NBC Gets Back to the Garden to Stop Global Warming

August 1st, 2007 6:36 PM

     Whenever the "NBC Nightly News” adorns the green NBC signature peacock in the bottom corner of a news report – viewer beware. It means a global warming story is coming.

 

     “Finally tonight, a small solution being offered up in the fight against climate change – something you can do in your own backyard or at least very close to home,” said anchor Brian Williams on July 31.

 

     “Nightly News” praised “fresh” urban gardens and its produce, but bashed the $121 billion U.S. field crop industry in the process.

 

     “We can’t always get our food from long distance,” Ken Dunn, founder of Chicago’s city farm, told NBC viewers. “It’s not good for us, by having been processed and transported and stored so much, and it’s not good for the planet.”

 

     Urban gardens have been a growing trend in some large cities. But they’re not as self-sufficient as advocates would have you think, often relying on taxpayer funding. The Denver garden featured on the “Nightly News” is one of them.

 

     “This red eggs beet’s short journey across town, not only saves on transportation costs, but also helps keep this garden growing,” said NBC correspondent Kevin Tibbles. “[P]rofits from sales to restaurants then subsidize the price residents in this low-income neighborhood pay for their garden fresh goodness.”

 

     These gardens may offer an “urban oasis of fresh vegetables,” but the selection pales in comparison to the selection supermarkets can provide.

 

     “The average item in your grocery store came from 1,500 miles away,” said Ted Caplow, creator of the “Science Barge,” a greenhouse on a barge floating off New York City’s public waterfront. “And it takes a lot of energy, typically fossil fuels, to bring that food to the table.”

 

     However, conventional wisdom would suggest it takes a lot of money to maintain a floating greenhouse on the Hudson River, as the “Science Barge” Web site points out – being reliant on donors and not the profits from the crops it produced.

 

     Yet, despite the challenges of urban agricultural endeavors, Tibbles advanced the socialist collectivist sensation created by cultivating urban gardens.

 

     “A community garden gives space, gives hope, makes us realize how similar we are, makes us realize we have neighbors to get to know,” said an unidentified woman at the Denver Youth Farmers Market in the “Nightly News” segment.