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Food and Drink

Hanging on by our 650 billion fingernails… And other small possibilities

Applause rose up Saturday night in the restaurant where we were enjoying celebrations as the lights dimmed for Earth Hour - at least applause arose from our table. But there were still so many lights on around us we felt a bit snubbed. So many habits to change, so little time to do it.

Yes, folks, we are still on target to be entertaining 50 per cent more people on Spaceship Earth by 2040. That means another 3+ billion added to the current 6.5 billion for a total of close to 10 billion people in just 30 short years.

By UN estimates, we should see a leveling off of the number of humans sometime around 2200. After that we're supposed to track the downhill curve in the graph that all species do after they reach their population apex - at least the species we haven't obliterated with our pollution, our excess, our success.

One prominent scientist, Nina Fedoroff, the science and technology advisor to the U.S. secretary of state since 2007, says never mind 2040 - there's already too many of us. In a recent BBC report, Dr. Fedoroff suggested that we need to get much better at bringing down the growth rate of the human population and at managing water supplies and our wild lands. Oh, and get better at using genetically modified foods.

Big stuff, even if you don't go along with the GMO thing. But what can we do by thinking small, very, very small?

What small thing - as small as switching off a light - can we do that, when added to another and another small act, can make a big difference in the Earth/human equation? Regardless of whether you were into Earth Hour, how about trying on another small habit that feels good, gets you in the groove or simply makes sense to you, like...

 

Whipping out your fingernails

No, not to hang on with, but to clean. Here's another tip from my dear mom, one women have been using for centuries. Her favourite cleaning trick? Her fingernail. See that bit of sticky gunk on the window? That line of soap crud built up on the tap? The orange stuff on your pants? Just get out your fingernail and work it.

Twist it and turn it. Get it in the groove. It won't scratch the surface, you don't have to wring out a dishrag, reach for a scrubber or even rinse, and you certainly don't need a single blob of powders, potions or chemicals. Best of all, your nail is free, organic and totally renewable.

Now here's where we separate those who still think it's 1960, and we all get to do what we damn well please, from those who don't. The former includes people who won't lift a fingernail to scrub, let alone track the whole meaning of such an act, because it chips away their something-or-other. The latter includes those who will. They also choose elbow grease or a toothpick over CLR, or keep a plastic pot scrubber in the bathroom to whoosh around with their feet as they shower rather than using some gimmicky gizmo that sprays chemicals to remove soap scum.

Check it out. If you, or let's say your parents, graced this fair planet in 1960, there were less than half the number of people on Earth then that there are now. People never dreamt we'd run out, plug up, peter out. So maybe you could do what you wanted to with impunity: eat what you wanted to, throw out what you wanted to, run that water as long as you felt like because it was too much bother to turn off the tap, and to heck with those wild places - most of 'em are sloughs, anyway.

Picture the difference. Picture Squamish or Vancouver with half the number of folks. You can't picture Whistler that way because virtually nobody lived here in 1960. Okay, so maybe 34 people did, which is way less than half.

No wonder we're going nuts now over traffic jams and lineups, and swamping our rivers and marshes with soap suds and phosphates, and filling our landfills with stinky garbage from all the stuff, including food, we buy and toss.

Which leads us to our next small step...

 

Eat one tablespoon less

You know one of my favourite mantras: eat 10 per cent less. But today I'm feeling that's too much, too big compared to switching off a light switch.

So how about trying just one tablespoon less. That's right, at one meal just try eating one small tablespoon less. Leave it on your plate. Don't feel guilty. Poke it with your finger. Regard it. Then give it to your dog.

Now picture 10 other people leaving 10 other tablespoons and, as the act broadens, buying 10 fewer tablespoons of cereal or apples or sausage because they are still satisfied eating one less tablespoon.

Now picture everybody in Canada eating one tablespoon less. Okay, so we'll leave out 10 per cent for the little babies and the infirm and the elderly who shouldn't eat less. In Canada, that would add up to 30 million tablespoons (we've got over 33 million people) or about 19 million cups of food we didn't consume on one day. That's 19 million cups of food that could be redirected, or not teased out of the Earth with petrochemicals, or food not needed for a while so land could be left fallow to restore itself.

I know, economists and statisticians are going ballistic right now over such a simplistic suggestion. You could never redirect that food to Pakistan, say, or God forbid, cut into food processors' incomes.

No, but you could start small and think big, as in big picture/small planet, as in think about where you really stand with your own two little feet.

 

6 billion - and counting

This year marks the 10th anniversary since the UN Population Division marked 1999, the year we crossed the threshold of 6 billion people. It took just 12 years for the world to add the most recent billion people - the shortest period of time in world history for a billion people to be added. World population did not reach one billion until 1804. It took 123 years to reach 2 billion in 1927, and 33 years to reach 3 billion in 1960.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who was never really into reproduction for billions of reasons.