I would say "Seasons Greetings" but perhaps "A farewell to Seasons" is a more fitting greeting given the after (lack of) math of our shared Copenhangover. Curious creatures with great potential were it not for a few fatal flaws. The history of humanity emulates the structure of a Shakespearean play long before it had Shakespeare to so poignantly identify it repeatedly with such eleoquence in his work. We just cannot seem to see the forest for the trees. Resistance to change seems forever preferred over rising above and being proactive. I hope its not human nature and that we are as protean on this one as we are on some other issues (such as mobilizing for war) but there sure is a lot of evidence that our own survival as a species is quite beyond our ability to secure against the biggest threat of all (the one we always address last if ever): ourselves.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
What if...
I would say "Seasons Greetings" but perhaps "A farewell to Seasons" is a more fitting greeting given the after (lack of) math of our shared Copenhangover. Curious creatures with great potential were it not for a few fatal flaws. The history of humanity emulates the structure of a Shakespearean play long before it had Shakespeare to so poignantly identify it repeatedly with such eleoquence in his work. We just cannot seem to see the forest for the trees. Resistance to change seems forever preferred over rising above and being proactive. I hope its not human nature and that we are as protean on this one as we are on some other issues (such as mobilizing for war) but there sure is a lot of evidence that our own survival as a species is quite beyond our ability to secure against the biggest threat of all (the one we always address last if ever): ourselves.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Happy 40th Earth Day Everyone!
Lordy, lordy look whose 40! (Well, okay 4.5 billion.) The thing about paying 1/365th of your attention to something is that you get predictable results. In 1970 Earth Day was a big day. Lots of gatherings, protests and positive vibes. These days it is more of a institutionalized mild nod overshadowed by economic and consumeristic diversions. Whatever we do about it, Earth is and will continue to be the Living planet. The only role we have to play is to decide if we want to continue to be part of it. Earth, the cosmic miracle... Ours to recover...
Friday, 27 February 2009
Social Ingenuity - Inventions Technological Cleverness
It continues to happen. Even though we (must?) know there are cheaper, easier, more effective and more sustainable solutions by now. Barack's plan for energy transformation is innovative and brave. But I cannot help but put it in perspective.
We keep betting our current and future assets on finding ways to continue consuming energy in the quantities we do. Yet the real ingenuity is not technological.
Its right here and its right now and its the lowest hanging fruit of all. Its not using it up in the first place. Its negawatts v megawatts. Its legs, bicycles and public transit v. cars.
Its things money and technology cannot buy: A walk in the woods. A stroll by the lake. A chair on the porch. A cool drink of water. A lazy summer breeze. A cup of tea with a friend. Its things we hear, taste, smell, touch, do, make, write, speak, ourselves. Its game with the kids. Its philosophic conversations. All of these things are right here, right now, right in front of us. Its worthwhile not lifestyle.
This is not to say that industrial society does not need financial investment and technological innovation to achieve very desirable and needed efficiencies to reduce material and energy use and "throughput" to a more sustainable level. It only says, we need to question the rate of usage we currently take for granted. It says we need to question the assumed rate at which we consume that is currently the invisible foundation on which we think we need to surge forward with sophisticated and expensive technological innovation. It also says that questioning our assumptions ("the unexamined life is not worth living" remember?) about the amount of material it takes to be happy will create more "space" in which to transform our societies. We can lament the difficulties of getting political decision makers to create and implement public policies that are sustainable. And we should. But, in the mean time, we can see the possibilities right in front of us that are liberating in that they do not require any major political movement to implement on the personal, family or even community level.
In the the end, most of our engineering feats in modern society will lie rusted and idol as the primary fuel on which they were build will be spent and unacceptable to the assimilative capacity of nature.
Very little of what really matters requires big financial investment, scientific ingenuity, material or energy consumption. Its just you me and our skills and time that will secure a future.
We keep betting our current and future assets on finding ways to continue consuming energy in the quantities we do. Yet the real ingenuity is not technological.
Its right here and its right now and its the lowest hanging fruit of all. Its not using it up in the first place. Its negawatts v megawatts. Its legs, bicycles and public transit v. cars.
Its things money and technology cannot buy: A walk in the woods. A stroll by the lake. A chair on the porch. A cool drink of water. A lazy summer breeze. A cup of tea with a friend. Its things we hear, taste, smell, touch, do, make, write, speak, ourselves. Its game with the kids. Its philosophic conversations. All of these things are right here, right now, right in front of us. Its worthwhile not lifestyle.
This is not to say that industrial society does not need financial investment and technological innovation to achieve very desirable and needed efficiencies to reduce material and energy use and "throughput" to a more sustainable level. It only says, we need to question the rate of usage we currently take for granted. It says we need to question the assumed rate at which we consume that is currently the invisible foundation on which we think we need to surge forward with sophisticated and expensive technological innovation. It also says that questioning our assumptions ("the unexamined life is not worth living" remember?) about the amount of material it takes to be happy will create more "space" in which to transform our societies. We can lament the difficulties of getting political decision makers to create and implement public policies that are sustainable. And we should. But, in the mean time, we can see the possibilities right in front of us that are liberating in that they do not require any major political movement to implement on the personal, family or even community level.
In the the end, most of our engineering feats in modern society will lie rusted and idol as the primary fuel on which they were build will be spent and unacceptable to the assimilative capacity of nature.
Very little of what really matters requires big financial investment, scientific ingenuity, material or energy consumption. Its just you me and our skills and time that will secure a future.
Monday, 9 February 2009
The Economic Quantitative & The Ecologic Qualitative
The fundamental problem with environmental economics as a framework for analysis and advocacy for sustainability is that it is restricted to using quantitative methods to achieve an essentially qualitative goal. Sustainability lies on multi dimensional gradient and cannot be fully conceptualized, understood let alone actualized on a two dimensional plane.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Creating Value: the Common Goal of Business and Ethics
In the age of the need to secure our future more firmly (i.e. in the age of the need to become more sustainable, it is useful to remind ourselves that business (and economic growth) share the same goal as ethics: they both seek to increase value in the world.
As long was we understand that only one form of value is monetary (and that there are manifold other forms of incommensurable, but nonetheless more important, value) and that it need not accrue primarily or only to the business operator, then we have a powerful conception of our social place in the world and on earth.
We also need to understand that the question of "to whom the value will accrue" is irrelevant except to the extent that the wealth creator needs enough to nourish a foundation for continuing to provide it (e.g. shelter, sleep food, happiness, family etc.) Creating more value benefits all who partake of it, and this should be an agreeable result for the those truly engaged in increasing value in the world (with due exceptions based on reasonable ethical grounds and distinctions - e.g. perhaps those who actively and deliberately detract from the value created.)
Aye - here is the rub: how do we define this and who places limits on it? While liberty recognizes that the self is the best knower of the self and therefore the best one to determine what is needed to nourish its foundations for social and ecological contibutions to value, it is also the self that is the best deceiver of the self. How can we protect the self from the self. Another way of putting this question might be to frame it in collective action parlance: "How can we ensure that the individually rational is 1. indeed individually rational (beneficial for that individual) and 2. does not overwhelm the socially and collectively rational by disproportionately attempting to acquire that value for itself at the expense of social value (e.g. standing on one's tiptoes in a concert hall to gain a better view at the expense of those behind us)?
As long was we understand that only one form of value is monetary (and that there are manifold other forms of incommensurable, but nonetheless more important, value) and that it need not accrue primarily or only to the business operator, then we have a powerful conception of our social place in the world and on earth.
We also need to understand that the question of "to whom the value will accrue" is irrelevant except to the extent that the wealth creator needs enough to nourish a foundation for continuing to provide it (e.g. shelter, sleep food, happiness, family etc.) Creating more value benefits all who partake of it, and this should be an agreeable result for the those truly engaged in increasing value in the world (with due exceptions based on reasonable ethical grounds and distinctions - e.g. perhaps those who actively and deliberately detract from the value created.)
Aye - here is the rub: how do we define this and who places limits on it? While liberty recognizes that the self is the best knower of the self and therefore the best one to determine what is needed to nourish its foundations for social and ecological contibutions to value, it is also the self that is the best deceiver of the self. How can we protect the self from the self. Another way of putting this question might be to frame it in collective action parlance: "How can we ensure that the individually rational is 1. indeed individually rational (beneficial for that individual) and 2. does not overwhelm the socially and collectively rational by disproportionately attempting to acquire that value for itself at the expense of social value (e.g. standing on one's tiptoes in a concert hall to gain a better view at the expense of those behind us)?
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
A Vote for the Environment in Canada?
This morning (October 15, 2008) after the 2008 federal election in Canada, I received an E-mail from Sierra Club Executive Director Steven Hazel entitled "We voted for the environment." The evidence provided for this inference was that an "overwhelming 62 percent of voters cast their ballots for parties that pledged to reduce greenhouse gases in Canada and combat global warming."
As much as encouragement, a positive mental attitude, reassurance, confidence and self-esteem are crucial to successfully rising to any challenge (like accelerating resource consumption and entropy), there seems to be less basis for it than ever in last night's vote. It seems hardly "overwhelming" when 57% of eligible voters actually cast ballots (an underwhelming 43% did not). This is lowest voter turn out in Canadian history down from as high as 80% in the 1960's. Of the just over half the population who bothered to vote, only 62% of them voted for parties other than the one that did and said little about the environment (the Conservatives). The only party (besides the Greens) taking the (apparently huge!) political risk to suggest ecologically taxing activities be identified as such with a financial tax was rewarded with 20 fewer seats (down from 96) and only 26% of the popular vote (an all time low). This gives us very little on which to base anything that might have encouraging tones. In fact, the inference that seems warranted is the opposite: Canadians are some combination of stupid and stupefied.
Canadian voting behaviour last night (October 15th, 2008) (whether by the results of active voting or absence of voting) implies a yearning (or a yawning) for the unsustainable status quo even in the face of mounting evidence for the evasive action required for anything even slightly closer to sustainability. A glance at the global ecological context in which we live (not a hint of which was provided by our “leaders” in the election campaign) reveals in widening chasm between the behavioural change we urgently need and the tired ways we seem to continue to want.
By most estimations that "don't talk falsely now..." about the environment and economy (i.e. that do not come directly off the payroll of oil companies or placating politicians), "the hour is getting late" (Jimi Hendrix from "All Along the Watchtower").
We live in a world where,
• population growth adds 70 million new mouths to feed to earth each year.
• 20% of the people consume 80% of its material and energy resources and are hard-selling this lifestyle to those with the ability to pay with no regard for the fact that a similar lifestyles for an additional 5 billion humans would require 6 more earths to “feed.”
• we are fast approaching 400 ppm of CO2 (speaking of historic lows and highs – perhaps our stupefaction is caused by breathing increased amounts of anthropogenic CO2) and the resultant climate change is causing unpredictable and ineluctable changes to weather events, climate, ocean current and temperature patterns.
• 1 in 5 humans lack access to clean water and “live’ on less than $1/day
• 2 in 5 lack “adequate” sanitation.
• wealth disparity, hunger, malnutrition, pollution, over-consumption of both renewable and non renewable resources is increasing.
• Increasing amounts of GDP go into dealing with pollution, inefficiency and waste.
• economic growth is based largely on decreases in the ecological integrity that forms the conditions of our own possibility as a species.
• the one thing that can avert disaster is an attempt to align the two through charging fees that would promote efficiency and more judicious use of our surroundings.
• insurance companies and economists are all sounding strikingly like environmentalists on this last point. With increasingly consistency, they simultaneously reach a parallel conclusion: that it would be not only easier (species saving?) but “cheaper “to “invest” (cf. Stern's World Bank Report on the Economics of Climate Change) and act now rather than wait until more extreme weather, drought, famine and war besiege increasing amounts of the economy’s and the ecology’s finite if not scarce resources.
In last night’s election, Canadians had a chance to make a very significant step forward in beginning the process of making more realistic economic evaluations of economic and ecological resources. Both the Liberal’s and the Greens proposed a carbon tax and the NDP proposed the more modest step of carbon credit trading between companies whose activity requires significant carbon effluents. They all suggested we begin the process of placing an economic value on activities that make use of what are, after all, economically valuable "inputs" currently taken for free and granted. None of these parties made much progress. The party that made the most progress was none of these. It was the one whose main platform comes from the ironic cover of a Supertramp album: “Crisis? What Crisis?”
Moral suasion and education about more judicious use of scarce and finite resources for the benefit of future generations should continue much more robustly (of course), but we need REAL economically evaluative mechanisms right now (years ago actually) that will induce more efficiency and less waste into each of our daily materially consumptive activities. Without these, the autopilot of the status quo (that continues to externalize ecological costs and take the profits of natural capital for free and for granted) will continue to be in charge of our locomotion toward the missing trestles ahead. This can only mean that (contrary to the Sierra Club's honourable attempt to providing encouragement to forge onwards to fight the good fight to raise environmental consciousness) far from voting for the environment last night, Canadians voted for continuing their profligacy and accelerating their own (and the world's) demise.
Ignorance (even of impending doom) may be bliss, but the doom itself retains the final potentially informative gesture (in an unfortunately unteachable moment).
John R. Ferguson
As much as encouragement, a positive mental attitude, reassurance, confidence and self-esteem are crucial to successfully rising to any challenge (like accelerating resource consumption and entropy), there seems to be less basis for it than ever in last night's vote. It seems hardly "overwhelming" when 57% of eligible voters actually cast ballots (an underwhelming 43% did not). This is lowest voter turn out in Canadian history down from as high as 80% in the 1960's. Of the just over half the population who bothered to vote, only 62% of them voted for parties other than the one that did and said little about the environment (the Conservatives). The only party (besides the Greens) taking the (apparently huge!) political risk to suggest ecologically taxing activities be identified as such with a financial tax was rewarded with 20 fewer seats (down from 96) and only 26% of the popular vote (an all time low). This gives us very little on which to base anything that might have encouraging tones. In fact, the inference that seems warranted is the opposite: Canadians are some combination of stupid and stupefied.
Canadian voting behaviour last night (October 15th, 2008) (whether by the results of active voting or absence of voting) implies a yearning (or a yawning) for the unsustainable status quo even in the face of mounting evidence for the evasive action required for anything even slightly closer to sustainability. A glance at the global ecological context in which we live (not a hint of which was provided by our “leaders” in the election campaign) reveals in widening chasm between the behavioural change we urgently need and the tired ways we seem to continue to want.
By most estimations that "don't talk falsely now..." about the environment and economy (i.e. that do not come directly off the payroll of oil companies or placating politicians), "the hour is getting late" (Jimi Hendrix from "All Along the Watchtower").
We live in a world where,
• population growth adds 70 million new mouths to feed to earth each year.
• 20% of the people consume 80% of its material and energy resources and are hard-selling this lifestyle to those with the ability to pay with no regard for the fact that a similar lifestyles for an additional 5 billion humans would require 6 more earths to “feed.”
• we are fast approaching 400 ppm of CO2 (speaking of historic lows and highs – perhaps our stupefaction is caused by breathing increased amounts of anthropogenic CO2) and the resultant climate change is causing unpredictable and ineluctable changes to weather events, climate, ocean current and temperature patterns.
• 1 in 5 humans lack access to clean water and “live’ on less than $1/day
• 2 in 5 lack “adequate” sanitation.
• wealth disparity, hunger, malnutrition, pollution, over-consumption of both renewable and non renewable resources is increasing.
• Increasing amounts of GDP go into dealing with pollution, inefficiency and waste.
• economic growth is based largely on decreases in the ecological integrity that forms the conditions of our own possibility as a species.
• the one thing that can avert disaster is an attempt to align the two through charging fees that would promote efficiency and more judicious use of our surroundings.
• insurance companies and economists are all sounding strikingly like environmentalists on this last point. With increasingly consistency, they simultaneously reach a parallel conclusion: that it would be not only easier (species saving?) but “cheaper “to “invest” (cf. Stern's World Bank Report on the Economics of Climate Change) and act now rather than wait until more extreme weather, drought, famine and war besiege increasing amounts of the economy’s and the ecology’s finite if not scarce resources.
In last night’s election, Canadians had a chance to make a very significant step forward in beginning the process of making more realistic economic evaluations of economic and ecological resources. Both the Liberal’s and the Greens proposed a carbon tax and the NDP proposed the more modest step of carbon credit trading between companies whose activity requires significant carbon effluents. They all suggested we begin the process of placing an economic value on activities that make use of what are, after all, economically valuable "inputs" currently taken for free and granted. None of these parties made much progress. The party that made the most progress was none of these. It was the one whose main platform comes from the ironic cover of a Supertramp album: “Crisis? What Crisis?”
Moral suasion and education about more judicious use of scarce and finite resources for the benefit of future generations should continue much more robustly (of course), but we need REAL economically evaluative mechanisms right now (years ago actually) that will induce more efficiency and less waste into each of our daily materially consumptive activities. Without these, the autopilot of the status quo (that continues to externalize ecological costs and take the profits of natural capital for free and for granted) will continue to be in charge of our locomotion toward the missing trestles ahead. This can only mean that (contrary to the Sierra Club's honourable attempt to providing encouragement to forge onwards to fight the good fight to raise environmental consciousness) far from voting for the environment last night, Canadians voted for continuing their profligacy and accelerating their own (and the world's) demise.
Ignorance (even of impending doom) may be bliss, but the doom itself retains the final potentially informative gesture (in an unfortunately unteachable moment).
John R. Ferguson
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