Food or Climate?

Which is more important, food or the climate? It is a question which has been debated many times since the 16th century when Malthus estimated that the popularity would one day not have enough food to sustain everyone unless steps were taken, which would in turn ruin the Planet's climate. 

The current food system is a significant contributor to climate change due to the carbon footprint of so many imported foods across the world each day, fertilizers and pesticides flowing into rivers and polluting ecosystems, and the deforestation of woodland to make room for crops. But should we continue this efficient system or change the way we grow and package food?

The food system is an important global market, with many benefits to humanity. These advantages include stopping starvation throughout the world, contributing to income for farmers in third world countries, creating jobs in the food industry for farmers, manufacturers and transporters. On the other hand there are also costs of this food system, such as the creation of pollution from transportation, the danger to ecosystems from plastic and tin packaging, and the deforestation of large areas of land like in Ecuador to make room for large scale food production.

Food has to be eaten all over the world. It is a basic sustenance, not a luxury. Therefore world trade is not an option but a necessity. Trade is a key factor in economic development; a successful use of trade can boost the progress of less developed countries. Food production generates jobs in many areas, from growing and cultivating to packaging and selling. Without this industry the world economy would never have advanced past sustenance farming. 

Unfortunately, importing and exporting food is expensive and pollutes the world with fuel waste. Pesticides and fertilizers contaminate land and water when they are sprayed aerially or allowed to run off the fields, ruining the area for future use.  Deforestation reduces the amount of carbon dioxide being recycled by the trees and also arrests the process of transpiration, upsetting the balance of nature. 

However Climate change causes extreme weather events which are feeding into a global food crisis. This disrupts agriculture and food production, forcing up the food prices, and hitting the world's most vulnerable the hardest. These abnormal weather patterns have been created through pollution, to which the food system has contributed. This has created a vicious cycle which will surely lead to the foreseen food shortage Malthus postulated...

Unless we change the way our food system currently works. 

We must change the way we grow, package and transport food in order to help stopping the pollution of the atmosphere. This would slow down climate change and allow the world to recover. Earth would then normalize its weather patterns and the droughts/floods/twisters would be less frequent. After all that, we would then be able to produce more food to support the growing population. 

Therefore in my opinion, there is no definitive line between food and the climate to make one more important than the other. Instead, the two seem to depend on each other to sustain humanity. 

Are We Free?

Jean-Jacques Rosseau was a great Genevan Philosopher of the 18th Century. His famous quote, "Man is Born Free, but is Everywhere in Chains", became the subject of a great debate about freedom between Libertarians, believers in free will, and Determinists, believers of fate. The quote was part of Rosseau's Social Contract, where he asserted that modern states repress the physical freedom of our bodies by social conditioning and behavioral upbringing, while doing nothing to secure the civil freedom for which we enter into civil communities. 

In my own opinion, Rosseau was making a point about the chains that we put upon ourselves through duty, whether through work, family or social role. Perhaps he was stating that although we believe that we are born free without any inhibitions, it is just a pretense due to the constraints inflicted on us by social conditioning. 

This links with Freud's ideas about duty being produced by human nature and social engineering from a young age. Freud suggested that our ideas of morality come about through the 'super-ego', an inner parent which rewards good behavior with happiness and punishes bad behavior with feelings of guilt. The super-ego is developed from a young age as the child views when parents get angry or disapprove of the child's actions.

These feelings of conscience are difficult to get rid of in a civilised society and therefore we have to ask ourselves if we really are free. Is freedom an illusion of the mind? Or can we strip the bonds of social conditioning away easily?

Personally, I believe that I am free in basic choices such as what to wear on a given day or whether to have an ice cream at the beach. However, I believe that we are a species are not autonomous beings. There are silent rules which guide us through life, which some interpret as conscience or responsibility, and others as God's will on Earth. We are held back by conscience and laws we place on each other in society. These chains are man-made, but they are binding beyond our free will. For example, society dictates that we look after our family, that we go to work on time, that money is the most important thing that we can gain in life. Through this, we can see that we are constrained by more than simply ourselves.

Of course I am free as far as I can be, as a girl living in a first world country, protected by the Human Rights Act of the United Kingdom, which is a lot more than can be said for other people. These ideals of freedom include freedom of thought, conscience and religion, right to a free trial, freedom of expression, freedom from forced labor and slavery, and freedom from discrimination of any kind. 

Generally I believe that I am free, and there is only one law which could be made to further my own freedom, that of equal rights in the workplace between men and women.This is because as long as there is such thing as a civilised society there will always be socially conditioned constraints on what we can and cannot do, both to ourselves and to other people.