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These are dark days for the environmental movement. A year after being on the cusp of passing landmark legislation to cap greenhouse gases, greens are coming to accept the fact that the chance of national and international action on climate change has become more remote than ever. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under attack by newly empowered Republicans in Congress who argue that the very idea of environmental protection is unaffordable for our debt-ridden country. Accustomed to remaining optimistic in the face of long odds, the environmental movement all at once faces a challenge just to stay relevant in a hostile political climate. In 2004, authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus faced a harsh backlash from the greens when they released a polemic essay called “The Death of Environmentalism,” but now it appears they might have been ahead of their time.
Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even politicians. It’s the food movement, and if it continues to grow it may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm – away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables – but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform – it’s about revolution. (See if environmentalism has lost its spiritual core.)
What makes the food movement so unusual is that it’s not a single national movement at all, it’s a series of organized smaller mobilizations – which is both an asset and a liability. A sustainable-food conference I attended in Manhattan over the weekend, put on under the TED imprimatur, shows the striking diversity of the movement(s). Laurie David, the Hollywood environmentalist and co-producer of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, explained how regular family dinners improve not just eating habits but also classroom grades and good behavior. Cheryl Rogowski, an organic farmer in New York’s Hudson Valley, talked about the challenges and rewards of producing for the local food market. Dr. Scott Kahan, an obesity expert at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, spoke about the role that mass advertising plays in promoting unhealthy foods for kids. Britta Riley, a New York City-based artist, talked about window farming in the city and the growth of DIY urban agriculture. That’s the food movement today: farming and eating and health and policy and business, all jostling for position and influence, but increasingly finding a common cause.