AND WHAT SHALL WE EAT?

Further musing after  reading the novel tie in, reading reviews of Noah and speculating on how we can really mess up the planet even if we weren't facing global warming. That’s just icing on the cake.There’s been a lot of whoop ti do over the family’s diet. Especially in “Christian” circles.

It appears that they are vegetarians, perhaps even vegans at least as far as food goes. Most folks appear to wear a fair amount of leather. No telling how long it’s been since it was easy to raise a critter big enough to wear, so to speak. And it's kind of hard to grow cotton, flax and hemp without enough water. 

The books describes a pretty blasted landscape. If it’s raining it doesn’t happen very often. I’m not sure where they’re getting their water, but there’s a description of an extremely polluted pool of water near an abandoned mine.

It was either one of Wendell Berry’s essays or a passage from Killing the Hidden Waters. It was a description of land in the southwest that had been used for irrigated crops. Cotton, I think. Eventually the salt and mineral build up made the land unprofitable for farming and the compacting of the soil by heavy equipment created a mineral laden crust over the earth that normal rainfall can barely penetrate and heavy rainfall pools and evaporates making it worse each year.

I’m assuming that in this universe there must be small springs fed by underground sources. Enough to survive on, not enough to do more than grow a garden of herbs and veggies supplemented with what every you can find in the wild.

Ok, your diet is pretty close to the edge already. Pasture appears to be scant to nonexistent. Are you going to try to raise a cow? Are you also going to try to support a critter whose life is spent mooing, eating and getting your cow pregnant every few months? I didn’t think so. Goats don’t take as much, but again same problem. How much are you willing to give up to keep that flock of goats going?

Chickens? Same problem. They have to eat too. Is what you can spare enough to make those eggs, the spare roosters and the hens that don't lay anymore worth it?

We’re so used to the relative abundance in our markets that we forget, if we ever think about it, what it takes to bring that T bone or rib eye to market.

It really shook me when I read a passage in Penny Lernoux’s Cry of the People. She’s talked to families in Central America who could manage to raise a cow or a few goats or a small flock of chickens. But THEIR children didn’t get to drink the milk or eat the eggs. That produce had to be sold so that their parents could afford to buy some corn or rice and beans plus the kerosene to cook them. Enough at least to keep them going for a few more days.  Now that’s poor. But still a step up from the landless peasants in the city slums who have even less.

So, does the movie story Biblical? Probably not in the true sense. Has the story I read and descriptions of the film’s story line made me stop, think and reexamine what we’re doing to the planet? Damn straight. Am I even more disillusioned with many of the so called Christians in this country. What do you think?