When a recent news report indicated bacon will be hard to come by next year, a collective gasp rose up from the masses in response. Not the other white meat! (or as in the case of bacon – not my breakfast fat!). But, I’m sorry, it’s true. Global warming has finally taken it’s toll on something meaningful in the human world, and frankly, people are fed up.
You can dry up my rivers and lakes; melt my glaciers and destroy my coastal wetlands. You can bring on the heat until we all evaporate, even bury me in snow storms for days, but don’t touch my comfort food. Honestly, there’s only so much I can stand. Come on pork industry – what’s the problem?! We’ve got an overabundance of food in this country – pigs eat anything, right? Toss them something and get back to butchering.
But what so many people fail to recognize when they start pointing sausage-like fingers at any food industry, is that farmers still depend upon Mother Nature. I realize that’s hard to accept as technology takes an even more substantial hold over us. But even today, long after Ma and Pa and all the little houses that once dotted the prairies are gone, human beings can only do so much when it comes to mastering the earth and all it’s resources. In our arrogance, we may think this is our world to dally in as we wish, and do with what we want; but at times like this, we face the rudest of awakenings. We’re far from in control.
John Muir once said, “When we tug on a single thing in nature we find it attached to everything else”. Muir knew what he was talking about.
Today it’s pigs and bacon, tomorrow, who knows. But predicting the next shoe, or foodstuff to fall isn’t all that important. What is important is recognizing it will, and that over time it will become more like dominoes, tip, tip, tipping along.
Which results in some disappointments, I know. For instance, short order cooks may have to eliminate bacon from the breakfast specials beginning next year. And many of us will cry, and fret, boo-hoo and complain. But this little snafu is only a taste of what is yet to come if we don’t take the time to understand the complexity of nature and see the bigger picture.
Along with this understanding, thinking more globally is a must. We’re tied together, no ifs ands or buts about it. Globally we will feel the effects, and globally we can make a difference.
But then again, it all comes down to how much you’ll miss your bacon.
greenupforlife 