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…
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Friday, September 10, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Nothing to Wear? Try this Challenge
As i push myself to lead a more sustainable lifestyle I try to buy less stuff. For example, on the clothing front I try to see how many months I can go without buying any new clothing. The next phase of the experiment for me is to explore second-hand stores and see how much of my wardrobe that I can buy there. I am also using a tailor more to extend the life of clothes I currently have. What percentage of the clothes in our closets do we actually wear? How much mental energy and time do we spend each day pondering what to wear? Is this really how we want live our lives?
Below is an interesting article on two clothing related challenges that really promotes mindfulness on this issue.
Check out this slide show of people who tried the 6 Items challenge. And the observations and testimonials from the Great American Apparel Diet (no new clothes for a year) are thought provoking. An example:
By KatherineS
If you try either of the challenges please let me know -- I would love to hear your insights. Perhaps you could be a guest blogger and tell us about your experience!
New York Times, July 21, 2010
Shoppers on a ‘Diet’ Tame the Urge to Buy
By ERIC WILSON
IMAGINE that horrible though all-too-familiar feeling: You are standing before a fully stuffed closet and yet have nothing to wear.
Now, imagine something worse: Your closet contains only six items, and you are restricted to wearing only those six items for an entire month.
Now, if you can bear it, imagine something unspeakable:
No one notices.
Nearly a month into what amounted to just such a self-inflicted fast of fashion, Stella Brennan, 31, an insurance sales executive from Kenosha, Wis., realized last week that not even her husband, Kelly, a machinist, had yet figured out that she had been wearing the same six items, over and over, since June 21. The sad punch line is that Mr. Brennan is the one who actually does the laundry in the family.
During her experiment — something called a “shopping diet,” actually — which ended on Wednesday, Ms. Brennan made do with the following: a black blazer and pants from H & M; two button-down shirts, one black and one pink; a pair of Old Navy jeans; and one well-worn pink T-shirt.
How she settled on those items was complicated by the fact that she has two young children, a golden retriever and three cats, and that she was starting a new job last month with an hourlong commute. She said she needed “six items that are animal-hair-, kid-, food- and wrinkle-resistant. I need these items to be professional, but also work for playing football with my son and tea parties.”
She agonized the longest over the T-shirt — the button-down shirts and suit separates were for work, but the right T-shirt could be worn casually with jeans or dressed up with the blazer. Her revelation at the end of 31 days, after her husband still had not noticed, even when she wore her floral-printed pajamas to do yard work: “Obviously, I didn’t need all of these clothes.”
This self-imposed exercise in frugality was prompted by a Web challenge called Six Items or Less (sixitemsorless.com). The premise was to go an entire month wearing only six items already found in your closet (not counting shoes, underwear or accessories). Nearly 100 people around the country, and in faraway places like Dubai and Bangalore, India, were also taking part in the regimen, with motives including a way to trim back on spending, an outright rejection of fashion, and a concern that the mass production and global transportation of increasingly cheap clothing was damaging the environment.
Meanwhile, an even stricter program, the Great American Apparel Diet, which began on Sept. 1, has attracted pledges by more than 150 women and two men to abstain from buying for an entire year. (Again, undies don’t count.) And next month, Gallery Books will publish a self-help guide, called “The Shopping Diet,” by the red-carpet stylist Phillip Bloch. (“Step 1: Admit You’re an Overshopper”... “Step 9: Practice Safe, Responsible Shopping”... “Step 10: Make the Diet a Way of Life.”)
Though their numbers may be small, and their diets extreme, these self-deniers of fashion are representative, in perhaps a notable way, of a broader reckoning of consumers’ spending habits. As the economy begins to improve, shoppers of every income appear to be wrestling with the same questions: Is it safe to go back to our old, pre-recession ways? Or should we? The authors of these diets — including some fashion marketing and advertising executives, interestingly enough — seem to think not.
Sally Bjornsen, the founder of the Great American Apparel Diet (thegreatamericanappareldiet.com), said she was prompted to stop buying clothes for a simple reason: “I was sick and tired of consumerism,” she said.
Last summer, Ms. Bjornsen, 47, said she was thinking about how years of easy credit had led to overspending on cars, homes and luxury goods. Then, looking in her own closet, she realized that she was part of the problem, she said. For her job, as a representative of commercial photographers in Seattle and before that as a marketing executive at fashion companies like Nike and Nordstrom, she’d spent $5,000 to $10,000 a year on clothes.
“I was buying in an egregious way,” Ms. Bjornsen said. “I was just kind of grossed out by the whole thing.”
Independently, the “six items” experiment was conceived by two friends, Heidi Hackemer, 31, a strategic business director at the New York advertising agency BBH, and Tamsin Davies, 34, the head of innovation at Fallon London, after an informal discussion about their desires to pare down their wardrobes. The idea snowballed into a creative challenge, Six Items or Less.
The rules were not hard and fast. If a person owned, for example, several similar black blazers — as Ms. Brennan, the Wisconsin executive, did — she could count them as one item.
“Our whole thing was not to put a philosophy behind it, and not be too preachy,” Ms. Hackemer said. The challenge has proved so popular that she said it would be repeated this fall.
Her six items were a black dress, a pair of black jeggings (a jeans-leggings hybrid), a black tank top, a black blazer, a gray skirt and denim shorts. The combinations she came up with were surprisingly diverse enough to get her through the month, “but once you hit Week 3, you think, You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Sixers, as Six Items or Less enthusiasts call themselves, have formed something of an online fashion support network, especially when they feel tempted to fall off the wagon.
Ms. Brennan did sound ripe for some kind of fashion intervention. In a recent interview, she spoke of a rack of clothes in the back of her closet that still had the tags on them, and clothes that she has not worn in 15 years but that she cannot stand to part with, and her 72 pairs of “active” shoes (meaning those that she actively wears, not the ones still in the boxes), and a closet full of clothes for her 3-year-old daughter, and, lest she forget, a wardrobe of clothes for her dog.
“My daughter doesn’t care what she wears, and I’m turning her into a monster,” Ms. Brennan said. “We’re ruining the next generation of girls with fashion.”
THE dieters’ comments reflect the complicated and sometimes confused relationships between consumers and their closets — which perhaps was to be expected in a nation where women, on average, own seven pairs of jeans but wear only four regularly, according to the September issue of Consumer Reports’ ShopSmart magazine. One in four women asked by the magazine said she owned 10 pairs or more.
Still, the month has been grueling. One Sixer from Venice, Calif., confessed online to splurging on T-shirts at a James Perse sample sale. Addy, from Milwaukee, wrote that she had become so bored with her six items “that I don’t even have a desire to get up in the morning,” and she complained of mood swings.
But others describe a life-changing experience. Sneha Lakshman, 32, a founder of Dig Design, a Web and mobile products company in Bangalore, said by phone that she had decided, “That’s it, I’m going to wear only black from now on.”
Kelli Bauman, 24, a visual communications student from Indianapolis, said she was facing up to her compulsive-shopping habits. She described herself as the type who gets excited about buying cleaning products; a thrice-weekly shopper at Target. “I feel like I am programmed to want to buy new things,” she said. “When my jeans got a hole in them, I wanted to buy new jeans that instant.”
Just look at how far she has come. “I’ve only been to Target twice this whole time.” On one visit, she bought wasp spray and toothpaste for herself, but splurged on gifts for a bride-to-be — buying for someone else was like a “gateway drug,” she said.
Another Sixer, Dean Kakridas, 42, the director of business development at Frog Design, an innovation firm in Austin, Tex., said that he was obsessed with efficiency. “I kind of question everything,” he said, including why he was spending 20 minutes every morning figuring out what to wear.
He wanted to identify the clothes that made him happiest and fit his lifestyle. He chose a pair of G-Star jeans, two button-down shirts, two short-sleeve polo shirts and, cleverly, a pair of shorts from Life After Denim that are reversible (one side is solid charcoal; the other is plaid). Speaking like a programmer, he said: “Anything that removes complexity or cycles from your day is really valuable. I have freed a lot of bandwidth in my head.” (After three weeks on the program, however, he was quoting Coco Chanel: “I don’t do fashion. I am fashion.”)
The most interesting thing to many of the Sixers was how few people noticed what they were doing. Except, that is, for those who did. Mr. Kakridas said that his wife disapproved.
“My wife jabs at me almost on a daily basis,” he said. “She tries to get me to waver from the commitment and get me to cheat. She hid my Febreze from me.”
As with any diet, abstinence is not for everyone.
Of the 150-plus-people who signed up for the Great American Apparel Diet, about half have given up. Ms. Bjornsen’s own sister quit after four weeks. And she has herself cheated twice, once when she realized she had forgotten to bring her workout clothes to the gym, a second time when her husband told her that her pajamas looked worn out and gross. Though she said she feels no guilt about those indulgences, Ms. Bjornsen said that she was looking forward to the end of the diet on Aug. 31.
She had thought about ways to make money off the diet, she said, but instead she plans to pass on the management of the Web site to continuing and future participants.
“It’s taken about 10 to 20 years to build up the idea that nothing is good unless it is new,” Ms. Bjornsen said. “Five years from now, if the diet is still going, it would be interesting to see how that changes.”
Below is an interesting article on two clothing related challenges that really promotes mindfulness on this issue.
Check out this slide show of people who tried the 6 Items challenge. And the observations and testimonials from the Great American Apparel Diet (no new clothes for a year) are thought provoking. An example:
By KatherineS
I just found this program through a story that ran in the New York Times-- which I think goes well with this program. . I actually started my own “diet” in May (didn’t realize there was a program). I had set out to do 6 months with no new clothes, beauty products, accessories for both me and my 2 year old daughter, but I fell off the wagon after a month when I was on vacation in Hawaii and discovered my bikini top was useless for surfing. I need a support group and glad to have found one now! Why does the diet makes me feel liberated? I realize how much more is less. A few perfect pieces is Nirvana. An over-stuffed closet is soul-crushing. My husband has had the right balance since I’ve known him: A uniform of black pants and shirts for work, and a uniform of jeans and t-shirts for play: he expresses himself creatively with hats, belts and sunglasses, but rarely adds anything to his basics. I have always been secretly jealous, but couldn’t put my finger on how to do it myself until I learn about the 6 items for a month plan. I realize more and more, that the more clothes I buy, the harder it is to value what I already have, and the more I want to buy to find something even better, and then what I already have starts looking pretty worthless or I can’t even see it in my closet..let’s end this vicious cycle !
If you try either of the challenges please let me know -- I would love to hear your insights. Perhaps you could be a guest blogger and tell us about your experience!
New York Times, July 21, 2010
Shoppers on a ‘Diet’ Tame the Urge to Buy
By ERIC WILSON
IMAGINE that horrible though all-too-familiar feeling: You are standing before a fully stuffed closet and yet have nothing to wear.
Now, imagine something worse: Your closet contains only six items, and you are restricted to wearing only those six items for an entire month.
Now, if you can bear it, imagine something unspeakable:
No one notices.
Nearly a month into what amounted to just such a self-inflicted fast of fashion, Stella Brennan, 31, an insurance sales executive from Kenosha, Wis., realized last week that not even her husband, Kelly, a machinist, had yet figured out that she had been wearing the same six items, over and over, since June 21. The sad punch line is that Mr. Brennan is the one who actually does the laundry in the family.
During her experiment — something called a “shopping diet,” actually — which ended on Wednesday, Ms. Brennan made do with the following: a black blazer and pants from H & M; two button-down shirts, one black and one pink; a pair of Old Navy jeans; and one well-worn pink T-shirt.
How she settled on those items was complicated by the fact that she has two young children, a golden retriever and three cats, and that she was starting a new job last month with an hourlong commute. She said she needed “six items that are animal-hair-, kid-, food- and wrinkle-resistant. I need these items to be professional, but also work for playing football with my son and tea parties.”
She agonized the longest over the T-shirt — the button-down shirts and suit separates were for work, but the right T-shirt could be worn casually with jeans or dressed up with the blazer. Her revelation at the end of 31 days, after her husband still had not noticed, even when she wore her floral-printed pajamas to do yard work: “Obviously, I didn’t need all of these clothes.”
This self-imposed exercise in frugality was prompted by a Web challenge called Six Items or Less (sixitemsorless.com). The premise was to go an entire month wearing only six items already found in your closet (not counting shoes, underwear or accessories). Nearly 100 people around the country, and in faraway places like Dubai and Bangalore, India, were also taking part in the regimen, with motives including a way to trim back on spending, an outright rejection of fashion, and a concern that the mass production and global transportation of increasingly cheap clothing was damaging the environment.
Meanwhile, an even stricter program, the Great American Apparel Diet, which began on Sept. 1, has attracted pledges by more than 150 women and two men to abstain from buying for an entire year. (Again, undies don’t count.) And next month, Gallery Books will publish a self-help guide, called “The Shopping Diet,” by the red-carpet stylist Phillip Bloch. (“Step 1: Admit You’re an Overshopper”... “Step 9: Practice Safe, Responsible Shopping”... “Step 10: Make the Diet a Way of Life.”)
Though their numbers may be small, and their diets extreme, these self-deniers of fashion are representative, in perhaps a notable way, of a broader reckoning of consumers’ spending habits. As the economy begins to improve, shoppers of every income appear to be wrestling with the same questions: Is it safe to go back to our old, pre-recession ways? Or should we? The authors of these diets — including some fashion marketing and advertising executives, interestingly enough — seem to think not.
Sally Bjornsen, the founder of the Great American Apparel Diet (thegreatamericanappareldiet.com), said she was prompted to stop buying clothes for a simple reason: “I was sick and tired of consumerism,” she said.
Last summer, Ms. Bjornsen, 47, said she was thinking about how years of easy credit had led to overspending on cars, homes and luxury goods. Then, looking in her own closet, she realized that she was part of the problem, she said. For her job, as a representative of commercial photographers in Seattle and before that as a marketing executive at fashion companies like Nike and Nordstrom, she’d spent $5,000 to $10,000 a year on clothes.
“I was buying in an egregious way,” Ms. Bjornsen said. “I was just kind of grossed out by the whole thing.”
Independently, the “six items” experiment was conceived by two friends, Heidi Hackemer, 31, a strategic business director at the New York advertising agency BBH, and Tamsin Davies, 34, the head of innovation at Fallon London, after an informal discussion about their desires to pare down their wardrobes. The idea snowballed into a creative challenge, Six Items or Less.
The rules were not hard and fast. If a person owned, for example, several similar black blazers — as Ms. Brennan, the Wisconsin executive, did — she could count them as one item.
“Our whole thing was not to put a philosophy behind it, and not be too preachy,” Ms. Hackemer said. The challenge has proved so popular that she said it would be repeated this fall.
Her six items were a black dress, a pair of black jeggings (a jeans-leggings hybrid), a black tank top, a black blazer, a gray skirt and denim shorts. The combinations she came up with were surprisingly diverse enough to get her through the month, “but once you hit Week 3, you think, You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Sixers, as Six Items or Less enthusiasts call themselves, have formed something of an online fashion support network, especially when they feel tempted to fall off the wagon.
Ms. Brennan did sound ripe for some kind of fashion intervention. In a recent interview, she spoke of a rack of clothes in the back of her closet that still had the tags on them, and clothes that she has not worn in 15 years but that she cannot stand to part with, and her 72 pairs of “active” shoes (meaning those that she actively wears, not the ones still in the boxes), and a closet full of clothes for her 3-year-old daughter, and, lest she forget, a wardrobe of clothes for her dog.
“My daughter doesn’t care what she wears, and I’m turning her into a monster,” Ms. Brennan said. “We’re ruining the next generation of girls with fashion.”
THE dieters’ comments reflect the complicated and sometimes confused relationships between consumers and their closets — which perhaps was to be expected in a nation where women, on average, own seven pairs of jeans but wear only four regularly, according to the September issue of Consumer Reports’ ShopSmart magazine. One in four women asked by the magazine said she owned 10 pairs or more.
Still, the month has been grueling. One Sixer from Venice, Calif., confessed online to splurging on T-shirts at a James Perse sample sale. Addy, from Milwaukee, wrote that she had become so bored with her six items “that I don’t even have a desire to get up in the morning,” and she complained of mood swings.
But others describe a life-changing experience. Sneha Lakshman, 32, a founder of Dig Design, a Web and mobile products company in Bangalore, said by phone that she had decided, “That’s it, I’m going to wear only black from now on.”
Kelli Bauman, 24, a visual communications student from Indianapolis, said she was facing up to her compulsive-shopping habits. She described herself as the type who gets excited about buying cleaning products; a thrice-weekly shopper at Target. “I feel like I am programmed to want to buy new things,” she said. “When my jeans got a hole in them, I wanted to buy new jeans that instant.”
Just look at how far she has come. “I’ve only been to Target twice this whole time.” On one visit, she bought wasp spray and toothpaste for herself, but splurged on gifts for a bride-to-be — buying for someone else was like a “gateway drug,” she said.
Another Sixer, Dean Kakridas, 42, the director of business development at Frog Design, an innovation firm in Austin, Tex., said that he was obsessed with efficiency. “I kind of question everything,” he said, including why he was spending 20 minutes every morning figuring out what to wear.
He wanted to identify the clothes that made him happiest and fit his lifestyle. He chose a pair of G-Star jeans, two button-down shirts, two short-sleeve polo shirts and, cleverly, a pair of shorts from Life After Denim that are reversible (one side is solid charcoal; the other is plaid). Speaking like a programmer, he said: “Anything that removes complexity or cycles from your day is really valuable. I have freed a lot of bandwidth in my head.” (After three weeks on the program, however, he was quoting Coco Chanel: “I don’t do fashion. I am fashion.”)
The most interesting thing to many of the Sixers was how few people noticed what they were doing. Except, that is, for those who did. Mr. Kakridas said that his wife disapproved.
“My wife jabs at me almost on a daily basis,” he said. “She tries to get me to waver from the commitment and get me to cheat. She hid my Febreze from me.”
As with any diet, abstinence is not for everyone.
Of the 150-plus-people who signed up for the Great American Apparel Diet, about half have given up. Ms. Bjornsen’s own sister quit after four weeks. And she has herself cheated twice, once when she realized she had forgotten to bring her workout clothes to the gym, a second time when her husband told her that her pajamas looked worn out and gross. Though she said she feels no guilt about those indulgences, Ms. Bjornsen said that she was looking forward to the end of the diet on Aug. 31.
She had thought about ways to make money off the diet, she said, but instead she plans to pass on the management of the Web site to continuing and future participants.
“It’s taken about 10 to 20 years to build up the idea that nothing is good unless it is new,” Ms. Bjornsen said. “Five years from now, if the diet is still going, it would be interesting to see how that changes.”
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Slow Money....
* What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?
* What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?
* What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?
Yeah, I don't know either. But I hope to have a better sense of the answers to these questions by the end of the week. I just took a 12.5 hour train ride to Burlington, VT to attend a "Slow Money" conference on Thursday and Friday. (I figured the train was better for the planet than driving, plus I could use all that time productively)
What is the Slow Money movement all about? From their website:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
About Slow Money
BusinessWeek calls Slow Money "one of the big ideas of 2010." NPR calls us "a movement." ACRES USA calls us "a revolution."
Founded by Woody Tasch, a pioneer in merging investing and philanthropy, Slow Money's mission is to build local and national networks, and develop new financial products and services, dedicated to:
Slow Money's goal is: a million Americans investing 1% of their assets in local food systems within a decade.
Because the first step is a fundamentally new way of thinking about money, our first step is a campaign to obtain signatories to the Slow Money Principles. Our next step is growing the Slow Money Alliance into a major national network that provides strategic and financial assistance to local initiatives around the country. The Founding Members of the Slow Money Alliance includes many recognized leaders in organic food, sustainable agriculture, philanthropy and social investing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am excited because they have a great list of speakers. One of them I have met in person, a few were highlighted in Food Inc (if you have not seen this film, go rent it NOW), and/or a few have inspired me with their writing or speaking.
Learn more about Slow Money here. And the program for the gathering can be found here.
* What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?
* What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?
Yeah, I don't know either. But I hope to have a better sense of the answers to these questions by the end of the week. I just took a 12.5 hour train ride to Burlington, VT to attend a "Slow Money" conference on Thursday and Friday. (I figured the train was better for the planet than driving, plus I could use all that time productively)
What is the Slow Money movement all about? From their website:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
About Slow Money
BusinessWeek calls Slow Money "one of the big ideas of 2010." NPR calls us "a movement." ACRES USA calls us "a revolution."
Founded by Woody Tasch, a pioneer in merging investing and philanthropy, Slow Money's mission is to build local and national networks, and develop new financial products and services, dedicated to:
- investing in small food enterprises and local food systems;
- connecting investors to their local economies; and,
- building the nurture capital industry.
Slow Money's goal is: a million Americans investing 1% of their assets in local food systems within a decade.
Because the first step is a fundamentally new way of thinking about money, our first step is a campaign to obtain signatories to the Slow Money Principles. Our next step is growing the Slow Money Alliance into a major national network that provides strategic and financial assistance to local initiatives around the country. The Founding Members of the Slow Money Alliance includes many recognized leaders in organic food, sustainable agriculture, philanthropy and social investing.
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I am excited because they have a great list of speakers. One of them I have met in person, a few were highlighted in Food Inc (if you have not seen this film, go rent it NOW), and/or a few have inspired me with their writing or speaking.
Learn more about Slow Money here. And the program for the gathering can be found here.
Confirmed Speakers
Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director, Green America
Eliot Coleman, Founder, Four Season Farm and Author of The New Organic Grower
Joel Salatin, Owner, Polyface Farm
Bill McKibben, Founder, 350.org and Author of Deep Economy
Gary Hirshberg, CEO, Stonyfield Farm
Will Raap, Founder, Gardener’s Supply
Erika Allen, Chicago Project Manager, Growing Power
Robert Zevin, President, Robert Brooke Zevin Associates
Tom Stearns, Founder, High Mowing Seeds
Michelle Long, Executive Director, BALLE
Chris Martenson, Founder, The Crash Course
Woody Tasch, Founder, Slow Money
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
A Timely Thought
It has been over a week since my last blog posting. Hopefully, you noticed and perhaps even lamented the omission. So, what kept me from writing? Did I run out of things to say? Been traveling? Bed-ridden with illness?
Alas, nothing so major -- I just didn't have time. I recently started a new job so that has greatly cut into my blogging time. On Wednesday I traveled to New York do a talk on sustainability ("The American Dream, The World's Nightmare") for an organization. Most of my nights leading up to this event were spent working on adding new slides and revamping the presentation. So, just not much time.
In our current society most of us are asset rich and time poor. We have so much stuff in fact that the self-storage industry is one the fastest growing sectors in America. You know the places, those little sheds that many of us rent each month to hold all the extra stuff that doesn't fit in our current home. This is especially ironic given the average house size has grown dramatically during the same time period while average household size has shrunk! (so bigger and bigger houses, with fewer and fewer people in those houses, and we still don't have enough space for all our stuff)
In a sustainable world we will be asset poor but time rich. We will work less, perhaps 20 hours a week. Maybe 3 days a week. With less income we will consume much less, reducing our burden on the planet. Imagine living in a place where you now have time. Time to really play with your children. Time to go on a long walk. Time to walk to the store. Time for a bubble bath. Time to actually cook and taste a meal. Time to plant food and harvest it. Time to tinker around the house. Time to read all those books you've wanted to read. Time to, gasp, re-read the same book. Time to learn to play the guitar. Time to spend with your grandmother. Time to improve your tennis serve (I need a lot of time for that one). Time to nap. Time to help your friends. Time to volunteer. Time to sing. Time to dance. Time to walk the dog. Time to write your senator. Time to read great blog posts. Time to write great blog posts. Time to do, well, nothing at all.
Time to imagine the world we really want.
It's time to make it happen. Work Less. Buy Less. Live More.
Alas, nothing so major -- I just didn't have time. I recently started a new job so that has greatly cut into my blogging time. On Wednesday I traveled to New York do a talk on sustainability ("The American Dream, The World's Nightmare") for an organization. Most of my nights leading up to this event were spent working on adding new slides and revamping the presentation. So, just not much time.
In our current society most of us are asset rich and time poor. We have so much stuff in fact that the self-storage industry is one the fastest growing sectors in America. You know the places, those little sheds that many of us rent each month to hold all the extra stuff that doesn't fit in our current home. This is especially ironic given the average house size has grown dramatically during the same time period while average household size has shrunk! (so bigger and bigger houses, with fewer and fewer people in those houses, and we still don't have enough space for all our stuff)
To pay for all this stuff Americans work longer hours than workers in just about any other industrialized country.
We work longer hours than the English, the French, and much more than the Germans and the Norwegians. We take less vacation. We retire later.
The more time we spend working the worse the impact on the planet and our souls. Why?
With rising incomes we have more and more money to buy things. Bigger homes. Bigger TVs. More TVs. Bigger and fancier cars. Multiple cars. More and more clothes. More gadgets. You know the drill.
But with all those extra hours at work we have less time for ourselves. Less time to spend with our families. Less time to engage with our communities. Less time for the things that actually make us human. We are are social beings. Our well-being, our happiness is fundamentally rooted in our connection to others. We are becoming more and more isolated, more individualistic, and less connected to others. Depression rates are 10x higher than 50 years ago. We have the highest divorce rate in the world. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Drug use is a constant problem.
To fill the void we consume more. The buzz is nice, but it soon wears off. That new ipod will never fill the void left by a disenfranchised family, distant friends, and no sense of belonging to community. But we keep trying. "Retail Therapy" anyone?
Time to imagine the world we really want.
It's time to make it happen. Work Less. Buy Less. Live More.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
What if?
The nature of our society can often make it difficult to live a lifestyle that is in balance with nature. We develop bad habits. Sometimes we need a jolt to think differently about how we see the world, to imagine a different way. Most of us are inclined to resist change. But if we are open to revisiting our assumptions, open to trying a different way, we can often make positive discoveries about ourselves, and the world. Here is a simple tale, from a real person on the possible.
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Making Do Without the Minivan
The gas pump shuts off automatically when you hit $100, or so my sister-in-law tells me. I'm pleased to report I haven't experienced that problem. However, I hit $66 when I partially filled my Honda Odyssey, and last month our family's gasoline expenses were well over $400. My husband's 2006 Ford Explorer gets 13 miles per gallon; my minivan runs at about 16 miles per gallon around town.
As transportation expenses rose, I cut back in other ways: fewer indulgences at the grocery store, not as many trips to Starbucks. We decided not to take a family vacation to Disneyland, although explaining this to our two school-age kids was less than pleasant. We're opting instead for an in-state trip to visit relatives, assuming gas prices continue to (finally) decrease.
In spite of all this, however, I've got to say: I love the high cost of gas. It's forced our family to rethink our spending habits and our carbon footprint, and we're finding we can do much more on much less than we thought.
As a working mom with a half-time job, two kids and a busy social life, I spend a lot of time in the car. The minivan is truly our "home away from home." In the car we eat meals, do homework, make phone calls, watch movies and even change clothes. Last year I read about a prototype "car of the future" equipped with a microwave and laundry facilities, and wondered how soon I could acquire one. Last month, however, I asked myself a different question: how could we reduce our dependence on the minivan we already own?
I challenged the kids to join me in a quest to see how long we could go between tanks of gas. They were surprisingly enthusiastic. Right away we realized that while we've always carpooled on the way to school, we've never done so on the way home. When I asked my friend if she'd like to carpool in both directions from now on, she eagerly said yes. One small step.
Next up: I told the kids I was no longer providing car rides to swim practice. Yes, I'd still take them, but from now on it would be on foot or bike. I calculated that each round trip to the pool was costing 50 cents, and we often make two to three trips per day. Although their bikes were handy and ready for use, mine was dusty, and I had lost my helmet years ago. So I borrowed an extra helmet from my husband, and off we went. Added benefits: quality time with the kids, plus a decent workout.
Once we started the challenge, there was no stopping us. Why drive downtown for dinner when we have several great restaurants less than a mile from home? When I needed a book to read last week, I almost drove to the bookstore—until I remembered that my neighbor would probably lend me some books. The dog and I took a pleasant walk down the street and came home with a splendid stack of novels.
The more success we had, the more we wanted. This was getting fun. Why drive to the gym and get on the treadmill when I could go for a run in my own neighborhood? Why drive to meet my friend for coffee on Monday when I would be near her house on Tuesday and could easily stop in to see her? Why take two cars to church when we could all ride together if we coordinated departure times a bit better?
We're only beginning the adventure, but already the payoff has been huge. Gasoline usage for the minivan is down by 50 percent. I've lost nearly five pounds. The dog is happier and getting more exercise. I'm having great conversations with the kids as we walk and bike together. Perhaps best of all, life feels simpler. All along I thought my car was an essential tool for navigating my busy life; it turns out that hopping in the car every time I wanted something was making my schedule more complicated. Eliminating a few trips around town, and replacing them with a walk or run, has reduced my stress immeasurably.
Do I still need my minivan? Of course. I want to visit my grandmother 10 miles away, and I can't carry a week's worth of groceries on my bike. When the rainy season begins in earnest I'm sure I'll find the car more pleasant than the bike. Still, we're making permanent changes in our transportation habits. The high cost of gas has been nothing but good for our family.
Perrow lives in Seattle.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/151739
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Making Do Without the Minivan
Why do I love the high price of gas? It's helped my family stop being so dependent on our cars.
Published Aug 9, 2008
Aug. 18-25, 2008 issue
The gas pump shuts off automatically when you hit $100, or so my sister-in-law tells me. I'm pleased to report I haven't experienced that problem. However, I hit $66 when I partially filled my Honda Odyssey, and last month our family's gasoline expenses were well over $400. My husband's 2006 Ford Explorer gets 13 miles per gallon; my minivan runs at about 16 miles per gallon around town.
As transportation expenses rose, I cut back in other ways: fewer indulgences at the grocery store, not as many trips to Starbucks. We decided not to take a family vacation to Disneyland, although explaining this to our two school-age kids was less than pleasant. We're opting instead for an in-state trip to visit relatives, assuming gas prices continue to (finally) decrease.
In spite of all this, however, I've got to say: I love the high cost of gas. It's forced our family to rethink our spending habits and our carbon footprint, and we're finding we can do much more on much less than we thought.
As a working mom with a half-time job, two kids and a busy social life, I spend a lot of time in the car. The minivan is truly our "home away from home." In the car we eat meals, do homework, make phone calls, watch movies and even change clothes. Last year I read about a prototype "car of the future" equipped with a microwave and laundry facilities, and wondered how soon I could acquire one. Last month, however, I asked myself a different question: how could we reduce our dependence on the minivan we already own?
I challenged the kids to join me in a quest to see how long we could go between tanks of gas. They were surprisingly enthusiastic. Right away we realized that while we've always carpooled on the way to school, we've never done so on the way home. When I asked my friend if she'd like to carpool in both directions from now on, she eagerly said yes. One small step.
Next up: I told the kids I was no longer providing car rides to swim practice. Yes, I'd still take them, but from now on it would be on foot or bike. I calculated that each round trip to the pool was costing 50 cents, and we often make two to three trips per day. Although their bikes were handy and ready for use, mine was dusty, and I had lost my helmet years ago. So I borrowed an extra helmet from my husband, and off we went. Added benefits: quality time with the kids, plus a decent workout.
Once we started the challenge, there was no stopping us. Why drive downtown for dinner when we have several great restaurants less than a mile from home? When I needed a book to read last week, I almost drove to the bookstore—until I remembered that my neighbor would probably lend me some books. The dog and I took a pleasant walk down the street and came home with a splendid stack of novels.
The more success we had, the more we wanted. This was getting fun. Why drive to the gym and get on the treadmill when I could go for a run in my own neighborhood? Why drive to meet my friend for coffee on Monday when I would be near her house on Tuesday and could easily stop in to see her? Why take two cars to church when we could all ride together if we coordinated departure times a bit better?
We're only beginning the adventure, but already the payoff has been huge. Gasoline usage for the minivan is down by 50 percent. I've lost nearly five pounds. The dog is happier and getting more exercise. I'm having great conversations with the kids as we walk and bike together. Perhaps best of all, life feels simpler. All along I thought my car was an essential tool for navigating my busy life; it turns out that hopping in the car every time I wanted something was making my schedule more complicated. Eliminating a few trips around town, and replacing them with a walk or run, has reduced my stress immeasurably.
Do I still need my minivan? Of course. I want to visit my grandmother 10 miles away, and I can't carry a week's worth of groceries on my bike. When the rainy season begins in earnest I'm sure I'll find the car more pleasant than the bike. Still, we're making permanent changes in our transportation habits. The high cost of gas has been nothing but good for our family.
Perrow lives in Seattle.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/151739
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
This Story Will Put Wind in Your Sails
Creating a sustainable society will require many things. At the broadest level it will require us to stop doing those things that are killing us, and begin doing those things that will allow us to prosper for generation after generation. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming and we need to shift away from these technologies urgently. What does that mean?
Means never building another coal plant starting today.
Means telling your elected officials to end the dozens of tax breaks and incentives still offered to the oil industry. Why are tax payers subsidizing the wealthiest corporations in the world?
Means stop driving cars. Means bringing public transportation to towns and cities all across the country. Means changing zoning laws so we can integrate our communities so we can walk or bike to school, to work, to the store, or wherever we need to go.
Means investing in renewable energy. Tax incentives for people like you and me to add solar panels to our homes. Tax breaks to encourage investors to expand the wind energy industry
A sustainable society will be powered on solar and wind and some geothermal.Sound crazy? Did you know that if we built a solar farm in Nevada that was 100 miles by 100 miles it would create enough electricity to power the entire country? You math types will think wow, but that is 10,000 square miles, that is huge. It is big, but it would only cover about 10% of the surface area of Nevada (really big desert out there). Now, no one is seriously proposing such a massive farm but it does give you a sense of perspective. Actually, if we tapped into all the solar potential found in our country, we could produce 7X all the amount of electricity we use now. Same for wind power. If we tapped into all the reasonable sites, we could produce another 7X all the power we currently use.
All those farms would be in the United States, creating American jobs. One windmill turbine has 6,000 parts. All those parts could be made in America....think of how many manufacturing jobs that would create. At the moment most of those parts are made elsewhere. Why?
I have only scratched the tip of a huge energy iceberg of options that are out there. And what are we doing as a country about this. Virtually nothing. Big oil has too much power and keeps our leaders in grid lock.
We need to transform our entire energy infrastructure. We need to change our lives and the demands we place on the planet. We need imagination and ingenuity. Our country has a wealth of both, but at the moment much of it seems to be wildly misplaced in developing credit default swaps and other soul and earth destroying ventures.
Check out the article below. It is about the potential offered by wind energy, well only in the smallest of ways. But more importantly it is a story about what we can achieve when we dare to dream and see our world in a different way. About what can happen when we simply get on with it, not aware that what we are attempting is impossible. It is one of the most inspirational stories I have read in a long time. A great way to start the weekend...
The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.
Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.
His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees.
When he returned to his parents' small plot of farmland in the central Malawian village of Masitala, his future seemed limited.
But this was not another tale of African potential thwarted by poverty.
Defence against hunger
The teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village.
And he was not prepared to wait for politicians or aid groups to do it for him.
The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi's worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation.
Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library.
Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.
Mr Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water.
"I thought: 'That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself'."
When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings.
But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people.
"Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy," he recalls. "They had never seen a windmill before."
Shocks
Neighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips.
"People thought I was smoking marijuana," he said. "So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].' Then they said: 'Ah, I see.'"
Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire.
"I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill]," says Mr Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work.
The finished product - a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala - seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer's folly.
But his neighbours' mirth turned to amazement when Mr Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine.
As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild.
Soon the whiz kid's 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family's mud brick compound.
'Electric wind'
Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber.
Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones.
Mr Kamkwamba's story was sent hurtling through the blogosphere when a reporter from the Daily Times newspaper in Blantyre wrote an article about him in November 2006.
Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village.
He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites.
Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family's field.
Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy's magetsi a mphepo - "electric wind".
As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania.
Cheetah generation
He recalls his excitement using a computer for the first time at the event.
"I had never seen the internet, it was amazing," he says. "I Googled about windmills and found so much information."
Onstage, the native Chichewa speaker recounted his story in halting English, moving hard-bitten venture capitalists and receiving a standing ovation.
A glowing front-page portrait of him followed in the Wall Street Journal.
He is now on a scholarship at the elite African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mr Kamkwamba - who has been flown to conferences around the globe to recount his life-story - has the world at his feet, but is determined to return home after his studies.
The home-grown hero aims to finish bringing power, not just to the rest of his village, but to all Malawians, only 2% of whom have electricity.
"I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I've learned," he says. "I feel there's lots of work to be done."
Former Associated Press news agency reporter Bryan Mealer had been reporting on conflict across Africa for five years when he heard Mr Kamkwamba's story.
The incredible tale was the kind of positive story Mealer, from New York, had long hoped to cover.
The author spent a year with Mr Kamkwamba writing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which has just been published in the US.
Mealer says Mr Kamkwamba represents Africa's new "cheetah generation", young people, energetic and technology-hungry, who are taking control of their own destiny.
"Spending a year with William writing this book reminded me why I fell in love with Africa in the first place," says Mr Mealer, 34.
"It's the kind of tale that resonates with every human being and reminds us of our own potential."
Can it be long before the film rights to the triumph-over-adversity story are snapped up, and William Kamkwamba, the boy who dared to dream, finds himself on the big screen?
Means never building another coal plant starting today.
Means telling your elected officials to end the dozens of tax breaks and incentives still offered to the oil industry. Why are tax payers subsidizing the wealthiest corporations in the world?
Means stop driving cars. Means bringing public transportation to towns and cities all across the country. Means changing zoning laws so we can integrate our communities so we can walk or bike to school, to work, to the store, or wherever we need to go.
Means investing in renewable energy. Tax incentives for people like you and me to add solar panels to our homes. Tax breaks to encourage investors to expand the wind energy industry
A sustainable society will be powered on solar and wind and some geothermal.Sound crazy? Did you know that if we built a solar farm in Nevada that was 100 miles by 100 miles it would create enough electricity to power the entire country? You math types will think wow, but that is 10,000 square miles, that is huge. It is big, but it would only cover about 10% of the surface area of Nevada (really big desert out there). Now, no one is seriously proposing such a massive farm but it does give you a sense of perspective. Actually, if we tapped into all the solar potential found in our country, we could produce 7X all the amount of electricity we use now. Same for wind power. If we tapped into all the reasonable sites, we could produce another 7X all the power we currently use.
All those farms would be in the United States, creating American jobs. One windmill turbine has 6,000 parts. All those parts could be made in America....think of how many manufacturing jobs that would create. At the moment most of those parts are made elsewhere. Why?
I have only scratched the tip of a huge energy iceberg of options that are out there. And what are we doing as a country about this. Virtually nothing. Big oil has too much power and keeps our leaders in grid lock.
We need to transform our entire energy infrastructure. We need to change our lives and the demands we place on the planet. We need imagination and ingenuity. Our country has a wealth of both, but at the moment much of it seems to be wildly misplaced in developing credit default swaps and other soul and earth destroying ventures.
Check out the article below. It is about the potential offered by wind energy, well only in the smallest of ways. But more importantly it is a story about what we can achieve when we dare to dream and see our world in a different way. About what can happen when we simply get on with it, not aware that what we are attempting is impossible. It is one of the most inspirational stories I have read in a long time. A great way to start the weekend...
William Kamkwamba educated himself in his local library
By Jude Sheerin BBC News |
Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.
His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees.
When he returned to his parents' small plot of farmland in the central Malawian village of Masitala, his future seemed limited.
But this was not another tale of African potential thwarted by poverty.
Defence against hunger
The teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village.
 |   Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy - people thought I was smoking marijuana  William Kamkwamba |
The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi's worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation.
Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library.
Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.
Mr Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water.
"I thought: 'That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself'."
When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings.
But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people.
"Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy," he recalls. "They had never seen a windmill before."
Shocks
Neighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips.
|  William Kamkwamba's achievements with wind energy show what one person, with an inspired idea, can do to tackle the crisis we face Al Gore |
Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire.
"I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill]," says Mr Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work.
The finished product - a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala - seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer's folly.
But his neighbours' mirth turned to amazement when Mr Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine.
As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild.
Soon the whiz kid's 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family's mud brick compound.
'Electric wind'
Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber.
Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones.
| WINDS OF CHANGE 2002: Drought strikes; he leaves school; builds 5m windmill 2006: Daily Times writes article on him; he builds a 12m windmill 2007: Brings solar power to his village and installs solar pump Mid-2008: Builds Green Machine windmill, pumping well water Sep 2008: Attends inaugural African Leadership Academy class Mid-2009: Builds replica of original 5m windmill |
Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village.
He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites.
Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family's field.
Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy's magetsi a mphepo - "electric wind".
As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania.
Cheetah generation
He recalls his excitement using a computer for the first time at the event.
"I had never seen the internet, it was amazing," he says. "I Googled about windmills and found so much information."
Onstage, the native Chichewa speaker recounted his story in halting English, moving hard-bitten venture capitalists and receiving a standing ovation.
 William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer (left) spent a year writing the book |
He is now on a scholarship at the elite African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mr Kamkwamba - who has been flown to conferences around the globe to recount his life-story - has the world at his feet, but is determined to return home after his studies.
The home-grown hero aims to finish bringing power, not just to the rest of his village, but to all Malawians, only 2% of whom have electricity.
"I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I've learned," he says. "I feel there's lots of work to be done."
Former Associated Press news agency reporter Bryan Mealer had been reporting on conflict across Africa for five years when he heard Mr Kamkwamba's story.
The incredible tale was the kind of positive story Mealer, from New York, had long hoped to cover.
The author spent a year with Mr Kamkwamba writing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which has just been published in the US.
Mealer says Mr Kamkwamba represents Africa's new "cheetah generation", young people, energetic and technology-hungry, who are taking control of their own destiny.
"Spending a year with William writing this book reminded me why I fell in love with Africa in the first place," says Mr Mealer, 34.
"It's the kind of tale that resonates with every human being and reminds us of our own potential."
Can it be long before the film rights to the triumph-over-adversity story are snapped up, and William Kamkwamba, the boy who dared to dream, finds himself on the big screen?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
To Dire to Inspire?
"The American Dream - The World's Nightmare" is a presentation I that conduct at high schools, colleges, universities, churches and at just about any venue where people are willing to come to hear me speak. (If you would like to have me come speak before your group, or want to learn more about this presentation email me at americandreamworldsnightmare@gmail.com )
Before one presentation was about to begin someone asked me if the talk was going to be all “doom and gloom.” I understand the question. I get it. Really. There is already so much bad news in the world why would someone want to hear my presentation or read these missives?
Many of the postings on this blog, especially in the early days and weeks, may seem to fall into this category. Lot 's of dire predictions and depressing facts. Doesn’t seem like a recipe for success does it? (or in this case, wide readership).
And of course, if you speak to anyone who knows anything about teaching, or about social change, or about behavior modification, they will tell you that the way to get someone to take action or change a behavior in their life is to inspire them. Create a vision of a reality that will pull them in that direction. Fear rarely works as a motivation force.
Martin Luther King inspired a generation with his "I Have A Dream" speech. He helped change a nation by enabling people to imagine what America could look like; by pushing the young and old alike to envision what the country could achieve; and by helping people of all walks of life to grasp how America
Martin Luther could leap right into the dream part because blacks in America
My challenge is quite different. We are all living the dream while few seem to grasp the full horror of the nightmare that awaits us once awakened. If I leap into the dream part now, and offer a cascade of "radical" ideas and "solutions" before you buy into the fact there is a problem, before you really begin to grasp the depth of the problem before us, you will simply find this to be the ravings of a mad man. You will not find the courage to consider the changes we need unless you fully begin to grasp the nightmare head.
I need some time to paint the landscape, to draw the connections and peel away the façade. Time to explore the facts, figures, and predictions that rarely see the light of day. But for me it is not about doom and gloom.
Just the opposite, actually.
These insights are essential to allow the birth of a sustainable dream. They hold the potential for the first step along a path with no ending. We can only begin to create a new path by first understanding the folly, the insanity, the wretched horror of what awaits us at the end of our current path.
Then, THEN, my friends, we can delve into the nuts and bolts, the wild visions and bold proclamations. There are solutions for every problem, issue, or predicament that I will present. There are glorious opportunities for human prosperity, and for creating a world where we can thrive in ways only pondered in our wildest dreams.
Stay tuned, the best is yet to come....if we can just wake up in time.
Note: This posting was inspired by a much shorter, but not dissimilar discussion found in James Gustave Speth's book "The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability."
Note: This posting was inspired by a much shorter, but not dissimilar discussion found in James Gustave Speth's book "The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability."
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