Living without a Fridge and Beyond

Canada: Climate Criminal

2012-01-17T17:47:00.000-08:00

by Rex Weyler

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.

What Happened to Canada?: Oil.

At the dawn of the 21st century a new political regime has transformed Canada from global hero – once standing up for peace, people, and nature – to global criminal, plunging into war, eroding civil rights, and destroying environments.

What happened to Canada? Oil. And not just any oil, but the world’s dirtiest, most destructive oil. Canada’s betrayal at the Durban climate talks – abandoning its Kyoto Accord commitments – is the direct effect of becoming a petro-state.

By the late 20th century, oil companies knew that the world’s conventional oil fields were in decline and oil production would soon peak, which it did in 2005. These companies, including sovereign oil powers such as PetroChina, turned their attention to low-grade hydrocarbon deposits in shale gas, deep offshore fields, and Canada’s Alberta tar sands. Simultaneously, inside Canada, oil companies began promoting the political career of the son of an Alberta oil executive, the conservative ideologue Stephen Harper.

Shell Oil opened operations in the tar sands in 2003. In 2004, the same year Canada signed the Kyoto Accord, committing to reduce carbon emissions, oil companies began to form “think tanks” and astroturf groups in Canada to establish the oil agenda and promote Harper as Conservative Party leader. Two years later, in 2006,

Harper’s Conservatives formed a minority government with 36% of the popular vote and launched Canada’s petro-state era, slashing environmental regulations, joining US Middle East wars, and launching a tar sands campaign, one of the most ecologically destructive industrial projects in human history.

In Durban, in December 2011, after mocking climate science and common decency, Canada’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent announced that Canada would abandon the Kyoto deal, abrogating a legally binding international agreement, which Canada had signed seven years earlier.

The Canadian government has become the policy arm and public relations voice of the international oil industry, discarding its reputation as an ethical country. Millions of Canadians have expressed outrage at the government that abandoned them and shamed Canada on the world stage. These voices are rarely heard in Canada’s corporate media. Meanwhile, Canadians witness an erosion of free press and civil rights within their own nation. They should not be surprised.

Life as an oil resource colony

“Oil and democracy do not generally mix,” explains Terry Karl in The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Oil is a “resource curse” for local populations, as experienced by Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and other nations. Oil rich nations attract oil industry patrons, who tend to support dictators. Petro-states often lose local economic sovereignty, suffer human rights atrocities, and see their environments devastated.

In the 1970s, the UK and Dutch economies experienced the oil curse as the North Sea oil and gas boom gave the illusion of prosperity while eroding sovereign economic capacity. Britain’s petro-state leader Margaret Thatcher used oil revenues to wage war, create banking empires, and subsidize elite society, while plundering the environment and leaving common citizens dispossessed of their own national heritage.

In 1977 The Economist magazine coined the term “Dutch disease” to describe the social and manufacturing decline caused by extreme resource exploitation. Oil revenues make a nation's currency appear stronger for a while, but this makes their exports more expensive and undermines manufacturing and local economy.

In 2011, the Montreal Macro Research Board warned that the “petrolization” of Canada had created “A severe case of Dutch Disease,” weakening Canadian business sovereignty, “hollowing out manufactured goods exporters” and making Canada “increasingly reliant” on oil and coal exports.

Like Thatcher's England Canada launched a scheme to privatise profits and socialize the costs of oil development. In the last decade, Canada has handed out over $14 billion in tax subsidies to oil, coal, and gas companies, while losing over 340,000 industrial jobs. A University of Ottawa study shows that oil colony economics is the largest factor in these job losses.

“Petro-states,” writes Terry Karl, become “unaccountable to the general population.” To impose the oil company agenda on their citizens, petro-regimes tend to centralize power, avoid transparency, and create a politics of lies and deceit.

Politics as war

Twice, in 2008 and 2009, Harper shut down the Canadian Parliament to avoid inquiries into his international deals, finances, and scandals including abusive treatment of Afghanistan detainees. Canada now ranks last among industrial nations in honouring freedom of information requests.

Harper’s perverse secrecy is typical of oil politics. “This is how petro states are made,” writes Andrew Nikiforuk in one of Canada’s best news sources, The Tyee; “with a quiet infection that eats away a nation's entire soul.”

In March 2011, as Harper ran Canada from secret cabinet meetings, 156 members of the government found Harper and his minority regime in contempt of Parliament for its refusal to share legislative information with other elected members.

In April 2011, Canadians learned that Harper’s liaison to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers had previously been convicted of defrauding two Canadian banks, a car dealer, and his own law clients, and had lobbied the Canadian government on behalf of his ex-hooker girlfriend.

The convicted felon, Bruce Carson, served as chief tar sands promoter, claiming “The economic and security value of oil sands expansion will likely outweigh the climate damage that oil sands create.” Carson also opposed “clean energy efforts in the U.S.” Canadian lobbyists undermined US low-carbon fuel standards by lobbying the US government.

In June 2011, on national television, another Harper henchman, Tom Flanagan, advocated assassinating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: “I think Assange should be assassinated,” he told Canada’s CBC. Flanagan has been one of the lead architects of Harper’s war on his own people. Before the 2011 election, in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Flanagan wrote, “An election is war by other means.” He compared an election campaign to Rome’s destruction of Carthage, whereby they “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.”

Alan Whitehorn of the Royal Military College of Canada wrote, “This suggests a paradigm not of civil rivalry between fellow citizens, but all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the opponent. This kind of malevolent vision and hostile tone seems antithetical to the democratic spirit.” Harper’s government is now constructing barricades around the Parliament buildings, erecting more jails, and passing tougher criminal codes. The Canadian people, who once felt proud of their democratic institutions, now feel like the “enemy” of their own government.

Canada against the world

Outside Canada, the Harper regime has dismissed the United Nations and international opinion. Canadian government officials called the UN a “corrupt organization.” Former Canadian senior UN official Carolyn McAskie wrote in Canada and Multilateralism: Missing In Action that Canada, once respected as a UN leader, is now “spurning a whole system of organizations critical to world peace, security and development.”

Economic analyst Jim Willie wrote that Canada has “followed the Goldman Sachs path to the fields of corruption and fealty… Canada followed the Bush Doctrine of fascism, embracing the war footing … and tightening the security vice. Next they will become a Chinese commercial colony.”

When citizens around the world objected to the climate impact of the tar sands, Harper’s government attempted to rebrand the notorious carbon bomb as “ethical oil,” shamelessly ignoring the facts. The tar sands crimes against humanity and nature begin with obliterating boreal forests and soils, creating massive open-pit mines, and removing two tons of sand and soil for every barrel of oil. The thick bitumen is melted with natural gas, which requires one-third of the energy in tar sands oil to remove it. The project uses about 150-million gallons of water each day from the Athabasca river and aquifers, and the black waste turns boreal lakes into sludge pits, kills birds and other wild life, and contaminates the local ground water. Pollutants from tar sands smoke stacks have caused lung disease throughout the region and a 30% increase in cancers over the last decade. Mike Mercredi from the indigenous Fort Chipewyan Cree Nation calls the impact “slow industrial genocide.”

The crime continues with pipeline oil spills and oil tankers that threaten the entire coast of North America. Meanwhile, the tar sands project emits more that 45-million tons of greenhouse gases each year. NASA climatologist James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands are fully exploited, “it is game over for the climate.”

The French Foreign Ministry called Canada’s decision to renege on its Kyoto climate commitments, “bad news for the fight against climate change.”

Representative Ian Fry from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu called Canada’s reversal “an act of sabotage ... a reckless and totally irresponsible act.”

The China news agency, Xinhua, called Canada’s decision “preposterous,” and China's Foreign Ministry urged Canada to “face up to its due responsibilities and duties... and take a positive, constructive attitude towards participating in international cooperation to respond to climate change.”

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres warned that Canada “has a legal obligation under the convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort.” UN Advisor on Water, Maude Barlow, called the tar sands “Canada’s Mordor.”

After Canada’s shameful showing in Durban, a Canadian businessman wrote to national newspaper, The Globe & Mail: “The pride of wearing the maple leaf on the lapel or backpack is gone. It's best hidden now. .. not one person in any country I have visited has been complimentary. Harper and his sheep will deny or ignore such facts while people like me lose business.”

Inside Canada, people are rising up, lead by The Wilderness Committee, Greenpeace, Council of Canadians, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Yinka-Dene Alliance, and others. These groups need international support to halt the tar sands crime and help Canada recover its lost reputation.

Rex Weyler's Deep Green Blog

Carism and Social Injustice

2011-12-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

This article was generously shared by Arlene Tigar Mclaren, links for this article, and further information about the writer are posted at the bottom of the article.

Carfree!
After giving up our car almost a year ago, we wondered if we were carless or carfree. We’ve been surprised not only how painless it’s been to be without a car, but also how liberating. Without a car, we are free to explore other forms of mobility that are pleasurable and convenient. We rely now primarily on walking and public transit and occasionally use car rentals and carsharing such as Modo and car2go in Vancouver, Canada. Since the area in which we live is reasonably well designed for walking, biking, public transit and car sharing, these alternative options easily rival the car as desirable forms of mobility.

Auto domination
The bad news is that due to their subordination to the private automobile these mobility alternatives are severely limited. Separated sidewalks and bike lanes are well and good but are built to accommodate the automobile as an all-encompassing system that shapes land use and transportation options. If public transit and railways were the main forms of motorized transport, they could be far more effective than they are rather than being the second cousin to the private automobile and commercial truck.

For the past century in the West, the automobile has dominated all other forms of transportation in hearts and minds, in social interactions and spaces, in culture, design and art, and in the political economy. Authorities protect at almost any cost the automobile – and its commercialized counterparts such as heavy trucks – as a way of life despite the fact that they do not serve all citizens equally.

Authorities protect the automobile, not people
Those with influence and power who design land use and transportation systems, provide funding for them, support the automobile and trucking industries, make the laws and uphold and enforce them are predisposed to favour the private automobile. They are biased towards cars and against pedestrians, cyclists, public transport and railways. In a word, they engage in ‘carism’.

This bias is no more evident than in the ways that political and legal systems uphold a culture of complacency and turn a blind eye to carnage on the roads. According to World Health Organization statistics (which are under-estimates) about 1.3 million people die annually around the world from motor vehicle collisions. These statistics are mind-boggling and the tip of the iceberg inasmuch as: an estimated 50 million people worldwide suffer serious injuries each year from motor vehicle collisions; countless others suffer minor injuries; and many more experience near misses.

Are there any other dangers that authorities view with such complacent indifference as traffic deaths and injuries? None spring to mind. Despite the fact that private and commercial motor vehicles are the most injurious forms of transportation to human (and animal) health and safety, they are protected rather than the other way around. Even more troubling is the fact that, if authorities adjudicate blame, they often punish non-motoring, vulnerable victims.

Three recent cases – one in the US state of Georgia, a second in Foshan, China and a third in Toronto, Canada – help to illustrate carism and social injustice. This handful of tragic events reveals how the legal, political, economic and spatial environment is biased towards supporting the domination of private cars and commercial trucks on public roads and against pedestrians and cyclists.

Carism, racism, sexism and class inequality
The bias towards motor vehicles and against pedestrians could hardly be more vividly portrayed than in a 2010 Georgia case in which a prosecutor charged Raquel Nelson with vehicular homicide. She was not driving a vehicle. She was a pedestrian crossing the road with her three children after they had gotten off the bus. Rather than walk 3/10 of a mile to a crosswalk and another 3/10 of a mile back – she had packages with her, as well as her children – she tried to cross the street to her apartment building right across from where the bus let her off. When her 4-year-old son broke away from her and ran into the road, he was struck and killed by a driver who had been drinking.

The man driving the car, Jerry Guy, fled the scene after the collision but later admitted to being the driver. He had previously been convicted of two hit-and-runs in 1997. He served six months in prison and the remainder of his sentence on probation.

What happened to Raquel Nelson? According to court records, the state charged her with three misdemeanors: second-degree vehicular homicide, failing to cross at a crosswalk and reckless conduct. An all-white jury convicted Nelson (an African-American). Although the prosecution did not recommend jail time, each count carried a potential sentence of one year in jail -- for a total of 36 months.

Nelson’s case attracted national attention from parents, the NAACP and transportation advocates who argued that she was being unfairly pursued for trying to cross the road as would any other pedestrian. In July 2011, Nelson obtained a victory of sorts. A judge sentenced her to 12 months of probation and 40 hours of community service and also said she could seek a new trial.

CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront program picked up the story on November 14, 2011, the day that Nelson’s lawyer filed an appeal to drop all charges. Burnett referred to the story as tough because of the situation where crosswalks don’t exist and busy roads run through poor neighbourhoods. The CNN legal contributor Paul Callan said the case is brutal: “Here's this poor young mother who has lost her son, her 4-year-old son run over by a hit-and-run driver and they charged her with vehicular homicide because she wasn't crossing at the crosswalk”. While Burnett wondered about racism being at work with a white jury convicting a black woman, Callan replied: “To me, it's more carism than racism” and explained, “The Georgia suburbs are built for the automobile. You know, they are big roads. They are fast roads. No crosswalks, minimal crosswalks. And she's someone who is poor. She relies on public transportation”.   

This case where a mother loses her child to a speeding car and in her grief is charged with vehicular homicide even though she was not the driver suggests that something is terribly wrong with the justice system. Callan’s use of the term carism helps to reveal how judicial and governing authorities privilege the automobile system at the expense of other forms of transportation. Municipalities continue to build roads with inadequate pedestrian crossings or sidewalks and governments vastly underfund pedestrian safety infrastructure, yet the court pointed the finger at a mother, blaming her for the death of her son on a road that was designed with no regard for pedestrian safety. As a poor African-American woman, she was caught in the intertwining forces of sexism, racism, classism and carism of an unjust judicial and political-economic system.

Motorized traffic is lethal to children
A collision that took place in China similarly illustrates how motor vehicles dominate other forms of mobility, resulting in terrible consequences. In October 2011, a child’s traffic injury, which was caught on video, was so shocking that it touched millions of people in China and reached the western media. In a local market street, a toddler, Yueyue, was struck by a hit-and-run driver of a delivery van and then run over by another hit-and-run driver. As she lay bleeding on the road, 18 passersby ignored her. Eventually a woman rescued the two-year old and called to her parents who were working in their nearby shop. They had not noticed that their daughter had wandered onto the street. She survived only to die a week later.

The media asked what this incident reveals about the soul of China in which passersby ignored the injured child. The case raises questions also about how private motorized traffic in every part of the world is taking over market streets and public space, and endangering pedestrians and children without adequate safeguards.

Because of carism, it is up to pedestrians and cyclists to accommodate to the risks posed by the car. Parents are forced to be forever vigilant and keep their children off streets and inside contained areas. As a result, children lose their independence and freedom to explore. When tragic collisions occur, a culture of complacent indifference flourishes.

Death and complacency
In Toronto, a recent collision between a cyclist and truck provides yet another example of how authorities are biased towards motor vehicles. On November 7, 2011, cyclist Jenna Morrison and pregnant mother of a 5 year old tragically collided with a truck turning right on a major Toronto street. Morrison was pulled under the truck and crushed beneath its back wheels.

According to the Globe and Mail, the incidence of death and injury as a result of collisions with heavy vehicles in Canadian urban areas is high: from 2004 to 2006, 77 pedestrians and 24 cyclists died and 1,410 people were injured from such collisions. Even though a 2010 report commissioned by Transport Canada shows that cyclist and pedestrian deaths and serious injuries involving trucks declined in Europe since side guards were introduced on the sides of most trucks in the late 1980s, Canada has not required side guards.

Parents in Canada who have lost children in similar collisions have been campaigning many years for mandatory safety guards. NDP MP Olivia Chow has tried three times to introduce a private member’s bill urging the federal government to require side guards. In 2006, the City of Toronto requested that Transport Canada mandate truck side guards. Prominent Toronto neurosurgeon Charles Tator has called for the federal and provincial governments to look more closely at the issue.

Transport Canada and the Canadian Trucking Alliance have so far been unimpressed with the research evidence and calls for action, upholding a culture of complacency about pedestrian and cyclist deaths. They claim that the evidence about side guards improving safety must be iron clad before they take action, even though the economic cost of side guards is not high and would clearly save lives. One would imagine that if any evidence suggests that truck safety guards are effective, responsible politicians would insist they be made mandatory. And some politicians are, just not enough.

Carism and social injustice
Here are three cases (and there are so many more) of families and children who have lost loved ones as a result of how motor vehicles dominate the roads. Such tragedies, which occur regularly and predictably, are not ‘accidents’. They could have been prevented yet the social and political responses to them are disturbingly inadequate and unjust. Carism, as a bias towards the automobile, helps to explain why authorities punish non-motoring, vulnerable victims, fail to protect children in the public space of roads, and are extraordinarily complacent in their indifference towards preventing traffic deaths and injuries.

Motor vehicle injuries and their consequences are only the tip of the iceberg of how the automobile dominates and diminishes daily life. People experience near misses as a daily contingency of walking, driving or cycling in a highly trafficked environment and must go to great lengths to avoid threats to themselves and others for whom they are responsible.

More generally, as the dominant mode of travel, the automobile disenfranchises those who do not drive whether due to age, ability, income, lack of opportunity, or choice. Carism has undermined what it means to be a citizen and needs to be challenged as a form of social injustice. If alternative kinds of mobility to the automobile had adequate public and political support, they would be far more egalitarian and accessible for all ages and walks of life.

Arlene Tigar McLaren is Professor Emerita at Simon Fraser University

She is the co-author of:
Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Automobility and Auto-Mobility. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

For links to referenced stories or the author:

Georgia, Beijing, Toronto

Arlene Tigar McLaren

Debt, Human Rights & Nature

2011-11-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider,
every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.” Martin Luther

In January, the bankers and corporate executives at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, presented a plan to create US$100-trillion (about 700-billion Euros or 7-trillion Chinese Yuan) in new international debt.

During the last decade, world debt nearly doubled from $57-trillion to $109-trillion. Banks created “toxic assets,” “mortgage derivatives,” and “default swaps” without substantial collateral to back them up. These schemes made bankers very rich, but helped collapse the world financial system 18 months ago. Public taxpayers have since bailed these bankers out with about $11-trillion in new debt. Now the financiers want more.

As some economies slightly recovered, energy prices rose to trigger inflation, slowing real recovery. Thus, the WEF bankers published “More Credit, Fewer Crises,” proposing that the world double its debt once again to $210 trillion by 2020. This debt would be over 3-times the entire world annual economy.

This debt, the printing of new money based on nothing substantial, has profound impacts on society and nature through resource inflation, the rising costs of food and energy, conflict, fraud, and ecological destruction.

Out of thin Air

These bankers are not proposing to loan their money to the world. Rather, they propose creating new money out of thin air, likely through International Monetary Fund (IMF) “Special Drawing Rights,” a synthetic currency beyond the control of any sovereign nation. By loaning currency rights to national treasuries, the bankers create $100-trillion with a few computer keyboard strokes. Then, they loan the fabricated money, collect interest payments, and demand the principle back in real money from the debtors. It’s a lucrative scheme if you’re on the inside.

What bankers call “Credit” the rest of world experiences as “Debt” owed to the bankers.

Interest payments alone on $100-trillion debt (at a modest 5% annual rate) comes to $400 billion per month. However, as the “Drawing Rights” pass down the chain of international, national, and local banks to become money in the hands of enterprising citizens, the total interest and fees to banks will be higher, perhaps 9 or 10 percent.

Furthermore, banks expect the principal back. To retire these debts over the next 20 years, the world’s borrowing enterprises would have to pay the bankers about $1-trillion per month. At the end of 20 years, bankers would have received about $140-trillion in interest payments and fees, plus the $100-trillion principal that they originally created out of thin air: $240 trillion profit (175-trillion Euro, 1.5 quadrillion Yuan) for creating money out of nothing.

The authors of the WEF debt proposal are executives from JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Rothschild & Cie, Deutsche Bank, Morocco’s Attijariwafa Bank, Russia’s Sberbank, China’s International Capital Corp., Shell Oil, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, BNP Paribas, and other international bankers, corporate capital funds, and national sovereign funds. These firms naturally stand to profit from the plan.

Even if some loans pass through the gauntlet of fraud and corruption to reach enterprising citizens, who create useful products and services for their communities, a harsh social and biophysical impact remains for communities and environments around the world. The quarter-quadrillion dollars that would be paid back to the banks becomes an endless debt burden for every project and every nation.

In the end, this debt-creation represents a massive transfer of wealth from global citizens to the world’s richest people. However, there is more.

The cost of debt

Forty years ago, Greenpeace was founded to campaign for peace and ecology. Today, Greenpeace continues those campaigns while working with communities around the world to retain civil rights and local autonomy. Massive debt undermines each of these social values:

1. Inflation:

Since this money is illusory, created from nothing, it dilutes all world currency and makes all citizens poorer through inflation. We have seen this in the last few months, as food and energy inflation has soared, caused by the last $11-trillion of debt imposed on the world to save the banks from economic collapse. The proposed $100-trillion of new money would have ten-times the inflation impact.

Debt causes inflation, inflation acts as a tax on the poor, and this leads to civil unrest. The Commodity Research Bureau food price index rose 44% this year and 22% in the last two months. In December, food prices in India rose 16% in three days. In Indonesia, rice prices rose 30% last year. In relatively rich Western Europe and North America families spend 12-15% of their income on food. In Egypt last year, families spent 40% of their income on food. The civil uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began as food inflation crises. Eastern Europe, China, Jordan and Sudan face similar food-inflation unrest.

Inflation, linked to the creation of un-backed money and debt, taxes the poor most severely. We will discover that debt also leads to the depletion of resources, soil erosion, water shortages and other environmental impacts, which further advance inflation and the debt cycle.

2. Ecological destruction:

Nations must account for both private and public debt because during economic crisis, companies often default, and private debt becomes public. Many countries now possess public and private debt three to four times their annual gross economy. The UK debt is 6-times its gross economy and Iceland 12-times. Massive debts put pressure on countries to expand their economies. But they are caught in a vicious cycle. Debt depresses growth, so nations relax environmental laws to increase industrial projects, corporate profits, and tax revenues to pay off the debt.

Debt pressure drives nations deeper into the ocean after oil and gas and deeper into wilderness for minerals. Desperate nations bulldoze forests for cash crops, dam rivers and burn coal for energy, open parks to mining and logging, and obliterate national treasures to create cash to pay interest on debts.

In Canada, where I live, our public and private debt stands at about 2.5 times our annual economic production. To grow our economy at all costs, our government opened the boreal plains to tar sands production, reduced environmental standards, and created one of the world’s most ecologically destructive industries. The tar sands project devastates local indigenous communities, drains aquifers, pollutes groundwater, destroys rare habitats, fills lakes with black sludge, and heats the atmosphere with low-net-energy hydrocarbons.

Environmental destruction makes the debt cycle ever more vicious, as depleted environments provide less economic potential and rob indigenous and rural communities of self sufficiency. Governments may then find it expedient to suppress angry citizens, who have lost their local economic base.

3. Human rights:

A large portion of international debt goes to corrupt dictators, who restrain public resistance by suppressing human rights. In Odius Debt, Patricia Adams documents the human rights impact of debt. One-third of World Bank loans, over 65 years, ended up in the private hands of dictators and corrupt officials through bid-rigging, bribes, kickbacks, and outright theft.

Twenty to thirty percent of all developing nation debt over the last fifty years has gone to dictators such as Zaire’s Mobutu Seko, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Indonesia’s Suharto, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov. The banks often justify loans to tyrants because they are “allies” of rich western nations. Mobutu stole billions of dollars loaned to Zaire; he jailed, tortured, and killed political opposition; and enslaved his own citizens. When International Monetary Fund (IMF) agent Edwin Blumenthal reported the loan theft and “sordid and pernicious corruption,” the IMF ignored him and awarded Zaire the largest African loan in history. Patricia Adams estimates that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos pocketed one-third of all loans to the Philippines during their regime. Once these dictators fall, the banks expect their victims to repay the loans.

Loans to corrupt dictators will likely get worse with the new SDR credits, set to be awarded by the IMF without even basic safeguards. The Wall Street Journal warns that “all governments qualify, including those that lock political dissidents in dungeons and steal from their own people.”

Cephas Lumina with the UN Human Rights Council, reports that private “Vulture funds” buy the defaulted debts of poor nations “at deeply discounted prices,” and then seek “repayment of the full value through litigation, seizure of assets and political pressure.” In the last ten years, 12 nations designated as Heavily Indebted Poor Countries have been served with 54 lawsuits by such debt profiteers.

Some African nations spend 40% of government budgets on debt service, draining money from much needed health and education, which average about 14% of budgets. Debt breeds poverty.

4. War:

We can see that the current structure of international debt creates inflation, poverty, fraud, oppression, and environmental destruction. Finally, through currency and resource crises, debt fuels war. The world, while increasing debt, spends over $2-trillion each year on military and warfare, exacerbating the vicious debt cycle.

Sudan dictator Omar Al-Bashir, for example, received loans from the World Bank, China, and others, helping finance Sudan’s 20-year civil war, causing 2 million deaths and 4 million refugees. Meanwhile, Al-Bashir’s army bombed innocent villages, tortured and massacred opposition, and kidnapped citizens, particularly in the rich oil-producing regions of Sudan.

The U.S., meanwhile, spends about $12 billion per month to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan, to secure oil fields and pipeline routes. European nations, Russia, China, and others have waged war to “protect national interests,” particularly dwindling resources. These large countries also arm the dictators that hold their debt, enabling more war and bloodshed.

Alternatives exist

Into this powder keg of corruption, violence, war, oppression, fraud, and ecological devastation, a few wealthy bankers want to inject another $100 trillion of debt burden on the world. Their scheme would not create “less crisis” as they claim, but more crisis, more financial bubbles, more corruption, more dictators, more war, more ecological destruction, inflation and poverty.

Alternatives exist. The poor nations of the world indeed need and deserve support to help develop their economies that have been wracked by colonialism, war, and resource plunder. The UN should manage international debt, base all money on real assets, and return profits to the human community. Loans can be designed to support local enterprise, solutions that benefit local communities, sustainable farming that protects soil, and localized self-sufficiency. The current international banking schemes undermine these community values.

Good economics will be good for everyone, not just enrich the wealthiest people on Earth.

================

Links in this essay:

WEF, “More Credit, Fewer Crises”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70J6K520110120

Commodity Research Bureau, Foodstuffs index
http://www.crbtrader.com/data.asp?page=chart&page=chart&sym=BWY00

food prices in India
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/vegetable-food-inflation-spikes-a-teary-eyed-govt-blames-onions-74522?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ndtv/Lsg

Odius Debt, Patricia Adams
http://journal.probeinternational.org/odious-debts/read-odious-debts-the-book/

Rex Weyler: The Prius Fallacy

2011-10-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.

This chart shows gasoline consumption per capita declining in Cascadia – Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Such graphs are sometimes used to support the idea that we are gaining transportation efficiency with new cars such as the Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid. People point out that “switching to a Prius” could cut gas use by 70% and so forth, which would certainly be a good thing.

However, to analyse this correctly, one must make a full accounting both of energy use in general and the specific “solution” proposed. Will buying a Prius or other hybrid help stop global warming and save the planet? Let’s have a look. Here are some of the factors:

1. The above graph shows oil consumption per capita declining in a particular region (Cascadia) since the mid-1970s. This may simply reflect the fact that per capita oil consumption has declined globally since 1979, the peak year of global per capita oil use. This has been known for some time. Lester Brown mentions this in his 1981 book, Building a Sustainable Society. I have done my own calculations, confirming that 1979 stands as the year of peak petroleum use per capita. Total oil consumption increased, however, since we have added some 3 billion people to the planet since the mid-1970s.

2. Note the sharpest decline here is approximately 1976 - 82, which correlates with the OPEC oil embargo and the ensuing global recession. The decline in this particular graph also correlates with a severe Washington State recession in the early 1980s.

3. The recent decline on this chart reflects the fact that global oil production has been flat since 2005, so global per capita use is declining faster than ever, since population continues to grow at about 1.1% per year. The most recent steep decline in oil consumption per person correlates with recent oil price increases and now a global recession.

4. Global oil production has peaked, so this decline in petroleum use per capita will continue independent of all technical efficiencies gained in car design.

Thus, there remains considerable doubt that this chart's shape (or future shape) can be correlated to Priuses and other automobile designs. But there is more.

Full energy accounting

To determine if buying a new Prius (or any other mechanical efficiency) reduces global petroleum consumption or carbon emissions (and if so, by how much), one must perform a full life-cycle energy and carbon accounting for the Prius.

There are three classes of energy that a vehicle consumes in its lifetime: 1. “Embodied energy,” required by material mining, manufacture, shipping, and automobile infrastructure; 2. vehicle operation, and 3. disposal & recycling.

Depending on the model, 10-40% of the energy an automobile uses in its lifetime is “embodied energy” consumed before it is purchased to build the car alone. For a Prius, the manufactured embodied energy is about 25% of the vehicle’s lifetime energy use. On top of this, one must consider automobile infrastructure. No studies that I know of have yet allocated the embodied material and energy of the highway, service, and parking infrastructure to individual vehicles, but for a full accounting, this must be considered. Our highway system is not just a financial subsidy to the automobile industry, it is also an energy cost subsidy, the energy to mine, move, and assemble the resources to build the highways.

The actual energy cost of a new vehicle – hybrid or pure gasoline style – depends on the vehicle lifetime and the full materials and energy costs.

New high-tech steels and alloys used in a Prius require more embodied energy to produce and to recycle than conventional steel. Other factors include high-energy-use products such as batteries and electric motors.

The point is, basing a car purchase decision solely on fuel economy will not tell you the full energy cost of that vehicle.

The critical factor is total throughput of material and energy. A new car of any kind requires mining, shipping, manufacture of exotic alloys, batteries, plastic, shipping of parts, assembly, and finally, shipping the vehicle. A new Prius equals more demand on the planet, less perhaps than a Hummer, but orders of magnitude more than a bicycle or even a reasonable public transport system shared among millions of commuters.

Here are some other significant factors

5. Exported emissions: A Prius is not likely manufactured in the region it is purchased (even if some part of it is). Most of the Prius' embodied energy is accounted for around the world in mining, manufacture, and shipping of the materials, parts, and the finished car. On a global scale, North America has exported a large portion of its carbon emissions. So, for example, to accurately compare “China's” emissions to US or Canadian emissions, we must consider the portion of China (or India, or Mexico) emissions that are actually exported North American emissions, because we are consuming the products associated with the energy use that created the emissions. A product's total energy cost is global.

6. More cars. Any new car – Prius, Hummer, Smart Car, whatever – is one more car that the biosphere has to supply with materials, energy, and waste sinks. The old car is now a cheap option for someone down the economic line. Now there are two cars instead of one. The more ecological car is the one you already have. The most ecological car is no car. Get a bicycle, or walk. But buying a Prius is a little like recycling on the Titanic.

7. Rebound effect: Historically, mechanical efficiencies gained by industries have not translated into less throughput of material and energy, but more. Why? Because when we gain efficiencies, consumer items become cheaper, so more people consume them. This well-known phenomenon in economics is known as the efficiency “rebound effect.” It may appear counter-intuitive, but industrial efficiency results in more consumption, not less. The “gain” is not given back to the earth, but rather it goes to (a) corporate profits and (b) consumer savings, rarely, or never, to less consumption.

A modern example is the fact that computers never saved paper as we once believed they might. Computers led to greater paper consumption. In 1950, humanity used about 50 million tons of paper per year. Now, in the computer age, we use 250 million tons per year. Computers made it cheaper launch more activities that consumed more paper. Typical rebound phenomenon.

And then, there is still more to consider:

8. Substitute consumption .. The profits and savings earned by efficiency are used for other material and energy consumption. The corporate managers get bigger bonuses that go into private jets, yachts, summer homes, cars (Priuses!) for their kids, and so forth, all costing energy. Consumer savings go into the same types of things. Saved money from the more efficient car, is spent on holidays, a second car .. more consumption.

Historically, all efficiency gains translate into greater aggregate consumption. Why?

because our economics is dependent upon consumption, not restraint. When the economy discovers an efficiency, it takes the gain as profit. We don’t return the gain to our abused planet.

And since humanity is in aggregate overshoot, all these efficiency gains that yielded greater consumption have increased human overshoot, not reduced it.

There is much more to fully accounting for our so-called global warming “solutions,” but the above outline describes the critical point: To analyse a “solution” one must do the full accounting. If we account for only a part of the process, we are easily misled into false solutions.

For example, science has known for over a century that industrial CO2 in the atmosphere would cause global warming. Svante Arrhenius wrote about it in the 19th century. James Lovelock had the data in the 1960s. Nevertheless, after decades of science, protest, innovation, international negotiations, speeches, handshakes, and treaties, human CO2 emissions continue to increase at about 3% per year. Our emissions have showed not a waver of slowing down (except by recession, barely). Our “solutions” so far haven't added up to anything remotely promising. The entire Kyoto process was probably a net carbon emitter just in the airplane travel. Will the Prius, or windmill, or next technical solution do the trick? Not without a full ecosystem accounting.

This full accounting appeared as one of the main points from Herman Daly's work, as well as the work of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Howard Odum, Hazel Henderson, Donella Meadows, Robert Costanza, Charles Hall, and other biophysical economists, who pioneered this common sense approach. The critical factors were worked out long ago, and the accounting is not particularly complex, it is just inconvenient for our industrial producers to face, and few consumers want to pay full cost if they can avoid it.

Consumption drives our economic system, so until we convert this system to something biophysically accountable, a system that rewards restraint, human enterprise will likely keep making these sorts of miscalculations about solutions to climate change and ecological destruction.

A good solution

In 1980, farmer/author Wendell Berry wrote an essay, “Solving for Pattern,” that outlined the features of “a good solution.” I consider this essay on the A-list for the 21st century. He showed that many problems we face today are the consequences of previous “solutions” that focused on an isolated, short-term gain. Toxic pollution, dying rivers, and nuclear waste provide examples.

Using farming examples, Berry demonstrated how a good solution preserves the “integrity of pattern,” improves balance and symmetry, and addresses the health of the whole system.

A false solution treats symptoms and only in a narrow focus. All problems are parts of a whole, and all systems are contained in larger systems. A good solution maintains the integrity of the larger systems.

In this way, a good solution solves multiple problems, and avoids “magic bullet” solutions that fail to account for their full impact. For example, a nuclear “solution” to an energy need creates new problems: radioactive fuel transport, public health, waste, security, decommissioning, accidents, insurance costs, evacuation plans, radiation exposure, and so forth. “In a biological pattern,” Berry writes, “the exploitive means and motives of industrial economics are immediately destructive and ultimately suicidal.” A genuine solution does not pollute or destroy a watershed, for example, to mine gold or generate power.

Real, integrated solutions tend to localize, accept limits, and use resources at hand. However, genuine solutions exist only in actual proof and cannot to be expected from absentee owners and absentee experts. People who will benefit from success or suffer the consequences of failure should guide local solutions with real work that fits the scale of their communities. Genuine solutions appear in harmony with a specific place, maintained with local knowledge. A solution, says Berry, “should not enrich one person by the distress or impoverishment of another.” The scale of a solution proves critical. Solutions that require massive, expensive, imported infrastructure often cause more problems than they solve.

Healthy, integrated solutions distinguish biophysical order from mechanical order. A mechanistic plan often works “on paper” by ignoring related systems. In crafting solutions, consider wisdom, not just calculation. Well-designed solutions maintain natural, organic pattern. Human communities exist only within large-scale layers of organic systems, with natural cycles and laws of material and energy exchange.

Systemic solutions satisfy multiple criteria. They consider form as well as function; they are healthy and pleasant to live around. On the other hand, large scale industrial solutions often create toxic waste, degraded environments, depressing work, designed obsolescence, and so forth, all in the pursuit of solving one single criteria: wealth for the owners of the firm. The service or product provided is a secondary purpose. The stated and actual primary purpose of modern corporations is the consolidation of cash wealth.

Avoid “going for broke” with single plan that could have large-scale negative impacts, but rather, design many small-scale solutions that can scale up and down, prove out, adjust for those that don’t work well, and augment those that do. Berry writes: “to have a lot of power should not make it impossible to use only a little.”

A good solution does not assume “More is better.” The growth solutions that do make this assumption destroy communities, families, cultures, and environments. Large-scale, centralized solutions allow wealth to be concentrated, but do not necessarily achieve optimum, systemic health. “The illusion can be maintained,” Berry points out, “only so long as the consequences can be ignored.” Thus, a series of village scale power systems that can be operated by village skills is more stable and more sustainable than a massive corporate industrial power system with invasive environmental disruption and long transmission lines that cut through wilderness ecosystems.

Restraint above all

Human solutions do not endure without human input, energy, organization, maintenance, and so forth. Wendell Barry points out that the integrity of human artifacts depends on human virtues: accurate memory, rigorous observation, insight, inventiveness, reverence, devotion, fidelity, and restraint. Here Berry emphasized “restraint above all.” We must learn to resist the temptation to “solve” problems by accepting “trade-offs” and bequeathing those to posterity. A good solution, Barry wrote three decades ago, is “in harmony with good character, cultural value, and moral law.”

All proposed “solutions” to our ecological challenges should be assessed using criteria such as these.

The Action Plan for reversing overshoot in a biophysical system is fairly simple: Shrink and restore:

1. reduce consumption ( in nature this is done by limiting population, and learning to manage on limited nutrient, material, energy throughput). Growth is not a solution for this.

2. Restore the ecosystem, or at least don't destroy the natural ecosystem. (In nature, this is done through symbiosis). We need to reduce our ecological impact, not grow it.

Bonus comment from Dr. Albert Bartlett:

"Smart growth is better than dumb growth, but they both destroy the environment."

More growth equals more well-to-do people, more homeless people, more employed people, more unemployed people, higher average salaries, more people living below the poverty line, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more crime, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more tax revenue, higher taxes, more fiscal problems for state and local governments, more tax limitation measures, more air and water pollution, higher utility costs, less reliable utility service, less democracy, more congestion on busy city streets and crowded highways, more unmanageable costs of maintaining public infrastructures, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment.

These problems can’t be solved by a nickel’s worth of “Smart Growth” tacked onto to billions of dollars worth of urban sprawl.

After maturity, continued growth is either obesity or cancer."

================
Links:
Rex Weyler’s Ecolog
www.http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Rex's Deep Green Column can be found at Greenpeace International
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/

How I Ditched my Fridge & Air Conditioner in Texas, Engaged in Civil Disobedience, all during Ramadan

2011-09-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

This article was generously shared by Murtaza Nek.

Hi readers!

I don't know how you discovered this blog. If you're like me, you decided to Google "living without a refrigerator". After some reading, I emailed Andrea. Soon after, I started trying to wean myself off my fridge, and Andrea asked me to write something up about my transition. But my story is about more than unplugging my fridge! So here I go... here I present the month where I became an activist and began to boycotting nonrenewable Texas energy.

I live in South Texas, which was experiencing record-high temperatures last July. I preferred not to use my A/C, but when the temperatures were consistently in the high 90's Fahrenheit (high 30's Celcius), I kept the A/C on all day and kept it off during the night.
Photo: Tim DeChristopher
In late July, I got an email about a heroic environmentalist, Tim DeChristopher, who in 2008 attempted to derail an illegitimate US government bidding for public lands. Not surprisingly, the lands were to be given to oil and gas companies that sought to exploit the land for profit at the expense of the local community and the environment. He posed as a bidder (the famous Bidder 70), and won bids for a lot more land than he could pay for. The email indicated that he was sentenced to two years in jail for financial fraud.

The email really hit me. It was shocking to discover yet another low the Bush administration would sink to by selling off lands to oil and gas companies back in 2008, inspiring that Tim had the guts to do something so bold but risky to oppose it, and intimidating since I realized that if we are to pursue true climate justice, a lot of people are going to need to do difficult things, possibly risk arrest and jail, to really bring attention to the issues at hand... because somehow, the messages delivered by scientists and activists, and now ever more increasingly, by nature itself, aren't enough for the masses.

I was inspired and motivated, but scared! I wasn't ready to do what Tim did, nor was I bold enough to have the courage that Tim had to be able to say, on the day of his sentencing: "The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today."

Contemplating this, I looked around my room, irritated that I live only a passive environmental life and contribute to the profits of unsustainable electric companies by consuming energy with my AC, fridge, and other things. Renewable energy is at 6% in Texas, so one is trapped supporting non-renewable energy here.

From Tim's inspiration, I stopped using my A/C, and lo and behold, it wasn't so bad! I bore temperatures in the high 90's and even low 100's Fahrenheit (high 30's/low 40's Celcius), simply by keeping my doors open to take advantage of the breeze! But the fridge... I didn't know how. That's when I wrote Andrea:

"I wanted to say THANK YOU for your blog! It was so helpful and motivating! I've just recently heard about the prison sentence of Tim DeChristopher, and was reminded of the urgent necessity for uncomfortably difficult action for climate change, but unfortunately felt that I still lack the courage to engage in civil disobedience. Thinking about how I'd like to hopefully go off the grid, I googled "living without a refrigerator" and came across your blog. Reading it was for me one of the first steps towards attempting to go off the grid, thus doing a small part to further my carbon-neutrality."

She encouraged me with her reply:

"Ideally, what we each do may be difficult but should not be overwhelming. Compact fridges or going off completely have been a good way for me to get involved, while getting more involved in activism."

I started making preparations to turn off my fridge. I expected it wouldn't be too hard, because as it happens I live alone, and hardly use my fridge. Furthermore Ramadan was about to start, and my local mosque provides free dinners for the month so I didn't have to worry about cooking. I unplugged in August, and for the first few days I kept the fridge off all day except for 5-7 hours. Every few days, though, I needed to store leftover trays of food from dinners from the mosque, so I needed to keep the fridge on continuously.

In the middle of Ramadan I received a call to engage in civil disobedience in Washington to draw attention to the environmentally disastrous tar sands in Alberta, Canada. The call also urged us to stop a Canadian company called TransCanada from building a 1,700-mile (2,700km) pipeline from the tar sands in Alberta, through Montana, and all the way to Texas, with dangerous consequences all the way down the line. So far, the US Government seems inclined to approve the pipeline.
Photo: Murtaza Nek
The Alberta tar sands region happens to be one of the largest pools of potential greenhouse carbon in the world. With the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere, the expansion of the tar sands means it's over for us as a species, for the climate, essentially for life as we know it. The organizers called for a 15-day protest in front of the White House in Washington, DC, one in which the protestors would be risking arrest. See www.tarsandsaction.org for more details. By the way, for those of you in Canada, there is a similar such one-day action happening in Ottawa tomorrow! For further information, see this link: http://tarsandsaction.org

Long story short, I thank God for bringing me from the point where I was writing Andrea about how I thought something needs to be done, to signing up to participate in the White House protests only a few weeks later, to unplugging my fridge, to protesting and subsequently getting arrested on Monday August 29. I thereafter returned, more resolved to do greater things in pursuit of climate justice.

Back from DC, it turns out that I might be braver than I thought, my fridge is presently off, Ramadan's over, and the rest of life is before me. And as far as fridge-ditching goes, I'm no longer getting free food from my mosque, so now the *real* challenge of going fridge-less begins. Let's see what happens next.

The Worlds Biggest Carbon Bomb: Canadian Tar Sands

2011-09-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

And the fuses that threaten to set it off

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.

====================

Three long fuses lead back to the world’s biggest carbon bomb: The Canadian Tar Sands. The fuses are pipelines – existing and proposed – that run from the black sludge lakes and devastated landscape of northern Alberta, Canada to marine ports where oil producers hope to ship tar sands crude oil to world energy markets.
Tar Sands Before and After, photo by Peter Essick

Releasing the ancient tar sands carbon into Earth’s atmosphere threatens every man, woman, and child on Earth as well as every other creature. NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands is fully exploited, “it is game-over for Earth’s climate.” The carbon contained in the tar sands is enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into runaway heating, releasing ancient methane and killing sea life and forests, so that humanity could not reverse the heating regardless of what we do.

The fuses to this carbon bomb, the pipelines and tankers, include:

1. Keystone XL: An expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline from Canada, through the central US to Port Arthur, Texas, where the crude oil can be refined or loaded onto oil tankers for the global market.

2. Enbridge pipeline, a proposed route over the Rocky Mountains, across Canadian boreal forests, wild watersheds, and indigenous territory to the marine port at Kitimat, British Columbia for export. And:

3. Kinder-Morgan TMX Trans-Mountain pipeline, also over the Rocky Mountains, into the port of Vancouver, British Columbia. This pipeline/tanker route is already operating and Kinder Morgan has applied for an expansion. In 2010, 71 large oil tankers shipped tar sands crude oil through the Port of Vancouver and the Georgia Strait to global markets.

These three pipelines threaten to detonate the world’s biggest carbon bomb, but they face resistance from indigenous nations, rural communities, farmers, unions, scientists, and private citizens in Canada and the United States.

Resistance

This summer, in front of the U.S. White House, police arrested 1,252 citizens – including Athabasca Chipewyan indigenous leader Gitz Deranger, NASA meteorologist Dr. James Hansen, writers Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben, actress Daryl Hannah, and Greenpeace USA director Phil Radford – demanding that US President Barak Obama refuse the Keystone pipeline expansion. Nine Nobel Peace Prize winners – including the Dalai Lama, South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Iran’s Shirin Ebadi – signed a letter urging U.S. President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone proposal.

Two major US unions joined the protest. James Little, president of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) issued a statement opposing the pipeline expansion. “We call on the State Department NOT to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline or to take any actions that lead to the further extraction of Tar Sands oil [and] impacts to groundwater resources from pipeline spills [and] the high levels of GHG emissions... The Tar Sands has destroyed vast areas of boreal forest and inflicted havoc on local communities…We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil.”

Athabasca Chipewyan leader Gitz Deranger declared, “I have seen the devastation of our environment and people's health with increased cancer deaths… If Obama approves this pipeline, it would only lead to more of our people needlessly dying.”

“A movement is being born right here in front of the White House,” said Bill McKibben, 350.org founder, who helped organize the protest. “We're at the White House because Keystone is the pipeline Americans have a real hope of stopping, because our president must give his specific approval. Tar sands mining has wrecked native land in Alberta; endangers farms, wild areas, and aquifers along its prospective route; and poses a danger to the whole planet. Keystone XL is one of three pipeline routes that lead back to the world’s biggest carbon bomb, so we’re working in solidarity with the indigenous people and other citizens in Canada.”

Canadian pipelines and tankers

Last year, in British Columbia, 61 Indigenous nations signed an historic “Fraser River Declaration,” promising to stop a proposed Enbridge pipeline from Alberta to the port at Kitimat, B.C. Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz Nation declared, “Enbridge has spills all over North America… We refuse to be next.”

Enbridge attempted to purchase indigenous consent with a “partnership” deal worth millions of dollars, but in September, the Yinka Dene Alliance – Nadleh Whut’en, Takla Lake, Wet’suwet’en, Saik’uz and Nak’azdli nations – turned down the Enbridge offer, which they called a “desperate and disrespectful attempt to buy our support for this pipeline.” Chief Larry Nooski of the Nadleh Whut’en said, “The Enbridge pipeline would risk an oil spill into our rivers and lands that would destroy our food supply, our livelihoods, and our cultures… There is not any amount of money that compares to the possible damage should an oil spill happen.”  The proposed pipeline would deliver tar sands crude oil to tankers. From Kitimat, these tankers would travel 150 kilometers down narrow Douglas Channel and around coastal islands, through treacherous waters and severe tidal currents, in a region of extreme weather. Thirty-four years ago, in 1977, Greenpeace joined an alliance with fishermen and the Gitga’at indigenous nation at Hartley Bay, B.C. to blockade an oil consortium vessel at the mouth of this channel. Four years later, Greenpeace vessels blockaded an oil tanker entering Georgia Strait.

The oil companies have persisted, but the indigenous nations of western Canada have taken up the challenge, insisting that this pipeline will never be built.

Floating oil

The third main pipeline from the tar sands runs over the Rocky Mountains into the Port of Vancouver, B.C. This Trans-Mountain (TMX) pipeline, owned by US company Kinder Morgan, is already operational.

In 2005, Kinder Morgan bought BC’s Terasen Pipelines, part of a privatization scheme by the BC Liberal government to sell public and natural assets. Kinder Morgan received approval to increase pipeline capacity to 260,000 barrels per day and began turning Vancouver into a tar sands shipping port. In 2007, without any public or indigenous consultation, tar sands crude oil began leaving Vancouver on Panamax and Aframax oil tankers. The US company has applied to dredge Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet to make way for 1-million-barrel Suezmax tankers.

Company founders Richard Kinder and Bill Morgan are ex-Enron billionaires. Enron swindled some $11 billion from their own shareholders. Richard Kinder was chief counsel for Enron from its founding in 1985 until 1996, when he received a $30 million retirement package and left Enron to start his pipeline company. He is now worth over $2.4-billion. The company has left a trail of oil spills and environmental disasters throughout the US.

The Burrard Inlet is home to three indigenous nations: The Musqueam on the Fraser River, the Squamish along Georgia Strait and Howe Sound coastlines, and the Tsleil-Waututh, the “People of the Inlet.” The Musqueam Nation signed the “Fraser River Declaration,” which declares they will help protect their lands, territories, watersheds, and “the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon.”

Rueben George, Sundance Chief and Director of Community Development at Tsleil-Waututh Nation recently told the Vancouver City Council and mayor, who have launched a “green city” project: “We came from these waters… We took care of the Inlet and only took what we needed. How can we be the greenest city when there are oil tankers going through our traditional territory … which we share with every one of you?”

In August, Squamish Elder Robert Nahanee welcomed and blessed a “No Tankers, No Pipelines, No Tar Sands” gathering at the Kinder-Morgan oil port. “We’re going to protect the sacredness of our dear Mother in a good way,” he said, and led a song his ancestors sang when they rescued white settlers from a fire a century ago.

“I’ve been fishing in BC since 1973,” said Canadian fisherman, Ron Fowler, who serves on the Pacific Salmon Commission and as Director of the Area-F Trollers Association on BC’s west coast. “If we get an oil spill anywhere in these waters, it would wipe out every fishery we have, shellfish, salmon, herring, and the plankton that they feed on. There is no sound reason for floating oil and risking our entire coastline.”

Follow the Money

The reason these companies risk oil spills to float oil is simple: Money. Right now, the European price for crude oil is about $24 more per barrel than the North American price. For a million-barrel Suezmax tanker, that price difference is worth $24-million per tanker. For this reason, all tar sands oil is destined for global markets where it will fetch the highest price. Thus, the producers want the pipelines to ports in Texas and British Columbia. It is a deception that this oil will help US or Canadian “domestic energy security.”

Promoters of the Keystone pipeline claim in the US that there is “no global warming impact” to the pipeline because if the US doesn’t approve the Keystone line, they will lose the business to Canadian pipelines. This is another deception. The three pipelines are not mutually exclusive; they are cumulative, and tar sands operators want them all and more. In a Financial Times article, Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert acknowledged the tar sands goal of producing 4-5-million barrels of crude oil per day. To move this oil, the producers need the Canadian pipelines and, according to Liepert, “By 2020, we may need three Keystones.”

Every pipeline or tanker that is stopped represents ancient carbon that stays in the ground and less global heating impact. More pipelines mean more tar sands development, more atmospheric carbon and more heating of Earth’s atmosphere.

===================

List of Groups involved in Stopping the Tar Sands

Tanker Free BC
http://www.tankerfreebc.org/

Wilderness Committee
http://wildernesscommittee.org/tankers

Council of Canadians, Tar Sands Action
http://www.canadians.org/energy/issues/tarsands/

Greenpeace Canada: pipelines and tankers in B.C.
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/greatbear/Resources/Fact-shee
ts/Oil-development-in-British-Columbias-coastal-waters/

Four Worlds International
http://www.fwii.net/video/video/show?id=2429082%3AVideo%3A66500&xgs=1&xg_so
urce=msg_share_video

Indigenous Environmental Network http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html

Fraser River Declaration http://savethefraser.ca/fraser_declaration.pdf

Rueben George Speaks to Vancouver City Council
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZh3p0mKGws

Squamish elder Robert Nahanee, pipeline/tanker protest
http://www.fwii.net/video/spiritual-leader-robert-nation-no-tankers-in-burr
ard-inlet?commentId=2429082%3AComment%3A70508&xg_source=activity

Fake
http://www.tankerfreebc.org/ "Ethical oil" campaign

Tar Sands Action, US
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/

Tar Sands Action, International
http://stoptarsands.yolasite.com/

Video: Rally Against Oil Tankers and Tar Sands
http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/994-video-rally-against-tar-sands-tankers-in
-vancouver

=======================
Links to writings by Rex Weyler:
Rex Weyler’s Ecolog
www.http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Rex's Deep Green Column can be found at Greenpeace International
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/

Ozone Decision Spikes Arrest Numbers at White House Pipeline Protest

2011-09-05T01:28:00.000-07:00

This article is a press release taken from Tar Sands Action organization, for more details, see the bottom.

244 Arrested on Saturday; 1,252 Arrested over the Last Two-Weeks

WASHINGTON– The largest environmental civil disobedience in decades concluded at the White House this morning with organizers pledging to escalate a nationwide campaign to push President Obama to deny the permit for a new tar sands oil pipeline.

“Given yesterday’s baffling cave on ozone standards, the need for a fighting environmental movement has never been more clear,” said Bill McKibben, who spearheaded the protest. “That movement is being born right here in front of the White House and reverberating around the country.”

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has become the most important environmental decision facing President Obama before the 2012 election and sparked nationwide opposition, from Nebraska ranchers to former Obama campaigners. A petition with 617,428 names opposing the pipeline will be delivered to the White House today.

Over the course of the two-week sit-in 1,252 Americans were arrested, including top climate scientists, landowners from Texas and Nebraska, former Obama for America staffers, First Nations leaders from Canada, and notable individuals including Bill McKibben, former White House official Gus Speth, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, filmmaker Josh Fox, and author Naomi Klein.

“Back home we are fighting to protect our land and water. This week, we decided to bring that fight to the President’s doorstep,” said Jane Kleeb, Director of BOLD Nebraska, who led a delegation of Nebraskans who were arrested this morning. “We are acting on our values and expect our President to act as well.”

Protest organizers are already planning ways to capitalize on the surge of energy the sit-in has created. In a number of cities, people have already begun to visit Obama for America offices to tell the campaign they will volunteer and donate only after President Obama stands up to Big Oil and denies the Keystone XL permit. Along the pipeline route, groups are preparing to drive turnout to State Department hearings later this month. Thousands are expected to descend on Washington, DC for the final hearing on October 7.

Last week, nearly every major environmental group in the country signed on to a letter demanding President Obama deny the pipeline permit. “There is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone XL pipeline, and those of the protesters being arrested daily outside the White House,” wrote the groups in their letter.

Vice President Al Gore also added his support to the protest, writing, “the leaders of the top environmental groups in the country, the Republican Governor of Nebraska, and millions of people around the country—including hundreds of people who have bravely participated in civil disobedience at the White House—all agree on one thing: President Obama should block a planned pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The tar sands are the dirtiest source of fuel on the planet.”

Many of the people arrested at the White House wore Obama 2008 buttons as they were taken away in handcuffs.

“We are not going to do President Obama the favor of attacking him,” said McKibben. “We are going to hold the Obama campaign to the standard it set in 2008. Denying this pipeline would send a jolt of electricity through the people that elected this president.”

Executive director of the 1.4 million-member Sierra Club, Michael Brune, warned of the consequences if President Obama approved Keystone XL: “We will see an enthusiasm deficit. We won’t see our members volunteering 20 or 25 or 30 hours a week. We won’t see the same passion and intensity.”

Courtney Hight, a former Youth Vote Director in Florida and White House Council on Environmental Quality staffer, now co-director of the Energy Action Coalition, said,

“Young people mobilized in record numbers in 2008 to elect a leader they believed would fulfill his promise. Yesterday, I was arrested with other young voters to call on President Obama to fulfill his promise and stand up to Big Oil.”

The White House is receiving pressure from citizens north of the border, as well. Activists in Ottawa are planning a civil-disobedience protest on Parliament Hill this September 26.

“The Canadian government is acting as the global advertising agency of the tar sands oil industry,” said author and activist Naomi Klein, who was arrested Friday. “Canadians have come to appeal directly to President Obama, to demand that he stop this pipeline and make good on his 2008 election promises.”

The proposed 1,700 mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry dirty, tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. A rupture in the pipeline could cause a BP style oil spill in America’s heartland, over the source of fresh drinking water for 20 million people. NASA’s top climate scientist says that fully developing the tar sands in Canada would mean “essentially game over” for the climate.

###

For more information, please visit tarsandsaction.org.

CONTACTS FOR REPORTERS
Daniel Kessler, 510-501-1779, daniel@ran.org
Jamie Henn, 415-601-9337, jamie@tarsandsaction.org

When Scientists, Daryll Hannah, and hundreds of US Citizens turn to Civil Disobedience: To stop a Deadly Pipeline

2011-09-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

The below clip was created by THE REAL NEWS, a publicly owned global news team that allow us to tell stories that corporations won't sponsor.

Vandana Shiva: Earth Democracy, and Preserving our Food Independence

2011-08-23T14:06:00.001-07:00

This lecture was originally given and hosted at Portland Community College

Want to know 500% more about our food in the modern world, and dozens of other important themes? Watch this 1 hour talk + questions at the end.

Rex Weyler on Living Systems: No more "Paper Parks"

2011-08-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.

Piecemeal ecology isn’t working.

Forty years have passed since the founding of Greenpeace and the first UN environment meeting in Stockholm, fifty years since the landmark Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and 115 years since Svante Arrhenius warned that burning hydrocarbons would heat Earth’s atmosphere.

Today, we have more environmental groups and less forests, more “protected areas” and less species, more carbon taxes and greater carbon emissions, more “green” products and less green space.

The human demand for land, materials, and energy has consistently overwhelmed our collective efforts to preserve and restore Earth’s environmental health.

For example, the “Living Planet Index” of species diversity reveals that since 1980 – even with new endangered species regulations and protected areas – terrestrial and marine species diversity has plummeted and the rate of decline has accelerated. We create more protected areas, but lose more species.

We gain 30% energy efficiency in buildings but double the average space-per-person and then add more people. After twenty years of Kyoto talks and deals, we have more CO2 emissions each year, not less. After forty years of international ocean dumping bans, the oceans are more toxic, not less.

Why?

Paper parks

The failure of protected areas to save endangered species helps explain our challenge. In July of this year, Camilo Mora, at the University of Hawaii and Peter F. Sale from the UN University in Ontario, Canada, published “Ongoing global biodiversity loss and the need to move beyond protected areas.”

Their report shows that since 1965, land based “Protected Areas” (PAs) have grown by 600% to 18 million square-kilometers. Marine PAs have grown by 400% to about 2.1 million sq-km. However, in both cases – on land and in oceans – biodiversity has declined, and the rate of decline has increased. Since 1974, the terrestrial biodiversity index has declined by about 40% and since 1990 the marine index has plummeted by about 21%.

Mora and Sale cite problems with the size and management of the protected areas and the disintegration of large scale ecosystems. The biologists trace these impacts back to growing human populations and growing demands on vulnerable ecosystems.

The authors support the establishment of protected areas but warn that these areas alone will not stop biodiversity decline without larger, systemic programs. Mora points out that most protected areas are only “paper parks,” legislated but not truly protected.

Sale says flatly, “Protected areas are a false hope in terms of preventing the loss of biodiversity.” The 2010 global biodiversity protection agreement signed in Nagoya, Japan pledged to preserve 17 % of land area and 10 % of oceans. Sale says it is “very unlikely those targets will be reached,” due to the growth of human demand for resources. Furthermore, “Even if those targets were achieved, it would not stop the decline in biodiversity.”

In “paper parks,” plants and animals disappear to poachers, development, and industrial pressure for logging and mining. Often, without adequate enforcement, industrial developers simply ignore protection rules. For example, in the 1980s, environmentalists won international bans on pelagic whaling and toxic dumping, yet those bans are routinely ignored by whalers and the toxic waste industries.

Furthermore, park boundaries cannot restrain pollution and global warming impacts. Typically, when a forest or coral reef is protected, the neighbouring area is overharvested and often decimated, breaking natural ecosystem links. Finally, this study points out that ecosystems require appropriate scale to allow for variations in ecological diversity, richness, abundance, synergies, and co-dependence.

Even so, Mora, Sale and many other biologists and ecologists have warned that we cannot stop biodiversity decline without putting limits on human population and consumption growth. “There is a clear and urgent need for additional solutions,” the authors warn, “particularly ones that stabilize ... the world’s human population and our ecological demands.”

Ecosystems

In practice, human efforts to protect and restore Earth’s ecological health have focused on a “species,” a “habitat” or some isolated thing that needed protection. But this has failed to account for the fundamental nature of living systems.

Earth’s ecology is not a collection of things. Rather, Earth’s ecology operates as co-evolving systems, shaped by feedbacks and interactions.

The systems remain always dynamic, never completely stable, always correcting for instability, as a hummingbird in flight or a bicycler.

Every subsystem in Nature interacts with others. Nothing exists alone in nature. Nothing survives alone in Nature. Biological and physical sciences do not describe “things.” Science tracks and describes relationships. Nature – from cells and bodies to communities and empires – is a web of relationships.

Global environmental strategies to date reveal isolated efforts and a few successes but systemic failures. As planners and implementers of ecological wisdom, we have not yet grasped the rules and demands of systems, the feedback mechanisms, co-evolution, and dynamic complexity.

In short, human environmentalism has yet to embrace Earth’s biosphere as a living process. The biosphere itself survives nested in a geosphere and solar system, which generate materials, energy and information for all the subsystems. Deep within the biosphere, communities, families, organisms, organs, and cells represent finer subsystems, each level nested in larger, more complex networks.

Nature is a continuum. Ecosystems are not “managed” by any of the parts. An ecosystem represents the highest level of complexity we know, orders of magnitude more complex, for example, than human societies or economic systems, which we struggle to manage. An ecosystem is not a thing. It is a web of interactions, drawing resources across boundaries; decoding information, responding to randomness and chaos, making collective decisions, and passing new information, products, and waste, back into the system.

Ecosystems have “rules” but do not determine absolute outcome because of “stochastic” or random inputs, similar to the process of a chess game or a hurricane.

Nature follows patterns and creates variations on themes as a jazz musician.

The random inputs give rise to new patterns, called “emergent behaviour,” which can influence the system in radically novel directions. The variations and patterns that replicate themselves become living systems, never just “things.” Every subsystem within an ecosystem, from cell to society, remains an interactive process.

Living systems do maintain states that ecologists call “dynamic equilibria” – a body, a forests, a community – during which system instabilities oscillate within mutually supportive limits for long periods of time. Even so, because of random factors, ecosystems are not entirely predictable, even if one could know all the rules, which we cannot. Thus, systems themselves evolve, and for human planning, we need to understand that the emergent relationships that follow disruption almost always include unintended consequences.

Accounting for human impact

In 1971, the year of the first Greenpeace campaign, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich and Harvard ecologist John Holdren proposed a formula to account for human impact on the environment. Their famous formula, published in the journal Science, stated that the Human Impact (I) equalled the Population (P), times average Affluence (A), times a factor for Technology (T), so the formula looked like this:

I = PAT

The factors of the formula can be difficult to quantify, but provide a reference tool to think about and discuss human impact on the environment. We can’t just blame population, because wealthy societies consume far more resources than more modest communities. We can’t just blame consumption, because sheer numbers of people – or any species – can and do impact a habitat. We cannot just blame technology (such as fossil fuel machinery) because history shows us that humans degraded habitats long before modern technologies. The Syrian desert, for example, used to be a cedar forest before human communities obliterated the forest with hand axes and goats. Animals with no technology at all can deplete an environment if they grow in numbers beyond the habitat’s capacity.

The formula is useful, but something is missing from this way of thinking. Given our discussion above regarding living systems, it appears that the formula requires another factor that we could call “S” to account for the systemic reactions within the system itself. Thus:

I=PATS

The system factor would prove even more difficult to quantify than the others, but it should appear in the formula nevertheless. Although we cannot reduce our environmental impact to a simple formula, the point of the “Systems” factor is that our impacts on the environment are not linear. The impacts often multiply among themselves, so that a polluted river depletes fish, which may deplete birds, which allows certain insects to overpopulate and destroy plants, which can cause soil erosion, and so forth.

We must not forget to include the fact that every time we disturb nature, we set in motion a sequence of system responses, reactions, and feedbacks, which may have their own impact independent of human activity.

Global heating feedbacks provide a disturbing example. As we heat the atmosphere with CO2, the permafrost melts, releasing methane, which increases the heating. Melting sea ice increases Earth`s heat absorption. Depleted forests absorb less CO2. Increasing heat causes more fires; acidic seas kill algae, reducing carbon capture; and so forth. We need to account for such system feedbacks when we reflect on our environmental impact. We cannot control most of these systemic processes, so good ecological planning will leave a margin of safety to allow the larger system to adjust to our activities.

So far, our ecological protection has failed to account for the fact that human society exists inside a complex living system. If we continue to ignore this fact, the system itself may reject the human presence.

=============

Links:
Rex Weyler’s Ecolog
www.http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Rex's Deep Green Column can be found at Greenpeace International
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/

Living Planet Index:
J. Loh, et. al., Royal Society, Biological Sciences,
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1454/289.full.pdf+html

UN, graph, from Loh, Goldfinger
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/the-living-planet-index-measures-trends-in-the-abundance-of-species-for-which-data-is-available

C. Mora & P.F. Sale, “Ongoing global biodiversity loss and the need to move beyond protected areas.” http://www.int-res.com/articles/theme/m434p251.pdf

=======================

The Bike Pirates: Something Good - Happening NOW

2011-08-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

by Andrea Peloso

A link to The Bike Pirates, and community bike organizations outside of Toronto, are at the bottom of this article. Thanks to The Bike Pirates, and other volunteer bike groups.

Yesterday, a hazy August evening, I slowly rode my broken bicycle down Landsdowne towards Bloor, Toronto's thriving neighbourhood of cultures, grit, and relative affordability. I'd spent over $100 to get my bike fixed 3 weeks prior, only to have the back tire completely go on my 2nd ride. There is something disheartening about this sort of thing: if this bike store had been my chance to vote, I'd have voted for President Nobody the next time round.

There I was, not much time left in the summer, with the choice of abusing my back steel tire or just going without my bike entirely. I had chosen the former.

Turning left on Bloor, I slowly half-rode-half-walked my bike along the sidewalk, passing through invisible yet omnipresent realms: first of cooked curry, next of capoeira rhythm, and finally of a seeming cacophony of activity coming from The Bike Pirates, a DIY volunteer bike shop. I had never been in. I figured I could at least get some free air - subconsciously having decided that there was something unique about my flat that made it unfix-able.

After meandering in, everything sped up: the bright light of a the shop cascading through generally blackish hues of metal bikes woke me up like a fresh breeze, but maybe it was the people.

I got permission to pump my tire. Before I could, a rosy fellow in a bright green t-shirt eyed my bike for what seemed like a mili-second and advised: "you can pump that if you want, but the tube is almost definitely shot". He explained that by the way the air tube nozzle was tilted, it was a sign of an obvious flat. "I'll just pump it anyway and see what happens", I said stand-offishly, grateful, but already involved more than I wanted to be. Of course, he was right. "Now...", he said, pausing enough to give me a chance to think about it, you can wait and pay for somebody else to fix it, ...or you can wait till 9 and fix it tonight, I can stay late to help you". Wow, really? Somehow by my own free will I found myself deciding to stick around for 1 hour until there was time, and learn how to fix my own flat. I passed a petite woman in a plaid shirt on my way out, we immediately shared a smile - a rare simultaneity in Toronto.

The center buzzed with a myriad of cyclists and volunteers coming in and out with problems of varying levels of difficulty. Some fantastically reconstructed bikes lay outside.

A cyclist needs to eat. Heading back in the direction of the curry realm, I loaded up a vegetarian thali and sat on a concrete tree pot, joining a swirl of capoeria dancers just done class, cyclists, pedestrians. It was a common moment of relaxed enthusiasm, creative interest casually and unintendedly shared amongst people in their city.

Soon enough I was full, and there was space for me early. WE WILL NOT FIX YOUR BIKE FOR YOU-signs abounded as I entered the work space, and tried to as nonchalantly as possible mount my own bike on the bike stand, making only 3 obvious mistakes, or every possible "not the right choice" option. I noticed how carefully the first pirate taught me. Not doing for me, doing when clearly no beginner would be able to do it, and then quickly returning the role to me. "A 16 nut is rarely used", he explained,"go find yourself a 15 that works on your tire". Somehow, I did, and 2 with built in washers, reused by me. I left them my parts for the "rare miscellaneous container". When I went to grab the 15 size wrench, it was the only one missing. As the most popular wrench, and the most commonly used, it was clear it had been stolen.

"How could somebody steal from a bunch of volunteers, people working for free to help others?" I fumed to two of the nearest pirates, one the man in the green shirt. "That's what we ask them when we catch them", he said, "But, that's life".

He seamlessly continued to aid the person the bike stand in front of me. Something about the speed of our interchange, and the cheerful focus with which he returned to the task at hand without bitterness spoke to me.

If sharing skills, tools, and knowledge was voting, and he got robbed, he'd just get up and vote again.

One pirate took the time to test and study my tube. We could both see that it was broken but he also showed me how to check the size, and that my tire had been filled with the wrong size. "This is what happens when you pay someone else to fix your bike." He said, advising me to keep the tube and question the shop on what happened. It felt like that wonderful moment in Annie Hall when Woody Allen dreams that Marshall McLuhan shows up to back him in a debate about himself, only this was a real way to take care of myself.

A new pirate showed me how to put my tire back on the steel frame once the new tube had been added. "Try to put your tire back on without any tools" he said, "it gets hard near the end". Doing it his way I felt my nails slowly separate from my now oily blackened thumbs, but I found another way with my fingers that mimicked his and managed to do it minus a tool. "Put the tire back on before you pump it up, hold it up while you tighten the screws" were the only two instructions I got from another pirate with a anarchic black t-shirt and a soft Australian accent... I did it.

I realized that all pirates seemed to be helping me. There must have been 4-6 volunteers, all who could stop by and help me with any particular aspect of the puzzle, they hummed through the shop, taking over where the other had left off, or teaching what they felt was important.

I paused for a moment to look up from my bike, in a room that felt entirely of movement, action, learning. Aged slogans and stickers were everywhere, mostly cheerful lines on fixing bikes. I was trying to answer a question for myself: why are so many intelligent, expert people devotedly helping others fix their bikes even over their allotted volunteer hours - even when they get robbed? My eyes fell on one old poster in the corner: "Everyone wants revolution, but nobody wants to fix their bike chain". If this bike chain were a vote, we'd all be voting revolution. Yes.

When I asked what a decent donation was for the help, teaching, free use of tools, a tube at cost, and 2 free nuts, I heard the common refrain that I'd heard all night: "You'll have to decide that for yourself." In a situation based upon the solid recommendations of others, I'd still had the choice handed back to me, whenever it was possible.

Riding home smoothly, on plush tires, the concrete a faint texture beneath me, I felt exhilarated. The sultry, almost Southern, August air seemed to flow around a brightly lit bike shop still alive in my head. I parked my bike differently, more lovingly than before in the dusty garage. And the thought of it breaking only seemed like a great excuse to jump back on the pirate ship, knuckle down, and be willing to fix my bike chain. If fixing my bike chain is one way to vote for revolution, there must be more.

WARNING: this article is NOT intended to dissuade people from voting in actual elections - do that too, canvas, run for office!

The Bike Pirates: http://bikepirates.com/
How to find a Community Bike Organization near You (Worldwide): http://www.bikecollectives.org/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Community_Bicycle_Groups

The Fridge-less Kitchen in Hyderabad, India

2011-07-17T03:12:00.000-07:00

This article was generously donated by Subhorup Dasgupta, who lived without a fridge in the hot and dry climate of Hyderabad for 3 years. He now has a 130 litre compact and still keeps most food out of fridge. In Canada, I think that living without a fridge is easy since it is almost always cold but here are some really amazing tips for any climate.

Living Without A Refrigerator

One of the things that seemed like a big challenge was getting by with a reasonably nutritious diet without a refrigerator. I grieved that I would have to miss out not only stuff like chilled drinks and icecreams, but also not have access to storing vegetables and meats and dairy products. Further, leftovers would be a liability and likely go waste. However, as I went on, I discovered ways of getting around this, and now, several months down, I have a diet where I am not impacted in any way by not using a refrigerator. As I set about trying to put my discoveries down, I came across another wonderful post on this same topic over here. Here are some of the things I personally discovered along with some of the wisdom already shared in that post.

My challenges were butter, milk, cheese, eggs, stocking up on vegetables for a week or more, green leafy vegetables, stuff like mayo and other dressings, toppings, and other processed pastes, and of course, leftovers.

Rice, Lentils, Omelets, and Ghee
As I struggled initially with a rice, lentil, and omelet plan, I started out by by adding clarified butter (ghee) to my diet. Ghee does not need refrigeration. Later, I added butter which stays perfectly fine in a covered bowl of water, the water needing to be changed every couple of days. Also, it saves cooking time in most recipes as you dont have to wait for it to reach room temperature. For those not comfortable with the water on the butter (it really is just a drop or two), you can put it in a small wide mouthed jar, and slip the jar into a ziploc bag and put the bag in water.

Milk, and Yoghurt
I am not a big consumer of milk, so the only use for it is with tea or coffee and for recipes that call for milk. I keep an emergency pack of UHT milk that you can buy in a tetrapak. For cooking, you cannot make out much of a difference between this and fresh milk. I tried making yoghurt with UHT milk, and contrary to what they claim, it doesnt taste the same as fresh milk. For yoghurt, I have switched to buying packaged fresh yoghurt. I do make it a point to check the dates on the packages, and it works fine. For any other use, I usually buy fresh milk from a dairy or use a dairy whitener for tea and coffee (since I dont take milk in my tea, this too is only for emergencies).

Cheese
Cheese, I started out by learning to do without. Later (when the withdrawals were too severe), I settled for single helping cubes of processed cheese. Usually smaller stores (the neighborhood kirana stores and the mom & pop outlets) will sell you these singly whereas the supermarkets will not. These stay good for up to a week if packed and ziploc'ed and placed in water. Most firm cheeses stay fine for weeks on end. If you are a cheese fanatic, and need to get by in warmer climate without a refrigerator, pick up the likes of parmesan, mimolette, pecorino tuscano, romano, and most cheeses that have grana in their name (grating cheese).

One good thing I found was the practice of frugality and moderation that comes with fridge-free living. I was forced to buy only as much as I could consume within a time frame.

Earlier, a visit to the supermarket meant stocking up (usually bad fats and carbohydrates) for the month or months. Now, I pick up one wedge of cheese, enjoy it till it is over, and only then go for the next, and this time, I usually pick up a different variety.

Eggs
Eggs stay perfectly fine for up to a week. I usually buy no more than two half dozen packs, and they stay good up to 10 days. A word of caution, a spoiled egg can give you a real bad case of loosies, so here I have linked a simple test. Being paranoid, I do this even with freshly bought eggs, since I am never convinced about how long they have been in the store before I bought them, but you can do this with eggs that are more than 5 days old after you have bought them. Fill a pot with water, place the egg in it. If it floats, or if it stands on the smaller end and the larger end bobs up, trash it and buy yourself a fresh supply, if it sinks to the bottom, or if it stands on the larger end and the smaller end bobs up, it is fine.

Cilantro and green chili

For green leafy veggies, the main items that I struggled with were cilantro, green chili, spinach and curry leaves. Small bunches of cilantro (with the roots) stays fresh for up to one day if kept standing with the roots in glass with some water. Another way is to wrap a large bunch of cilantro with the roots in newspaper and fold the ends so that it is kind of airtight, store in a cool dark place, this too will stay for up to one day. When using, sort through and trash the ones that are starting to spoil. Letting cilantro soak in cool water for up to 30 minutes before use will restore them to their original crispness even if they seem to have wilted a little. For green chili, the trick is to de-stalk them, taking care not to injure the flesh while doing so. I usually buy a large handful each time, that lasts me for up to 10 days. After washing, drying and de-stalking, sort the ones that have started showing signs of ripening (a tinge of yellow or orange, or sometimes just a hint of lightening of the green towards yellow) and the ones that have blemishes or injuries on them. These go into a jar that will be kept on the shelf with other spices to be used for immediate cooking. The rest (fresh, bright green, intact flesh) gets packed air tight but loosely in newspaper, and the newspaper packet placed in a ziploc bag, and then kept in a cool dark place. This will stay for up to two weeks, but take care to change the paper packing once every three four days as it will sweat up and if not changed will cause the chili to spoil. Once my at hand chili is exhausted, I pull out the packet, sort and pick the ones that are closest to ripening, and replenish, at the same time changing the paper packing. Being a chili fiend, I usually have two or three types of chilis at hand, and this helps me not to have to waste just because it spoiled.

Spinach and Curry Leaves
Spinach is not too tolerant of heat or time, and will not stay beyond three days even with greatest care. Sort them as soon as you get them home, removing all the leaves that are bruised or mutilated. Leave the stalks on, they seem to keep better that way. Making sure they are dry (they sometimes comes with moisture and even water from the shop), loosely pack them into a large ziploc bag, and wrap the bag with a wet napkin, making sure that the napkin is kept moist at all times. While they stay green and alive for more than three days, the flavor seems to disappear when cooked if kept more than that.

Curry leaves are good for up to five days if kept on their stalks and dry in a ziploc with the air squeezed out.

I also turn curry leaves into a powder which stays good for up to a month in an airtight jar. Links to recipes are provided below. This works great for livening up a dal or a khichdi or even a curry, just throw a spoonful in and the taste changes.

For stuff like mayo and dressings, I have not found a fix better than making it fresh each time you want to use. I keep all my dry spices (pepper, clove, cinnamon, etc.) and dry herbs whole, and lightly roast them before use, letting them cool before grinding them. For fresh herbs, miniature versions of square foot gardening helps with basil, sorrel, thyme.

I end up eating more fresh food and foods without preservatives, and they taste oodles better than the canned stuff.

Nearby Stores
I have searched and found multiple fresh vegetable outlets near my place of work and near my home, so that at the end of the work day, I go across and pick up fresh vegetables, making sure to get a fair spread of colors, fiber, nutrients in my bag. Potato, onions, garlic, ginger have a long shelf life and can be bought in larger quantity. Vegetables like Beans, Carrots, Cabbage, Ladies finger, etc., stay good for up to three days if stored in a cool, dark and dry container. Hybrid tomatoes can stay good for up to seven days, while the wilder variety keeps for lesser time. Cauliflower stays good and crisp for up to two days, but can be used for up to three or four days. Once you have a hang on how long freshly bought veggies will keep before they start losing on texture and taste, you can plan your purchases accordingly.

Meat, fowl, fish
With meat, fowl and fish, one has to choose between fresh and frozen. If buying frozen, for meat and fowl, up to 12 hours ahead of cooking is okay, keep in a covered container in a cool place. For frozen fish, 8 hours is good. For fresh meat, fowl or fish, cook within four to six hours of buying. It is challenging to plan meals like this, but it is also rewarding to cook and have the food fresh.

Leftovers including rice
Leftovers need to go within 12 hours if you are in a hot but not humid climate, whereas in more humid places, even if cooler, food tends to spoil faster. One of the easier ways to preserve leftovers is to initially serve when just finished cooking and then to cover the container air tight and not touch it till it is to be eaten again. For pressure cooked items, try to do the final cooking in the pressure cooker itself, and after serving, immediately put the lid on, put the pressure weight on and bring the leftover to a whistle, and then let it cool, only opening it when ready to reheat and serve the next time.

Rice that is left over can be soaked liberally in water, and left covered.

The next day, drain the water and warm either over a flame, in a microwave or in a pressure cooker, and it tastes just like freshly cooked rice. If soaked for more than 12 hours, there is a slight fermented taste and smell which is easily removed by washing the cooked rice in a few changes of water before reheating it. Food preparations that are high in oil and salt keep longer than water based preparations. One trick that I use for watery stuff is to cook them till the water dries out, toss a little oil and cook it, and then reconstitute when using the next time. Stuff that has semi cooked or fried tomatoes or other such fleshy vegetables in them tends to spoil faster than you would estimate.

Sprouting: easy and longlasting
Another good living food habit that doesn't need a refrigerator is sprouting. Most beans, grains and nuts can be sprouted easily and simply at home and the yield is not only delicious, but has a shelf life of two to three days in addition to a lead time of one to two days, and is very, very healthy. Ann Wigmores wonderful book The Sprouting Book is a great storehouse of information. Whole Moong, Lobia (both red and white), Whole Masoor (brown), peas, groundnuts, horsegram, etc., make excellent basic sprouts. For spicing them up, you can try sprouting almonds, mustard, radish seeds, fenugrek, sunflower seeds and mix them in small quantities with the basic sprouts. You can add salt and pepper, lime, red chili powder, finely chopped raw onions, and a dash of mustard oil to make your sprout mix more spicy. Or you can have them straight and savour the enzymes and the sugars as they share their being with you. Sometimes you can saute them lightly and throw in some spices to make a crunchy healthy snack. More often than not, I end up with more sprout than I planned for, and this goes excellently into the next dal or khichdi or even vegetable curry you are making, enriching it with taste and nutrition.

Overall, living without a refrigerator has taught me to plan ahead, to purchase, prepare, and consume food in moderation, to have a healthier choice of food, and to have a slimmer power bill and at the same time feel good about not contributing to pollution.

Recipes:

http://subhorup.blogspot.com/2008/05/curry-leaf-powder-podis-make-for-quick.html

How to Decipher the Freshness of an Egg:

http://www.ochef.com/789.htm

Writings by Subhorup Dasgupta
On Music: opnotes.blogspot.com.
On Parenting: thestoryofparth.blogspot.com
On Food: sitakirasoi.blogspot.com
On Social issues: subhorupdasgupta.blogspot.com
Miscellaneous: subhorup.blogspot.com

Subhorup Dasgupta

Subhorup Dasgupta is a Hyderabad based writer, fine artist and musician. A student of Literatures from Jadavpur University, his pursuits have been diverse and include Eastern mysticism, interfaith studies, photography, linguistics, artificial intelligence, alternative medicine, healing sciences, and food. Having spent his early working years with the terminally ill and their families after training with global thought leaders in the healing arts, he moved on to become one of the country’s most respected domain experts in healthcare documentation. After spending “a third of my life” pursuing a corporate career, he recently chose to give up his job to return to his first love, the creative arts. He presently describes himself as a self-employed tea drinker.

The slow trickle of poetry that he has published in the past, though critically well-received, is often dark and cynical, and all his work, including those self published by him, are tagged as unpublished, “a joke lost to all but myself.” It takes a while to realize that the more lighthearted writings of his are those that, at the end of the day, speak of his deepest anguish.

A self declared atheist, his prose (which is more forthcoming in the various blogs that he posts on) delves deep into the common well of spirituality and brings forth the universality of the human condition in the context of present day culture and civility, or as he puts it, “lack of it.”

Hilarious Video: We need more bike lanes!

2011-07-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

BKS Iyengar: Our duty to Adapt to Nature

2011-07-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

I love this quote by BKS Iyengar, prominent yoga teacher and yoga practitioner of 60+ years. It so deeply touches on the reciprocal relationship of health between humans and nature when humans are willing to adapt to the natural world, rather than coerce nature to adapt to us in the short term.

"As mammals, we are homeostatic. That means we maintain certain constant balances within our bodies, temperature for example, by adapting to change and challenge in the environment. Strength and flexibility allow us to keep and inner balance, but man is trying more and more to dominate the environment rather than control himself. Central heating, air conditioning, cars that we take our to drive three hundred yards, towns that stay lit up at night, and food imported from around the world out of season are all examples of how we try to circumvent our duty to adapt to nature and instead force nature to adapt to us. In the process, we become both weak and brittle. Even many of my Indian students who all now sit on chairs in their homes are becoming too stiff to sit in lotus position easily." BKS Iyengar, Light on Life

This quote, while certainly a challenge to us all, illuminates how clearly our energy imbalances are seen through the eyes of a person who has endeavored to live in harmony with nature for a lifetime. It serves as another reminder that the simple ways of integrating with nature, may hold the most joy, and health for us all.

When More is Less: De-Growth, an Interview

2011-07-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

This interview was generously shared by Rex Weyler. It, and other excellent articles by Rex can be found at the Deep Green Column of Greenpeace International, and on Rex's blog. Links to both are at the bottom of this article.

"Growth is natural, but even in nature, growth is limited...When our
cells don't stop growing, we have cancer...Growth can become a liability...Modern advocates of degrowth are not against social diversity or innovation. The degrowth movement is simply cautioning society about the historic link
between economic growth and ecosystem destruction. Wishful thinking won't change this."

Interview
“GDP, the so-called measure of economic growth, does not separate costs from benefits.”
Herman Daly, World Bank Economist, author of “Steady State Economics.”

In 2008, economists and scientists met in Paris to discuss “Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity.” The Degrowth (Décroissance) movement grew from this economic revolution in France. In 2010, a similar conference convened in Barcelona. For the last two years I have helped organize the Degrowth Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Journalists and traditional economists have asked why a degrowth movement is necessary. Here are answers to their questions:

Why focus on ending growth? Isn’t growth natural?

Yes, growth is natural, but even in nature, growth is limited.

The Degrowth movement addresses the growth of human consumption, driven by economic growth, population growth, and the impacts of resource extraction – oil spills, polluted rivers, atmospheric carbon. System feedbacks such as melting permafrost and methane releases, add to the impact. We can call aggregate human consumption and waste “throughput.”

We now hear talk of “decoupling” economic growth from material and energy throughput, which would be desirable, but we must be realistic because we possess very few actual examples of such decoupling. Historically, economic growth leads to increased energy and materials throughput. For example, some people once claimed that computers would “save paper” but this did not happen. Human society today uses six-times more paper than we did in 1960. Computers accelerated economic growth, and although this yielded benefits to certain sectors of society, the growth required more consumption, ecological devastation, and social inequity.

But don’t we want certain economic sectors to grow, like renewable energy and developing economies?

Yes. But to achieve ecological balance and social justice, we need to respect the limits nature places on material and energy throughput. A social transition can take place without total system growth, but even solar panels and windmills require materials and energy, rare-earth metals, copper, steel, silicon and so forth. We don’t mine copper or silicon with solar energy, we mine them with hydrocarbons.

We need to appreciate the magnitude of the transitions we contemplate. Today, the rich 15-percent of Earth’s people consume about 85-percent of the resources. Meanwhile, our population grows and nations expect their economies to grow by 3-to-4-percent annually. Projecting these growth rates to 2050, a world of 9 billion people with social justice and better living standards, powered with renewable energy would require about 30-times more resources than we consume today. We would be fair and wise to ask: Is that possible?

Furthermore, energy systems – windmills, solar arrays, dams – have fixed life-spans, so even if we built enough renewable energy to power a world of 9 billion people, that infrastructure would have to be built again, and again, forever, to be “sustainable.” In nature, desire does not equal capacity. We have to start with Earth’s capacity and design our cultural transition based on that capacity.

Therefore, the key policy of any ecological energy plan must be conservation, the only solution that does not require material growth. Conservation has to start with wealthy nations. If rich consumers reduced energy consumption by half – possible since rich economies waste so much energy – then the rest of the world could double energy use, and we could still reduce total world energy use. But if we attempt to power the wasteful, consumer culture built on fossil fuel for 9-billion people, we encounter some inconvenient laws of physics, thermodynamics, and ecology.

But can we not become more efficient through innovation?

Yes, but we will need to question our assumptions. Historically, humans have made millions of industrial efficiency gains without reducing consumption. When society achieves efficiency with a resource, it becomes cheaper, so we tend to use more, not less. This phenomenon, documented by William Jevons during the coal era, is known in economics as the rebound effect. Efficiency could reduce consumption, but humanity has a poor track record of doing so. Historically, efficiency gains increased profits or reduced consumer costs, but do not save resources. We can change this but we should not be naive.

But growth is a natural biological and evolutionary impulse.

Yes, growth is not innately evil. However, growth is not innately “good,” and can become destructive even in nature. When our cells don’t stop growing, we have cancer; if our bodies don’t stop growing, that is obesity. Successful species grow until they overshoot their habitat capacity. Growth can become a liability.

Throughout history, certain dominant societies grew until they depleted their habitats. A few learned to simplify, degrow, and endure. Modern advocates of degrowth are not against social diversity or innovation. The degrowth movement is simply cautioning society about the historic link between economic growth and ecosystem destruction. Wishful thinking won’t change this.

Photo: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as Marie Antoinette. Photo Illustration by Marge Collins.

Diversity and complexity grow continuously. Does Nature really have a limit on growth?

The word “growth” does not mean the same thing in different contexts. Non-material qualities – species diversity, innovation, or human ideas – can “grow,” but this is quite different from the growth of material things such as populations, cell phones, or power plants.

Even non-physical qualities – beauty, love – require physical foundations with limits. Nature can produce five species of finches or fifty species but nature imposes limits on the total biomass of finches, or forests, humans, or human technical artefacts. Forests reach a limit that we call “maturity,” at which point the forest reaches dynamic homeostasis, roughly stable biomass with shifting diversity.

Humans can create virtually unlimited musical styles, but only a limited number of maple cellos with ebony fingerboards. A biophysical supply chain makes “non-material” social innovation possible. Dreaming up innovations may require near-zero material throughput, but the practical application of those innovations requires energy and materials.

The infrastructure of knowledge – education, books, Internet, conferences – that nurture an environment of ideas, requires throughput. For this reason, cultures that have dominated in technical innovation also dominated in resource consumption. The Internet may feel like “free” information but requires massive materials, energy, and waste sinks. Growth of difference (diversity) is not the same as growth of stuff. We’ll need to be precise about claims that economic growth can avoid throughput growth.

But the biosphere has grown its energy and material throughput for billions of years with no sign of stopping.

This needs to be qualified for two reasons: Growth rates and natural collapse events.

Nature’s growth rates remain tiny compared to human economies. Nations typically attempt to grow their economies at 3-4-percent annually. Since about 1750, this equates to a doubling of human consumption every 20 years. On the other hand, over the last 500-million years, Earth’s biomass has doubled about every 50 million years, 2-million-times slower than human economic and consumption growth. Growth is natural, but not anywhere near the rate that bankers and neoclassical economists want economies to grow.

Secondly, collapse appears frequently in the fossil record and in human history. Biological diversity reached capacity limits not only during the famous “five extinctions” but in thousands of minor extinctions. About 600-million-years-ago (mya), free oxygen allowed cells to extract more energy from the ecosystem, unleashing tremendous diversity growth. However, this growth reached habitat limits many times between 550mya and 200mya, as species diversity crashed, recovered, and crashed again. Growth does stop in nature, and reverses. The rate of diversity growth peaked during the Cambrian era, 550-500mya, and has not been equalled since. Diversity is not a one-way progression; it grows, stutters, collapses, and recovers based on environmental capacity and conditions.

Today, human sprawl reduces Earth’s biological diversity. Humans occupy and impact habitats, replacing and obliterating species. If natural growth was unlimited, then these other species could survive human expansion, but human expansion fills and depletes ecosystems, exposing nature’s limits.

Likewise, we witness cultural diversity growth and simultaneous cultural loss. Industrial growth has diminished cultural diversity as well as species diversity. Historical anthropologist Joseph Tainter has shown that when societies grow, they inevitably face problems related to habitat capacity. To solve these problems, they develop new technologies, but these solutions tend to create new problems (irrigation causes salinization, nuclear energy causes leukemia, and so forth.) Highly complex societies eventually experience “diminishing returns” on their innovations, which Tainter explains in The Collapse of Complex Societies. A few societies overcame this dilemma by simplifying their systems, but most overshot their habitat and collapsed. Growth is not a solution for societies in overshoot. Rather, solutions to overshoot involve reduced consumption, simplification, and a return to fundamental rules of ecology.

Human social complexity has grown over the last 100,000 years, punctuated with collapses and ecosystem decline. Human success clearly incurs ecological and social costs. Economist Kenneth Boulding called these ecological and cultural losses the “metabolic costs” of growth. Donella Meadows, and others simply pointed out the “Limits to Growth.” Since human impact now threatens global ecosystem balance, we don’t know if human complexity will continue to grow.

Degrowth advocates suggest that the best strategy to ensure maximum human diversity is to stabilize our consumption and expansion. Dynamic homeostasis, nature’s genuine sustainability, makes demands on growing things, and simplicity proves as important as complexity. The notion of degrowth is not intended to destroy human society, but to preserve it.

If our growth economy recycles as nature does, are we not more sustainable?

Yes, of course, but we need to understand nature’s costs and limits regarding recycling. Human economies should attempt to approach 100-percent recycling, but recycling itself requires energy and materials. In nature, recycling is a cost of life, not just a solutions. The laws of energy transformation teach us that there is no such thing as 100-percent recycling, even in nature, because of these throughput costs.

Attacking growth is counter-productive because people expect growth, and want to find hope.

In the autumn, when leaves fall and the air turns cold, it is not “pessimism” to point out that winter is coming. If hope is delusional, it is futile.

The degrowth movement does not “attack” growth, which has its appropriate place in nature. The degrowth movement simply exposes the pretence of celebrating the benefits of economic growth while ignoring the costs. Rich nations typically ignore the costs of growth by exporting those costs to poor nations and to nature: Sending city garbage to the country, dumping toxic waste at sea, exploiting workers to make products cheap, and devastating the landscape in resource mining. A large portion of China’s CO2 emissions, for example, are really European and American CO2 emissions, because those nations consume the products of that pollution.

Naturally, people resist the idea of limits on their consumption. The instincts to grow were forged in natural evolution, but those instincts don’t make limits disappear. Even in non-human nature, instincts can become counter-productive. Aggression, for example, exists because it had survival value, but in certain contexts aggression becomes destructive. When the context changes, instincts can be harmful. Once a species reaches its habitat limits, the instincts to grow and expand become a liability.

Aren’t ecosystems destroyed just as thoroughly in poor nations as wealthy ones.

Yes, but usually because those nations are plundered and exploited by the rich. Sheer numbers of inhabitants anywhere can deplete an environment, but wealthy-nation industrial expansion is the leading cause of global ecological destruction. Many cultures were sustainable for thousands of years, and could have endured many thousands more, until colonized by industrial nations, which took their resources, took slaves, waged war, practiced genocide, and so forth. In the industrial era, rich nations export destructive resource extraction, waste disposal, and social costs to the poor nations. Africa is not ecologically depleted and poor because Africans consumed too much stuff; it is depleted and poor because Europe and North America plundered it to fuel their economic growth. Now, China, Japan, and other industrialized nations have joined the plunder of poor nations and the global commons. Nature limits population growth, but for humanity, wealthy consumption and economic growth remain the primary causes of ecological destruction.

Rather than degrowth, should we not focus on preserving ecosystems?

If our social, political, and economic planners actually understood ecosystems, we might avoid a lot of problems we face.

But degrowth is not just a rallying cry or a trivial idea. Degrowth is an important, natural concept that our society needs to understand, whether we call it Degrowth, Limits to Growth, Costs of Complexity, Overshoot, Carrying Capacity, Metabolic Costs, Diminishing Returns on Innovation, Entropic Limits, “The Meek Shall inherit the Earth,” or “Richer lives, simpler means” as Arne Naess said.

The problem for our society is not that these ideas are too complex or wrong, but that they are annoying and inconvenient for the wealthy and powerful. Everyone wants more. Millionaires want to be a billionaires. The more that individuals grab and horde, the less there is for everyone. On the other hand, as we learn to share and live modestly, our ecosystems can recover and provide us with nature’s bounty.

The best way for poor nations to avoid deeper poverty is to protect their ecosystems from plunder.

The Degrowth movement advocates richer, more rewarding lives with less material stuff. Our economic efforts should focus on providing basic needs to everyone in the human family, rather than enriching a few, while others starve. Beyond basic necessities, happiness does not come from consuming more stuff. Happiness comes from friends, family, community, creativity, leisure, love, companionship, and time spent in nature. These things can grow without much material throughput. These are the qualities of life we should be helping to grow.

This may be the most important public dialogue of this century. And we better get this right, because humanity may not get many more chances.

========================

Rex Weyler Blog: http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Deep Green Column: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/deep-green-why-de-growth-an-interview/blog/35467/

Useful resources:

Degrowth Research: Recherche & Décroissance

Albert Bartlett on Exponential Growth: “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” video lecture

William Catton, Overshoot

Donella Meadows, et. al., Limits to Growth (D. H. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, W. Behrens, 1972; New American Library, 1977)

Herman Daly, Steady-State Economics (1977, 1991)

Mark Anielski: Genuine Wealth

Lourdes Beneria, Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if People Mattered

Kenneth Boulding, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966

Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 1973, Le Monde also discusses the negative social and ecological impact of high-energy society.

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, (1971).

T. Gutowski, et. al. (“Thermodynamic Analysis of Resources Used in Manufacturing Processes,” Environ. Sci. Technol. 43(5) pp1584-1590, 2009).

K. De Decker, (2009) “The Monster Footprint of Digital Technology” tracks the embodied energy and material resources of silicon based technology.

Arne Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle

Wendell Berry, Solving for Pattern, on appropriate solutions

The Anti-Fridge

2011-06-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

What did people use Before?

Nicola Twilley

This article was generously donated by the author, you can find more of her fabulous writing on her award-winning blog listed below.

IMAGE: Owner of Defunct Amusement Park | Alpine, TX | 1-Person Household | Former WW II Prisoner of War | 2007. From You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” Found via GOOD, where you can see many more photos from the series.

In America, 99.5% of households own at least one fridge. For many people who hear that statement, the surprising news is that 0.5% (1,520,299 households) don’t! What do those people do? Food processors, dishwashers, even ovens: most kitchen appliances seem totally optional. But living without a refrigerator seems slightly insane, if not completely impossible.

Of course, such dependence wasn’t always the case (nor is it still, in many parts of the world). In her excellent book, Fresh, Susanne Freidberg describes the inauspicious origins of the artificial cold chain, from ice plant infernos to frigoriphobie (the French refrigeration industry’s term for widespread public antipathy to cold storage).

During the first half of the twentieth century, however, the combination of technological advances, war (during World War One, Europeans relied on beef imported in refrigerated steamships to meet demand, while patriotic Americans were urged to conserve food and save leftovers using an icebox), urbanisation and suburbanisation, lifestyle changes, and sustained, pervasive marketing (“Kelvinated foods just fairly coax midsummer appetites!”) meant that by 1940, more than half of American households owned a refrigerator.

Midwife/Middle School Science Teacher | San Antonio, TX | 3-Person Household (including dog) | First week after deciding to eat locally grown vegetables | 2008.

IMAGE: Bar Tender | San Antonio, TX | 1-Person Household | Goes to sleep at 8AM and wakes up at 4PM daily | 2008. Both images from You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” Found via GOOD.

Perhaps to an even greater extent than the car, the refrigerator didn’t just become ubiquitous – it became essential. Freidberg quotes a 1931 article from Golden Book Magazine, called “The New Ice Age,” which speculates on what the world would look like without it:

If the stupendous system of food preservation [...] which supports us were interfered with, even for a short time, our present daily existence would become unworkable. Cities with thousands of inhabitants would fade away. We would probably turn into beasts in our frantic struggles to reach the source of supply. It is not extravagant to say that our present form of civilization is dependent upon refrigeration.

The refrigerated cold chain played a huge role in reshaping the geography of food, removing the constraints of season, climate, and proximity in favour of monocultural economies of scale, astronomical food mileage, and permanent global summertime.

Freidberg’s book, however, concentrates on another, equally fascinating, impact of artificial refrigeration and food preservation: the ways in which they blurred “the known physics of freshness,” and undermined “traditional understandings of food quality related to time, season, and place,” creating a widespread mistrust, misrepresentation, and misunderstanding of “fresh” food that persists today.

IMAGE: Graphic Designer/Print Shop Owner | 2-Person Household | Founder of www.DeliverUsFromLiberals.com | 2008. From You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” Found via GOOD, for the link, see below.

It is that lost knowledge about fresh food – what it should look like, how long it should last, how we should treat it – that designer Jihyun Ryou wanted to reintroduce in her thesis project at Design Academy Eindhoven, Save Food From The Refrigerator.

Ryou’s initial research brought her to the same starting point as Susanne Freidberg: artificial refrigeration has radically redefined our relationship with fresh food, and not necessarily for the better. Her solution is a set of ingenious, wall-mounted storage units that draw on traditional, pre-refrigeration food preservation techniques.

IMAGE: Verticality of Root Vegetables, Jihyun Ryou. Found via The Ecology of Food.

IMAGE: Humidity of Fruit Vegetables, Jihyun Ryou

Ryou’s designs rely on information that used to be common knowledge: for example, that root vegetables such as carrots and leeks last longer when buried upright in slightly damp sand, mimicking their growing conditions. Meanwhile, fruit vegetables (peppers, courgettes, and aubergines, for example) benefit from moist storage, rather than the cold and dry environment in the fridge.

IMAGE: Breathing of Egg, Jihyun Ryou

IMAGE: Symbiosis of Potato + Apple, Jihyun Ryou
Before refrigeration and permanently lit hen houses, eggs were a seasonal phenomenon: hens laid their eggs in spring, and they lasted for a few weeks in barns or pantries. Since most people buy and use eggs within that window, and since eggs stored in the refrigerator easily absorb the odour of neighbouring items, Ryou proposes a separate egg shelf complete with freshness tester (a fresh egg sinks in water). Meanwhile, her apple and potato storage unit takes advantage of the ethylene gas emitted by apples in order to control sprouting in potatoes.

Leaving aside the potential food preservation benefits and possible energy savings, perhaps the most important aspect of Ryou’s food shelves is their visibility. By putting fresh fruit and vegetables on the wall, Ryou’s design would force us to actually look at our food. The result of this daily confrontation, she hopes, is that we would eat more healthily, waste less, and – intangibly but importantly – rebuild our relationship with these equally biological and perishable, if slightly less animate, fellow organisms:

In the current food preservation situation [...], we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology. We don’t observe the food any more and don’t understand how to treat it. My design looks at re-introducing and re-evaluating traditional oral knowledge of food. Furthermore, it aims to bring back the connection between us as human beings and food ingredients as other living beings.

I believe that once people are given a tool that triggers their minds and requires a mental effort to use it, new traditions and new rituals can be introduced in our culture.

Ryou doesn’t call for the complete elimination of the refrigerator, but her idea of redesigning domestic space to suit food (as opposed to redesigning food to suit our appliances) is pretty exciting. Unfortunately, her elegant designs are not commercially available, although they don’t look impossible to recreate with quite a basic set of carpentry skills.

References:

Nicola Twilley's Blog:
http://www.ediblegeography.com/the-anti-fridge/

Fresh: A Perishable History by Sussanne Freidberg
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674032918?ie=UTF8&tag=ediblgeogr-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0674032918

Jihyun Ryou's work:
http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.blogspot.com/

Photos:
Good: You are What you Eat:
http://www.good.is/post/picture-show-you-are-what-you-eat/?GT1=48001

The Ecology of Food:
http://ecologyoffood.blogspot.com/2010/02/thinking-outside-fridge.html

Secret of the Zeer Pot: Ditching a Fridge in Australia

2011-06-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

This article was published for Living without a Fridge and Beyond with the permission of Kim from Adelaide, Australia

You can make your own refrigerator for free, from stuff that you find in the rubbish, and it doesn’t need any electricity to run, just water. And it really works! Here’s how:

All you need is two clay pots, some sand, and a way to plug the hole in the bottom of the pot.

Get two terracotta pots, one needs to fit inside the other with about 1cm gap between. They could be the same size with one slightly raised. They need to be unglazed, unsealed terracotta, as the cooling happens by evaporation through the porous clay. Pots can sometimes be found in hard rubbish, or by asking around. If you’re really keen you could get hold of some clay and make them yourself. Or if you’re not, try secondhand from a garage sale, flea market, salvage yard or tip shop. They’re about $10 each from hardware stores. Imported from Italy.

Next step: plug the holes in the bottom of the pots, so that water doesn’t drain out. I did this with the lid of a PET bottle and sealed the edges with waterproof silicon sealant, but I’m sure there are other ways that are equally effective. I tried to go low-tech and use clay, but it got soggy and fell apart.

Line the inside of the larger pot with sand, and place the smaller one inside.

Placing the pot in a tray is a good idea, as on hot days the cool water condenses on the outside of the pot and runs down the side. This water is great to cool yourself in hot weather.

Top up the water in the sand layer every day so it stays damp, and cover the top with a towel. Even when it’s over 40 degrees outside, the inside of the zeer pot is 15 degrees, so food keeps a lot longer than it would without refrigeration.

One catch: the evaporation process needs a dry climate to work effectively. It wouldn’t do so well in a humid place.

Some more refrigeration tips:

Lots of things that are often kept in a refrigerator really don’t need to be. Sauces, jams, miso, eggs and fruit keep perfectly well out of a refrigerator.

Many vegetables keep better in a dish of water. This way they continue to be alive so are much more nutritious. Celery, broccoli, leafy greens and beetroot keep really well this way. Tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini are generally fine out of the refrigerator.

Of course all these things are much tastier and higher in nutrients if they are eaten directly from the plant. I read somewhere that leafy greens lose 90% of their nutritional value within hours of being picked. A great reason to eat weeds and grow your own food!

Rocket Stoves and More:

Another technology that I use at home that is made from free recycled materials is a zeer pot. This is a non-electrical refrigerator that works by evaporation. It is made from two terracotta pots, one that fits inside the other, and a layer of wet sand between. The sand is kept wet and as the water evaporates through the porous terracotta, the inside of the pot is maintained at 15°C. Fruit and vegetables can be kept for 20 days, compared to just two without. And meat and dairy can be kept for up to two weeks. Even on 45° days the temperature is maintained. Placing a wet towel over the pot helps to keep the contents cool. A dry climate is needed for the evaporation process to work effectively, so this technology would not be effective in humid places.

For cooking I use a rocket stove, which is made out of used food tins and scraps of ceiling insulation. This is fuelled by scraps of paper and small twigs, and due to the insulation is very fuel efficient. Another technology made completely for free from readily available waste materials. For more information on rocket stoves see www.aprovecho.org

I grow fruit and vegetables at home, keep chickens for eggs and for recycling food waste into fertilizer, make compost and liquid fertilizer, and save seeds. I glean fruit from urban fruit trees, and gather wild food and edible weeds as I walk around the neighborhood. I get a lot of food from supermarket dumpsters, the large supermarket chains throw out huge amounts of perfectly good food. I share excess food with friends and neighbors, which builds community and introduces people to new foods. By planting fruit trees in public places in my neighborhood, I am making it possible for more people to access food this way in the near future.

Rex Weyler: The Cost of Complexity

2011-06-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

We’re all in Deepwater Now...

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.

The myth
Corporations don’t need regulation because protecting the environment is in their interest. The free market will protect nature. That theory disintegrated at 21:49, April 20, 2010, under a waxing quarter moon, on a dark spring night in the Gulf of Mexico.

We’ve witnessed the collapse of corporate credibility before at Bhopal in 1984, at Chernobyl in 1986, at the Marcopper Copper Mine in the Philippines in 1996, in Seveso Italy, at Love Canal, and in Minimata Japan for four murderous decades, as Chisso Corporation poisoned a fishing village with mercury.

These disasters cannot be written off as human error. They are the natural consequence of our society’s practice of treating nature as a free resource for profiteering.

Global corporations have demonstrated no ability to regulate themselves. Morality is too expensive.

It is cheaper to cut corners on a hundred oil wells and pay the fines on the one that blows out. It is cheaper to dump mercury, cyanide, or dioxins into rivers and bays, and wait to see if the poor inhabitants have the muscle to make the company pay. It’s cheaper to obliterate nature, finance your own “citizen group” to sign off on your treachery, and pay squadrons of lawyers to avoid liability.

Human industry now sinks its claws into every corner of the Earth, exploiting the last pockets of resources. The juggernaut took the easy stuff first because it was cheap. Now we go higher into the mountains for lithium and copper, deeper into the forest for ancient trees, and deeper into the earth’s crust for oil and gas.

Damn the cost. Rich consumers will pay, and the pelicans have no lawyers.

The Deepwater blowout that now stacks up among the greatest ecological holocausts of all time was not just an accident. It stands as the latest symptom of industrial civilization’s hubris.

Solutions aren’t the answer

Any robust species will naturally expand, if it can, to occupy its habit. However, in nature “success” has a cost. A flourishing species must find new energy and nutrient resources, and must negotiate with its environment to process its wastes. Ecologist and historian Kenneth Boulding called this the “metabolic cost” of evolutionary success.

Likewise, as human societies dominated their habitats, they sought solutions to the problems of paying this metabolic cost. Societies often fail to see that those problems were the results of previous solutions. Irrigation allowed ancient city states to solve the problems of population growth and scarce rainfall, but extensive irrigation produced salty, depleted soils.

To win new lands for food production, empires abandoned their cities and moved to new watersheds. Eventually, they clashed with other migrating communities, so they designed weapons and built armies to “solve” conflict. The subsequent arms race created new problems. They solved this with bigger armies, but big armies need more food. New problem.

Innovative technologies helped solve these problems but technologies, like armies, must be fed resources. Ships consumed forests. Machines demanded iron and oil. Computers require copper, plastic, silica, and lithium.

Where does it all stop?

Anthropologist Joseph Tainter studied societies to find out where the problem-solution-problem cycle stops. Most complex civilizations and empires simply collapsed under the weight of their metabolic costs. Their solutions became bigger problems until they consumed all available resources, depleted their habitat, and collapsed. Persia, Rome, Maya, and Easter Islanders traveled this route to failure.

In The Collapse of Complex Societies, Tainter describes how civilizations trapped themselves in increasing complexity until they experienced diminishing returns on their solution investments. At that point, new complex solutions no longer paid for themselves. To feed the bigger army meant expanding the empire, but a bigger empire has more borders to defend and more over-taxed, irate citizens to pacify.

To finance the rising cost of growth, an empire must discover new energy subsidies. Ancient Rome increased its energy consumption by annexing distant forests, taxing landed peasants, and capturing slaves. However, the hunt for more energy costs energy. “Imperialism,” Boulding explained, “makes the empire poor.”

Finally, a growing civilization experiences negative returns on its investments. The modern disasters in Bhopal or the Gulf of Mexico provide examples of negative returns. As our industrial system seeks out more energy, we find ourselves digging up the Canadian tundra, destroying wild watersheds, draining lakes, and boring deeper into the Earth’s crust below the ocean.

We may notice that the greatest driver of environmental destruction is the growth process itself.

Tainter points out that the only known examples of avoiding collapse – in both nature and in human history – involve simplifying, not growing. Eventually, we have to stop building false “solutions” that create new problems and negotiate a lasting peace with nature.

The high cost of high tech

We may believe that a new technology will solve the problems of growth, until we account for the full ecological cost of that the new technology. To build hybrid cars and computers, we seek out copper, lithium, zinc, aluminium, and rare earth metals, displace communities, and push deeper into Earth’s remaining wilderness.

Timothy Gutowski and colleagues calculated that as computer chips shrunk in size and grew in power the material and energy intensity per unit mass increased a million-times. This is even before we factor in the cost of armies swarming over Afghanistan to secure the lithium for batteries.

We tend to think that since our computers require so little energy to operate, that they are “efficient,” but we’re measuring the wrong thing. We need to measure the “embodied” energy and material required to mine and ship resources and to build telecom infrastructure, server networks, software, research labs, and office towers. According to the International Energy Association report, “Gadgets and gigawatts,” electricity consumption for computers, cell phones, iPhones, and other devices will triple by 2030, and this does not include the bulldozers digging up resources.

Remember when people claimed computers were going to save paper? This never happened. In 1950, at the dawn of the computer age, humanity used about 50 million tons of paper each year. We now use 250 million tons, five times the paper. Growth swamps efficiency. Computers stimulated growth and created more uses for packaging and paper. Meanwhile, during that period, the earth lost over 600 million hectares of forest.

In “The Monster Footprint of Digital Technology” Kris De Decker points out that utility stations operate at about 35 percent efficiency, so the actual energy consumed is almost three-times the electricity consumed when a device is switched on. This is the metabolic cost of growth, the rising cost of complexity, paid long before you boot your computer or recharge your iPhone.

Where does this energy come from? It comes from damming rivers, loping off mountain tops for coal, and boring wells deep into the Earth’s crust below the ocean.

In Deepwater now

Like our ancestors, modern human enterprise took the low hanging fruit and harvested the cheapest oil first. In the oil heyday, fifty years ago, oil flowed from shallow wells with 99% net energy efficiency.

Today, we dig into oil sands, destroy vast tundra and grassland, melt bitumen in giant furnaces, fill lakes with black sludge, kill migrating waterbirds, displace caribou and human communities, trigger lung disease, mix bitumen with condensate refined thousands of kilometres away, ship the goop through long pipelines, endanger our coasts with oil tankers, and heat the planet like a flambé to deliver crude oil at 50% net energy efficiency.

More costs, less benefit, represents the “declining return” on our investments. Eventually those returns turn negative. In the Gulf of Mexico, British Petroleum lobbied politicians to cancel regulations, drilled a 6000 meter well in 1500 meters of water, and cut corners to save money.

At 21:49 on April 20, 2010, gas from an improperly sealed well reached the BP drilling rig, ignited, blew up the rig, killed 11 people, devastated the Gulf’s coastal economy, and launched an ecological holocaust on the scale of Bhopal, Chernobyl, and Minimata. The blowout has killed thousands of seabirds, turtles, fish, and marine animals. Some 50,000 to 150,000 barrels of oil per day pours into the Gulf of Mexico. On top of this, BP has added over 1-million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersant, banned in the UK, which contains the neurotoxin 2-Butoxyethanol, arsenic, cadmium, cyanide, and mercury.

The Gulf of Mexico tragedy is not unique. It is only the latest symptom of a civilization out of control, stumbling blindly to pay the metabolic cost of reckless, unsustainable growth.

===================

Readers can make comments at Rex Weyler’s Ecolog
www.http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Rex's Deep Green Column can be found at Greenpeace International
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/

Links in this essay:

Joseph Tainter
http://www.cnr.usu.edu/htm/facstaff/memberID=837

The Collapse of Complex Societies http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052138673X

Timothy Gutowski, et. al., “Thermodynamic Analysis of Resources Used in Manufacturing Processes,” Massechusetts Institute of Technology.
http://web.mit.edu/2.810/www/lecture09/10-Gutowski.pdf

International Energy Association, “Gadgets and Gigawatts”
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/05/power-hungry-gadgets-endanger-energy-efficiency-gains.ars

Kris De Decker, “The monster footprint of digital technology,”
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730

Hydroelectric Dam in the Amazon: Genocide, Ecocide - not Efficiency

2011-06-06T04:46:00.001-07:00

Photo and this quote by Thomas Doo Marmo.

The chief Raoni cries when he learns that Brazilian president Dilma released the beginning of construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, even after tens of thousands of letters and emails addressed to her and which were ignored as the more than 600 000 signatures. That is, the death sentence of the peoples of Great Bend of the Xingu river is enacted. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species - all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency. We do not need to destroy our world, and our fellow people on this earth to live richly.

Facts about the Brazilian Rainforest:

1.) We are losing it.
2.) The Amazon is the worlds last remaining rain forest, containing more life than any place else on earth.
3.) Deforestation and Climate Change are threatening the Amazon.
3.a) A threat to the Amazon is a threat to our survival. See these Amazon facts. More than 20% of Earth's oxygen is produced in this area, thus the name "Lungs of the Planet".
3.b) The people who protect the Amazon by living there sustainably and speaking to keep it untouched, are faced with complete destruction of their way of life. There may also be fifty or so Amazon tribes living in the depths of the Amazon rainforest that have never had contact with the outside world. They are the ones who know how to live sustainably on this earth.
4.) Hydroelectric dams, which produce massive amounts of greenhouse gases, and destroy wild rivers, absolutely destroy the lives of Indigenous peoples, and all other living creatures in the area seriously threaten the Rainforest.
5.) There are other ways of getting needed hydro, such as efficiency that don't require destroying our oxygen source.

What you can do:

1.) Get everyone you know to sign this petition.

2.) Continue to post and share articles, educating people you know.

3.) Help make friends and family realize what happens to people and our world when we do not live with a conservation model towards energy.

4.) Send the below press release to any blogs, papers, newspapers in your area.

5.) Support movements that give all of us more democractic control of our world.

6.) If you can, Donate to directly support Indigenous Leaders organize against the dam.

7.) Live simply. See Indigenous Peoples who know how to live sustainably on this earth as leaders. Support their struggles.

PRESS RELEASE, PLEASE SHARE FAR AND WIDE, SEND TO YOUR LOCAL NEWSPAPERS
Brazil Green Lights Controversial Amazon Dam, Steamrolling Environmental Laws and Human Rights: IBAMA authorizes installation of Belo Monte Dam Complex despite escalating local, national and international opposition

For more information, contact:
Christian Poirier, Amazon Watch, + 1 510 666 7565, christian@amazonwatch.org
Caroline Bennett, Amazon Watch, + 1 415 487 9600, caroline@amazonwatch.org
Brent Millikan, International Rivers, +55 61 8153 7009, brent@internationalrivers.org

Brasília, Brazil – The Brazilian government has issued the full installation license allowing the Belo Monte Dam Complex to break ground on the Amazon's Xingu River despite egregious disregard for human rights and environmental legislation, the unwavering protests of civil society, condemnations by its Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) and the request for precautionary measures by the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The license was granted by Brazil's environmental agency IBAMA despite overwhelming evidence that the dam-building consortium Norte Energia (NESA) has failed to comply with dozens of social and environmental conditions required for an installation license.

The risky $17 billion Belo Monte Dam Complex will divert nearly the entire flow of the Xingu River along a 62-mile stretch. Its reservoirs will flood more than 120,000 acres of rainforest and local settlements, displace more than 40,000 people and generate vast quantities of methane – a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The installation license will allow for NESA to open access roads, initiate forest clearing at dam construction sites encompassing some 2,118 acres, and begin construction on the complex immediately. It also instigates publically subsidized funding from Brazil's National Development Bank (BNDES) to finance 80 percent of the project's spiraling costs. The bank has come under increasing scrutiny from the Public Prosecutor's office and civil society due to alarming evidence that approval is based on political grounds, often downplaying problems of economic viability and compliance with social and environmental safeguards.

"This is a tragic day for the Amazon," said Atossa Soltani, Executive Director at Amazon Watch. "By turning a blind eye toward the tragic consequences of this dam, President Dilma Rouseff is undermining the positive environmental and social advances Brazil has made in recent years and miring its image on the global stage just as it prepares to host the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit next year."

The decision follows years of recently escalating intense local opposition and a string of government resignations in rejection of the parameters of the project, including IBAMA's president Abelardo Bayma, who allegedly resigned over the Belo Monte dam project license amidst intense political pressures from the Ministry of Mines and Energy and President Dilma Rousseff.

"The installation license for the Belo Monte Dam is in clear violation of the recent request by the IACHR to stop any construction until precautionary measures are met. Now the Brazilian government is in clear violation of human rights, especially those of indigenous peoples affected by the project. By moving forward with this project, Brazil has denounced the authority of the IACHR and has completely rejected international human rights treaties," said Astrid Puentes, Co-Director of the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), one of the legal groups who filed the petition to the IACHR representing Xingu communities.

Fierce opposition by local inhabitants to Belo Monte has not wavered. "Belo Monte's installation license is a sign of the government's deepening authoritarianism, as it continues to steamroll over environmental legislation and human rights," said Antônia Melo, a spokeswoman for the Xingu Alive Forever Movement (MXVPS). "The government seeks to build this dam at any cost in order to benefit corporate interests at our expense. We will not cede an inch. This license is the entryway to a crime that we will prevent from being committed at any cost."

Rex Weyler: Who Negotiates for Nature?

2011-05-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace, check out the list of resources at the bottom. This is a great article to help us understand what organizations and people are actually helping the planet, rather than simply talking the talk. I've linked you to Rex's blog by his name, and you can check out his monthly columns for Greenpeace at Deep Green

Who Negotiates for Nature?

By Rex Weyler

=========

In 2008, journalist Christine MacDonald’s book, Green, Inc. rocked the environmental movement. After working for Conservation International, MacDonald left in frustration about the power of corporate money to influence strategy. She concluded, “Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them.”

This month, in The Nation magazine, UK journalist Johann Hari documents the evolution of this trend in “Wrong Kind of Green,” an expose of how some environmental groups have gone soft on polluters after receiving corporate money.

“By pretending the broken system can work,” writes Hari, “and will work, in just a moment, after just one more Democratic win, or another, or another – the big green groups are preventing the appropriate response from concerned citizens, which is fury at the system itself. They are offering placebos to calm us down when they should be conducting and amplifying our anger at this betrayal of our safety by our politicians. ... when green groups cheer them on, they are giving their approval to a path to destruction--and calling it progress.”

Other serious ecologists and environmentalists are sounding an alarm. “We're close to a civil war in the environmental movement,” says Charles Komanoff, after 30 years with the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council. “For too long, all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by this beast of these insider groups, who achieve almost nothing. ... We need to create new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals."

Given the threats we now face – global heating and large scale habitat overshoot – Hari asks, “How do we retrieve a real environmental movement, in the very short time we have left?”

Resisting the cash

Some groups, thank Gaia, have refused to take money from large corporate donors or their granting agency fronts. Amazon Watch, which works closely with indigenous people, is one such group. Kevin Koenig at Amazon Watch attended the Copenhagen conference and expressed shock at what he witnessed. “At Copenhagen, I couldn't believe what I was seeing,” Koenig states in the Hari article. “These groups are positioning themselves to be the middlemen in a carbon market. They are helping to set up, in effect, a global system of carbon laundering...that will give the impression of action, but no substance. You have to ask, are these conservation groups at all? They look much more like industry front groups to me.”

Greenpeace has maintained a nearly 40-year policy of raising its funding only from its individual members and not accepting government or corporate grants.

There is a big difference between forcing a company to the bargaining table and winning concessions – as Greenpeace has done with Shell Oil, Apple Computers, and Coca Cola – and simply partnering with a corporate donor and acting as greenwashing seal of approval. Christine MacDonald points out that World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and Conservation International cozied up to agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and other companies to fashion a “sustainable soy” policy, a process that dragged on for years and accomplished nothing. Meanwhile Greenpeace campaigned against the international agribusiness giants and forced a moratorium on buying soybeans from recently deforested Amazon lands.

The campaign to reverse concentrations of atmospheric carbon back to 350 parts-per-million (ppm), which climate science believes is the limit to control run-away global heating, has fallen on similar problems. The Center for Biological Diversity, in Arizona refuses corporate funding, but finds itself being challenged by organizations that accept such funding. “There is a gigantic political schizophrenia here,” executive director Kieran Suckling told Hari.

“The Sierra Club will send out e-mails to its membership saying we have to get to 350 parts per million and the science requires it. But in reality they fight against any sort of emission cuts that would get us anywhere near that goal.” When the Suckling and the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and follow what climate science says is necessary, restoring a maximum 350 ppm, the Sierra Club appeared to side with industry against him. “I was amazed to discover the Sierra Club opposed us bitterly,” says Suckling. “They said it should not be done. In fact, they said that if we filed a lawsuit to make EPA do it, they would probably intervene on EPA's side. They threw climate science out the window.”

Traction going nowhere

What we often hear from groups and individuals, who set themselves up as Nature’s negotiators and pitch weak compromise rather than serious change, is that real change will not “get traction.” What they mean by this is that the status quo institutions – political parties, corporations, well-funded organizations – don’t want to make deep or radical change. What they want is to keep doing what they’ve always done, keep making money, and simultaneously appear “green.” We must ask, however: What good is traction if we’re racing down the wrong highway toward a cliff?

Hari points out that the compromised environmental groups believe they are adhering to “political reality” when they accept, for example, CO2 emission cuts that fall short of what climate science knows is necessary. “They don't seem to realize,” writes Hari, “that in a conflict between political reality and physical reality, physical reality will prevail. You can't stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, ‘Sorry, the swing states don't want you to happen today.’ The laws of physics are more real and permanent than any passing political system. ”

“We need a few leaders who aren’t careerists,” says Bill Turnage, the former president of the Wilderness Society. People who aren’t worried about where they are going to get their next job.”

Green Disaster Capitalism

In British Columbia Canada, General Electric – one of the world’s largest corporations, with interests in defense contracts, international weapons trading, nuclear power, oil, and gas – is one of the lead actors in a campaign to privatize some 600 watersheds. GE and their partners, such as Plutonic Power, have attempted to sell this to a doubtful public by claiming their projects to build massive hydro plants and transmission lines is “green energy,” that would help alleviate global warming. A few Canadian environmental groups signed on to this idea, but most groups and communities did not take the bait.

General Electric, meanwhile, plays both sides of the climate “debate.” While they support organizations that help sell their private acquisition of Canadian public and natural assets, allegedly to help “reduce global warming,” they simultaneously fund organizations that deny global warming, which supports their oil and gas holdings. They fund the American Petroleum Institute and its Astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S.

Through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services, GE is a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell and others. Last year, Greenpeace uncovered API plans to launch a nationwide Astroturf campaign, “Energy Citizen,” to deny global warming and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. Greenpeace said the PR campaign “runs contrary to several prominent API members’ public support for climate action, namely Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Electric and Siemens.” General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada.

This is a “green” version of “Disaster Capitalism,” as described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. The goal is to privatize public assets. In B.C., Canada, this also means undermining and likely destroying the public power system, B.C. Hydro. The plan forces the public power company to purchase the private power at inflated rates, estimated to create a $450 million dollar annual loss to B.C. Hydro, a recipe for collapse of the public system. The BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) has deemed the plan “not in the public interest,” and yet a handful of environmental groups signed on to support it.

The Privatization of public and natural assets – such as rivers and watersheds – is not “green.” I stand with the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC), B.C. Citizen’s for Public Power, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, and scores of other community and environmental groups (see B.C. Guardians network) in favour of preserving BC’s wild rivers, resisting the privatization of BC’s rivers, and in preserving B.C.’s heritage of public power embodied in B.C. Hydro.

Humanity needs non-polluting energy, but rushing into a region such as British Columbia and attempting to privatize 600 watersheds for the benefit of global corporate interests is not the way to go about it. Before Canada or any jurisdiction industrializes more rivers, we must launch a massive campaign for conservation of energy in both industry and residential homes. Secondly, before we build massive power projects, we must have in hand a public and transparent analysis of local power needs. If small, community scale micro-hydro plants satisfy ecological and public requirements in some of these watersheds, then the decision to build those plants needs to be fairly discussed by the communities living in those watersheds in balance with other river and watershed values. And finally, those power projects must remain a public asset.

The discussion about who has the authority to negotiate for Nature, however, goes deeper than this. When Greenpeace was founded nearly 40 years ago, we understood that humanity lived within a living, diverse, generous, but limited ecological habitat. We also understood that humanity had violated and abused that habitat. Today, with thousands of environmental groups at work, humanity finds itself farther down the road of habitat overshoot.

Negotiating on behalf of Nature, for Gaia, is a sacred duty. Environmentalism is not just a career move. As Paul Sears warned 40 years ago, “Ecology is a subversive subject,” because ecology will demand that we completely re-evaluate our assumptions. We do not get to rewrite the laws of biology, physics, thermodynamics, and exponential growth for our own convenience.

We need ecological leaders who understand ecology and biophysical laws, and who feel a deep, sacred respect for Nature itself.

=========

Links:

Johann Hari, The Nation, “The Wrong Kind of Green” by

Christine MacDonald’s book, Green, Inc.
http://www.amazon.com/Green-Inc-Environmental-Insider-Reveals/dp/1599214369

Amy Goodman interviews Johann Hari and Christine MacDonald
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/9/the_real_climategate_conservation_groups_align

B.C. Guardians network: B.C. Guardians network
http://www.bcguardians.ca/content/view/15/14/

B.C. Citizens for Public Power: http://www.citizensforpublicpower.ca/

Western Canada Wilderness Committee
http://wildernesscommittee.org/

Media, Myths, and Mess: Pollution & Women's Cycles. Men, keep reading!

2011-05-25T14:31:00.001-07:00

I want to be these women on the beach. Or better, I too, want a mysterious secret - a mission, perhaps to the depths of the earth... The all-pink commercial shows a stylish woman in a power suit with red nails (the only red in the commercial) deftly handing another stylish woman a compact tampon with a plastic applicator. The second woman breezes off, close up on hair tossing over shoulder, Jane Bond style, with an exciting, mysterious secret - a glance between the two heroines communicates the bond of a daring friendship. I want in! But here's the secret: piles of long lasting rubbish. Its just an advertisement for menstrual pads! Darnit! I wanted this to somehow involve crashing through a window on spidey string and perhaps saving the planet. Why are women's periods something to be ashamed of and hid, and why aren't we all ashamed of the trash we're creating, and the insecurities that are behind this?

(Men, here's why you need to read this too)

The skinny: creating insecurities sells products. Selling men and women the idea that women's periods are dirty secrets to fear and hide has resulted in a massive disposable "feminine hygiene" industry that is covering the planet in something truly gross: single use, used, menstrual products. Often these products are full of toxins such as dioxins and furans - not even good for women, with risks of toxic shock syndrome. Also, they aren't cheap. The gender that is the poorest is spending money each month on something they don't need! Here are some stats on menstrual waste:

1.) Over 12 BILLION pads and tampons are USED ONCE and disposed of annually, adding to environmental pollution.
2.) According to the Center for Marine Conservation, over 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999.
3.) Some estimates hold that 6.5 billion tampons and 13.5 billion sanitary pads, PLUS their packaging, ended up in landfills or sewer systems in 1998. While The National Women’s Health Network states that twelve billion pads and 7 million tampons pollute landfills annually in the US.

THIS IS SO NOT COOL. HOW CAN THE MOST NATURAL PROCESS ON EARTH, THE CYCLE OF REPRODUCTION, NOW BE RESPONSIBLE FOR DESTROYING LIFE ON EARTH? Furthermore, imagine your own mother being ashamed of the process that later brought you into this world.

If you find this situation in any way frustrating and ridiculous, and you don't mind the site of fake blood, you'll love this song by Ani Difranco: Blood in the Boardroom.

I'm sure none of the below people stink, but if you believe these 50s-80s ads, then all women without perfumed disposables stink to high heaven on their period - so much so that they could be left by their partners and must live in secrecy - no dancing allowed!

There are great supplies out there that don't have to be thrown out. They simply need to be washed. However for the majority of women, this means that they have to risk revealing the "dirty secret" to partners and family via washing machines, or simply a menstrual cup that needs to be kept in a medicine cabinet. The fear generated by advertising keeps women using disposable products. So lets all drop this notion that a bit of blood is something to be ashamed of. If it is, I guess us and most animals will all have to just die out since its the basis of life.

So men, don't let a woman in your life believe wrongly that you think her period is disgusting! You don't have to go as far as this guy, but have a basic level of comfort. If you see a speck of blood, feel understanding instead of disgust.

Women, as of today, why not save an average of $40.00+ a year as well as all of that time going to the drug store? Below are 3 great methods for catching blood during your period that will save you time, hassle, and cash.

The Keeper/ or the Diva Cup

A truly amazing product, the menstrual cup is designed to catch blood inside of the vagina. It works just like a tampon in that it sits inside the body, but there are no harsh chemicals and dyes, and no risk of toxic shock. The cup requires practice the first 1-3 times it is used, and can simply be washed with a non toxic soap after each use, and at the end of the cycle sterilized by boiling. Menstrual cups last up to 10 years before needing to be changed and work almost better than tampons. There are 2 sizes for women under and over 30, and one amazing thing about them is that they measure in ounces the blood. This means that for those women whose periods are heavy, leading to iron deficiency, they can at least have some sense of what is going on and tell their doctors or naturopaths. When the menstrual cup needs to be emptied, it simply gets removed and poured right into the toilet, then washed. Easy! The Menstrual cup costs about $35-45 and should last up to ten years.

Here is a link to more information and various cups as there are many options. This site also has a demo using a menstrual cup and a glass. One thing it does not mention is that the cup also needs to be turned 360 degrees upon insertion. Two extremely popular brands are the keeper and diva cup. The keeper is rubber which means it will naturally biodegrade when you are done using it. You could literally bury it in your back yard. The diva cup is latex and slightly more pliable (see demo). It is not biodegradable. Both are very good, comfortable, products.

Re-usable menstrual pads:

These are just what they seem, often locally made, soft material, fun and funky pads that can simply be worn and washed. Pads can be expensive, they can cost anywhere from $5-13 each but will obviously last a long time if washed properly!

The Classic: Single Socks and Safety Pins

It sounds complicated but this option is way better than most disposable pads, socks are just more absorbent and more comfortable. Want to spend absolutely no money and reuse fabric in the process? Simply fold a sock in half and pin your single socks to your underwear with 3 safety pins. The pin should not be on top of the pad close to the body, but on the bottom of the underwear separated from your body by 3 layers of fabric. Keep a cloth bag or wrapper with you for if/when you need to change your sock. Just wash them in the washing machine. Nothing is more practical or more comfy than this than this!

What about my daughter? Helping her with her first period:

Dads, here is a great article if you are the wondering about how to help your daughter with her first cycle. This article lists a host of great ideas, including taking her out for a fun day without mentioning it too much or making a big deal about it.

One thing is is great for parents of either sex to do prior to your daughter getting her period is to provide her with a number of products that she can choose to use so that she feels ready and in control her first time, socks should be one of them! :). Include eco friendly options. If you also want to include disposable pads, go for a non-bleached ecological kind that will at least keep her free from harm.

Moms, have you heard of ways to celebrate your daughter's first period? See this great link on celebrating. There are also many more links for menarche parties. Generally, these parties involve inviting other women that your daughter feels comfortable with. Sometimes, a simple card or gift of congratulations is better. Let her know you are proud of her and happy for her.

Rex Weyler: Nuclear Delusions: Why Nuclear Power is not a Solution to our Energy Challenge

2011-05-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace, check out the list of resources at the bottom. It provides an great compliment to the article by Harvey Wasserman from yesterday. Here's one more reason to first protest our governments to phase out nuclear power and to reduce our energy consumption with compact fridges, or no fridges, and beyond. I've linked you to Rex's blog by his name, and you can check out his monthly columns for Greenpeace at Deep Green

Guardian environment writer George Monbiot’s leap onto the “nuclear renaissance” bandwagon disturbed many environmentalists. Monbiot has a good reputation for doing serious research and getting his facts straight. However, in this case, he may have leapt before he looked deeply into the logical conclusions of nuclear power. Questioning our assumptions – including our assumptions about nuclear energy – remains necessary if we are to solve our global ecological challenges. Nevertheless, the evidence in hand shows that nuclear energy is not the solution to humanity’s energy needs that Monbiot and others hope for. Here are the reasons:

1. Nuclear energy is not low carbon

The industry claims that nuclear energy is “carbon free” because while a nuclear plant operates, it does not directly burn hydrocarbons. However, from a life-cycle analysis, nuclear energy is a carbon hog. Plant construction – cement, steel, and complex electronics – is carbon intensive. The nuclear fuel cycle – mining, milling, enriching, fabrication, transport, and processing nuclear waste – is also carbon intensive. Halogenated compounds used in uranium refining have a greater impact on global heating than carbon dioxide. Finally, when a nuclear plant’s 40-to-60 year life is over, decommissioning adds more carbon costs and leaves a radioactive, lifeless blotch on the landscape. Many studies confirm that nuclear electricity is not low-carbon; here are three:

A study of carbon and nuclear power by the Australian government and Sydney University, found that nuclear plants emit about 60 grams of carbon-dioxide equivalent per Kilowatt-hour of electricity 3-times the comparable emissions from wind turbines.

The International Energy Agency’s 2006 World Energy Outlook, a pro-nuclear report, found that among the alternatives – wind, solar, hydro – nuclear power yielded the lowest emission reductions.

At Stanford University, Dr. Mark Jacobson compared the lifetime CO2 emissions of energy sources, “Review of Global Warming Solutions,” and found nuclear electricity to be the highest non-hydrocarbon option, emitting between six and 60-times more carbon than wind and concentrated solar.

2. The health risk is real

Radiation emissions have serious health implications. There is no safe level of radiation. Any increase in public radiation exposure results in bio-concentration of radionuclides and cancer, birth defects, and genetic damage.

Nuclear promoters claimed that there were “no deaths” from the Three Mile Island meltdown in the US in 1979. However, Dr. Steven Wing, epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health documented lung cancer and leukemia rates 2-to-10-times higher downwind from the Three Mile Island reactor, compared to upwind rates.

Monbiot takes exception to Dr. Helen Caldicott’s calculations of radiation health effects but appears to accept the estimates from the industry. For example, Monbiot accepts the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO) estimates of “four thousand fatal cancers” from the Chernobyl accident although IAEA is a nuclear industry promoter and they approve WHO radiation estimates.

These industry-biased studies minimize radiation levels, rely on external doses, and underestimate the effects of internal radiation, inhaled or ingested by the victims. Radioactive isotopes such as iodine-131 concentrate at each food chain stage, migrate inside the body to specific organs such as the thyroid or bone marrow, irradiate cells, and produce cancer and genetic damage decades after exposure.

In 1992, the British Medical Journal published a study showing a significant change in infant mortality in Germany after the Chernobyl incident, where the post-natal death rate ceased declining and temporarily increased. Studies showed an increase in cancer in Sweden and even childhood leukemia in the US linked to the radiation from Chernobyl. In 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences compiled data from some 5,000 research papers not reviewed for the IAEA/WHO reports and estimated 985,000 excess deaths due to Chernobyl radiation, 250-times more deaths than reported by the IAEA.

We cannot precisely know how many people died from Chernobyl radiation because radiation’s trail is difficult to follow, but people die. I have witnessed children dying from leukemia, a painful, heartbreaking tragedy. There is something grotesque about counting the dead with the nuclear apologists and trading off human suffering for electricity. I would not advocate one single death by cancer as a necessary price for electricity, much less 4,000 or 980,000.

Likewise, people will die from the Fukushima radiation, and the deaths are not ciphers on a health survey, they are the genuine suffering of innocent human beings. Nuclear power is a form of random murder.

3. Corruption and collusion

If the nuclear industry had been honest about accidents, radiation emissions, and other difficulties with nuclear power, government and citizens would be in a better position to assess the value of nuclear energy. But the nuclear industry has left a trail of deceit, corruption, and collusion with regulatory agencies.

As already noted, the International Atomic Energy Agency insists on vetting World Health Organization radiation impact reports, to protect their own interests, to promote nuclear power. Meanwhile, independent scientists have fought the industry’s suppression of data.

Professor Dimitro Godzinsky, from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, claims that “defenders of atomic energy” obstructed Chernobyl investigations by diverting scientists from radiation studies, “refusal to fund medical and biological studies,” and by “liquidating government bodies” responsible for researching the Chernobyl impact.

In 2009, Dr. Jack Valentin resigned as head of the International Committee on Radiological Protection’s Scientific Secretariat because he believed the health risks from internal radiation exposure were 100-times greater than the organization claimed.

In 2004, UK government lawyers blocked a minority report by Dr. Chris Busby and colleagues, suggesting that the Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) underestimated health risk by as much as 300-times, failing to account for clusters of cancer and leukemia near nuclear installations in Wales, Essex, and Cumbria.

In 2000, Kei Sugaoka, a nuclear inspector at the Daiichi plant, told Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) that Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) had concealed safety information about a cracked steam dryer. Rather than act on this information, NISA exposed Sugaoka and TEPCO expelled him from the industry.

Between 2002 and 2006 nuclear workers, who feared reprisals from TEPCO, reported 21 safety warnings to Fukushima governor Eisako Sato, who passed these concerns to NISA. However, NISA and TEPCO, ignored the warnings, attacked governor Sato, accused him of corruption, and drove him from office. Meanwhile, TEPCO routinely rewarded collaborating NISA employees with executive positions at the company.

Victor Gilinsky, who served on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) during the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, says the NRC is “a wholly owned subsidiary of the nuclear power industry.” Like their Japanese colleagues, cooperative NRC regulators can look forward to plush industry jobs when they leave the agency. During the last decade, the US nuclear industry donated over $4.6 million to Congressional members, and in 1996, when the NRC dared investigate reactor design flaws, US Senator Pete Domenici threatened to cut the agency’s funding.

If nuclear energy was safe, the lies, corruption, and collusion would not be necessary.

4. Costs and Subsidies

A kilowatt-hour of electricity from a new nuclear power plant costs 14-to-17-cents compared to wind farm electricity at 7-cents.

Nuclear projects routinely exceed budgets due to delays, design flaws, and rising commodity prices. In Canada, for example, the Darlington nuclear plant, with a construction budget of $6 billion, now approaches $26 billion.

In the UK, a new nuclear plant costs about £6 billion (US$ 10 b.; € 6.7 b) to build, not including insurance, accidents, waste, safety, security, or decommissioning, costs usually paid from public funds.

Historically, the private nuclear industry’s economic model is this: Privatize profits, socialize costs, socialize risks, and leave the garbage for posterity. In the U.S., the average “private” reactor has received about $1.3 billion in public subsidies. If the industry practiced free market capitalism it would collapse.

In Solutions magazine, energy specialists Robert Costanza, Cutler Cleveland, and colleagues ask: “Can Nuclear Power Be Part of the Solution?” They offer a balanced assessment, but cite the hidden costs, tax subsidies, and “legacy” subsidies such as waste. They recommend, “Remove the subsidies, require nuclear power plants to be fully insured, and put aside adequate funds for decommissioning and long-term radioactive waste disposal.”

5. Radioactive Waste: Unsolved

At Fukushima, most public radioactivity exposure came from spent fuel rods in temporary storage pools. The nuclear industry has not yet solved the waste problem, so these spent rods sit in makeshift ponds around the world at 1000°C, requiring 24-hour cooling and security. The UK holds over 112 tonnes of plutonium waste. In 2002, the Royal Society estimated that a sufficient storage system would cost £ 85 billion (€95 billion, US$140 billion). The UK operates 19 reactors, so the waste debt comes to about £4.5 billion per reactor.

In the US, radioactive waste sits in 121 temporary facilities, an enduring environmental and security risk. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) spent $7 billion researching a waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, projected to cost $96 billion to complete, but which may never open due to technical problems, fraudulent geological reports, and soaring costs. “Power companies don’t want to pay for it,” says Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser at the US Energy Department. Total US nuclear waste amounts to 72,000 tons from civilian sites, 34 tons of military plutonium, plus other undisclosed military waste, totalling more than the hypothetical Yucca Mountain site could accommodate.

The US spent $5 billion to build a nuclear fuel factory on the Savanna River in South Carolina to combine plutonium waste with uranium to create mixed-oxide fuel, MOX. However, after a decade of construction, the plant remains half finished, with no customers.

The UK built an MOX plant at Sellafield and projected producing 1200 tons of fuel in a decade. However, since 2002, the plant has produced only 13.8 tons. A leaked US diplomatic cable from London cites UK government sources that the Sellafield plant costs £90-million a year to operate and is “one of Her Majesty’s Government’s most embarrassing failures in British industrial history.” Japanese customers complain of UK production problems and have cancelled fuel orders for the next decade. By that time, the plant will be nearing its expiry date and will be decommissioned at British taxpayer’s expense.

Clandestine dumping of radioactive waste at sea continues, as evidenced by the containers of waste that washed up on the shore of Somalia after the 2004 tsunami.

No solution has yet been successful for the storage or processing of dangerous radioactive waste, piling up as a regrettable legacy to our progeny.

6. Weapons proliferation and security

Since World War II, the nuclear industry has created more than 1,200 tonnes of plutonium. About 260 tonnes are “weapons grade,” and the remainder can be fashioned into lower-grade weapons or reprocessed for high-grade nuclear weapons. Plutonium is a toxic carcinogen that collects in bones and the liver. The weapons grade plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,110 years, and the heavier Pu-244 has a half-life of 80 million years.

The existing stockpile of weapons grade plutonium could make about 60,000 warheads, and the entire plutonium stockpile could make over 200,000 warheads. Nations that develop a nuclear industry become a threat to the world as plutonium suppliers, targets of terrorism, and potential wielders of nuclear weapons.

China, France, Russia, UK, US, Israel, India, and Pakistan now possess about 8,800 nuclear warheads. Syria, North Korea, South Africa, Iraq, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had or still have nuclear weapons programs. Libya, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan have shelved nuclear weapons programs. Thus, twenty nations possess the capability to create sophisticated nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, anyone with a supply of plutonium and common technical knowledge can create unsophisticated nuclear weapons.

7. Scale

The world now operates about 434 nuclear reactors, not counting those in current meltdown or closed for repairs. To replace current hydrocarbon energy production with nuclear power at the current average capacity would require about 7,000 nuclear reactors. To replace half our hydrocarbon energy with nuclear (3,500 reactors) by 2030, we would have to build 175 new reactors per year, 3 new reactors per week for twenty years.

Such a scenario is not possible for supply chain reasons alone (cement, steel, appropriate sites, and construction capacity). From 1996-2009, the nuclear industry retired 43 old reactors and opened 49 new ones, a net gain of six reactors in 13 years.

If such a scenario were possible, we could then expect 8-times as many nuclear accidents and subsequent cancer and leukemia cases, and 8-times the annual nuclear waste and uranium demand. The current nuclear industry consumes 68,000 tons of uranium per year. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s most optimistic estimate of reserves, including hypothesized reserves yet to be discovered, is 7.7 million tons. Thirty-five hundred operating nuclear plants would drain these reserves in 14 years, leaving communities on land poisoned with radioactive dust, radon gas, and suffering from a legacy of birth defects, leukemia and other cancers.

Furthermore, none of this accounts for population and economic growth. Two billion people live without electricity. The UN estimates we may add 3 or 4 billion more people before human population stabilizes. Meanwhile, the wealthy 15% of the world consume most of the current energy capacity. Even accounting for some efficiency gains and modest lifestyles, to meet these growth and social justice needs would require 3-to-4-times our current energy consumption, and to supply even half of this with nuclear plants would require about 15,000 nuclear plants.

Nuclear plants have a life-cycle of 40 to 60 years. To maintain an industry of 15,000 nuclear plants, we would have to build approximately one new plant each day, forever; while decommissioning one plant each day, forever; leaving behind thousands of radioactive dead zones vulnerable to earthquakes, uranium mining wastelands, and deadly radioactive waste.

These scenarios are not even physically achievable, much less “sustainable,” and they certainly do not offer a “solution” to our energy and global heating challenges.

The first and most important genuine alternative to hydrocarbon energy use is conservation, especially in the wealthy nations. The wasteful lifestyles that petroleum has made possible are not sustainable, so imagining a nuclear industry to sustain those lifestyles remains counter-productive. We can reduce energy needs with better public transport, communities designed for walking and bicycles, with localized economies that minimize shipping; and by ending wasteful consumption. We don’t hear these kinds of solutions from our current political regimes because they remain chained to the assumption of endless growth.

After conservation, real energy alternatives do exist. Solar and wind systems must address the same scale and replacement issues that nuclear power faces, but they do not leave a legacy of cancer, radioactive waste, and abandoned radioactive dead zones.

Every dollar, every piece of land, and every resource spent on nuclear energy is an opportunity lost, consuming financial, human and natural resources required by real solutions.

=======================

Sources and links

George Monbiot adopts nuclear power, The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima

Australia nuclear carbon Study: M. Lenzen, “Life-Cycle Energy Balance and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Nuclear Energy in Australia, Department of Integrated Sustainability Analysis, Sydney University, 2006/08” http://www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au/publications/documents/ISA_Nuclear_Report.pdf

IEA World Energy Outlook 2006, International Energy Agency p.190, http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2006/weo2006.pdf

coal vs. nuclear: See chart on page 18, “Radiological Impacts of Airborne Effluents of Coal-fired and Nuclear Power Plants,” J.P. McBride, et. al., Health and Safety Research, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (5315), August 1977. http://www.ornl.gov/info/reports/1977/3445605115087.pdf

Monbiot critique of Caldicott:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world

IAEA: page 15/16, “Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts, The Chernobyl Forum, IAEA, 2006 – http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

German infant mortality: “Neonatal mortality in Germany since the Chernobyl explosion,” Jens Scheer, British Medical Journal, no.304 p.843, 28/3/92 – http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/archive/magnox_a1_29.pdf

Cancer in Sweden: Increase of regional total cancer incidence in north Sweden due to the Chernobyl accident?, Martin Tondel, Peter Hjalmarsson, Lennart Hardell, Goran Carlsson and Olav Axelson, Journal of Epidemiol Community Health, vol.58 pp.1011-1016, 2004 – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1732641/pdf/v058p01011.pdf

US Childhood Leukemia: “Childhood leukaemia in US may have risen due to fallout from Chernobyl,” Joseph Mangano, British Medical Journal, 314, April 19, 1997. http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/archive/magnox_a1_17.pdf

Dr. Stephen Wing, cancer from Three Mile Island, http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/feb97/wing.html

New York Academy of Sciences report, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, 2009. Dimitro Godzinsky in the Introduction.
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/chernobylhealthreport.pdf

Dr. Jack Valentin
http://vimeo.com/15382750

Victor Gilinsky, US NRC:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-s-nuclear-nightmare-20110427

Report by Dr. Chris Busby and colleagues
http://www.llrc.org/wobblyscience/subtopic/cerrie.htm

Eisako Sato, Governor of Fukushima forced to resign, The Independent, UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/warnings-of-nuclear-disaster-not-heeded-claims-former-governor-2273764.html

Cost of UK nuclear plant: Bloomberg, August 25, 2010: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-25/edf-rwe-may-spend-9-3-billion-per-new-nuclear-plant-in-u-k-hendry-says.html

Cost / kWhr: Renewable Electricity Production & Nuclear Power:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/Renewables_and_nukes_factsheet.pdf

Robert Alvarez, US Energy Department
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-s-nuclear-nightmare-20110427

R. Costanza, et. al., nuclear subsidies, Solutions magazine:
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/918

McKenzie Report: “Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy;” McKinsey & Company, 2009. http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/sustainability/pathways_low_carbon_economy.asp

US Savanna River MOX plant
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/us/11mox.html

UK Sellafield MOX Plant
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/governments-doomed-6bn-plan-to-dispose-of-nuclear-waste-2266047.html

Leaked US Cable, UK Sellafield plant, The Telegraph, Feb. 14, 2011:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100075851/so-the-nuclear-plant-does-not-work-loses-90-million-a-year-and-could-be-a-security-risk-lets-build-another-say-ministers/

World Plutonium Stockpile, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1999:
http://www.ccnr.org/plute_inventory_99.html

World Nuclear weapons programs
http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat

World Uranium reserves, World Nuclear Association
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html

== ==

Addition links and information

UK energy .. UK Carbon Dioxide Emissions by fuel, 1990-2009; 2009 Provisional UK Greenhouse Gas Figures, Department for Energy and Climate Change, March 2010 – http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/climate_change/data/data.aspx

Paul Mobb, Ecolonomics, “When the facts change, I change my mind,” a survey of nuclear power and critique of George Monbiot’s analysis. http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ecolonomics/01/ecolonomics-010-20110322.shtml

Greenpeace Chernobyl Report
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/chernobylhealthreport.pdf

Kei Sugaoka expelled from Japanese nuclear industry, New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/world/asia/27collusion.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Harvery Wasserman: Forget the mainstream Media - Fukushima is an escalating a disaster for us all.

2011-05-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

This article was generously shared by Harvey Wasserman

Fukushima may be in an apocalyptic downward spiral. Forget the corporate-induced media coma that says otherwise…or nothing at all. Lethal radiation is spewing unabated. Emission levels could seriously escalate. There is no end in sight. The potential is many times worse than Chernobyl. Containing this disaster may be beyond the abilities of Tokyo Electric or the Japanese government.

There is no reason to incur further unnecessary risk. With all needed
resources, it's time for the world's best scientists and engineers to take
charge. Even then the outcome is unclear. For a brief but terrifying overview, consult Dr. Chris Busby as interviewed by RT/TV.

Fukushima Units One, Two and Three are all in various stages of melting
down. Molten fuel at Unit One may have burned through its reactor pressure vessel,
with water poured in to cool it merely pouring out the bottom. A growing pond of highly radioactive liquid is softening the ground and draining into the ocean. There is no way to predict where these molten masses of fuel will yet go.

Especially in the event of an aftershock, steam and hydrogen explosions
could blow out what's left of the containments. The extra plutonium in the MOX fuel at Unit Three is an added liability. At least one spent fuel pool has been on fire.

The site has already suffered at least two hydrogen explosions. Some believe
a fission explosion may also have occurred. All have weakened the structures and support systems on site. These shocks and the soft ground may be why Unit Four has partially sunk and is tipping, possibly on the brink of collapse. Even a relatively minor aftershock could mean catastrophe.

More explosions are possible. More leaks are virtually certain. Escalated radiation levels from any one of the reactors could force all workers to evacuate, leaving the entire site to chance. The New York Times has now reported that critical valve failures that contributed to the Fukushima disaster are likely at numerous US reactors.
Significant radioactive debris has been found thousands of yards from the
plant. Radiation levels in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, have risen. Fallout
has been detected in North America and throughout Europe.

Radiation pouring into the sea has begun to spread worldwide. There is much more, none of it good. Japan and Germany have had the good survival sense to abandon future reactor construction, and to shut some existing sites. But here, the corporate media blackout is virtually complete. Out of sight, out of mind seems the strategy for an industry desperate for federal loan guarantees and continued operation of a rickety fleet of decaying old reactors.

The Obama Administration has ended radiation monitoring of seafood in the
Pacific. It does not provide reliable, systematic radiological or medical
data on fallout coming to the United States. But we may all be in unprecedented danger.
A national movement is underway to end atomic give-aways and turn to a
green-powered Earth.

Now we must also move ALL the world's governments beyond denial to focus on
somehow bringing Fukushima under control. After two months of all-out effort, four reactors and at least that manyspent fuel pools remain at risk. Our survival depends on stopping Fukushima from further irradiating us all.

The world community has come together to put a new sarcophagus around
Chernobyl. A parallel, more urgent effort now needs to focus on Fukushima.
Whatever technical, scientific and material resources are available to our
species, that's what needs to go there.

NOW!

*Harvey Wasserman*, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is
editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the
author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D.
2030,
is
at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com

Mountain Top Removal: One more Reason to Unplug

2011-05-21T05:22:00.001-07:00

If we don't take too much, we can have heaven on earth.

As a child, my family would take a vacation once a year by driving from Canada down to South Carolina. One of the best parts of our trip was passing through West Virgina and seeing the beautiful mountains awash in fall colors. Our eyes would search for, and find deer leaping on the hills. West Virginia is a place of breathtaking beauty. There is nothing more sacred or permanent than a mountain. How could a mountain die?

Now I've discovered that in order to extract even more coal, more cheaply, the Appalacian Mountains and communities the live there are being destroyed by a new form of coal mining: Mountain Top Removal. These mountains are being destroyed forever. Toxins from the mining then run downstream to anyone further south in the water supply.

It makes me think of what is happening in Canada in Northern Alberta with the Tar Sands. The Tar Sands are also a relatively new form of oil extraction that literally chew up the Boreal Forest - the lungs of the world. Like Mountain Top Removal, the Tar Sands are permanently destroying land the size of the state of Florida for cheap oil. They are poisoning and destroying the way of life of Canada's First Nations Peoples, causing cancers, devastating fresh water supplies, and taking away from all life this beautiful land. These two tragedies are connected to two very unsustainable forms of energy: oil and coal.

Meanwhile in Fukushima, Japan another form of energy - nuclear power is connected to the permanent destruction of land. Nuclear waste has leaked onto the precious land in Japan, causing an evacuation. In all cases, our need for these resources has reached the very soil and earth we need to survive on is being destroyed. Since we all need land, this is destroying life in the long term. Across the world, we people must be united in our call for safe Renewable Energy such as wind and solar. And we must empower one another in our communities to speak up for justice and live more simply, but more happily.

Renewable energy and living more simply are very simple solutions to protecting this beautiful earth. And to respecting the people who have lived on this land for generations. Do we really need a thousand electronic devices rather than a happy healthy planet and justice for its citizens?

Here's an important video on how we can stop Mountain Top Removal. I would also add that reducing our electricity consumption will also take the pressure off this earth that belongs to all past, present, and future generations of animals and people.

Clayton Thomas Muller on the Devastating Consequences of the Tar Sands:

Priscilla Judd: To hear the Wild; Ousting Fridge for Compact in Wild Salmon Country

2011-05-14T19:22:00.001-07:00

This article was written specifically for Living without a Fridge and Beyond with the permission of Priscilla Judd

Priscilla Judd: protector of wild salmon, piano tuner, activist, poet, mother, grandmother, musician, blogger, unplugs her fridge and chooses a compact.

"We keep thinking if we just consume a little bit more of the planet, if we just industrialize a little bit more of our wilderness that somehow that's going to solve our problem....We keep hoping that somehow these technological innovations are going to save us. It's not going to work that way. The only thing that's going to make us more sustainable and solve problems such as global warming is for us to get smart and start consuming less stuff. That means consuming less of our rivers, consuming less of our wilderness, consuming less of everything. We're going to have to teach ourselves, our children, and help them teach their children that we can live richer lives with less consumption." Rex Weyler

A note from Andrea: What is often overlooked when we think of "clean energy" is the environmental degradation that comes from damming wild rivers for "clean" power. If energy demands continue to grow, and private companies have their way, every wild river will be threatened with a damn as is practically the case in British Columbia. Wild salmon in British Columbia depend on wild rivers for their migration each year, and the people of British Columbia and beyond depend on the wild salmon. It inspires me, but does not surprise me that someone involved in the preservation of wild salmon understands the link between energy consumption and the death of the salmon. British Columbia generally sells power to the US which explains why there are increasing dams, BC is itself energy independent. While it is the powers that be, and big business that needs to be pushed to change, in replacing her old fridge with a compact fridge, Priscilla in my mind is making the symbolic link to the larger issue of wild rivers, and wild salmon. Read her excellent bio and post below!

I live in a second growth forest on the Bessette River which flows from Lumby into the Shuswap River. We are part of the Fraser River watershed, home to the largest inland Sockeye salmon run. Lumby is the eastern most point for spawning salmon who travel 1,000 kilometres get here. Every year many salmon die as they try to get over the Wilsey Dam so we are raising funds (and political will) to build a fish ladder. We are strongly committed to salmon with the Lumby Wild Salmon Music Festival in July, Salmon Art, Salmon Songs and the Lumby Salmon Trails.

Two weeks ago, while preparing for some house guests, I peeled the stickers, old photos and news clippings off my refrigerator. My dream image of a 22 foot, stainless steel, Future Shop monster fridge went into the recycle bin. I hoped my guests could sleep through the old fridge rumble.

Since we moved here I've wanted a new fridge. Now and then it leaves puddles on the floor. It trundles on, endlessly it seems, loud enough to drown out even the coyotes from the forest edge. After it dies down, peace settles in, and I say "thank you". Then I notice the quiet of living in a forest - the jay at the bird feeder, the wood warning the stove, the pump in the pump-house, the computer. . .

Our guests arrived and we walked out to see the salmon spawning. Later that day 22 people came with pot luck supper. It was a wonderful evening. We washed dishes and put away left overs. The old fridge was remarkably well behaved, it didn't clunk on and off or drown our evening conversation. I hardly noticed it at breakfast and it wasn't running when our guests said goodbye. Several days later when the left overs were finished the fridge noise came back - louder and more obnoxious that ever.

A couple of busy weeks passed. I happened onto Andrea's "ditch your fridge" blog and thought about times we spent camping with our kids. A cooler in the creek worked well. I remembered my Great Aunt's English pantry and how we walked out to the shops each day for food. There was a time when "back to the land" people dug a root cellar into the hill on my sister's property. Eventually, the community went back to the city. Twenty years later I helped take down domes and returned the earth to the cellar hole in the side of the hill.

I left a comment and Andrea replied. She offered to help me write a post or she said "You could also try to unplug your fridge for a couple of days and see how it goes. Then plug it back in and write about it... or keep it off...".

Today I stopped at the used Emporium and looked at a 20 inch bar fridge. We haven't decided for or against a mini fridge but we started clearing out our freezer. Gordon called BC Hydro - they're picking up the old fridge on the 25th. Pumpkin's thawing for pies and I'll make fruit compote with plums and strawberries tomorrow. We turned the frozen cabbage into cabbage rolls and made soup. It was fun, we were chopping and cooking and dancing through the saucepans. In the middle of our delight, I walked over and pulled the plug. The fridge roar stopped dead. It was a powerful act. This silence is beyond believable. I'll keep you posted.

It could be a significant power saving if baby boomers ditched their big fridge - even if they switched to lower power ones as we have done.

Day 2
It's Saturday with coffee in bed - lucky me! I sipped the hot java, listening to the morning. Chink chink chink, the metal wedge splits apart the gnarly wood as Gord chops firewood. The jay squawks and chickadees chirp for sunflower seeds.

I wander downstairs, pick up the cold soup pot that was hot when I said good night. I open the fridge door - it's unexpectedly dark inside. Aha - I remember - last night I pulled the plug!! The old beast looks a bit forlorn with it's tail-like cord lying across the kitchen floor. I pick it up, push the plug back in the wall socket then head out to feed the birds.

When I come back, I realize pretty quick that the fridge isn't running. The light's on but there's no sound. The wretched old beast just gave up the ghost. It quit - I killed it. It felt like a powerful act last night when I pulled the plug but I didn't expect it to die, at least not yet 'cause BC Hydro will take my fridge and give me 30 bucks if it's working.

Anyway, I called the Emporium and they put a sold tag on the mini fridge. I'm up-sizing my kitchen space and down-sizing the Hydro bill. I need to find out where to recycle the old beast or maybe I'll just have to pay the dump tipping fee. I'll let you know how it goes.

Day 3 – Compact Fridge
Thank you so much, we have such a quiet home now. The mini fridge uses only as much power as a light bulb. It holds all our cool food and even the tiny freezer works. It's under our counter now and the old fridge is out on the deck. It could be a significant power saving if baby boomers ditched their big fridge - even if they switched to lower power ones as we have done.

For more of Priscilla's writing, and on wild salmon and more, check out her blog at: http://priscillajudd.ca/theXpress

For a great talk by Rex Weyler on Private Power and Wild Rivers, go to http://www.thecanadian.org/k2/item/58-rex-weyler3

Photos by Gordon Judd

For further reading and information:

Lumby Salmon Trail - (Educational Signs): www.gordonjudd.ca/lst
Music Festival: www.wildsalmonmusicfestvial.ca
New England Waste systems: www.newswet.com
Dr.Lavigne's Resume: www.priscillajudd.ca/thexpress/?p=1208

General Motors or General Dismay: How Cars are Pushed on Society

2011-05-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

This article has been republished with the permission of the writers, Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi. Compare the anti-smoking images with the apparently positive depictions of the car below (which allude to what cars are doing to the planet). What if we had images similar to anti smoking ones for cars?

Recently the McGill Daily and Concordia University's The Link covered their back page with end of semester advertisements for the 2011 Kia Soul. Above a picture of the small SUV reads: "Like it and Win. Grad [Facebook] Contest."

These two nonprofit, Left student papers are not alone in promoting this unhealthy, lethal, inefficient and utterly unsustainable mode of transportation. Across the globe newspapers of all types are filled with odes to the private car. For every new vehicle sold today $630 is spent on advertising. In newspapers and magazines, on TV and radio, car ads are overwhelming. Moving beyond traditional car-drenched media the Wall Street Journal noted that, "car companies have been among the most aggressive marketers in trying out new advertising tactics." Whether you're at a party, online, at the mall, playing videogames, at the movies or even writing checks, there is an endless promotion of both brand names and automobility. Car advertisers have conquered nearly every sphere of human consciousness.

Cadillac developed a subtle "influencer" campaign where vehicles were loaned to CEOs, doctors and other distinguished individuals. For its part, Honda took a more blue-collar approach to selling cars. The company's PR department dispatched a team to pump gas at service stations, pass out popcorn at movie theatres and offer aid in supermarket parking lots. These individuals all wore the company logo and could usually be found close to a car with the slogan "Helpful Honda." Nissan came up with a more novel strategy. To promote the Altima, they deliberately 'lost' 20,000 key rings in bars, concert halls and sports arenas in seven major U.S. cities. Each ring had three keys and a tag that declared: "If found please do not return." The Altima "has intelligent key with push-button ignition and I no longer need these." A second tag was labeled "gas card" and offered the finder the chance to enter a competition with prizes ranging from free gas to a six-month subscription to Vibe magazine. This innovative marketing strategy followed on the heels of a campaign that hired actors to stand up in movie theatres and talk back to Nissan Altima commercial

The automobile's new 30-second spot is definitely the videogame. To promote its 2010 GTI hatchback Volkswagen created an iPhone and iPod Touch game. The game allowed players to send messages to competitors on Twitter and post videos of the game to YouTube. Volvo's S40 model enjoyed so much advertising success from Microsoft's 'Rally Sport Challenge Two' that the company used clips from the game to create a TV ad. Another example is the Dodge Caliber, which made paid appearances in Ghost Recon, Crackdown and custom made four videogames for its launch. Nissan, too, worked with Sony/EA to release a downloadable video game to coincide with the launch of its GTR racecar. Similarly, Chrysler and Activision executives collaborated on American Wasteland, where 3D Jeep vehicles appear an average of 23 times every 20 minutes.

Most major auto companies have executives based in Los Angeles because new models increasingly rely on branded entertainment. Advertising Age summarized the industry's position: "Automakers: Every car needs a movie."

Released in July 2007, Transformers was a dream come true for GM. Bumblebee is a Chevy Camaro, Jazz a Pontiac Solstice, Ratchet a Hummer H2, Ironhide a GMC TopKick truck and Stockade a Cadillac Escalade. A number of other GM "car-actors" swept up supporting roles as well. Bob Kraut, GM's director of brand marketing and advertising, was understandably pleased with the film. "The content is very good," said Kraut. "The cars are integral to the story. They generate attention. It's a story of good vs. evil. Our cars are the good guys."

While bigger and better roles go to the car, the real action takes place behind the scenes. Be it a change in dialogue or camera angle, auto companies have taken an increasingly hands on approach to product placement. Some changes are subtle. In The Forgotten, for instance, Volvo slipped a line into the protagonist's dialogue, identifying the brand as her car of choice. Other changes are less subtle. After a scene with an Audi was cut from Ironman the car company's multi-million dollar marketing campaign with the movie was thrown into doubt. "The solution: run a drawn out shot of an Audi Q7 sports utility vehicle being saved by Ironman, complete with a sustained full frontal of Audi's 4-ring logo."

Car companies are aware of the silver screen's value and part with big bucks for permanent spots. Aston Martin paid $35 million to unseat BMW as the official car of James Bond. In a massive agreement with Universal Studios and NBC, Volkswagen spent an estimated $200 million to see its products in Universal Films and on NBC television.

Today's car ads manipulate nearly every value, emotion and human desire. Be it safety, speed, security, rebellion, the status quo, environmentalism, serenity or the defiance of nature. There is no place the industry won't go.

The automakers omnipresent advertising explains the private car's immense cultural standing. Those of us who want a landscape more amenable to pedestrians, cyclists and trolley riders must challenge the promotion of a product many times more damaging than cigarettes. As with tobacco, car advertising should be steadily eliminated (and immediately appropriated). The dominant media, ad agencies and car-makers will no doubt resist bitterly so let's build momentum towards this end by prodding media outlets with ethical advertising guidelines (campus newspapers, green groups etc.) to immediately ban car ads.

Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler begin touring in Ontario this week for their "Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the road to Economic, Social and Environmental Decay."

Media, Myths, and Mess: Pollution & Women's Cycles. Men, keep reading!

2011-05-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

I want to be these women on the beach. Or better, I too, want a mysterious secret - a mission, perhaps to the depths of the earth... The all-pink commercial shows a stylish woman in a power suit with red nails (the only red in the commercial) deftly handing another stylish woman a compact tampon with a plastic applicator. The second woman breezes off, close up on hair tossing over shoulder, Jane Bond style, with an exciting, mysterious secret - a glance between the two heroines communicates the bond of a daring friendship. I want in! But here's the secret: piles of long lasting rubbish. Its just an advertisement for menstrual pads! Darnit! I wanted this to somehow involve crashing through a window on spidey string and perhaps saving the planet. Why are women's periods something to be ashamed of and hid, and why aren't we all ashamed of the trash we're creating, and the insecurities that are behind this?

(Men, here's why you need to read this too)

The skinny: creating insecurities sells products. Selling men and women the idea that women's periods are dirty secrets to fear and hide has resulted in a massive disposable "feminine hygiene" industry that is covering the planet in something truly gross: single use, used, menstrual products. Often these products are full of toxins such as dioxins and furans - not even good for women, with risks of Toxic Shock. Also, they aren't cheap. The gender that is the poorest is spending money each month on something they don't need! Here are some stats on menstrual waste:

1.) Over 12 BILLION pads and tampons are USED ONCE and disposed of annually, adding to environmental pollution.
2.) According to the Center for Marine Conservation, over 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999.
3.) Some estimates hold that 6.5 billion tampons and 13.5 billion sanitary pads, PLUS their packaging, ended up in landfills or sewer systems in 1998. While The National Women’s Health Network states that twelve billion pads and 7 million tampons pollute landfills annually in the US.

THIS IS SO NOT COOL. HOW CAN THE MOST NATURAL PROCESS ON EARTH, THE CYCLE OF REPRODUCTION, NOW BE RESPONSIBLE FOR DESTROYING LIFE ON EARTH? Furthermore, imagine your own mother being ashamed of the process that later brought you into this world.

If you find this situation in any way frustrating and ridiculous, and you don't mind the site of fake blood, you'll love this song by Ani Difranco: Blood in the Boardroom.

I'm sure none of the below people stink, but if you believe these 50s-80s ads, then all women without perfumed disposables stink to high heaven on their period - so much so that they could be left by their partners and must live in secrecy - no dancing allowed!

There are great supplies out there that don't have to be thrown out. They simply need to be washed. However for the majority of women, this means that they have to risk revealing the "dirty secret" to partners and family via washing machines, or simply a menstrual cup that needs to be kept in a medicine cabinet. The fear generated by advertising keeps women using disposable products. So lets all drop this notion that a bit of blood is something to be ashamed of. If it is, I guess us and most animals will all have to just die out since its the basis of life.

So men, don't let a woman in your life believe wrongly that you think her period is disgusting! You don't have to go as far as this guy, but have a basic level of comfort. If you see a speck of blood, feel understanding instead of disgust.

Women, as of today, why not save an average of $40.00+ a year as well as all of that time going to the drug store? Below are 3 great methods for catching blood during your period that will save you time, hassle, and cash.

The Keeper/ or the Diva Cup

A truly amazing product, the menstrual cup is designed to catch blood inside of the vagina. It works just like a tampon in that it sits inside the body, but there are no harsh chemicals and dies, and no risk of toxic shock. The cup requires practice the first 1-3 times it is used, and can simply be washed with a non toxic soap after each use, and at the end of the cycle sterilized by boiling. Menstrual cups last ___ before needing to be changed and work almost better than tampons. There are 2 sizes for women under and over 30, and one amazing thing about them is that they measure in ounces the blood. This means that for those women whose periods are heavy, leading to iron deficiency, they can at least have some sense of what is going on and tell their doctors or naturopaths. When the menstrual cup needs to be emptied, it simply gets removed and poured right into the toilet, then washed. Easy! The Menstrual cup costs about $35-45 and should last up to ten years.

Here is a link to more information and various cups as there are many options. This site also has a demo using a menstrual cup and a glass. One thing it does not mention is that the cup also needs to be turned 360 degrees upon insertion. Two extremely popular brands are the keeper and diva cup. The keeper is rubber which means it will naturally biodegrade when you are done using it. You could literally bury it in your back yard. The diva cup is latex and slightly more pliable (see demo). It is not biodegradable. Both are very good, comfortable, products.

Re-usable menstrual pads:

These are just what they seem, often locally made, soft material, fun and funky pads that can simply be worn and washed. Pads can be expensive, they can cost anywhere from $5-13 each but will obviously last a long time if washed properly!

The Classic: Single Socks and Safety Pins

It sounds complicated but this option is way better than most disposable pads, socks are just more absorbent and more comfortable. Want to spend absolutely no money and reuse fabric in the process? Simply pin your single socks to your underwear with 3 safety pins. The pin should not be on top of the pad close to the body, but on the bottom of the underwear separated from your body by 3 layers of fabric. Keep a cloth bag or wrapper with you for if/when you need to change your sock. Just wash them in the washing machine. Nothing is more practical or more comfy than this than this!

What about my daughter? Helping her with her first period:

Dads, here is a great article if you are the wondering about how to help your daughter with her first cycle. This article lists a host of great ideas, including taking her out for a fun day without mentioning it too much or making a big deal about it.

One thing is is great for parents of either sex to do prior to your daughter getting her period is to provide her with a number of products that she can choose to use so that she feels ready and in control her first time, socks should be one of them! :). Include eco friendly options. If you also want to include disposable pads, go for a non-bleached ecological kind that will at least keep her free from harm.

Moms, have you heard of ways to celebrate your daughter's first period? See this great link on celebrating. There are also many more links for menarche parties. Generally, these parties involve inviting other women that your daughter feels comfortable with. Sometimes, a simple card or gift of congratulations is better. Let her know you are proud of her and happy for her.

Plastic Containers for Dental String: WTF??

2011-04-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

CAUTION: the below article includes the swearing levels one could find themselves using when stumbling upon the fact that the oceans are chalk full of deadly plastic.

You are living your life, minding your own business, just want to keep your gums clean and healthy. You don't even want to, but you do it because the thought of losing your teeth seems socially unacceptable and only funny in a bad way. As you silently floss (thinking of something else, in a magical world with no flossing), unknowingly you are creating a legacy of nearly immortal useless plastic containers which slowly make their way into the guts of birds and fish via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a gyre of swirling plastic that spans from California to China making one of the 5 global gyres of plastic contaminating the oceans for not just you, you of the healthy gums, but for everyone).

Did you ask for this legacy? Apparently your floss provider decided for all of us, and governments said "Yes, Floss-man God". Of course, floss companies are not the only ones who are contributing to a massive single use plastic problem globally (in fact they are minor players in comparison with some ), but let's focus here today. Along with bottled water companies, any single use disposable plastic,and plastic based forms of advertising, they wanted to immortalize their brand as legendary gum string providers into the next millennium.

Will future and current generations conclude that we cared more about special boxes for our gum string than them? Let's not wait to find out.

Why the frack is it necessary that string be contained in a special plastic box, only for it, especially in contrast with the necessity of life for the biosphere? These are the mysteries of the modern world that constantly float by us as if natural. And they are great mysteries to reduce and eliminate (they currently seem to be being reused and recycled).

You've got one of two problems, as far as I can tell. 1.) How to somehow make Christmas tree decorations out of every single future floss box you inherit from the plastic loving floss daddy in the sky (religions other than Christian, pick festival of choice that involves handmade decorations or solve your work "Christmas Present" problem for all time), atheists, i don't know... bookmarks?). Make sure while you are doing this that you are convincing your friends to do the same while maintaining a healthy social life. or, better, 2.) you take on the floss barons. How to do this? Let's take a little inspiration from the Great Canadian film, Mambo Italiano:

Hey! You #@**!!))** (see video)! Can't you just give me some string? No?!! Well guess what! I've discovered string isn't so hard to come by! WHO KNEW! I have some right here, in fact! Until you give me some nice waxed floss without a special box just for it, I'm going old school!(don't actually do this, see my list of tips below) And by the way, making those little boxes is now illegal thanks to the massive peaceful movement I've helped create that is fed up with absolutely useless junk that's killing life! I'll see you in hell! Wait... I don't believe in hell... Bye now!

To floss your teeth safely the old fashioned method is silk string, you don't want to cut your gums with regular string. I'd advocate for "unplugging your floss" but really we should all probably floss more. There is also a company that has even more packaging it seems, but with a biodegradable box. You might want to order some floss from them, or have your local store order some in bulk, and demand that they also eliminate their biodegradable box which (while better than plastic) is still an unnecessary use of energy. The goal is the simple, peaceful beauty of a simple product kept uncomplicated. What could be more desirable than that which does less harm?

To get rid of redundant floss packaging:
Online petition - Stop Plastic Containers for Dental Floss

To get involved and rid of all single use plastics (classified as being different from dental floss) visit The Plastic Pollution Coalition for personal and political ways to make change.

Preparing to Unplug your Fridge

2011-04-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

"Heaven isn't so far away as people say. I've got a home, high in my heart. Heaven is right where I come from, I never throw it away. I know the place, and I'm going home." Buffy Saint Marie

Unplugging your fridge is a fantastically easy thing to do. You can just unplug, or make things a little easier with some preparation. Here's a simple list to get you started so that your kitchen is well stocked when you power down. Basically, you are looking at having all of the same foods around that you usually do, but perhaps more in larger quantities than in the past. Having lots of dry goods handy, as well as dried fruits, and longest lasting vegetables means that there are only a few items you need to get more regularly. You'll have these on a week when you don't feel like shopping as your comfort food. Just a note also that canning and drying can be a handy addition to this list.

Veggies: Squashes, Tomatoes, Zucchinis, Peppers, Carrots, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes are all great things to have handy in larger quantities. Smaller, more delicate veggies like lettuce, herbs, and greens need special care. Please see my articles on this.

Protein sources: Big organic bag of lentils, other dried beans, nuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds. Remember you can also soak the nuts to make nut milks. Lentils are fast cooking, high in iron, and tasty which is why I favor them.

Perishables: Seek out sources of great local dairy or meat products and prepare to pick those up on the day.

Dry goods:

All tastes vary but here is what I keep on hand so that I can always prepare some food!

Grains: Rice, barley, oats, flour.

Pasta: Various pastas and also a jar or two of pasta sauce.

Fruit: Dried fruit, and also as much local fruit as you can handle! Apples will last a long time. Berries need to be eat much closer to the time that you purchase or pick them. Canning fruit - rhubarb, blueberries, apples, is a great way to stay stocked up year round. See notes on canning.

Eggs: A half carton is nice to have around, or a full carton if you like eating eggs a couple of times a week. Buy eggs fresh, keep them in a cool spot, and use in a couple of weeks.

Treats: Chocolate, popcorn, a bag of organic local potato chips. Having ingredients around the house for tasty popcorn or cookie variations is always a plus. I must add here that the more fresh food you get your hands on, the less tasty a lot of junk food will begin to seem.

Oil: Whatever organic, local oils you use, organic butter if you use this kept in a cool place. Remember to be aware of what oils degrade if you heat them. I have heard that olive oil does not degrade if you keep it at the temperature of boiling water, 100 degrees. So, cooking with olive oil and water together is a good option.

You can also see this handy list of things you'd think you need a fridge for, but don't.

Indoor Garden: A nice addition is to also grow your own indoor garlic chives ( I have written about this), as well as your own herbs. That way, even if all you have in the house is pasta and some oil, you can add your fresh herbs and eat better than almost anyone!

Neighbors: Suss out some neighbours who you think would enjoy some of your leftovers. You will likely overestimate from time to time, and can either preserve your food in cool snow or water, or simply share with your closest neighbour. It's an instant way to build community, you won't just be creating dishes when you cook anymore.

"I got my kitchen stocked, I got my door locked, there ain't no demons here, and I don't really care whose name is printed in bigger type, I live in a world full of hope, not a world full of hype. I ain't no saint, I help myself to what I'm in, but I help other people too. I'm sleeping soundly." Ani Difranco, Puddle Dive

Living Well in an 90 Square Foot Apartment

2011-04-10T06:06:00.001-07:00

I love this little story primarily because it shows that living with much less can be a great thing! Note the compact fridge!

Plastic Dental Floss Containers: WTF??

2011-04-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

CAUTION: the below article includes the swearing levels one could find themselves using when stumbling upon the fact that the oceans are chalk full of deadly plastic.

Will future and current generations conclude that we cared more about special boxes for our gum string than them? Let's not wait to find out.

Why the frack is it necessary that string be contained in a special plastic box, only for it, especially in contrast with the necessity of life for the biosphere? These are the mysteries of the modern world that constantly float by us as if natural. And they are great mysteries to reduce and eliminate (they currently seem to be being reused and recycled). You've got one of two problems, as far as I can tell. 1.) How to somehow make Christmas tree decorations out of every single future floss box you inherit from the plastic loving floss daddy in the sky (religions other than Christian, pick festival of choice that involves handmade decorations or solve your work "Christmas Present" problem for all time), atheists, i don't know... bookmarks?). Make sure while you are doing this that you are convincing your friends to do the same while maintaining a healthy social life. or, better, 2.) you take on the floss barons. How to do this? Let's take a little inspiration from the Great Canadian film, Mambo Italiano:

Hey! You #@**!!))** (see video)! Can't you just give me some string? No?!! Well guess what! I've discovered string isn't so hard to come by! WHO KNEW! I have some right here, in fact! Until you give me some nice waxed floss without a special box just for it, I'm going old school!(don't actually do this, see my list of tips below) And by the way, making those little boxes is now illegal thanks to the massive peaceful movement I've helped create that is fed up with absolutely useless junk that's killing life! I'll see you in hell! Wait... I don't believe in hell... Bye now!

To floss your teeth safely the old fashioned method is silk string, you don't want to cut your gums with regular string. I'd advocate for "unplugging your floss" but really we should all probably floss more. There is also a company that has even more packaging it seems, but with a biodegradable box. You might want to order some floss from them, or have your local store order some in bulk, and demand that they also eliminate their biodegradable box which (while better than plastic) is still an unnecessary use of energy. The goal is the simple, peaceful beauty of a simple product kept uncomplicated. What could be more desirable than that which does less harm?

To get rid of redundant floss packaging:
Online petition - Stop Plastic Containers for Dental Floss

To get involved and rid of all single use plastics (classified as being different from dental floss) visit The Plastic Pollution Coalition for personal and political ways to make change.

How to Use a Hair Dryer: Don't.

2011-04-08T02:52:00.001-07:00

This article is going to be short. Very short. Computers take electricity and I'm not going to waste much of it on why none of us should be using this device! Yes, mountains are being blown up, the boreal forest is being chewed up, and nuclear reactors are hanging out on fault lines in Japan and the US so that we can use this?? Lets face it: none of us need this thing.

One writer spends 38 minutes, and dumps 1.2 lbs of carbon into the atmosphere in over a week for the sake of drying hair faster. That's 43.2 lbs of carbon into the atmosphere per year and 23 hours of a person's life (speaking of which, I've got to go)! Is it the biggest waste of electricity out there? Not compared to fridges and electric cars, but for the love of god, let's stop this thing - you are more beautiful without it and without any toxic hair product that needs it. Air dries hair, and clothes for that matter. Let's give ourselves a free moment instead of blasting ourselves with charred air. "Just a bunch of hot air" is actually our planet.

Mountain Top Removal: One more reason to Unplug and Push for Renewables + Tar Sands and Fukushima

2011-04-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

Rex Weyler: Oil Shock

2011-03-31T08:04:00.001-07:00

SOCAR Oil Fields #4, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006 by Edward Burtynsky

This article was generously shared by Rex Weyler

“While the energy crisis will have severe economic impacts, it is not fundamentally about economics. It is about human ecology and the limits of growth.”
Dr. William Rees, University of British Columbia, author of Our Ecological Footprint.

The world oil harvest has peaked. For geologists this is not news. Science and industry have known about oil limits for over fifty years, at least since Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbert described the phenomenon in 1956. In 2005, after a century of growth, liquid petroleum fuel production peaked. Since then, it has maintained a wobbly plateau at about 85 million barrels per day, and will eventually begin an inevitable and relentless decline.

Meanwhile, the burning of hydrocarbons has increased carbon-dioxide in our atmosphere, heating Earth, turning oceans acidic, and threatening the entire human community. From the point of view of carbon emissions, an oil decline appears positive, but we shall discover that the impacts on the environment and society are not simple and not equally shared across the human community.

The popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain exposed the limit of global oil production. Libya provides about 1.8 percent of world production, but even the threat of losing a portion of this sent oil prices to their highest level since the months before the 2008 economic collapse.

Humanity took the cheap, easy, high-quality oil first – as we did with most resources – and the remaining oil fields produce a progressively lower grade, harder to retrieve oil. The Libyan fields produce a good-quality, low sulphur oil, prized for making gasoline. However, such oil is quickly disappearing, replaced by dirty, low-net energy oil such as tar sands crude and coal-to-liquid fuel. These sources increase environmental destruction and carbon emissions.

Since peak oil has arrived, every disruption creates shortages, increases prices, and triggers inflation, which hurts the poor first and sparks social unrest. Thus, we witness how ecological fundamentals impact society. Peak oil disrupts industrial societies addicted to oil and developing societies maintaining modest communities with much more limited energy supplies.

Peak oil recessions

In 2003, as the oil industry approached maximum world production, a barrel of oil cost about $30. When production stopped growing in 2005, world demand kept rising, outpacing supply, and the oil price rose to $40, 50, then $60 per barrel. By the fall of 2008, oil had reached $147/barrel, helping trigger a recession. The 2008 economic breakdown revealed ecological limits as well as financial blunders.

The rise of oil from $30 to $147 per barrel – reflecting the limit of the resource – added about $3.5 trillion per year to the world’s energy budget, almost 5 percent of the entire world economy. History shows that national and global economies rise and fall with available energy. Since energy is fundamental to economy, nations, companies, and households paid the rising energy costs in 2008, but this reduced budgets for all other economic activity, including food, travel, and loan payments. As economies faltered, companies and homeowners in the wealthy nations defaulted on loans, exposing financial fraud and unsecured derivatives. The financial collapse of 2008 signalled the first “peak oil” economic crisis.

“Oil shocks create global recessions,” explained Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist at Canadian International Bank of Commerce World Markets. In February of this year, Steven Kopits from Douglas-Westwood energy consultants presented a report to the United States House of Representatives Energy Subcommittee staff. He told them, “2008 was an oil shock, not just a financial crisis.” But his warning did not stop there. More oil shocks are on the way “most likely in 2013, although 2012 is not precluded.”

The Next Oil Shock

In February, the world learned from Wikileaks that ex-Saudi-Aramco executive Dr. Sadad al-Husseini believes the Saudi company overstated its oil reserves. Since 1990, Saudi Arabia has produced about 10 million barrels per day (mb/d), but that production is in decline. According to Kopits, since 2008, the Saudi oil fields have failed to produce about 1 mb/d of expected “spare capacity,” considered critical to the global economy during oil disruptions such as the uprisings in North Africa. These revelations suggest that Saudi production may continue its decline and fail to produce any spare capacity within the next two years. Kopits predicts “Oil shock thereafter.”

Furthermore, the diminishing returns on oil investment present more evidence of peak oil and eminent decline. Typically, as a resource declines, the quality deteriorates, ecological impacts increase, and the costs to retrieve that resource increase. Witness the oil industry. The quality of oil has plummeted. Oil fields in the 1930s yielded 100 barrels of oil for each barrel of oil burned to recover it. This was “100-to-1” net energy oil, low in sulphur, easy to recover. Today, tar sands producers, for example, recover 3 or 4 barrels of oil for one barrel of oil energy used for extraction. The product is heavy, high-sulphur oil, yielding higher carbon emissions and leaving behind greater ecological devastation. Similar energy costs and ecological impacts result from deep-sea oil rigs, such as the one that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
Densified Oil Filters #1
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 1997 by Edward Burtynsky.

According to Kopits, between 1995 and 2004, the oil industry spent $2.4 trillion on capital expenditures, and increased oil production by 12.3 million barrels per day. Then, from 2005 to 2010, the industry again spent $2.4 trillion in capital expenditures, but production declined by 0.2 mb/d. These diminishing returns on investment are typical of a depleted, degraded resource, a story as old as human civilization.

In January, Shell Oil released the “Energy Scenarios to 2050” report that acknowledged peak oil production and declining net-energy. Shell, which passed its own production peak in 2003, conceded, “The energy system will struggle to match surging demand for easily accessible energy.” The economic impacts range from higher food prices to industry slowdown. In February, the International Air Transport Association in Geneva estimated that rising oil prices will cut airline industry profits in half in 2011 compared to 2010.

Since world agriculture relies on oil-based equipment, fertilizers, and transport, rising oil prices drive food inflation, causing hunger and frustrations in the world’s poorest nations. Furthermore, the necessary transition to renewable energy also relies on oil-based infrastructure, mining, shipping, and manufacturing.

Transition: Harvesting energy

“Production” is not the correct way to describe energy acquisition. We do not “produce” oil; we harvest it. We do not produce any energy. We only capture and transform energy. We also do not produce copper, silver, or lithium for our new technologies. We harvest these as well. We mine such resources with oil-burning machines, and this harvest is limited by Earth’s finite capacity.

Human civilization must make a transition to renewable fuels. Ultimately, this is inevitable if there is going to be a sustainable human civilization. Environmental groups and a few visionary governments and companies have been pushing this transition for decades, against a great deal of resistance and denial. As we make the change to renewable energy over the next generation, we must be aware of two important realities about our natural world: scale and limits.

Oil has fuelled the massive scale of human enterprise today and the affluence and wastefulness in wealthy nations. However, the oil we burn represent 500-million years of solar energy, captured, primarily by ocean algae, transformed by photosynthesis, and stored deep in the Earth. We currently burn this ancient solar energy at the rate of about 5-million-years’ worth of recoverable energy in one year.

This should awaken us to our challenge. We cannot assume that we will replace the scale and extravagance of modern industrial cultures with energy that we harvest from the sun on a daily basis. The wealthy countries need to embrace simpler lifestyles. Hydrocarbons – coal, oil, and gas – represent 85 percent of human energy consumption. Nuclear (which is not a “low carbon” energy source due to the carbon emissions of cement, steel, mining, construction, decommissioning, and waste storage) comprises 6 percent. These high-carbon energy sources represent 91 percent of human energy consumption.

Wood and other biomass represents 4 percent of human energy. Hydro-electric dams – built on some 30,000 rivers since 1900 – represent 3 percent. The remaining renewable energy sources – solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels provide about 1.2 percent of our energy. Wind has shown the most growth among the renewables, reaching 200,000 megawatts by 2010, about 0.3% of the energy we currently obtain from burning hydrocarbons.

“Beware of scale,” says David Hughes, petroleum engineer for 30 years with the Canadian National Resource Council. “There are no scalable alternatives to the dense energy available from fossilized sunshine, period. So we have to get with the picture: radical reduction in energy throughput.” The first priority of a sound energy transition will be conservation. Wealthy nations must lead in energy reduction, as we build localized, low-impact, renewable energy systems for all nations. Biological and social histories demonstrate that the key to sustainability is simplicity and restraint, not complexity and growth.

A good energy strategy will also protect the primary energy harvesting systems on Earth, our living forests, grasslands, and oceans. We will require good public transportation systems, reversing the trend toward highways and private automobiles. The sustainable model for individual transportation is still the bicycle. Most of these changes will take generations. We can help our progeny by beginning the transitions now. The decline of oil is inevitable, but how we respond will determine our progress toward genuine sustainability.

Andrea Peloso: Vegetables, Greens, Sauces, Milks

2011-03-29T07:05:00.001-07:00

With regards to vegetables - virtually ALL of them can last outside of the fridge. The question is: for how long? All root vegetables keep fantastically, cool dark areas are best, but even a fruit bowl with added root veggies is great. Traditional methods to store root vegetables through the winter abound, one I like is storing them in boxes in cool, clean sand. But we're just talking about a few weeks or more here, so you should be fine just keeping them out. Yes, perhaps covering them with a towel would protect them. I just keep mine in my no-longer-plugged-in fridge.

Suggestions for buying lettuce. BUY LOCAL. There is way more of a chance that it will be fresh and last longer. BUY ORGANIC - it's safer for your health. Even in the winter it is possible to find local greens at places like THE CULINARIUM if you are in Toronto and other markets. There are also local organic lettuce heads served with the roots and a bit of soil still there. These do amazingly well sans fridge. Just place the bulb of roots in a cup of water.

Greens and herbs - just put them in fresh water in cups. They look beautiful and will last for a few days. Experiment with this as some will last longer than others. For instance, Basil is a fast wilter, but also dries quite easily if just hung and turned upside down. My dandelion greens tonight look hearty and I suspect they will last me at least until 2 days from now. But the encouragement here is to eat your greens fresh!! Get that basil right on your pasta!! No time to waste. In the end, you will find that you are eating much fresher food as a result.

Almond milk, so glad you asked! Almond milk, of all the milks out there, is the absolute best for going without a fridge. It will keep longer, especially by a cool window or sitting upright in a sink of cool water. I find I can have a big glass one evening, then add it to my cereal the next morning, and finish it off later in the day. In the winter, or any time I have access to cold, the shelf life of almond milk can really last. Next to a cold window, or in a pot of fresh snow, it can last as long as it would in a fridge if you keep it cool enough, as would all milks. I have not tried. If you think you could not consume this much almond milk in the time I've mentioned, try this recipe for a fast, fresh, daily dose:

handful of almonds(preferably soaked overnight but if you forget, just go for it...use them anyway)
filtered water
tiny pixie dust of salt
(below 3 ingredients optional)
dash of vanilla
sprinkle of cinnamon
drop of maple syrup, fair trade sugar, agave, or local honey.

blend!!

This is by far the most fun way to consume almond milk. Takes the amount of time grabbing and tossing some almonds and rinsing the blender takes... so 1 min or so.

For a local option, try homemade oat milk:

Fill a large jug with one-third oats and two-thirds water. Mix, and leave overnight. The next morning, sieve the mixture and you will be left with a milky liquid that can be drunk as it is or used in place of cow's milk in some recipes. You can add sweeteners or other things suggested above for more flavour.

Here's an interesting article from the Guardian on 7 alternatives to milk:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/mar/04/healthandwellbeing.fitness

Of course, winter is an amazing time to store animal milks, like goat or cow. Goat is lighter on the planet! I also feel compelled to mention as a side note that goats jump when they play, make friends with dogs and horses, climb trees, check out these photos before we move on to sauces!

goats play by jumping completely into the air...

climb trees...

okay, this little guy was just cute...

Find kind dairy farmers who care for their animals if they milk them!!
And animals are always best as friends!!

Prejarred Sauces:

So many can be kept outside of the fridge after opening. I recommend still keeping them in a cool dry place if you think they will be around for a while. But any way, they will keep. All nut butters, including tahini do just find outside of the fridge. As well as non-dairy curry pastes, soy sauce, hot sauces, and beyond. Even miso will keep but is much more delicate and definitely need the cool dry place.

Hope this answers some of your questions... keep them coming!!

The Unplugged Home: Happy Earth Hour! It's Easy

2011-03-26T11:29:00.001-07:00

artwork: "Sleeping House"

I realized once I had unplugged my fridge that I was able to leave my entire apartment without using one 'drop' of power when I did not need it. This felt incredibly liberating. I felt in control of what I was using, conscious of what was happening, like I had at least found a personal solution to waste. I would leave my house, and not one tiny red light was blinking for no reason.

Conventionally, the fridge is always running. I am tempted to add 'always already' running but let's save Heidegger for another time...

We anticipate the need to use power without knowing whether or not we will actually need it. Our unquestioned assumption is that we will always need power.

The fridge motivated me to turn off the rest of the simple gadgets living sleepless lives in my space. I had a battery operated watch which I would use to set a battery operated alarm, or just rise by the sun. My computer/tv/stereo could easily be unplugged by simply bending down once, simply getting up again.

In one small moment I had unconsciously converted my home from a home that perpetually used power to one that only used power when I needed it.

It's amazing how far our society has gone to prevent us from simply unplugging.

But its very easy. Its great to let the house sleep. We've created a culture with so many needless things running, tiny lights, nothing too quiet or still. We need rest, so does the earth.

I called Toronto Hydro. I am currently paying $3 a month in hydro, what I pay to Bullfrog Power, and a $17 connection fee. When I am away, they will suspend my power. I can save that money and also make the point that power is not always (already) necessary.

Brent La Rue: My Fridge-Free Kitchen in Nebraska

2011-03-20T19:23:00.001-07:00

This article was written for Living without a Fridge and Beyond, and published with the permission of Brent La Rue

Well I travel a lot for work and wanted a cheap place to use as a workshop and living space. My goals were to keep a very simple lifestyle for as long as possible. After I was fully moved in I started setting up my kitchen. I really didn't think about it for long before I decided against having a fridge. It seemed to me as more of a hassle and an excuse to buy more food than needed.

Living without a fridge has been great. I work in wind surveying and spend half the month on the road so I don't worry about it when I'm gone; when I'm home I have time to go grocery shopping every couple of days. I have done this for the simplicity of it and have not bothered to packing a cooler full of ice or put food outside in the snow.

I'd like to convince more of my friends to do without. Having the time to go grocery shopping every couple days helps a lot. In general, I spend less and buy smaller quantities of the pricier items like meat, cheese, and beer. It's helped condition me to cook smaller meals and use everything I buy. I would go as far to say it's a lot healthier to live fridge less if done right.

Well, I can see if my eggs float before cooking to tell if they're rotten or not. One morning I wasn't quite awake and just dropped an egg into an empty cup!

My family is pretty used to me doing things like this and support it with a bit of skepticism. As for my friends, almost all of them are for it but not that many of them are going to try it for themselves.

I'd say it's a positive change. I eat better, waste less, and feel slightly unburdened. How often do you get to say that instead of buying something you just changed your own habits and did without? The only issue so far is I can't store film or screen printing emulsion for long periods of time.

This article was kindly written by Brent La Rue.

Democracy Now: Japan faces Worst Nuclear Meltdown since the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

2011-03-15T08:47:00.001-07:00

Excellent coverage by Democracy Now that explores the Nuclear Catastrophe in Japan in the context of potential Nuclear Catastrophes here in North America. Some organizations working to end Nuclear Power in North America are Beyond Nuclear and Greenpeace (different websites for each country)

Arlene Tigar McLaren: Going carless or carfree?

2011-03-12T06:29:00.001-08:00

This article was generously shared by *Arlene Tigar McLaren

In January, our 1995 Toyota Camry recently ended up in a scrap-it program. The salvage company that took the car is located in a wasteland of trashed automobiles, trucks and buses on the banks of the Fraser River in Surrey, BC. On the way home, our taxi driver said that many of the crushed vehicles will be shipped off for recycling in less developed countries such as India with cheaper labour, fueling the global economy. We left the car wondering if we would have any regrets as we began our new venture. Would we be carless or carfree? With the courtesy taxi ride to Metro Vancouver's Skytrain, we were on our way.

We joined the Vancouver Cooperative Auto Network and thanks to the scrap-it program, have $750 credit, which will likely last well beyond the year and maybe two or three years. So far, we've used the coop car only a few times and have not yet rented a car, which by joining the coop is cheaper at specific rental companies.

Do we miss the car? Hardly. Being carless is not all roses, but how can one regret leaving behind the expenses, hassles about repairs, traffic congestion, parking problems, and stresses of driving?

Being without a car has been a money saver. At minimum, maintaining and running our car cost us $4000 a year, or about $10 a day. In the last two months, savings are close to $600. Occasional trips to see family and friends on Vancouver Island, which were about $100 roundtrip for the car on the ferry (plus gas), now cost about $10.

Most of the time, we get around by walking and sometimes taking public transit, which we used a fair amount when we owned a car. Vancouver's public transit system could be better - a lot better. It's too costly for many and frustrating when the service is slow or inconvenient. But the transit system has the potential to provide services that would greatly benefit most people.

Luckily, the buses are quite good where we live and the rides are often entertaining. It's fun to people-watch, like sitting in an outdoor café yet getting where you want to go. In contrast to the car, the bus is a good place for talking to fellow passengers, reading, text messaging, listening to music, and using cell phones. It's a cool, connected and diverse public space.

If public transit is well organized, the ride is not only entertaining but also freeing. You don't have to use seat belts, deal with congested traffic or find parking spots. You can get more easily on and off than in a car. Ramps for buggies, scooters and wheelchairs and racks for bikes have made buses more accessible.

As our default mode, walking has come to have a different feeling about it than it had before; you just do it since the car is not an option. The more one walks, the easier it becomes; even the steep hill that is sometimes necessary to climb to our home has become more surmountable over time.

Exercise is now integrated into daily routines of not just walking our dog, but going to nearby local shops for groceries and other items. Our habits are changing. A light knapsack is a constant companion. The food is fresher. It might even be possible one of these days to 'ditch the fridge'

The experience and subjectivity of distance is changing. I'm not sure why, but ironically, journeys that used to feel long when traveling by car can seem shorter if walking, bicycling, riding a scooter, or taking public transit.

(wear your helmet!! - hard to find images with helmets)

The collapsing of distance may have to do with no longer having the stress of driving. It is also possible that distances feel shorter as a result of short cuts. Driving a car usually means following arterial roads, but non-motorized transport often includes exploring quieter streets that provide more direct routes, which can actually be entertaining, making the feeling of time and distance diminish.

Public transit might also reduce the sense of distance because of the way it stitches communities together.

Only recently, for example, did I discover (and why isn't this kind of knowledge more widely circulated?) how well public transit coordinates travel from Vancouver to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal. What once seemed far away requiring a car now feels closer because of the good connections between the skytrain and express buses that pull together several communities (Vancouver, Richmond, Delta and Tsawwassen).

In addition, using this transit system frees up worrying about traffic and whether or not the ferry will have enough room for the car. It's a good feeling to know that once you've left the bus, you simply reach the ferry as a pedestrian.

Popular culture and commercial advertisements portray the car as a means of escape, freedom, adventure, convenience, safety and fun - providing all the good things in life. The truth is that as the most injurious and deadly of daily activities, with almost 3000 people dying each year in Canada from crashes, motor vehicles fail abysmally the test of representing wellbeing. That tragic figure is only the tip of the iceberg of injuries and near misses that are far more numerous and impossible to count.

Driving is supposed to fulfill the modern dream of individualism but how can it? It has become one of the most constrained and frustrating activities of daily life, with its seat belts, car seats, road rage, rules and regulations.

Its promise of individualism is highly over-rated. In contrast to the isolated cocoon of the car, non-motorized travel and public transit provide people with opportunities that many crave: to connect with local neighbourhoods, the general public and social media.

Needless to say, car dependence is degrading the quality of life as it encourages sprawl, holds us hostage to oil, pollutes the air and atmosphere and usurps public space.

I have a dream…. a more democratic future in which cities such as Vancouver will have a railway/streetcar/rapidtransit/bus/mini-bus/customtransit/bike(scooter)path/walking complex connectivity that is a lifeline in support of everyone's travel - that is safe, accessible, sustainable and pleasurable for people of all ages, incomes, genders, races, abilities and walks of life, that allows everyone to participate more fully in society.

The road and transportation system in most Western cities is built around the world of drivers of a certain age, activity, ability and income. It excludes most of society particularly those who are young, old, have physical or mental disabilities, or inadequate incomes.

When Vancouver was a fledgling city with a much smaller population, it had a well-developed streetcar and inter-urban system that tied neighbourhoods and communities together. That was progress! Back to the future! Without a car, one can feel more carefree. But, getting around sure could be a lot more liberating if we had a publicly supported transportation system that benefited everyone and that was subsidized as highly as is the private motor vehicle.

Here's a clip - the earliest film of Vancouver - and of its streetcar routes in 1907:

*Arlene Tigar McLaren is the Co-editor (with Jim Conley) of Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Automobility and Auto-Mobility. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Henry David Thoreau: Morning Air & How to Live Immersed in Nature

2011-03-08T06:41:00.000-08:00

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain,
of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun’s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if anyone should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather’s, but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always. . . . For my panacea. . .let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If people will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world.

Solitude (Walden)

Eating Meat: Ask Your Doctor, a funny informative clip

2011-02-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

Unplugging, Switching to a Compact, Living Simply, or Something?: Write about it!

2011-01-26T06:02:00.000-08:00

Considering unplugging your fridge, television, ditching your car, makeup, going vegetarian, or switching to a compact fridge? Does your way of life already have less energy intensive methods that work quite well? I'd love to hear about it, and would be happy to help you get the word out!! Along with my articles, I also feature articles from folks who are doing the same things, and then link these articles to your own sites. You can help build a movement where we learn to live more simply, fairly, and sustainably. Remember, before you make any decision, make sure that for you it is right. Write me at apeloso@georgebrown.ca for more details!

Rex Weyler: What the Greens Got Right

2011-01-18T13:35:00.000-08:00

This article has been republished with the permission, of Rex Weyler.

“Ecology is a subversive subject.” Paul Sears, BioScience, July 1964
Last November, British television’s Channel 4 aired ‘What the Green Movement Got Wrong’, attacking environmentalism while supporting nuclear power, DDT, genetically modified crops and geoengineering. The diatribe was laced with bias, misrepresentation and outright errors.

One of the show’s contributors, Adam Werbach, is a former member of Greenpeace International’s Board of Directors. Werbach reported that the Channel 4 producers misled him about the content of the documentary, misrepresented his ideas and used his comments to support points of view he opposes.

Willing contributors included Florence Wambugu, lobbyist for biotech giants Monsanto and DuPont, and Stewart Brand, consultant for ExxonMobil, Cargill, Dow Chemical, General Electric, and Bechtel - a virtual Who’s Who of socially predatory and ecologically-destructive companies.

Propaganda as news
“The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology.” Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962

The errors and biases of this show have been exposed by George Monbiot at The Guardian, The Weather-Makers author Tim Flannery, Greenpeace scientist Dr. Doug Parr, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo and many others. Naidoo points out that the focus on GM foods to solve hunger, for example, undermines the real solutions, such as improving soil fertility and providing access for the poor to land, water and agricultural financing.

Other obvious errors:

Nuclear Power: Climate blogger and nuclear power promoter Mark Lynas claimed on the show “Nuclear power is ... a massive potential source of zero-carbon power.”

Zero carbon? Dead wrong. Nuclear power is among the most carbon-intensive forms of energy. Why? Start with cement, a massive carbon-consuming product. Add mining, milling, enriching and transporting uranium; forging high-alloy steels for pressurised containment vessels; construction of complex plants; and handling, shipping, reprocessing and storing radioactive waste. All of these stages require fossil fuel supplies. Mark Jacobson at Stanford University compared the lifetime CO2 emissions of energy sources in a Review of Global Warming Solutions. He found wind and concentrated solar emit 3 to 11 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity. Nuclear electricity emits between 68 and 180 grams per kWh. Mr. Lynas was wrong. Nuclear energy is not zero-carbon – it’s a carbon hog! It also presents unsolved problems with security, weapons proliferation, radioactive emissions, decommissioning and waste storage.

DDT: Stewart Brand claimed that the ‘green movement’ is responsible for millions of malaria deaths because environmentalists – including Greenpeace – campaigned for and won a worldwide ban on DDT, resulting in malaria epidemics. Brand, repeating a myth created by corporate interests to sabotage environmentalism, was wrong on all counts.

First of all, Greenpeace has never conducted a campaign to ban DDT worldwide and has never opposed the use of DDT for disease control. Never. Secondly, there is no worldwide ban on DDT, and never has been. The only international instrument to regulate DDT - the 2001 Stockholm Convention - restricts agricultural use so as to avoid producing DDT-resistant mosquitoes, and never mentions a ban for disease control.

“Brand and Lynas present themselves as heretics,” wrote George Monbiot at The Guardian, “but their convenient fictions chime with the thinking of the new establishment: corporations, think tanks, neoliberal politicians. The true heretics are those who remind us that neither social nor environmental progress are possible unless [political] power is confronted.”

What environmentalists got right

“Love of the wilderness is … an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need.”

Edward Abby, Desert Solitaire

Historically, ecologists and environmentalists have offered thousands of genuine solutions and critical ideas to help humanity achieve peace and sustainability. The problem is not that ecologists offer no solutions. The problem arises because those solutions are not convenient for those who want to concentrate wealth and political power.

Corporate promoters like Brand, Lynas and Channel 4 insist on high-tech, complex solutions such as nuclear power, biotechnology and geo-engineering because those ventures promise more wealth and centralised control for the wealthy. They attack the genuine solutions offered by ecologists because those solutions require less reckless consumption and more community power.

Nevertheless, over the decades, ecologists and environmentalists got a lot of things right. Here are some examples:

Poisons have unintended consequences: Rachel Carson was right. The overuse of DDT and other biocides killed wildlife, damaged human health, and undermined disease control by creating resistant insects. A public relations campaign financed by Philip Morris tobacco company mocked her. Meanwhile, DDT use expanded to agriculture. The world experienced a brief reduction of malaria followed by the return of DDT-resistant mosquitoes and new epidemics, as Carson warned. In 1969, the World Health Assembly acknowledged that eradicating malaria with DDT was not feasible.

Lead, mercury and other heavy metals are toxic: In 1923, General Motors and Standard Oil (ExxonMobil / Chevron) introduced leaded gasoline. Harvard toxicologist Alice Hamilton warned them of the public health dangers in the Journal of the American Medical Association. GM and Standard Oil launched a public relations campaign, smeared Hamilton, and persuaded the New York Times to print "there is no measurable risk to the public.” Meanwhile, leaded gasoline’s neurotoxic effects caused mental deterioration, madness, antisocial behaviour, sickness and death among the public. The US finally banned the toxic gasoline in 1995, 70 years after Hamilton’s warning, as oil companies continued to sell it elsewhere. Africa finally banned leaded gasoline in 2006. Ms. Hamilton had been right; GM and Exxon, wrong. Millions suffered. Similar tragedies with mercury poisoning and other heavy metals have claimed thousands of victims.

Radiation kills: Channel 4 attempted to minimise the Chernobyl nuclear accident health impact, but as ecologists and medical doctors have warned, ionising radiation causes DNA damage, mutation, replication errors, early aging and cancers, including leukaemia, thyroid, liver, lung, myeloma and so forth. There is no safe dose. Any increase in radiation results in an increase in risk. Twenty-eight rescue workers at Chernobyl died from radiation sickness. Medical researchers traced a certain link between Chernobyl radiation and 1,800 thyroid cancer cases. Thousands of others died from Chernobyl’s radiation. How many? It is not the environmentalist’s job to count the dead for the nuclear apologists. One death is too many. Radiation kills. We were right.

CO2 will heat the planet: Swedish physicist Svente Arrhenius reported in 1896 that carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon combustion would heat the planet. He estimated that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels would cause a 5°C temperature rise. Current estimates range from 3° to 7°C, depending on successful mitigation and feedback factors. Arrhenius was right. Ecologists were right. Greenpeace first voiced concern in 1979. Meanwhile, oil companies financed a campaign to deny this simple, physical science.

Laws of Ecology: In the 1970s, Greenpeace published its first ecology manifesto, The Declaration of Interdependence. We suspected that the next century’s battle would be to reconcile human enterprise with nature’s rules. The Declaration included three ‘Laws of Ecology’: Interdependence, Stability through Diversity, and Consumption Limits. Pardon the immodesty, but we were right then and we’re still right today.

* Interdependence: Life forms remain interdependent. We co-evolve and co-survive in complex, dynamic ecosystems. Predator and prey collaborate in the genetic process; all organisms share nutrient and energy cycles in a habitat. Ecologist Gregory Bateson was correct that the ‘survival unit’ in evolution is not the individual, nor a single species, but species within an ecosystem.

* Stability through Diversity: In an ecosystem, species diversity provides stability in dynamic homeostasis. Since the 1960s, ecologists and naturalists – Rachel Carson, Edward Wilson, Yvonne Baskin and others – have warned of species loss risk. Norman Myers calculated in the 1970s that the human-caused extinction rate was 100 times the natural rate. Few listened, and society’s response has proven ineffective. By 2000, extinction rates reached 1,000 times natural rates, and today the figure approaches 10,000 times. Myers also warned that habitat destruction reduced evolution’s capacity to generate new species. Human activity is now causing the greatest diversity collapse since a meteorite hit the Earth 64 million years ago, weakening the entire planetary ecology.

* Consumption limits: This remains the most disturbing ecological fact for our society. Captains of industry and their paid pundits deny and ridicule this idea, but it remains absolutely true. We live on a finite planet. No species in any habitat can grow forever. Donella Meadows and her co-authors were right about Limits to Growth in their 1972 book of that name. We witness the evidence in degraded soil, drained aquifers, forest loss, global warming, and resource depletion.

An activist dripping in 'oil' protests at the World Energy Congress (WEC) in Montreal - urging participants to move beyond oil. Image: François Pesant / Greenpeace

Peak oil: Ecologists and geologists have warned about oil depletion for decades. Geophysicist M. King Hubbert described the phenomenon in 1956. He was largely ignored. Global peak oil per capita occurred in 1979 and we have now arrived at the absolute peak - just as predicted.

Net Energy: Oil depletion and society’s oil addiction drives us toward lower-grade reserves, such as tar sands, with a low net energy, costing more energy to retrieve, returning less to society and emitting more CO2 pollution. Researchers such as Charles Hall at the State University of New York warned society about this in the 1970s.

Habitat Overshoot: In 1980, William Catton published Overshoot, explaining that humanity had ‘already overshot [Earth’s] carrying capacity’. He was right. No one in power listened. Humanity has now reached about 30% overshoot, using more resources each year than Earth can replenish. Newsflash: a species cannot grow out of overshoot.

Reduce consumption: William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel at the University of British Columbia devised the ‘Ecological Footprint’ analysis to help individuals and communities gauge their role in global overshoot and reduce their consumption. Rees explained that our challenge is less technical and more ‘behavioural and social’. We hear of hundreds of large-scale industrial ‘solutions’ but the only genuine solution to habitat overshoot is this: Consume less stuff.

Biomimicry: We’ll find the keys to genuine sustainability in the patterns and laws of nature itself. We can design an authentically sustainable human society, but only by apprenticing ourselves to nature, as described by Janine Benyus, John Todd, Wes Jackson, Elaine Ingham, David Suzuki and many other ecologists.

Ecological Economics: In the 19th century, economist John S. Mill cautioned that industrial growth would eventually reach Earth’s physical limits and require ‘stationary state’ economics. Donella Meadows and colleagues (Limits to Growth), Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (The Entropy Law and Economic Process), Herman Daly (Steady-State Economics), Mark Anielski (Genuine Wealth) and others have since refined these essential and inevitable new ecological or biophysical economics.

It would take a very long book to introduce all the important, accurate and visionary ideas that ecologists, environmentalists and biophysical scientists have contributed to society: Organic farming, voluntary simplicity, transition towns, environmental rights, the conserver society and so forth. Ecologists such as Paul Shepard, Chellis Glendinning and Kathy McMahon examined the psychological impact of the ecology crisis. Arne Naess introduced ‘Deep Ecology’ and ‘richer lives with simpler means’. Vandana Shiva, Mary Jo Breton, Rosemary Ruether and others describe the importance of feminism for ecology. Southern hemisphere nations such as Bolivia have raised the issue of environmental justice. Gregory

Bateson introduced the link between mind, cybernetics and ecology, and wrote “My knowing is a small part of a wider integrated knowing that knits the entire biosphere of creation.”

The anti-environmental sophists bark for their patrons like the medieval henchmen who burned scientists and healers at the stake and conducted inquisitions and pogroms. And like those agents of institutionalized ignorance, they will end up on the wrong side of history.

But being wrong isn’t the problem. The problem appears in the destruction and suffering caused by this deceit, misinformation and propaganda. Every day, as Earth spins through the heavens, species blink from existence, cancers and illnesses attack people, children starve and communities suffer.

We aren’t quibbling about facts here. We’re battling for lives.
-Rex Weyler

CBC Video on Living without a Fridge

2011-01-02T20:45:00.001-08:00

This great couple lives ingeniously without a fridge - with milk tips in winter! And tips from clay pots in India. You'll remember Dona and Vibhu, they shared a great article on unplugging for us in January. You can check out Dona's blog here.

How the Status Quo Protects Itself: Rex Weyler on the Global Consequences of a Compromised Media, and my thoughts on the Importance of Wikileaks

2010-12-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

Why is a blog devoted to helping people live more simply and unplugging their fridge posting a video on Wikileaks? Good journalism is a core element to a future society of justice and sustainability. This blog is full of great journalism on related issues. Free information about important issues educates us about the planet, saves lives, and stops corruption. As we know, one of the reasons our planet is dying is because no one can face the facts of how severe the crisis is, and we rarely see evidence of it in the news, or it is willfully denied. Exposing this is hard and needs to be done. The Real News, and independent journalists such as Rex Weyler who kindly shares his work with this blog are all part of a solution to a world where problems get solved. Wikileaks has already dealt with exposing corruption in war, and even oil spills. We need strong democracies (based on free information) to solve our ecological crisis. I encourage you to learn about Wikileaks and support them. Also below is an excellent and important talk about the ecological and human consequences of poor journalism and censorship by Rex Weyler, founding member of Greenpeace.

Robyn Crispe: Life Without a Fridge in Boulder, Colorado

2010-12-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

This article was republished and edited for Living Without a Fridge and Beyond with the permission of Robyn Crispe

A couple years ago I came across a post about someone who unplugged their fridge to reduce their carbon footprint. I was intrigued, but I wasn't going to do it. I had recently donated my car and wanted to adjust before making another transition. Yet the idea kept nagging at me. I live in a small condo with a tiny kitchen and the full size fridge took up a huge amount of space. I live alone and kept 5 items, OK maybe 8, in the fridge that all seemed to need refrigeration: canola mayo, lettuce, leftovers, eggs, the jars that say “refrigerate after opening”, etc.

A few weeks ago I decided to see what would happen if I posted my fridge on Craigslist. Everyone was selling their fridge! There were tons (if you weighed them) of refrigerators online. While I waited, I decided to unplug the fridge. I lasted 36 hours. Used to the hum of the fridge, it gave a wasted life it gave to my place. I know, pretty sad. So I took the post off of Craigslist, plugged in and decided I was green enough. Still, the fridge was looking more wasteful every time I opened it. As noted on Living Without a Fridge and Beyond, “Running such a huge machine, larger than a coffin, just for myself and my two-fist-sized stomach suddenly seemed more bizarre than convenient.

Selling the Fridge
I revisited the idea of going fridge-less. I re-posted and immediately made the sale.

So much of what the average western person possesses is a result of culture, convenience, and being convinced we have a need. Often, we don't have a need, but rather a burden.

We’re used to easy (i.e. expensive) transportation. We’re used to hot and cold food. We pay a high price for convenience – again something we’re used to. Now that I’ve gotten very used to not having a car, it would seem ludicrous to take on the expense of car ownership again. Same for a gym membership. Could I be retired now? No blame, I make better decisions now.

The fridge still sits in my kitchen, waiting for the new owner, now unplugged. My remaining food is sitting on the counter until I come up with some storage system.

It is blessedly quiet. I don’t have the same sense of “wasted life” I described above. Maybe my 36-hour trial run was good practice. This is a new path and I'm excited.

8 Days Later
Here’s the thing: It’s No Big Deal.
It’s been 8 days since I unplugged my fridge and I’ve hardly noticed. Well, I must have noticed a little bit, because a few times I opened the door out of habit to see if there was anything to munch on. An empty, dark, cavernous space looked back. I’ve quit thinking of getting a mini-fridge. I threw a few things out – the mustard that I had not used in a couple years; the lettuce that was already going bad, the leftover pasta was tossed.
New Space in the Kitchen
I am even more relieved than I would’ve imagined! It is done. Refrigerator Movers, Tom and his son Jonathan came in their pickup truck, loaded the fridge and took it away to a new home. They did an amazing job of finagling the fridge out of my tiny kitchen, around some tight corners, down the steps and up into the truck bed.

I had no idea how this inanimate appliance – something that I’ve accepted as a part of daily living without question all of my life, never, until recently, considered going without – could take up so much energy.

I’ve moved a small shelf into the space that blends with the cabinets for food storage. The map on the wall is of the Appalachian Trail. It’s only appropriate that it hangs in this new space as it was on that Trail that I spent 6 months having the time of my life — without a refrigerator. My only problem now – where do I put the refrigerator magnets?
What I’ve learned thus far

1) Spinach that is removed from the stem lasts longer than if it is left on. I removed all the stems, put the spinach in a damp kitchen towel and put this in a plastic bag. I was amazed to find that this was just fine after 2 days. It has held up just as well (if not better) than when I stored it in the fridge.
2) I put the kale in a bowl of water, along with the carrot sticks and bell pepper. 3 days later all are in good, edible shape.
3) I am not missing my veggies and salad ingredients being cold. Cool to room temperature is fine.
4) I’m now cooking in smaller batches and only having enough extra food made for one additional meal. This can safely stay unrefrigerated for a day. I’m just getting used to cooking a bit more per week.

5) Eggs don’t have to be refrigerated, same with Butter for those of you who are wondering.
6) I didn’t have many condiments to begin with, but the salad dressing seems fine so far. I have an unopened jar of canola mayo, so once I open it I’m not sure how long it will stay good. Most likely I’ll take it to work and make my sandwiches there, which is all I use it for anyway.

2 Months Later
The transition was easier than anticipated and the absence of the old fridge much more appreciated. I used to cook some things in bulk and freeze them, using them later for lunches. Now I cook as I go. Most things are fine at room temp for an overnight, I can take leftovers to work for lunch. I don’t buy soft cheeses unless I’ll be able to use the whole block in a few days. The Parmesan cheese will last a fairly long time. My biggest gaff so far is timing the use of my spinach lettuce. It lasts fine up to 4 days, then tends to go bad. I’ve adjusted to using it right away. Canola Mayo isn't something I buy anymore. I cook rice and beans, quinoa, eggs, tortillas and pasta. I also buy a variety of fruits and vegetables. I will purchase or bake a loaf of bread on occasion. It’s been liberating and enjoyable to see that I can have the sort of meals that I like without depending on a fridge. I thought I’d be shopping a lot more, but I still go as much as I always did. Although I appreciate not having a fridge, I rarely think about it.

Robyn Crispe is a writer and teacher who lived without a fridge for 8 months before moving to China. She would still gladly live sans fridge. She also lives without a car. She writes about her adventures on her new blog: This Open Road. A more detailed account of her fridge story can be found on her old blog Nomad Needles.