Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael PollanRead
Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness.
Interpretation
Tree planting represents a hopeful investment in a future that may not be seen by those who plant them.
In this quote, Michael Pollan suggests that the act of planting trees is an optimistic endeavor that embodies a belief in a better future, even if the person planting the tree may not live to see it flourish. This reflects the idea that some actions, especially those for the environment, are carried out for the benefit of future generations, emphasizing a commitment to long-term thinking and stewardship of the earth.
In practice
During a community event focused on environmental sustainability, this quote can inspire participants to engage in tree planting.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
You look how much sugar is in a typical supermarket loaf of bread: it's a lot of sugar. It's just become one of those sugar delivery systems in our food economy.
There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day.
Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we're eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's as important as the kind of car you drive - whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat.
[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.
He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.
When you have an intense contact of love with nature or another human being, like a spark, then you understand that there is no time and that everything is eternal.
The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It's been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going.
The way I see it, the earth is going to be here after we're dead and gone. Even if it's a polluted planet, and they messed it up. Where do they go from here - to another planet so they can mess that up too?
We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.'
Ocean acidification - the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid - is a slow but accelerating impact with consequences that will greatly overshadow all the oil spills put together. The warming trend that is CO2-related will overshadow all the oil spills that have ever occurred put together.
Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris.
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