By Mary Tuomanen
THREE CATEGORIES OF HUMAN EXTINCTION THREAT:
NATURAL CAUSES
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
HOSTILE CAUSES
These were the categories Cain Elliott, of the Critical Writing Center in Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, laid out for us at the beginning of his seminar on Human Extinction with us this Sunday. At Becky’s comfy pink house on Chester Ave, with baby Vernon horsing around on the living room floor, we came together to discuss the possibility of the end of our species. Cain came as our Human Extinction expert to put a new perspective on the future of food as we prepare for our September show, FEED. We learned about how our food practices, specifically consumption of animals and animal products, contribute greatly to Political Ecology (more widely known as Climate Change). Political Ecology falls squarely into the second category of possible extinction causes — Unintended Consequences. And the way we eat contributes to those consequences more than almost anything else we do as individuals.
“I’m much more of an incrementalist about this stuff,” Cain said, sitting cross-legged with a sharpie in hand as we contemplated a diagram of how much land, water and resources goes to feed 1) an omnivore 2) a vegetarian 3) a vegan. (Spoiler: vegans have an incredibly dainty resource footprint compared to those of us who are omnivores or vegetarians.) “So what I do is try to make a commitment to myself — in the last five years to go from barbeque once a week to once every two weeks. I take it incrementally.”
We talked about the intimacy and vulnerability of our food choices. It’s hard to think politically about something as nostalgic as a family recipe, or which soup comforts you in sickness, or what tastes like home. In Cain’s case (he is Texan), that longing is BBQ.
“You’ll never get to a discussion about political ecology if you’re starting from a question of What Makes Your Body Happy and Healthy. Then it’s a question of ‘my choices, my practices, my behavior, how I organize my life…’ But if you’re talking in terms of numbers,” referring to the diagram of land and water use, “You’re saying something about shared space, this piece of dirt on a rock we happen to inhabit together.”
This progressed to a discussion of Soylent, which is a meal-replacement beverage of soy, algal oil and isomaltuose that scores as low on the NOSTALGIA/FLAVOR/ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT scale as BBQ scores high. All of this information will be highly useful in our development of FEED, as we explore the human relationship with food. We felt extremely lucky to have Cain Elliot’s perspective enter into this conversation.
No doubt, Cain left us with a lot to chew on.