A Crisis of Red Roses
A symbol of our times
Based on my personal observations, 2020 became the year when “old normal,” fresh-looking red roses practically disappeared in New York. What is passing for “red roses” sold today is very old flowers with withered dark spots on the petals, they don’t look anything like pre-2020 flowers, and the dramatic different stuns me. Most red roses everybody’s selling look like $hit—and it’s been this way since 2020. I am serious. I have only seen somewhat acceptable quality red roses a few times in the past four years. Other colors are relatively okay—give or take—but the red ones are impacted by something. What is messing up the red roses? Do you know?
During the early COVID era, I thought, okay, it must be all the supply chain interruption, the great reset, Klaus Schwab, everything is broken, blah blah blah. But we are in 2024!
Yes, the quality of everything has plummeted, and especially the quality of “fresh” produce—much of which is no longer fresh enough to feed to the resilient New York rats—but this red rose situation is just too dramatic not to wonder about. Do you have ideas?
Or … wait … is is the climate change and the airplanes?
Airliners filled with flowers zip around the globe every day. Chrysanthemums from Colombia dash to Japan; roses from Kenya end up in Britain; carnations from Ecuador jet to Russia. Nearly all imported cut flowers go through the same emissions-intensive journey — climate-controlled greenhouses, refrigerated trucks and a long, chilled flight. Fresh flowers are a $34 billion global industry with a massive carbon footprint.
Compared with other perishables we transport around the world, flowers are perhaps the most damaging to the climate. The reason? Nearly everything else moves by ship, which has 1 percent the carbon footprint of air freight. A 2020 analysis of products sold in British grocery stores, by climate expert Mike Berners-Lee, found that a bouquet of imported flowers has a more significant impact than an 8-ounce steak raised on deforested land in Brazil and consumed in London.
Based on this convincing excerpt, I assume that the conscientious types like the Gates and the Bezoses of the world have already stopped buying roses for their mates and eating steak. It is safe to assume that, RIGHT?!!
I will end this short story with a philosophical point.
I am actually fine with seasonal produce and flowers, as long they aren’t plastic GMO and aren’t laced with pesticides or geoengineering cocktails. (That is all marketing language, however. No one wants us to have that.)
I detest manipulation and coercion. When the magicians pull business models out of their sleeves and demand cooperation from the rest of the world, they are abusive magicians. They are the ones who came up with the notion of all-pervasive consumerism because it worked for them at the time—and they are the ones who are “taking it back” because something else works for them now. They lied then, and they are lying now.
There are many serious things to say but sometimes, I am just disgusted by how easily they lie. Money talks, I get it. They’ve got the drive to dominate that rides them and most of the big guns, I get it. But the moment our spirit wakes up in earnest, their lies will shatter. And they know it. And so they lie harder, bully harder, kill us harder, bribe us harder, divide us harder, trick us to betray our brothers and sisters harder, and yet, the moment our spirit wakes up in earnest, their rule will come to an end, and we will come alive.
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Don’t know. Last year the roses growing in our garden were darker than previous years. Something to do with persistent chemtrails?
'impacted by, not my' (e.g. I am often impacted by your writing in a very good way.)
Maybe roses are being mal-poisoned by less Malathion use. (I wonder who came up with that name. Almost as though they want to rub it in...somewhere. )
If only they would pull the business models out of their immaculately laundered sleeves...those sleeves are reserved for the iron forearms & fists that they plan to insert into our analog of where they're pulling those business models out of. (Sorry, you sorry militant grammarians of yesteryear, I'll finish with a preposition regardless of whether or not it pisses you off.) (You, the grammarians, not you*.)