It’s a little hard to tell whether Michael Pollan thinks the latter is a good thing or a bad one, in “Mass Natural” in the New York Times:

“This is good news indeed, for the American consumer and the American land. Or perhaps I should say for some of the American land and a great deal more of the land in places like Mexico and China, for Wal-Mart is bound to hasten the globalization of organic food. (Ten percent of organic food is imported today.) Like every other commodity that global corporations lay their hands on, organic food will henceforth come from wherever in the world it can be produced most cheaply. It is about to go the way of sneakers and MP3 players, becoming yet another rootless commodity circulating in the global economy.”

Pollan has got John Mackey, the founder of Wholefoods Markets, on the defensive, as you can see from Mackey’s blog. Investors adore Wholefoods, a company that markets virtue with staggering success, and that is, no question, a fascinating and attractive business. What I’m waiting to see is a campaign aimed, like the Church of England’s recently launched effort, at getting their customers to stop driving to the store. Or should Wholefoods ban SUVs from their parking lots?

And think of this: “The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain it takes to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people.” Read more.

Here’s a great photo created by David Coale of Acterra, who worked out how much oil is takes to ship a bottle of water from its source to California. You’ll see the oil floating on the top.

Can you ever buy Evian again?

Technorati : bottled water, oil, transport costs, water

Why, I wonder, do people want to live in buildings colder in the summer than in the winter? I have learned to carry a sweater or shawl in the summer because buildings are so cold. Cold. Not just pleasantly cool, the way an old farmhouse, shaded by huge oaks, is cool, or the way our house, with an attic fan going at night, and the windows and shades closed during the heat of the day, is cool. These buildings are downright cold, the way our house is cold in the winter, so chilly that my sister-in-law shivers until we turn the heat to 70. But in the summer, the same people think that temperature is okay, and even desirable.

What does this mean? What does it tell us about ourselves? Do we fear nature and need to control it? Have we been persuaded by advertising and social pressure that this makes sense, in spite of its being completely against our evolutionary history. It’s expensive and wasteful.

But people are deeply resistant to the idea of turning the A/C up or the heat down. I need to figure out the motivation behind this wacky behavior, because I know I’ll never convince people to try something else until I do.

In my books I’ve written about this in terms of “comfort zones.” I’ll post some sections, and would love to have feedback.

Technorati : air-conditioning, eco living, energy, global warming

Technorati : clothesline, energy saving, global warming, laundry

Two garden beds prepped and planted–thanks to Tom and Rachel, who have taken to lecturing me on global warming and the wastefulness of grainfed meat–with Asian salad and stir-fry greensand a mix of early radishes,* arugula, and some chicory seed we brought from Italy two years ago. I highly recommend all these things for ease, and taste. If you’re new to gardening, there are few simpler things that to sprinkle seeds like these across a bed, rake in lightly, and leave to grow. We could have radishes in three weeks (or inches of snow). We timed things well: a good rain soon after we planted, which saved water and time, too.

The second important chore was getting my bike out and ready for the road. I used to be much more handy with bikes than I am now, and realize that even basic maintenance can seem overwhelming. This is a handy checklist from a bicycle shop, but if you’re a novice cyclist I think it’s too much. Yet if you are really going to cycle instead of drive, it’s essential to keep your bike in excellent working order. You shouldn’t feel hesitation because the tyres are low and the chain rubs, and for safety it’s important to check brakes and lights regularly.

And it really is possible to keep a bicycle in good shape yourself; no need to be hauling it to a shop for minor adjustments. Here are my favorite bicycle books, in their newest editions: Anybody’s Bike Book by Tom Cuthbertson and Richard’s 21st Century Bicycle Book by Richard Ballentine. There are no doubt other excellent books, but make sure you get one that’s suitable for your kind of use. If you are using a bicycle for transportation and some exercise, you don’t need the kind of professional tome needed by a serious cyclist. I’ll work on putting together a simple bike guide to be posted on this website, too.

* These mixes from Nichols Garden Nursery. I notice that the greens should be pickable at only 21 days, and they give 24-30 days for the radishes. Learning to read seed packages is an important gardening skills, to be discussed over the next few weeks.

Chevron’s campaign is called “Will you join us?” Myself, I doubt that the transformational leadership we need will come from Big Oil. But it hasn’t come, effectively, from Greens, and I welcome these campaigns both because they do raise awareness, and because they may actually mean that there are people in power with the sense, and courage, to recognize the problems we face.