Changing Planet

I write and link here about many of the observable effects of ‘green’ marketing campaigns and energy initiatives. By hook or crook, we’re all learning the implications of societal progress on natural the world, perhaps most visible right now upon the so-called intellectual order. It is important to remember in the middle of all of this that the world is changing. Sometimes we overlook this perspective of change from the ones who will feel it the most, or at least, more than today’s adults. These people walk and crawl among you today – they’re in everything from diapers to seventh grade right about now. Their perspectives will be far different from the ones enjoyed/indulged just a few short years before – and while they may be revolted by corporate subservience and climate denierism of their elders, they will likely be more empowered to something a little more active than resentment. While we contemplate change at the margins, these folks will likely have the knowledge, gumption and evidence for the necessary actions.

That may sound hopeful, but take a look a this Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Formal and Informal Educators. This is the kind of knowledge is power take on climate change that will lead to sober solutions and clear thinking about the challenges ahead. It doesn’t say but I don’t think there is any age limits on its impact or usefulness.

Green Squared

If, in the course of human events [what’s highfalutin’ language for, after all?], one’s view is obstructed by a hill, there have come to be three options, each of which feature their own distinctive elements: summon the necessary wits and climb the hill – which will reward you with an unobstructed view (though some probability should be noted that you might not like what you see); summon the necessary wits and level the hill – which will reward you with an unobstructed view (though the hill will no longer be of any utility or refuge in the case of earlier-referred to sub-condition); decide to forgo knowledge of what lies beyond the hill and do nothing – an appealing option of certain though crudely sanguine utility that, itself, might overestimate the courage and wit required of option A.

What lays beyond the green? The rough, of course, and most likely a water hazard. If it’s a big-money tournament, and everything we do promises that it is, many spectators are on hand, occupying every bit of space just outside the area of play. The players? Ah, that’s where the analogy creaks.

Is this because we lose our sense of play when it comes to self-preservation? Certainly not. We seem to fiddle with the most trivial issues precisely at the most inopportune junctures. Is not the ability to dither in the face of demise a sign of a certain playfulness? If not, what then is it? A willful decision to ignore the hill and all that lies beyond it?

There is a solid divide between childish behavior and adult maturity that we have come to obscure and crowd out with nostalgia for the one and disdain for the other. The line itself respects this dynamic precisely as it allows a devious cross-pollination. Wherein, our affinity for innocence in the latter displaces our knack for creative response in the former. It does not have to be response to a crisis, but in the case that it is and we’ve replaced one with the other, we find ourselves having grown-up too quickly; adults, ill-prepared as children. We can’t hold our own hands after all. Oh… wait. Who’s is the hand of a child if not our own? Every other species understands this.

Climb or level the mountain and we have an unobstructed view to all the underlying issues at once. The spirituality, sensuality, economics, politics, ecology and thermodynamics of not putting more into the earth than we take out and not taking more out of the earth than we put in are… all the same thing. At once. Money times inexperience; envy multiplied by sustainability; Go X the Future… they all equal nothing worse than merely facing up to our own contradictions and failings. Then we can get on with the important stuff:

Making it up, making out, Sittin’ In A Tree. K-I-S-…

Time On

A rich history that has led to an uncanny present that is itself perhaps connected to a hopeful future, CL combines the power and vulnerability of an unsecured corner just off-shore of what we consider civilization. If you want to imagine the parallel universe just beyond the world of slash-and-burn development. Take the Lucy R. from Fernandina.

Many thanks to our gracious hosts, GG, D and M.

Smallholder farms

Smallholders, or smallholdings, refer to small farming operations, usually commercial and usually the work of a single family. According to the Guardian UK, some 450 million smallholder households earn their livelihoods from plots of three acres or less; with their families they make up a third of all humanity.

Most of these enterprises are scattered throughout what we commonly refer to as the Third World. As WE now have several generations between us and growing things, that’s simply not the case for many others and there currently exists a burgeoning economy of smallholder farms across the globe – not in the sense that we typically think of burgeoning or economy – but they are, or are nearly, self-sustaining, a term with which we are becoming increasingly familiar. I have a colleague of African descent who has initiated several excellent sustainable development projects there and elsewhere, targeted at seemingly minor technological innovations (solar powered, small-quantity refrigeration, for ex.) to increase the profits of smallholder farms without changing their way of life in ways that alter the social fabric of their community. It’s a tough line but also the essence of the triple bottom-line idea that gives equal consideration to people, planet and profit.

The connection of many of these farms and enterprises to the larger world is the Fair Trade federation, of which many are familiar. I bring all this up because today is the beginning of Fair Trade Fortnight, as good a time as any to familiarize yourself further with the ideas and practices of smallholder farms, their plights, fates, hopes and destiny. Who knows, there could be some overlap with yours.

Book burning

by any other name. A friend of mine wrote this article about another one of those, shall we say, constructive dilemmas: build a new-fangled structure in a newish city, wait thirty years until they want something else cutting edge (ouch!) and new, then watch as they decide what to do about the old building. In this case the old building is the final structure of Modernist master Marcel Breuer. Take it, JL:

Breuer’s design sits closely surrounded by other buildings where Peachtree Street, a principal artery, touches a remaining patch of narrow, 19th-century street grid, about a half mile southeast of the proposed Centennial Olympic Park site. If the building could be viewed whole, from a greater distance, its sculptural power might be more affecting. As it is, Pitts and others don’t get it. “From a design point of view, it probably means a lot to those in the field, but for the average citizen who sees it, it’s just not there,” he says. “It’s dark, it’s not friendly, it’s not inviting.” Isabelle Hyman, a Breuer scholar at New York University, acknowledges that “the concrete architecture of that period is disdained right now. It’s massive, heavy, bulky, weighty, and it’s not appreciated.” Still, she insists, “You just don’t get rid of a good building by a good architect because it’s out of style.” Pitts would prefer a building with of-the-moment transparency. “I envision glass and color and water and openness,” he says. But can a shiny new building attract patrons to the library, and visitors to Atlanta?

So… there’s a thread here, connecting what they’re contemplating doing with this building and what has saddled them with an urban landscape largely indistinguishable from that of Dallas or Indianapolis or Phoenix. Can anyone guess what it is?

For another thing, why not let the building stand as a marker for the question of why we designed and built structures like this once upon a time? Could be instructive.

And what do you know, there even could be a fiscal upside to preserving the structure, beyond its architectural merits.

Jon Buono, a preservation architect, makes a com­pelling pragmatic argument for saving the building. “I’m clearly interested in the artistic and cultural value of the library,” he says. “But as a civic booster, I’m even more concerned with recognizing the financial and material value of that public investment.” He calculates that the energy embodied in the library and required for its demolition equals a year’s electricity consumption by some 4,000 households.

Hmm. Preserve cultural heritage. Save the city some money. Conserve a non-trivial amount of energy. Does this compute? Or is it a plan written in a book, shelved in a library that’s become obsolete?

Book burning

by any other name. A friend of mine wrote this article about another one of those, shall we say, constructive dilemmas: build a new-fangled structure in a newish city, wait thirty years until they want something else cutting edge (ouch!) and new, then watch as they decide what to do about the old building. In this case the old building is the final structure of Modernist master Marcel Breuer. Take it, JL:

Breuer’s design sits closely surrounded by other buildings where Peachtree Street, a principal artery, touches a remaining patch of narrow, 19th-century street grid, about a half mile southeast of the proposed Centennial Olympic Park site. If the building could be viewed whole, from a greater distance, its sculptural power might be more affecting. As it is, Pitts and others don’t get it. “From a design point of view, it probably means a lot to those in the field, but for the average citizen who sees it, it’s just not there,” he says. “It’s dark, it’s not friendly, it’s not inviting.” Isabelle Hyman, a Breuer scholar at New York University, acknowledges that “the concrete architecture of that period is disdained right now. It’s massive, heavy, bulky, weighty, and it’s not appreciated.” Still, she insists, “You just don’t get rid of a good building by a good architect because it’s out of style.” Pitts would prefer a building with of-the-moment transparency. “I envision glass and color and water and openness,” he says. But can a shiny new building attract patrons to the library, and visitors to Atlanta?

So… there’s a thread here, connecting what they’re contemplating doing with this building and what has saddled them with an urban landscape largely indistinguishable from that of Dallas or Indianapolis or Phoenix. Can anyone guess what it is?

For another thing, why not let the building stand as a marker for the question of why we designed and built structures like this once upon a time? Could be instructive.

And what do you know, there even could be a fiscal upside to preserving the structure, beyond its architectural merits.

Jon Buono, a preservation architect, makes a com­pelling pragmatic argument for saving the building. “I’m clearly interested in the artistic and cultural value of the library,” he says. “But as a civic booster, I’m even more concerned with recognizing the financial and material value of that public investment.” He calculates that the energy embodied in the library and required for its demolition equals a year’s electricity consumption by some 4,000 households.

Hmm. Preserve cultural heritage. Save the city some money. Conserve a non-trivial amount of energy. Does this compute? Or is it a plan written in a book, shelved in a library that’s become obsolete?

Citizen Green USA

Lots of discussions this week about art (imagine that), so I thought it might be a good time to share this site, built by a friend of mine. She’s showing some of the green things you can do in your own life, home and work, and it’s all pretty nifty. In fact, LK’s pretty nifty herself.

She’s adamant about referring to herself as a graphic artist, as though the term artist held some other, reserved connotations (imagine that). She’s a painter, who works by hand – politely sidestepping the term artist while elevating your/her experience. It brings to mind how people throw things around, including that word, so carelessly. But judge for yourself. What she calls graphic design blurs into fine art so seamlessly, you wouldn’t think there is even a difference. No gimmicks necessary. It’s the opposite of the decorations many people attempt to pass off, that hold all the wonder of road signs to blah.

Her Citizen Green antics are only an extension of this, like everything else in her life. Enjoy.

Made by hand, tested by labs

I’m a little late to this but… like many issues, it is woven into a blanket that is easy to forget you have, unless it’s the one you pull up every night to keep warm.

In response to the furor last year over lead in toys from China and elsewhere, the government responded with the Consumer Product safety Improvement Act. Sounds reasonable enough, right? The materials used to fabricate toys should be thoroughly tested before mass production and dissemination through chain retailers and the intertubes. But what about small runs of hand-made items, clothing, dolls, toys from people who have created tiny, sustainable niche markets to make things and support themselves? What about used clothes and thrift stores? No difference at all, the Act says.

For starters, the CPSIA requires end unit testing on every product intended for use by children under 12. It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to do this testing, regardless of how small the business. That means that manufacturers (like myself ) will have to pay to get every different product they offer tested. These tests have to be done at a CSPC accredited lab, and cost up to $4,000 with an average of around $150. So for me, I offer 3 different types of dresses. Each dress contains 2 different fabrics, as well as buttons, and thread, so that’s potentially $600 to test one dress. But I have 3 styles, so that’s $1800. And when I get a new bolt of fabric, I need to start all over again. I can only make 15 dresses from one bolt, so there is no way I could make the testing financially feasible.

At present, there are no exemptions for small businesses and “micro” manufacturers like myself and most handcraft artisans.
There is no exception for quantities made, where the garments/products are made or anything else. Nor is there an exception for unadorned fabric components, unfinished wood components, materials which, by their nature, are free of lead and phthalates. Also, the Act takes a “guilty until proven innocent” approach, which would treat a handmade, unfinished wooden toy that doesn’t meet the certification deadline of 2/10/09 as a “banned hazardous substance” which would be illegal to distribute in this country. Each infraction carries a $100,000 felony charge.

This legislation is also retroactive for any pre-existing inventory as of February 10th, 2009. This means that everything on the shelves in those big (or small) stores will also be “banned, hazardous substances” – contraband. Larger corporations that can afford testing will incur thousands, maybe millions of dollars in fees, and this expense will be handed down to the consumer, probably making the prices for children’s products go through the roof. This also means that after that date, even selling your kids old things on eBay or Craigslist will be illegal. Charities will not be able to accept donations without a certificate of compliance either.

Designers and shop owners are being turned into activists by this issue and the looming deadline, as their livelihoods are at stake. The manufacturing scale here should easily connote a distinction in risk, and the handmade fabrication and retail industries should be enlisted as a corrective/alternative to mass-produced, imported goods, not lumped in with them. These are the folks who started out championing local, organic, small scale and sustainable as the cornerstones of new enterprise. And they were right. It is a crucial point of departure which is itself one of the new routes to sustainability. The time in which lawmakers could be insufficiently familiar with this distinction, and other, very related ones, has passed.

Disincentives

Disincentives are the levers of motivation we use on power companies to get them to sell us more energy than we need. We provide them by not expressing a preference against them. They are stupid in their own way. Why are light bulbs hot? Why do video game consoles automatically stay powered-up, unless we set them not to?

Greater energy efficiency – efficiency in general – is the elbow of the energy conundrum in which we are presently mired. It’s the least sexy part and yet the one which would have the most force if heartily applied to the mid-section of our wasteful nature. Whoa! We didn’t know we could do that! It’s empowering when you can get a creep off your back, especially using a tool you’ve possessed all along. And in this case, the shock itself would provide a little desperately-needed breathing room to take on the more difficult, sexier paths to sustainability like solar and wind (the T & A in this crazy, mixed-up analogy). Sensible adjustments to the way we generate, distribute and use energy even from dirty, nonrenewable sources would go along way toward highlighting and reforming the waste endemic to our ways.

Of course, the way things stand, the suppliers who generate the energy we waste desire anything but such illumination and reform. Their motives are also all about green, but the other kind. You can’t blame them (unless you recall that them = us); this is the system in which they/we operate. With shareholders to satisfy, their only incentives are for us to use more power. Why should they invest in expensive, energy-saving initiatives that adversely affect their bottom line?

The Department of Energy predicts a 30% increase in power demand by 2030. As this Time magazine article points out, the utilities that will supply this power are very aware that the cheapest new power plants are the ones they don’t have to build. But, if we give them no other alternatives than to build new clean coal-fired plants, they will oblige. We’ve already provided ourselves some pretty nasty choices by omission that have begun haunt the future, as we are loathe to face them.

We need to untangle some of the simple assumptions about status quo energy use in order to steer clear of the more complex and disasteful choices down the road regarding unaffordable new power production and out of control emissions. Realize that by not demanding less, we are demanding more.