National Super Bowl ads have been universally fun or relatable through the years, making up for their glib materialism with some entertainment value and giving fans of pop culture but not the sport a reason to watch. Cute frogs croaked for beer (“Bud-wei-ser!”) and babies sang off-key (eTrade) in memorable campaigns.

But this year, CBS and the Super Bowl – which drew more than 95 million viewers in 2009 – are kicking up political dust allowing an anti-abortion ad in the national broadcast. The first religious-political ad CBS has approved to air in the entire history of the Super Bowl hails from the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family.

It features Pam Tebow, who recounts her decision to carry a pregnancy to term, against the advice of doctors who feared for her life and recommended an abortion. By her side is thankful son Tim Tebow, Florida Gators quarterback and Heisman trophy winner. The privilege of airing the ad cost Focus on the Family an estimated $2.5 million media buy, plus more to produce it.

Debate has been raging in the blogosphere. Is Tebow too controversial to get drafted now? What’s appropriate for broadcast during the Super Bowl? Should American women have the right to choose? And with teen pregnancy and teen abortions on the rise, shouldn’t we be focused on improving sex education, first?

No matter where you stand on such matters, or whether you’re one of more than 35 million women over the age of 18 likely to watch the Super Bowl this year (according to Nielsen research), it’s hard not to think of the positive human or environmental impact that a couple million dollars could have made, if redirected to help the already-born children of Haiti, for example.

Finally, there’s another question the anti-abortion movement raises, constantly, and again with this ad: should women be encouraged to have kids at all costs, when overpopulation is wreaking havoc in the form of air, water and noise pollution, loss of species and habitat, and a low life expectancy for humans where you find the fastest growing populations?

BASIC READING:

“Although people no longer talk about a catastrophic ‘population bomb,’ world population continues to grow. Unfortunately, the most affected countries are also the ones least able to support more people.” – Interactive feature on the environmental and social costs of over-population at National Geographic

“Do we really want to start seeing anti-abortion”¦messages on Super Bowl Sunday? Do you know what [this sports blogger] doesn’t want to see? “˜Issue-oriented’ ads. It’s Super Bowl Sunday. The only issue I want to deal with is replenishing the queso dip. Are you listening Tim Tebow?” – A blog post by Jeff Schulz for Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Tebow and his mom’s Super Bowl ad”¦will tell America how [Ms. Tebow] was young and not sure she wanted a baby, but then she had Tim who’s now a star about to make gobs and gobs of money… Ergo, you’d be crazy to consider an abortion, ladies, and gents and those not of child-bearing age, don’t even think about supporting a woman’s right to choose, because how could you choose not to gestate and give life to a person as successful and handsome as Tim Tebow?” – A blog post by Elizabeth Gettelman for Mother Jones

FURTHER RESOURCES:

An Associated Press article about Pepsi’s decision not to advertise in the Super Bowl 2010, unrelated to Tebow

A conservative opinion-editorial piece by Jan Crawford for CBS News online about her reaction to the network’s decision to air a pro-life, or anti-choice ad during the Super Bowl 2010

A blog maintained by researcher Richard Heinberg that frequently discusses the impact of overpopulation on the environment and related topics

Overpopulation.org, a website with scientific and historical data on overpopulation, maintained by researchers and activists who seek to improve the environment by curbing overpopulation

A news feature by Nena Carpenter for Helium on the links between various environmental issues and overpopulation

“It appears that Americans have completely forgotten about the profoundly dangerous relationships between overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental degradation, and our standard of living.” – A letter to the editor of Chicago’s Daily Herald by Jim Peterson

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, trends and tech highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: Landshark Stadium, where Superbowl 2010 will be played, by Chris Acuña

The post EcoMeme: Super Bowl Ad Controversy appeared first on EcoSalon.

Haiti is a nation of farmers. Though only about a third of the mountainous country is suitable for farming and the countryside is heavily deforested and losing topsoil, somewhere between 66 and 75% of Haitians are engaged in agriculture.

Marginal land and periodic crop damaging droughts and floods combined with ever-rising food prices and the lowest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere means that hunger for the people of Haiti was part of everyday life even before the earthquake.

In mid-2008, Haitians rioted to protest food prices that jumped nearly 40% in a few months. Yet, at one time, Haiti was an important, and self-sufficient, rice producer. Today, Haiti imports the majority of its rice, making it (at the time this study was written) the fourth largest market for American rice. For such a tiny country, that’s a pretty big achievement.

How did this come to pass? Hunger in Haiti is at least partially a result of stipulations by the World Bank and IMF that Haiti open its economy to cheap US food imports in exchange for loan guarantees, and focus on producing other products for export.

The other problem is Haiti’s own government. Haiti can’t compete with heavily subsidized US rice while Haitian farmers receive almost no investment from their government. According to this article, the United Nations recommends that the Haitian government invest much more in food production, but the government had earmarked only 6.95 percent of its 2009-2010 budget for agriculture.

So where does this situation leave Haiti in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake?

In a word, screwed – unless both International and American aid organizations focus on rebuilding Haitian agriculture in a sustainable, ecological way. Tom Vilsack, Head of the USDA, said on the Rachel Maddow Show on January 14th that his agency, along with USAID, is mobilizing to help Haiti with emergency humanitarian food supplies (around 14,000 metric tons).

He indicated the need for long-term support for Haiti and the rebuilding of the country’s agricultural and non-agricultural infrastructure. Then he mentioned he was working with American food companies like ADM, Cargill and Walmart in the immediate aftermath and that later there would be people on the ground helping the farmers plant their crops.

Uh oh. I truly believe that Vilsack means well, but corporations like Cargill and ADM have a pretty checkered past when it comes to “helping” developing countries build their agricultural capacity.

Usually such efforts lead to environmentally and economically disastrous mono cropping, making small farmers dependent on the company’s seeds and chemicals and driving them ever deeper into debt and misery.

Currently, Haiti is a nation of low-tech human and animal powered farming. It could be the perfect laboratory, much like Cuba was, for developing an ecological agricultural system capable of feeding the people of Haiti. Think about it: unlike our own firmly entrenched system, Haiti is not currently dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, or power. Since fossil fuels aren’t going to be around forever, I hope some of the progressive people at the USDA and USAID prevail and help Haiti to develop agriculture appropriate to its needs, not the needs of Cargill and ADM.

In the meantime, what can you do to help (if you haven’t already)? Many sites have published lists of where and how to donate. I don’t want to duplicate their work. One of my other favorites is Paul Farmer’s organization in Haiti, Partners in Health. They’ve been on the ground there for years and are a trusted organization with a great track record.

Also check out Grassroots Online and Haiti Action.

I’ll be participating in the bake sales this coming weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area. And for other food focused folk, the New York Times Diners Journal has published a list of ways the food community is coming together to help Haiti.

Image: Lucas the Experience

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

The post Haiti’s Future: Food Insecurity and Agricultural Capacity in the Aftermath appeared first on EcoSalon.