If you have not lived in the deep south (in the USA) then you may not know the charms of kudzu. When you first come across it, you wonder why someone never trims their ivy then you realize its absolutely everywhere and consuming just about anything that is not tended on a regular basis.
Coming from your typical American suburban background where we dedicate our free time to vast tracts of inedible grasses, pouring toxic waste and precious water on this piggish crop to prove our neighborly worth, we might mistake kudzu as a plant that is all about rude infinite unsustainable growth.
Kudzu laughs at us for our blind zeal for order and complete willful ignorance of complex systems.
It is able to grow so fantastically because it doesn’t take from it’s environment so much as enhance it. It is a legume which means it fixes or captures nitrogen from the air (something our industrial mono-agriculture – other than soy beans – doesn’t do). It doesn’t suck the nitrogen from the ground, it gives it back.
It grows roots deep into the soil, bringing up water and minerals from way down, making it available to more surface dwelling organisms.
I could sing the praises of kudzu all day but its the way we DON’T appreciate it that is illustrative of our dysfunctional culture.
We don’t harvest it like the Japanese do, for food like kuzu starch and tofu. We don’t use it as a nitrogen amending cover crop. We don’t seriously develop it for cellulosic ethanol biofuels.
We emulate it’s prodigious growth without caring to understand it’s real nature.
We would, if we had our own misguided monkey brain ways, have a Kudzu Economy.
We built an economy these past 100 years based on infinite growth. We were lazy because, with liquid fossil fuels, the illusion of infinite growth is easily maintained.
Our consensus culture formed our minds to not ask where the power comes from or what to do if it stops. That is dangerous thinking when you are driving the bus on the very edge of a cliff.
No, we sip at the teat of fossil fuel even as it lies supurating in the morgue.
We suck ever harder as we close our eyes to a global economy that has ceased its expansion, inevitably resulting in disastrous immediate contraction.
We want our economy, our individual supremacy, our global domionism to grow on for ever, like kudzu growing greedily across a wasteland of broken down cars, moldering tires, burbling barrels of toxic waste, all the wages of that explosive growth, without ever once paying the dues, without ever once fixing the nitrogen for true and honest growth that requires a willful and respectful understanding of the complexity and limits to a system that may one day be sustainable.
No, I state the obvious when I say that we, as a nation, are snuggling up tight to that corpse in that cold morgue, sipping ever more ferverently.
We are closing our eyes and our ears tightly, living in a matrix-like construct where economic depressions get fixed, gutted banks pass their stress tests, deeper oil deposits are just waiting to be found, and a huge preponderance of hard data showing how we have committed climaticide and have overshot the tipping point quite completely are all utterly wrong.
Soy is now so genetically modified, I would be surprised if it still even fixes nitrogen in the soil.
Great post, btw Nika. That construct amazes me too, as does its complexity.
The one area I struggle with is climate change. I have to preface what I am about to say, with reassurance that I am NOT pro big industry, international corporatism, etc etc. I believe our fix with big industry and massive consumption has resulted in extreme ecological damage and put us on a tipping point of ecological collapse.
However, I have not bought into the Al Gore/James Hansen propaganda either. From my perspective, the public concern for ecological damage caused by our standard of living has been co-opted and turned into yet another tool for achieving global control and forced population reduction by over-simplifying the problems and narrowing them down to “too much co2″. One can see that this must be the case, because the “solutions” being put into effect seem to be more about monitoring human and animal activities like driving, breathing, farting, than they are about addressing industrial pollution and waste.
From my own self-directed learning, it seems that it is far more likely that climate is controlled at a macro level by solar activity (flares and such), and that greenhouse gases have a more micro effect on climate.
So I completely support reforming our society, massively, but I cannot buy into the climaticide argument. The carbon movement is just another horrible control mechanism that must be shown for what it is so that we can actually start to address the real ecological concerns before it is too late.
Or so I think.
I dont know if they have messed with the N genes but my guess would be that they would boost N fixation versus kill it
for me climate change is NOT about a personality nor do I orient toward such celebrity. I dont really care what they say – as a scientist – I look for hard data and look at the context. (just thought I would put that out there – there are some people who DO get into environmental lathers because of these celebrities)
I dont think that there is any organized overlords because there is this giant limitation we humans have – greed – which leads to distrust and thievery and – well – the foundations of capitalism! There is an aggregate whole of demand destruction but I dont think that groups are capable of forcing it – I think its a natural consequence of overpopulation and resource overshoot.
The sun is absolutely the engine of the earth and it’s energy systems. I also think that the devastation that humans do, in the name of capitalism, is large enough now to push us well past tipping points.
I think that most if not all of today’s “carbon movement” has been co-opted not by nefarious gray men but by greed. Carbon offsetting? PLEASE – what a scam. So much about today’s green carbon sensitive bilge is sad because it satiates people’s need to assuage their guilt – truth is, as long as China and India continue to function at status quo and also grow (as they must) any amount of solar panels and urban composting and such, in the name of carbon management, is sadly futile.
I feel strongly that people should get solar panels and compost their stuff not for carbon but to survive.
I am going to send you a private email in a moment about another matter… let me know if you do not get it.
You wouldn’t think live bird flu virus would end up in flu vaccines either, yet it happened and got sent to several countries.
I am totally with you that these things we’re talking about need to be done for survival, and I also agree that greed is rampant in our western society. Matter of fact, I agree with just about everything you said there. I am just going to have to devote some time to writing my thoughts out more completely in regards to my concern about developing fascist control mechanisms and why I think we must deal with those while trying to deal with these other issues. It’s just too complex to try to sum up in a quick comment, but I am convinced that if we manage to achieve viable survival, but only through fascist means, then we are still losing out in the long run.
I did get your email, and I am honored at the invitation…and interested. I am just looking over the website and I will email you back!