Plan B 2.0

I gave this talk, borrowing heavily from Lester Brown's Pan B 2.0 (2006) for a local television program called "Voice of the Voter." I went over my allotted time and didn't get through half of it (because my son was tugging on me and I missed the one minute warning). I highly recommend the book.


We are entering a new era. A few decades ago the drive to grow was prized as the great American way. Only recently have we begun to see the down side- that resources have limits, and that pollutants cannot be endlessly pumped into the environment where nature will render them harmless. We built an economy on fossil fuels although we knew supply was limited. Parents’ main concern has been protecting their kids from harm and ensuring their education. Now it must also include passing onto them an earth that is habitable.

With 5% of the world’s population, America uses 25% of the world’s resources. We are facing multiple major threats due to our misuse of resources. Global Warming will cause heat waves, rising seas, more powerful storms, droughts, advancing deserts, melting glaciers and fresh water shortages. Other problems include deforestation (or the destruction of the earth’s lungs), fisheries collapsing, disappearing species and peak oil. Peak oil refers to the point of maximum oil production. Many scientists are predicting that the peak will occur within the next 10 years. Beyond the peak comes an imbalance where supply cannot keep up with demand. This will not only mean higher and more volatile prices for gasoline, but also for all goods due to transport costs, and food because modern agricultural practices rely heavily on fossil fuels.

The amazing thing is that we can go a long way toward fixing all these problems by changing how money is collected from us and by spending it smarter. If we play our cards right, we will also build a new economy by investing in efficiency and renewable sources of energy.

One way is to shift the tax system to decrease income taxes, and increase levies on environmentally destructive activities. This is working in Germany and Sweden. Decreasing income taxes makes labor less costly which protects and grows jobs. Our modern economic prosperity has been achieved partly by running up ecological deficits- costs that do not show up on the books but costs that we all eventually pay. The economic term for this is “negative externality.” For example, when you fill up your tank, what are you NOT paying for? The costs of that gasoline that are not included in the retail price but that you pay with your tax and healthcare dollars amount to an additional $9 per gallon. These costs include oil industry tax breaks, oil supply protection costs, oil industry subsidies and health and environment costs.

The other way is to change these subsidies, which is a giveaway of our tax money, from fossil fuels to alternative energy. From 1992 to 2002, a total of $26 billion was given to oil and gas companies. But investing in renewable energy technology keeps dollars here instead of sending them overseas. Also, renewable energy creates more jobs per unit of energy produced and per dollar spent than fossil fuel technologies do. And the costs of renewable energy decrease over time because you don’t have to keep finding, mining and transporting fuel. Invest now, save later is considered a smart move.

The bottom line is, you can pay either directly at the pump, or out of your paycheck through taxes and for increasingly expensive healthcare plans. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have more control over how my money is spent. I’d rather have the option to drive less or get a more efficient car in order to reduce the amount of my money that goes to energy sources that degrade the environment and make us less safe.

One major way to better spend the money is on efficiency programs. The easiest, cheapest energy to make available is the energy you don’t use. It was government programs that brought about the major reductions in energy used by refrigerators. California’s demand reduction program has saved 5000 MW or the output of 10 power plants. We should focus on alternative, renewable sources of energy. Wind power can be combined with hydrogen fuel cell technology to maximize the efficiency. We could also expand recycling. Recycling one aluminum pop can saves enough energy to power a TV for an hour. We should decrease the amount of throwaway containers and packaging, because everything that gets thrown out means that energy was wasted in its production, transport to you then transport to the dump or recycling center. We should increase investment in mass transit and think about designing cities for people, not cars. Individuals should “vote with their wallets” and preferentially buy green power and products.

Stabilizing the world’s population through public health initiatives and ensuring they have adequate resources (such as food and water) will go a long way toward decreasing global instability.

Why should we care about inadequate resources in other countries? Because we are impacted by failed states- these governments and countries in trouble weaken the capacity of the international community to maintain stability in the monetary system, control the spread of infectious disease or deal with famine or local conflict. We can’t close our borders in this age of globalization and be unaffected by the world’s problems. We are mis-spending an enormous amount of money in the defense budget. The reality of international conflicts has dramatically changed. Historically the greatest threat America faced was aggressor nations that built up military might. But our heavy investment in military power and sophisticated weapons are of little use in dealing with terrorism, as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have shown. Today, the strife coming out of failed and failing states represents the greatest threat.

Lester Brown and the Earth Policy institute have figured out how to fix ALL these problems for 1/6 of the world’s military budget. That dollar amount, $161 billion, would provide universal education and healthcare, wipe out hunger, restore natural resources and stabilize the population.

America needs to lead. We do not have time to wait for the perfect international agreement. We have the know-how, the labor force and the infrastructure. All that’s lacking is leadership.

Why we're in this mess

How the system gets us

From "The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard"
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

The average US person consumes 2x as much as they did 50 years ago. Back in our grandparents' time, she says, stewardship. resourcefulness and thrift were valued. I noticed that myself when comparing the way my grandparents lived to the way we live today- canning and saving and using everything. Some of that frugality trickled down through my own parents, which probably allows me to see things this way. All this wastefulness was considered sinful just a couple generations ago.

For all the stuff we take home, 1 percent of the total materials that flow through the system (from extraction of raw materials to production to retail to home to landfill) is still in use 6 months later. There was a major shift after World War II because industry wanted to keep up the wartime boom. And retail analyst Victor Le Beau (sp?) summed it up thus:

"Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

And it was around this time that planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence became standard. Industrial design journals from the 1950s talk openly about how fast they can make products break and still retain consumer confidence.

Other statistics: National happiness peaked in the 1950s. We now work more and have less leisure time than any time since feudal society. The average home size has doubled since the 1970s. The average person produces 4.5 pounds of garbage a day, two times as much as 30 years ago. For every garbage can of waste we take out of our houses, the equivalent of 70 cans of waste were filled upstream in production of those goods.


And the system is self-sustaining

There's an interview with a former member of the British Parliament, Tony Benn that appears in the movie "Sicko" (2007) by Michael Moore.

Tony Benn: "What democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet to the ballot." And he states that the reason Britain adopted national health insurance after World War II was because they realized that "If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.... I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, far more revolutionary than socialist ideas.... Because if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.... And if you're shackled with debt you don't have a freedom to choose."

Michael Moore: "It benefits the system if the average working person is shackled with debt."

Tony Benn: "Because people in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don't vote.... If the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people who represented their interests it would be a democratic revolution. So they don't want it to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic.... See I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten people. And secondly, demoralize them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there's an element in the thinking of some people- we don't want people to be educated, healthy and confident because they would get out of control. The top 1 percent of the world's population owns 80 percent of the world's wealth. It's incredible that people put up with it but they're poor, they're demoralized, they're frightened and they think perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best."


So we're unhappy. We're scared. We recognize that the whole thing is a house of cards. Just one thing happens- an auto accident, an illness, a fire- and our whole illusion of happiness is gone. We can't make a living. We can't pay the bills. The house is gone, the cars, our friends... There is no safety net. We've watched enough others go through it and we are glad it was them and not us. But yet, we've been convinced it would be too expensive for us, too much out of our pocket to have a national safety net. Welfare mothers would take advantage of it and there wouldn't be enough of our hard-earned money left for us.

Better that we have as much spare change as possible to buy more stuff and keep the free market spinning 'round, because that's where our paychecks come from after all.

The Leftovers

I am going to give the most pointless explanation ever penned now because I have no readers, but just in case there is one soul out there wondering why I write nothing for ages then all of a sudden there’s a lot: I am always thinking and writing down thoughts in various places, but don’t always have the time or desire to “finish” them into something readable and postable, with all the necessary background. That’s also why they seem disjointed and fly from one theme to the next. If these thoughts occurred as temporally close as I’m going to record them here, rest assured I’d commit myself.

Also, I had promised a friend almost a year ago that I would organize my thoughts for his blog (and only the environmental ones), but never followed through so I guess the other reason for doing this is that I feel guilty for that. Finally, I also worry that it is both pointless and arrogant to broadcast something somebody else has already thought of and written down as your own original idea, so I hesitate to write anything until I’m somewhat sure it hasn’t already been done by someone else. But it would be impossible for me to verify because I’m not a speed reader (and not very well-read anyway), and not everyone is as lacking in a life and spends time publishing their thoughts as if it matters at all. Besides, I have concluded that there are no original thoughts. There is “nothing new under the sun.” So why worry about justifying to anyone that I never read Joe Schmoe’s treatment of the same subject, so am not plagiarizing him? Here is my official disclaimer: I’ve never read Joe Schmoe. All this is as original as is possible in an infinite universe.

Anyway, it has all caught up to me now and I’m in need of another exorcism. I tried to group things in ways that made sense, but had some leftovers. So here goes.

On “American pride”
People generally cringe at the phrase “white supremacist.” It has very bad connotations. Why are we pursuing a policy of “U.S. supremacy” then? The rules should be the same for everyone. No exceptions. No torture, no genocide, no nukes. We get ourselves into more conflicts because nations, rightfully so, reject the notion that this is how it has to be. We’ve proven recently that we can’t live by our own “values” that we project onto everyone else. We’re so afraid of these governments and regimes because of what they might do given enough power. What makes us so sure we can be trusted with the power? We do not uniformly apply our principles (Iraq vs. Darfur, Iran vs. North Korea); only when it suits us.

We should abandon this idea of U.S. supremacy because others will always be aiming their slingshots at us. We should ensure that the U.N. is a body with across-the-board rules that international community agrees to, and unite in condemning those who break them (including ourselves.) And there have to be substantive reasons for condemning a regime or government, such as human rights abuses. It can’t just be because of the style of government (dictatorship or communist).


Out of touch: Another observation that I have made is how sterilized we have made our lives. We allow all unpleasant things to be taken care of by strangers away from our pristine homes. In becoming a nurse, I was initially shocked, repulsed and literally blown away by illness, body fluids and death. I had no idea about the depths of suffering that people endure every day. Parts of life like dying, rather than being the most natural thing, have become unnatural and dreaded, despite being everyone’s ultimate destination. When my stepfather-in-law was dying in the hospital, my husband felt powerless to help him get more comfortable. Out of habit, I repositioned him so he could breathe easier. But my husband was terrified to touch him, feeling that offering this kind of comfort was better left to someone else.


Various cultural styles: We get so immersed in culture that it doesn’t seem like it can be any other way. In an affluent suburban neighborhood, they wouldn’t dream of protesting a war or having any kind of inflammatory lawn signs. It’s all about large families, keeping up with the Jonses. They are the epitome of success in our culture, so they don’t perceive any of it as harmful. How can you blame them when they’re only doing what is right and proper according to our norms? Yet at a graduation party, self-congratulatory proof of the success of their lifestyle, you can hear songs in the background from when the home-owners were younger:

“War! What is it good for?”
“Fish full of mercury…. What about this overcrowded land? How much more of this demand can she stand?”

These ideas are no longer revolutionary. They’re relegated to the background.

Then, go to an urban street and the lifestyle is so different. Most are childless, own dogs, live in smaller spaces, and use scooters or walk to get about.


Because it’s not for the earth- it’s for us.
I found this piece of glass at the lake. You had to look very closely at it to realize that it used to be part of a bottle. It had a bluish cast. Time and the elements had worn away all the sharp edges and it looked like something that belonged in nature. The earth will heal itself and reclaim for nature all that we had built. The things we placed here…
Someday, when the cockroaches evolve to sapience, they will dig up a landfill and think they’ve found a goldmine of Styrofoam and #2 plastic.

Definitions

When you pay at the gas pump or pay your energy bill, what are you NOT paying for?
Negative Externality: an effect or consequence not reflected in analysis or price. The cost is imposed on others. The economic, environmental, health and security costs are paid for by society at large, which is not reflected in market price.
Air pollution from power plants alone costs $160 billion a year in medical expenses. The World Health Organization estimates that climate change is already responsible for 150,000 deaths annually. Then there’s mountain top removal, mining injury and fatalities, war and other political problems…

Now I know what you’re thinking- I already pay too much for energy. Are you telling me I need to pay even more? I just want you to understand that the true costs are much greater than you may realize. And you are paying them, whether at the gas pump, in the rising cost of healthcare and insurance or through the taxes that come out of your paycheck.


Informed consent: we are not making truly informed decisions when we purchase things because the labels don’t tell us the impact that the products have on the environment. You energy bill does not mention pollution or global warming.

In some areas of daily life, we are now allowed to make good choices. At the doctor’s office in the past few years, you’ve probably noticed a new movement to protect your rights. One of these legally-recognized rights is informed consent. This is the idea that a person has the right to truly understand the consequences of what would happen to their body through some intervention. All positive and negative effects must be explained, or the person cannot make a free, informed choice about whether they will agree to the intervention. This right is protected by law and held up in the courts.

Why should the products and energy we use be any different? The true impact of what we use should be explained to us fully, without having to do a lot of digging and research. Your doctor doesn’t tell you to go home and Google the heart surgery he’s advising. He’s obligated to explain it to you fully.

The producers of goods and energy should be held to the same standards. California has enacted some labeling laws. So if you happen to pick up a bottle of a cleaning product that’s also sold in California, it may say “Warning, this substance is known to cause cancer in the state of California.” And I know what you’re thinking- thank goodness I don’t live in California!
Seriously, people are busy. They go to work, make dinner, put the kids to bed and try to relax for a few minutes. It should be general, common knowledge that the phosphorous in their dishwasher detergent is killing the oceans. That by burning coal for energy, mercury, arsenic, lead, sulfur, nitrogen oxides and other smog-forming compounds are released causing brain, lung and heart disease and death.

Companies don’t want labeling laws enacted because their sales would drop. If they were looking out for our best interests, they would be making the least harmful product already, and would be proud to label it as such. We have to start holding them accountable.


Quality: I’ve heard it said again and again when I ask mechanics and repairmen why something can’t be built differently in the first place. Because if the company has to pay $1.00 more per unit and they sell a million units, that’s a million dollars they’re losing. Why not pass on that cost? Consumers will not tolerate higher cost. We have an expectation that we can get things at artificially low prices because of manufacturing in countries where labor is cheap. So rather than make all cars conform to California emissions standards, auto makers sell 2 different emissions systems based on where the vehicle is sold. Air pollution standards are stricter in the summer so the power plant decreases pollution output just for the summer. Almost all recently built home central air conditioning units have to be retrofitted with a “hard start kit” which stores energy and gives an extra boost for starting up, but the company will not install them initially despite recommendations from repairmen and obvious benefits to the electricity grid.

Yes, it’s just too costly or impossible to change over an entire utility system. People will not pay a higher price for a utility service. Oh really? An entire utility infrastructure has been replaced by no fewer than 10 different companies- the cellular network. The amount of money people of all income levels throw at cell phones constantly amazes me. I think the newest models are over $1000. Yes it’s a little more convenient than waiting at home for a phone call but this is not how cell phones are used the majority of the time. People are disengaged from their surroundings, and they are too busy telling someone on the phone that they’re at the checkout line at the supermarket to say hi to the clerk. All plans cost upward of $50 a month, and the service is terribly unreliable compared to land lines- static, dropped calls, service blackout areas, whatever. Can you imagine telling someone, you’re now going to pay 3 times more for a service you already have and the quality is going to be much worse? There would be rioting in the streets. We would hear endlessly about how unfair this is to lower income people. The key is to convince someone it’s what they want, then money or poorer quality service are no problems.

Common Ground

If you ever think you know everything, sit down and talk with a guy from Liberia. You’ll realize that you know so little as to amount to practically nothing, and that the world is a whole lot bigger than your current perspective allows for. I learned this from my coworker about growing up in Liberia with a chimp for a pet. JJ the Chimp learned how to braid hair from watching his sisters. They only have 4 fingers, so you have to be careful when dealing with them to only show 4 fingers because it might upset them if they notice you have 5. They like to hang out on the weekends and watch movies with you. How can you, with your biases and formative experiences limited to (for example) a comparatively wealthy, white country make any sense of the actions, feelings or motivations of a guy from Liberia?

So I guess it boils down to 2 types of people: people who would say I can’t possibly take the tiny universe of my own experience, analyze your actions, guess at your motivation and pass judgment on you. Then there are people who would say well, it’s your fault that you’re not like me because you should be. I’m the best and my way is the only way. So either you become like me and do things my way, or I’m not going to like you, because I have judged that you’re bad or wrong.

What if everyone could get to know some completely different person? Like bi-partisan pen pals. Think about it. Right now both sides are heavily invested in keeping people in separate corners of the room. Because if they got a chance to talk, maybe they’d realize that they aren’t so different after all. I found myself in the position of trying to find common ground with a friend, because we had a misunderstanding. It seemed like an impossible gulf to find common ground. And he wasn’t the only bull-headed one. Any “liberal” friend that I told about my Republican, deer-head-on-the-wall, pickup-driving, NRA-member friend either rolled their eyes or felt sorry for me.

Partisanship has turned into a rift like black and white. Stick with us. We’re like you. We’re comfortable, known and we are morally and idealistically superior. Hate those people over there in the other corner of the room. And both sides are guilty of this. I can't even listen to most "progressive" radio hosts anymore because they do the same thing.

So here's what I wrote to this friend:

Is there hope? Only if everyone has open eyes and mind to see that the perceived “differences” are really quite the same. And, that insight would need to be applied to other circumstances later on. Take that lens you’re seeing out of and shift it a fraction of an inch. And block out for a moment the radio and TV voices telling you to look at this person this way. You see that the person next to you not as a tree hugging hippie freak but someone who does what they do to protect their kids just like you. Your lived experience included X, Y and Z which led you to conclude that the greatest threats to your kids were A, B and C. Her lived experience was pretty different and she regularly sees things happen that I don’t give a lot of thought to, don’t know about or whatever.

So we are exactly the same from a moral perspective- we do what we do out of the desire to protect our kids. And all this time, you thought we were polar opposites, completely on opposite ends of the political spectrum and were told by all the Republican voices to hate these freaks. Don’t let them get into power or by God they’ll drive the country to ruin.

I really really think that if you try hard enough, you can find common ground on pretty much any issue. The problem is that most politicians and pundits focus on the differences just to get elected or get better ratings. But that's not a very productive way to run a country.

I mean, you must have never imagined having anything in common with a tree-hugging, Prius-driving (you can fill in better terms here I'm sure). All friendly razzing aside, political generalizations have limited usefulness. I just think we have different assessments of what the problems are, and a different focus for our energies.

Anyway, I wonder if you know the story of why I got into this "treehugger" thing. (I'll give you a hint- it wasn't to save the spotted owls and bald eagles.) Over a year ago, I took care of a little girl who ended up dying of cancer at age 3. I did not know what to say to this mother who was living out my worst nightmare. The little girl reminded me so much of my son- she was a little peanut (although bald, yellow, and with an incredibly distended belly) and had a lot of the same mannerisms and phrases. The pictures of her from when she was healthy would break your heart- she was so beautiful. I had a very hard time when she died. I guess you try to find something that you can blame or change. So I thought about all those disclaimers on products that read, "May cause cancer." Shortly thereafter I became an activist. The first thing I did was testify at a hearing for the state to tighten its standards for cleaning up toxic waste sites, telling this little girl's story.

And you know what- it doesn't get easier. Because now I'm seeing kids through from diagnosis (when they still look like normal kids) through whichever way it's over for them- remission or otherwise. Right after we had about 4 passings last summer and fall, I overheard the oncologists talking about tumors they found in a newborn and a baby about a month old.

So, although I may let the kids stay up past 9, I put a lot of effort into making my home as non-toxic as possible (green cleaning products etc.) and I'm trying like hell to improve outside my house too. We all breathe, eat, and drink stuff that causes cancer because these substances are so saturated in the environment we can't avoid it. Mercury from our beloved power plant causes brain damage, and it pumps out lots of asthma-causing toxins. Kids that frequently play sports outside in polluted areas have worse lung function than couch potatoes. Tailpipe exhaust inhibits lung growth and contributes to heart disease.

What I'm trying to say is that I think our concern for our kids gets expressed in different ways. And one approach is most likely not better than another. Because the fact is, you could keep your kids in a bubble and something would still happen to them (they'd probably be psychologically scarred, for starters). There's so many different things that can go wrong there's no conceivable way to anticipate or prevent it all. This job has changed my perspective, because I had to find a way to deal with seeing this stuff happen to other peoples' children and wondering if that can or is happening to mine. The only thing I can really do is the best I can, but most important is to have fun with them, love them and enjoy them while I've got them. Someday, the ungrateful things are going to grow up and leave me anyway.

So see- a treehugger can have something in common with an NRA member- trying to do the best they can for their kids.

Miracles can happen!! Hey- this is huge. We should alert the media. Maybe somebody can get canonized.


It is important to resist the temptation to blame one political party or another, because greed has no bounds and power can corrupt anyone. Bush represents rock bottom for a lot of incorrect societal concepts- materialism and the accumulation of personal wealth at the expense of others, complacency and bad theology. I used to think that corporations and American Idol represented the root of all evil. But then Wal Mart went Green and American Idol raised $70 million for charity. They’re not inherently evil- they are just concentrations of wealth, power and influence. So are governments. Both can be directed for good or bad. Are we going to reject the positive gestures because they’re being done for the wrong reason? Wal Mart is green to improve its image and save money. Maybe they’re just finding it easier to follow the laws talked about by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael. So if that’s the way the system works, there’s nothing wrong with that. There are a lot of people who think governments and corporations should be done away with because they can’t be good. I disagree. They have to be regulated, and be held accountable.

Simplify

According to Bill McKibben, organizer of Step it Up in an article entitled “Global Warming Can’t Buy Happiness,” published in The Los Angeles Times Wed, 21 March 2007:

“For the last century, our society’s basic drive has been toward more- toward a bigger national economy, toward more stuff for each of us. And it’s worked. Our economy is enormous, our houses are enormous. We are (many of us quite literally) living large. All that more is created using cheap energy and hence built on carbon dioxide- which makes up 72% of all greenhouse gasses.

“…We made an assumption- as a society and as individuals- that more was better. It seemed a reasonable bet, and for a while it may have been true. But in recent years economists, sociologists and other researchers have begun to question that link. Indeed, they’re finding that at least since the 1950’s, more material prosperity has yielded little, if any, increase in humans’ satisfaction.

“In the 1990s, for instance, despite sterling economic growth, researches reported a steady rise in “negative life events.” In the words of one of the study’s authors, “The anticipation would have been that the problems would have been down.” But money, as a few wise people have pointed out over the years, doesn’t buy happiness. Meanwhile, growth during the decade increased carbon emissions by about 10%.

“Further, economists and sociologists suggest that our dissatisfaction is, in fact, linked to economic growth. What did we spend our new wealth on? Bigger houses, even farther out in the suburbs. And what was the result? We have far fewer friends nearby; we eat fewer meals with family, friends and neighbors. Our network of social connections has shrunk. Do the experiment yourself. Would you rather have a bigger television, or a new friend?”


And if you’re just spending time watching that television rather than being involved in community activities, you’re driven to want even more of the stuff you see on TV. I know a lot of people who love in these cul-de-sacs of new cookie-cutter houses, and it would seem like the achievement of a lifelong dream. But they all absolutely hate the people around them, thinking they’re pretentious assholes.




Excerpts from:
“Why Working Less is Better for the Globe,” Dara Colwell,
Alternet.org, Mon 21 May 2007

“’We now seem more determined than ever to work harder and produce more stuff, which creates a bizarre paradox: We are proudly breaking our backs to decrease the carrying capacity of the planet,’ says Conrad Schmidt, an internationally known social activist and founder of the Work Less Party, a Vancouver-based initiative aimed at moving to a 32-hour work week- a radical departure from the in early, out late cycle we’ve grown accustomed to. ‘Choosing to work less is the biggest environmental issue no one’s talking about…. As a society, we’re working exponentially hard to decrease sustainability and it’s making us miserable….’

“When people work long hours, they rely increasingly on convenience items such as fast food, disposable diapers or bottled water. Built-in obsolescence, has become standard business practice- just throw it away and make more- leaving mountainous landfills in its wake. ‘Earning more often means spending more money in ways that are environmentally detrimental. We’re finding that to compensate for lack of time, you actually need more money to work those extra hours,’ says Monique Tilford, acting executive director of the Centre for a New American Dream, a Maryland group promoting environmentally and socially responsible consumption. ‘When people are time-starved they don’t have enough time to be conscious consumers. The overarching theme of our organization is to remind Americans that every single dollar they spend has a carbon impact, to make the connection.’

“Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving technology equals ever-increasing productivity…. Maintaining growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.

“Unsurprisingly, the United States is the world’s largest polluter. Housing a mere 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for 22% of its fossil fuel consumption, 50% of its solid waste and, on average, each citizen consumes 53 times more goods than a person in China, according to the environmental nonprofit, Sierra Club.

“So what fuels this need to accumulate in the face of time depravation? Devoting his career to what drives materialism, Tim Kasser, associate professor of psychology at Knox College and author of ‘The High Price of Materialism,’ has sought scientific explanations, examining the relationship between materialism and psychological well-being.

“ ‘Materialism is driven by an underlying sense of insecurity,’ says Kasser, who conducted a study where subjects were randomly assigned writing about death or writing about listening to music. The former experience an increased desire for consumption and were ‘greedier,’ according to Kasser. ‘Death is the ultimate end of time; it’s interpreted as that feeling of not having enough time. In the last decade politicians have played off that insecurity. It keeps getting people elected, but it also drives us to think we need to work harder and harder,’ he says, noting the signs of insecurity around us are numerous: We don’t know our neighbors and suffer from high divorce rates; our social safety nets have been dismantled…. “All these work to create an underlying sense of insecurity, and we need to break out of that cycle,’ he says.
“Interestingly, Kasser conducted an empirical study comparing 200 adherents of Voluntary Simplicity to a control group of 200 mainstream Americans and found the Voluntary Simplicity group was ‘simultaneously happier while using fewer resources,’ and that their happiness was derived from ‘less materialistic, intrinsic goals, such as personal growth, family and community.’"


Daniel Quinn also proposes a shift from material rewards to higher ones- the exchange of human energy. In his description of a “tribal business,” what the participants gained was not so much financial security, but the security of knowing they’d all take care of each other. The idea of working and living for some other purpose than monetary reward- the feeling of closeness and belonging. And, if you’re doing something you love, your happiness can come from that instead of trying to make up for your unhappiness with monotonous and meaningless work on payday


So what is sustainability?

Resources are like your bank account-
*Renewable resources are like Income
*Non-renewable resources such as Fossil Fuels are like Savings

If you spend more than you earn, you can spend your savings for a little while but eventually you go broke

So what would you do?
1.) Spend less (efficiency, conservation)
2.) More Income (increase renewables

Some people wonder, “What about China and India? What will happen when all those people attain the American lifestyle like they want to?” This question should scare us. But not because they aren’t entitled to improve their situation. It should scare us because we are not setting the right example. It makes the need for America to move toward sustainability that much more pressing.

We have to move the big players- government, companies and people. We have what we have because one group makes stuff in a way that uses energy and other resources, the public buys stuff, and in the middle is government charged with regulating, but mostly adding to the problems. Some people have no resources to trade for any stuff, so they’re poor or they take by force.


Daniel Quinn in Ishmael points out the cultural myth that it's man's manifest destiny to improve the earth. There's nothing wrong with how it was- all we've done is screwed it up.

Screwing with our life support system

I don't want to be dismissed as a mooney-eyed naturalist; how can I convey this? Look at a rose- can we manufacture something better or even as good? How about plants and trees? They are more efficient, reliable, sustainable and self-propagating than any machine we could build. They don't need some fuel mined, refined and delivered to them. They get all they need and never move an inch, harvesting the sun's energy and storing it, so that other living things can use the chemical energy later on. They clean the atmosphere and are totally responsible for its breathability, and contribute to the nutrient content of the soil upon their death. They aren't just eye candy for treehuggers. They are absolutely essential for life on earth. We think we’re invincible and can engineer or build our way out of every problem. But even biospheres or any proposed extraterrestrial colonization scheme include plants and animals to provide us with food and a breathable atmosphere. Human life is totally dependent on the health of the ecosystem. We can't build something that does all that. Everything we build takes more than it gives back. So what are we going to do once the balance is thrown off and our life support dies off?

And despite our ability to make things to help us adapt, we’re so frail. Compared with any other living creature, we have a much narrower tolerance for temperature. We have few physical characteristics that help us survive and acquire food- speed, weapons. Is this why we do not feel at home in nature but view it as the enemy? Because we’re defenseless in a natural state?



Excerpts from: “By the End of the Century, Half of All Species Will be Gone. Who Will Survive?”
Julia Whitty, Mother Jones May/ June 2007

“Scientists recognize that species continually disappear at a background extinction rate estimated at about one species per million species per year, with new species replacing the lost in a sustainable fashion. Occasional mass extinctions convulse this orderly norm, followed by excruciatingly slow recoveries as new species emerge from the remaining gene pool until the world is once again repopulated by a different catalogue of flora and fauna. From what we understand so far, five great extinction events have reshaped Earth in cataclysmic ways in the past 439 million years, each one wiping out between 50 and 95 percent of the life of the day, including the dominant life forms (emphasis added), the most recent event killing off the non-avian dinosaurs. Speciations followed, but an analysis published in Nature showed that it takes 10 million years before biological diversity even begins to approach what existed before die-off.

“Today we’re living through the sixth great extinction, sometimes known as the Holocene extinction event…. Throughout the 20th century the causes of extinction- habitat degradation, overexploitation, agricultutal monocultures, human-borne invasive species, human-induced climate change- amplified exponentially, until now in the 21st century the rate is nothing short of explosive…. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have assessed, 1 in 4 mammals, 1 in 8 birds, 1 in 3 amphibians, 1 in 3 conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. The peril faced by other classes of organisms is less thoroughly analyzed, but fully 40 percent of the examined species of planet Earth are in danger, including up to 51 percent of reptiles, 52 percent of insects, and 73 percent of flowering plants.

“By the most conservative measure- based on the last century’s recorded extinctions- the current rate of extinction is 100 times the background rate. But eminent Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson and other scientists estimate that the true rate is more like 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate….

“We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been- and will never be- known to us….

“A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that 7 in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its contributor, global warming….

“All these disappearing species are part of a fragile membrane of organisms wrapped around the earth so thin, writes E. O. Wilson, that it ‘cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered.’ We owe everything to this membrane of life. Literally everything. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and services that can’t even imagine we’ll someday need will come from species we have yet to identify. The proverbial cure for cancer. The genetic fountain of youth. Immortality. Mortality.

“The living membrane we so recklessly destroy is existence itself.

“Biodiversity is defined as the sum of an area’s genes (the building blocks of inheritance), species (organisms that can interbreed), and ecosystems (amalgamations of species in their geological and chemical landscapes). The richer an area’s biodiversity, the tougher its immune system, since biodiversity includes not only the number of species but also the number of individuals within that species, and all the inherent genetic variation- life’s only army against the diseases of oblivion….

Various “life-forms and their life strategies compose what we might think of as [a] ‘body’…, with some species acting as the role of lungs and others the liver, the blood, the skin. The trend in scientific investigation in recent decades has been toward understanding the interconnectedness of the bodily components, i.e., the effect one species has on others. The loss of even one species irrevocably changes the [ecosystem]….

“Nowhere is this better proven than in a 12 year study conducted in the Chihuahuan Desert by James H. Brown and Edward Heske of the University of New Mexico. When a kangaroo rat guild composed of three closely related species was removed, shrublands quickly converted to grasslands, which supported fewer annual plants, which in turn supported fewer birds. Even humble players mediate stability. So when you and I hear of this year’s extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, and think, how sad, we’re not calculating the deepest cost: that extinctions lead to co-extinctions because most everything on earth supports a few symbionts and hitchhikers, while keystone species influence and support a myriad of plants and animals. Army ants, for example, are known to support 100 known species, from beetles to birds….

“In a 2004 analysis published in Science, author Lian Pin Koh and colleagues predict that an initially modest co-extinction rate will climb alarmingly as host extinctions rise in the near future. Graphed out, the forecast mirrors the rising curve of an infectious disease, with the human species acting all the parts: the pathogen, the vector, the Typhoid Mary who refuses culpability, and ultimately, one of up to 100 million victims….

“The truth is, wilderness is more dangerous to us caged than free- and has far more value to us wild than consumed. E. O. Wilson suggests that the time has come to rename the ‘environmentalist’ view the ‘real-world’ view, and to replace the gross national product with the more comprehensive genuine progress indicator, estimating the true environmental costs of farming, fishing, grazing, mining, smelting, driving, flying, building, paving, computing, medicating and so on. Until then, it’s like keeping a leger recording income but not expenses. Like us, Earth has a finite budget."

Perspective

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
“Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
“This planet has- or rather had- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
“And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should have ever left the oceans.”

“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than the dolphins because he had achieved so much- the wheel, New York, wars and so on- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man- for precisely the same reasons.”

-The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

You know how you look at a problem for hours or weeks or years and you can’t figure out what’s wrong? So you ask someone else who has never seen the thing before and they immediately say, “Well, there’s your problem right there,” and point out some simple mathematical error or flaw in your plan. That’s what Douglas Adams literally did, and Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) did through the eyes of a gorilla- look at our global situation from the perspective of an outsider.

So from within the culture, it's not readily apparent that so many problems stem from how far out of whack we are living from the way our bodies and the natural system were [designed /evolved] to be. Think about it. Why are we living in such advanced times, yet we're dying from so many diseases. Heart and vascular disease, diabetes, cancer... Biologically we are no different from animals. The difference is "all in our heads." Good and bad- from conscience and empathy to killing for sport. We are not exempt from the laws that govern nature. Our bodies are supposed to move regularly, not sit at a desk or on a couch all day. We are killing ourselves being over-nourished while others are dying from being undernourished.

The problems are so big that we may fail to see how they’re linked. GW, peak oil, pollution, extinction, hunger We look at each one individually and think, “Wow, that’s big. I could not possibly have any effect on this problem myself, much less other problems at the same time.” You despair and do nothing. Or you can think about what’s at the root of it and change that behavior. Picture this: you’re sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner with about 10 other people. Suddenly, the guy next to you grabs the bowl of mashed potatoes and takes half for himself. Taking more than your share hurts someone or something else, whether an American suburbanite or a big corporation. Endless consuming without appreciation of the consequences, exploitation without giving back. It all gets out of balance and we all pay in the end. The “American Dream” is the problem. The idea that we have some manifest destiny to take as much as we can for ourselves.

It's going to come around to bite us in the ass. And it's getting worse with each generation. The sense of entitlement evident in your average child or adolescent is inconceivable to me.

There is a shift in thinking that needs to occur. This happens naturally in smaller countries and societies where resources are not viewed as limitless. But here, people flip the switch and it’s like breathing the air. It’s just there. Little if any thought is given to how electricity is produced until someone wants to put a windmill in their backyard. I want to use electricity but not be affected by how it’s produced.

I had no idea that I wanted so much stuff until I went to Wal Mart. I walked in there, and suddenly felt the absolute need to have many things that I had no idea I needed moments before walking through the doot. It’s genius, really. You can be desperately poor but not feel that way- you can have lots of crap if you go to Wal Mart. You will still have faith in yourself as a consumer. And advertising tells us that our worth is defined by what we consume. It all seems so inexpensive, and not just harmless but wonderful and good to take home lots of stuff. It isn’t until you start realizing that each little harmless thing is the embodiment of vast wasting of energy and resources that you get it. That is the value of a changed mind. You can try to use financial incentives or disincentives, but we’re willing to make sacrifices, financial and otherwise, small and huge for the want of things.

We take it all for granted so we don’t get why the problem is so big. We are not involved in the process of making or obtaining things. All we do is go to the store, pay some money and it’s ours. We have machines that do an enormous amount of work for us, so we lose sight of just how much work it really is. I mean the physics definition of work. We have no concept of how much energy is required to travel from point A to point B, then bring stuff back from point B to point A. I walked a mile to the store then carried some groceries back. And I was amazed at how much energy I expended doing that.

We are insulated from how much all this is taking from a finite system, so we don’t really realize how much of a share we’re hogging. Air pollution is invisible and easier to ignore. It’s easier to blame fate for asthma and cancer than make the connection to something we could control- or make better by giving up something we don’t want to. We’d rather not think about it. Don’t want a windmill in your backyard? How about spent uranium rods buried there instead? But so many fewer people would have to make the choice to accept the nuclear waste than the windmills, so the perception is different.

If we lived in sync with the way we were meant to be, we wouldn't be so sick. Our world wouldn't be so sick. We wouldn't create substances unknown on this earth that react poorly with our bodies and cause cancer or birth defects. We wouldn't suffer from the physiological impacts of being in a constant state of stress, or have all the orthopedic problems from being overweight and sedentary.

There has been a push recently to return to "natural" ways from yoga lifestyles to parents' magazines. Everybody wants what's "natural." Be careful now, because sometimes this is just another marketing ploy. What if this went beyond what we buy to how we live? My husband was laid off in the spring and I have had the best summer- outside almost every day all day, growing food and hanging laundry. The cars sat in the driveway and we rode bikes. I stopped giving to my usual charities because we were broke. But then I got a mailing with a picture of a malnourished 3 year old and I realized that I do still have room to reduce my consumption. I could stop paying to drink chemicals (soft drinks etc.), drink tap water for free and use the savings to share with her. Great concept. Have I stuck with it? What do you think?