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Tag: "Environment"

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Building lifeboats
By Brynn Jacobs on March 03rd, 2010

Building lifeboats

I know that my past few posts have been bleak (see here and here), but now I must temper that sense of despair with some hope. Things are bad, and will probably get worse, but that’s not to say that they will not get better.

But here’s the trick: we all have to stop relying upon someone else for solutions. Forgive me if I sound like a politician for just a moment: we must “be the change” we want to see in the world. I cannot tell you how to solve the peak oil problem, or the unfolding economic collapse, or climate change, or the corruption which has become endemic in our political system– you have to figure it out for yourself. I’m not selling a prepackaged kit which contains all of the answers, and I would probably distrust anyone who was.

But that’s precisely why I still have hope. If we are going to make it through the challenges facing us, we must learn to pull together again as a community and actually attempt to create our own solutions. There can be no more delegation to those in Washington. We cannot afford to wait for decades as they attempt to muster the political will to combat the flood of money which has so damaged our electoral and political processes. We simply don’t have time to fix the system that’s been damaged beyond repair.

Community • Consumerism • Featured • Quality of Life • Simple living
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How’s your water quality?
By Brynn Jacobs on September 16th, 2009

How’s your water quality?

The debate over tap water vs. bottled water will probably go on for quite some time. Many people believe that by purchasing bottled water, they are consuming better quality water than that which comes from the tap. Others argue that the environmental impact of bottled water is massive, and that bottled water is no safer than tap water. A report earlier this year from the Government Accounting Office claims that because public water supplies are regulated by the Safe Water Drinking Act and those regulations are enforced by the EPA, they are therefore safer than bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA– and we all know what a wonderful job the FDA has been doing. But a new investigative report by the New York Times calls this conclusion into question.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

Campaign Finance Reform • Environment • Featured • Law
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By Erich Vieth on August 02nd, 2009

Founder of Whole Earth Catalog gives us an update

Stewart Brand was the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog. He’s been doing a lot of thinking over the years, and gave an update at TED.

He discussed the 1 Billion people living in squatter cities, soon to be 2 billion. There’s a lot of desperation and a lot of crime, but it’s not all bad news. There is a scale of efficiency about these cities. Talk about compactness! Go to the 6 minute mark of this video within a video and watch what happens immediately after the train goes by.

Brand suggests that coming to the city gives people hope that they will be better off financially, which inexorably brings down the birth rate.

He has nothing good to say about coal–it is the cause of the climate change we see. He has nothing bad to say about nuclear power; it is a “green” fuel. According to Brand, we can’t get rid of coal fast enough. We are going to be facing massive climate change, faster than we can imagine. This will cause many millions of “climate refugees” and ongoing “resource wars” such as the one in Darfur.

Economy • Environment • global warming
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Why are we getting so fat?
By Erich Vieth on July 13th, 2009

Why are we getting so fat?

Why are we getting so fat? Elizabeth Kolbert answers that question in many ways in her article, “XXXL” in the New Yorker. Her answers come from the several new books on obesity that she reviews in her article. Here are some of her observations:

- We have evolved a “taste for foods that are high in calories and easy to digest; just as it is natural for gorillas to love leaves, it is natural for people to love funnel cakes.”

Image by Willie Lunchmeat at Flickr (creative commons)

-The only place pre-modern humans had to store energy “was on themselves. Body fat is energy-rich and at the same time lightweight” and “a person with a genetic knack for storing fat would have had a competitive advantage.”

It is too easy to eat high calorie food in the modern U.S. “We evolved on the savannahs of Africa,” Power and Schulkin write. “We now live in Candyland.”

Or, consider David Kessler’s approach, that are the victims of “eatertainment”:

In “The End of Overeating” (Rodale; $25.95), David A. Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, takes a somewhat darker view of the situation. It’s not that sweet and oily foods have become less expensive; it’s that they’ve been reëngineered.

-There’s bigger problems. We eat too much because we are oblivious to how much we are eating:

Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating” (2006). They have no idea how much they want to eat or, once they have eaten, how much they’ve consumed. Instead, they rely on external cues, like portion size, to tell them when to stop. The result is that as French-fry bags get bigger, so, too, do French-fry eaters.

-Kolbert points out that bagels have grown by 210 calories over the past couple of decades:

For someone who is in the habit of eating a bagel a day, these extra calories translate into a weight gain of more than a pound a month.

Who is gaining the most weight? “Those living just above the poverty level.”

What are the documented medical risks for being obese?

Type 2 diabetes, coronary disease, hypertension, various kinds of cancers—including colorectal and endometrial—gallstones, and osteoarthritis are just some of the conditions that have been linked to excess weight.

Kolbert’s article is an excellent review of much recent research focusing on the causes of obesity and potential solutions.

Food • Health
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By Erich Vieth on July 02nd, 2009

Hold that shrimp!

When you read about the environmental and social consequences of eating farmed shrimp, you’ll think twice about eating them. This article, titled “Chemical Cocktail,” was published by Public Citizen.

Environment • Food • Health
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By Erich Vieth on June 29th, 2009

Employing your butt to save trees

Americans talk a good game when it comes to the environment, but most of us aren’t willing to do much of anything at all. Are you willing to ride the bus, carpool, cut down on your consumption of meat, eat produce only in-season? No thanks,” say most Americans. That’s my personal experience, based on talking with numerous “concerned” citizens. Most people that I talk with tell me that they will make changes only when the “market” makes it worth their while. It’s crazy, but that’s the way it is.

How about this option: Would you be willing to use one roll of recycled toilet paper per year if it would save 425,000 trees? Resoundingly, America has said “no thanks,” according to Time Magazine:

[A] mainstream brand, Scott, started offering toilet paper made with 40% recycled fiber. Switching to such material could make a big difference: the NRDC estimates that if every household in the U.S. replaced just one 500-sheet roll of virgin-fiber TP a year with a roll made from 100% recycled paper, nearly 425,000 trees would be saved annually. . . Hence Greenpeace’s four-year-long campaign to pressure paper companies . . . to stop cutting down virgin forests. . .

It’s possible — but few Americans are doing it. Toilet paper containing 100% recycled fiber makes up less than 2% of the U.S. market, while sales of three-ply luxury brands like Cottonelle Ultra and Charmin Ultra Soft shot up 40% in 2008.

Considering that the average family uses about 20 rolls of toilet paper per month, NRDC’s suggestion is not a laughing matter.

Based on my conversations with lots of people, though, being responsible to the environment is truly a laughing matter for most Americans. They just don’t get it, unless it affects their pocketbooks.

American Culture • Environment
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The wheel of life turns in the backyard
By Erich Vieth on May 23rd, 2009

The wheel of life turns in the backyard

My family has a dog named “Holly.” She’s a friendly mutt. Loyal to a fault.

A big raccoon took up residence on or in our garage recently, and Holly didn’t like it at all. Our neighbors often saw the raccoon on our garage roof. We often heard Holly’s barking, thanks to the raccoon.

We live in the middle of the City of St. Louis, and we know that there are lots of raccoons running around. The City Animal Control told me that if we trapped a raccoon, they would come by to pick it up. By the time I got around to setting a trap, the neighbors mentioned that there was now one big raccoon and several small ones. As I was setting the trap near the garage, I could smell the smell of death. Even as we were trying to trap a raccoon, at least one of the raccoons had already died. I really do wonder how they can survive in a congested urban area, but the do, often enough, anyway.

The next morning, my children excitedly mentioned that we had caught a large raccoon in our trap. raccoonIt looked like it weighed 15 pounds. I called the City Animal Control, and they indicated that they would come out and take away the raccoon. I didn’t ask where they would take it, as I assumed that I was essentially dooming the mother raccoon to death, and possibly dooming the babies too (by taking away their mother). As I mentioned above, even as we waited for Animal Control, we were smelling the smell of death whenever we were in our garage. It was getting stronger by the hour.

The next day (today), we still couldn’t find any dead raccoon baby, but we did find that there were flies all over the garage, so the raccoon body was apparently nearby. window-fliesNature, red in tooth and claw. But I’m not done yet. This mini-life cycle started with a human family who wanted the companionship of a neotonous wolf (Holly), who got upset at the raccoon, who had been deprived of her natural habitat by the humans. At least one of her dead babies was being eaten by flies. Now what about the flies? You’ve all heard the joke, “Why did the fly fly?”

Answer: “Because the spider spider.”

This afternoon that joke became incarnate, right in the corner of my garage. Though these macro photos didn’t turn out in the sharpest focus, you can clearly see that a spider had caught one of the flies in a web and was making a meal of it (there’s also a piece of leaf in the foreground).

image by Erich Vieth

If only we humans ate spiders, this cycle would be at its end (or a beginning), but it gets all the more convoluted from here. For instance, 90% of the cells in your body are “aliens,” most of them are bacteria that allow us to digest our food. Without them we would die. And while I’m pointing out connections, consider that parallel universe of fungi living under the ground. Two weeks ago, I saw an eruption of mushroom (their fruiting bodies) in the front yard. Without this fungi, most of our plants would die. img_6679

It occurred to me today that, right here in the middle of a major city, whether or not I’m aware of it, nature is churning away, doing its thing in an entirely amoral way. Except for us humans, they say. We supposedly have a “moral” sense that is not anchored to our animal-ness. Or are we spinning elaborate intellectual webs in coming to this conclusion?

Environment • Human animals • Whimsy • nature
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George Lakoff frames eco-talk
By Erich Vieth on May 19th, 2009

George Lakoff frames eco-talk

Linguist George Lakoff, who I have often discussed at this website (see here and here), has spent a lot of time discussing the power of framing. In fact, the way we frame serve as tectonic plates of sorts underneath all the chatter. Exposing the frames can clear up misunderstandings. Being careful of how one frames one’s arguments can make for a much more effective message.

Turning to environmental issues, Lakoff suggests that we need to consciously note that certain types of frames will enhance the message. What are those frames? Here’s Lakoff’s list, from a long post at Huffpo:

First, the public’s very understanding of nature has to change. We are part of nature; nature is not separate from us. Nature nurtures us. The destructive exploitation of nature is evil. What is good is the use of nature that doesn’t use up nature.

Second, the economic and ecological meltdowns have the same cause: the unregulated free market and the idea that greed is good and that the natural world is a resource for short-term private enrichment. The result has been deadly, toxic assets and a toxic atmosphere.

Third, the global economy and ecology are both systems. Global causes are systemic, not local. Global risk is systemic, not local. The localization of causation and risk is what has brought about our twin disasters. We have to think in global, system terms and we don’t do so naturally. That is why a massive communications effort is needed.

Fourth, the Right’s economic arguments need to be countered. Is it too expensive to save the earth? How could it be? If the earth goes, business goes.

Fifth, we are the polar bears. Human existence is threatened, and the existence of most living beings on earth.

Sixth, we own the air jointly and we can’t transfer ownership. Polluting corporations are dumping pollution into our air. They need to gradually be made to stop, two-percent less a year for 40 years: that is what a “cap” on carbon dioxide pollution is about. And meanwhile the polluters should pay us dumping fees to offset the cost of fuel increases and pay for the development of better fuels.

Seventh, even the most successful emissions cap would only take us halfway. Business needs to do its part to take us the rest of the way. Large corporations need to face up to reality and join in the effort.

Finally, for those in the business world: Corporate interests are constantly putting forth arguments based on cost-benefit analysis. But the very mathematics of cost-benefit analysis is anti-ecological; the equations themselves are destructive of the earth . . . [I]n a fairly short time, any monetary benefits compared to costs will tend to zero. That says there are no long-term benefits to saving the earth!

Communication • Environment • Featured • Language • global warming
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Hear the story about all of our stuff
By Erich Vieth on May 16th, 2009

Hear the story about all of our stuff

In The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard tells us that all of our “stuff” is part of a linear system that is clashing with our finite planet. Her video is extremely popular (5.5 million views) and easy to follow. Here’s a short description from her site:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

What are the main problems? We are externalizing costs, so that we are oblivious to the damages we are causing around the world when we buy so much of the stuff that we are buying.

We are running out of resources. Her stats from the United States are especially troubling because we are so very much living beyond our means. We generating huge heaps of waste. We are using energy + contaminated products to promulgate toxic products and untested products. One of the highest concentrations of toxic food substances has become human breast milk. 200,000 people move from their resource-exhausted long-time communities into crowded cities, many of them slums.

And consider that 99% of the stuff we run through our economic system is trash within 6 months. This is not an accident, either. It is long-time government and industry policy that we should shop and consume. We shop three to four times as much as Europeans.

Which, again, leads to disposal problems. For every trash can full of waste we throw away there were 70 trash cans of waste produced to make that one can of waste.

Incredible.

Many DI related posts can be found here.

Further, listen to Daniel Goleman’s description of the basic problem and the solution in his interview with Daniel Goleman.

American Culture • Consumerism • Environment • Featured • Health
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Straight talk about Canada’s oil sands
By Erich Vieth on February 24th, 2009

Straight talk about Canada’s oil sands

Would you like to learn the unvarnished story about oil sands, an often highly-touted source of fuel?

The March issue of National Geographic has a detailed article on oil sands, focusing on a production facility in Alberta Canada: “Scraping Bottom.” It’s an already profitable environment-unfriendly carbon-irresponsible way to feed America’s often-wasteful craving for fuel.

[Photo: Wikimedia Commons]

Energy • Environment
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The American war against telephone poles
By Erich Vieth on February 04th, 2009

The American war against telephone poles

In a short article entitled, “The War on Telephone Poles,” the February 2009 edition of Harper’s Magazine includes a fascinating excerpt from an essay by Eula Biss, which was originally titled “Time and Distance Overcome” as it appeared in the Spring issue of Iowa Review. Biss’s article is a terrific example of the human tendency to resist long-range change that would substantially improve the community as a whole.

As she clearly documents in her essay, many people ferociously opposed the erection of telephone poles back in the 1880’s. Whatever their stated reasons (aesthetics and defense of private property were often argued), the real reasons for resisting telephone poles were timeless: fear of change combined with a warped sense of the importance the individual in relation to his or her community. The Biss essay reminds us that Americans have long been quite capable of harpooning critical community-building endeavors in the name of individual freedom. We don’t fight telephone poles anymore, but this destructive tendency is one we still see in modern day America.

Only a small bit of Biss’s essay is available online. The basic idea presented by her essay is that in the 1880s, numerous people (including elected officials and newspapers) ferociously opposed the erection of telephone poles. They argued that telephone poles were ugly. They characterized telephones to be considered playthings of the rich.

American Culture • Consumerism • Environment • Featured • History • ignorance
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By Erich Vieth on November 30th, 2008

What if there were far too many people, but no one had the courage to talk about it?

What if there were far too many people living on planet Earth, but no one had the courage to talk about it?

According to Global Population Speak Out, that is exactly our situation.

Consider that we repeatedly see news reports about scarce and dwindling resources (e.g., water, food, fish, fuel, topsoil), but these news reports rarely consider the exploding population on Earth as a major contributor to these problems. This refusal to consider the carrying capacity of Earth is truly staggering. As a thought experiment, consider how our “environmental” issues would be altered if each country had 25% fewer people than it currently does. Or 50%. Instead, we the human population of earth is at 6.5 billion, headed toward at least 9 billion by 2050.

When it comes to discussing sex, reproduction and birth control, we freeze up, even when out-of-control population growth threatens our way of life.

Energy • Environment • Food • Politics • Reproductive Rights • Sex • Statistics • global warming
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By Erich Vieth on August 06th, 2008

Don’t get too excited about oil shale

How many times have you heard that there is an immense amount of oil shale, from which we can extract lots and lots of oil?   I’ve heard this claim dozens of times, yet the people uttering this claim never know anything at all about what it takes to make oil out of oil shale.
Consider this [...]

Economy • Energy • Environment • global warming
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