My new lexicon entry in the Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics on “Fungi Ethics” is online. It can be accessed here. Fungi ethics, which is closely allied to plant ethics, describes how fungi–both for better and worse–are forever imbricated in our food systems. Fungi both destroy and enable crops. Virtually every terrestrial plant is threaded-through with endophytic fungi. A further majority trees and many plants require mycelial mycorrhizae to flourish, and will flag without these crucial extensions and transmitters of their root structure.

I am inspired by recycled electronics. IT Asset Partners (ITAP) recently posted a video about it’s ragtag recycled electronic car surpassing in range the major three manufacturers’ (Tesla, Chevy Volt, and Nissan Leaf) top vehicles. ITAP director Eric Lundgren stresses that we should be reusing electronics rather than reducing them to their elemental components, as this process wastes all the work that went into making these parts, and it takes energy, water, and waste products in order to take apart and reuse the materials in a stripped down form. Lundgren writes,

re-use is the purest form of recycling. it creates zero carbon footprint. re-using parts/components within broken/obsolete electronics is called “hybrid recycling”. this is a much-needed and often missing part of the recycling ecosystem.’

Lundgren, who has come under attack by Microsoft for his efforts in refurbishing and distributing junked computers in a misplaced lawsuit, has made a recycled electric car for $13,000 that outpaces Tesla, Chevy, and Nissan by at least 50 miles.

The question of what is to happen with the millions of electric car batteries after their cars are junked needs to be addressed now, rather than waving the hand in a mañana fashion.

In the Bay Area, and probably all around California, I have been seen at bus stops and on buses a very disturbing ad. What is disturbing about this advertisement, is that whoever made it failed to understand adolescent psychology. The ad says:

Underage drinking and driving: the ultimate party foul

So what’s wrong with this statement? The key word is “underage.” What this implies, is that drinking and driving if you are 21 or older, is not “the ultimate party foul, but it’s something else.” And that something else, can only be less than a big deal compared to under-aged drinking and driving. So, it’s simultaneously telling people over 21 that drinking and driving is much much worse if you are under 21, and it’s also telling people who are under 21 that it’s not as bad if you’re over 21 and drink and drive. Whichever end of the threshold you’re on, the ad challenges you to not think of drinking and driving as such as that bad of a thing.

As we know from research on children and advertising, all you have to do to make something cool, is to say “only adults can do it.” This institutes the no-kids-allowed forbidden fruit policy that precisely draws kids to do whatever they’re not supposed to do. The tobacco industry and the alcohol industry have made use of this knowledge to sell their products to underage youth for decades. So it’s baffling that the American Ad Council, which posts these public service announcements, would create a PSA like this, which completely undermines the very position one would think they’re trying to take (i.e., that nobody, especially young people, should drink and drive). What this amounts to, is simply that they need child psychologists and cultural semioticians to vet all of their Ad work. I volunteer for that position. Because as it stands, they’re messaging is creating the very opposite effect which they intend.

As Freudenberg writes, “Some industry-sponsored ‘Drink Responsibly’ campaigns, for example, use ‘strategic ambiguity’ to create messages that mean one thing to young people (e.g., ‘don’t drink too much’) and another to their parents (‘don’t drink if you’re under 21’). By telling each group what they want to hear, these advertisements offer alcohol companies positive publicity without jeopardizing market share or the recruitment of new customers” (p. 33). What is uncanny, is that Freudenberg is writing about the alcohol industry’s own fake corporate social responsibility campaigns, rather than the the American Ad Council and the National Highway Traffic Safety Association.

(Screenshot from the webpage full of tepid underage memes that have a lot to do with minimizing the actual potential costs of driving drunk, let alone the long-term and short-term health effects and vulnerability from excessive alcohol use)

Just as bad, the rape-prone advice “crash at their place” could cause these agencies a lawsuit if they’re not careful. It turns out that the website is no better than their ill-conceived tips.

When I lived in Germany, there were lots of ads on the streets against teen rape and date rape, especially alcohol fueled. Where are the ads broaching this important subject in the US? Do we just pretend it doesn’t happen? How irresponsible is that?

The Party Foul ad is the ultimate PSA fail.

Out of the almost 500 shellmounds that existed in the greater bay area, over the last few centuries, these have been systematically destroyed. The Berkeley Shellmound is the earliest of those shellmounds established in the greater Bay Area region by the people indigenous to this region, who first inhabited this area since about 3,700 B.C.E. Although destroyed on their surface, some of these shellmounds in Berkeley and Emeryville still extend 20 feet down in some parts and indigenous peoples of this area still perform ceremonies at these sites.

Now a strip mall developer is threatening the City of Berkeley to avoid due diligence in an Environmental Impact Assessment for plans to develop the Berkeley Shellmound. The Chochenyo Ohlone sacred site is in dispute currently, as the 4th Street location could either be a public common, a tribute to the indigenous people who live here and inhabited this area for thousands of years; or, it could be a strip mall with luxury loft apartments. Indigenous People Organizing for Change, a Bay Area-based organization led by Corrina Gould, has organized the submission of over 1500 letters to the City of Berkeley Planning Department supporting this space on the 1900 4th Street to support an eco-indigenous vision of a common park and indigenous monument and event area. Five letters supported a developer’s project. At the same time, a developer has proposed a 5-story condominium retail complex on the 2.2 acre site (at 1900 4th St.) that is Spenger’s parking lot.

The City of Berkeley has an easy win here. There is not a need for more retail, or luxury housing. While it’s true that the Bay Area has a housing crisis, further luxury housing isn’t going to ameliorate that. Density in places close to public transportation (i.e. close to BART), and close to UC Berkeley campus, at student and low-income-friendly prices, is the type of housing Berkeley needs. We don’t need another million dollar loft apartment to further gentrify our up and coming neighborhoods.

Transitioning this parking lot into a public resource, restoring the sacred site to the extent possible, and daylighting Strawberry Creek on this land, are all no brainers for the City of Berkeley to live up to hits reputation of open-mindedness and justice. It would be a shame for the City to rest on its now aging laurels and allow this rare sacred site to be converted into profits for some developer and awkward unneeded development.

Protecting the West Berkeley Shellmound should be a priority of the Berkeley City government and Zoning Board. To do otherwise will signal a strong rejection of its legacy of environmentalism, social justice, and sensitivity and commitments to diversity and indigenous peoples.