Green Survival Skills
Being green can mean a lot of different things. At this time of year, with St Patrick’s day just around the corner, being green means embracing your Irish roots (or making some up) for the pure pleasure of drinking copious amounts of Guinness. The colour green is also how you will feel the next day. Living in America as I do, the colour green represents money. The Green back. One of the most annoying currencies in the world, in my opinion, because it all looks the same. Mind you, it does make you look way richer than you are if you simply roll up a wad of single dollar bills. But let’s face it, in this day and age, being green is most commonly associated with being eco friendly. Reducing one’s carbon footprint. Eating organic. It’s a catchphrase being used by every marketing company – if you want to be green then use our product. It’s nice to know that as my Toyota Prius hurtles towards a concrete wall due to a stuck accelerator pedal, that at least my car will be using far less gas than if I was in an SUV. That’s being eco friendly. I like to know that when I crash that I leave the smallest carbon footprint possible, whilst leaving the largest skid mark in my pants. Hey at least it’s organic. And like Kermit said, it’s not easy being green.
The eco friendly fad of the last ten years or so has reached fever pitch. Certainly it’s a good thing – that we are all acutely aware of what we as a human race are doing to our planet. Global warming, oil spills, greenhouse gasses, nuclear power. Of course if the Mayans are right then it will all amount to nothing when the world ends in 2012 anyway. The Green movement however has also made it possible for the naysayers to use scare tactics to sell their products. We apparently must all be ready for the end of the world as we know it. Seeing as though there are seemingly more ways than ever that the planet Earth may no longer exist, we must be prepared for anything. I thought my general apathy was preparation enough until I saw an advertisement for the ’survival seed bank’. It “lets me plant a full acre crisis garden”! It asks the question – am I ready to take control of my own food supply? So here’s the deal, for just US$149 you get enough seeds to plant a survival garden. They claim that I would getting well over $600 worth of seeds, if I can even find them due to the ‘current seed shortage’. There are several problems with this. Now it takes a while for seeds to grow into anything worth eating, so I guess you will just have to anticipate that the world is going to go to pieces a few weeks in advance. Otherwise you’ll be scratching around in your arid, post nuclear dirt trying to find some indication of a vaguely edible bulb. What happens though, if the world doesn’t meltdown like you anticipated? If another September 11 type event occurs and you start planting seeds like a madman only to find that the world carries on as normal some month after the event and you now have $149 worth of seeds planted in your garden that you were supposed to save for that acid rainy day? Can you stop the growing process? Can you quickly un-germinate the seeds? I think not. If you could then paternity suits would be a thing of the past.
Now who could disagree with that graph that shows absolutely nothing but colored lines? I did however feel a strange curiosity to see what sort of consumer testimonials they had. Brian says “Had my best garden ever in 2009…the best value and return on seeds that I ever purchased”. Mike says “I was amazed at the number and strength of the sprouts…I wound up giving some of the plants away to friends because I had overproduced expecting some would not sprout”. My question is obviously this – what the hell are you people doing planting your emergency survival seeds and eating the produce? Has the world ended and I wasn’t notified? I mean, I don’t check my email every day, maybe I missed something. If this is an emergency situation then I feel pretty happy with the current climate. I’m not finding any problem going to the grocery store and buying a rib eye fillet with all the trimmings. There’s plenty there. Meanwhile, in ’survival land’, Mike and Brian are chowing down on sprouts and radishes. And anyway, everyone knows that when the world does go into emergency mode, it will be because a virus has broken out and mutated causing the human race to turn into flesh eating zombies. In which case, I can tell you that sprouts and radishes will not be providing you with enough energy to either run away or keep up a sustained attack against such man eating creatures. At that point I will want everything in pill form or in a can. No way am I going out behind the shed by myself to go harvest my ’survival vegetables’. I’ve seen the movies. Those are the people that never come back. And I won’t be coming out looking for you. Those people don’t come back either. I’ll be sitting on the couch, with a can of Campbells chunky soup, a bottle of Red Bull and a crap load of multi-vitamins.
And you will be green with envy.
