what adaptation means

I had a conversation recently with some colleagues about what adaptation means.  The context was global warming, but it could easily be rising prices+inflation+tightening credit (I happen to not think these are all separate).

When it comes to climate change, the experts all talk about adaptation and mitigation.  Adapting meant changing, and mitigating meant lessening.  Nowadays, we talk about the two in the same sentence, because one will require the other.  We can’t mitigate effects on the environment without adapting to major changes in our lifestyle.

So the bottom line - adaptation means hard change.  It doesn’t mean biofuel or recycling.  It means bikes and reusable packaging.  It means giving up our dependence not just on oil, but on energy.  It means moving from the suburbs to the city.  It doesn’t mean canceling the cable, it means blackout days.  Turning off piped water.  Doubling the percentage of your income you spend on food.

This seems unduly pessimistic, but the early warnings are being seen already.   Having to choose between heat and food doesn’t seem like something the average American worries about it.  But it will.  Maybe not in the next 10 years, but probably in the next 50-100.  We’re way behind in the research for alternative fuels, and until we hit the tipping point in the changeover, we’ll be living hard times for a while.  Of course, in a 100 years, most of us won’t be around anymore, but our kids will.  And this is what we leave for them.

Life will get interesting in the next several years.  Food prices might stabilize, but oil is not likely to.  The area I live in is changing USDA hardiness zones, which is resulting in some interesting new biotica. Globally, we’re seeing tropical diseases in temperate zones, rising sea levels, the breakup of polar ice, and mass desertification of some of the most important agricultural areas in the world.

Of course, not everyone believes that climate change is something to worry about.  Perhaps not.  But the symptoms (even if they are of something else) are still there for us to see and address.  The question is, how will we react?

a new world order

The 50s were a period of conformity, and a celebration of all things America. After two devastating wars, we deserved the opportunity to live our American dreams. But in the 60s and 70s, as we hit an oil crisis and another involvement in a foreign war, our American idealism shrank, and the counterculture movement of the hippies took precedence. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius meant a critical rethinking of our values. We protested the war in Vietnam; we demanded equal rights for all.

And in the 80s, sick to death of starry-eyed idealism, we loosened economic restrictions and reveled in capitalism run amok. Yuppies bought cars and TVs and fancy vacations. And their kids followed in their footsteps, pushing us through the dotcom boom and bust, and into a new world of technological utopia. And underneath it all, lay the shadow of resource depletion, labor inequality, and the looming spectre of climate change.

So now we have the YAWNs, those of us in our 20s, 30s, and 40s, a generational overlap of collective whiplash. We’ve rejected the unbridled consumerism, stress, and corporate mismanagement of the past few decades. We don’t rely on stuff to reveal social status. We care about the environment in a very real way. We’ve returned to the grouplove of the hippie movement, except we aren’t angry revolutionaries - we’re idealistic technophiles. We’ll solve the problems of the world with our convictions… and our inventions.

We donate vast amounts of money to charity; we save for retirement. We take our financial cues from Bono and Warren Buffett, rather than Donald Trump and Ludacris. We’re sick of spending ourselves into debt; we’re tired of the 90/10 gap. We don’t want war and larger cars - we want real solutions to global poverty, lack of health care, mass consumer debt, and dwindling natural resources.

Looking back over the past 75 years, we see the icons that define generations. Pin-up girls, and Marlon Brando, McCarthy and Eisenhower, Cadillacs, Nixon and Vietnam War protesters, the Challenger and Coca-Cola and Wall Street. And now we have the Toyota Prius and Mohammed Yunus. Kiva. Facebook. Make Trade Fair. Freecycle. The One Campaign. The waning of Microsoft and the waxing of Google. Darfur. Melting ice caps.

In a few decades, we might cycle back to mass consumerism once again. I’d like to think we’ll break the cycle, because I can’t imagine our world can handle the 80s again (and this time with several times the population). But we are clever and inventive, and perhaps we’ll find a less consumerist way of consumerism (perhaps a recycled consumerism?). Only time can tell.

it’s a green world. we just live in it.

Lately, everyone’s caught the green bug.  I watched quite a bit of TV today, and I saw several interesting ads highlighting industry’s eco-friendly commitment. Of course, I’m a cynic, so I immediately dissected the ads and dismissed just about all of them.  Which might be a bit unfair, better 50% than 0%, yes?  And, corporations exist to make a profit. If they do so while being green, then hey, who am I to complain?

Of interest, Coke has a smart new t-shirt campaign.  This one will appeal to the tweens, who we know don’t care to reduce their spending in an economic downturn (unlike their parents).  The ad (brought to us by Target) explained to me (via 2 teenage girls) that the t-shirts are made of recycled Coke bottles, so if you buy it, you’ll be, like, saving the world, or something.  There’s some fabulous statistic, such as “if every Target customer, all 200 million of them, bought a t-shirt, that would be 5 million plastic bottles recycled”.  Ah, the logic of teenagers is impeccable.  Coke, here’s a thought - if every Target customer bought one less plastic bottle, that would be 200 million plastic bottles not consumed.

Another interesting ad came to me after a trip to the grocery store.  Apparently, Safeway is one of the largest users of wind/solar energy in the US.  They also support plastic bag recycling.  The trucks run on biodiesel. They are green and proud, dammit! And yet, everytime I go into one with my reusable bag, I get dirty/blank/confused looks and poor customer service.

Then there’s Toyota’s long-running ad about zero-waste production.  Ambitious, to be sure, considering that the production of cars is naturally a wasteful process.  This is rather promising, because Toyota is possibly at 100% success.  Subaru is not far behind, either. Of course, the best way to be zero-waste?  Buy a used car… or bike.

The new programs are certainly a welcome change from the past.  And zero-waste and wind power are certainly laudable achievements.  But there is still something really important that we’re missing here.  The true path to being “green” lies in reducing consumption, not just greening it.  This seems to be the point that everyone is missing.

an ode to coffee (why mass consumerism will ruin us all)

Starbucks has recently tested $1 coffee and free refills, in an effort to be more competitive with Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds. One dollar coffee. Does anyone else realize how absurdly cheap that is? I think, in our fast food nation, we’ve forgotten about the true cost of things.

When McDonalds turned beef into a commodity we could afford to eat every day (sometimes multiple times a day), it sent us hurtling down the road of cheap consumer goods (and global warming and obesity, but that’s a different post). Now, we’ve forgotten what quality means, and how much it really costs. I don’t eat meat, but even I can tell that the $2 Whopper at BK is nothing compared to the $35 steak at Morton’s. Comparing the two is like apples and oranges, and yet the comparison is made all the time. It is one thing not to be able to afford the pricey steak, it’s another to even think that the whopper is any sort of valid substitute. And yet, that’s what we’ve been led to believe.

And now, mass consumerism has ruined my favorite vice - coffee. Let me disclaim - I don’t drink Starbucks coffee. I find it overroasted and burnt. But I do respect them as a company because they tend to lead the socially conscious pack. I had hoped, as the economy took a downturn, that Starbucks would take a different approach - one of enhancing customer loyalty (perhaps even some in-store brewing of their fair trade blends). Instead, they’ve fallen prey to mass consumerism and cheaply produced goods.

Let me be blunt - $3 for coffee is not a lot. We just think otherwise, because we get so much crap for cheap. But good quality coffee should be expensive. It should also not be slugged down mugsful at a time (much like meat was never meant to be eaten so often). In a fairly priced market, with fair wages, coffee would possibly cost more. It should cost more.

One day, I want to see labeling detailing the true cost of goods. I want to know how many children were forced to carry 50-kilo bags of coffee cherries to make that cup of McDs brew. I want to know how many acres of rainforest were cleared for that cheap bag of beans from Dunkin. I want to know how much energy it took to produce my Starbucks latte.

The problem isn’t $3 for a cup of coffee. The problem is the ridiculous mark-up and the cheap cost of labor (and the strain on the global environment). I would like to think that Starbucks is taking a loss on that $1/cup in order to sell more, but I know that won’t be the case. Instead, they’ll undercut the Ethiopian co-ops and buy ridiculously cheap beans from subsistence farmers in Indonesia, further perpetuating the cycle of poverty and deforestation.

So I’m going to stick to my single-origin, fair-trade, organic, shade-grown beans and continue to brew my own $3 cup at home. I’m willing to pay the full price for quality and sustainability.

the story of stuff

Here is something to think about. Where do your material goods come from? Where do they go when you’re done with them? And what goes on in this whole process?

Free range studios has a great video on this issue: the story of stuff. Annie Leonard has spent the last 10 years following the chain from resource extraction to waste management. Luckily for us, she’s managed to consolidate everything she’s learned in a 20-minute presentation, with accompanying graphics. It’s easy to understand, and easy to get indignant about.

Here are some highlights:

1. “Cheap” goods are not cheap. Somebody is paying for the production of that item, and it’s not usually the consumer. Instead, it’s more likely the invisible forest, mountain, miner, factory worker, garbage man, or store clerk bundled up in this opaque process. The inevitable result is an unsustainable drain on the environment, local communities, infrastructure, and your budget.

2. The government is not doing a good job looking out for you. Annie believes in “for the people, by the people”. I think we all do. But that’s not what we get, usually. With MNCs running the planet, governments do all they can to appease those interests.

3. You work as hard today as serfs did in the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, we have less leisure time than ever, except possibly those folks who worked their fingers to the bone for close to zero gain 1000 years ago. Sure, we have more stuff, but aren’t actually any happier than they were. We may even be unhappier, because we have a whole lot more to worry about than they did.

4. You’ve been brainwashed. Commercials exist to tell you that your life is unfulfilled until you go out and get the latest consumer item (in the latest model). If you don’t, you won’t be happy. Never mind that the current version you have is perfectly fine - it’s nothing compared to the newest version, and all your friends know it. In business, they call this “perceived obsolescence”. There is also, of course, “planned obsolescence”, in which the item is deliberately engineered to be useless after a specified (short) amount of time. These are the twin pillars of the American economy (with the anthem being: “buy stuff! spend more! be American!”).

5. Recycling won’t save us. You could recycle everything that comes through your house, it won’t matter, because for every garbage bag-worth of stuff you save, 100-worth we used to make it (and they weren’t being recycled). In other words, the problem lies in two places: the front end of manufacturing, and the back end of demand.

6. We’re slowly killing ourselves (and taking everyone else with us). Annie doesn’t explicitly say this. But if we don’t do something to change our way of life, we’ll soon be in a lot of trouble.

7. But there’s hope! It’s not easy to change habits, but it can be done. There are so many big and little ways to do this, and maybe I can talk about that in a later post, but the main idea is simple - BUY LESS.

manufactured landscapes

In 2005, Edward Burtynsky won the TED prize. One of his wishes was to create a dialogue on sustainability, so he partnered with WorldChanging to bring awareness to some of the many issues he’s been documenting for decades.

I recently had the opportunity to see him speak and present the stories behind his photos. We also learned a bit about his motivation and his view on many of the emerging environmental and social justice issues that he captures with his pictures.

Photographers often attempt to remain detached from their subjects. But some things just grab you, and it’s nearly impossible to stay neutral.

a nomad at heart

I’ve never been the type who’s needed to set down roots (which is bizarre considering how long I’ve lived here). I think it’s telling that the commute to school was never considered a disadvantage, that every summer I dream of road trips and weekends away, that my brother moving across the country didn’t even faze (actually, I thought it was awesome).

So it doesn’t surprise me now that I’m planning my escape. I’ve still got another year to go in school (and a thesis), but I’m already thinking about the fellowships and grants I’ll be applying for so I can spend a year or so in another country (preferably one I’ve never been to before). I’ve definitely overstayed my welcome in this city.

every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism

Someone asked me the other day why I care about the issues I care about (ie, poverty, human rights, hunger, environmental degradation).  My response - how can you NOT care?

But I think I’m just an idealist.

thoughts on vegetarianism

People always ask me why I’m a vegetarian, as if the reasons are so radically different between people. While most people are well-meaning or genuinely curious, I know some people ask so they can start a discussion/argument.

The usual comment I get is, “Is it political?” At almost-30, I think I’m too old to be making statements. No, it isn’t political. It just is. The same way I don’t eat eggplant or bean sprouts, or I do eat edamame and bananas. It just is.

That being said, I do have a conscious reason for not eating meat (for the most part), and it’s really simple:

I don’t want my kids living in a shithole.

The environmental impact of industrial food animal production is astronomically devastating, and we’ll start seeing the direct effects of this in a few decades. That means our kids will have to deal with the shit we’re putting into the environment. And I’m not willing to put my future kids through that.