Scathing Criticism
JUST OVER A MONTH AGO, an American bank announced that it had built what it is billing as the largest Green Wall in North America. I have majorly mixed feelings about this new development. On the one hand, it gives green walls great visibility; many more people will come to know of living walls and their beneficial qualities because of this huge installation. On the other hand, this bank has chosen to feature its corporate logo as a graphical element on the green wall itself, by tracing the logo’s outline using plant varieties of different colours. This has the potential to create disinformation in two ways: one, it can confuse the general population about ecological systems and the way they work; and two, it can obfuscate the truth about the actual business practices of this bank, and their effects on the American economy. Because of this ambivalence, I have included photographs of the giant green wall, but with their corporate logos digitally blurred out.
AT GREEN APPLE PIE, we see our primary objective as keeping our clients and community as informed as possible about everything they can do to have a healthier home for themselves, and more moral dealings with all of the other ecosystems that are impacted by our landscaping decisions. Certainly, if we were all more conscious of how each of our actions affects the next seven generations and then some, our ecological ledger would be looking a whole lot better. And at the end of a long day, after making payments on food, clothes, shelter, and taking care of all our parental responsibilities, this is no small challenge in and of itself. But if you’ve already carefully scrutinized your own family’s ecological footprint, and you’d like to take on more responsibility for our collective fate, then the next step is environmental activism.
THE PROBLEM IS Malthus remixed: the population of the planet is expanding exponentially, but forty per cent of the planet’s land mass is already being used for agriculture. There are hardly any virgin patches left in the temperate zones to convert into new farmland, and what’s currently being used to grow food is expected to fail in the decades to come. These are the facts and figures for so-called conventional agriculture, using poisonous pesticides. If we demanded that everyone have the right to eat organic food — currently less than three per cent of the population does — we would need to more than double the amount of land being cultivated for food crops. It would mean the total destruction of all of the tropical rainforests, since they would need to be used for grazing, to produce poop for natural fertilizer. So how do we provide the whole human family with healthy food?
TWO DAYS AGO, I promised you a blog about clover lawns as an alternative to grass. Then I took you time-travelling into history to understand the back-story. In Part I, Clover the Hills and Far Away, and Part II, Clover and Over Again, I explained how the artistic imagination of the Middle Ages triggered a new paradigm for gardening during the Renaissance. You’ve got to know where you’re coming from, if you want to figure out where you’re going, right? So now in Part III, Clover and Out, I will talk about how this new paradigm has perverted our senses of space and society, our relationships with nature and culture, and left us with a chemical legacy of lifeless monoculture. And finally, I won’t only talk about the problem, but I’ll suggest some possible solutions. So, one more time, what’s wrong with our good friend green grass, and why would we want to examine any alternatives?
EVERYONE ECO is excited about the recent May 26 Toronto City Council 36-2 decision to mandate the allocation of at least some percentage of the roof space of all newly constructed buildings to topsoil and plant life, and the inclusion of a clause that financially penalizes developers that don’t comply with the code. There’s no need to let the fact that this law is the first of its kind in North America go to our heads — Chicago has over 600 green rooftops, and in Germany, they’ve been building green roofs for nearly 40 years now! Plus, people that profit from real estate development have harshly opposed the bylaw since it means diminished short-term profits for themselves, and have succeeded in watering down the law significantly. But hey, some green roofs are better than no green roofs, right?
