Netzingers -- Explicit coquina que est optima medicina.

Michael Pollan fantasizes that a new Victory Garden campaign will do anything to curb global warming. While this is nice dream, and indeed a noble pursuit, it is yet another example of his flawed logic.

What would the average person do in response to Pollan's call for action? They will hop in their SUV and drive to the garden center. Once there, they will spend money on plants, seed, garden tools, top soil, and fertilizer. Trucking it all home, the new garden enthusiast will unload the truck, drop the stuff in the back yard, and then realize that it time for the game. A week later, the plants are dead, the seeds are soaked, and the back yard looks even more daunting. And, there is no time for puttering around in the middle of a recession.

Let's allow that the gardener actually gets to putting the plants in the ground. Let's even be generous enough to allow that they overcome the hurdles of site selection and preparation, transplanting and sowing, and maintaining a proper level of moisture for growth. So what is the final result?

Vegetables. Unfortumately, the average American, eating the Standard American Diet, eats only 1/6 of the recommended servings of vegetables. On the dish, you are more likely to encounter an expanse of flank steak or chicken leg than and pile of zucchini or spinach. Yes, Michael Pollan, you are suggesting that people devote time and energy to something they obviously have no use for. The existing supply of fresh vegetables already mostly goes to waste.

So the new Victory Gardener lets the zucchini turn into baseball-bat size gourds, and lets the spinach go to seed. The tomatoes fall from the vine while ground beef is eaten at more and more meals.

The net result: more gas used to fetch garden supplies; more gas used to produce packaged agrictultural goods; more gas used to make the money needed to pay for these things. This is obviously a net loss. Pollan's suggestion is useless given the current dietary habits of most Americans.

Once again, as in the conclusion of the Omnivore's Dilemman, Pollan ignores the one real way to have an immediate impact on global warming: transition to a plant-based diet. Not only does he ignore the logic of his own argument, to bolster an a-priori conclusion, Pollan also flunks Home Economics 101.