Comercio Justo and "A Deeper Shade of Green"

FAIR TRADE

For those of you interested in buying Fair Trade products or just want to find out more about it, I found some good webpages online for Spain, the US, and the UK. The concept originated in Europe in the 1960s, and it is a movement to help:

·promote sustainable development

·alleviate poverty

·create transparency and accountability

·develop the producers' independence, eliminating the "middle-man"

·payment of a fair price, enabling a production that is socially just and environmentally sound

·gender equity

·safe and healthy working conditions

·children's rights

·encourage better environmental practices

WEBSITES:

Equi Mercado

Global Exchange: Fair Trade

Traidcraft Shop


"A DEEPER SHADE OF GREEN"

In my family I've always been picked on as being a "tree hugger". Now, I'm no Julia "Butterfly" Hill who spends two years of her life living in a California Redwood, and I am strongly against radical or violent activism, but I would consider myself an environmentalist in the sense that I think conservation and sustainability are extremely important. I'll also be the first to admit that I don't do all I should. I hate taking the bus and it's so much easier to go to the grocery store below my house rather than walk to the local Farmer's Market in the old city. But we are slowly destroying our natural environment and we,the world, need to change our practices and our way of life.

If you are suscribers to the National Geographic, there's a great article in the August issue by Bill McKibben (author of the best seller, The End of Nature) called, "A Deeper Shade of Green". He talks about the need for a new cultural environmentalism. The need for a new frame of mind and way of living and thinking. He deals with fossil fuel, energy costs, urban sprawl, farmer's markets, etc. Here are few exerpts:

"The old paradigm works like this: We judge just about every issue by asking the question, Will this make the economy larger? But endless economic growth is built on the use of cheap fossil fuel...We need to stop asking, Will this make the economy larger? Instead, we need to start asking, Will this pour more carbon into the atmosphere?"

"We've gotten used to eating across great distances. Because it's always summer somewhere, we've accustomed ourselves to a food system that delivers us fresh produce 365 days a year. The energy cost is incredible--growing and transporting a single calorie of iceberg lettuce from California to the eastern U.S. takes 36 calories of energy. What would it take to get us back to eating more locally, to accepting what the seasons and smaller scale local farmers provide?"

"What would it take to make us consider smaller homes, closer to the center of town, where we could use the bus or a bike for daily transportation?"

"Standard economic theory has long assured us that we're insatiable bundles of desires. That may be true, but more and more it feels like our greatest wish is for more contact with other people...We don't need to erase individualism; it is one of the glories of the American character. But environmentalists desperately need to celebrate community, too."