New Home for Sustainable Thoughts

Please check out my new blog and website:  www.SustainableThoughts.org

This new site allows me to highlight my presentation, The American Dream: The World's Nightmare while continuing to blog.  

I am working to transfer all of my email subscribers to this new site so you won't have to sign up again....stay tuned,  I will let you know if it worked.

Here is a screen shot of the new site:

 

A Win-Win from Erica

Today, i thought i would share a great idea from Sustainable Thoughts follower, Erica.  First some background.  In July 2010 I wrote about some interesting challenges out there to prompt people to be mindful about the tremendous amount of time, money, resources, mental energy, and space that we often waste on clothing.  Many of us have closets that are overflowing yet we keep buying more.  In the first challenge, the "6 Item Challenge" people try to live for a month using only the same 6 items of clothing (undergarments not included).  In the second, the "Great American Apparel Diet"  participants try to go for an entire year without buying any new clothing.  To catch up on all the details, check out the original post: Nothing to Wear?  Try this Challenge.

From Erica:

Hi Michael, thanks for this article.  I just spent 3 weeks traveling in Europe and had a wardrobe of about 15 items that could be mixed and matched to fit every occasion from the opera to bike riding.  I like the idea of a compact closet partly because it simplifies getting dressed and partly because I don’t like shopping particularly.  However, I do like to use fashion to express myself so, for about 11 years now, I get together twice a year with a small group of girlfriends (7 total) and we swap clothes.  Sometimes it’s clothes we just don’t want to wear anymore and sometimes it’s clothes that we spent money on and so feel guilty throwing out.  The swap lets us get things off our hands guilt-free and our items often look more fabulous on our girlfriends – which is another gift!  Plus – it’s become a tradition and our favorite days of the year…we make a whole event out of it!  Maybe you can start a men's swap club??

Good luck at the thrift shops!

A brilliant idea - the clothing swap.  It intertwines sustainability (consuming less by sharing/reusing clothing) and community (making time to spend with friends). 

Thanks again to Erica for sharing.  Keep the good ideas coming in folks.

The Siren call

In Greek mythology Sirens would call out from their island to passing sailors with music and song.  Heeding the irresistible calls the seamen would sail to their death as they became shipwrecked on the rocky coast.

The tradition of the Siren is alive and well in our modern world. With each day we are bombarded with the enchanting sounds of fantasy -- that our economy can continue to grow forever.  This intoxicating delusion of an infinite world where we expect our every expectation and desire to be fulfilled runs through every facet of our popular culture.  It is broadcast endlessly across our media.  It permeates our value system and is part of our belief system.  It is taught at the highest levels of our education system.  It is espoused as dogma in our political system.

It is the defining fiber that makes up the fabric of our society.

As more and more societies around the world heed the siren call towards capitalism and consumerism humanity veers closer and closer to the metaphorical cliffs and true disaster.  The allure is so strong that, like the sailors of old, we seem oblivious to the clear signs of danger.

• The climate is reeling out of control and within a lifetime may be unlivable for much of humanity.
• Other forms of life are disappearing from the planet 1000 times faster than normal
• Alienation, depression, and other emotional maladies are chronic, and growing more severe in consumer societies
• The earth is reaching its limit in absorbing the pollution and toxic waste produced by  exponentially growing consumer societies.  The level and number of toxins in our bodies grows with each new day

So, I have to confess that my heart sank when i saw these two headlines in the New York Times Magazine:


In China, Cultivating the Urge to Splurge (November 24, 2010)


Shop, China, Shop  (November 30, 2010)

In these stories the writers continue the suicidal mantra -- if we are to prosper the world must encourage China to continue to grow and create millions, many, many more millions of people who consume like we do in America.

As soon as I saw the headlines I knew that I would have to write a blog posting on this.  I was heartened to see that even Joe Romm, who normally focuses on climate issues (Blog: Climate Progress), felt compelled to attack this lunacy.

I will close with a copy of his post here:
_______________________________________________________________________

And so the word “sustainable” dies

Killed by the NY Times magazine.

November 30, 2010

The larger idea is to build a more sustainable economy, or what Chinese leaders have called a balanced and harmonious society. In that economy, families would not have to save 20 percent of their income in order to pay for schooling and medical care, as many do now. They would instead be able to afford more of the comforts of modern life — better housing, clothing, transportation and communication. In time, China would become the world’s next great consumer society.

Maybe you thought that the word ’sustainable’ was already dead, but really it was only ill — ill-defined by overuse.  But thanks to the NYT magazine and economics columnist David Leonhardt, it has now been officially defined out of existence.

Maybe you thought ’sustainable’ meant something like “capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment.”  How wrong you were.  Apparently, to the Times, ’sustainable’ means being the biggest consumers in the world.  George Orwell would be proud.

Special props to the NYT and Leonhardt for running a piece that uses the words sustainable, sustain, and sustainability six times — without once mentioning global warming or China’s unsustainable contribution to it  — on the day before the big international climate conference in Cancun, a day their op-ed page ran three pieces on global warming, including one explaining the dangers of our unsustainable path (see Farmer in the Times: “Climate change, I believe, may eventually pose an existential threat to my way of life”).

And extra bonus credit to the Times for this head-exploding cover:



Yes, the “health of the world economy depends on” China learning to spend “more like Americans.”  As if (see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?“)

The article is a masterpiece of tortured logic and magical thinking.  Here’s the paragraph that follows the one quoted above:

That term may have negative connotations in the United States, particularly after the last decade of debt excess. But the term means something very different for China. A Chinese consumer society would improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The benefits of the industrial boom that began in the 1980s would spread more rapidly beyond the country’s eastern coast. The service sector would grow, and the economy would no longer be quite so dependent on smoke-spewing factories.

So the only negative connotation the NYT is aware of for the phrase “world’s next great consumer society” is debt excess.  No treehuggers at the Times magazine.

And somehow the benefits of the industrial boom would spread rapidly beyond the country’s east coast, but smoke-spewing factories wouldn’t?  How exactly are all those mass consumer goods bought by all those new Chinese shopaholics going to be manufactured?  By magic?

Note to NYT:  If you make a bunch of stuff for hundreds of millions of people, you’re gonna have to build a lot of smoke-spewing factories.

Finally, I’m all for improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people — but somehow I imagine it can be done without “cultivating the urge to splurge” of Americans.  Indeed, I am reminded of a piece I wrote two years ago — Chinese Premier: Rich nations should ditch ‘unsustainable’ lifestyles … and stop buying all the crap we make.  I cited an AFP story:

BEIJING (AFP) — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday that rich nations should alter their lifestyles to help tackle global warming, at the start of a two-day meeting on climate change, state media reported.
“The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life,” Wen was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Not exactly a view that the NYT felt needed to be part of its piece.

That said, the first thing that popped into my head when I read Wen Jiabao’s admonition was this Onion story: (Note from Sustainable Thoughts:  If you are not familiar with the Onion, this "article" is a spoof/parody)

Chinese Factory Worker Can’t Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans
FENGHUA, CHINA–Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of shit Americans will buy.”

“Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ’salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these,’ …. One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless shit?”

… “I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said….

Among the items that Chen has helped create are plastic-bag dispensers, microwave omelet cookers, glow-in-the-dark page magnifiers, Christmas-themed file baskets, animal-shaped contact-lens cases, and adhesive-backed wall hooks.
“Sometimes, an item the factory produces resembles nothing I’ve ever seen,” Chen said. “One time, we made something that looked like a ladle, but it had holes in its cup and a handle that bent down 90 degrees. The foreman told us that it was a soda-can holder for an automobile. If you are lucky enough to own a car, sit back and enjoy the journey. Save the soda beverage for later.”

… Chen expressed similar confusion over the tens of thousands of pineapple corers, plastic eyeshades, toothpick dispensers, and dog pull-toys that he has helped manufacture.

“Why the demand for so many kitchen gadgets?” Chen said. “I can understand having a good wok, a rice cooker, a tea kettle, a hot plate, some utensils, good china, a teapot with a strainer, and maybe a thermos. But all these extra things–where do the Americans put them? How many times will you use a taco-shell holder? ‘Oh, I really need this silverware-drawer sorter or I will have fits.’ Shut up, stupid American.”

Chen added that many of the items break after only a few uses.

“None are built to last very long,” Chen said. “That is probably so the Americans can return to buy more. Not even the badly translated assembly instructions deter them. If I bought a kitchen item that came with such poor Mandarin instructions, I would return the item immediately.”

May Gao of the Hong Kong-based labor-advocacy group China Labour Bulletin said complaints like Chen’s are common among workers in China’s bustling industrial cities.

“Last week, I took testimony from several young female workers from Shenzhen who said they were locked in a work room for 18 straight hours making inflatable Frisbees,” Gao said. “Finally, the girls joined hands on the factory floor and began to chant, ‘No more insane flying toys for Western pigs!’ They quickly lost their jobs and were ostracized by their families, but the incident was a testament to China’s growing disillusionment with producing needless crap for fat-ass foreigners.”

Continued Gao: “As Chinese manufacturing and foreign investment continue to grow, and more silly novelty products are invented, we can expect to see more of these protests.”

And if the NYT magazine has their way, the Chinese can look forward to making their own crap too!

Wild Words

Yes, it has been a long time.  Been having a hard time finding that "life-balance" thing.  My life has been consumed by work -- little time to read, ponder, or write......

For a while there I was really in a groove.  I was reading quite bit on sustainability and I had lots of ideas for the blog and messages that I wanted to share.  I haven't picked up a book in three months.  I haven't written a thing in two months.  It is so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day routine.  The days pass.  

Each night as my head hit the pillow I would feel disappointed in myself for failing again to make any progress on the blog.  For failing to learn more.  Failing to share more.  As I would drift off to sleep I would promise that tomorrow I would get up early and do some research and some writing.  Didn't happen.  At home each night I would be too tired and would find ways to avoid "thinking."

The months pass and little has changed.  Our society is hurtling toward disaster and still no real discussion.  No serious re-evaluation of who we are, of what we are becoming, and of what we could be.  There is system failure all around us (environmental, political, economic, social) but people hang on tighter and tighter to beliefs, ideologies, and values that are simply not valid in the world we now live in.  (The increasing "shrillness" of our political system is a clean indicator of this)

There are thousands of people out there creating a new reality.  Creating the world of what could be.  I will be writing about some of them and their "movements" in the weeks to come.  I will be encouraging you to find the one(s) that resonate and figure out how you can make your mark.

But for today, I will leave you with some "wild words."  Every day I rack my brain trying to figure out what is the statistic, the turn of phrase, which image, which vision is the one that will enable someone to finally have that "Aha" moment.  Do I paint the apocalypse or sketch the milk and honey?  What will it take to inspire someone?

Every day more and more people "get it" but that number is still far too small to change the system.  So today, an attempt to jar some consciousness:

Herman Daly and John Cobb wrote this in 1994 (15 years ago!)

But at a deep level of our being we find it hard to suppress the cry of anguish, the scream of horror—the wild words required to express wild realities.  We human beings are being led to a dead end---all too literally.  We are living by an ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and killing the planet…  Even the one great success of the program that has governed us, the attainment of material affluence, is now giving way to poverty.  …The United States is just now gaining a foretaste of the suffering that global economic policies, so enthusiastically embraced, have inflicted on hundreds of millions of others.  If we continue on our present paths, future generations, if there are to be any, are condemned to misery.  The fact that many people of good will do not see this dead end is undeniably true, very regrettable, and it is our main reason for writing this book;

(For the Common Good:  Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future)

This is a great book and one of the first that I ever read on ideas around sustainability.  Herman Daly was a World Bank economist who realized that mainstream economic thought was flawed and ultimately unsustainable.  He shows why most of what we were taught in Econ 101 is wrong.  But this book is much more than economics.  Cobb is a theologian.  Together they write a fascinating book that maps out what a sustainable society could look like, and they were some of the first to look at the economic and spiritual and philosophical changes needed to create a sustainable society.  Pick it up at your library!

I am going to leave you with some selected thoughts from Adam Sacks.  In this blog post (shown in blue text) Adam writes a long critique on the environmental movement and its failure to properly communicate the problem of climate change to society.  His critique challenges the very core of our history, and challenges how we define ourselves as humans.  You can read the full blog post here. 

I've already shortened his piece, but if you are really in a hurry, read the selections I highlighted in RED

In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating -- this despite all of our best efforts. Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture. What is it that we do not yet know? What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?^[1]

The answers lie not with science, but with culture.

Climate activists are obsessed with greenhouse-gas emissions and concentrations. Since global climate disruption is an effect of greenhouse gases, and a disastrous one, this is understandable. But it is also a mistake.

Such is the fallacy of climate activism^[2]: We insist that global warming is merely a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions. Since it is not, we fail to tell the truth to the public.  I think that there are two serious errors in our perspectives on greenhouse gases:

Global Warming as Symptom

The first error is our failure to understand that greenhouse gases are not a cause but a symptom, and addressing the symptom will do little but leave us with a devil's sack full of many other symptoms, possibly somewhat less rapidly lethal but lethal nonetheless.

The root cause, the source of the symptoms, is 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations.^[3] This should be no news flash, but the seductive promise of endless growth has grasped all of us civilized folk by the collective throat, led us to expand our population in numbers beyond all reason and to commit genocide of indigenous cultures and destruction of other life on Earth.

To be sure, global climate disruption is the No. 1 symptom. But if planetary warming were to vanish tomorrow, we would still be left with ample catastrophic potential to extinguish many life forms in fairly short order: deforestation; desertification; poisoning of soil, water, air; habitat destruction; overfishing and general decimation of oceans; nuclear waste, depleted uranium, and nuclear weaponry -- to name just a few. (While these symptoms exist independently, many are intensified by global warming.)

We will not change course by addressing each of these as separate issues; we have to address root cultural cause.

[MD:  long section on climate science, let's skip that and get to the good stuff]

Bitter climate truths are fundamentally bitter cultural truths. Endless growth is an impossibility in the physical world, always -- but always -- ending in overshot and collapse. Collapse: with a bang or a whimper, most likely both. We are already witnessing it, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Because of this civilization's obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way. Our version of life on earth has come to an end.  Moreover, there are no "free market" or "economic" solutions. And since corporations must have physically impossible endless growth in order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth. The only socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve.

We can't bargain with the forces of nature, trading slightly less harmful trinkets for a fantasied reprieve. Geophysical processes care not one whit for our politics, our economics, our evening meals, our theologies, our love for our children, our plaintive cries of innocence and error.

We can either try to plan the transition, even at this late hour, or the physical forces of the world will do it for us -- indeed, they already are. As Alfred Crosby stated in his remarkable book, Ecological Imperialism, mother nature's ministrations are never gentle.^[5]

Telling the Truth

If we climate activists don't tell the truth as well as we know it -- which we have been loathe to do because we ourselves are frightened to speak the words -- the public will not respond, notwithstanding all our protestations of urgency.

And contrary to current mainstream climate-activist opinion, contrary to all the pointless "focus groups," contrary to the endless speculation on "correct framing," the only way to tell the truth is to tell it. All of it, no matter how terrifying it may be.^[6]

It is offensive and condescending for activists to assume that people can't handle the truth without environmentalists finding a way to make it more palatable. The public is concerned, we vaguely know that something is desperately wrong, and we want to know more so we can try to figure out what to do. The response to An Inconvenient Truth, as tame as that film was in retrospect, should have made it clear that we want to know the truth.

And finally, denial requires a great deal of energy, is emotionally exhausting, fraught with conflict and confusion. Pretending we can save our current way of life derails us and sends us in directions that lead us astray. The sooner we embrace the truth, the sooner we can begin the real work.

Let's just tell it.

Stating the Problem

After we tell the truth, then what can we do? Is it hopeless? Perhaps. But before we can have the slightest chance of meaningful action, having told the truth, we have to face the climate reality, fully and unflinchingly. If we base our planning on false premises -- such as the oft-stated stutter that reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions will forestall "the worst effects of global warming" -- we can only come up with false solutions. "Solutions" that will make us feel better as we tumble toward the end, but will make no ultimate difference whatsoever.

Furthermore, we can and must pose the problem without necessarily providing the "solutions."^[7] I can't tell you how many climate activists have scolded me, "You can't state a problem like that without providing some solutions." If we accept that premise, all of scientific inquiry as well as many other kinds of problem-solving would come to a screeching halt. The whole point of stating a problem is to clarify questions, confusions, and unknowns, so that the problem statement can be mulled, chewed, and clarified to lead to some meaningful answers, even though the answers may seem to be out of reach.

Some of our most important thinking happens while developing the problem statement, and the better the problem statement the richer our responses. That's why framing the global warming problem as greenhouse-gas concentrations has proved to be such a dead end.

Here is the problem statement as it is beginning to unfold for me. We are all a part of struggling to develop this thinking together:

We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we've ever faced. It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years -- but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora's Box tightly shut. We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.

We love our cars, our electricity, our iPods, our theme parks, our bananas, our Nikes, and our nukes, but we behave as if we understand nothing of the land and water and air that gives us life. It is past time to think and act differently.

If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably. Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn't good and we'd better think it through very carefully.

Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic. We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand.^[8]

Living sustainably means, in Derrick Jensen's elegantly simple definition, that whatever we do, we can do it indefinitely.^[9] We cannot use up anything more or faster than nature provides, we don't poison the air, water, or soil, and we respect the web of life of which we are an intricate part. We are not separate from nature, or above it, or in any way qualified to supervise it.^[10] The evidence is ample and overwhelming; all we have to do is be brave enough to look.

How do we survive in a world that will probably turn -- is already turning, for many humans and non-humans alike -- into a living hell? How do we even grow or gather food or find clean water or stay warm or cool while assaulted by biblical floods, storms, rising seas, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, and hail?

It is crystal clear that we cannot leave it to the technophiliacs. It is human technology coupled with our inability to comprehend, predict, and prevent unintended consequences that have brought us global catastrophe, culminating in climate disruption, in the first place. Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking--the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.^[11]

All that being said, we needn't discard all that we've learned, far from it.^[12] But we must use our knowledge with great discretion, and lock much of it away as so much nuclear weaponry and waste.

Time is running very short, but the forgiveness of this little blue orb in a vast lonely universe will continue to astonish and nourish us--if we only give it the chance.

Our obligation as activists, the first step, the essence, is to part the cultural veil at long last, and to tell the truth.

What could be...

An exciting day here at Sustainable Thoughts:  our first guest blogger.  Josh Foster, a friend and former colleague traveled to Europe over the summer and was amazed at how easy it was to get around, mostly without the need for a vehicle.  I asked him to share his experience with us.

Josh is a self-described policy wonk and climate science "groupie" with over 15 years working on adaptation to climate change (working on how to deal with the changes caused by our rapidly changing climate; learn the basics here). He spent 13 years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) improving the  communication of climate information to decision makers and the public. He now works with local governments to enhance their resilience to climate change impacts and to ensure adaptation is on the national policy agenda.


First, my little prologue:

For most of us in the U.S. it is hard to imagine life without a car.  The car is wrapped up in our country's history, our popular culture, and for many, it makes up part of our personal identity.  Owning a car is a national birth right.  Our landscape is defined by the privately owned vehicle.  Thousands of miles of highways.  Shopping centers located miles from where we live with massive parking lots.  Zoning laws that require us to drive to go from work, to school, to find a loaf of bread.  Mile after mile of strip malls and low density development. 


This reality did not happen overnight.  Our government has invested many billions of dollars since the 1950s to subsidize road building around the country.  Our taxation system encourages the discovery and use of massive amouts of oil needed to fuel this system.  The military is used with greater frequency to protect oil supply lines.


If you live anywhere outside of a large city in America your life would be very hard without a vehicle. 


Using a 1.5 ton piece of machinary to move one person around is stunningly unsustainable.  The carbon emissions that are destroying the climate.  The pollution that kills thousands each year.  Thousands more who die in accidents.  The material use.  The mining.  The toxic chemicals.

Any proposition to reduce the use of cars is seen as an attack on the American way of life.  Many can only imagine a life of extreme inconvenience and suffering.  A loss of independence and freedom.  It is easy to understand why -- public transportation in the US is typically woeful and unreliable. 


It doesn't have to be that way. 


Many societies have created public transporation systems that are clean, efficient and useful.  People get to where they need to go with minimal delay and discomfort.  These systems are many times more efficient than the one we have in America. 


Cars are not part of a sustainable future.  It is that simple. 


Below is a view to world that could be.  That already is.  When do we catch up?
_____________________________________________________________________

From Josh Foster:



It’s mid-afternoon on the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend May 2010. I am crawling along in pre-Holiday bumper-to-bumper Beltway traffic on my way to Washington Dulles International Airport. My goal is to fly to Bonn, Germany to speak at the Resilient Cities 2010 - 1st World Congress on Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change. The Congress is a first ever, global gathering dedicated to sharing the latest scientific findings, effective approaches and state-of-the-art programs on climate change adaptation and resilience-building in cities and urbanized areas.

I had left my condo in Cleveland Park, DC three hours before my flight for the 45 minute drive to Dulles Airport—ostensibly to “beat the traffic”, but found my fellow drivers had the same idea regarding their long-weekend vacations—2 days in advance! Reaching the Dulles access road running 17 miles to the airport traffic continues to crawl along behind trucks hauling dirt for the future Silver Metro Line connecting Falls Church to Dulles…hints of a better future. Arriving at the airport I park in the sprawling satellite economy lot full of cars…and board my first public transportation…the shuttle bus to the terminal. On the bus I reflect that it’s still overall cheaper, faster, and more convenient to drive to an airport 35 miles from downtown Washington, DC, park, and fly internationally than to take a cab or bus to Dulles, or Metro to Washington National---the “downtown” DC airport—and connect to Europe via another domestic airport. Essentially the incentives embedded in the design of my hometown’s urban system encourages my less sustainable behavior…and here I am one who has dedicated my career to encouraging better.


Arriving at the check-in line I find 500 of my fellow travelers also waiting to enter the airport system. Needless to say, I missed my flight…reason given, “traffic congestion,” resulting in a sage nod from the rebooking agent -- and the need to return home for the night and do it all again the next day with associated expenditure of time and resources.


The next day, as we are in the glide path into Frankfurt Airport, and I am looking across green farm fields around the city studded with the iconic towers of windmills, blades turning lazily in the available breeze. After clearing customs, I follow signs over a foot bridge directly into the adjacent train station to catch the high-speed rail to Bonn. In about 20 minutes I am cruising along at 232 mph past the same farm fields and windmills I saw from the plane. Near Bonn, some obstruction in the track sends us back to Frankfurt—but redundancy in the dense track system allows an alternate scenic route along the Rhine River -- beautiful towns, castles, and water but also working cargo barges plying their trade. From the train I also notice the ubiquity of individual and community gardens growing vegetables in almost every yard and town.


Arriving at Bonn Station, I exit within a stones throw of dense light tram-rail and bus lines. Running late, I grab a cab to the conference center where food, lodging, and facilities are all centralized around an open-air garden and pond. A nearby 700-acre park allows space for early morning jogs overlooking the Rhine intersecting a miles long foot-path along the river that doubles as a bicycle commuter route. Going downtown for the evening we walk to the nearby subway station for a 20-minute ride. After a fun evening of fine food, drink, and fellowship we return to the conference center in a mini-van taxi that fits our entire group of 8. Upon leaving Bonn, I take a taxi to the nearby city of Cologne to visit a friend, and then a train to the airport…flying to Vienna, Austria.


On the glide path into the airport in Vienna, I again see the green farmland around the city studded with windmills. I am staying with a friend in a suburb surrounded by vineyards and walking trails…each vineyard with it’s own local restaurant. Groceries and many other amenities line the local dense network of streets and houses. An urgent trip to his daughters school to deliver a science project means a 5-minute walk to a light rail-tram, followed by a bus ride, and a short walk to the school. His kids ride public transit to school daily and children as young as 5 ride unsupervised. Going downtown from the school we board a bus, to a subway station, and exit in the heart of the city. Adjacent to the subway exit is a trash to energy incinerator that is high-tech, clean, and a local icon having been designed as a work of art. Walking around the Viennese “old city” it is nearly carless…and I notice that parking necessitates a special permit at $10s per hour. We return home hopping a bus, to tram, and walk in the door a few minutes later. When we go hiking the next day a bus that passes every 10 minutes takes us to the top of a nearby range of hills with great views and networks of trails through miles of parkland that are all still inside the city limits.


My next stop is Helsinki, Finland. Exiting the airport terminal I board a bus (leaving twice per hour) for the 50-minute ride downtown. The bus arrives at the center city train station surrounded by light tram-lines and bike paths with streets sparsely crowded with cars. After a fine dinner near the train station we hop a frequent bus out to his apartment in the suburb.  He does not have a car. His apartment complex is near the ocean and surrounded by forest. It has a grocery store, a child-care center, and a health-care clinic -- most apartment complexes have these facilities. And these are the “cheap” apartments. My friend’s wife was in the hospital for 2 months—and they only paid $500 out of pocket. In the morning, I notice numerous pedestrian bridges over roads and bike paths in and around the complex. Buses passing through leave for downtown every 10 minutes. A short walk takes us to nature trails threading through woods, across cliffs with great views of the ocean, and through estuaries full of waterfowl. He rides the bus to work—an office building overlooking the water.

Upon leaving my friend’s on the way home to the US, I continue on downtown by bus. I kill time at a sidewalk café in the sun with a coffee and pastry overlooking a parkland running between main thouroughfaries. I reflect that skillful urban design, public transportation, and a willingness to pay collectively to provide for the common good are a real kind of security. It is also gratifying to know that there are countries in the world that are seeking a path toward sustainability while also providing a high quality of life. There are those in the US that would call it Socialism as if it was a pejorative…but as I board the bus to the airport, I think it feels like freedom…and that there is a different way to live…

Disconnect to reconnect

When you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing you do? 

Can you remember the last time you were not even a little bit tired?

I thought I would share this article that I read a few days ago -- it really resonated with me.  As we find more and more ways to "stay connected" or be entertained we have less and less time for ourselves and our own thoughts.  Last year I used to take the metro into work each day.  I always took an issue of Newsweek magazine along so I could do some of my "current events" reading.  Heaven forbid I should waste the 40 minute one-way ride.  After a while I decided to not do any reading during the morning ride -- I "allowed" myself the luxury of just sitting and thinking.  I loved it.  I have so many things I feel that I should be doing, reading this, writing that, working on something else, I grant myself very little time to do nothing.  In our culture, that is wasted time.  I feel that stress every day, to not waste a minute.  I am working hard to move away from technology and more towards nature and flesh and blood people.  I highly recommend it.

Despite what our culture says, doing more, does not equal living more.


New York Times
August 24, 2010


Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television.

Just another day at the gym.

As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

Ms. Bates, for example, might be clearer-headed if she went for a run outside, away from her devices, research suggests.

At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.

The researchers suspect that the findings also apply to how humans learn.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.

Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say.

“People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.

Regardless, there is now a whole industry of mobile software developers competing to help people scratch the entertainment itch. Flurry, a company that tracks the use of apps, has found that mobile games are typically played for 6.3 minutes, but that many are played for much shorter intervals. One popular game that involves stacking blocks gets played for 2.2 minutes on average.

Today’s game makers are trying to fill small bits of free time, said Sebastien de Halleux, a co-founder of PlayFish, a game company owned by the industry giant Electronic Arts.

“Instead of having long relaxing breaks, like taking two hours for lunch, we have a lot of these micro-moments,” he said. Game makers like Electronic Arts, he added, “have reinvented the game experience to fit into micro-moments.”

Many business people, of course, have good reason to be constantly checking their phones. But this can take a mental toll. Henry Chen, 26, a self-employed auto mechanic in San Francisco, has mixed feelings about his BlackBerry habits.

“I check it a lot, whenever there is downtime,” Mr. Chen said. Moments earlier, he was texting with a friend while he stood in line at a bagel shop; he stopped only when the woman behind the counter interrupted him to ask for his order.

Mr. Chen, who recently started his business, doesn’t want to miss a potential customer. Yet he says that since he upgraded his phone a year ago to a feature-rich BlackBerry, he can feel stressed out by what he described as internal pressure to constantly stay in contact.

“It’s become a demand. Not necessarily a demand of the customer, but a demand of my head,” he said. “I told my girlfriend that I’m more tired since I got this thing.”

In the parking lot outside the bagel shop, others were filling up moments with their phones. While Eddie Umadhay, 59, a construction inspector, sat in his car waiting for his wife to grocery shop, he deleted old e-mail while listening to news on the radio. On a bench outside a coffee house, Ossie Gabriel, 44, a nurse practitioner, waited for a friend and checked e-mail “to kill time.”

Crossing the street from the grocery store to his car, David Alvarado pushed his 2-year-old daughter in a cart filled with shopping bags, his phone pressed to his ear.

He was talking to a colleague about work scheduling, noting that he wanted to steal a moment to make the call between paying for the groceries and driving.

“I wanted to take advantage of the little gap,” said Mr. Alvarado, 30, a facilities manager at a community center.

For many such people, the little digital asides come on top of heavy use of computers during the day. Take Ms. Bates, the exercising multitasker at the expansive Bakar Fitness and Recreation Center. She wakes up and peeks at her iPhone before she gets out of bed. At her job in advertising, she spends all day in front of her laptop.

But, far from wanting a break from screens when she exercises, she says she couldn’t possibly spend 55 minutes on the elliptical machine without “lots of things to do.” This includes relentless channel surfing.

“I switch constantly,” she said. “I can’t stand commercials. I have to flip around unless I’m watching ‘Project Runway’ or something I’m really into.”

Some researchers say that whatever downside there is to not resting the brain, it pales in comparison to the benefits technology can bring in motivating people to sweat.

“Exercise needs to be part of our lives in the sedentary world we’re immersed in. Anything that helps us move is beneficial,” said John J. Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and author of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.”

But all things being equal, Mr. Ratey said, he would prefer to see people do their workouts away from their devices: “There is more bang for your buck doing it outside, for your mood and working memory.”

Of the 70 cardio machines on the main floor at Bakar Fitness, 67 have televisions attached. Most of them also have iPod docks and displays showing workout performance, and a few have games, like a rope-climbing machine that shows an animated character climbing the rope while the live human does so too.

A few months ago, the cable TV went out and some patrons were apoplectic. “It was an uproar. People said: ‘That’s what we’re paying for,’ ” said Leeane Jensen, 28, the fitness manager.

At least one exerciser has a different take. Two stories up from the main floor, Peter Colley, 23, churns away on one of the several dozen elliptical machines without a TV. Instead, they are bathed in sunlight, looking out onto the pool and palm trees.

“I look at the wind on the trees. I watch the swimmers go back and forth,” Mr. Colley said. “I usually come here to clear my head.”
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Some of my favorite comments on this article:

Rob  New York  August 24th, 2010  4:06 pm

I was out to dinner with some current and former colleagues. I had put the evening together hoping for some interesting conversation. The only participant in those conversations seemed to be me. The others kept glancing (nervously) at their phones. They missed out on a lovely evening and I vowed never to dine with such idiots again.

Rage Baby  NYC  August 24th, 2010  4:06 pm

I click on things to avoid the pain of thinking

Steve St-Laurent  Vancouver, BC  August 24th, 2010  4:06 pm

The end result of this self-absorbption is that everyone else becomes, well, just traffic – stuff that distracts you or gets in your way. Then we wonder about the epidemic decline in empathy. What a sorry state and pathetic waste of our humanity!

T.R.  New York  August 24th, 2010  3:35 pm

I do not find this news surprising. As a high school English teacher, I blame this lifestyle on my students' inability to think. I see it among adults as well. Nobody discusses ideas because nobody has any.

Matt  New York City  August 24th, 2010  3:35 pm

Yes, our passion for connectivity is disconnecting us from ourselves.

jesus.christ  Newark, NJ  August 24th, 2010  4:57 pm
Ball-and-Chain nation. That's what I tell my students who can't seem to let go of their cell phones. Slot machine mentality, they await for some event that will change their lowly lives. That event won't come from a cell phone though, yet they continue to fixate on this little device. It's all they need, and in many ways I must agree that many of these minions will die waiting to live their lives. Such is youth

MT  Rhode Island  August 24th, 2010  4:57 pm

Articles like this inspire me to remove myself from my digital devices. I myself turn on my itouch and check my email before I put on my glasses in the morning, listen to my ipod while working out, and spend more time on the computer daily than I do reading a book. From now on,I will make a pledge to myself to use less of my digital devices, and spend more time living in the present, appreciating and acknowledging my surroundings and the natural world. Thank you for motivating me to live my life! :)

Walking Lightly (er)

I thought I would share some of the changes and/or choices we (me and my partner) have made to try and reduce our impact on the planet. We are always looking for new ways to reduce the amount of energy that we consume, to reduce the amount of materials that we use and for ways to extend the life of the goods we already have.

Why is this important? Well, if everyone on the planet consumed the way we do in the United States we would need FIVE earths. We have one (for those of you keeping score). We use up materials as if trees, water, and minerals were unlimited. In just 100 years we have wiped out much of the earth's stocks of natural resources.

In order to avoid catastrophe we must fundamentally change how we live our lives. Few people are prepared for this message. It challenges everything we think we know about life. It challenges and calls into question the very core of our national and personal identities'. Some very heavy emotional and intellectual lifting indeed, but for today, let's focus on the "easy" stuff.  Let's focus on reducing energy use, consuming less, and looking at diet.

There are LOT's of links in this posting.  Take your time and work through them if you can.  Lot's of good information and ideas to be explored.

Reduce Energy Use

Drive Less:  In America 30-40% of all energy use, and climate change inducing carbon emissions, come from the transportation sector.  That is because our society is so dependent on the private automobile.  Do everything you can to drive less. 

Car:  We have made a commitment to being, at most, a one-car family. We have a small car which at times is inconvenient and we have considered getting a larger second-hand car for those times when more space is needed.  In the end we decided that if a larger car is needed, we will trade in the first car.  If and when public transportation improves in this country I would love to have no car and just rent a vehicle from time to time.

Location:  When we moved to Washington DC we very consciously chose an apartment that is within walking distance of a metro station.  This allows us to use public transportation to go to work each day and for any excursions into the city (In fact, with my new job, I can actually walk to work - even better!).   Our apartment is within walking distance to two grocery stores (Giant and Whole Foods).  We have a cart that we use to carry our groceries back and forth.  We get some exercise and we don't use the car.  Love it.

Facilities:  We also specifically chose an apartment complex that has tennis courts and a gym.  Finding tennis courts in this semi-urban area can be difficult and can require driving 5 to 45 minutes to public courts depending on the location and time of day.  I save a tremendous amount of time and fuel by having courts that I can walk to.   We can go weeks at a time without using the car.

Promote Integrated Communities:  In many communities across the U.S. we passed zoning laws that separate our schools from our homes and from our work place.  We spend much of our lives cut off from the world as we drive from one errand to the next.  Get involved in your local political scene and get those zoning laws changed to create a move livable environment.  Arlington Virginia did just this and it is thriving. (Read about it here and here.)  If you are looking to move to a new area use this site to find a "walkable" community.

Reduce Home Energy Use: (here is a good list also)

1. Choose a smaller home:  A smaller space requires less energy to heat and keep cool.
2. Get an Energy Audit:  The best way to find out where you are losing energy (and money).  Focus on the biggest energy hogs in your home (good list here)"
1. Insulate your home
2. Get triple pane windows
3. Get a more efficient Refrigerator (the fridge is a major energy hog)
4. Get a more efficient water heater
5. Get low flush toilets
3. Use Efficient Technology:
1. Use compact fluorescent bulbs.  They can reduce your energy use by 80%.
2. Only use appliances with the Energy Star symbol.  Energy Star approved products can use 2 to 10 times less energy than non-approved models!  (Find energy star appliances here)
3. Use smart power strips that cut off power to appliances when not be used.  Many appliances drain energy even when off ("Energy Vampires").  Anywhere from 5-10% of all energy use in the U.S. is from these vampires.  Unplug!!

Appliances:  Although our rent includes the cost of electricity and water we do as much as we can to reduce our use of these resources.

1. All light bulbs are low energy.
2. We use power strips that cut off the current to appliances when not in use.  We unplug appliances not on power strips.
3. When buying appliances we make to purchase the most energy efficient model currently available.
4. Laundry:  We wash all our clothes in cold water.
5. Dish washer:  If used properly a dish washer can save in water and energy.  We fill the machine to the maximum before each load is started.

Consume Less
Our entire society is set up to promote consumption.  We are bombarded by messages every day that create the "need" to buy, buy, buy.

Reduce the Temptation

Turn off the TV ( research shows that for each extra hour of TV watched, a person spends an extra $220/year).

Stop Mail Order Catalogs

Over the years I ended up on the mailing list of many mail order shopping catalogs (LL Bean, Eddie Bauer, etc).  I rarely needed anything but I would just page through them for the fun of it.  Invariably, from time to time I would find something that caught my eye and I would buy it.  I have stopped all the catalogs and save all that paper and avoid impulse buying.  I don’t miss it.  You can stop catalogs by calling the company directly or by using this free website.

Stop/Reduce Paper use

1. Stop using paper towels
2. Use tissues from recycled paper
3. Use toilet paper from recycled paper

Paper Towels:  I love the convenience of paper towels but cutting down virgin forests for such convenience is too high a price to pay.  We now have a collection of dish towels that do the same job and can just be thrown in the wash.

 

Paper Napkins:  Same idea.  We have cloth napkins that we wash and reuse.

Toilet Paper:  Only from recycled paper.

Water bottle:  We each have a durable water bottle that we take with us everywhere.  We never need to buy bottled water.  We use a water filter at home.  Watch this fun video on bottled water.

Tailor:  We take clothes when they have small tears or don't fit so well to the tailor and for $1 to $10 we can extend the life our otherwise perfectly fine clothes.

Paper:  We normally print on both sides of paper.  We reuse all single side printed sheets.  I also save all paper from work (I get a lot of memos, handouts, draft documents, etc. that are printed single sided) and reuse them at home.

E-statements:  I have converted all my financial statements (bank, credit cards, mutual funds, etc) to electronic statements.  It has cut down significantly on the amount of mail I receive.  I used to have binders and binders of all these statements that I never looked at.  Saves me time in filing and saves trees.

Receipts:  I have boxes and boxes of receipts that I never used.  If you buy online or use a credit card then you already have an electronic receipt.  I no longer ask for receipts at the gas station.  When I have choice, I normally decline getting a receipt.

Recycle:  We separate our trash and recycle as much as we can.

Avoid Plastic:  Every piece of plastic ever made still exists.  In the US we buy about 30 Billion plastic water bottles each year!!  Most end up land fills.  Not to mention all that other plastic we consume every day as packing materials for the stuff we buy, Ziploc bags, shopping bags, etc, etc.  Plastic doesn't go away easily -- it can take 500 to 1000 years for plastic to break down.  Nobody knows for sure.  And every day we learn of more risks associated with the chemicals that leach out of these plastic products.  Plastic burned in incinerators emit carcinogenic fumes into the air.  Plastic is evil. Do everything you can to remove plastic from your life.

Plastic shopping bags:  We have a collection of canvas bags that we use for all shopping.  We keep a set in the car.  We have small portable ones that we keep in our backpacks or travel bags.  It took us a while to get in the habit of remembering to take the bags with us but now it is second nature and now we never use plastic bags. 

Ziploc bags:  We try and use as little as possible and if we must, we gently wash and reuse to extend their life.  To replace ziploc bags we have purchased small Pyrex containers to protect our food.  Works great.

Reduce exposure to chemicals

Cleaning Products:  We have experimented with a range of “Green” cleaning products.  After trial and error we have managed to find products that get the job done using less toxic chemicals.  We like Method products for:

1. toilet cleaner
2. bathroom tile cleaner
3. floor cleaner
4. window and glass cleaner
5. dishwasher soap
6. dish washing machine soap

Diet
The nature of our diet has a tremendous impact on the planet.  Our industrial food system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels and is unsustainable on many levels.  Watch the great documentary "Food Inc" to learn about how our food system fails us. The American diet is rich in meat, a very inefficient way to feed a growing population.  It takes 2,500 gallons of water to make a one-pound steak in the U.S.!  More than 50% of the entire corn harvested in the U.S. is fed to cows to make beef.  Fast food is also becoming a staple of the American diet with disastrous effects on our personal and planetary health.  Read more on this here.

Eat less Meat: 

1. We eat red meat very rarely and when we do we buy only organic, grass fed beef or grass fed buffalo meat.  
2. We try and have at least a few "meat free" days each week.
3. We buy eggs that are free-range and organic and endorsed by the Humane Society
4. We buy organic chicken (free range) and pork
5. We buy fish according to environmentally friendly list (printable version here) - avoiding sea bass, farmed salmon etc... focusing on tilapia, wild salmon....

 Buy Local

We buy as much of our vegetables from local farmers and we go to the farmers market regularly.  We buy organic vegetables and fruits as much as possible.

Well, that is a start.  Drop me a line if you have some other good ideas or examples of steps that you have taken to reduce your footprint.

The longest journey begins with a single step....