A Lifeboat Called Utopia

A Natural Predicament

2009-04-02T07:03:00.004-05:00

Two of the most prominent aspects of human nature are the survival instinct and the impulse to improve one's life by making certain tasks easier (i.e. less labor intensive, less time consuming, or more efficient). Tracking the great arc of human history, it is evident that these two impulses have been constantly at work in our lives, driving us to eke out a living against all odds in lean times, and precipitating great leaps in the development of technology and social organization when conditions are favorable. There are also times when our ambition to improve our livelihood in the short term undermines our ability to survive in the long term (e.g. every collapsed society in history -- the Maya, Greenland Norse, Easter Islanders, Romans, etc.). Basically, these societies bit off more than they could chew -- they extracted too much from their environment too fast, and they were left with too many hungry mouths to feed when mother nature had nothing left to give. (Incidentally, a similar and related cause of societal collapse occurs when humans are exploited beyond their breaking point, which often leads to popular revolt in order to dismantle an oppressive system of centralized power).

But whether it be the hyper-exploitation of natural resources or the subjugation of other humans, both undermine long term survivability and both stem directly from our innate desire to live lives of luxury and comfort. So I think this is our natural predicament as humans: in tough times we start out by surviving anyway we can, and then, as some semblance of stability is achieved, we reach out for more in an attempt to become more comfortable. This pursuit eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns, usually rather quickly, and mother nature (or hoards of hungry peasants) slap us down to repeat the cycle. And it's pretty clear where we are in the cycle now -- can the class spell O-V-E-R-S-H-O-O-T ?!? yep, time to brace ourselves for an epic smack down.

But there's no need to panic, we can take comfort in knowing that there is plenty of precedent in the story of life on the planet. Ours is a most natural predicament. Indeed, it connects us with every other species on the planet, which thrive and proliferate when their habitats are conducive, and then starve and die off when ecological overshoot is reached, thus maintaining the balance and health of the ecosystem. When considered within this larger context, our so-called 'environmental problems' do not represent a sustainability crisis at all -- life on earth will continue to thrive and evolve, with or without us. All we are left with is one, rather weighty choice: Do we hang on to our precious 'lifestyles' until the bitter end, passing the buck to future generations and multiplying their misery in the process, or to we get a FUCKING grip and take responsibility for the problems staring us all in the face.

Oh yeah, and one other thing I'd like to say: a big FUCK U to our celebrated global political leadership (represented by the UN, IMF, World Bank, G-6, G-8, G-could ya shampoo me crotch!) What leadership? Where was it in Kyoto? Where was it during Greenspan's slick tenure at the Fed? where has it been for the past 60 years, since WWII? Short answer -- in the pocket of Corporate America. The sooner we face the fact that we live in an era of unimaginable corporate greed and govt. corruption, the sooner we can pursue an empowered response. So forget the G-20, it's just a big P.R. opportunity for the leaders of the richest countries in the world. And forget Obama's current agenda (he's a great man, and he's a poignant symbol, but our system is rotten to the core, and you can't slap a band aid on a melanoma and call it all better.) Unfortunately, Mr. O alone can't save us. We are the ones we've been waiting for! We need to boycott the big and the transnational, and support the small and the local whenever and wherever possible. And we need to hold each other accountable. We need to understand the poisons we are ingesting in our conventional food supply, and we need to make some noise about it! Only then will we give Obama the opportunity to respond intelligently to the will of the inspired masses who elected him.

350

2009-03-11T12:19:00.003-05:00

On October 24th of this year citizens of the world have an unprecedented opportunity for activism. Climate scientists agree that unless we can reverse the trend of growing carbon emissions and stabilize CO2 concentrations at or below 350 parts per million, we face catastrophic consequences in our lifetime. This number, 350 has become the rallying cry for a truly global movement of concerned citizens. 350 needs no translation, it is a universal target for all of humanity, and on the 24th of October the world will voice its concern in unison. We will demand better from their leaders. We will demand a future. Forget economic growth, we need a future!! On the road to a brighter future, humanity will inevitably pass an important signpost marked 350! We will pass it together with solidarity and triumph in our hearts. And maybe then our grandchildren can enjoy the long march down, down, down from this peak of population and consumption with gratitude in their hearts. I prefer not to focus on the alternative.

Here is an inteview with Bill McKibben, who has been instrumental in organizing the upcoming events in October. http://globalpublicmedia.com/reality_report_bill_mckibben

Some background about the interview:

The Reality Report talks to Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: TheWealth of Communities and the Durable Future and co-founder of the climate change group 350.org.
Over the past year or so, much of the thinking about the severity and timeline of climate change has undergone a major shift. In the fall of 2007, a report titled The Big Melt came out that reviewed the rapid loss of polar ice and its likely implications. In December 2007 James Hansen presented a paper at the American Geophysical Union in which it was argued that safe levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide were at least below 350 parts per million, and in fact may be less than 300 ppm. For anyone familiar with climate science and policy this was a stunning conclusion because current levels of CO2 are over 385 ppm. During the winter of 2008 a new report titled Climate Code Red was released that greatly expanded upon The Big Melt and delved into the socio-political implications of the new scientific information, essentially framing the issue in terms of survival requirements on a damaged spaceship Earth. Soon afterwards, a climate activist group called 350.org was formed by Bill McKibben and friends to spread the message that policy targets need to reflect the scientific imperative.
Previous shows of the Reality Report interviewed Jamie Henn, a cofounder of 350.org, and Philip Sutton, a co-author of Climate Code Red.
This show brings us up to date since those developments--and a lot has occurred, including international climate change policy meetings in Poland, more information from scientists, a new U.S. president, and major disruptions to the global economy.
I am very pleased to have Bill McKibben on the program. Bill has been along-time champion of ecologically grounded economies, a safe climate campaigner, a popular writer, and teacher to many.
For more information, here are two sites dealing with policies and mechanisms on carbon emissions: http://www.capanddividend.org/http://www.carbontax.org/

The One Straw Revolution

2009-03-02T16:05:00.000-06:00

"The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems
arise. The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources,
the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been
brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something. Originally
there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We
have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a
'movement' not to bring anything about." --excerpt from The One Straw
Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

2009-02-26T13:34:00.003-06:00

Is it just an idea?, or can we find models of agriculture that already exist that are sustainable? How do we feed Las Vegas in an energy scarce future? Short answer is we probably won't. The Sun Belt boomtowns will turn to ghost towns as a mass exodus from desert climes to greener pastures grips our nation and our world.

In places with an ideal climate and ecology for agriculture (like central and western Europe) maybe a sustainable system of food production could feed the locals, but it would still be tough because of population density in those places. The obvious pattern of history is that all the nice places with fertile soil and ample rainfall get settled and civilized first, which means that they now have big populations to support.

Then there is the relatively recent phenomenon of desert boomtowns -- which is literally unprecedented in history; Vegas, Phoenix, Dubai, the entire country of Saudi Arabia. These places were very poor until very recently, and they will likely be poor again. Who knows how bad it will get. Anyway, I've stayed true to form and gone off on a tangent without answering my own question. That's because I found a website that answers it better than I could. This is from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/sustagintro.html

Sustainable agriculture is one that produces abundant food without depleting the earth’s resources or polluting its environment. It is agriculture that follows the principles of nature to develop systems for raising crops and livestock that are, like nature, self-sustaining. Sustainable agriculture is also the agriculture of social values, one whose success is indistinguishable from vibrant rural communities, rich lives for families on the farms, and wholesome food for everyone. But in the ﬁrst decade of the 21st Century, sustainable agriculture, as a set of commonly accepted practices or a model farm economy, is still in its infancy—more than an idea, but only just.

Although sustainability in agriculture is tied to broader issues of the global economy, declining petroleum reserves, and domestic food security, its midwives were not government policy makers but small farmers, environmentalists, and a persistent cadre of agricultural scientists. These people saw the devastation that late 20th-Century farming was causing to the very means of agricultural production—the water and soil—and so began a search for better ways to farm, an exploration that continues to this day.

Conventional 20th-Century agriculture took industrial production as its model, and vertically-integrated agri-business was the result. The industrial approach, coupled with substantial government subsidies, made food abundant and cheap in the United States. But farms are biological systems, not mechanical ones, and they exist in a social context in ways that manufacturing plants do not. Through its emphasis on high production, the industrial model has degraded soil and water, reduced the biodiversity that is a key element to food security, increased our dependence on imported oil, and driven more and more acres into the hands of fewer and fewer "farmers," crippling rural communities.

In recent decades, sustainable farmers and researchers around the world have responded to the extractive industrial model with ecology-based approaches, variously called natural, organic, low-input, alternative, regenerative, holistic, Biodynamic, biointensive, and biological farming systems. All of them, representing thousands of farms, have contributed to our understanding of what sustainable systems are, and each of them shares a vision of "farming with nature," an agro-ecology that promotes biodiversity, recycles plant nutrients, protects soil from erosion, conserves and protects water, uses minimum tillage, and integrates crop and livestock enterprises on the farm.

But no matter how elegant the system or how accomplished the farmer, no agriculture is sustainable if it’s not also proﬁtable, able to provide a healthy family income and a good quality of life. Sustainable practices lend themselves to smaller, family-scale farms. These farms, in turn, tend to ﬁnd their best niches in local markets, within local food systems, often selling directly to consumers. As alternatives to industrial agriculture evolve, so must their markets and the farmers who serve them. Creating and serving new markets remains one of the key challenges for sustainable agriculture.

Organic Farming: Can It Feed Us?

2009-02-07T18:25:00.002-06:00

Yes it can!!

Part 1

Part 2

Agroecology: Finding the Elusive Middle Path

2009-02-05T05:44:00.003-06:00

The following is an interview that was published in Talking Leaves Journal, an Oregon based magazine focusing on deep ecology and environmental issues. It is a good introduction to traditional, indigenous methods of sustainable agriculture, and how we can learn from past civilizations. Cultivating the land in accordance with ecological design principles is referred to throughout the interview as agroecology. Here's the link to the Talking Leaves website:

http://www.talkingleaves.org/node/164

Homeward Bound: Agroecological Civilization and the Quest for a Sustainable Society A Conversation with Pramod Parajuli

"To restore any place, we must also begin to re-story it; the stories will outlast us."-Gary Paul Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat

Dr. Pramod Parajuli is an internationally renowned interdisciplinary scholar, sustainability educator, and anthropologist. A native of Nepal, he has traveled widely and done research and published prolifically on the topics of sustainability education, bio-cultural diversities, knowledge systems and environmentalism of the global South. With a research grant from the McArthur Foundation, he has established a multipurpose family farm in Chitwan, Nepal, which educates people on the possibility of peasant livelihoods.

Dr. Parajuli is part of the faculty at Portland State University (PSU), where he co-founded and also serves as the executive director of the Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning (PIIECL). He serves on the boards of a PSU student-run Food for Thought Café and Oregon Tilth. Currently, he is working on a manuscript entitled Learning Sustainability: Ecological and Cultural Foundations. A sample of his writings is available at the research and publications section of PIIECL website: www.piiecl.pdx.edu.

This interview is part of a longer conversation with June Rzendzian, who is pursuing a masters' degree in "Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning" within PIIECL. June is involved in the Portland-area Slow Food movement and interested in sustainable agricultural issues.

JR: Where does agroecology fit in the larger context of ecological and sustainability debates?

PP: Agroecology represents one major branch within a broad movement. In a way, as we know it, environmentalism in North America has come of age. Even if we count from 1970, it is about 33 years old. The time is ripe to critically look at what has been said and done in the name of environmentalism. I identify three distinct schools of thoughts, plans of actions, and choices.

The first and perhaps the most common-sense view is that the Earth is wild and sacred so we as humans should protect it and revere it. Humans should not be around her except for times of meditation, nature walks, hiking, and contemplation. Among others, people like Henry Thoreau, John Muir, and Leo Tolstoy could be considered the "bachelors" of nature. A modern manifestation is the fascination with the idea of wilderness, parks, and sanctuaries as a form of saving and protecting nature. This has grown to be a big industry in itself. Its credo is: Nature is more pure if it is untouched by humans. So, as the logic goes, we should have fewer people and more nature. In an extremist version, this might justify killing, eliminating, and displacing people in order to save nature. There is a reason why this thinking has a strong hold. When you don't like this techno-industrial life, a natural response is that you want to run away from it and get wild.

The second view is the extreme antithesis of the first, and it could be characterized as nature as a factory: tame, subdue, and extract from nature. We have seen enough of the "hit and run" model of clear-cutting and monoculture in agriculture and forestry. This is the story of the all-too-familiar mainstream techno-industrial worldview that sees nature as an obstacle to progress and the expansion of the frontier. Ideally, in this view, nature would operate in the model of a machine--measurable, quantifiable, predictable, and thus controllable.

The Earth as a household, or an agroecological worldview, is the third way of thinking. It is most often misunderstood, and less talked about. Poet Gary Snyder eloquently represents this view when he suggests: find a place, dig in, and stay put. This view carves the middle path between the other two views by overcoming the projection of culture and nature as binary opposites in the techno-industrial mindset. In this third school of thought, the agroecological householder can be considered as a housewife or a husband of land and nature.

The idea of husbandry or housewifery is a mode of using and being in nature that I call the "moral ecology of using nature." In this mode there is a possibility of overusing, abusing, and also appropriately using nature by humans. A majority of peasant and indigenous cultures and ecological thinkers/activists such as Vandana Shiva, Mahatma Gandhi in South Asia, Wendell Berry, Gary Nabhan, and Gary Snyder in North America share such views. In some ways, Emiliano Zapata's "land and liberty," Sandino's struggle for land in Nicaragua, and other "land to the tiller" movements can be recognized in this framework. During my visits in Mexico in 2001, I found a form of "Zapatista ecologism" alive and well.

Agroecological communities are coming into focus today because of the biocultural diversities they nurture. Tobias Policha's travelogue "Mexican Plants, Places and People" (In Good Tilth, December 15, 2003; see contact info. at end of article) amply demonstrates the rich biocultural diversity nurtured by an agroecological civilization. Occupying merely 1.4 percent of the global landmass, how is it that Mexico hosts 10 percent of the global flora (26,000 plant species)? Furthermore, of the nine countries in which 60 percent of the world's remaining 6,500 languages are spoken, six of them are also the centers of megadiversity. Those six countries are Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Zaire, and Australia. In Mexico, those languages and biodiversities are nurtured by 54 main indigenous groups who speak 240 languages and dialects. In geographer David Harmon's overlapping of the top 25 countries with the highest number of endemic languages, 16 also had the highest number of endemic wildlife species.

In 1996, I also found another prophetic example among the peasants in the Peruvian Andes, where a host of grassroots peasant organizations inspired by Proyecto Andino Tecnologias Campesinas (PRATEC) are revitalizing the age-old practice of exchanging seeds and cultivating biodiversity in the chakras (farm fields). They call themselves an agri-centric civilization that depends on nurturing nature and being nurtured by nature. Although I am from the Himalayas, I was astounded to find that the Andean peasants were farming at 14,000 feet. I wondered and asked, "Isn't it too much that you are farming on the top of the mountain?" They said, "No, we are farming in a different way. This farming is for the gods because gods see the top of the mountain. We are farming for them and then by farming at the top of the mountain you get a different kind of potato that is not possible in the lower elevations." By respecting the ecological niche of the top of the mountain, they are strengthening biodiversity.

Perhaps agroecology is the mean between these two extreme worldviews: earth as untouchably sacred and separate from us, and earth as a factory to be managed and exploited. This middle path is our quest for a sustainable future.

JR: It seems like you are not merely talking about agriculture as we know it. By adding the flavor of ecology, agroecology offers something more.

PP: Yes, the issue is not merely whether agroecology is a better economic system. I am engaged in a deeper unearthing about the very possibility of human life and that of other species. I am looking at whether humans have been a co-evolutionary animal in the rise and decline of biodiversity. Is biodiversity merely a function of nature or have humans played a role in it? In what ways could linguistic and cultural diversities contribute to biological diversities?

In agroecological thinking, the issue of body, health, food, and eating is central. By eating, all of us participate in interspecies communion--agricultural cycles and cycles of the wild. Among others, I encourage people to read Gary Paul Nabhan's two books, Coming Home to Eat and Cultures of Habitat. As an alternative to the famous Cartesian dictum, "I think, therefore I am," one might say, "I eat, therefore I am."

It is worth doing a bit of historical stretching. Human culture has 40,000 years of vertical axis and horizontal spread of about 6,500 different languages, about 2,000 different cultures and ecological variations in plants and animals. Each culture is a result of cross-fertilization between cultures as they interface through migrations and adaptation and conflicts. Solomon Katz of the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated that people's genetic makeup has evolved in synchrony with their food collecting and processing practices. After tens of thousands of years with one set of foods processed in a certain way dominating their diets, people physiologically adapt to the digestibility and nutrient levels of those particular foods. Maladaptations can result in cases such as the diabetes among Native Americans or obesity among North American children.

JR: What are the sources of your ideas? Will you describe the community and setting where you were raised?

PP: It has a lot to do with where I was born and how I was raised. I was born and raised in a mountain village in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. It seems as if, although I left Nepal for graduate studies in the United States, Nepal did not leave me. The agroecological Nepali culture is growing within me even deeper. My village was considered to be very remote, even by Nepali standards. The first time I had to go to Kathmandu (the capital city), I had to travel three days to reach the nearest bus stop. To reach there, we'd walk on foot through forests, going uphill and downhill and crossing rivers. So we were considered to be kind of a hinterland, like you might say the Appalachian range in the American sense, or Chiapas in the Mexican sense.

JR: What form of agroecology did you practice in that village?

PP: In that village in the Himalayan foothills, we had figured out almost all aspects of sustainability and agroecology. It was what I would now call a kind of agroecological civilization. Except for salt and kerosene oil, the village produced almost everything. People did most of their labor, without buying and selling labor, through what was known as parma, a form of labor-sharing with your neighbors. Through parma, houses, fences, farm terraces, and walls were built and repaired, crops were planted, weeded, and harvested. Life journeys such as birth, coming of age, and death were celebrated without much cash exchange. However, a set of forces unleashed in the early '60s unsettled our village economy and culture--one of those being my own departure for Kathmandu and eventually to the United States. While merchant capitalism, trade, marketing of goods, wage labor, and English-speaking schools gradually moved in, we saw the accelerated erosion of the agroecological base and the customary laws that governed it.

JR: Was there a systematic knowledge system embedded in these traditional ways?

PP: There was an implicit science in a very so-called unscientific world out there. For example, when I began to develop a multipurpose educational farm in my own land in Chitwan (located south of the mountain village in the plains of Nepal) in 1993-94, I began a systematic study of these plants in the traditional agricultural and medicinal texts and found that there were books and chapters written on the quality of those plants. Some of them are used for manuring and fermenting seedlings. They can cure you when you are sick, and you can brush your teeth with the twigs of at least five plants. Perhaps the people didn't know the term "nitrogen fixing," but they knew which tree was beneficial for the soil and which was not, which one needed to be kept near the garden, which one by the end of the field as a windbreak, which trees worked together and which did not. The more I recognize how holistic and integrated that system was, the more it puzzles me.

It's puzzling in the sense that the system functioned as if without claiming anything, without telling other people, giving lectures, or putting up a "no trespassing" sign--as if all was embedded in the daily rhythms of life, as if knowledge was not separate from life.

I will give you an example. There was an implicit understanding that you not cut trees around water sources. I distinctly remember within a mile of my own house, there were about six or seven water places--springs sprouting directly from the earth. They were basically carved-out small places where the spring was just bubbling up. These water sources were either within larger public forests or where there was a thick forest cover around the water sources. Nobody could even think about cutting that forest. That is what we call the sacred. Interestingly, lots of deities were placed at the bottom of those trees just so that people would also say that this was not only a watering place but also a place of the Nagas (the serpent snakes) who were supposed to be the givers and regulators of water. In each and every source of water, the idea was that there was a certain kind of god or certain kind of goddess living there.

JR: The water sources are connected to the sacred grove and then the groves to the Nagas, serpent snakes? You are talking about not one actor in nature but many. Do humans and their cultures have a role?

PP: The work on nature is not possible by one but always requires many co-operating hands, including humans. All are bound by a need to protect a place, bring fertility to the soil, or continually maintain a water source. I found similar examples in the tribal communities of India and many other indigenous peasant cultures in the Cornwall region in England, peasant communities in Peru and Mexico, and Maori communities in New Zealand.

Let me illustrate this with another example from my own mountain village. Human rituals recognized the role of more-than-human communities in making this agroecological life fecund and possible. For example, in the month of July, there was a particular day for snakes or serpents, including the Nagas. This has to be the fifth day after the full moon, called Nagapanchami, literally the fifth day of (and for) the Nagas.

We believe that the Nagas are the regulators of the underworld, and they connect different water levels and let water springs come out. My given name according to the ritual calendar is after one of those serpents--Padma Naga. By looking into my nature and the day and time of birth in the month of July, my father (who was also an astrologer) gave me this name.

On the day of Nagapanchami, we as a priestly family--my father was the priest of the whole area--our job was to draw pictures of all these serpents. And there is a particular drawing design about how you could untangle all these varieties of 36 different kinds of serpents. We also had to acknowledge the spider, the scorpion, the snakes, and the earthworms--all the things that were in the soil. In today's language you could call them the ingredients of the soil food web. Our job was to put these hand-written posters on top of everybody's front door. Then we performed pooja (worshipping) and said, "Let this house and family be safe. Let this house be fertile. We are aware that you are around (all these serpents and these beings, the crawlers and critters of the world). We are respectful of you. Don't frighten us and don't harm us. Help us because without you our culture isn't possible."

What we were trying to do during Nagapanchami was to purify water, to make it healthy through the protection of the forest around the water because water is basically a product of trees. As scientists have now recognized, a full-grown tree can transpire 2,000 gallons of water on a hot, dry day.

JR: Are these actions deliberate in recognition and respect for other than human beings?

PP: Let me share with you another ritual from South India. In South India women of the household draw different designs in front of doors and in the yards with powdered rice flour. These patterns are known as Kalam. The patterns vary because they express the women's dreams, their anxieties, current events, etc. A cultural anthropologist might say this is the human invention of art, but here we see clearly that it is also an ecological act. It has the creative idea about designing the pattern the way you like it, but then it is basically about offering the product of the earth to other species such as ants. You are offering rice, which is the product of the soil, to the ants as well as other things that come and eat. That means you are in partnership with the ants and other critters that need that food and acknowledge that they have a role in your harvest. That is the sustainability of spirit.

Now, you might say, you are hungry but you are feeding these ants! From an economic perspective it might be a stupid thing to do. But what they are doing is nurturing nature's economy, sharing the bounty of nature with more than humans.

JR: Let's talk more about agroecology in the general sense. How exactly do you define it?

PP: Agroecology basically means doing agriculture according to ecological designs and principles. Doing so, you can get agricultural crops without overtaxing and in some cases actually enhancing nature's vital principals. In economic terms, you could say you are using the interest rather than the principal of nature in doing agriculture and pursuing your livelihoods. In a nutshell, a move towards agroecology from this techno-industrial society is a move from emphasis on the accumulation of technomass to the nurturing of biomass.

The option ahead of us, as Wendell Berry aptly says, is not whether to live with or without nature. We can afford to live only with and in nature. But we can choose how, in what scale, in what speed and velocity, with what degrees of reciprocity we want to live in nature. So the division between the wild and domestic is the function of a techno-industrial mindset. The answer is not in creating national parks and sanctuaries; the challenge is in creating different ethics for using nature. I talk a lot about this in my article, "How Can Four Trees Make a Jungle" (see www.terrain.org/essays/14/parajuli.htm).

JR: Younger generations think that pursuing an agroecological civilization would be like going back in history. After all, somehow, didn't the techno-industrial civilization emerge from the agricultural one?

PP: Even if one wanted to, one cannot go back. That is the secret dynamic of history. In history we evolve and co-evolve (again not only among humans but also among more than human species) but do not go back to an earlier historical period or experience. As the saying goes, you cannot jump into the same river twice. But what we can do and many have chosen to do is to carve out a future in a different path. Among others, Helena Norberg-Hodge talks about Ladakhi society and proposes that these could give us inspiration towards our "ancient futures."

The second point I want to bring home is how many innovations and how much good thinking have gone into refining the new mode of agroecological civilization, bringing into fruition indigenous traditions and new innovations. There is a blending and the flowering of convergence between the old and new.

JR: What are some examples of this?

PP: Let me start with some living examples from indigenous and peasant traditions. Recently, there was a delegation of people from Ecuador, the Mamallakta, in Portland. They gave several lectures and also distributed an e-mail defining who they are and what they do. The first paragraph in the e-mail read: "We come from the Ecuadorian Amazon, which is a cultivated forest (le silva culta)." This is one of the most profound statements in the history of agroecology. The Amazon is supposed to be the wildest place untouched by humans, right? Now, what are the indigenous people saying? Yes, it's a forest but it is cultivated forest, not only by humans but also cultivated by birds, insects, plants, and mammals. No wonder the Kichwa word Mamallakta means "mother community."

Another example is the "forest islands" (apêtê) found among the Kayapo people in the Brazilian Amazon. In the campo-cerrado in Brazil, the Kayapo have concentrated plant varieties collected from an area the size of Western Europe into a 10-hectare plot. One hundred-twenty species were found in ten apêtê.

What on earth are these human artifacts of forest islands doing in the heart of Amazon? As shown by the late anthropologist Darrell Posey, these are the centers of biodiversity but nurtured by human knowledge and labor. Apêtê begin as small mounds of vegetation, about one to two meters round, created by ant nests in open areas in the field. Slight depressions are usually picked out because they are more likely to retain moisture. As apêtê grow, they begin to look like up-turned hats, with higher vegetation in the center and lower herbs growing in the shaded borders. The Kayapos usually cut down the highest trees in the center to create a donut-hole that allows the light into the older apêtê.

From the southwest US and Northern Mexico, ethnoecologist Gary Paul Nabhan reports that more than 400 plant species are eaten by the tribes of the northern Sierra Madre; historically, the Tarahumara alone utilized at least 220 kinds of native plants as food. He also reports the multifunctionality and purpose of an ironwood tree. Sixty-two reptiles and amphibians, and 64 mammals use ironwoods for forage, cover, and birthing grounds. An ironwood-bursage habitat also shelters some 188 kinds of bees, 25 ant colonies, and 25 other types of insects. That adds up to an extraordinary level of biodiversity.

I am currently reading an inspiring book called Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway who lives in Southern Oregon and has written one of the most intuitive books about biocultural diversity that can be maintained in permaculture gardens. I highly recommend the book. He documents many innovations. You could think about edible landscaping meeting wildlife gardening. Basically, it is the idea of the wild and domestic, the forest and farm disappearing as dividing lines and blending with each other. It becomes a continuum where there are polycultures and there are some annual cultures helping each other.

Wes Jackson'sLand Institute, based in Kansas, also offers a provocative model. There they caution us, "Wait a minute! This annual agriculture is too much! We are taking ourselves too seriously by doing annual agriculture, by planting and weeding and harvesting and storing." We're taking too much of an active role. What humans should do rather is let nature do perennial polycultures and harvest from nature's labor of love. Perhaps the future of agroecology is in the combination of some form of bio-intensive garden, permaculture designs, polycultures, animal husbandry, food-forests, agroforestry, farming within forestry and so on.

JR: Any final thoughts?

PP: Humanity is at the verge of knowing how to create our livelihood while following nature's designs and meeting nature's needs. We are enriched with foresight provided by the past and a vision for the future. That's the new terrain I want to explore, a sustainability of the spirit! Sustainability is, in my recent metaphor, a move from outward bound to homeward bound. Earth is our home and making a nest within that home is the basic challenge right now. We are already in the middle of that journey and we do not need a huge violent revolution to get there, either.

As Manfred Steger and Perle Besserman write in Grassroots Zen: "We don't have to create waves when the ocean is flat.... Finding ourselves in the middle of a big wave itself presents us with an opportunity. All we have to do is dive right in."

A slightly different version of this interview first appeared in the February 15, 2004 issue of In Good Tilth, 470 Lancaster NE, Salem, OR 97301; organic@tilth.org.

Pramod Parajuli, Ph.D. is Associate Professor, Education, and Director of the Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning (www.piiecl.pdx.edu), Graduate School of Education, Portland State University, pramodp@pdx.edu. June Rzendzian is a masters' student at PIIECL. See introduction for fuller bios.

©2004 Talking Leaves
Spring/Early Summer 2004
Volume 14, Numbers 1 & 2
Person and Place: Adventures Here, There, & Everywhere

"Winning the Oil End Game"

2009-02-04T15:58:00.002-06:00

Amory Lovins TED talk a few years ago addresses some of the most recalcitrant energy challenges of our time -- namely those related to our addiction to liquid fuels. He has some reasons to be optimistic, but it will take some sensible leadership to give markets a push in the right direction. Anyway, hope you enjoy. If you like what you see, you can find out more by visiting his website at: http://www.oilendgame.com/

Food for Thought

2009-01-31T18:09:00.005-06:00

Lately I've been thinking about food, but not because I'm hungry. I'm interested in how best to raise it -- for a family, for a community, and for society. There is little doubt that current farming practices are both highly destructive and highly productive.

The so-called Green Revolution of the 20th century delivered the large scale, mechanized model of agriculture to much of the world, and as grain harvests grew, so did population. This model of food production has been extraordinarily, almost miraculously productive. So it is not surprising that it has surpassed traditional, lower impact methods of agriculture as the preferred method of raising food.

But, as always, agriculture comes at a cost to the land base. Since the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, intensive cultivation of the soil has been an ecologically taxing endeavor. Farmers have always walked an agricultural tightrope -- it's a balancing act between producing enough to feed a growing population and exhausting the soil upon which the entire system depends.

Traditionally, farming societies would have been forced to periodically rotate crops to avoid pests and disease, and they replenished the fertility of the soil through simple but effective forms of fertilization, such as slash and burn agriculture and the application of animal manures. And even with this relatively low impact, low yield system, population had a tendency to outstrip food supply and there were occasional famines due to variable harvests from year to year. These early farming societies also sometimes exhausted the land base to the point that agriculture became impossible or inexorably changed for years to come.

Examples of ecological mismanagement leading to such collapses abound (e.g. deforestation on Mediterranean islands, soil salinization due to over-irrigation in the once-fertile crescent, damming and diversion of the Nile leading to loss of seasonal alluvial deposits). But modern farming has changed the rules of the game (at least in the short term).

The use of manufactured, ammonia-based fertilizers and petro-chemical pesticides enables us to grow the same crop year after year without giving the land a rest and without actively managing the health of the soil through natural processes. You can see the results if you drive through Kansas (which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy) -- county after county of monoculture plantations of grain.

This is the factory mentality of economy of scale and assembly line production applied to farming. The soil is reduced to an inert, lifeless recepticle for a host of soil additives, and farming itself is reduced to a highly monotonous form of trucking. After all, hopping on a tractor and driving around in circles all day is closer to long-haul trucking than it is to true land husbandry. And let's not even talk about the cramped feedlots where our animal protein comes from (just read "Fast Food Nation" for a short cut to veganism).

Traditional farming demanded a wide range of skills and careful management of the soil to ensure a healthy, balanced system. Now there are very few such farmers left, and the majority of our food comes from thousands of miles away as a result. God how boring must it be to grow nothing but corn! And to do it in complete solitude with nothing but heavy machinery and chemicals to keep you company. It is a sad bastardization of farming and agrarian life. This alone is an outrage, but it gets much worse!

Consider for a moment the longer term, cumulative effect of these practices on the environment, and you won't just be a little aggravated, you'll be justifiably frightened. The great irony of modern farming is that while it is amazingly productive in the short term, it actively undermines our ability to feed ourselves in the long term. If we don't catch a clue, modern farming may be setting up the world for widespread famine (particularly in places like Haiti, sub-Saharan Africa, Indian sub-continent, etc. which depend on grain imports to feed their populations).

What happens when the Ogallala Aquifer finally gets sucked dry? What happens to all that wonderful agricultural land in the California desert when soil salinization finally reaches the surface? What happens when we no longer have the cheap, abundant fossil fuel necessary to keep the fertilizers, tractors and pesticides on the fields?

The Queen of Soul

2009-01-21T17:40:00.001-06:00

The soul of America.....

the coming social shift.

2009-01-21T17:27:00.002-06:00

Brought to you by Clusterfuck Nation, the blog:

"The "change" we face in agriculture dwarfs even the death throes of Happy Motoring (and is not unrelated to it either). A lot of people are likely to starve in America if we don't get our act together pronto in terms of how we produce the food we eat. Petro-agribusiness faces a set of disturbances that are certain to induce food shortages. Again, the Peak Oil specter looms in the background, for soil "inputs" and diesel power to run that system. But all of a sudden even that problem appears a lesser danger than the gross failure of capital finance now underway -- and petro-agriculture's chief external input is credit. Credit may be in extremely short supply this year, and hence crops may be in short supply as we turn the corner into spring and summer. Just as in the case of WalMart versus Main Street, the reform of farming in America is one of those "changes" much larger than most of us imagine. I'd go so far to say that a large proportion of young people now in college will find themselves not working in office cubicles, but in some way or other in farming or the "value-added" activities connected to it." -- jim kunstler 1-19-09

This is a severe scenario, I admit. But assuming for a moment that some version of it is true -- the result being that more of us inhabit the countryside, adding value to natural materials, and producing healthy local food. Suppose fewer of us make a living sitting at a desk all day, and more of us actually make our living by being good stewards of our collective land base. Is that a bad thing? I embrace this future.

Black First Family Changes Everything

2009-01-21T10:33:00.002-06:00

Here is a copy of a very interesting article from CNN Politics.com:

CNN) -- Jamaal Young was watching Barack Obama and his family greet an ecstatic crowd in Chicago, Illinois, on Election Night when he realized that something seemed wrong.
Obama didn't shout at his wife, Michelle, to shut up. The first lady didn't roll her eyes and tell Obama to act like a man. No laugh track kicked in, no one danced, and no police sirens wailed in the background.

Young had tuned in to celebrate the election of the nation's first African-American president. But he realized that he was witnessing another historic first. A black family was being featured as the first family, not the "problem family" or the "funny family.

"They are not here to entertain us," says Young, a New York Press columnist. "Michelle Obama is not sitting around with her girlfriends saying, 'My man ain't no good.' You're not seeing this over -sexualized, crazy black family that, every time a Marvin Gaye song comes on, someone stands up and says, 'Oh girl, that's my jam.' "

The nation didn't just get a glimpse of its new first family when Obama and his family waved to the crowds on Inauguration Day. The Obamas are offering America a new way to look at the black family, Young and other commentators say.

America has often viewed the black family through the prism of its pathologies: single-family homes, absentee fathers, out of wedlock children, they say. Or they've turned to the black family for comic relief in television shows such as "Good Times" in the '70s or today's "House of Payne."
But a black first family changes that script, some say. A global audience will now be fed images of a highly educated, loving and photogenic black family living in the White House for the next four years -- and it can't be taken off the air like "The Cosby Show."
Don't Miss
Obama's girls about to go into the fishbowl
Michelle Obama's urban chic heads to D.C.
Washington abuzz about Obamas
"The last time we had an image of a black family that was this positive it was "The Cosby Show," but this is the Real McCoy," says Jacqueline Moore Bowles, national president of Jack and Jill of America Inc., a predominately black organization for youths.
A new vision of black intimacy
The new first family could inspire some of their biggest changes within the black family itself, some say

In 1965, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic senator from New York, warned the nation about the rise of fatherless black families. The "Moynihan Report" concluded that many black families were caught in a "tangle of pathology."

The relationship between Obama and his wife may help untangle some of that pathology, some black commentators say.

It could start with black intimacy. The American public is routinely exposed to sexually charged relationships between black men and women. "Street lit" books with titles such as "Thugs and the Women Who Love Them," and "A Project Chick" now crowd bookstores and public library shelves.

Yet the new first couple offers America an example of a black, passionate, marital relationship, says Jennifer Brea, a writer for EbonyJet.com.
"They are the most natural and accessible first couple this country has ever had," Brea says. "You see a politician give a peck on his wife's cheek after a speech and often it looks staged. When you look at them, you feel like that there's this chemistry and spark."
Several black women actually sighed as they talked about how much Obama seems to touch his wife and exchange soulful glances with her in public. They said Obama will show young black men how to treat women -- and young black women how they should be treated.
"We don't get to see black love," says Heidi Durrow, the prize-winning author of the forthcoming novel, "Low Sky Dreaming."

"But every time you see them [the Obamas] on stage, it's been super," she says. "It's an amazing image to see these dynamic, smart, progressive people just openly affectionate. I'm all for it."
Obama's apparent closeness to his wife may help untangle another pathology -- the preoccupation with skin color and "looking white," Bowles, president of Jack and Jill, says.
Bowles says some powerful black men marry women who are white or fair-skinned. Obama's decision to marry a darker-skinned woman like Michelle Obama shows black women that black can indeed be beautiful.

"Too often successful black men look for other things ... a white woman or someone who light, bright and darn near white," Bowles says. "She [Obama] is a true sister, and she makes no bones about it."

'They're not 'Bebe's Kids' '
But what about those blacks who haven't been considered "true sisters" or "true brothers." A black first family changes that script as well, some say.
Obama's family shows that there is not one way, but many ways for someone to claim membership in the black family, some say.
Brea, the writer for EbonyJet.com, is the daughter of white mother and a Haitian-American father. She says she felt pressure to claim one race growing up. She never quite felt like a full citizen.

Obama's biracial background and his "exotic" upbringing relieves her of that pressure. Obama will help other blacks who come from multiracial backgrounds and immigrant communities to be comfortable in their own skin, she says.

"It's changed everything," she says. "You can sort of be whatever you want in all of its complexity, and it's something to be proud of."
The Obama's two daughters, Malia and Sasha, also offer America a new way to look at black kids, others say. Throughout Inauguration Day, the two girls stood before the cameras and waved, smiled and played to the cameras.

Durrow, the author of "Low Sky Dreaming," says it's refreshing to see well-spoken black children on television who act nothing like "Bebe's kids," the unruly black kids from the ghetto immortalized by the late black comedian Robin Harris.
"It's wonderful for people on the world stage to see young black kids who are so poised and vivacious," Durrow says. "They're not 'Bebe's Kids.' I see them and I get the sense that they're going to be OK."

Though the new first family may seem like a novelty to some, but for others they are familiar.
Barbara McKinzie, international president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, says she grew up in a small town in Oklahoma surrounded by black couples, and an extended family of teachers and neighbors, who were knit together like the new first family.
She didn't need to look at the Inauguration Day festivities to see a vibrant black family.
"It's not new, but it appears new," she says. "The president and his wife and children are not a novelty in the African-American community.
"It's the only family I've know in my life."

The PodChef!! My New Hero!

2009-01-16T09:37:00.005-06:00

I found this guy on YouTube, and he's doin' it all the way. He runs an organic smallholding up in the beautiful San Juan islands off the coast of Washington where he raises a diverse variety of livestock, veggies and grains. Check out all of these videos -- very informative stuff. This is a picture of the future of farming, ironically many aspects are ancient agrarian traditions that have been dusted off and re-labeled 'sustainable'. Whatever it's called, it's good farming.

Baking Bread In A Wood Oven

Tour of the PodChef's Smallholding

Cider!

Farming With a Chicken Tractor

Winter on PodChef Island

Pasture Pigs Part 1

Pasture Pigs Part 2

Michael Pollan

2008-12-30T15:38:00.004-06:00

I just listened to a wonderful TED talk by Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma, which is a book about our industrial food system. Anyway, his talk highlights the power of changing our perspective about how we fit into the biosphere. He talks about how we aren't just actors in nature, but acted upon; not just manipulating our surroundings, but being manipulated by them. This is not a concept we regularly consider. The most powerful insight I heard here is that we co-evolved with every species on the planet, so what is good for us is good for them. Nature is not a zero sum game, where our gain is nature's loss. May permaculture design and a more profound understanding of our unity with nature usher in an era of regenerative economy, rather than extractive false economy. Species of the world unite!

21st Century Economics -- Part 3

2008-12-30T06:28:00.006-06:00

What does value mean to you?

How do you define value?

How does our culture define value?

What are the most valuable possessions in your life?

What are the most valuable experiences in your life?

I answered these questions for myself recently, and my responses had me thinking about how value is quantified in the marketplace by pricing goods and services. This of course led to more questions, most of which I won’t bore you with. But there is one question I want to discuss:

Are prices an accurate reflection of value?

The anatomy of price isn’t too complicated. A given commodity is produced at a cost to the capitalist who owns the means of production, and the capitalist sells the commodity at cost plus whatever profit he can get away with in a competitive market. When you add sales tax to the picture, you have a rough equation of price: production costs + profit + taxes = price. It’s pretty simple, maybe too simple.

Price is the most universal and influential market signal in the economy. At the most fundamental level, price is simply value quantified. And participants in a money-based system of trade depend on price to assess relative value in the market. As such, prices must accurately reflect the true costs of production in order to properly inform the decisions of consumers.

To illustrate what I’m describing, here is a concrete example (it’s a bit unrealistic, but bear with me):

Let’s say you go to a market to buy shoelaces, but when you find some, you notice that they are more expensive than a new pair of shoes in the next stall. You immediately conclude that either the shoelaces are overpriced, or the shoes are underpriced, because the shoes are clearly more valuable than the shoelaces, and prices should reflect that. At the risk of pushing this example too far, let’s assume that you do a little more comparison shopping to gain more information about average prices of shoes and shoelaces.

You go to another market and find that with a few exceptions, the shoes at the second market are more expensive than the pair you saw at the first market. But when you look at the shoelaces, you realize that all of them are less than half the price of the ones at the first market.

Now you have a picture that makes sense -- you have found prices that reflect relative value more accurately, and you buy the cheap shoelaces at the second market. I know this example was a bit tedious, but it shows the kind of rational self-interest that lies at the heart of the free market system, and it demonstrates the importance of price as a market signal that informs the decisions of both consumers and producers.

Understanding the Power of Price

Understanding the pricing mechanism (i.e. how prices are assigned) has always been an essential principle of economic theory.

The early political economists of the 18th century observed that price performed a vital function within the capitalist system. They saw that flexible prices maintain a fairly stable balance between supply and demand in the market – high prices ration scarce goods and low prices prevent excess supply. This was a perfectly logical and accurate conclusion. And like any good idea, it was refined by those that followed.

In the early 20th century, for instance, the trust-busting of the Gilded Age was aimed at encouraging competition in the market to prevent price gouging by monopolies. This is an important example of necessary government intervention in the marketplace. Child labor laws, occupational safety, minimum wages, etc. were also necessary interventions. So clearly, government has a crucial supervisory and regulatory role to play in the market. We don’t want a completely laissez-faire economic policy. But that is essentially what we got during the Reagan/Thatcher consensus of the 80s.

For the market fundamentalists informing their policies, price was seen as the ultimate regulator of the market. Little else was needed to regulate the market: so, if the price of oil rises, so too does the incentive to produce more or compete by offering alternatives. In this way the market was always checking itself through competition among businesses and a capitalist economy was seen as a self-regulating system. This thinking became very influential in the 70s and 80s after Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976.

From then on, he and other Chicago School monetarists guided U.S. economic policy toward less regulation, monetary management of business cycles by the Federal Reserve (rather than fiscal management as Keynes suggested), and lower business taxes. At the same time, largely unfair international trade was rapidly expanded through the Structural Adjustment Programs of the World Bank and IMF which opened much of the world up to foreign investment and foreign imports.

It's been called neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and (a little less accurately) globalization; it's even been sugar-coated as free trade! To call the institutionalized exploitation of people and the destruction of the planet 'free trade' is truly to enter the realm of Orwellian doublespeak. We can sugar coat it all day long in the rich world to make ourselves sleep better at night, but globalization has been a jagged little pill to swallow for the poorest in the world. And that's putting it mildly.

I found my rose colored glasses.....finally!

If there is a silver lining in the current economic carnage, it’s that these neoliberal economic policies, introduced to America and the world during the Reagan administration, have at last been exposed for the fraud they truly are. Any pretense that we live and work in a free market has been smashed by a nauseating series of “too big to fail” bailouts. This is corporate welfare on an unprecedented scale.

For the past few decades, the government has privatized corporate profits, while socializing corporate risk. And the whole time our leaders (Republican and Democrat alike) chanted the tired mantra of Milton Friedman and his Chicago School cronies: 'de-regulation and free trade will lift the world out of poverty'--as if these policies were designed to help sub-Saharan Africans or the American taxpayer!

Recent history is our best teacher. Undermining our trust in the guidance of capitalism's venerated 'invisible hand' was the economic reality that average real wages for the American taxpayer were stagnant while the tax codes became increasingly regressive. A glance at the world's news headlines brought home the tragedies of an entire continent crippled by the AIDS pandemic and the predatory lending practices of the World Bank and the IMF. We watched in utter powerlessness, as free trade put millions of small farmers out of business throughout the so-called 'developing world' by exporting the cheap, subsidized cash crops of Europe and North America, thus undercutting the price of local produce in places like Mexico.

This is the ugly side of unregulated economic globalization--speculative bubbles on Wall Street and Main Street, a widening gap between rich and poor, and the transformation of rural, semi-autonomous peasants into urban proletarians beholden to the mercy of unfettered capitalism. In the urban context, these farmers suddenly find themselves without any marketable skills and they are forced to join the ever growing population of unskilled workers.

As the ranks of the urban working class swell around the world, there is a race to the bottom in poor countries in terms of working conditions and wages. The labor market is over stocked and competition is fierce. At the other end of the supply chain, the average Wal-Mart shopper is comfortably oblivious and well insulated from these realities.

So, Wal-Mart shoppers, why the comfortable oblivion?

Why do we continue to delude ourselves about the impact of our consumer choices?

Could it really just be down to those rock bottom prices?

In a word....YES

Pickin' on Wal-Mart....again....cuz they deserve it!

In their single-minded pursuit of their corporate responsibility to keep their shareholders happy, Wal-Mart has found the perfect business model for our time: great quarterly profits with no accountability. Wal-Mart understands that for the average consumer, price is the bottom line when making a purchasing decision. All things being equal, we choose the lowest price. That’s why people still shop at Wal-Mart. Everybody knows that their standards ethically and ecologically inferior to those of most local businesses. But the products are roughly equivalent and MUCH cheaper.

Most importantly, when you walk into Wal-Mart, the heavy problems of the world are conveniently out of sight and out of mind. You aren’t stumbling over an under-fed child laborer busy sewing the seam into your new blue jeans on your way to the check out line. And you don’t have to breathe the air in downtown Shanghai as you push your giant cart around either. That’s the genius of Wal-Mart’s business model!! They have zero accountability! They can exploit people and the environment without paying for it!!

This is the glitch in the system: corporations are allowed to externalize environmental and social costs and therefore prices lie.

What if consumers were aware of the full costs associated with producing the goods they buy?

And what if producers had to purchase the right to use our ecosystem services?

What if they also had to pay living wages to their employees, even in China?

Imagine an economy that fully accounted for the value of our planet and its people -- do you think buying a happy meal would cost more or less in that economy?

There is clearly much of great value that is simply not priced into the market. Think of all the things we depend on our ecosystem for:

-- natural resources including fossil fuels, soil, metals and minerals

-- climate stability via natural carbon sinks such as the algae in the sea and the trees in the forest

-- biological diversity

-- the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe.

These are some of the essential services our ecosystem provides for free. Taken together, the ecosystem services support our very livelihood as a species. Without a functioning ecosystem there is no economy.

So if economists love numbers so much, why haven’t they slapped a price tag on these vital ecosystem services? The easy cop-out answer is that they’re priceless. But the truth is that they’re not priced because you can’t make money buying and selling them. They belong to every living being on the planet, so private property laws simply don’t apply. And as a result, these vital services are invisible to the market.

You can’t own climate stability, but unfortunately you can own a dirty coal-burning power plant that robs it from future generations. This is what is broken. This is why price is not a good enough regulator. Until we figure out a way to price the damage we’re causing to our own life support system, we cannot depend on price to guide markets effectively.

More About This Site

2008-12-24T16:57:00.003-06:00

I have to share some good news with all my loyal fans -- this blog has experienced its first major breakthrough on the long, hard road of building web traffic! Two days ago I noticed a huge spike in the number of new visitors to the blog, so I assume someone out there in the blogosphere has jumped onboard the 'Lifeboat' and linked to this site. At least that's what I'm telling myself. Anyway I was excited, so it was with great enthusiasm that I decided to give all of my new readers some more info. about this site. Enjoy! :)

This site is intended to empower individuals and communities to take bold action in response to our worsening ecological predicament. Human population and consumption are rapidly outstripping the carrying capacity of the planet. The signs are all around us – every ecological indicator shows that human activity is putting enormous stress on the biosphere.

And we all know the folly of destroying our only life support system....yet we carry on, hypnotized by a million diversions, paralyzed by fear or simply ignorant to the reality that we are all complicit servants of a profligate culture, a culture that has set us on a collision course with mass die off. The time for a mainstream, popular critique of this culture is long overdue.

I firmly believe that such a critique can liberate us from the destructive patterns of habitual consumption that define modern civilization. I want to contribute to that critique. And my goal is for this blog to become a thriving grassroots forum facilitating discussion about local, community action that can make a difference. We have no time to waste!!

Disavowing consumer culture will require that we restructure and rescale our global economy as well. An economy that is driven by feckless consumption, dirty production and supply chains that criss-cross the globe is an economy that’s categorically unsustainable.

Simply put, the global economy is far too large. We need to shift our focus away from the blind pursuit of economic growth, toward the goals of economic downsizing, re-localization, and restructuring. Only then can we collectively engage in an orderly retreat from this peak of population and consumption.

Right now Americans borrow, borrow, borrow, spend, spend, spend – thus lining the pockets of the modern day oligarchs whom we call CEOs. Instead we need to save, invest and produce in America, for America.

It’s time to rebuild a productive domestic economy that can deliver necessities to the masses without reliance upon imports. It’s time for us to voice dissent to power; time to question our most fundamental assumptions about wealth and value; time to push hard for the change we need. The true power in every society lies with the people.

Humanity is currently undergoing a great cultural shift precipitated by a host of ecological constraints. We are living in a time of unprecedented change, and our collective response is critical – it’s evolve or die time.

Will we choose to build stronger communities to share scarce resources? or will we allow civilization to unravel through a series of bloody resource wars?

Will we proactively make the sacrifices required to create a more ethical economy? or will we stand by while famine and disease continue to ravage the poor and while the cancer of economic growth continues to eat away at the scant remaining natural resources of the planet?

How long will we go on stealing from future generations?

These are the most pressing ethical questions of our time, and the only answers that matter are actions. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.... what will we do now?

Money As Debt

2008-12-22T06:14:00.003-06:00

I've posted this video before, but since we've been discussing money lately I thought I would post it again. So here it is, Paul Grignon's fantastic overview of our fractional reserve banking system, entitled Money As Debt

Richard Douthwaite's Cap and Share Plan

2008-12-20T04:50:00.003-06:00

As a follow up to my angry rant about our monetary system, I feel obligated to serve up a little portion of hope. After all, this blog is supposed to be about solutions. So I'm sharing a very good interview today -- Richard Douthwaite talked with Jason Bradford on the Reality Report a while back about the possibility of a carbon-backed global currency to tackle climate change. Here’s the link to listen to the interview:

http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_douthwaite_on_the_reality_report

Basically, it’s a glorified cap and trade system resulting in a currency that represents an allowance to emit carbon. To launch the currency, every nation in the world is issued a pre-determined number of credits based on their population. Once the currency is issued, countries can trade their carbon credits freely—the idea being that energy hungry countries would buy credits from poor countries, thus distributing wealth more evenly around the world.
If this was implemented in combination with an Oil Depletion Protocol to prevent wild fluctuations in the price of oil and food, perhaps Africans could keep eating past 2020.

Life After Peak Credit

2008-12-19T05:23:00.003-06:00

Our economy is so fucked!! I gotta get this out:

Our monetary system is the biggest pyramid scheme in human history. We have inherited and fully embellished a fractional reserve banking system that depends on ever expanding levels of debt in order to stay afloat. Private banks, with the assistance of the Federal Reserve have virtually unchecked power to control the money supply; they create new money every time they make a loan. And since the 70s, a growing proportion of big industrial and corporate loans are made with absolutely NO reserve requirements!!

These loans are being funded with bank CDs and money market deposits, not hard currency held in reserve at a central bank. This has allowed overall loan to reserve ratios (i.e. leverage) in our financial system to skyrocket. Even checking account deposits are overwhelmingly comprised of debt money. Banks are only required to hold 10% of their total checking deposit liability in reserve at the central bank. Further complicating this picture is the market for securitized debt. This enables financial institutions to essentially pass the buck, by selling their liability to a third party, thus getting it off their own balance sheet.

At the same time fractional reserve requirements for FDIC-insured banks were falling to next to nothing, the Federal Reserve was pursuing the most profligate monetary policy in U.S. history under the auspices of the highly revered Alan Greenspan. After the tech bubble burst in 2000, he ramped up the stimulus by slashing the fed funds rate to 1% and kept it there for a year!! The financial services industry had a field day with the easy money and we know the result all too well – a massive credit bubble that inflated housing prices and a wide range of other assets.

But at the time we didn’t recognize this monetary policy as inflationary – we thought it was fuelling real growth because the economy was effectively being subsidized by cheaply imported consumer goods from China. So the Consumer Price Index was stable, and core inflation was within a healthy range. But if you look at the expansion of the money supply over this period, it’s absolutely shocking – we’re talking exponential growth in debt money. And where was the commensurate growth in economic productivity? Was it in the magical financial engineering that created the now infamous slew of structured debt instruments? Was it in the flip-a-house get rich quick scheme out in Calee-fornia? Seriously, what do we have to show for this rapid expansion of the money supply?

Well, we got a massively over-leveraged financial system + a massively indebted federal government + record levels of household debt, which = Peak credit!!

A conversation between me and my evil twin about the implications of peak credit: Enjoy!

ME: Right, so this is peak credit – maybe that’s OK. After all, a little debt deflation is just what the doctor ordered for this bloated economy, right? Loan defaults will rise for a while, but at least it will encourage people to stop borrowing, start saving and pay off their debts if they can. And most importantly, it would allow financial institutions to de-leverage – restoring loan to reserve ratios to more normal levels. What’s wrong with allowing all of that?

MY EVIL TWIN: Did you say you want to encourage Americans to save? We can’t allow that. 70% of our economy depends on them buying shit they don’t need – that’s why they’re called CONSUMERS. Save? Ha, that fell out of fashion back in the 80s. If we saved as much today as we did in the 70s, our economy would hemorrhage jobs, and Starbucks would become an endangered species. And I, for one, like my gingerbread lattes this time of year. So please, get off your “We need to encourage savings” soap box.

ME: Alright I’m off it already – agree to disagree. Let’s talk about how to best stimulate the economy. Obama’s fiscal stimulus sounds promising, but the Fed seems determined to re-inflate the money supply at all costs. This is wrong-headed and reckless to say the least. Any effort to stimulate the economy during the now-unavoidable deflationary recession should come in the form of fiscal investment in projects of real long-term value to the American people. Can anybody say renewable energy infrastructure?!? Why can’t we stick with that? Why do we have to keep pumping money into the financial system? Aren’t they the ones who got us into this mess?

EVIL TWIN: We need both a fiscal and a monetary stimulus because deflation is the Fed’s worst nightmare. Honestly, given the size of the current money supply, unchecked deflation should be everyone’s worst nightmare. We owe it to ourselves to at least try to make an orderly retreat from this debt peak. The value of the dollar will suffer as the Fed prints hard currency to buy government debt (i.e. monetizing debt instead of selling bonds on a market that’s soon to be saturated with too many govt. bonds). Budget deficits will soar. And there will be more layoffs across all sectors of the economy as banks deleverage and credit markets stay tight. There may even be mild deflation. But perhaps we can avoid the worst case scenario of repeating the Great Depression. We’ve already committed to sinking $5 trillion into this money pit, and we still have a threat of deflation – this recession could be far worse than anyone is predicting. That’s why the Fed has to print right now. There’s not another choice.

ME: I hate your evil logic. Damn, our economy is so fucked.

A Snapshot of the Economy: Where do we go from here?

2008-12-13T11:29:00.003-06:00

I wrote the following post in response to an opinion on another blog. The opinion I argued against can be roughly summarized as such:

"We need to end all of these bailouts and allow deflation to happen. The bailouts aren't working anyway, so what's the point? Assuming deflation is a bad thing is a fallacy. It's precisely what the economy needs to purge the bad debts from the system."

O.K. so those were the main points; it's an argument I hear quite a bit these days, and understandably so. The TARP plan keeps morphing into something new every week, and nothing seems to be slowing the collapse of the retail and housing sectors. However, given the levels of debt in our economy, deflation is a dangerous threat and without monetary and fiscal stimulus, it will cripple our economy for years to come.

The Bubble's Deflating...

Assuming that deflation is a bad thing for the economy is not a fallacious premise. An environment of falling wages and prices at a time when we have record levels of private debt will surely lead to a massive spike in defaults, further destabilizing our already fragile financial system.

If nothing is done to prevent this we really won’t have the capital we need to invest in alternative energy infrastructure. That is why I support the coming Fed rate cut, which will likely be 50 basis points, as well as further monetary easing by other methods. The fed funds rate is quickly approaching 0%, so cutting rates will not be an option much longer.

Nouriel Roubini has called for more monetary easing by unorthodox means to avoid a liquidity trap when we reach 0% interest. In a recent op-ed for the Financial Times, he recommends that the Fed begin purchasing commercial paper, mortgages, mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other asset-backed securities in order to add even more liquidity to the financial system. You can read the full article here:

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/254642/financial_times_op-ed_how_to_avoid_the_horrors_of_stag-deflation

Believe me, I have my doubts that this will work. I am more of a Keynesian than a monetarist, but given the severity of the contraction in the money supply (which i’m sure you know is just loaned into existence), it seems worth a shot.

More than monetary easing, we need a massive fiscal stimulus in the form of investments in alternative energy infrastructure and electrified rail transport. Check out Van Jones website http://www.vanjones.net/ or his book about a new “green collar” economy for more info. His plan is solid – not saying it’s destined to succeed, but it’s sensible. At the moment, government is the only entity capable of borrowing and investing on the scale we need. This is basically our only choice because the American economy needs to be massively restructured, and fast. Our current role in the global economy is that of the reckless spendthrift of the world, and we just maxed out our credit card. The only line of credit left for us is to issue government bonds.

Unlike some, I don’t think foreign bondholders will dump Treasuries anytime soon. Where else will they park their cash? Gold? Oil? Stocks? Those have all proven to be far more volatile than U.S. bonds.

It's also important to remember that what is good for the U.S. dollar is good for China (currently the largest foreign bondholder in the world). It’s a dysfunctional, utterly destructive relationship from an ecological standpoint. But the fact is that we are co-dependent right now -- we need their exports and they need our custom, which depends on the strength of the dollar. So China can’t afford to dump its dollar reserves; and China just surpassed Japan as the largest foreign holder of U.S. govt. paper. The trend is moving in the opposite direction to that which you suggest: U.S. govt. issued paper is the safest investment out there, you don’t get a return on your money, but at least you’re not going to lose your ass tomorrow. I’m not arguing that the future solvency U.S. govt. is a foregone conclusion. It is not, particularly if we fail to restructure our economy. I’m just saying it’s a better short term bet than anything else out there.

Here’s some brief background info on the inherent, structural vulnerabilities of the U.S. economy (I’m sure you’ve heard it all before :)

The neoliberal economic policies of the Reagan administration ushered in a new era of de-regulation for the financial sector, which over the past three decades has ballooned in size to comprise roughly 20% of GDP.

This boom in finance, what Kevin Phillips calls the “financialization” of the U.S. economy, has occurred as part of the larger trend of globalization opening the world to so-called free trade.

Concurrent to the rise of finance has been another trend of globalization: the decline of America's manufacturing base. In the 70s, manufacturing was twice as large as finance; now it's just the opposite, with manufacturing only accounting for around 12% of the economy. For thirty years these trends have gained momentum, creating an economy that is utterly dependent on convoluted financial transactions, debt, and most of all, consumer spending.

Currently 70% of America’s economic activity is driven by consumption, and everything from energy to fresh produce to shoelaces is imported. Seriously, everything is imported.

Now, having made those points earlier about the dangers of deflation and how to prevent its worst consequences, I want to stress that I understand that we are past ‘peak credit’, if you will. De-leveraging needs to happen right now; the collective private debt burden in our economy needs to be dramatically lower. So some debt deflation is inevitable. That is why the banks have hoarded the bailout money rather than lending it. After watching the value of their assets plummet, they are restoring solvency to their operations, and in the process lowering their risk by making fewer, more careful loans.

All of this adds up to much less debt money circulating in the economy, or as Kunstler puts it – we are hemorrhaging pixel money. I recognize that no amount of monetary or fiscal stimulus will stop the bleeding. But it may slow the bleeding, and that’s important right now. The credit bubble has popped, and there is no re-inflating it. However, properly guided investments aimed at restructuring our economy can slow the rate that the bubble deflates. We can’t reverse it. It had to happen eventually because our total debt (public and private) to GDP ratio had reached an unsustainable level.

The total debt to GDP ratio for the U.S. economy before the subprime crisis was an incredible 3.5 to 1, far higher than it was in the late 20s before the Great Depression. In 2007 the total amount of debt in the U.S. (household, business, financial and govt. sectors) was a staggering $53 trillion. Only about $10 trillion of that is the national debt, so the vast majority was private debt, and a little local and state govt. debt.

I mention these numbers to point out that the credit bubble was largest in the private sector. The government can de-leverage later, right now we need an emergency blood transfusion from the public to the private sector.

The Journey of Man, Spencer Wells

2008-12-11T11:27:00.005-06:00

This video is a little off topic, but it is so fascinating that I had to post it. I love learning about human origins, and this guy does a great job of telling the story. What always strikes me when I think about the dawn of humanity is just how recently we arrived on the planet. Alligators have lived for 200 million years in perfect harmony with their habitat, while modern humans are in danger of wrecking the planet in less than 250,000 years of existence.

Get to the Arena!!

2008-12-07T08:09:00.005-06:00

Right, so I know everyone out there is perched at the edge of their computer desks, eagerly awaiting my next essay on ecological economics. It's alright, you can take a bathroom break if nature's calling, I promise you won't miss too much :)

I do hate to disappoint my loyal fans, but unfortunately I'll have to keep y'all waitin' fur the time bein'. I don't want to just post a bunch of steamy dog crap, so I'm gonna employ the use of the few brain cells in my head that managed to survive my youthful debauchery, and I'm gonna create something truly special. Stay tuned, you won't want to miss it...trust me.

In the meantime this quote from Teddy Roosevelt will have to keep you entertained and inspired. It's a good little nugget of wisdom from a guy who wasn't all bad. He's kinda the Ernest Hemingway of dead presidents -- if nothing else, you gotta love his style.

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs
to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and
sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and
again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself
in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high
achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring
greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
know neither victory or defeat." --Teddy Roosevelt

I thought this might encourage the couch potato in all of us to cower shamefully into a dark corner so it can curl up and die forever. Peace out.....

21st Century Economics -- Part 2

2008-12-03T10:40:00.003-06:00

Before discussing the key points of ecological economics, I would like to present a brief overview and critique of classical economics as a contrast.

Off to an ugly start....

Classical economic theory has its roots in European colonialism. As Europeans expanded throughout the world exploiting the resources of newly discovered lands and peoples, massive new wealth began flowing from the colonies into Europe, and the money supply grew rapidly. These were the early days of capitalism. Some powers, such as Spain, extracted raw money, in the form of gold and silver bullion, from their colonies. Others extracted raw materials and then added value through manufacturing (i.e. British furniture makers using American lumber). And of course the most brutal and inhumane colonial enterprise was the institution of chattel slavery in order to maximize profits through the cultivation of cash crops. Regardless of the specific strategy, the goal was simple: to bring wealth back home to Europe.

For the European societies at the receiving end of this epic transfer of wealth, the discovery of the New World must have felt like finding a hidden treasure of inexhaustible abundance. The proverbial ‘land of milk and honey’ had at last been found, and the European powers began hoarding copious amounts of gold and silver to signal their newfound wealth. Resources were there for the taking, and the only factor limiting production was labor.

Not surprisingly, the greedy ambitions of these early entrepreneurs afflicted them with an insatiable appetite for cheap labor. This blinding self-interest is the original sin of the free market and it set capitalism on an unethical and inhumane course which led to the enslavement and subjugation of countless individuals all across the globe. For these unfortunate souls, European expansion and the imposition of merchant capitalism were twin curses that forever changed them. Timeless traditions were banned, languages lost, and entire cultures muddled as the Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Dutch marched across a world they felt they owned.

A Few Enlightened Souls?

Far from the front lines of colonial exploitation and oppression, the first thinkers to attempt to explain the inner workings of capitalism emerged out of the European Enlightenment. Among them the political economists of the Scottish Enlightenment took the lead. During the late 18th century, as the industrial revolution was just beginning to ramp up in Britain, the world was introduced to the first fully articulated theory of self interest, division of labor and free trade. Appropriately enough, Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776, the year a bunch of rebellious British transplants in America decided to throw off the yoke of merchant capitalism and make their own money.

Wealth of Nations is widely regarded as the founding treatise of capitalism. In it Adam Smith criticized the restrictive tariffs of merchant capitalism, or mercantilism, and touted the free market as the most efficient mechanism for allocating the resources of society. In the most often quoted and paraphrased excerpt from his magnum opus, Smith employed his now famous metaphor to describe the miraculous efficacy of free markets:

“the invisible hand” of the market ensures that the pursuit of individual self interest in the marketplace will naturally benefit the whole of society. This was clearly written before the age of derivatives markets and credit default swaps and securitized debt. It seems more than a bit naive to assume that the selfish whiz kids on Wall Street who devised these investments were naturally benefitting society.

Among the most incisive observations presented in Wealth of Nations is Adam Smith’s labor theory of value. Smith recognized that in an industrial system, labor was the essential medium of exchange in the economy. In the previous agriculture based system of feudalism, one’s wealth was equal to the amount of productive land one controlled.

But in societies characterized by a high degree of specialization within the work force, where workers depend on the markets to provide for their needs and wants, one’s wealth is measured by the amount of labor one can purchase in the form of goods and services. So for Smith, the value of a given commodity was roughly equivalent to the trouble and toil that went into producing it.

This was a brilliant insight, and in the 18th century, Smith had no way of foreseeing any limits on production other than labor. In his world, it made perfect sense to think of labor as the only significant factor limiting production. But in the modern world, when efficiency improvements are replacing human labor and natural resources are being extracted at unprecedented rates, labor is no longer the key to understanding value in the economy.

In our time, resource scarcity, pollution and population growth comprise a set of unprecedented ecological limits to growth. These are new limits for us, and we need new thinking about how to adapt an economy that fits within them.

Beyond Wealth of Nations

With the publication of Wealth of Nations, the field of economics was born, and later contributors elaborated upon the ideas of Adam Smith. One of the most significant early developments was David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, which presaged globalization.

Ricardo made the observation that if country A was blessed with a tropical climate and a year-round growing season but no fossil fuel, and country B had a massive endowment of coal but harsh winters; then country A should exchange its fresh produce for the coal of country B.

This insight eventually led to a rapid expansion of international trade. International trade of this kind can be understood as simply another type of division of labor; it is specialization between nations rather than workers.

During the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill was the first economist to write about the value of preserving nature. Like a true Romantic, Mill waxed poetic when lamenting the prospect of watching the whole earth divided and conquered by the capitalists. In Principles of Political Economy, Mill issued a prophetic warning to the future generations of industrial society regarding the environment:

There is little satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the
spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into
cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery
waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not
domesticated for man's use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow
or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or
flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved
agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which
it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would
extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but
not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of
posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity
compel them to it.

Unfortunately he never fully explained how nature is valuable to the economy, or how a system which depends on processing natural resources might temper its destructive proclivities.

Taken together the ideas of Smith, Ricardo and Mill represent the nucleus of mainstream economic thought to this day. Criticisms and contributions have fallen in and out of favor (i.e. Marxism, Keynesian economics, supply-side monetarism). But the core set of conclusions that emerged from classical economics remain fundamental and unchallenged.

So, we have essentially inherited an eighteenth century economic paradigm. We believe in the efficiency of the so-called free market. We regard division of labor, including international trade, as a net positive for society. And we depend wholeheartedly on prices to balance the supply and demand in the market. Unfortunately, these assumptions don’t make sense in our time.

For example, classical economics fails to acknowledge that growth on a finite planet has limits. In fact a central premise implicit in conventional economic theory is that such limits are illusory. A classical economist would argue that as the natural limits of a given resource are approached the price of the limited resource increases, which creates an incentive for the market to invest in alternatives and/or more efficient productivity. Thus economic growth, albeit in a new direction, can continue in spite of the limit.

However, when the scarce resources in question include everything from fresh water and top soil to crude oil and natural gas, it seems ludicrous to assume that the market can truly deliver enough in the way of alternatives and increased productivity to allow for this hypothetical, perpetual economic growth.

My next essay will focus on how the field of ecological economics proposes to redress the glaring ineptitude of the markets to deal with limits.

21st Century Economics -- Part 1

2008-11-28T04:56:00.006-06:00

This post is an introduction to a series of essays on economics. These essays outline what we can do to transition from our unethical, and ecologically destructive economic system to an economy that works in the 21st century.

From Spendthrift to Thrifty:
An Introduction to Ecological Economics

A couple of weeks ago, I listened to an interview that introduced me to the field of ecological economics. The man being interviewed was Nate Hagen, a doctoral student at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. I found his insights fascinating and after hearing his brilliant synopsis of the topic, I decided to learn more about it. By the way, you can find several good interviews with Nate and his colleagues by following this link:

http://globalpublicmedia.com/to_review_reality_report_episodes_on_economics

Ecological economics represents a fresh new approach to understanding our market system. Central to this approach is the notion that economic activity does not occur in a vacuum; it happens within a rich context of human culture and social behaviour. And like every other human system, it is built upon ecological foundations.

We rarely pause to consider how completely we depend on the ecosystems of our planet. It’s a little like contemplating the miracle of DNA replication – we have a tendency to just take it for granted. This is understandable, particularly when the natural world is so vast and abundant that exhausting its bounty seems impossible.

It must have been difficult for people in past societies to imagine a world in which natural resources are becoming scarce and population is spiralling out of control. But we no longer have the luxury of naiveté. The most grievous oversight of contemporary mainstream economics is the failure to acknowledge the fact that every economic transaction depends on ecological stability.

As the current financial crisis has illustrated so dramatically, our global economic system is in dire need of a major overhaul:

In our economy, prices lie. The market fails to include the tremendous environmental costs of production in the final price of the goods and services it provides. Prices are determined solely on the basis of cost of production plus profit margin. This dysfunctional pricing mechanism is a dangerous oversimplification of the true costs associated with production and it is misleading consumers.

We have a broken monetary system of debt-based fiat currency which requires ever expanding amounts of public and private debt to maintain. Watch the video below to learn more about our fractional reserve banking system which essentially loans money into existence.

We have a regulatory structure that, instead of being updated and expanded to deal with the challenges of globalization, has been systematically dismantled under the misguided tutelage of market fundamentalists like Milton Friedman.

We have a lop-sided global economy that is driven by the consumption of wealthy nations and the production of poor nations (both of which are ethically and ecologically problematic). This is international trade run riot, and it leads to the notoriously long, wasteful supply chains that we euphemistically call globalization.

The American economy is particularly vulnerable because so much of our economic activity is based on discretionary consumer spending to buy things that are imported from overseas. And the size of our productive economy has shrunk dramatically relative to the size of the service economy. Basically, we no longer produce our own necessities, we rely on imports for most of them, and what’s left of our economy is largely propped up by the unsustainable spending habits of the addicted American consumer.

So, what happens to our global economy when America realizes it has maxed out its credit card and the international spending spree grinds to a halt?

I think it’s called a CREDIT CRUNCH-cum-ECONOMIC CRISIS-cum-SYSTEMIC FINANCIAL MELTDOWN. At least that’s what they call it in the news.

Maybe this will get our attention.

Maybe we will finally muster the ethical courage to grab the reigns of our economy and guide the markets to deliver what humanity truly needs and wants: a global economy that is both humane and ecologically sustainable.

Maybe we’re ready for....drum roll, please....ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS!!

**Part 2 of this series will be posted soon. It is a critique of classical economics in light of current ecological challenges.

Geo-engineering: Apocalypse Averted?

2008-11-27T02:23:00.003-06:00

O.K. I admit it. I'm addicted to TED talks! If you don't know about TED, check out this website: www.ted.com

The talk I'm sharing today is about geo-engineering as a possible response to climate change. Sounds ambitious, I know. This has to be the ultimate techno-fix dream solution. Half-mad scientists have proposed all sorts of methods for artificially cooling the planet: a host of plans to sequester carbon for instance. I picture them scrambling behind the scenes with their research teams, desperate to patent the great silver bullet that saves humanity from climate chaos. But as crazy as it sounds, if climate change gets too scary too quickly, we may be happy to have an ace in the hole.

We all hope it doesn't come to that. We would love to believe that the human family is capable of coordinated, aggressive action to cut emissions in time to make a difference. But garnering the political will to tackle a problem that does not seem imminent is always difficult. Scores of climate scientists have testified before world leaders at these so-called 'earth summits', and we still lack the sense of urgency required to take bold action. Current evidence suggests we may have waited too late.

I think we are quickly approaching a tipping point with the melting of polar ice. The glaciers in the arctic circle are receding at an accelerating rate, and it's probably too late to reverse that trend by cutting emissions. Losing the polar ice would have all kinds of severe ripple effects, so a tipping point for polar ice melting is effectively a tipping point for global climate. Without the Greenland ice sheet for example, the gulf stream current stops, throwing Europe's climate into chaos.

The tough fact to consider is that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere represents the accumulation of carbon emissions over time. So even if we stopped emitting carbon tomorrow, the amount of CO2 in the air will still be far higher than the 350 parts per million target. And because we are rapidly destroying many natural carbon sinks through deforestation, it will take a while for mother nature to equilibrate. In other words, cutting emissions is a slow process, and it does not reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2 over night. So, assuming the worst case scenario unfolds, what do we do to save the polar ice and preserve some semblance of climate stability? Support your local geo-engineer!

The method discussed in this video basically involves spraying loads of sulphates into the upper atmosphere to 'shade' the planet from the sun, particularly at the poles. We know that sulphates in the atmosphere have a cooling effect because scientists have observed it after the eruption of major volcanoes. Hypothetically, it could work. It could definitely cool the planet.

The obvious danger is that people assume that geo-engineering is a free pass to emit carbon. It is not. All it does is buy us more time to help mother nature recover balance. We have to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere for a bunch of other important reasons. Geo-engineering is just a possible way of saving billions of lives in the meantime.

Hope you like the video. Post a comment and let me know what you think.

Jane Goodall

2008-11-24T10:26:00.002-06:00

I have to share a fantastic video with you all. The great field biologist Jane Goodall gave a TED talk a few months ago to talk about an amazing program she started called Roots and Shoots. Roots and Shoots is an initiative aimed at empowering young people to take action to save the planet through local service projects. It's a neat project, but that's not the main reason I'm sharing this video.

The real reason I have to share it is that I found her to be so inspirational. This is a truly brilliant and enlightened woman; and she speaks with such passion and hope about solving the most intractable problems of our time. Please take the time to watch this video. Jane Goodall has plenty of wisdom to share.

Suburban Clusterf#@k

2008-11-20T03:27:00.013-06:00

The Tragic Comedy of the American Suburbs

In many ways, I am a product of the suburbs. As a middle class white male from Dallas, I am quite familiar with the setting and I’ve spent a large portion of my life either living in or visiting the suburbs. Almost my entire extended family resides there and my hometown is notorious for its sprawling suburban development. I know the suburbs. The suburbs are my home. Nevertheless, I despise what the suburbs represent: a psychological, social and ecological disaster.

More than any other settlement pattern, the suburbs embody the middle class American dream. We are all too familiar with the picture perfect fantasy: the white picket fence, the two story house, the 2 or 3 or 4 car garage, the meticulously manicured chem-lawn, and of course, the anti-depressed family of four with a dog and maybe a cat or three. As lovely as it sounds, this specific form of the American dream has had a ruinous social impact.

Socially F#@ked

It has never been an inclusive dream. Historically, it was largely the dream of white people who desired exclusivity, security, and privacy. These are understandable values when you are raising a family. However, the reciprocal values of strong community, social justice, and mutual trust are equally important. The phenomenon of white flight shows which value set was preferred.

White flight during the decades following World War II was driven both by the pull of the suburbs and by the push of urban decay. These white families were motivated as much by the alluring prospect of suburban retreat as they were by xenophobia. Either way, white flight was an escape strategy; and the suburbs represent the divisive impulse of the majority to socially detach from the uglier side of society: the crime and poverty of deprived urban ghettos, for instance.

Unfortunately as whites fled the inner city, so too did much of the political will needed to address the glaring social inequalities that were at the root of the problem. Once your family had successfully retreated to the comfort of the suburbs, these social ills were out of sight and out of mind. The quality of public education in the inner city no longer affected your kids, so who cares if the city school district is corrupt, or schools are not getting the funding they need.

As a result, the inner city was chronically neglected and these problems were basically ignored. Over time they became more severe, creating an ever-widening achievement gap between privileged, white suburbanites and poor, inner city minorities. So the regrettable social legacy of white flight to the suburbs was a new era of de facto segregation in America.

Mind-f#@k

To illustrate some of the nastier psychological effects of suburban development, let’s take a look at the most exclusive type of sub-division: the gated community. And just a reminder before we begin our tour – humans are social animals. What we call a gated ‘community’ could be more accurately described as a self-imposed suburban ghetto for the privileged with a security fence surrounding it. And for many it is the apex of the suburban American dream: exclusivity, security and privacy.

But there is little true community within these quaint gates of heavy steel. As you enter, you are immediately confronted with a security checkpoint staffed by the community’s very own private security force (usually a bunch of teenaged kids whose patrol duties include tooling around the neighbourhood on golf carts). 8 foot privacy fences, enclosed garages and guard dogs keep the neighbors at a safe distance and ensure that any uninvited outsiders are met with the hostility they deserve. The range of activities within the gates is quite limited: no shopping, no restaurants or cafes, no public life whatsoever. It’s essentially a place for scared rich people to sleep and eat in relative peace; a glorified dormitory with a massive padlock on the front door.

A general mood of suspicion and fear pervades most households because the entire design of the so-called community serves to alienate and isolate individuals, rather than fostering the mutual trust upon which strong communities are built. This is the American suburb in its most extreme form, shockingly similar to the settlement patterns of white South Africans during Apartheid. It’s time to do better.

Eco Clusterf$@k

The ecological impacts of suburban development are equally disastrous. This is perhaps the most obvious downside of the suburban living arrangement. Nearly everything about the suburbs is ecologically damaging. Here is a brief list of the problems:

1. The activities of the typical suburb are strictly zoned so that residential space is distinct and separate from commercial space. Traveling between these zones almost always requires a car because of the long distances involved and lack of pedestrian accommodation.

2. The houses are much larger than they need to be, which wastes building materials and energy. The size of your McMansion is a status symbol in the suburbs.

3. The conventional building materials used in home construction have very high embodied energy, meaning that they require lots of energy to manufacture and transport to the building site.

4. The houses are often very poorly designed and poorly built. A common design feature is the grandiose vaulted ceiling which wastes a ton of energy. Windows are often placed on west facing walls without any shade. In places like Texas, this can turn a room into a solar oven during the summer time.

5. Lawns are little more than grass covered chemical and fresh water sponges of questionable aesthetic value, and they are usually maintained with gasoline burning machines. The suburban lawn is probably the single biggest waste of resources within the typical household. Most lawns don’t even produce any useful food or herbs. They are literally just energy and water sinks.

6. Most suburbanites don’t work in the suburbs. Many drive long distances alone in their SUV just to get to work every day.

7. The predominant culture of ownership in the suburbs values private property over shared use. So everyone owns their own lawnmower and weed-eater, and it’s not uncommon to see 4 or 5 private backyard swimming pools on a given block.

Anyway, I could go on, but most of you have heard it all before. The bottom line is that this whole situation is a huge clusterfuck, and we have to figure out a way to fix it.

The Consummate Critic

James Howard Kunstler is one of the most outspoken critics of the suburban way of life. He has called it "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world" and views the architecture of the suburbs as a symptom of our throw-away society. In his opinion, the massive investment dumped into suburban development after World War II not only wasted resources on a colossal scale, but also created a ‘geography of nowhere;’ a nation full of places that are not worth caring about. In addition he addresses the myriad and subtle ways that living in a landscape littered with strip malls and McMansions affects our attitudes and behaviors.

He has also criticized urban planners and modern architects, whom he dubs 'starkitects' for creating buildings and urban spaces that are scaled to accommodate machines rather than humans. A passionate champion of the principles of traditional architecture and urban design, he supports the emergent renaissance of the time-tested urban planning exemplified by many classic European cities. New Urbanism and the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism are two such approaches to urban design. Both draw inspiration from the cities of Europe and both can do much to revitalize the urban landscape, through an emphasis on creating quality public spaces for the community to gather, and through mixed use, human-scaled buildings which serve to bring the activities of the city together in symbiotic relationships.

Sensible design brings urban places to life – this is what the vibrant cities in Europe have going for them. Even the busiest European cities feel like a network of interconnected villages, particularly when you get off the beaten path. Almost every building is mixed use, with retail on the ground floor and private residences or office space on the floors above. And the settlement is always very dense, making neighbourhoods walk-able. Public space is emphasized and valued in the form of beautiful parks and plazas. This is a decent model for creating more functional, pleasing cities. The question of what to do with our existing suburban infrastructure is more challenging (more on that in future posts).

Kunstler refers to the built environment of America's suburbs as a ‘tragic comedy’; a cultural wasteland which does nothing to edify its inhabitants. The sad fact is that the suburban landscape was built for cars full of consumers, not people. Many of the places we have inherited are characterized by an alienating infrastructure which discourages one from truly engaging with others and enjoying a place.

Instead, we have grown accustomed to the drive thru convenience of our built environment. That peculiar kind of convenience, which is utterly inconvenient unless you drive everywhere, has become the primary value for most Americans when they interact with their urban environment. For them, the convenience of their driving experience takes priority over quality -- so it's more important to get a burger at the drive thru in less than 2 minutes than it is to get a decent burger. Likewise, every major urban development includes a gargantuan multi-story parking garage or a massive slab of asphalt to park the cars, regardless of the aesthetic sacrifice. In this way the built environment is simply a reflection of the deeper values of our throw away culture.

The same culture that is seduced by the glorious efficiency of McDonald's and disposable everything: plates, cutlery, contact lenses, diapers, etc. also accepts expendable buildings which are no longer aesthetically rewarding, but exist solely to facilitate our primary function in modern society, which is to consume. These facilities of consumption do little to foster any other type of activity within the community. They are designed to get you in, get you spending, and then get you out the door again, back into your car.

The Wal-Mart for instance, is not designed to be a particularly warm enriching experience, inviting you to spend your afternoon there. It’s a massive warehouse with bad fluorescent lighting. The irony is that you end up spending your entire afternoon there unintentionally, just trying to get through the gauntlet of diversions and through the check out.

We're quickly turning our cities, and the network of suburban developments between them, into clones of each other; destroying almost everything that is unique and special about a place. We are destroying the precious story of place for the sake of economic development, which all too often takes the form of a strip mall full of corporate retail. Many American cities feel like habitats for corporate retail establishments rather than habitats for humans.

I’ll turn it over to Kunstler now: enjoy! He’s actually pretty funny.

Related Links

http://www.regenesisgroup.com/
(great example of a developer that's trying to create better human habitats)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Intelligent_Urbanism
(good wikipedia article explaining the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism)

http://www.cnu.org/
(A San Francisco based non-profit organization that works with architects, developers, and planners, teaching how to implement the principles of New Urbanism)

Lester Brown Lecture at Berkeley

2008-11-18T11:25:00.002-06:00

This lecture is a very good overview of our current environmental challenges and potential solutions. Lester Brown is an environmentalist with experience and training in the field of agronomy. He brings an amazingly well-informed perspective to issues related to food production and energy. In this talk he discusses the big picture side effects of corn-based ethanol, the great potential of wind and solar hot water, and encouraging examples of the emerging new green economy. The video is a bit long (over an hour) but well worth the time. Let me know what you think.

Paulson: Our National Dictator of Finance

2008-11-14T09:07:00.009-06:00

$700 billion is a lot of money right? It's important to spend it wisely, right?

The government is making a complete mockery of the bailout oversight Congress supposedly fought so hard to get. Secretary Paulson and his team of ex-Wall Street bankers effectively have a blank check courtesy of the American taxpayer.

So far he has burned through almost half of the TARP money to sink even more cash into AIG (about $40 billion extra -- above and beyond the original $85 billion bailout) and to buy equity shares in failing banks. None of the money has been used to purchase troubled assets.

Last month Paulson announced that he thinks buying shares will be a more effective way to recapitalize banks than buying mortgage backed securities. This was probably a good idea -- the point is that he's done it with zero congressional oversight. Now he's announcing, rather than requesting, that the second half of the bailout money will be pumped into the ailing consumer credit market.

**News alert!! The private debt bubble in America has a huge hole in it and it's deflating fast -- there is no use trying to re-inflate it!!**

That's exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this mess; after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Alan Greenspan revved up the stimulus by slashing interest rates and the cheap money inflated an even bigger bubble in real estate. Our debt to GDP ratio is higher today than it was in 1929. The last thing we need in this country is more consumer debt. We can't borrow our way out of this. We need to accept the recession, end the debt-fuelled spending spree, and invest in a new productive economy.

A Grand Vision -- 6 Steps Toward a Stronger America

2008-11-12T17:48:00.003-06:00

If I could change American society with a stroke of the key pad, then everything I'm about to write would happen exactly as it is described – it’s always fun to dream!

1) TRANSPORT -- The entire American fleet of automobiles needs to be plug in hybrid vehicles designed to run on liquid natural gas or bio-fuel, and the fleet should be drastically reduced in size by lowering demand for cars through massive public investment in local, electrified mass transit, such as light rail systems and streetcars instead of buses.

2) LIQUID FUEL -- Massive investment should be pumped into domestic natural gas production for the hybrids that are on the road, as an interim liquid fuel solution while the electric rail infrastructure is rapidly expanded. Bio-fuels can play a minor role, so long as they derive from cellulosic sources (such as forest waste) that don’t require the cultivation of new land or the misuse of grains.

3) ENERGY -- Of course we also need renewable energy of all kinds: wind and solar in particular, and R and D for new types like tidal. Wind is especially exciting: Lester Brown says we have enough wind generating potential to meet our current domestic electricity demand. Renewable sources of electricity are the long term solution to our energy problem. Electricity is by far the most flexible form of energy we use – it can be generated from a variety of renewable sources and it’s the most versatile form of energy. Electrified transit has to be part of the picture.

4) INCENTIVES -- A completely restructured tax system that creates incentives for people to do the right thing for the environment and discourages people and businesses from wrecking the place. Many (including Al Gore) advocate a carbon tax for economic activities that emit greenhouse gases, and I think that's a good idea. But we also need some government sponsored subsidies for activities such as installing rooftop solar hot water, rainwater harvesting, grid-tied photo-voltaic cells, compact fluorescents, shopping local, buying a hybrid vehicle. We could also lower the speed limit to 55 mph! These measures could dramatically reduce our overall energy demand. Conservation has a huge role to play. We haven’t talked seriously about conservation in America since the 70s, and as a result our energy consumption per capita is twice that of Europe. The good news is that we have a lot of wiggle room to reduce our consumption without sacrificing our basic creature comforts.

5) FOOD -- A brand new government PR campaign aimed at encouraging individual households and neighborhoods to grow their own fruit and veg. To maximize the effectiveness of this campaign, there should be a complimentary, free permaculture education course offered at community colleges throughout the country to teach people about intensive, organic gardening methods. This could save a ton of energy and potentially add to the resilience and security of our nation’s food supply. We need new, 21st century victory gardens! permaculture style.

6) COMMUNITY – One of the greenest things we can do is build strong community wherever we are. Interdependent groups that network, and interact and share are much more resilient to shocks than an individual, and they tend to consume much less per person than isolated households. In a strong community, it is also easier to raise awareness about climate change and fossil fuel depletion while encouraging those around us to respond by shopping less, cycling, sharing, bartering and repairing whenever possible.

**I know most of these suggestions are big picture solutions meant to be implemented at the national level. Obama's election has me waxing patriotic lately. Check out this video for a really cool, local, community-based solution to organize consumers: http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1310

A Brief History of the Age of Oil

2008-11-10T13:17:00.004-06:00

Peak Moment TV describes the current human condition as follows:

“We are living at a peak moment in human history, a peak of human innovation, information, wealth and health, but we're also at a peak of population and consumption, with rising temperatures and declining resources as a result.”

The fuel that got us to this peak moment is oil. The incredible abundance of energy released when oil is burned has supplied humanity with the fuel necessary to make unprecedented advances in technology, population, wealth, etc. You can see it very clearly if you look at global population growth over the last century. Since 1900, human population has risen from around 1.6 billion to 6.6 billion (this period also corresponds roughly with the age of oil.)

The early industrial revolution was fuelled by coal, but in the late nineteenth century, we transitioned to crude oil. Ecologist Richard Heinberg says this was "like winning the energy lottery" because oil is such a uniquely energy-dense resource, and it is relatively easy to transport through pipelines. It is also about twice as potent as an equal volume of coal. So burning this marvelous stuff effectively increased the carrying capacity of the planet beyond our ability to comprehend at the time. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, we had no way of knowing that burning fossil fuels would lead to such explosive population growth, let alone climate change; the sky was the limit for the new economic growth made possible by burning oil.

However we have known for a long time that crude oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, and geologists have observed repeatedly the bell-shaped curve of oil field production. In fact, back in the 50's an American petroleum geologist accurately predicted that the peak in U.S. crude oil production would occur between 1965 and 1970. In retrospect, we know for a fact that we peaked in 1970 because despite huge investment in exploration and new discoveries like Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the U.S. has never been able to produce as much oil as it did in 1970. The U.S. currently produces approximately half as much oil as it did in 1970. Consequently, we've gone from being the world's leading oil exporter (pre-peak) to the world's leading oil importer (post-peak).

Of course the impact of this peak was not felt by most Americans because we were able to import oil cheaply from overseas. This supply of imports has been fairly reliable and stable, with the notable exception of the Arab oil embargo of the 70s, which caused a huge price spike, leading to record prices that were not surpassed until earlier this year. Incidentally, we've not only broken the record, we've shattered it completely -- prices increased another 50% after surpassing the inflation-adjusted high of 1980. We hit the record price of $147 a barrel without an embargo or a hostage crisis!! Imagine what could happen to prices if there was a serious supply disruption.

The cause of the price spike over the summer has been debated ad nauseum by all of the experts. Was it supply and demand or was it speculation? This always struck me as a false debate – it was clearly both. But speculation does not start trends; it reinforces existing trends, so I still feel that the market fundamentals of supply and demand were the main forces driving prices up.

Soaring demand from the emerging BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China) created an extraordinarily tight market before and during the summer of this year. And most oil exporting countries were producing flat out, meaning that they had no spare production capacity. In fact many key non-OPEC producers, such as Mexico, Britain, Norway and possibly Russia have entered an irreversible phase of declining production. Saudi Arabia and Iraq are the only countries in the world with significant spare capacity. This is a basic description of the supply and demand situation during the summer. And while the oil market was tightening, investors were moving loads of capital out of equities and into commodities to protect their assets from inflation. Oil became the commodity of choice for these investors because of the pre-existing trend in the market.

Prices have fallen sharply from their summer peak as demand slackened and recession fears drove speculators out of the market. But at over $60 a barrel, oil is still pricey relative to historic levels; and the recent price drop shows how volatile the market has become over the past 5 years. It is interesting to note that with the exception of the price spike during the embargo of the 70s, the price of a barrel of crude has stayed below $40 (2007 dollars) since the 1870s, and usually hovered around $25 until 2003.

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, oil prices have quadrupled -- rising sharply from around $35 a barrel in 2003 to over $145 a barrel at the peak in July. During this period, the price of oil has risen dramatically and in a non-linear fashion, characterized by huge price swings. The most recent and severe price swing punctuates a worrying trend: increased volatility in the market. This is consistent with the predictions of energy analysts who are concerned about peak oil.

So, when will global oil production peak? Some in the oil industry, including Texas oil men, T. Boone Pickens and Matthew Simmons think it’s already happened; some think it’s happening now; others think it will happen sometime between 2010 and 2030. That covers most of the predictions I’ve seen, although there are a few who don’t believe in the peak oil hypothesis at all (mostly those who have a conflict of interest with honesty, such as OPEC and ExxonMobil).

There are also those who believe that oil is an inexhaustible resource that derives from non-organic sources. I guess, according to them, we should stop calling oil a fossil fuel! The main point is that just as there is a broad scientific consensus that recent climate change is anthropogenic, there is likewise a consensus that peak oil will happen within our lifetime. We can quibble all day long about when it might happen, but it really isn’t important. Just as it isn’t important to predict exactly when we will pass the point of no return with climate change.

The important fact staring us all in the face, but often ignored, is that burning fossil fuels is not sustainable ecologically or economically. Therefore, the energy transition must start now. We are living in a fool’s paradise, and the sooner we begin moving toward fossil fuel independence, the smoother the future will be.

Here is a good overview of peak oil by one of the world's foremost peak oil researchers, Richard Heinberg.

**for more information on peak oil, check out The Oil Drum website. The link is listed in my favorites.

“Change We Need”—Can Obama Deliver?

2008-11-09T14:39:00.004-06:00

Barack Obama is a special leader, with a special opportunity. As he has emphasized with such eloquence in his campaign speeches, this is a defining moment for America and the world. At a moment of tremendous uncertainty around the world, President Elect Obama has risen to power against great odds because he had the audacity to hope.

The response of people around the world to Obama’s hopeful message has been overwhelmingly warm and positive. A day after the election, I watched in awe as Nigerians in the ancestral village of Barack Obama Sr celebrated his son’s historic victory. An Afro-Colombian community on the northern coast of Colombia staged mock elections just so they could cast a symbolic vote for Barack Obama. Children at the school in Indonesia that Obama attended as a youth, watched the returns with eager anticipation. And my personal favorite: In Japan, Obama supporters from across the country, including a few American ex-pats, converged on the town of Obama, Japan for a huge victory party as the U.S. electorate made history. It truly seems that at least for the moment, American voters and onlookers around the world have put cynicism aside and allowed themselves to hope. As Oprah said publicly, “Hope Won!”

This is the first great contribution of Barack Obama – he has made it O.K. to hope again. He has energized a weary people with his enthusiasm and vision. After the duplicity and complicity of the Bush years, even the most die-hard American cynics are starved for something to be hopeful about. When you add the continuing economic crisis, geopolitical tensions over scarce energy resources, and ever more pressing ecological challenges to the picture, it’s clear that the opening decade of the 21st century has not exactly been full of hopeful news.

That is precisely why we need Mr. Obama. The incompetence of George W. Bush bred cynicism, and his fear-mongering tactics paralyzed many Americans. By contrast, Obama’s bold vision for America has inspired hope, and his reassuring, explanatory communication style will mobilize us to create the change we need. Fear paralyzes and hope mobilizes.

For me, this is the great promise of an Obama administration: that his leadership will unlock the collective genius of the American people by engaging citizens on an unprecedented scale to act with a renewed sense of purpose and focus. We cannot afford diversions right now, solving our problems will require ingenuity, foresight, perseverance and sacrifice.

A Time for Action

Given the severity of global resource depletion, climate change, and the pressure of over-population, we are facing an ‘all hands on deck’, ‘all investment capital on deck’ scenario to address these issues. The silver lining of the current economic recession is that there are plenty of idle hands, and the number is growing fast, especially in the construction sector of the economy. But, as you may have gathered from the news lately, in terms of investment capital the outlook is not so sanguine.

At the moment the government is the only entity capable of investing on a scale that could make a difference nationally. And the government has already stretched itself way too thin by funding the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the war in Iraq (total cost is over $500 billion), not to mention the chump change we dropped on the Fannie and Freddie, AIG, and Bear Stearns bail-outs. These bills are truly enormous, so it’s not surprising that the U.S. Treasury is issuing bonds like crazy, piling debt on top of debt in order to stave off financial apocalypse.

Our fiscal situation is grim – no two ways about that. But if we can get out of Iraq, we will save over $100 billion a year and the best case scenario for our illustrious portfolio of toxic mortgage backed assets is that we recover a significant portion of our money. Assuming the best case occurs, maybe our government won’t go bankrupt. But, regardless of what happens in Iraq or with TARP, we have to pass a massive stimulus package aimed at helping the middle class, even if it means maxing out the national credit card. But we don’t just need checks in the mail, we need real investment. I think that if we fail to do this, we could watch a huge portion of the middle class fall into poverty. Such is the severity of the current recession, and such is the inherent vulnerability of our current economy (more on this in future posts).

We are at the front end of a recession that is likely to be lengthy and severe; now would be a great time for our government to invest in a more ecologically sustainable future. One of the first things President Obama will do is send a comprehensive economic stimulus package to Congress. We need this money to go into new national infrastructure projects. Private industry hates taking on projects like this even in the best of times, because it’s difficult to make a profit short term. But during a recession, government funded infrastructure projects are a win-win: they put people to work and they benefit the country long term.

In the 30s the New Deal’s PWA built bridges, canals, and dams. Today, we need an electrified rail network to move people and goods, and we need renewable energy infrastructure. Taken together these projects have the potential to significantly reduce our national demand for fossil fuel derived energy. Some energy experts are calling for a major outlay for renewable energy, particularly wind, so that we can scale these efforts up to a level that will have an impact. How we respond to these ecological constraints is the issue of our time. If we don’t get this right, social security and health care and education won’t matter.

How does this fit with Obama’s vision for America?

To salute Obama’s election, a British newspaper published a collection of Obama’s speeches, beginning in 2004 when he burst onto the national political stage as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In these speeches, Obama consistently outlines his vision for a more unified American society, motivated and focused by the values we share, and mobilized by hope for a better future. He repeatedly emphasizes his commitment to ensuring that government works on behalf of ordinary people. What a novel concept -- a government that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people!

At present, the speeches exist only as political rhetoric, and I am well aware of how fleeting political promises can be. But in our modern age of excessive corporate power and influence, it’s refreshing to watch a politician address the issues of corporate greed and political corruption – even rhetorically. After all, the words of charismatic leaders can be very powerful. It was the soaring oratory of Martin Luther King that touched off the civil rights movement, and social movements often rally around the words and ideas of a persuasive individual.

Obama’s vision for America is compelling indeed; voters turned out in record numbers to support him. Now it’s time to see what he and his new Democrat-led Congress can do. It will be interesting to see if and/or how his priorities as president differ from his campaign promises. With the specter of the financial crisis still looming and a recession on his hands, something is bound to fall lower on his list of priorities. I personally think it’ll be healthcare, but we’ll see. In his first press conference, Obama indicated that it was high time to set politics aside and start getting things done. Right now it seems that the economy is top priority, and I’m very interested to see what form his economic stimulus package takes. He has talked about investing in renewable energy and re-tooling motown to create green jobs. This would be a good start.

Right now everything is in flux, so there will undoubtedly be many surprises in the coming years. But if Barack Obama can tap further into the reservoir of latent enthusiasm and energy that exists among us, and if his leadership decisions as president reflect the ideals espoused in his great speeches, I believe we may look back at this election as the beginning of a marvelous green revolution in America.

**If you are interested in learning more about a potential Green New Deal, check out this article on the Post Carbon Institute website: http://www.postcarbon.org/green_new_deal

"This recession or depression is appearing at the exact historical moment when action to end our dependence on fossil fuels is required in order to avert the chaotic collapse of the entire human enterprise." --Richard Heinberg

My First Blog Post!!

2008-11-07T04:41:00.006-06:00

I'm super excited to finally be blogging! I hope the content on this site is useful and timely. The purpose of this blog is to facilitate an open-ended discussion about the future of our species; our habitat, and our culture. I want to create an online dialogue with readers to address the most pressing challenge of our time, which I feel is summed up well by the phrase on my homepage:

"there are too many of us, using too much stuff too fast."

About This Site

This blog will explore how our collective response to current ecological constraints can build stronger communities, create more ethical economies, and restore balance to our lives. The body of work presented here comprises an ongoing cultural analysis of American life. The main thrust of this analysis is to assess the sustainability of our current life-ways and to highlight more adaptive alternatives to current patterns of resource use. The ethical values underpinning much of this work derive from the deep ecology, voluntary simplicity, and appropriate technology movements.

Because the focus of this site is both an assessment of problems and an exploration of solutions, some posts will simply detail the nature and scale of our environmental challenges. Of the topics discussed in these posts, peak oil and climate change will get the most attention, but I will also cover deforestation and soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, and pollution. However, the majority of my posts will be solution oriented. The chief goal of this site is to empower individual households to take meaningful action in response to the full range of challenges discussed here. So practical solutions will be my central focus.

I believe that the informed action of individual households is a powerful model of change for the larger community. There is great revolutionary potential in the momentum of these changes occurring simultaneously in communities all over the world. This is grassroots social change in action! It all starts with the creation of visible alternative models in the community; the seminal element of every popular revolution in history is activism at the level of the household/local community.

Many useful alternative models of human settlement and resource use already exist. Perhaps the most well known and comprehensive is permaculture design, which emerged in the late 70s with the publication of ‘Permaculture One’ by Australian ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Permaculture represents a broad-based holistic strategy of achieving ecological sustainability through observant, thoughtful design. It is a system for constructing human habitats that ‘fit’ into the larger ecosystem in every sense.

Other models include natural building, homesteading/self-sufficiency, ecovillage and cohousing settlements, small scale renewable energy, and voluntary simplicity. On the homepage there are links to learn more about each of these topics. Modern information technology has facilitated the rapid spread of these alternatives by enabling communities to exchange ideas and practical knowledge quickly and easily. My goal is for this website to further that amazing diffusion of ideas, so that more people can jump for joy into this lifeboat called utopia.