Affluenza: Treatment

Here are some poignant quotes I wanted to share from the book that started from a PBS series called Affluenza. This particular quote is from a chapter entitled, "Political Prescriptions."

"What if Americans started buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, driving them less and keeping them longer? What if we took fewer long-distance vacations? What if we simplified our lives, spent less money, bought less stuff, worked less, and enjoyed more leisure time? What if government began to reward thrift and punish waste, legislated shorter work hours, and taxed advertisers? What if we made consumers and corporations pay the real costs of their products? What would happen to our economy? Would it collapse, as some economists suggest?

"Truthfully, we don't know exactly, since no major industrial nation has yet embarked on such a journey.

"...But as economist Juliet Schor points out, there are many European countries (incl. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) whose economies have grown far more slowly than our own, yet whose quality of life-- measured by many of the indicators we say we want, including free time, citizen participation, lower crime, greater job security, income-equality, health, and overall life contentment-- is higher than our own. Such economies show no sign of collapse. And their emphasis on balancing growth with sustainability is widely accepted across the political spectrum. As former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, a conservative, put it:

'It is true that the Dutch are not aiming to maximize gross national product per capita. Rather, we are seeking to attain a high quality of life, a just, participatory and sustainable society. While the Dutch economy is very efficient per working hour, the number of working hours per citizen are rather limited. We like it that way. Needless to say, there is more room for all those important aspects of our lives that are not part of our jobs, for which we are not paid and for which there is never enough time.'"

A Progressive Extravaganza

The following is a non-exhaustive list of progressive organizations and entities (loosely categorized) I was, am, or could be interested in. I post it for two reasons:
a. I'm constantly misplacing the bits of paper I record them on, when they are recorded at all, and
b. because other people might be interested in them, too!
It also doesn't suit me to make my Launch Pad on the left much longer than it is now. I'll probably update this every so often.

In no particular order, other than the order they came to me:

Topics:
NY Times letters from Amory Lovins
Failure of the Appropriate Technology Movement [requires jstor access]
dcjobs.com, indeed.com, idealist.org, marylandjobnetwork.com, US Gov't Jobs

Movies/Documentaries:
Who Killed the Electric Car?,
The End of Suburbia
An Inconvenient Truth
Affluenza: The Epidemic of Overconsumption [recently added!]

Books:
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Affluenza
Not Buying It [recently added]

Organizations and Projects:
Maryland Conservation Corps [recently added]
The Post-Carbon Institute [recently added]
The Rocky Mountain Institute: Abundance by Design
The Society of Ecological Restoration
Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology
Redefining Progress
Design that Matters
International Development Enterprises
Engineers without Borders
Design Corps
KickStart: The Tools to End Poverty
Solar Electric Light Fund
Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore
Woods End Research Lab
The US Composting Council
Biodegradable Products Institute
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Design for the Other 90% Resources Page
Green Living, Natural Foods Links at Roots [recently added]

And here's a quote or two, just for fun:

"The new problems are not the consequences of incidental failure but of technological success."
Small is Beautiful
E.F. Schumacher


"In 1967, two-thirds of American college students said 'developing a meaningful philosophy of life' was 'very important' to them, while fewer than one-third said the same thing about 'making a lot of money.' By 1997, those figures were reversed."
Affluenza by De Graaf, Wann, and Naylor
and The Post-Corporate World, David Korten

NPR Story on Biofuel

Earlier this year, I got word of a new company that has the first plans to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia in 2008. Range Fuels plans to use waste products from corn production (and hopefully, waste products from other proliferative agricultural processes too) to make ethanol. More and more companies are seeing this time of environmental need as an opportunity to be innovative, and the news media is all over those kinds of stories, too.

Just today, I ran across an NPR Story from a March '07 Talk of the Nation (Science Friday) show about the viability of biofuels in which a Range Fuels CEO serves on a panel that addresses this particular method of weaning the US off its "fossil fuel addiction," including US enthusiasm over Brazilian ethanol. From my perspective, the reason this story is so great is that they go into the issue not only from a ChemE perspective but from a sustainability point of view.

One particularly keen question that came up is, how can we support corn-based fuels when they are one of the largest users of petroleum-based fertilizer in this country? That's one more very large reason for spreading the use of composting!

Small Design is Beautiful

Recently, I traveled to New York to visit some friends and to see an exhibit about the fruits of a movement to direct engineering, design, and architecture toward socially responsible, sustainable, humanitarian design. Design for the Other 90%, at the Cooper-Hewitt museum until September 23, 2007, is a small but important temporary exhibit at this branch of the Smithsonian museums. I enjoyed seeing the objects on display, but much more valuable are the ideologies spelled out and the stories behind the exhibits.

Again and again, the project leaders credit the concepts laid out in E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful; by designing on the more human scale of the intended customers (poor people included!), you eliminate waste and make the design enterprise more fail-proof. The kicker for me is that you can "design like you give a damn" and since you're operating on the level of the customer, which necessarily includes lots of feedback and hands-on, creative development, projects are almost guaranteed to have an observable beneficial impact.

Here are a few quotes from the second chapter, on peace and permanence (paraphrased from the writings of Prof. Leopold Kohr). They're rather long but they make some important points:

"Small-scale operations ... are always less likely to be harmful to the natural environment than large-scale ones, simply because their individual force is small in relation to the recuperative forces of nature. There is wisdom in smallness if only on account of the smallness and patchiness of human knowledge, which relies on experiment far more than on understanding. The greatest danger invariably arises from the ruthless application, on a vast scale, of partial knowledge such as we are currently witnessing in the application of nuclear energy, of the new chemistry in agriculture, of transportation technology, and countless other things."

"It is obvious that men organised in small units will take better care of their bit of land or other natural resources than anonymous companies or megalomanic governments which pretend to themselves that the whole universe is their legitimate quarry."

Some particularly demonstrative examples from Design for the Other 90% are the Fuel from the Fields project and IDE's Drip Irrigation system. Fuel from the Fields uses a variety of farming waste products specific to the intended customers to make cooking fuel that decreases damaging air pollutants and the demands on the females who usually have to go far afield to find wood, dung, or other burnable materials. The Drip irrigation system incorporates a way to store waters from monsoon season with a simple distribution system that is perfectly fitted to the quarter-acre size of the plots maintained by small farmers, allowing them to dramatically increase their output of high-priced produce in the dry season. Both of these projects incorporate equipment and technology that is low-priced and low-tech enough so it can be produced by entrepreneurs in the region. This means that such entrepreneurs can make a profit by enabling their fellow villagers a more healthy lifestyle and decreasing the harmful impact of deforestation in the case of the fuel, and by enabling an increase in profit and food supply for the case of drip irrigation.

Stuff, things, food on the table.

I'm back from Europe! There is so much to share about the experience. What a wonderful gift to receive. Now, to finish the blog (which is only currently halfway there!)...

Living at home again has been a rough adjustment. I'm just amazed at how much time two people can spend looking after their stuff - things that become their entire lives, instead of things that compliment and facilitate lives. There is a lot more to my parents than stuff, but maybe the transition from being a backpacker running on 4 sets of clothing for a month to stumbling through a house full of possessions and noise pollution has been harder than I anticipated.

Nonetheless.. one material possession I can appreciate is trip pictures! I just started printing some today, and even got high compliments from my Dad, buyer of many an expensive camera accessory. Now that I'm relatively adroit at keeping up with them, photos and journaling a great way to hang onto and share memories. I'm so thankful that I had a friend to borrow a camera from - Emily did me an amazing favor! It must have taken a huge amount of trust to let it go for an entire 6 weeks.

Now that I'm back, it's officially time to work on doing something productive to move toward winning my very own multigrain loaf. To that end, I just dug out an article I photocopied from the New Yorker about an innovative, green designer named Amory Lovins. He envisioned a different energy future in 1976 (Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken? pdf) and is the CEO of a company I would be excited to work for (!). I'm also interested in internships at Friends of the Earth, who are centered in DC. Lovins worked there before founding his own company; I'm sure reading more will lead me to other interesting opportunities. Excitement!

Edit-
3 websites for green jobs were recently e-mailed to me by a friend:
1. Young Professionals in Energy
2. Greenjobs
3. Renewable Energy Access

Save some energy, while you're at it!

It's no secret that I took Captain Planet to heart when I learned about the three R's: Recycle, Reduce, Reuse. To focus on a current buzzword, energy, saving money and reducing emissions is all about that middle one - cut down on your use! There are so many easy ways to do this. A few of the best I'm personally invested in are...

- Energy Efficient Computing!
This one is especially important. I wish more companies would get on the bandwagon with this; think of all the money wasted and gases created by leaving computer-centered offices on all night (not to mention clusters in Universities.. cough CMU cough). However, just as a public service announcement:

do *NOT* leave your laptop plugged in and charging overnight.

Also easy to do but worth noting is turning off and unplugging lights and appliances when you're done using them. I can't describe how many times a day I walk around and turn off things people have forgotten about. Also crucial are unplugging adapters that draw power when appliances are turned off. The point: the era of electronic thoughtlessness is coming to a close.

- Hybrid cars (much borrowed from hybridreview)
Some calculations indicate that, along with the well-known superiority in terms of miles per gallon of gas, costs for operating hybrid cars are now competitive with those of traditional cars, with only 3-7 years ownership (that's nothing -- I drove a 1992 car until recently). This means savings for the environment and for your wallet. That's a powerful combination!

Tax incentives currently abound for buying hybrid cars - one bill Bush managed to do right. Though some are diminishing as years go by due to sales, many still apply. See if the car you're thinking about using qualifies, then go for it! Sooner might be better.

- Alternative Energy and Fuel Technology
This one's a biggie; I'm considering of applying for jobs in this area. My biggest concern is the emissions of the new fuels; I have yet to hear of a new fuel that lives up to be a) non-oil derived and b) doesn't deplete our crops and c) emits less CO2 per mile driven.
I love the idea of using ethanol fuel, especially using cellulose as a source and genetically-engineered E. Coli to get the job done; it's cool, it's high-tech, and the government has already looked into it - but the infrastructure isn't there, not to mention what the actual environmental impact would be.. I have no idea. I will definitely be alert to news in this area.