350 = LIFE.. The world needs to know!

 

Plan B v3.0

I’ve been reading this book for a bit now. (You can download it in sections from the website and read it free online. nifty,huh?)

Anyway, one of the things I keep hearing bandied about politically these days is how the “Free Market” should be left to do it’s job. The wrench in that plan is that what we see as the “Free Market” is anything but free. This book takes on those facts and presents solutions. It is an excellent read and I highly recommend it to anyone who really wants to understand the state of our world.

_____________

As economic decisionmakers—whether consumers, corpo-
rate planners, government policymakers, or investment
bankers—we all depend on the market for information to guide
us. In order for markets to work and economic actors to make
sound decisions, the markets must give us good information,
including the full cost of the products we buy. But the market is
giving us bad information, and as a result we are making bad
decisions—so bad that they are threatening civilization.
The market is in many ways an incredible institution. It allo-
cates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body
can match and it easily balances supply and demand. The mar-
ket has some fundamental weaknesses, however. It does not
incorporate into prices the indirect costs ofproducing goods. It
does not value nature’s services properly. And it does not respect
the sustainable yield thresholds ofnatural systems. It also favors
the near term over the long term, showing little concern for
future generations.

One of the best examples of this massive market failure can
be seen in the United States, where the gasoline pump price in
mid-2007 was $3 per gallon. But this price reflects only the cost
of discovering the oil, pumping it to the surface, refining it into
gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations. It overlooks
the costs of climate change as well as the costs of tax subsidies
to the oil industry (such as the oil depletion allowance), the bur-
geoning military costs of protecting access to oil in the politi-
cally unstable Middle East, and the health care costs for treating
respiratory illnesses from breathing polluted air.

Based on a study by the International Center for Technology
Assessment, these costs now total nearly $12 per gallon ofgaso-
line burned in the United States. If these were added to the $3
cost of the gasoline itself, motorists would pay $15 a gallon for
gas at the pump. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but
the market tells us it is cheap, thus grossly distorting the struc-
ture of the economy.
_______________________

And while I’m posting from this book, I’ll also include this passage, which is basically what the book is about. Solutions:

The overriding challenge for our generation is to build a new
economy—one that is powered largely by renewable sources of
energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and
that reuses and recycles everything. We have the technology to
build this new economy, an economy that will allow us to sus-
tain economic progress. Can we build it fast enough to avoid a
breakdown of social systems?

 

Life after Peak Oil

A lot of the news lately about the oil crisis/costs/peak/runningout, etc has been really negative and doom-and-gloom. I don’t know if it’s supposed to scare people into giving up stuff or just another way the media likes to sensationalize everything, but whatever it is, I really don’t think fearmongering is the way to get people to change. I really liked the positive tone of this article, PeakOil doesn’t have to mean the apocalypse and we just need to look around a little to see examples of people making drastic life changes, without drastic bad effects.
quote:
In Juneau, Alaska, for example, people are proving it’s possible to change our energy-hogging ways literally overnight and still keep a community up and running.

rest of the article is here:
How I learned to stop worrying and Love Peak Oil

 

Happy Shrimp

An article about innovation in sustainability and how Europe seems to be leading the way. Posting this because of a conversation I was having with friends about how travelling to other cities around the world makes you really realize how behind we are here in some areas.

http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/05/15/europe-leading-the-way-in-sustainable-innovation/

Enviu, together with 8 other innovation labs from Spain, Denmark, Poland, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands is soon to be launching the NEXT Europe Alliance. The launch is set for the upcoming iFest, the business inspiration fest in Spain where there will be, “ideas and energy to solve the issues of the near future.”

sidebar: Happy Shrimp. GENIUS.

 

The New Mafia

This article in Vanity Fair is quite long, but it is a good read on the tactics that a certain corporate giant is taking to ensure they control the world’s food supply. This company and it’s tactics make cinema’s most cold-blooded bad guys seem like common street hustlers.

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

______________

I’m always torn about posting articles like that. On the one hand, I think it’s really important to get the word out about what is happenning in our world (and that idea often wins, but not always), but on the other hand, those articles are scary and sad and often leave me feeling like I can’t ever do enough.

Then I read something like this:
about a woman who turned a barren patch of NYC land into a lush paradise

and it renews my faith that one person really CAN make a difference. And that makes me want to try even harder.

 

quoting NoImpactMan

add him to your blogroll, really. good stuff!
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/try.html
________________________

We need a peaceful revolution in thinking and living.
The problem is that the revolutionaries are otherwise engaged. They’re delivering Fedex packages, waiting tables, driving taxis, entering data and countless other tasks–including, yes, writing books and blogs–for 12 hours a day.
They’re working their butts off to afford the gas and the car payments and the Christmas presents. They’re worried about whether their kids are safe, whether they’ll be able to afford the mortgage, how they’ll pay if they break a leg.

So when the news comes on and some newscaster starts droning on about the climate, they care, yes. And they think we ought to take care of it. Just as soon as we take care of the health care system and the economy and national security.

It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we’re more scared of today than we are of tomorrow.

The way modern life is set up in these United States, so many of us feel like we could fall off the tightrope at any moment and there’s no safety net. What happens to an American who loses a job and gets sick? Without some sense of security, how can we risk taking our eyes off our daily tightrope long enough to worry about the problems of the future?

It’s not selfishness. It’s not apathy. It’s not mindlessness.
It’s busyness.
We’re too busy to think.

**********
But however we define the problem, the question stays the same:
How can we help?

 

Back to the Land

A series of talks on YouTube by the UK’s TheSoilAssociation.

The rest of the series is in the sidebar of this video, and partially explains why I am so obsessed with getting a viable garden planted and running within the next year.

 

perspective

NoImpactMan had a post this morning about happiness. It was a repeat, but one with good timing as this is something I’ve been contemplating more often lately as I try and simplify my life even more.

I’ve often wryly noted that change seems to be the only constant in my life, but the reality is that I like change, I like learning new things, I like trying to make things better. I think a lot of people feel this way, but that their definition of “better” centers around a new object or more money. This isn’t because they are bad people or anything, it’s just sort of what our society has become - how so many people have grown up. NoImpact Man talks about how he thinks this is in part because we’ve become less religious, and there hasn’t been much put forth to replace the role of the Church in our lives. Instead of turning to Faith when we are feeling low, we turn to Possessions to fill the void.
He makes a good point, and it’s easy to see that played out all around. Just hearing 5 minutes of campaign coverage, or listening to a friend talk about her co-workers who bully and play power games, or seeing how many people in the world project their own insecurities into manufactured reasons to hate another person… all these things are symptoms of fear and none of them seem very different than the guy who buys the Hummer so he’s the biggest thing on the road.

I don’t really know how to make any of that better, the only thing I know how to do is to try and not let myself get tangled up in other people’s messes. It’s difficult for me to understand or respect people determined to focus on negativity and control, the best I can do is extricate myself as politely as possible and move on. I’ve always thought the answers to the happiness issue were found in connecting with other people and working together to accomplish more that you could on your own. At least that’s what makes me happy.

Opportunities can arise out of the oddest situations. You can start in one direction and find yourself totally turned off by the time you see the reality the destination, but then there’s that side road at the last minute that winds up taking you exactly where you need to be. Life is funny that way, isn’t it?

 

Intention and Design

In honor of earth day, I present a video talk via TED.com from William McDonough. William McDonough is the author of the book Cradle to Cradle . It’s 20 minutes long, and the beginning is more than a little scary, but just stay for the end to see the city he is building. You won’t regret it. Living better and happier for less money and healing the planet? It IS possible, we just have to focus on what we want, instead of what we are afraid of.

entire film here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/104

 

Last night I saw the most amazing thing,

and this morning I had to search for the video to make sure I wasn’t dreaming it.

Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson uniting in a commercial (think about that for a moment, would you?) talking about putting aside differences and acting on climate change. I almost cried. here it is:

EDIT:
for some reason I can’t make their formatting show on this blog, so the link is here:
http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/s/unlikelyalliance

until someone puts it up on YouTube and I can embedd that, ha.