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Banana

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Koeppel spent many chapters on the history of United Fruit, the modern Chiquita. I knew it was a history of violent colonialism, but I didn't know to what extent. The history of the "banana republics" of Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, etc. is fascinating, dark and disturbing. Guatemala in particular, with the CIA-orchestrated conspiracy / coup that was very much related to United Fruit and bananas. It’s hard to miss the news about climate change. Every day there seems to be a new story about melting polar ice, floods, endangered species and how we should expect more hurricanes and extreme weather. It’s up to us, as the citizens of Earth, to push our leaders into action and do our own part to reduce the harmful emissions that are ruining our planet. This is the kind of book that will either inspire me or drive me crazy (or inspire me to drive other people crazy). The good news is bananas are a pretty good deal from the perspective of carbon emissions.

But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today’s yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight—and there’s no cure in sight. Bananas are cheerful! This is noted even in the book itself (finally, getting to the actual book in question), which includes a remarkably informative chapter on the 1922 Tin Pan Alley novelty hit “Yes, We Have No Bananas” and yet another one devoted to slipping on a banana peel as classic movie sight gag. Since the book's publication in 2008, the banana has continued to provide comic fodder as the favorite food/conversation topic/go-to any-occasion utterance of the yellow pill-shaped Minions, of lucrative movie and associated licensing fame. These two aspects are the political and the agricultural. I was more familiar with the latter, having read an interesting article in The New Yorker in December 2010 on the spread of a devastating fungus that is jeopardizing the world’s supply of what has become a monoculture: the Cavendish banana. However, I was less familiar with the fruit’s political history, and in particular the rise of the “banana republics.” This part of the story has been dealt with in several other books, which is perhaps why the author chose to hedge his bets and include material on the efforts of banana breeders and genetic engineers to come up with a disease-resistant and marketable successor to the Cavendish banana. Some areas: using the phone and computer, what one eats or drinks, how one gets from point A to B (walking or using a personal or public vehicle), everyday actions (like laundry, taking a shower/bath, or writing a letter), everyday objects (like diapers, a rose, a book). Some things are included that are not really in our hands, but are still of interest (a volcano, a forest fire, a war).

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One such example in this erroneous line of thinking is volcanoes, which are known to emit greenhouse gases even when they’re not erupting. The author tried to infuse this work with an overarching drama, which is "a banana blight that is tearing through banana crops worldwide". This is a fact, however there seem to be some solutions in place, and at least several alternatives. In any case, some chapters end with sentences like "this is why the banana you eat today might be the last of its kind you eat. Ever!". Hilarious! But please, go on! Bring us another one of whatever this guy is drinking!!

How Bad are Bananas? doesn't present itself as any sort of manifesto; it doesn't attempt to persuade anyone to live greener or go vegan or ride a bike. What it does is present the facts, as accurately as Berners-Lee can calculate them, about how each of our decisions impacts the production of greenhouse gasses, and therefore impacts global warming (which the author takes as a given, as do most rational people). The book is set up, basically, as a list from the small things to the big things. We start with text messages and plastic bags and work our way through food and and housework up to volcanoes (which we obviously have no control over) and wars (which you would think we do have some control over). There is no overarching narrative or anything, which makes the book somewhat tedious to read for long stretches, but the book's format does lend itself well to act as a sort of reference that you should keep handy and occasionally consult. To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or exactly where they originated. Rich cultural lore surrounds the fruit: In ancient translations of the Bible, the 'apple' consumed by Eve is actually a banana (it makes sense, doesn't it?). Entire Central American nations have been said to rise and fall over the banana.

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Being British, the author hopes to help the United Kingdom reduce harmful emissions by a significant yet reasonable amount. Berners-Lee has laid the groundwork for such a reduction through what he calls the 10-tonne lifestyle, which would result in the average person going from 15 to 10 metric tons per year – a one-third reduction of each person’s carbon footprint. While the focus is on carbon emissions, he does often explain that is only one perspective. From that point of view, plastic grocery bags have a negligible carbon footprint. Of course these bags damage the environment in many other ways. Given that there is some overlap, these steps should add up to between a 60- and 75-percent reduction. Adopt them all, and you’ll be well on your way to living a 10-tonne lifestyle. It seems common knowledge that riding your bike to work is a low carbon activity. What you might not know if that if you fuel your bike ride with air-freighted off season asparagus, then your carbon footprint increases dramatically and you'd be better off commuting buy Hummer. The art and science of taking into account many aspects of what constitutes a carbon footprint has often been ignored.

My brother-in-law is obsessed with food miles. Obsessed. He flat-out won’t buy anything not grown in the UK. And yet his last holiday involved flying to Africa. And he eats a lot of meat. And he wants to have a child.There are some folks who believe that the environmental damage caused by humans has been exaggerated, and that the harm we’ve done doesn’t hold a candle to what Mother Nature can do to herself.

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