Does anyone know anything about the 30 Days of Sustainability event in Vancouver, Canada? It has this great looking website but I have heard little about it. A great idea that perhaps can be mimicked elsewhere.
Category: other
All posts that do not belong in the categories of buddhism or philosophy goes in here. Please check tags for more details about what the post is about.
Micro-generation
“Planning obstacles for small-scale [example: micro-generation] renewable energy schemes would be reduced – and to meet targets, it’s been suggested local authorities could provide financial incentives for using renewable energy.” (From the BBC)
It is truly sad to live in a society where incentives are needed (for the government and citizens) to get us to use more environmentally friendly energy sources like micro-generation.
In a blialogue (a blog-dialogue) recent I was made to think about why it was necessary to work so hard when the rest of the world was going against your grain. The other party in the conversation suggested that all the hard work of pushing for sustainability is nullified by the actions of politics and business, so, to him, it seemed a waste of time. But I say without the effort and successes at smaller levels we will have no example of workable solutions. To show that it is viable is what we should be aiming for as the little people. The big people do not see (or refuse to see) the long-term value of this, because it goes against the current dominant society and culture’s philosophy of immediate gain.
Environmentalism Is Not Religion
Martin Livermore – an independent consultant with a background in industry, covering a range of science, communication and policy issues – might have been talking about people like me when he wrote this essay for the BBC’s Green Room.
In it, he asks the question, should we not think about humankind first before trying to save other species? So he thinks we are worrying too much about nature and other lifeforms and not worried about our own. He believes we have become too zealous in treading the green path.
He argues that:
“Admittedly, a few key evolutionary advantages make us [humankind] remarkably adaptable and, currently, the ultimate generalist; but it still makes us part of Nature, and our use of human ingenuity is every bit as natural as a spider’s web or a swallow’s migratory pattern.”
This is a point which many use to argue the anthropocentric viewpoint, one that I think is flawed. Let me be postmodernist and argue from within his article.
Mr Livermore gave the example of the conservation efforts for the bison population in Yellowstone by culling wolves. He calls this effort misguided because it led to a bison overpopulation crisis which then caused even more problems. In the end, the wolf culling was stopped in order to bring back a balance to the system. And he is right. The conservationists were going about problem the wrong way.
But has he not here argued a case for nonintervention, rather than one that says conservation is bad? And is it not ironic that it is through human intervention that the human population is where it is today? We are “culling our wolves” to get the human population at its level, through medicine, technology and other means. In other words, we are as foolish as those bison conservationists just mentioned when it comes to human conservation.
And as Mr Livermore has shown we do need the wolves to bring back a balance. The difference is whereas bisons have their wolves to keep them in check the humankind does not – not yet. Like a pendulum the environment will eventually bring things back into balance. It is just that “our predator” has not yet come.
And as for value judgments, yes, who is to say a dormouse is better than a rat… or that a man is better than a dormouse. At the risk of sounding postmodern Mr Livermore has actually sounded modern, in all its negative sense. He has mistakenly understood postmodernism to mean we can no longer hold on to values, when actually postmodern means we must hold on to many values, but none can be the absolutely correct one.
Yes, we are part of nature, as he pointed out, and so may human ingenuity. But so is human shortsightedness and arrogance. And ironically, so is our ability to see beyond tomorrow or this generation. It is possible to view nature in a different way. People, like Mr Livermore, just need to realize that there is not only one pair of rose tinted glasses, but many.
Sadly, Towards Urbanization
Our modern lifestyle seems so boundless. If the food in your refrigerator runs out just get more from the supermarket. And it seems just like that – the supermarket is like some kind of miracle place. But this is just an illusion, just like a magic show. We have come to believe that if we have money food will appear.
That food in your supermarket must come from somewhere. And it can run out like all else in the world. And I don’t mean run out on the shelves but actually disappear from existence. It is by equating everything with money that we lose sight of these facts.
Whereas once we would farm with our bare hands and hunt with our own prowess, we would know what exactly is available. But today we place that burden on someone else and expect miracles from them. If there isn’t enough petrol one just needs to complain to the government. If the block of cheese you want isn’t there on the shelf just ask a store clerk.
Just remember: sometime this year more people will be living in the city than off the land for the first time in human history (if it hasn’t already happened). For whatever reason people are motivated to move into the city it means more of us will make invisible the logistics of sustainability.
Are We to Blame for Climate Change?
“The global scientific body on climate change is expected to report soon that emissions from humankind are the only explanation for major changes on Earth.”
Why is it that every time someone puts out one of these reports it falls on deaf ears? You really don’t have to be reading the newpaper to notice the changes in the climate. By the late 1990s the winters in the city of Sydney (where I used to live) seemed almost like the autumns of ten years earlier.
“It’s amazing how much we can learn from history – and how little we have.” anon.
Have we not learnt by now that our governments are not looking out for our interests? Have we not learnt that they are doing too little too late?
If we are shocked now by the changes occurring from thirty-percent greenhouse gas emission levels what will it be like with forty-percent? No. I am scared. I am scared that it is too late. I am scared that my child will instead of working in a normal job he will be a some kind of global warming refugee. I am scared that all life on this Earth will come to near mass extinction because of humankind’s way of living.
Right now, I can only think of humankind as a cancer to this planet, the very kind that we have tried fighting so hard but have lost to in so many battles for life. No, I don’t want to be cynical but it is turning that way.
But, you know, the Earth will recover. It will one day recover without “us” around. Because it seems this is the only way to stop global warming.
Environment and Sustainability Humour
Here is a list of ten of my favourite environment and sustainability jokes (not in any order). It is not so much that I find them funny but that because they have some truth in them. Enjoy.
- We need science to solve all the problems we wouldn’t have if there were no science.
- “If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy long ago.” Sir George Porter
- Gravity is a myth – the Earth sucks.
- Whenever he thought about the environment he felt absolutely terrible. So he came to a fateful decision. He decided not to think about it.
- The modern electric toothbrushes are having an effect on tooth care. In fact, my dentist was telling me that in Great Britain today, the major cause of tooth decay is weak batteries.
- Progress: the continuing effort to make things to be as good as they used to be.
- Have you ever noticed how modern developers operate? They bulldoze the trees and then name the streets after them!
- Most people in the city have come up from the country to make enough money to leave the city and live in the country.
- The government is finally doing something about energy conservation. They are asking motorists to remember to turn off their wind-screen wipers whenever they drive under a bridge.
- How wonderful it is to wake up in the middle of London every morning to the sounds of the birds coughing.
Know of any good sustainability humour? I would love to hear it.
See also Mara’s Dictionary
Three Kinds of Lies
Earlier I wrote about the Gross National Product – an indicator which measures the total amount of good and services produced at home and overseas in a given period by a nation. And the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) takes into account only what is happening at home regardless of who is producing the goods and services.
Governments and economists want the GDP to indicate growth, because it would mean the nation’s economy is healthy. But do the figures really mean just that?
This is what David Suzuki had to say about the GDP recently:
There is a good rationale for [growth], in that economic growth is tied to jobs and income, which are indeed to a certain extent tied to well-being. But the GDP also includes things like cleaning up oil spills, clearing car accidents and treating asthma attacks brought on by smog. And it includes things like strengthening process efficiencies to “improve the bottom line” – which actually means laying off workers so shareholders make more money. Is that really good for well being?
One of the only things that my psychology taught me that I still remember (and that is still useful) is that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. No more is this true than in the way governments use numbers.
Bottom Trawling in New Zealand
It was announced this week that New Zealand will ban bottom trawling in one-third of its off-shore waters.
While this might have seemed like good news environmental groups were less ready to rejoice. They said the deal which was struck with the fisheries happened all too suddenly and that it constituted to be nothing more than a PR exercise. They also said the areas which were being declare off-limits have either already been overtrawled or are too deep for bottom trawling.
Such deals are of course always being struck at conferences behind closed doors with environmental groups neither being present nor represented. And by the time we realize the duplicity the fisheries and politicians have already got what they want and the damage to the environment is already done. It is an all too familiar a scenario.
What we seem to have lost is our sense of respect. Where as once a upon a time we would nurture and care for the environment that provided for us, today we more like its masters. And that is not far off the mark. For it wasn’t long ago that slavery was openly and unashamedly practiced. While slavery is still practiced today it has “gone into hiding”.
If you think about it the mentality of fishing and slavery are very similar – they both treat the living like non-living commodity, to be brought and sold by its owner. Where as once we saw a fish as a beautiful and wonderous creation of nature we now see it as nothing more than a supermarket product. It is as David Suzuki said the most urgent problem that needs to be tackled is our attitude. We need to regain a sense of respect for all things including respect for ourselves.
The US and the Kyoto Protocol
In a recent review of the present state of the Kyoto Protocol US President George W Bush is quoted as saying he decided to pull out of the agreement (in 2001) because he believed implementing it would gravely damage the US economy.
And until we change the way politicians think we will continue to be told that figures like the GNP are actually meaningful.
A “Healthy” Economy?
Sometimes we can be using the wrong yardstick all along and not know it. Take this anecdote which was originally published in the Adbuster Magazine and requoted by David Suzuki in A David Suzuki Collection: A Lifetime of Ideas:
Joe and Mary own a small farm. They are self-reliant, growing as much of their food as possible, and providing for most of their own needs. Their two children chip in and the family has a rich home life. Their family contributes to the health of their community and the nation … but they are not good for the nation’s business because they consume so little.
Joe and Mary can’t make ends meet, so Joe finds a job in the city. He borrows $13,000 to buy a Toyota and drives 50 miles to work every day. The $13,000 and his yearly gas bill are added to the nation’s Gross National Product (GNP).
Then Mary divorces Joe because she can’t handle his bad city moods anymore. The $11,000 lawyer’s fee for dividing up the farm and assets is added to the nation’s GNP. The people who buy the farm develop it into townhouses at $200,000 a pop. This results in a spectacular jump in the GNP.
A year later Joe and Mary accidentally meet in a pub and decide to give it another go. They give up their city apartments, sell one of their cars and renovate a barn in the back of Mary’s father’s farm. They live frugally; watch their pennies and grow together as a family again. Guess what? The nation’s GNP registers a fall and the economists tell us we are worse off.
So what does a healthy and growing “economy” really mean? It means – I am told by the experts – that for the same food to get to my table the more people involved in the process the “healthier” the economy. How wrong can they get. So next time you see the GNP in the news don’t be fooled.
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