The Wrong Kind of Green

The Wrong Kind of Green, by Johann Hari. Nation: March 4, 2010.

This is another one of those, no, REALLY? sort of articles. No, REALLY? Massive environmental organizations take money from major corporations?

No, it couldn’t be.

Sometimes it is so difficult to control the sarcasm on this blog. The funny thing is, I posted about this before, though in reference to the smaller scale version. Actually, upon reading that post again, I’ve already said just about everything I might say in response to this Nation article.

I do want to point out one other part. Hari mentions the phenomenon in which environmentalists are happy to be thrown a bone, any bone: a few trees here, a few concessions toward climate change there. Many environmentalists will accept just about anything if it makes them feel like they’re accomplishing something. It’s sad, but you see it happen again and again. They just back down and back down and say things like, well, the political climate isn’t right, and next thing you know, the actual, physical climate is too far gone to do anything about it. And then there’s no going back.

It’s so sad, and it’s one of the delusions that plague the environmental movement. We feel powerless. We have been raised feeling that nothing we do really matters, and really, how could we possibly defeat the massive corrupt army that is Congress and its multitude of corporate funders? What can we possibly do? Easy to accept the sad concessions thrown in our direction when faced with all THAT. I think the 2004 election had a lot to do with it. I think a lot of us, after staying up all night thinking to ourselves, no, there’s really no way that idiot could be elected president TWICE, woke up the next morning (or dragged ourselves into work after no sleep) with a different view of the world. No, our votes don’t matter. No, sense and the best interests of the population (and the planet) do not matter. Money matters. Money, and expansion, and the economy, and the rest, and we can scream ourselves hoarse trying to convince anyone else differently.

Some people seemed to become hopeful again after Obama election, and maybe these are the people who were still hoping something would actually come out of the Copenhagen debacle other than a lot of waffle. But really, anyone who actually expected some kind of effective decision to come out of Copenhagen was delusional. Anyone who still expects Congress, despite its immense corporate sponsors, to act in some kind of reasonable and responsible way as far as climate change goes, is living in a fantasy world. So in that sense, the accusation that the major environmental organizations are only aiming for what they think might have a chance of passing Congress is unfair. Those major organizations have a much better sense of reality than the environmentalists who thought real action would come out of Copenhagen.

Of course, that’s no reason not to take a hard line. After all, that’s how the major corporations get their way (well, that, and a whole lot of money). They stand their ground. They decide what they want and they fight tooth and nail, do everything in their power, to ensure that they get that outcome.

Shouldn’t that be what we do, as well? I’ve had about enough of waffle.

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Snow, Snow, and more Snow

I’m going to admit up front this doesn’t have much of anything to do with the environment. It is a rant, pure and simple. But I think it reflects on why we treat the environment the way we do: we can’t accept a loss of control, pure and simple.

In my position at the college I am privy to most of the complaints levied by the population in relation to the goings ons of the everyday sort of campus affairs- broken toilets, out of order exit signs, and, most often, heat that is either too hot or too cold and air conditioning that isn’t functioning, depending on the season. I get just as many complaints at work as I do through facebook, which seems to be the repository of everyone’s bad feelings about their daily activities. And in the past week, there have been even more complaints than normal- and all about the snow.

Oh, I’m tired of being stuck in the house. Oh, there’s nothing to do. Oh, I’m so tired of shoveling, oh, I wish it would stop snowing, oh, the lines at the grocery store, whine whine whine. People who I know don’t like their jobs much complaining about how much they want to go back to work. People on and on and on about how the college shouldn’t have been closed for a whole week, that it was taking too long to get things cleared, that the state botched things up, that if we lived up north they never would have dealt with things so badly.

Well, I for one am appalled at these reactions. First off, knowing how hard the crew worked on campus to clear away the snow as fast as they could, staying overnight, not seeing their families, working endlessly to clear away snow that was already piled high on the ground, not to mention the places where it drifted- I saw damage to buildings, pieces of roofing pulled right off by the snow. And the understaffed crew had to clear it all away with two pick ups with plows, because one of them broke clean in half from the weight of the snow, a broken tractor, and a rented Bobcat. People asked why the snow wasn’t cleared faster. Well, what would you expect? It’s not like they’re willing to divert more money to the grounds crew, for extra staff, or for better equipment. And yet somehow they expect them to be able to make the snow magically disappear the day after it stops falling? Really the complainers should be ashamed of themselves for having so little respect for the people who have worked so tirelessly to clear the campus for them.

But it’s not just people on campus. Everyone I’ve talked to goes on and on about how miserable they were staying in their houses, not being able to get out and drive. It’s all about having to get out and drive- and honestly the roads would have been clear a lot faster if it weren’t for the people who insisted on trying to drive on them before they were ready, so that road crews (on campus included) spent more time towing people out of snowbanks than actually plowing. And what I can’t understand, is why people are so incapable of being inside their own houses (especially if they have children). Is being at home so bad? I got so much done over the week at home- and enjoyed myself more than I had in months. It was a right little vacation.

But then again, I’m ok with the slow pace. I’m definitely ok with not driving. I keep all the food I need in my house, because I don’t shop at the grocery store anyway. And I’m willing to admit that some things are just more powerful than business as usual, which seems to be what everyone else was so upset about. “Nature” cannot be allowed to stop the ongoing rush of daily activity. Snow? No. Snow cannot be allowed to cause interruptions, no matter how many feet of it fall on the ground. We must assert our control over it immediately, show that no manner of snow fall can keep US from driving on the roads.

And, to attempt to make this relevant, this is how it relates to the environment: we believe, as a society, that we can control natural forces. We believe weather has no effect on us. THIS is how we end up growing tomatoes with massive petroleum inputs in January. THIS is how we start to believe that we can change the composition of the atmosphere and not have any negative effects. We believe we, and the natural world, are two separate entities at war with one another. And, if we believe that it is direly important to conduct business as usual on a daily basis, we are at war with nature, because nature is not business as usual. Stuff happens, and that stuff usually happens for a reason (not like fate, or something), but because those weather events are important to the survival of the ecosystem. And we can fight them all we want, but in the long run, we will lose. Business is not going to conquer nature. Unless we accept the fact that we are as subject to its ever changing progression, we will get left behind.

So get over it, people. It snowed.

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Recycling is Bull S***

Treehugger: Recycling is Bull S***

Before anyone gets offended, I’m borrowing the title from Treehugger. And I agree.

*waits for gasps of shock to disappear*

Recycling is a huge waste of time. The fact that students spend a total of about 50 hours per week collecting and sorting recyclables on this campus: waste. Those recyclables have to be trucked somewhere, and Kent County, just like so many other municipalities all over the country, is responsible for finding someplace willing to buy the materials (usually China). They don’t make very much money at it. But the alternative is to dump them in a landfill, and landfills are even more expensive.

Why is this such a waste? What alternative could there possibly be, you ask? Well, not so very long ago in the past, there were refillable bottles. You drank a Coke, say, and then you gave the bottle back. And they washed it out and put more Coke in it. Whoa. Same with most other beverages, including alcohol.

But for this to be possible, there had to be places making beverages in the relatively near vicinity of the place where people were drinking them. Otherwise you had to transport a load of glass bottles over long distances, and, well, obviously glass doesn’t travel very well. Plus it’s heavy, and costs a lot to transport. Having a lot of little places each making soda or beer or alcohol meant lots of little companies each making their own product, often unique, often with local ingredients. There were hundreds and hundreds of brands of sodas, and probably thousands of microbreweries.

Now, Coke couldn’t have that, could they? Thousands of people doing their own thing, making unique diverse products? Bad for business. And Coke couldn’t afford to have lots of little factories all over the place- far more efficient, and far cheaper, to make Coke in one place and ship it all over the country. But not if you have to ship glass bottles back, and wash them, and refill them, and ship them out again. Thus was born the aluminum can. Lightweight and cheap to ship. Can’t be refilled. Never mind the fact that aluminum is ridiculously expensive to mine, that’s all done in Africa, and who cares if strip mining demolishes native populations and leaves millions of people in stark poverty. For Coke, it’s not only cheaper, but now they don’t have to deal with the end product: it’s all yours! Part of the bargain! But what in heavens name are you supposed to do with that aluminum can?

Well, for years, throw it in the trash. Then the environmental movement got all crazy, and you had to recycle it. Notice the key word here: YOU. YOU had to recycle it. YOU had to figure out what to do with it. Municipalities, which are not exactly money making organizations, had to figure out what to do with it. And they, and you, have to do this with every single consumer product.

But I say NO. NO, it is NOT my responsibility to figure out what to do with this plastic bag. I don’t want it. I don’t take them. What the hell are they doing in MY river? I don’t remember anyone ever asking companies to make plastic bags. I don’t remember anyone asking the companies to start producing aluminum cans. And seriously, did anyone go around asking companies to make the ridiculous tons of plastic s*** that plague waterways around the world? I certainly didn’t. And yet it’s supposed to be MY responsibility to deal with it? Are you kidding?

It is time, far past time, that we stop putting all the blame on ourselves. Oh yes, you as a consumer can vote with your wallet and all that. I’m just not sure why we have to continue to be defined as consumers at all, as if we don’t have any option other than to consume. What if we become producers? What if there are local microbreweries, who start taking bottles back again, and refilling them, and selling them? What if you buy products locally, so they don’t have to be shipped at all? What if you buy them from craftspeople, who don’t wrap them in tons of packaging? Or, if you’re still determined to keep using those multinational corporation products, why don’t you DEMAND, with your consumer dollars that are supposed to be all-powerful, that THEY take responsibility for the packaging of their products? That THEY deal with the millions of tons of plastic, of aluminum cans, of other useless packaging, instead of passing that cost on to you, the consumer (because the municipalities are collecting recycling using your tax money)? What if THEY take responsibility for the pollution they create, and not just the waste, but the air and water pollution? Why is it our problem? Did we ever ask for it?

Companies will undoubtedly say this makes their products more expensive, but I say bull S*** to that too. Coke spends billions of dollars on advertising. If their product was really all that great, they wouldn’t have to. They could use some of that money to solve the problem THEY’VE caused.

But, oh right, the global economy depends on shifting all the responsibility away from corporations, who have the legal rights of people, but none of the responsibilities, and putting it on “consumers.” And CLEARLY the global economy is more important than the environment, and our health, and our lives.

How very silly of me.

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The End of the Long Summer

So last night the environmental author Dianne Dumanoski gave a talk at the college. If you missed it, and I bet you did, then you missed quite a discussion. You can read all about her book, The End of the Long Summer, over at her website, www.diannedumanoski.com.

Dumanoski started by pointing out a fundamental flaw of the environmental movement, and one I’ve pointed out several times on this blog. We aren’t particularly honest with ourselves when we discuss our goals, if we discuss them at all. We talk about saving the planet, but this is an act of pure hubris- the planet will get on just fine if there’s climate change. There has been climate change many times in the past, and species have died back and rebounded in new and astounding ways.

What we’re really doing is saving the planet so we can still live on it. We can talk about saving whales and trees and rare species of butterfly, but let’s face it, we’re really talking about saving ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing immoral about wanting to preserve your own species so your potential grandchildren can keep on trucking. Well, metaphorically- trucks may be extinct by then. But you get the idea.

In her book, and in her talk, she attempts to look beyond the symptoms of “planetary distress” to the actual cause. It was a refreshing talk in that she didn’t just ramble on about climate change- a frequent topic, among lecturers, and one she certainly brought up- but addressed the likelihood that we are in fact actually past the point of no return. Climate change, according to most research, is now inevitable. There’s no going back. We can mitigate the effects of climate change, certainly, and so there’s no reason to throw our hands up in despair and stop pursuing cleaner energy sources and things of that nature. But we also have to think beyond those mitigating efforts. If climate change is indeed upon (and it seems that it is- it is only the when and where and to what extent that are up for debate), our planning should be for how we handle the changes that will occur.

This isn’t a momentous idea. Most people, with only a cursory knowledge of human history, will agree that things change. Things aren’t the same now as they were 100 years ago. And yet we tend to act as if things are never going to change. Our economy is based on this notion of exponential growth, without taking into account that at some point there will be no more possibility of growth- we live in a limited environment (presuming we don’t expand into space, and the very thought makes me roll my eyes). Our food system is based on fossil fuels. Our communications (and most of our economy) are all based on a very fragile system that could fall apart with a few well placed keystrokes. And our heating and cooling is all based on electricity, as is our access to water. If these things are taken away- if something were to happen to disrupt public water systems, for example- would any of us know what to do?

These things are rarely taken into account. Dumanoski argues that we’re asking the wrong questions. We’re trying to “green the status quo”, a phrase that I love, because it so accurately describes efforts to find a technological fix for everything. On one of the green blogs I subscribe to, I am daily barraged with tips on “greening” everything from hair dryers to toothpicks to vacations to gym memberships. But there the question of whether we should continue to pursue all these avenues is never, not a once, brought into light.

The common law among environmentalists is that we can never, EVER, mention the dirty words “maybe we should just give that up.” No, we cannot question consumption. We can never, god forbid, question the mandate of constant economic growth, or the desire of people to own private jets. People will never subscribe to environmentalism if we’re so negative.

But Dumanoski’s call to action is not for us all to go around crying that the sky is falling. Rather, she simply suggests we be honest with ourselves, that we in fact must be honest with ourselves, if we hope to survive as a species. If we don’t prepare for climate change, how can we possibly face it? Wouldn’t the worst catastrophe be if climate change occurred, and very abruptly as scientists are predicting, and we all just stood there with a big “oh [insert four letter word here]” sketched on our faces?

She pointed out that the answers are in fact just in front of our faces. The planet organizes things in such a way as to be resilient to catastrophe. There are multiple species doing the same job, or similar, so that if one is killed off there are others to take their place. The college does this as an emergency planning measure- if one person is out, we are all required to have a second and third person trained to do our jobs so things don’t come to a grinding halt. Ecosystems are also modular- connected, somewhat, but not to the point where if one collapsed there would necessarily be a chain reaction wiping out all the others. But we in our global society are all very specialized- and all very connected- so that if oil reserves run out, for example, pretty much all of us are screwed. But that’s a topic I intend to write more about later.

During the Q&A the topic of hope came up- what is there to give us hope that we can face the momentous task of preparing for climate change, when we neither know when it’s going to occur or what form it’s going to take? Dumanoski responded that we can’t have hope unless it’s honest- unless we are willing to face the facts about what lies ahead, and realize that the “long summer” we’ve enjoyed will not and cannot last forever. She suggests large scale social reorganization as one of the only ways of becoming more adaptable to change- which is of course one of the things our society is most resistant to. She also pointed out that we’re currently educating for a future that doesn’t exist, and this is key. Even here at the college we’re still educating under the assumption that things will be more or less the same down the line when our students are facing the real world.

I think she’s partially right about the honesty- we absolutely have to be honest about what’s ahead. There is far too much unfounded optimism running around where “saving the environment” is concerned- and far too much despair. But I think we have something to be optimistic about. From what I’ve seen, when faced with the honest truth, most humans are able to step up to the challenge. When given a problem and asked to solve it, we have the creative capacity to find solutions- if only we are taught that we do have that capacity within ourselves, if only we are educated to approach problems with enthusiasm and an eye for the experimental, the untried path, the unconventional- and that it doesn’t take experts to save the planet for people, but people with the passion and dedication to be entirely honest with themselves and each other, and jump off that ledge into an unknown future armed with just their wits and one another.

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Money Money Money

Reality Sandwich: Money, A New Beginning

There are two important (related) points I want to address from this article:

We have a growth economy (in fact, an exponential growth economy) and a finite quantity of resources upon which that economy is supposed to be based. This is undeniable.

In a growth economy, we must constantly have more things if there is going to be more money in circulation- in other words, in order to grow, we must have more things to sell. If you look at our society, it is based almost entirely on the privatization of things which were once free (such as clean water), and the constant invention of new things to spend money on (for example, “upgraded” technologies, which renders the old versions obsolete).




This causes two problems: first, that in order to continue to grow, our economy encourages phenomenal amounts of waste. If you reuse something for ten years instead of buying a new one every few months, there is no profit to be made, as a long lasting reusable item subverts your need to constantly make a purchase. The same principle demands the constant use of more resources to produce the new items.

Second, it traps you into a constant cycle of accumulation. I’ve talked about this in terms of major environmental groups previously on this blog. When you constantly require additional funding to stay afloat (literally to stay in business- to maintain your employees and programming) a vast percentage of your time is spent on accumulating money in order to do this. Now imagine if we were secure, and accumulating money was unnecessary- that same amount of time spent on fundraising and grant writing could be spent on immediate, tangible applications, such as going out and quite literally cleaning up a stream.

It’s yet another way to look at sustainability. Let’s look at one of my favorite examples again, water. One way or another, we have to pay for water. Even if you refuse to buy bottled water, which is thus far the ultimate in privatization of water, you still have to get it from somewhere (a tap) because it certainly isn’t clean enough when it’s running in a stream or something similar. There are methods of collecting and purifying your own water, but these are typically discouraged, looked down upon, or made otherwise difficult, if not outright illegal. So we get our money from a tap, the cleaning of which is paid for typically by a municipality, which pays with our tax money and the like. If you have your own sink, typically you have a house or apartment or something around it (which you had to pay for), or even if you are getting water on the go, you need some kind of container to put it in (which you had to pay for). Water is by no means free. We must accumulate some sort of material good to grant us access- whether it be a whole house or a Nalgene bottle. Take a minute and imagine someone in a tribal society with a Nalgene bottle. What the hell would they do with it? They’d have to haul it around all over creation. If water were simply available, clean and without pollutants…

Well, possibly you can see what I’m driving at. The destruction of the commons, as it is typically called, has deep reaching consequences for our environment. If everything is privatized, it is no one’s responsibility- who is to blame for the polluted air in the vicinity of a power plant, as we’ve asked before? The plant, or the people who purchase power from them? And when it comes down to removing the pollution, who should pay? And who, ultimately, pays when the people living nearby (regardless of whether they purchase power from that plant or not) suffer from exposure to pollution?

Something to consider, certainly.

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