I was inspired to write about the magnificent dandelion today as an earthy caramel-like scent wafted through the house. The aroma of roasting dandelion roots is totally unlike anything I have ever smelled before, and definitely not what I expected (being well-accustomed to the smell of the bitter white latex in the leaves).
Another delectable option for warm tannic satisfaction came today in the form of a dandelion. I was prepping an area to put in some new trees, so I had to clear out some flora. As I pulled up root after root, remembered tattiehoking’s post about dandelion coffee, and decided to give it a go.
I came to understand today that one of the many benefits that has come from covering the garden in mulch instead of grass has been the sheer size of the dandelion roots available for harvest. The dandelions that grow on the grass plane are wiry and stunted, but the behemoths I dug up in the mulched areas may as well be carrots.
With a little under 2 hours between harvest and steeping, I washed, chopped, and then oven-dried the roots at 100˚ C, turning it up to 180˚ C for the last 30 minutes to roast them. After steeping the resulting pellets for a good five minutes, I topped off my mug with a splash of maple syrup: my Canadian roots seemed to intuit that it was the right thing to do.
The result was a caramel-like brew that is an excellent tonic for the liver and gall bladder, which is also being researched as an anti-cancer medicine. [x] It was truly delicious, which–considering my habits–is bad news for the dandelions in the rest of the local area.
Six talking points to use when debunking the myth that overpopulation is the root of the environmental crisis:
1. Rates of population growth are declining: Between 1950 and 2000, the world population grew at a rate of 1.76%. However, between 2000 and 2050, the rate of growth is expected to decline to 0.77%.
2. Overpopulation is defined by numbers of people, not their behaviors: Industrialized countries, who make up only 20% of the world’s population, are responsible for 80% of the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. The United States is the worst offender, with 20 tons of carbon emission per person. Therefore, it is not the amount of people that leads to degradation, but what they are doing. Permaculture design illustrates how humans can have a positive impact on the health of our ecosystems, bringing greater health and equity.
3. Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of color, and immigrant communities: Often times the subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of color, and immigrants. This idea has been used to justify such practices as the forced sterilization of 35% of women of childbearing age in 1970′s Puerto Rico, under the control of and with funding from the US government. This is a human and reproductive rights violation.
4. Overpopulation points the finger at individuals, not systems: This lets the real culprits off the hook. When we look at the true causes of environmental destruction and poverty, it is often social, political and economic systems, not individuals. We see militaries and the toxic legacy of war, corrupt governments, and a capitalist economic system that puts profit over people and the environment.
5. Supports a degenerative mental model of scarcity: Much of this ideology was created by Thomas Robert Malthus, an 19th century English scholar. Malthus gave us the erroneous idea that the reason there is famine is because there are too many mouths to feed. This hides the reality that we have a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem. Malthus’s work has been used as the philosophical bedrock to justify many human rights violations throughout history.
6. Focusing on overpopulation prevents us from creating effective solutions and building movements for collective self determination: Permaculture teaches us that how we define a problem determines how we design solutions. How does viewing overpopulation as a root problem impact the way we think of and design solutions? What would solutions look like if we viewed people, all people, as an asset? The myth of overpopulation has lead to solutions of population control and fertility treatments, rather than overall health care and women’s rights. The more we blame humans and think we are bad and evil, the harder it is to believe in ourselves, count on each other, and build a collective movement for justice and self determination.
The USPS is about to declare bankruptcy. It’s at the center of the longstanding plans for disaster recover and has been since the Cold War. It’s the only institution that could (for example) deliver covid meds to every home in America in one day.
The proximate cause of the post office’s bankruptcy is the pandemic, but that is merely the finishing blow. The USPS was murdered in 2006, when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.” That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadn’t been born yet.
The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.” That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadn’t been born yet.
The USPS’s murder is straight out of the neoliberal playbook: “1 Defund, 2 claim crisis, 3 call for privatizatization, 4 profit!”
As Lambert Strether points out, it was a bipartisan act of murder, cosponored by the “centrist” Democrat Henry Waxman.
Killing the USPS looms large in the Trump admin’s (nonmetaphorical, actual) privatization playbook, “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations”:
The proposals are for USPS to become a Wework clone or franchisee, but not to become a publicly owned bank - a common line of business for other nations’ postal services, natural based on the amounts of cash they handle.
The USPS is the nation’s second largest employer of veterans, with 630,000 employees. Trump is about to allow it to collapse so that UPS, Fedex and other private firms can skim off the most profitable parts of its business and leave rural Americans totally isolated.
The loss of the USPS would mean the loss of the last truly universal federal program in America and would unduly hammer the people whom Trump claims to love – veterans and rural voters.
I wonder how many of the Bitter Old White People livin’ rural who support this Tang-colored shitheel even realize that this is happening, or understand that if it’s allowed to continue that they just… won’t get mail anymore.
Annnnd our parents and grandparents never taught us basic life skills because the baby boomer generation loved outsourcing easy work, like hemming pants and baking cakes. The generations before us glommed onto the fast, easy fix, and important skills have been lost in the process.
(And of course the generation who raised us loves to act fake shocked like “my grandkids don’t know how to boil water” like yeah, Janice, that’s because you took your kids out to eat 6 nights a week and baked Stouffers lasagna one night)
And now we are broke. And can’t afford to pay $60 to have every pair of pants we own hemmed (shoutout to shorties!). We are making yogurt because we can’t afford to pay $2.50 for one yogurt.
I’ve learned to knit to make myself wool hats and scarves. I’ve learned to sew so I can make items that would otherwise cost me 4x the cost to make it. I’ve learned to make yogurt because I would prefer to spend $2 for a gallon of milk and get 24 yogurts out of it rather than just one.
I’ve planted fruit trees in my yard so I can reduce the carbon footprint of the fruit I eat, and because produce is expensive.
I raise egg-laying chickens so I don’t contribute to factory farming.
My husband hunts deer so that we can eat lean, virtually fat free meat, and also not contribute to factory farming. The deer live happy lives and are not allowed to suffer. (Hey PS also, hunting up here plays an important role in ecology, as otherwise the deer population would explode, and deer would starve in the winter. Thanks for coming to my TEDta…)
My generation is going on YouTube to learn to change tires, bake bread and do their taxes because y’all sure as shit didn’t teach us.
THIS
Lets not forget the phasing out of the HomeEc class. Or the Shop Class.
Alleviating one’s ignorance of a subject should NEVER, EVER be looked down on! Learning and growing are never anything to be shamed of, or for!
reblogging for the additions.
really if you take a moment to think about the headline it basically just says “millennials are so helpless they’re taking time to learn how to do things they don’t know how to do”
oh no…how awful…
Damn kids and their *spins roulette wheel* commitment to continued education in practical skills…
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
