Leaving Las Vegas ~ Interlude IV ~ "There Ain’t Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
Cara Judea Alhadeff
October 2023
Algae-digesting sea slugs, dung-consuming beetles, debris-eating brine shrimp—all examples of potential biomimicry if we are willing to witness, learn, and adapt our human behaviors. Click on the image to enlarge.
"Minds cannot be changed, but rather, rearranged." —Gayatri Spivak
Before we leave Las Vegas, we need to ride a gale out of the Windy City, but the gust keeps blowing us back—as we know, there is no away.
When humans throw things away, they’ve got to understand that there is no ‘away!’ We all must learn from waste-consuming creatures that co-exist symbiotically with their environments. Echoing the scenario in which we are indebted to dust-mites for eating our dead skin (otherwise we would be suffocating in our own flesh debris), we are also indebted to dung beetles for clearing excrement off the world’s grasslands. They clean up astounding quantities of organic waste produced by vertebrates. If dung beetles did not do their job, our earth would be piled high with manure. These poop mountains would be infested with disease-carrying flies (98). Dung beetles, who use others’ waste to build their home and feed their family, algae-eating sea slugs who eat debris off the ocean floor, and brine shrimp who clean coral reefs by eating dead sea animals and fish poop (138) are ideal symbiotic animals, doing our ecosystems an indispensable service.[1] In Nature, there is no waste; nature demonstrates its delicate balance of contradictions— cultivating life from death.
In Zazu Dreams the human and more-than-human characters together explore symbiotic possibilities: “Could we learn from the dung beetles? What if we could take a social permaculture[2] approach that promotes zero-waste in which all by-products are re-integrated into use-systems?” Social permaculture offers “[t]he playful discovery of our interdependence, of emergence, of coevolution. …That is the principle: that we should allow the translation [reciprocally carry across] to transform this world through an invitation to participate in the discovery of what already is.”[3] Unlike a permaculture and social permaculture consciousness that focuses on stacking functions—a profoundly lived commitment to connections, too often liberal environmentalists comfortably wrap themselves in stacked dysfunctions facilitated through convenience-culture consumerism.
Currently, I am in Chicago at the Parliament of the World’s Religions Conference delivering my five lectures, workshops/ performances, and exhibition—weaving exquisite connections with others immersed in eco-spiritual-political commitments; and, heart-contorting waste hypocrisies: frigid air conditioning relentlessly chasing the almost 4,000 participants through an industrial conference-center labyrinth, the omnipresent, deafening electronic buzz of overheard lights splintering the rhythms of international sacred music and polyvocal prayers, and of course, ubiquitous plastics throughout every public space—including more than 7,000 Parliament swag bags that state “Recycled 4x” and are produced by “CoExist with the Earth.” The catch is each one is wrapped in its individual petro-plastic bag and include dangling “eco-tags.” Dozens of volunteers tear open the disposable outer layer and fill the interior bag with laminated announcements.
Parliament Greenwashing Swag Bag. Click on the image to enlarge.
In last month’s Mother Pelican, I asked: “What happens when the mode of reception (how the audience sees and hears) debilitates, and often eviscerates, that which is being delivered.” I explored the ironic inconsistencies among public educators/ activists/ academics who, for a myriad of psychological and infrastructural reasons, do not (perhaps cannot) make the connection between drinking from Parliament’s thousands of single-use plastic cups while lecturing about dominator-culture hubris and their own community members dying from breast cancer directly caused by plastic’s PFAS (“forever chemicals”).
What about the extraordinary (and this, too, is extraordinarily ordinary if we remember Stephen Hawking’s message, active throughout interfaith cosmologies: everything we need to know is already within us just waiting to be realized) possibility for another way of being in the world? For example, learning and acting from ancient technologies and ancestral wisdoms, while integrating social permaculture and cultural biomimicry practices.
This is not about taking shorter showers! (referring to Derrick Jensen’s “Forget Shorter Showers”) or recycling (which is energy intensive and actually encourages people to buy more) or “saving” the planet. We need infrastructural re-design! In next month’s Mother Pelican, I will continue to explore micro/macro/local/global relationships—individual>community action as one foundation for grassroots movements leading to cultural paradigm shifts.
How can we shift our epidemic of individualism from consumer, convenience-culture-bred entitlement to creative self-accountability that integrates profound, sustainable changes in individual behavior, community action, infrastructural re-design, corporate accountability, and policy reform? Individual behavioral change (potentially leading to community, corporate, and policy shifts) require daily practices.
Refusing to witness and act on climate-crisis “apocalypse”—that which is being revealed—below are six recent incidents that demonstrate how too many committed activists reinforce the very structures we are trying to dismantle:
1. For years, Bill McKibben has been identified as “the nation’s leading environmentalist” (Boston Globe, 2010). Yet, during his entire interview in front of the San Francisco Commonwealth audience in 2014, he drank cola from a commercial plastic bottle. During the Q&A, I pointedly asked McKibben how individuals can resist plastic use in our Petro-Culture? In addition to the imperative for structural change (what McKibben promotes), how can our everyday choices create an opportunity for significant environmental justice? He offered no response. It must not go unnoticed that this disparity took place in the city of San Francisco which in 2007, established the first plastic bag ban in the country and had set the (now unfulfilled) goal of reaching ZeroWaste by 2020 (diverting 100% of the city’s waste from landfills). Both commitments require both individual-social agency and infrastructural change. My concern about McKibben's personal-public behavior does not diminish my deep respect for his work.[4]
2. The radical direct-action duo, The Yes Men, who perform their infiltrations of fossil fuel corporations, similarly (during their weeklong event at Penn State University in 2015) were drinking from plastic water bottles during their public lecture, and when responding to my question stated, “If everyone in this auditorium stopped using plastic bottles, it wouldn’t make any difference.” Their claim, yet again, is that social change only occurs through corporate and policy shifts.
3. Energy Analyst and my friend of 49 years, Antonia Juhasz[5] (author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—and What We Must Do to Stop It) lectures about what we can do about the fossil-fuel industry. Following one of her recent lectures, during the Q&A, because the elephant in the room (the hyper-consumerist roots of industrial tyrannies) was not being addressed, I was yet again the only person in the audience who brought up our insidiously integral practice of plastic consumption as a critical element in normalizing the grip of Big Oil and Gas.
4. Following an interdisciplinary symposium on Plastic Pollution, all the refreshments were served in and on disposable single-use plastic. When questioned, the Eco-Action organizers shrugged, “This is what the university can offer.” This, of course, happens on a daily basis in environmentalist/conservationist contexts across campuses.
5. During an international panel on Environmental Refugees, each panelist was given their own plastic water bottle. In response to my query about what appeared to me to be extraordinarily misaligned given the dire subject of climate crisis and mass population displacement/environmental refugees, the director of Penn State University’s Center for Global Studies said, “Yes, but only two of them were opened.”
6. During my meeting to discuss our potential collaboration, the founder and director of Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) ate from a wax-lined disposable coffee cup replete with PFAS and sandwich wrapper (replete with PFAS) and threw them away after her meal. Chuckling at her consumer-choices, she commented, “Well, I heard you are “hard-core.”
In so many activist communities, why is there such friction between personal-collective responsibility and infrastructural change? Why are so many internationally acclaimed activists inconsistent? Refusing to practice in their personal lives what they preach (whether by default or explicit choice)? The neoliberal eco-marketing appropriation techniques of the US Green Movement (including the Green New Deal) are reminiscent of Philip Slater's Toilet Assumption. We attempt to flush away what doesn’t fit our comfort level—the determinants of convenience-culture.
In the mid-1990s, Henry Giroux[6] and I debated this conflict. His critique of ConEdison’s billboard blaming the electricity consumer instead of being an accountable corporation echoes Derrick Jensen's[7] seminal essay "Forget Shorter Showers.”[8] Both Giroux and Jensen rightly critique the obscuring of corporate power relations by positioning the individual consumer as a decoy to distract from the interpenetrations of Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Pharma who use rhetorical traps: “communicating strategically to confuse the public and undermine action.”[9]
However, as I write in Zazu Dreams:
Naomi Klein’s 2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, a book that has shortsightedly been identified as the contemporary Silent Spring, misses many key paradoxes in various environmental movements. Such an underserved association with Rachel Carson obfuscates the hypocrisies within western environmental movements.
Klein’s film neglects to address one of the primary underlying causes of global scorching: consumerism. It took Klein an hour and 18 minutes to (only briefly) mention consumption habits, let alone corporate-driven consumer society. It is obviously gratifying to see a film that demonstrates global grassroots victories that cut across class, gender, and nationhood. However, Klein’s entire film was anchored in an us-versus-them division. Even within the 99%, consumers are capitalism. A Greek activist Klein interviews is reluctant to identify her belief that capitalism is the ‘core of the problem.’ But, what is this core without consumers? Without convenience-culture/ mass consumer-demand, the machine of the free-market would have to shift gears. We can’t blame oil companies without simultaneously implicating ourselves, holding our consumption habits equally responsible.
Similarly, an activist at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions Sacred Water panel gave a predictably disconnected statistic that once again displaces our interconnected realities. She highlighted the false binary between 10% domestic consumption of water compared to 90% industrial, agricultural, military use. These statistics disregard the fact that the private sector determines the public sector and ultimately is responsible for that 90%. Finger pointing at corporations while diminishing consumer accountability wreaks disastrous consequences. This recognition can be empowering. It is not about guilt and shame—blaming the individual[10] —but about embracing our interdependencies. Again, consumers are capitalism. How can we insist that the government and transnational corporations be accountable, when we refuse to curb our buying and disposal habits? As a mother committed to barter-economies and zero-waste, I offer my practice as one strategy to begin to undermine US parent’s/culture’s extraordinary addiction to consumption-disposal hegemonies. We can make change if we are willing to change.
Also, we can’t continue to position (new car) Prius-driving, liberal environmentalist, Sierra Club members who recycle but don’t repurpose against hummer-driving, neo-con, climate deniers. I ask the reader to challenge what you associate with denial. We must move beyond the binary implicit when we (the supposedly illuminated ones—those who believe climate crisis is “real” and must be transformed) point our fingers (essentially, throw up our hands in disbelief accompanied by inaction) at “climate deniers.”
The yearning question for climate journalists now: What are the magic words? We have the facts and the wildfires [heat, floods, displaced peoples and so much more] to prove them. But climate communication—how to make those facts penetrate hearts and minds—seems always a losing battle. The denialists have always had sexier language [the market], and they pay handsomely for it (Zoe Schlanger, The New York Times, Sunday, August 27, 2023).
Again, this binary has dangerous consequences; we are all radically complicit.
In 1971, the year I was born, Edwin Dolan titled his book There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch – A Libertarian Perspective on Environmental Policy. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL) has roots in both the sciences—referring to the Second law of thermodynamics and to the universe as a closed system, and in economics—referring to opportunity cost that accounts for externalities. See my article in next month’s Mother Pelican.
Echoing the idea that there is no away, someone (sacrifice zones) will always pay. Most people’s lives in the United States are rooted in sacrifice zones: a standard of living that is maintained at the expense of people, wildlife, and more-than-human ecosystems. Neocolonialism depends on the externalization of costs that reinforce sacrifice zones. Across time and place, regardless of one’s religious, spiritual, moral, economic community, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL) is apparently a fact.
During each of our five-day Parliament of the World Religions’ Defending Human Rights conference, I gratefully attend Langar: The Communal Meal | The Pluralism Project (gurdwaras’ free food provision), Sikh free vegetarian hot lunch. The 500-plus-year-old community service, an integral facet of the Parliament, takes place under large tents providing shelter from torrential rains. Wrapped in white from head-to-toe, dozens of Sikh practitioners guide us to cover our hair as we file past live musicians and a replica of the Golden Temple. I swoon with delight at such generosity and abundance (hospitality, music, food, historical exhibition). I need to state upfront that my response below does not dissipate my tremendous gratitude.
Langar Temple Music. Click on the image to enlarge.
Devouring my saag and sauteed curry chickpeas, I am suddenly struck by the absurd contradictions spread across the table beyond the rows of ground-dwelling luncheoners: rows upon rows of plastic water bottles are being emptied one by one into plastic pitchers and then delivered one by one with accompanying plastic cups to each one of us. I gently refuse again and again and again.[11] The water distribution persistence reminds me of when I was in Dr. Gerber’s office (the irony of his name continues to haunt me fifteen years later) awaiting my abortion. I was emphatic that I didn’t want any anesthetics during my abortion procedure. But they kept asking me, sliding the paperwork under my icy, sweaty palms. Or, when my mother refused chemotherapy and radiations for her breast cancer and hospital staff harassed her for weeks. My mother survived two cancers (breast and blood)—refusing to succumb to institutional pressure to further damage her immune system.
For me, in this time of climate chaos, comparing plastic water bottles and cups with abortion and cancer does not feel extreme. As Greta Thunberg pleaded with dominator-cultures to remember: “Our house is on fire!” Some readers may find my analysis hyperbolic, and that is precisely my point. We luncheoners don’t need to accept plastic. During Parliament week, people approach me in hallways, bathrooms, the conference lobby saying they noticed I save my utensils/plates and it inspires them to make their own choices where alternatives hadn’t felt available.
The possibility to reconfigure institutions is phenomenally constrained by what we take for granted as our predetermined, fixed reality. How is it that “civilized” humans are so adept at denial and self-justification—particularly in the midst of thousands of years of humanitarian service founded on profound empathy, compassion, and beauty?
During lunch each day I have great conversations, asking my Sikh hosts why is water distributed from plastic to plastic like this? Each person with whom I speak is totally conscious of the extreme problematic nature of this situation. I do not enter into the incongruency of excessive petro-plastic consumption with Sikh vegetarian philosophies that focus on avoiding violence and tyranny while providing service to humanity. Am I not comparing the Parliament’s Langar with the actual largest free kitchen in the world, the Langar at the Golden Temple at Amritsar, which serves free hot meals daily to 50,000-100,000 people. They have hundreds of years of tradition and infrastructure to support them! I try to elicit a dialogue about short-term gratification versus long-term consequence.
Clearly, we are addressing a non-industrial scale, although we are supporting industry production in our (not-so-small-scale) consumption.
On the final day of our conference and our Langar lunch, I notice dozens of plastic shrink-wrapped cases of individual single-use plastic water bottles. I ask one of the generous servers why they are stacking them outside. The response is someone bought too many from Walmart (possibly 30,000+bottles since 7,000 people registered for Parliament) and they need to now give them away since the conference is over.
There is no away.
This is why we need S.O.U.L. (…see footnote eleven).
Notes
[1] Converting and living in our Love Bus serves a similar symbiotic purpose.
[2] Patrick Whitefield defines permaculture as “the art of designing [mutually] beneficial relationships.”
[3] Cecilia Vicuña with Camila Marambio, The Miami Rail. Summer 2015: miamirail.org/visual-arts/ cecilia-vicuna-with-camila-marambio.
[4] In fact, McKibben is one of the endorsers of my book on the Anthropocene, Zazu Dreams (in addition to Paul Hawken, V-Eve Ensler, Noam Chomsky, James E. Hansen, SHKG HumptyHump, Paul Hawken, among other artists, activists, and scientists): www.zazudreams.com.
[5] Juhasz also endorsed Zazu Dreams. I highlight her lecture in this essay because we are so familiar with one another's work. However, I could have referred to hundreds of others in which the same discussion of convenience-culture is perversely absent.
[11] As many of you also do (those who do not pathologize or belittle this behavior), I gathered the plastic cups that I could and am now dragging them with me on Amtrak, trying to find uses for them. S.O.U.L. (Shared, Opportunity, Used, Local) guides me through this process.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff, Professor of Transdisciplinary Ecological
Leadership, has published dozens of interdisciplinary books and
articles on critical philosophy, climate justice, art, epigenetics,
gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies, including
the critically-acclaimed Zazu
Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable
for the Anthropocene Eraand
Viscous
Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene.
Alhadeff's
theoretical and visual work is the subject of documentaries for
international films and public television. She has been interviewed
by
The
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacifica
Radio, NPR, and the
New Art Examiner.
Alongside
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vandana Shiva, Alhadeff received the
Random Kindness Community Resilience Leadership Award, 2020. Her
work has been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben, James E.
Hansen, Paul Hawken, SHK-G, Eve Ensler, Alphonso Lingus, Avital
Ronell, and Lucy Lippard among other activists, scholars, and
artists.
Alhadeff's
photographs/performance-videos
have been defended by Freedom-of-Speech organizations (Electronic
Freedom Foundation, artsave/People for the AmericanWay, and the
ACLU), and are
in private and public collections including and San Francisco MoMA,
MoMA
Salzburg, Austria,
the
Kinsey
Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and reproduction, and include
collaborations with international choreographers, composers, poets,
sculptors, architects, scientists. Her art-based and pedagogical
practices, parenting, and commitment to solidarity economics and
lived social-ecological ethics are intimately bound. Former
professor of
Philosophy, Performance, and Pedagogy at
UC Santa Cruz and Program Director for Jews Of The Earth, Alhadeff
and
her family
live in their eco-art
installation repurposed schoolbus where
they perform and teach creative-zero-waste
living, social
permaculture, and cultural diversity.
She is always eager to collaborate with other activists, scholars,
and artists from other disciplines. If you are interested please
contact Cara via email at photo@carajudea.com
or
via her websites, Cara
Judea
and
Zazu
Dreams.
See also this article: Social
ecology pioneers return to Nederland.
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