A simple and unambigous definition of "Ecological" for the world

There’s so much delusion concerning the concept, ”ECO” even though a definition may go like ”not harming environment” a product marked “ECO” may have circled the planet several times to reach a consumer. At the bottom line we don’t have clue and it has become a slogan to sell more which is what drives us, sell and consume. Large corporations, multinational corporations have bought in to the concept but with the sole purpose not to lose markets and consumers and to increase sales in an ECO aware world of consumers. I would like to change the whole idea of “ECO” to something simple and efficient, “near produced” whatever that is feasible to “near produce” and only let imports be legitimate when they only could be found elsewhere.

There is nothing wrong with the definition “not harming environment” but we have to be smart still using what we learnt about fertilizers, pest control and DNA modified crops and keeping the business around chemicals and farming under close watch. The big gain from making “ECO” meaning “near produced” more than anything else would be to remove a great amount of trailers from the roads, boats from the seas and airplanes out of the air, reducing CO2 contamination from burning fossil fuels, road wear, road accidents and a contaminated ocean from huge transporters spilling it’s waste into the air and mother sea.

Globalization has become a threat to the environment as it has opened up remote markets to biblical scale producers from countries like the USA, Argentina and China and others, that are extremely competitive just because of the scale of production and without no or little ethics when it comes to keeping animals or producing meat. It is difficult to grasp why meat should have to crisscross the globe to reach a market, meat like poultry, or milk products that can be produced locally anywhere. Reflect over that a US milk producer could keep 10,000 cows that never are allowed to go out; the largest Swedish one could have 1000 which is very rare as the majority would have no more than 100. A situation like this pollutes the globe with CO2 and other unwanted substances, forces small producers out of business creating dependencies and eventually political instability on the planet.

National politicians in large influential countries lobbied by local industry, works hard to force other nations to open their markets to all sorts of produce even to such absurd export products like poultry. You can just imagine that the gain is one-way and to whole thing setup to support the own industry and to keep its population happy. The end result for all of us is global warming with severe effects even for the “rogue” CO2 nations and their greedy and reckless politicians.

The oil price drops (2014-2015) and the most popular car sold in the foremost nation on earth is a large gas-hungry SUV while on the other side of the ocean car manufacturers are breaking their budgets to develop and produce small cars with engines running on minuscule amounts of fossil fuel or non-fossil means. Does this have anything to do with “near produced”, no, I just mention to introduce you to the hypocrisy in what certain nations say and do. The same hypocrisy applies to the concept “ECO”.

“ECO” in the meaning of  “near produced” could be the difference between maintaining earth’s temperature at current level or continue towards a catastrophic 2 degree raise. And it is guareantee that diversity on our fragile planet is maintained.

Another effect of “near produced” would mean that nations/regions would be able to uphold production of grain, vegetables, meat and milk to be more or less self-sufficient and also important - for strategic reasons, when war or other disasters strike. Sweden’s milk- and meat-producing farmers are on the brink of extinction because of global trade and the country have ended up in an absurd situation investing in the under-dimensioned armed forces to be able to curb an attack from the “east” while not taking any measures to safe-guard local food production. I wonder what the population and its military forces will eat during a longer period of war when most food-stuff is imported.

We are living in crazy world driven by greed and fear, constant drafting on new trade agreements mostly with the US pushing for it as the US has gone the farthest with very large scale farming and production that would outcompete the industries overseas making an imbalance in trade to the favor of the US. At the same time as transcontinental transport increases, climate conference after conference is not bringing us closer to a solution.

The ideal would be having a world order where only digital products are allowed for import/export, everything else “near produced” with the exception of aid programs for development of countries/regions and to disaster zones. That was the ideal but a first step would be to restrict export/import of grain/food or basically anything that could be produced locally. It would dramatically bring unnecessary transport down, curb CO2 emission and maintain jobs for people in less fortunate regions of the world.

This is just a little digging into the surface of huge problem and not straight off recipe about what to do. There will still be exports/imports needed just to grow crops or to keep animals. Fertilizers and chemicals for pest control is not to be found in every region, vaccines, pharmaceuticals for keeping live-stock and many other things will have to be transported (in good will and with profits) across the globe.

It will take many years, treaties, will power and courage from citizens and politicians of the world, there will be protests and anger, layoffs but also hope, trust in humanity and new jobs created around the world. Humane treatment of animals may become global when monstrous killing plants are scaled down or shut closed. Will this ever happen? We the people of the world has to stand up and voice the isssue and if we do, there's hope and there will be change for the better and for the future of our off-spring, whatever color, ethnicity or race they sprung out of.