Reading 2018

I’d love to tell you want it all meant, but instead I’ll just share a partial [but unranked] list of the books I read this year.

Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif

The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Primeros Pobladores; Hispanic Americans of the Ute Frontier, by Frances Leon Quintana

God, Dr. Buzzard and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee talks about life on Sapelo Island, Georgia by Cornelia Walker Bailey and Christena Beldsoe

Les Passions Intellectuelles by Elisabeth Badinter

Do well and be well in 2019.

meat vs. a planet

As in yours. As in birthing it, feeding, slaughtering it, shipping it and cooking it in order to eat it in the quantity that we do spells certain, not probable but certain, disaster for planet, people and profit as you understand each of these things.

We say all the time how the planet would not survive China developing to levels commensurate with first-world consumption. It goes triple for meat eating. I’m just saying, I do it, too, and we should at least reckon with its consequences and be aware of them, acting accordingly if the spirit moves you. Otherwise you are ignoring this purposefully.

via.

Bonus: Stephen King on taxes (plus a well-placed f-word or two). Word.

Reflections on the Passing of a Car

Value – noun, verb, -ued, -u·ing.

A colleague used this term in a written draft recently and it immediately triggered in me the impulse for the equivalent of an electronic scratch-through; so much do I detest the term as generally construed but especially in the context of quantifying the benefits of something that should be considered in terms of quality.

So, given such a distaste and allergy, the sensible thing is to turn sharply back into the term, which I did on my walk this morning.

One of the qualities still heartily propping up Our Way® is the skewed preference we preserve for the wrong things – wrong in the context of resource depletion and ghg generation, the burning of coal and general wasting of essentials that is the chief characteristic of 1st world progress. We’re not that far away from being able to shift our priorities – the rank of what we value. But we’re also not close to actually doing it, either. We basically market ourselves vis-à-vis that transition as far into the future as possible, so much so as to make the possibility appear remote and implausible, and largely making this so, as well.

Why this disconnect between capability and action? Value (n.,v.) seems to be the culprit.

An example close to home, pun intended: We could value the ability to commute to work on foot more than the ability to drive that Porsche or BMW we cannot afford anyway. Now this one statement is chock-full of some of the neat contradictions that define us. But we do reserve a high degree of importance for the kind of car we can drive, not in any way comparable to that which we attach to walking – which we associate with drudgery as well as a kind of personal failure on the part of the walker. It takes excessive time and energy. But the car, its excessive costs and energy externalities, delivers a kind of status walking cannot touch. The qualitative difference at the center of our ability to value one over the other, despite the terrible quantities of money and energy demanded to hold this equation in place – not to mention the quantities of time and health extracted from us in the exchange – make the arrangement appear permanent and intractable. That’s not even considering the marketing to which we voluntarily submit ourselves and our consciences. Until we realize how we are not the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement and attach status value with being able to go car-less, indeed we are trapped within this tight little circle.

Yet it is easy to comprehend: were we availed of it, walking has just as much status potential, with the ability to do it everyday far superior to being trapped in a personal automobile.

Even supposing a person could conquer the desire to drive a Porsche or BMW and replace it with a preference for walking to the same destination, what would a person have to do in order to close the distance. The first order would be actually closing the distance, creating a real choice between the two modes of transportation. Granted, this is not the option for most people, and makes the question moot. But how to move the window? You would have to put value on living with proximity to work, food, school and play, with the ultimate prize being the ability to walk. In-town neighborhoods would be the most desirable (and most highly-valued, touché!); once they are fully occupied, demand drives development at the edges of walkable distances; to remain carless at these edges, public transportation infrastructure crops up to facilitate access to proximity – convenience, but not prioritized for personal automobiles. With this, a cascade of other values fall into place. You suddenly began to value other things that end with you/yours and quality re-enters the picture whereas before only quantity was considered: how many miles to work? How long will it take with traffic? How fast can we eat? How long can he wait at school for me to pick him up? How much does gas cost now? How much for new tires? Repairs?  A tune-up? There is no end to these questions. Their answers may change subtly but their nature does not. They worry and weigh upon us, but these questions are essential trivial – which itself worries and weighs on us, re-enforcing the circle.

We need the slippery slope of weightier issues and topics. Compare to: what is the walk doing to my weight? Am I feeling better with a little more exercise? What should we eat tonight? Is that new book store open? What should I read? What should I write? What new music would I like? Should we get the band back together? Could I learn Italian listening to a podcast five minutes a day? What is Coriander for? These questions are also endless, in a good way as you can see.

Which set of questions do you prefer?

Material Flow Accounts

DON'T+FEED+THE+BEARS...+++...you+taste+like+chick...

According to this article, the number of calories consumed at home in the UK peaked in 2001:

“One thing that’s remarkable is the sheer speed with which our resource use has crashed since the recession,” Goodall continues. “In the space of a couple of years, we’ve dropped back to the second lowest level since we started keeping track in 1970. And although the figures aren’t yet available for 2010 and 2011, it seems highly likely that we are now using fewer materials than at any time on record.”

Goodall discovered the Material Flow Accounts while writing a research paper examining the UK’s consumption of resources. The pattern he stumbled upon caught him by surprise: time and time again, Brits seemed to be consuming fewer resources and producing less waste. What really surprised him was that consumption appears to have started dropping in the first years of the new millennium, when the economy was still rapidly growing.

So of course that’s there and not here, But still, point taken. And we’re oftener than not a decade or so behind the continent on some things.

Our problem will be, is, one of scale. Proportional reductions of consumption will also have to be done to scale – across regions and demographics. Sounds obvious, sure; but so does not feeding bears and they still have to put signs up everywhere. The much bigger problem will be that we will have to decide/believe it’s us, our own selves, who is telling us what to do – and not some librul hippie government whatever. I know. Obtuseness seems to be our sweet spot.

The Next Great Consumer Society

One of these words does not belong. David Leonhardt’s NYT magazine article on China offers a lot to digest over a week heavily gilded with L-tryptophan, so take it slowly and don’t miss the subtext – what’s wrong with the entire formulation: mainly that the hope of all humanity and the fate of the known universe rests upon China kicking some old-school lavish consumption into high gear.

The larger idea is to build a more sustainable economy, or what Chinese leaders have called a balanced and harmonious society. In that economy, families would not have to save 20 percent of their income in order to pay for schooling and medical care, as many do now. They would instead be able to afford more of the comforts of modern life — better housing, clothing, transportation and communication. In time, China would become the world’s next great consumer society.

Okay, it’s sounds good, especially with sprinkles of harmony, but which of these ideas don’t go together? I know – the whole idea that there can be anything but a continuation of the way things have been is nothing but hippie. But that’s why this whole thing is so difficult and you need to get off the baby sitter, Joel, and figure out something new besides the old brand of consumption. Buy and save the world. You see how incoherent that sounds? well, that’s this plan in its entirety. Read the article – the best case scenario, that China props up the world economy by engaging some kind hyper-consumption mode, is absolutely bleak. How long will that last? Then what? Remember: closed system. Whatever else it is, another fossil-fueled buying spree that lets us all hang on a little longer is not enough… is not it, as the kids say. This is not anti-growth, it’s just a realization that we can no longer see everything only through the prism of growth – as important as that is. So, it’s really a comment on the weakness of this response, if we can even still call it one, of framing the next last best hope on China going down the path we have used to get where we are, which is turning them into us so that we can… what?

remember, also, cycles are for pedaling. In some ways, this is the story of China’s decline before it even starts, and in this way can be instructive. Our future is linked – there are no separate dimensions for prosperity and decline. It is this we will choose/fail to reckon with until we no longer cannot.

May you enjoy your bird with family and friends.

Mmmm… Complex… Issues

Why not use cartoons instead of charts and graphs to make your point? Use whatever you want.

Annie Leonard used to spout jargon. She reveled in the sort of geek-speak that glazes your eyeballs.

Externalized costs, paradigm shifts, the precautionary principle, extended producer responsibility.

That was before she discovered cartoons.

Today the 45-year-old Berkeley activist is America’s pitchperson for a new style of environmental message. Out with boring PowerPoints and turgid reports; in with witty videos that explain complex issues in digestible terms.

M’kay. All good. Instead of being a boring old scold… entertain and scintillate with the latest and the gravest.

In the past 2 1/2 years, more than 12 million people worldwide have viewed Leonard’s animated Web video, “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute expose of humanity’s wasteful ways. It has been translated into more than 15 languages and has spawned a book of the same name, published on recycled paper with soy ink.

Leonard recently launched “The Story of Bottled Water,” a video about how clever marketing turned a freely available commodity — tap water — into a source of profit and pollution, and “The Story of Cap and Trade,” her take on how carbon trading undermines efforts to curb global warming.

“The Story of Cosmetics,” about toxicity in personal care products, will go live July 21. Coming this fall: “The Story of Electronics,” on planned obsolescence and pollutants in computers and cellphones.

Uh huh. I see. Taking the backdoor route to Old Scoldsville, eh? Nice one. But I have a feeling these stories themselves won’t be nearly as insightful about waste nor cause as many people to pause and think about their own consumption as will the many ham-fisted attempts to paint her as a marxist or a communist by well-meaning libertarian ignorati. Talk about enlightening.

The More You Know

About how much power you use, the less you use. It’s a question of isolating the major power-consuming activities and reducing them. First it’s three or five percent and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Google has announced its new Powermeter prototype, which will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to their home electricity consumption on their cell phone or computer.

via.