Category: sustainability

A problem faces President-elect Obama. He knows he has to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but how does he do it without hurting the economy. This is not a new problem, of course. And the rhetoric from the energy camp is like a broken record:

For the mining companies these are potentially unsettling times – billboards along the highway carry the assertive message, “Yes, Coal”. But in reality they’re quietly confident that the new administration will come to see the essential role of coal.

How silly it is to protect a job as though man is inflexible.

Isn’t it obvious that the solution is to get them to change jobs, to convert their energy production means into those which are clean(er).

And why not just educate the public to use less? Reduce is the simplest of mantras and one that is the most important of the three ‘R’s.

And if they are looking for something that takes away the greenhouse gases efficiently why not stay with the good ol’ tree and rainforest? Best technology around, they say.

OK. So I am overstating the solution. There is the size of the population to think about. But there are plenty of countries out there with sizeable populations who live within their means. It is possible to live relatively comfortably and still be under the ecological footprint. Isn’t it about how you define quality of life, or wealth?

The choice to give up should be easy. But to those who are spoilt this may be difficult. Americans may have taken steps to change but how willing will they be. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one generation or even in one lifetime. But I am hopeful that we will get there someday. For, as a long-term optimist, that is the all I can hope for – that the this animal (for that is what we are) will learn and change to become more benevolent.

There are tell-tale signs of an economic slowdown in Australia.

Here, too, in Japan are similar signs. There were ads on television about how advertising is good for you, that we need advertising. While I see the value of ads as a way to tell us about the availability of a product, it is when ads become a persuasion tool for our need for something not needed that it starts to tick me off.

Most of the products advertised on TV I really don’t need. They do not cover the basics for our survival. We don’t need an ipod to be happy. To come to think of it, if it were necessary for our survival we needn’t advertise about it in the first place. We’d all know what it is.

This is about the difference between needs and wants. But they are often very difficult to tell apart. Skim through this post and you will notice how difficult it is to use the word “want” instead of “need”. At times they can be used interchangeably. At other times they cannot.

So there must be something fundamentally very wrong with our society and our way of life when there is a need(?) to advertise for ads.

While I am retiring the Ingrid Betancourt link on my blog it does not mean we should forget the other people who are still prisoners of FARC or killed in the name of “freedom” in Colombia. There is no excuse for violence, detainment or suppression of any form by anyone or any organization.

We need to continue to remind ourselves that injustice done upon us is not reason to do it to others.

I was lucky enough to catch the rerun of the BBC program The Dodo’s Guide to Avoiding Extinction. Told from the point of view of the extinct dodo this documentary gave ten pieces of advice on, as you might have guessed, how to avoid extinction. I think the points are worth listing, so here they are, along with my paraphrase and summaries. I watched it in Japanese so that my three-year-old can follow it. Surprisingly, he thought it was interesting. He is going to be an environmentalist when he grows up … I hope.

The points are my translations from the English to the Japanese dub and back into my English paraphrase.

1. steer clear of human beings
Animals (as if we are not animals) should avoid coming into contact with human beings at all cost. Coming into contact with them is risking extinction.

2. adapt
Adaptation is an important ability needed if a species is to keep up with human beings.

3. don’t live on an island
This is an extension of No.2. By living on an island a species evolves without change which, in itself, is a death sentence since non-native predators, once entered into the environment, will wipe the docile species out without much resistance.

4. don’t be a sitting duck
The example they gave is a North American bird species which was so passive that by scaring, pointing and shooting indiscriminately into the sky with a rifle, hunters (no matter how bad marksmen they were) were able to kill off the entire species in perhaps half a century. Estimates are that without trying they had killed on average 250,000 birds per day.

5. breed like rabbits
Australia was the example. In the early twentieth-century twelve pairs of rabbits were were brought to the planet’s largest island (or smallest continent) for research. They escaped and bred … as rabbits do. Ten years on, the population in the wild was four million from just twenty-four cuddly bunnies. That is the definition of success.

6. Get some help
Sometimes humans can “do” good. Cloning was the example given. Some species have survived because we keep them alive through genetic science. But we really should think about the reasons why we are doing it, because I don’t think it’s because we are altruistic in nature.

7. don’t be attractive to human beings
Tigers are simply so cute and loved by human beings that there is a market for their body parts. Whether it is for their fur or organs for Chinese “medicine” their population have suffered for it. Moral of the story: just don’t be liked by humans.

8. be very lucky
This isn’t the first mass extinction on the planet. It’s the sixth apparently. Everything from asteroid strikes to world devastating volcanic eruptions have wreaked havoc on Earth. Just think dinosaurs. While the first five were naturally caused extinctions, the sixth is more than likely to be (mostly) man-made.

9. don’t be too smart
Human beings’ ability to control and manipulate everything is uncanny. The way I see it is that we are the cancer of the planet and it perhaps would be a better place without us.

10. don’t worry, life will continue
The fact that the planet has had the power to rejuvenate itself time and time again is a reason we shouldn’t worry. It may take some beating but it always comes back with a vengeance. The planet is more resilient than we think. But don’t let this be a licence to do as we please. Hopefully we can prove to be smarter and wiser than that.

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If you get a chance I do recommend that you watch this underrated program.

“Charity begins at home,”

… as the saying goes. And in our post Bail-out world it literally does mean this.

This years topic for Blog Action Day is poverty.

Join other bloggers to highlight this problem, to talk about it in a renewed fashion. It is an important issue that every person who can afford to give a little should give a little time to (as well as some money).