust communities will make people happier and will be more economically stable. This last point is important, because in the justice framework, people are risk-averse.

2. A second way that Rawls’s justice framework can be linked to the book is McKibben’s recognition that for people who are living at a subsistence level, access to global markets makes more sense than pursuing deeper, local economies. That’s because McKibben, like Rawls, knows that the concerns of people who have the least social status and economic goods will be different than those who have plenty.

If you're interested in more of my thoughts about what Deep Economy gets right (and wrong), you can read what I've written here.

Citizens and Consumers

In class yesterday we watched a video about Carrotmob.org. The idea behind it is that people want to do good, and one source of average people's power is the money they spend. So the company behind Carrotmob does the footwork of organizing ways to help people create good effects by deciding where to spend their money. In the video we watched, one food market agreed to put 22% of their Carrotmob-acquired profits toward increasing their energy efficiency.

I asked for your critical response to the video, and there were several good insights. One was that people might be traveling so far to participate, that it effectively wipes out the environmental good that's created. Another is that it can be inconvenient to participate, taking some extra time. And if it does take extra time, one wonders what else could be done with that time instead, such as some kind of service or personal action (don't we all have ways we could make our own lives energy efficient, if that's what we're into?) rather than standing in a checkout line. That is, does it create change in the right proportion to the perception of creating change?

In general, this sort of effort raises some difficult questions. Should there be skepticism about a for-profit company set up to facilitate environmental and social activism? Or is this a case where the people behind Carrotmob should be applauded for finding a way to set up a company that makes profits (well, presumably they will profit if the model works) by encouraging people and businesses to make a better world?

A different video that I've shown in class before--one which is perhaps more radical and more thought-provoking about economic and social arrangements--is "The Story of Stuff." Implicitly, this video criticizes the Carrotmob approach by questioning the culture of consumption and showing that it is a historical, intentionally created social arrangement. This gives a political valence to DIYers, MAKErs, and hackers, such as Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, who visited RIT last month.

Experiential Learning Project: Assessment

This is a reminder that the Ethical Experience Project is due on Monday. It is worth 20% of the final course grade.

In grading the project, I’ll be looking for several things:

1. the quality of your activity. Did you have an original idea? How much time and effort did the activity require? How challenging was it to you, or how far out of your comfort zone? Does it open up ideas or opportunities for future ethical actions?

2. the quality of your written description of the activity. Is your story interesting to read? Do you provide enough background information so that I understand the context of your activity? Do I get a clear picture of what you did, why you did it, and how it affected your thoughts and actions? Was the activity what you expected, or did it present unexpected challenges or surprises? Does your narrative give a vivid picture while excluding unnecessary or irrelevant detail?

3. the depth of your reflections. Have you made the relevance to the course topic (ethical frameworks and/or Deep Economy) apparent? Do you make use of the experience to examine a difficult question? Did you learn something or expand your horizons, and have you reflected critically on what you learned? Can you relate something about your experience to one of our ethical frameworks or to one of the ethical problems that we’ve discussed? Do you use it to highlight some particular conception of “the good life” or of “right action”? What impact did your activity have on other people, now or in the future? Were your attitudes transformed as a result of the experience, and if not, what were the obstacles to transformation? Is there something you wish you had done differently, or do you have advice to pass on to me and future students about this activity?

Hyper-Individualism

"All for One, and One for All": we discussed the benefits of tight communities--and the disadvantages, such as a loss of privacy, of options, and (sometimes) freedoms.

We can see McKibben's argument as being implicitly utilitarian: that local economies produce more satisfaction and less harm for more people than our current economy. How would someone argue with him on this point? Probably, it would have to be done on the basis of showing that his calculation of the benefits and disadvantages left something out.

One such disadvantage (which we did not discuss) is the possibility that tighter communities are related to higher levels of conflict between different communities--nationalism, racism, and the policing of ingroup/outgroup loyalties.

It's also plausible to see McKibben as relying on an argument from virtue ethics. You might read his argument not as a strict calculation of utility or preferences, but rather as an argument that says that certain qualities make for more virtuous communities and certain communities lend themselves to the flourishing of a certain kind of good character. He thinks our material and economic culture value things, people, and services that are "fast, cheap, and easy." Instead, he thinks we should build cities and economies which are deliberate, valuable, and lasting. This would promote virtues which are currently neglected, such as loyalty, responsibility, creativity, etc.

A question to consider is whether the only way to achieve the postive results that McKibben attributes is to cultivate cohesive communities that are local in geographical terms. Does technology permit us to participate in communities that are tight and supportive but distributed in space? Although McKibben is concerned with the transport of goods and the environmental toll of transportation, our economy is increasingly based in services, and knowledge and communication are no longer bound by space.

Along these lines, last fall I heard a report on NPR that, for a variety of reasons, local banks are much less affected by the banking crisis than the large conglomerates are. You can listen to the story here.

Also, a former student passed along this interesting timed map of WalMart's spread.

RIT Sustainability Conference

For more extra credit opportunities, there is a conference on philosophy and sustainability this Friday. Most of the presentations will consist of interviews with environmental philosophers or other academics who have taken a stand on the ethics of handling environmental problems. The conference runs all day, and attendance at any one of the presentations (plus a summary and critique) can be used for extra credit.

Friday, May 1st, Carlson Auditorium

8:45-9 Opening Remarks

9-10 Braden Allenby (Lincoln Professor of Engineering & Ethics, Arizona State University)

10-11 Bryan Norton (Distinguished Professor in Public Policy at Georgia Tech)

11-12 David Orr (Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics,
Oberlin College)

1-2 Paul Thompson (W. K. Kellog Chair in Agricultural, Food, & Community Ethics,
Michigan State University)

2-3 William Shutkin (Director, Initiative for Sustainable Development and Chair in
Sustainable Development, University of Colorado at Boulder)

3-4 Panel of Commentators, Moderator: Robert Ulin, Dean, Liberal Arts
Randall Curren (University of Rochester), Sarah Pralle (Syracuse University), and
Erin Taylor (Cornell University)

4-5:30 Panel of Presenters, Moderator, Jeremy Haefner, Provost
Braden Allenby, Bryan Norton, David Orr, Paul Thompson, & William Shutkin

These presentations are free and open to all.
Directors: Ryne Raffaelle, Wade Robison, Evan Selinger
For details go to http://www.rit.edu/cla/ethics/Sustainability.html

More extra credit opportunities

These are from SEAL (Student Environmental Action League), a campus organization.
This is Earth week, and Earth Day is Wednesday.
Either of the lectures could be used for extra credit in this course (see the syllabus).

Thursday 4/23:
Speaker - SEAL has brought in Jim Tappon from the Climate Project to speak in the library's Idea Factory from 6pm to about 7pm.
"Who Killed the Electric Car?" Showing - SEAL is co-sponsoring a showing of the film as part of CAB's Thursday Night Cinema Series. The movie starts at 10pm in the SAU Cafeteria.

Friday 4/24:
University of Rochester Speaker - Stephen Schneider from Stanford University will be talking at U of R on climate change and sustainability, starting at 3pm in Hutchison Hall Lander Auditorium. If you are interested in attending, please let us know (sealwww@rit.edu), and also if you would be willing to drive. We are currently planning on meeting by the Sentinel at 2:15pm and leaving shortly after that to attend the event.

High-tech or Low-tech?

The article we discussed about carbon footprints raises the question of what policies and actions will be most effective in curbing fuel consumption and, therefore, carbon emissions and global warming.

Do we need innovative policy instruments? Forward-thinking (or even backward-looking) economic plans? Or will we make our way through this crisis with creative high-tech?

Many researchers suggest that, in fact, lo-tech is the way to go.
One study found that the high energy use of air-conditioning could be greatly reduced if we replaced black roofs with white or reflective one. Changing the color of a 1000-square-foot roof on an air-conditioned building could offset ten metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

How Is a Cow Like a Nuclear Bomb?

An extreme comparison, I totally agree.

But check this out and keep in mind that Mark Bittman knows food, and knows good food.

What do you eat if you don't eat meat?

The word 'vegetarian' came into use in English in the 1840's, but vegetarians have been around for quite awhile. The first prominent vegetarian was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived between 490 and 430BC.

How many vegetarians are there? Less than 1% of the global population is vegetarian by choice. Many more people than that eat meat rarely but only because it is not available or is too expensive.

Vegetarianism is more popular in the U.S., where high-quality vegetable protein is available and affordable. A 2008 Harris Interactive poll found that about 1 million American adults are strictly vegan (that's about .5% of the adult population). 3.2% of the adult American population identifies themselves as completely vegetarian. And another 10% say their diet is mostly vegetarian.

India is the country with the highest proportion of vegetarianism, where it is tied to culture and the Hindu religion. In India, strict vegetarians make up between 20 and 42% of the population, and fewer than 30% of the population regularly eat meat.

Here are some links for anyone writing their argument outline on vegetarianism.

Wikipedia, "Ethics of Eating Meat" and "Environmental Vegetarianism"

The Vegetarian Resource Group (a national coalition)

The EarthSave report on vegetarianism and global warming

The Food Ethics Council (an organization that works on issues of food security and social justice)

GMO vs. Organic

The organic community has soundly rejected the use of genetically modified crops, and current organic standards do not permit genetically modified crops to be marketed as organic, even if they are grown without harmful pesticides or artificial fertilizers.

The reasons include the fact that genetic modification can come with unknown risks to the environment and that genetic modification alters plants in ways that many people feel are more extreme or unnatural than alterations that are brought about through selective breeding. In addition, genetically modified crops are tied to patents and commercialization which threatens the economic well-being and independence of subsistence farmers.

However, genetic modification also opens up opportunities which can contribute to long-term sustainable agriculture, according to the authors of Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. For instance, if a variety of rice were genetically modified to make it flood tolerant, then instead of using herbicides that might have negative health consequences, farmers could flood fields to kill weeds. There might also be the possibility of genetically modifying crops so that they are tolerant of marginal growing conditions, permitting them to be grown without the use of high levels of artificial fertilizers.

Lectures and Extra Credit

In the syllabus, I note that

You may replace one missed commentary or add 10 points to an outline grade by attending a philosophy lecture or another relevant public lecture.

There is a lecture [tomorrow evening] next week that would be relevant:

Rochester Committee for Scientific Information Annual Meeting

Thursday, April 23, 2009,
7:00 PM

Rochester Institute of Technology
Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science
Building 76 – Room 1125

“Critical Issues In Climate Change Research”

Presented by Dr. Benjamin Laabs
Assistant Professor
Department of Geological Sciences
SUNY Geneseo

Dr. Laabs will discuss how new challenges in climate-change research will help to improve the understanding of the Earth climate system.

Co-sponsored by the RIT Department of Science, Technology and Society/Public Policy

In addition, Shirag had a great idea. The Innovation Festival on May 2 will feature a number of sustainability exhibits. Anyone who visits the festival, searches out exhibits on environmental sustainability, and describes/evaluates them can also earn extra credit.

Locavores and Omnivores

The LOCAVORE movement has become so popular that there is even an iPhone app to support locavores in their search for farmer's markets and in-season produce.

The reasons that people support growing and buying food locally include a desire to build strong communities, accountability, support for small and sustainable farming, reduction of dependence on fossil fuels for transportation, and aesthetic enjoyment. Some people feel that it is a way of putting down roots (so to speak) and finding what is special about the unique place where they live. It is a way of reclaiming regional flavors in a mass-market mass-media world.

Here is a list of 10 ways to increase localism in your buying habits. Many of these are quite easy for people in the Rochester area, especially in the summer. In addition to the Public Market, there are neighborhood farmer's markets all over the Rochester metro area, including one at RIT and the South Wedge Farmer's Market which specializes in foods grown within 100 miles.

We also have many affordable CSA's and organic farms in the neighborhood.

Finally, I would recommend Lento, a local restaurant that specializes in local and organic food. They have a buy-one-get-one-free special for college students on Thursday nights.

YUM!

But let's take a look at this again....

The transportation of food accounts for 11% of food-related greenhouse-gas emissions. So, while all that transportation does add up, it's not the fastest route to cutting greenhouse-gases.

What's faster? Cutting out meat, especially red meat. 18% of all greenhouse gases are produced by livestock, and 30% of the earth's land surface is devoted to raising livestock or the grain and grass they eat. If you replaced beef with beans one day a week, it would reduce your carbon footprint more than becoming a locavore.

Argument Outline 2: Food Ethics

Due Monday, April 20

Eating is something that we all do several times each day. We eat not just for sustenance, but also as a source of pleasure and, often, as a time of companionship.

Collectively, the choices we make about food have a major impact on our lives, on the lives of others, and on the economy. Until the last decade, farming was the largest industry on a global scale. Agriculture still makes up about 36% of the global economy. In spite of the central place of food in our lives, we tend not to think about what we eat, where it comes from, how it was made, or why we’ve chosen to eat it. Even philosophers have perhaps not paid as much attention to the role of food in human life as they ought.

For this outline, you have a choice from among 4 topics:

Topic 1: Localism
What is an ethical justification for buying local foods? Why should we be concerned about where our food is produced, or how far it travels, or whether it is in season? Why do some people choose “slow food” rather than “fast food”? What ethical framework supports any of these choices, and how?

Topic 2: Vegetarianism
Is vegetarianism/veganism a choice that people make on ethical grounds? Why? What ethical framework supports a choice to be vegetarian/vegan, and how?

Topic 3: Organic vs. GMO
Currently, organic certification for organic farming in the United States prohibits organic crops from being genetically modified. Some people argue that genetic modifications are risky and threaten food purity. Other people argue that the most sustainable form of agriculture might include organic cultivation of crops that have been genetically modified to suit them to specific environments. Do you support this policy or not? On what ethical grounds?

Topic 4: Sustainable agriculture
There is not currently a global food crisis. That is, on a global scale, the modern world has produced more than enough food to feed its population. Food shortages have been local in nature and usually are due to political conflict and war or to distributional problems. However, we might worry about the long-term effects of modern agricultural methods. For instance, fish stocks are falling rapidly, and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is attributed in large part to agricultural runoff from the Midwest. What ethical issues are raised by intensive agriculture or intensive fishing?


As always, the purpose of this assignment is to practice constructing clear, straightforward, and focused ethical arguments. Grading is based on how strong your arguments are and how well they illustrate the ethical frameworks we have studied up to now (deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics).

In addition, this is an opportunity to explore the justification for a position that you may not have thought through before. For instance, you may choose to defend vegetarianism even though you are not yourself a committed vegetarian.

You are responsible for doing any necessary web research. But do not copy anyone else’s words off the Internet—express the ideas in your own way. Cite your sources, please.
And I hope you find the assignment thought-provoking!

Carbon Footprint Measurements

On Wednesday, we'll discuss carbon footprint models in class.

• How can they be helpful? What is their goal?
• What do they measure?
• What are the differences among them?
• Is there a standard way of measuring carbon footprints?
• What are some obstacles to lowering carbon emissions?
• Is the use of fossil fuel an ethical problem or a practical problem or an economic problem?
• Is the solution to excessive carbon emissions a technological one? A political one?
• What motivates people to lower their energy use? What are some obstacles?

Reminder: the assigned reading is this article: "Big Foot" from The New Yorker.
And I request that each person measure their carbon usage with both of these online tools:
Model 1: http://www.rprogress.org/
Model 2: http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/

Another comment is due, and you should probably write it on the reading assignment. There are many challenging ideas in this article that are begging for commentary. One question I would like us to discuss in class is: Why does the subtitle say "In measuring carbon emissions, it's easy to confuse morality and science"?

I would also entertain thoughtful comments on the carbon footprint exercise, if you'd rather write about that instead, providing that your comment gets to the substantive and theoretical issues that are raised.

See you tomorrow!

Virtue Ethics

This week we talked about the ethical framework that guides moral actions based on evaluations of moral character. That is, right moral action is based in virtue, and wrong moral action is based in vice.

In contrast to modern theories, it asks not what we should do, but what should we be? Of course,
as Tom pointed out, a virtuous character is based in good acts. One can't be virtuous merely by believing the right thing. But by calling this the "morality of being," we are highlighting that how you act is constitutive of the kind of person you are. If you say you believe in charity for the poor, but never give of your own time or money, then we would not say that you are a charitable person.

By contrast, modern theories focus on decision-making. A utilitarian sizes up a problematic moral situation, calculates the total harms and benefits that would be produced by different courses of action, and picks the one that produces the greatest overall good. Then the utilitarian's moral faculty can go on holiday until the next crisis of decision arises. Not so for the virtue ethicist. She recognizes that ethics has to do with how we live our lives--every day. She sees virtue as a potential that has to be actualized over the course of a whole life. This is a theory of moral development.

The scope of morality includes these questions:
How do you choose your friends?
What do you do on the weekends?
What books do you read?
How have you chosen to live your life?
Is it an admirable life?

Some modern theories influenced by virtue ethics are “the capabilities approach” to ethics, care ethics, and communitarianism.

Virtue ethics is useful for understanding Bill McKibben's views because he seems to be arguing for living well, with virtue, in strong communities--even if he doesn't use that language. Virtue ethics can help to understand the normative aspects of everyday actions of the sort that are often advocated when people are talking about “going green”.

The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living

That's what Socrates says, and so presumably the examined life is worth living, and the film Examined Life ought to be worth seeing! It's a documentary about philosophers and despite its small opening has been receiving rave reviews.

At the Dryden Theater this Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 5pm. Eligible for extra credit!

Look out for Peter Singer mentioning the article we'll read during the last week of class, and Slavoj Zizek visiting a garbage dump to talk about environmental responsibility.