The Harris Tweed Shop

The textile and clothing industry, like every industry, has been facing the green facts.  Cotton, the big fiber on the block, is taking its hits. Being half granola and half redneck myself I can feel both sides of the issue.  My father and grandfather supported themselves with cotton, yet I like to strut around in nothing but hemp.  Good enough.

But as it turns out, cotton makes wonderfully soft and affordable clothing while using relatively high levels of chemicals, resources from the soil and lots of water (during growth and processing).  But, if we know all this about cotton, why do we still wear so much of it, and more importantly, why do we keep so much more of it hanging in our closets and tucked into our dressers?  Most of us keep buying clothes as if we intend to throw away a brand new green suit once it gets its first bit of pheasant blood on it.  Sheesh.

Once again, we can learn something here from our Redneck brothers (I’m not so sure about sisters).  Rednecks are particular about their clothing.  It has to be functional and affordable.  And now, I’m not making light.  These are two very serious considerations in clothing that I am not so sure civil folk understand.  For a redneck shopper these two dueling forces create a dilemma kin with taming the jackalope.

Functional means the garment of clothing should work properly for many, many a donning.  Working properly means a variety of things such as holding dead quail, repelling manure of various forms, and at a picnic being able to transition from cowboy volleyball to goat roping to neckin’ on a blanket (the ideal date, by the way) all the while disguising the discreet bear belly.  Many, many a donning of an article of clothing implies that the owner of said article can’t quite recall its purchase.

And all of this has to come at a redneck value, and rednecks know value.  Jeans that tear the first time you cross a barbed-wire fence ain’t no value.  Fireworks that can’t even blow up a mailbox ain’t no value.  And a beer that can’t make life look better certainly ain’t of no value.  Clothing is to render its promised service, to cloth the naked form and allow said form to function in an hostile environment without suffering undue harm.

A brand name isn’t worth anything more than that very promise of function.  A redneck might pay considerably to attain that function, but too much, and the brand risks looking disingenuous.  Because, after all, Adam and Eve got on just fine in the raw, and if it comes down to it, I reckon I can to.  And that is the bottom line, isn’t it?  Clothes should serve a function, and if style happens to be a derivative of that function, then fine.  But no self-respecting redneck would be caught dead with a closet full of brand names knowing he came into the world, and he would go out, in nothing but his God-given birthday suit.

How many gardens out there end up being weed factories full of overripe and splitting produce, sipping on wasted water and allowing moisture to evaporate away into the ether?  In other words, are most of us into gardening more in spirit than in actuality?  And if so, do the spiritual benefits of readjusting our Chi with a spade in our hand really worth the waste of time, energy, soil nutrients and water?

Let’s look at some plus and minuses.

Plus: Even when I forget to check my peas in the back yard, the quail never do.  Minus: but then they eat all my grapes, and this really pisses me off.

Plus: I had homegrown radishes for lunch today.  Minus: the saved me like fifteen cents, maybe.

Plus: Gardening gets my wife outside and more often than not, in good spirits.  Minus:  this gets me outside with noisy, rented equipment like tillers.  (And this year it took me a while just to find a freaking post-driver.  Seriously, sometimes living in the city sucks.)

Plus: I have less yard than I used to.  Minus:  I still have a yard.  (Oh wait.  I guess this isn’t my garden’s fault.)  Plus:  I use less water on my garden than on my yard, and I can usually get my wife to weed the garden while I have to mow the lawn.  I do have some dwarf peach and nectarine tress that actually make fruit that gets mostly eaten by us.

So, I guess over all I would still prefer garden to lawn.  But, much of our attempts to garden end in fruitlessness and waste.  And I suspect that my wife and I might be better than many urban gardeners out there.  I think the solution lies in community development and neighborhood gardening efforts.  If our neighbors all tore out their strips as well, and we organized dates throughout each month in the spring and summer to tend the neigborhood strip garden, not only would the results be probably ten-fold, but the rewards would extend well beyond having salad grown on your own block.

This sort of neighborhood garden could provide sustainable community along with local produce which is good for our bodies and our planet.  Maybe then the quail would leave my wine-making grapes alone.

You know you are thinking it.  Will God judge all of California because of the haughty arrogance of Kobe Bryant?  Should he?  Well, in my opinion, yes.  Through watching the Lakers banish all on-comers this year it has become apparent to me that they have filled up the totality of evils to be ecologically smitten by an earth loving God.  It is too much for Nature to bear up.

A sustainable planet simply cannot continue on with the L.A. Lakers in their current incarnation.  They are draining the rest of the planet of necessary natural resources such as the will to live.  There is nothing more vital right now to the survival of mankind as we know it than the will to act.  How, I ask you.  How?  How can mankind have the will to act immediately and decisively after watching a single L.A. Laker/ Kobe Bryant play-off victory? (Much less a gaggle of them.)  And in the midst of a global recession at that?

What did we elect President Obama for if it was not to intervene in such travesties? After his much talk about reforming the college football bowl debacle I had hope that he would understand the significance of sustainable sports in the U.S.  He does not, and he will not.  Now I fear it is too late.  We can only ask that God allow us to not make the same mistake again.

The good news is that there are more and more people out there bringing the inside world into closer harmony with the outside world.  Ooam.  Ooam.  No, I don’t mean by focusing your chi or by feng shui or anything hocus pocus.  I simply mean it is time to start making homes out of our surroundings instead of trying to separate our homes from our surroundings.  It is so much more considerate and less huffy.

Hemp can provide an excellent start when it comes to building with more natural and less processed/refined materials.  Hemp is a natural and obvious contender for products such as siding, fiberboard, carpet, shingles, paint, curtains and as a component in cemeotious materials.  Think about theses products.  This is huge in the building world.  These are the sacred cows.  If we could use hemp to make concrete, roofing, walls, and flooring…

Well, the truth is that we can.  Hempcrete is already being used in multiple applications by mixing hemp, lime, sand, plaster, and cement.  I realize you still must use a certain amount of portland cement, but in much less quantities.  All of the above listed building materials are being made from hemp as we speak.  If only we could freakin’ grow the stuff on location or at least somewhere other than the occasional Native Reservation or Canada.

An acre of hemp can produce up to four times the amount of cellulose fiber pulp than an equal amount of trees.  That cellulose is the building block of modern construction.  If we could only start taking it from a more sustainable resource like hemp.

Can we get there?  Within the last 15 minutes of ABC’s show, Earth 2100, a positive picture of our potential future was painted.  (How is that for alliteration?)  The interviewed experts posed that it would be possible to perform the heavy lifting of global clean-up by 2050, with only the peripheries to remain after that.  Really?

Now, many bloggers and commentators have spoken out that the first 100 minutes of the show were simply too devastatingly depressing.  I don’t know.  I thought the bulk of the show was pretty entertaining.  Instead, it was the end that brought me crashing down into middle of the afternoon, bathrobe shuffling, bacon eating depression.  If the bright, hopeful version of our future requires us to bond together globally in loving harmony in order to completely revolutionize our cultures, values and worldviews…  I think I just peed a little.

I don’t normally consider myself a pessimist, certainly not a realist.  Normally I fully and heartily endorse optimistic dreamland.  It is a great place to walk the dog or grab a doughnut.  But when it comes to sustaining human life on earth we got some serious shiz to tend to.  And I am starting to fret that we just can’t make the changes soon enough.

So I was watching the ABC special together with a friend.  He felt that radical change was already occurring in the U.S. and certainly he is correct.  Obama is nothing if not a frothing madman of radical and visionary change.  But…  I don’t know.  Obama doesn’t run the nation alone, and I am not even convinced a bulk of his efforts at change are going to turn out to be sound ones.  I mean, is anyone else worried here?  How much money does the world have left to throw at this problem?  And is it going to be enough? And soon enough?

For example, Architecture 2030 states that 76% of U.S. electricity consumption is for building operation.  76%.  It would seem obvious that something would have to be done about such significant energy consumption for us to make any progress toward licking global warming by 2050.  So that means we have 40 years to do what?  Completely retool how we construct modern buildings, tear down and replace our entire infrastructure, and do so while economically in the crapper?  How many homes and factories and office buildings and commercial outlets can we tear down and replace in forty years?  What materials are we going to use to do so?  What energy will we use for the work?  And yet, we will have to get down and dirty now.  I am just not sure that we are up for it.  Even with the recession, life might just be too comfortable to give up all the unsustainable, electricity draining bloggers out there.

I by chance stumbled upon the last half of ABC’s show Earth 2100 a couple nights ago.  Now understand, I just returned from a trip to Texas, the land of my birth.  And Texas, with the exception of Austin, is not the land of environmental sensitivity.  And so my frame of mind was stemming from what some other bloggers on the topic of Earth 2100 have been referring to as “the lowest common denominator.”  Imagine my reverse culture shock when I found myself watching an acid trip induced, enviro-documentary/graphic novel about the end of humanity on prime time television.

Break out the shisha and tea.  I need to relax.  Now for the last couple of days most of the reviews on the show have been critical, but personally I think everyone needs to take a few puffs from the hookah.  After you feel a little light headed you should keep reading.Yes, temperatures and sea levels are rising here on planet earth (taking into account that temperatures have leveled off some over the last couple decades, but you know, follow the overall trend).  Yes, most of us have come to agreement that humans and our affinity for burning petroleum has contributed to these trends.  Over the last few years most people seem to be admitting that we should even do something about it.

But here is where level heads must prevail.  Most of us are not in agreement as to what the human impact is and will be.  Most of us are not in agreement as to how much and how quickly our planet will heat and what effects that temperature increase will have.  And get this, most of us are continuing to move forward under the assumption that everyone else either sees it our way or is a nonconsequential moron.  This sort of flippant name calling is the backbone of our national conversation these days and the biggest reason I randomly crap myself while wondering around the park considering life.

I thought Earth 2100 was interesting and imaginative.  It should cause many regular Joes to stop and think a little.  On the other hand I did think that their method was a bit heavy handed and overdramatic.  The last thing we need is for several of those regular Joes to take the whole thing seriously just to decide that when the dramatic predictions fall short that global warming was just a hoax after all.  Maybe Earth2100’s predictions are on the nose.  Maybe not.  Some people still need to be scared while others need to be encouraged, challenged or comforted.  A few people on either extreme will need to be ignored, it is true.

The main truth in all of this is that our petro-industrial revolution has run its course and we need to come up with another.  Intelligent people that disagree as to what this revolution should be and how we should come about it will need to work together (with one voice or another taking the lead).  This fact, above all, is what keeps me awake at night.

Farmers have had a rough row to hoe for a while now, and unfortunately the economic downturn is not helping them.  Another 90,000 farmers are expected to sell the farm during the next decade at a time when we need to be producing more food than ever.  Many are promoting new genetically altered and engineered crops and larger industrialized farm conglomerates as the answer to step up the world’s food supplies.  Pardon my lack of French, but this seems like a dumbass solution to me.  Past attempts to step up industrialized farming without appropriate wisdom and sense has lead to such smash hits as “Welcome to the Dust Bowl.”As a partial libertarian the waters can get dicy for me when talking about economic forces, but in this instance I think it is a matter of leveling the playing field to not be against the small farmer.  Corporate greed has the bull by the horns and Congress is all too ready to cut off it’s nuts.  We have established for decades now that large faceless entities care less for the land than small, local farmers do.  In a time of such carbon awareness, small farms are even more critical.  Citizens of our major urban areas need to know the faces behind the fruit (and vegetables and meat and milk).

The future of farming must rely on a growing army of morally conscious, small, specialized farmers if we are to seek agriculture sustainability in the U.S.  To succeed these farmers will have to charge more for their product.  For consumers to afford this, middle men must be cut.  Community Supported Agriculture is growing all around the nation, and this is a good start.

For our cities to survive farming communities need to be encouraged and supported by property zoning changes in order to prevent urban fringe lands from being used entirely for residential suburbs.  These lands need to be zoned for small 5 to 10 acre farms with cooperative farmers markets and processing facilities built in.  Current farming land needs to be preserved.  Water use needs to be regulated by preventing growth of inappropriate crops (say corn or alfalfa in a near desert).  Or at the very least incentives need to be offered for growing water miserly crops in water starved areas.

What about my recent rants about hemp?  Well, thanks for asking.  This is where crops like hemp can make a difference.  If the U.S. government were to step aside (as it sorta’ is in a few areas) and allow farmers to grow hemp these farmers would have one more tool in the arsenal that would help them survive.  Hemp is a great rotational crop which helps the soil recover from intensive crops like corn and cotton.  Even if the hemp was to be tilled under and used for no other purpose the farmer would increase his profits through the benefit to his other crops.

Hemp can be grown with less water than most other crops in the U.S.  Hemp has multiple uses for differing qualities of crop.  Facilities are open across the border in Canada for processing hemp for feed and fiberboard and other rough uses.  Hemp could also contribute to the growing agricultural tourism industry (vineyards, wineries, educational farms, etc.) by allowing the sale of home made hemp products on the farm.  Besides, every Simpson’s fan knows that a little tamacco never hurt business.  Maybe it is time for farmers to be allowed to grow some Hemato too.

Third, hemp could easily replace our lust for cotton textiles.  Cotton uses 50% of the U.S.’s pesticides, damages the soil, uses over twice as much water to grow and produces less than half the crop that an equivalent acre of hemp will produce.  Fourth, by being burned or converted to ethanol, alcohol, etc. hemp could help significantly lower carbon emissions, as well as providing a carbon sink as a planted crop.  Widespread use of hemp could also save forests and other endangered carbon sinks.

Fifthly, hemp has great value as a source of nutrition for humans and an even greater potential as feed for animals.  Lastly, hemp could have a major impact in our growing construction industry by replacing or supplementing everything from fiberboard to concrete.  Each of these uses could easily be enough to make hemp a valuable crop.  Combined they make it impossible to ignore, yet ignore we do.  For the next several days I will highlight each of these glorious possibilities one at a time.

For now I leave you to ponder the ultimate sustainability in clothing… the loincloth.  But wait.  It gets even better.  A loincloth made from hemp.  You heard it here first.

I keep wondering when the “lease revolution” is going to take hold for the individual consumer?  But alas, the stigma of “leasing is for the least” seems to be clinging to our culture like stank on the unshaved armpits of a female U of M (Montana) graduate.

Part of this could be due to the fact that the only two real players in the consumer leasing business are Rent-a-Center and Aaron’s.  And RAC seems to be doing more payday loans and high price rentals that anything.  I’m still a little foggy about what Aaron’s actually does.  Both stores are mysterious via website.

I realize that leasing has been going gangbusters in the corporate world for over 40 years in the U.S., starting off its big kick with IBM and Xerox.  But I keep thinking that it should become mainstream to rent washers and dryers and computers and T.V.s any day now.  It certainly would encourage sustainability.

Currently the manufacturing and consuming models in the U.S. involve producing lots of crappy, “low-price” merchandise with big mark ups and expensive extended warranties that will presumably break down and have to be completely replaced within a few years.  Besides being really annoying if you desire a quality product, this model is the worst possible when it comes to sustainability.  It uses maximum resources for manufacturing, transportation and maintenance.

But it seems next to impossible to find even a single appliance available to me locally that I can lease without ever intending to own.  It seems like it would be a win, win, win (for the producer, consumer and the earth) for me to lease a quality product at a consistent monthly price for which I would never have to worry about repair.  This arrangement would save me hassle, provide the producer a more steady income to survive manic induced capitalist freak-outs (otherwise known as recessions), and the earth would be spared having to birth and subsume multiple crappy consumer goods.  So get out the soap, Granola Girl.  It’s time to wash off the stank.