More than a love of fashion, need for money, or desire for camaraderie, I founded Vital Hemp on Earth Day, in 2003, from an ecological impulse. I could no longer stand at the podium, in front of my 125 Film History students, lecturing about François Truffaut as I watched our planet’s exquisite ecosystems unravel.
I felt like I was in the screening room on deck 23 of the Titanic as we sped toward the iceberg. First Mates, looking through binoculars, sounded the alarm: “Change course!” while others loudly proclaimed, “False alarm! Dinner will be served in the main dining hall, as usual.” Others called the warning a hoax, designed to disable our pleasure cruise. “Icebergs are a fact of life, like the sun!”
A couple of years later, when I watched the documentary,An Inconvenient Truth, I knew in my bones that the global warming scenarios it depicted, studied and developed by scientists over decades, were both real and accurate, likely within a very few degrees. As the son of a scientist who spearheaded the project to develop night vision, and who knew that even such things as toilets are the product of science, I was shaken by what I saw and decided I wanted to have an even more profound impact to counter this possible future.
As a budding hemptrepreneur, I had read Jack Herer‘sThe Emperor Wears No Clothes, like almost everyone else I met in the hemp business community. That book persuaded me (as the words on the cover suggested) that hemp could “save the world!” So I devoted my life, my resources, and my energy to growing Vital Hemp, intending to bring hemp clothing back to the masses, so that we could usher in an age of ecological consciousness that would indeed change the world, with innumerable sustainable products, and better solutions than those that were destroying it.
While I am proud to have participated in educating people about the many valuable uses of hemp--including in the beautiful, functional lines hemp clothing I designed and brought to market, I know now that even making hemp legal to grow in the USA was not enough to change the unfortunate trajectory that we now find ourselves traversing, a trajectory that will make hurricanes like the one some of our citizens are experiencing, look timid, compared to the cataclysms we will likely face as we continue to carelessly heat up the globe with our unchecked human industry.
We have passed so many tipping points. I now long for the relative optimism of Malcolm Gladwell’s crazy afro, as the beautiful dandelion seeds of our future get blown away, drown or burned up, leaving us wavering, like weak, bald stems, clinging to earth amid 120 mph winds.
For decades, I have tried to remain non-partisan in my business dealings, even as I was clear about my ecological concerns and the policies I believed best addressed them. As time runs out, I no longer feel compelled by these diplomatic niceties. There is one party that has consistently recognized the dangers posed by global warming and has consistently worked towards solutions to address it. There is another party that has consistently denied the existence of global warming and has done its fossil fuel company benefactors’ bidding, denying conclusions they studied, understood, and knew to be true, obfuscating these facts, and opposing every possibility of a better future for our planet. The truth of the statement is so evident that I don’t even need to state which party is which.
When, after long years of negotiations with international allies and foes, John Kerry and his team negotiated the signing of the Paris Agreement to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below2°C above pre-industrial levels,”
I felt buoyed, as though we had been given a life jacket and could see a rescue boat on the horizon. Finally, the world acknowledged the elephant in the room, and how we all needed to row together to save ourselves from the great weight of it.
When Trump pulled us out of the Paris Accords shortly after being elected in 2016 (as he said he would do) many people mourned what felt like an inevitability: the dissolution of a consensus around the importance of addressing global warming as a global issue. Some continued the work at local, city, and state levels, and in the sustainable business community.
While 45’s administration struck phrases likeglobal warming from websites and defunded agencies that studied the existentially-dangerous phenomenon, children, like Greta Thunberg and countless other young people who saw what was going on and feared for their future and the future of their children on a viable planet, raised the alarm again, and educated us and each other about the perils we all face, now more than ever.
So now, more than ever, it is still up to us. It is up to us to decide: will we elect a president and a congress that will continue to make a deal with the oil companies: “Support us, and you can do whatever the hell you want!”
Or do we want to choose a future that recognizes the perils posed by global warming, electing leaders who will work to address the most existential problem of our generation (and perhaps of any generation)?
One outcome leads to an Earth that resembles a desertified Mad Max hellscape, a wasteland marked by hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, tsunamis, and every kind of apocalyptic catastrophe you would never want your loved ones or future loved ones to live through.
The other outcome can lead us forward to a functioning, relatively stable planet in which life’s ecosystems can thrive. As we have seen, Democrats plan to invest in renewable and regenerative sectors of the economy, growing a future we can inhabit, with regulations that ensure basic necessities for health, such as clean air, water, and land free from poisonous, hazardous materials. In this future, we—believers and non-believers in whatever (or whomever) we may call G-d--participate faithfully as stewards of the paradise of creation we inherited, a paradise we want to enjoy and leave as a safe and clean home for future generations.
Will we choose to plant the seeds of this future, to nurture and care for the well-being of this life-sustaining Earth, as a vital part of the ways we nurture and care for our families, relationships, and homes?
Or will we succumb to the lying narratives of those who only want to play us for their own self-enrichment? Quarterly reports always motivate CEOs and corporations to maximizeProfits as their bottom line; but as I learned attending numerous Green Festivals and Natural Products Expos over the years, there are at least three bottom lines, that includePeople andPlanet too.
As someone who has always been baffled by the anthropocentrism of our species, I just want to give voice here to all the other species, who are imperiled by our attachment to such values as convenience and lower prices--values that, while not bad in and of themselves, often sacrifice other values, such as quality, durability, or ecological responsibility, with very tangible effects, such as the massive amount of petroleum-based plastic in our oceans, ingested by every species including our own, and the rapid rise in the number of species going extinct. What foolish pride to think that we can trash the web of life and still thrive!
We treat the cost of orange juice as a right that can be determined by a presidential election, when we may better understand that the ability to grow oranges at all in Florida (or predictable crops anywhere in the world) in the wake of preventable catastrophic disasters is a more important metric upon which to decide our vote. Due to global warming evaporating more water, and hotter oceans generating more energy, Hurricane Milton dropped 20% more rain and had 10% stronger winds. These increases led to 50% more property damage, as previously inert matter became harmful-- even fatal--projectiles. When your home is gone, or damaged beyond repair, will you still think about the relative cost of OJ?
For decades, experts have been warning us about catastrophic natural disasters caused by global warming. Rather than acknowledging the problem, 45 and the GOP continue to deny the real effects of climate change. Instead, they create conspiracies about Democrats magically causing hurricanes to land in Republican areas (why they don’t blame God, I don’t know).
Or they redirect attention to their favorite scapegoat for all problems, immigrants, who they falsely claim have taken all the funds that would have somehow rescued their cities or towns—even as Republican governors praise the Federal government’s response as “superb,” and work to undo the lies about funding that can still help those in need.
These powerful hurricanes represent a 2-3 degree rise in the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico. I wonder: how many Trump voters are thinking about the marginally higher price of gas or eggs or orange juice as they drive for hours or days in nightmarish traffic to a theoretically safe area, illuminated by “no vacancy” signs? I wonder: how would they would feel in a few years under a second, insane Trump regime, that prohibits scientific research into global warming or its solutions, warming the Gulf perhaps 4 degrees with untold consequences for their lives, as Trump jokes about “more waterfront property,” by which he means more catastrophe areas that he and his billionaire friends can buy up for pennies on the dollar?
I am fully aware that this message is probably too long, too strident, or too late to affect many peoples’ votes; and yet, I encourage you to vote, and to encourage whomever you may know, especially in a swing state to vote--not only to vote, but toVote Blue, from the top of the ballot to the bottom--because, sadly, in today’s political landscape, there is only one party that represents the long-term interest of people and the ecosystems that support us, including the largest ecosystem of all, that is a habitable Earth.
Thanks for being vital,
Ron
Ron Alcalay
Founder/CEO/Hemperdasher
ron@vitalhemp.com
vitalhemp.com
~Let Us Hemp You Out!
First and second-generation Americans. United we stand.
