California drought pits farmers vs. cities. But neither is the biggest water victim. The answer to climate change won’t be water. It will be cities. For all their talk about protecting water supply, it is cities who will bear the most of the burden of change.
A long-running debate has been raging on the subject of water policy and its relationship with the environment. In this debate, one side has been represented by conservationists, who argue that the relationship holds a lot of promise and that the relationship is a good one. The other side has been represented by environmentalists, who argue that the relationship is a bad one that must be eradicated. This argument has pitted conservationists like Ralph Nader against environmentalists like Leonardo DiCaprio.
Some environmentalists have gone even further, suggesting that it is the conservation movement that must end. That’s the argument being made by one of the most well-known environmentalists, Bill McKibben, in his new film, Food, Inc.
In Food, Inc., McKibben challenges the idea that the relationship between the environment and the economy is a good one for the economy, rather than a bad one for the economy.
The world needs a new way of making economic calculations, he says, and that new way begins with the simple concept that the environment is not just a resource, but also an ecosystem.
That’s the point of the film, which was shot this past summer in the heart of the California drought and tells the story of a family that takes in a large family of migrant workers.
The film is a must-see for environmentalists. But its message is not limited to environmentalists. It’s also a message that environmentalists should have been making in the first place.
“People should be outraged about the way the economy is doing,” says Chris Houghton, executive director of the Sierra Club. “The economy is not just the economy, it’s the environment. The way we make business decisions is really driven by how our planet is doing.”
Houghton’s point is not that this relationship must be changed, but that we should be outraged about the way our economy is doing.
This is the perspective we should be taking in our own