conference notes - sustainable living conference

omegaTotally inspiring conference at Omega on Sustainable Living this past week-end, awesome speakers, all on the forefront of this new consciousness paradigm. Bill Clinton made two major points: Americans are not politically active enough (hence the Congressional mess - 40 years in the making he said, go vote, not only in the presidential elections), and from here on in it's  all about cooperation and community, win-win for all.

Economist Jeremy Rifkin, who consults the Germany government on how to transition to the new energy paradigm (not enough people listening on this side of the Atlantic yet, oops) foresees the new cultural paradigm arising out of the climate change calamity and predicts a lateral energy and infrastructure development, solar go! - Germany and Denmark are developing it now, America - look there for the future.

Environmentalist Paul Hawken is currently writing a book on loving our enemy: carbon - isn't that what they teach in all the spiritual disciplines, to love your enemy?

Biologist Janine Benyus teaches think tanks to use the natural world as a model for new technologies.

Rob Hopkins of the Transition Movement, which is about living without fossil fuels, preaches local + community + cooperation.

Environmental professor David W. Orr and architect Bob Berkebile are developing entire sustainable communities, not just individual buildings.

Live stream of conference can be watched until December 5:  http://www.eomega.org/workshops/conferences/where-we-go-from-here

Let yourself be inspired!  These are people we need to listen to.

on sustainability

You may wonder what all the buzz is with sustainability and "green" practices and what it actually means. Most of our current manufacturing processes are linear, energy intense and they create waste, thus damaging the environment one way or the other. Just imagine how corn flakes are made (not that I'm an expert). The various ingredients - GMO corn (oh no), food coloring (just saying), high-fructose corn syrup (oh well), preservatives and additives (ahem) - have to be shipped to the corn flakes factory from various locations at the expense of a lot of energy (trucking, gas) and packaging material. The packaging waste of the corn flakes ingredients goes into the garbage or recycling (if we are lucky) stream. Then the cereal is being manufactured (don't like that word for food) by machines with high energy input and some waste products (waste water, steam and fumes, and who knows what else). After that it gets packaged into sealed inner plastic bags and outer cardboard boxes (another high energy/high supply input process) and shipped to distributors (trucking, gas - you get the picture), after that to the supermarkets, where they have to recycle or throw away the pallets/shrink wrap/outer cartons. Finally the cereal gets purchased, and the retail packaging goes into the waste (the inside plastic pouch) or gets recycled (the exterior cardboard box).   Overall it's a process that requires huge material and energy inputs all along and creates enormous waste and pollution.

A sustainable process should require no exterior input of energy or material. It is a cyclical and wasteless process that repeats itself indefinitely without damage or side effects to the environment. The easiest example of such a process is a vegetable garden. If we save the seeds from one year to the next, if we fertilize with compost created from organic home and garden waste, if we use manual labor to tend to it, it becomes a wasteless indefinitely renewable cycle that requires no outside energy or product purchase other than elbow grease. All natural cycles are thus sustainable. Permaculture is such a sustainable agricultural/cultural system (please refer to an earlier post on permaculture).

On the homefront the better our houses are insulated for example, the less outside energy we need to introduce to heat and cool them, and the more sustainable the home energy cycle becomes. The Passivhaus is a residential building concept with such stringent insulation specifications that the house retains a constant temperature and requires no heating system (heating the hot water is another story, and energy to run appliances and lighting is yet another). A Passivhaus also takes into account the heat output from lights, people, and appliances in its energy calculations. There is also a zero-energy house, which is sustainable and generates its own energy needs. A zero energy house may include a geothermal heating/cooling system, solar panels to offset the electrical needs, LED lighting (the lightbulbs are good for 50,000 hours!!! - something like 20 years, and consume minimal energy), triple-pane windows (see a previous post), and a few other new cutting edge mechanical systems, in addition to superior insulation.

Sustainable is the way to go, it is gentle on the planet!

put your money where your values are

In the spring we switched our electric energy supplier to Viridian and chose 100% renewable energy (they also have a 20% renewable energy option).   Viridian is a socially responsible (another worthwhile value) power company that supplies clean energy from local wind power. I found that cheaper is not necessarily better, because this is no longer my only value and consideration when making a purchase.  Oh - I do admit that I buy things at Walmart - where else can I get sewing thread, school notebooks, cotton socks, a sink stopper, pens and envelopes, marshmallows for our camping trip all in one place?  And at Trader Joe's (lots of inexpensive organics).  But then they have certain values attached to them, which I buy into.  Walmart (the new Woolworth) offers lots of different utilitarian things in one place (important since I live in the country and have few specialty stores), and Trader Joe's means organics for the masses.

I am conscientious about what I buy and where I buy it:  meat from local farmers (or venison from our own fall harvest), produce from food coop, local farm stands, or the farmers' market, organic grocery staples in bulk from the coop, eggs from a friend or a local farmer, clothes for myself and my daughter mostly from local second hand stores, pet supplies from the local pet store for the corn based cat litter (and I make my own cat food), 100% recycled copy paper for the office: from Staples (only place that has it), 100% recycled toilet paper and paper towels from Trader Joe's (lots less than the local supermarket), to name just a few choices that indicate clear values.

Imagine what would happen if 80% of Americans stopped buying GMO corn and soy products? And remember, if you don't buy organic they'll keep spraying the pesticides that are killing the bees, which are our main produce pollinators (!!!). So be aware of what values you fund, or don't fund with your purchases.  Cheap is not the only value.

Also see a similar post on voting with your dollars.

be patient!

We have become used to instant gratification.  Information is now available at the touch of a finger.   We no longer write letters, barely even send e-mails or make telephone calls, we text and twitter.  Our attention spans have become shorter, as teachers have noticed, and the movie and TV industries exploit and promote it, which then self-perpetuates. DSC07889 On the material side the credit system has enabled us to buy now and pay later, since we choose no longer to be patient until we have saved up enough money.  Besides houses and cars we can also get everything else instantly without paying for it upfront (just pay Amazon an annual fee and you'll get 2-day shipping on all your orders).  We have lost our patience, we live on credit, and we are banking on a better future to acquire today’s perceived needs now.

The belief that this system will work long-term is also coloring our relationship with nature.  Many don’t want to believe - yet, as it seems - that oil and natural gas reserves are finite.  Many don’t want to believe - yet, - that we have a huge garbage problem.  Many don’t want to believe that we have any number of grave environmental challenges to deal with.  We’ll fix them in the future – or so many still like to believe.  Environmentally speaking, we live thus on credit instead of investing now into our environmental future.  From indigenous cultures we need to relearn patience and a long-term outlook on issues.  DSC07890

Native Americans look seven generations ahead into the future!   We must invest in a viable future for our children, grandchildren, and five more generations out, instead of leaving them to mop up our messes. The Lorax is a good book by Dr. Seuss on what happens otherwise.

why men need women

Women are more generous than men, Adam Grant noted in his NYT article of the same title yesterday.  Yesterday, too, a friend raved about her daughter's female boss, who provides her with benefits and vacation time even though the daughter works only part-time. I am not saying that women make better bosses.  But we are naturally more nurturing and empathetic, while men are more driven and result oriented, the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy.  Yet, we shouldn't want to do away with the guys in business.  Balance is everything, and we need both energies - the driving and the nurturing one.  The article reports that women inspire the men in their lives to greater philanthropy and generosity - i.e. Melinda Gates is the driving force behind the Bill & Melinda Gates philanthropic foundation according to Grant).

I believe that the incoming cultural paradigm is or will be more balanced, more heart based, more sustainable, because we are beginning to realize that strict bottom line capitalistic exploitative yang behavior is dangerous to our health (environmental damage etc) because it is unbalanced.  We need both energies, since they complement each other perfectly.

Women are slowly leading men away from ying domination to greater balance.  The rise of women's empowerment, their greater involvement in business and politics, and their slow and steady recognition as equals attest to that.  Adam Grant concludes his article with the (wise) recommendation that men follow our lead.

why fair trade?

UnknownHave you read about the awful recent garment factory collapse stories in Bangladesh?  Do you know what fair trade coffee or what a fair trade banana is? Well, here it is.  According to Elizabeth Henderson, an organic farmer for 30 years who helped organize the Domestic Fair Trade Association, "a fair price is the right price with a triple bottom line people-profit-earth."

Unknown-2Fair Trade began with such crops as bananas, coffee and cocoa from South America because the local farmers were being exploited in the interest of a low sale price and the biggest possible profit for Dole or Chiquita or Chock-Full-O'Nuts or whoever else.  The idea of Fair Trade is a facet of the "new economics," the newly arising cultural paradigm of watching out for all of us, not just some of us  - the health of the farm worker, a fair wage for the farm worker, a sustainable agriculture that does not harm the earth, a healthy product for the consumer, and a fair profit for the banana exporter/importer or cocoa powder maker.  See WFTO and Fair Trade USA for more information.Unknown-1

Fair Trade is a win-win situation, all parties involved profit from it; non fair trade is win-lose, because only one side wins.  Of course this means that the end product costs a bit more.  But what's wrong with that if in the end we all profit from it?

The DFTA (Domestic Fair Trade Association) now promotes the same principles of health, justice and sustainability on a domestic level.  And, to complete my loop to the recent garment factory disasters, through all our awakening to these issues the beautiful win-win principles of Fair Trade will surely make a leap to the garment factories abroad so those workers can work in safe buildings and work for fair wages.

shark fin soup and hope

If the Chinese are back peddling on shark fin soup, so ubiquitous at all festive banquets of the past, there is hope for changes in our attitude about a lot of other things as well.  I am thinking of idling stances on such pressing issues as climate change, pollution, animal welfare, GMOs, child prostitution, and many other ugly realities.  It seems to me that ultimately our collective indecisiveness on these issues boils down to the hesitance of wrestling ourselves away from the profit-first model.  If we only realized that the wellbeing-first model benefits us all around. Bonnie Tsui wrote this week-end in the NY Times about the changing attitude of the Chinese on serving shark fin soup at important banquets, previously a sign of "honoring (and impressing) your guest."  I was served shark fin soup at several banquets in my company's honor in the late 1980s when we lived in Hong Kong, and was oblivious of the gruesome practice (which I can't bear to describe here, but you can look it up).    Because it has been such an inherent component of Chinese food culture I was really quite amazed to read that "last summer, the Chinese government announced that it would stop serving the dish at official state banquets."

Here's to change for the better, change towards wellbeing, change towards respect of nature and all living beings. 

food forests

Permaculture, although around since the 1970s in Australia, is still a fairly new idea over here.  The word is a contraction of the words permanent, agriculture, and culture (interesting that agriculture, which means cultivation of the land, is so tightly tied to culture - without agriculture there is no culture!).  The idea of permaculture is a completely sustainable agriculture, and more so culture.  Sustainable means that there is no "garbage," that everything we need to live on comes and goes in a permanent, circular, mutually beneficial and dependent, and therefore WASTELESS cycle.  The principle of agricultural permaculture is planting crops together that complement one another in a wildly complex and diverse composition that emulates nature, although it is man-made.  These food forests work at every stratum of the vegetation, from low down mushrooms, herbs and flowers, to the next level of berry and hazelnut bushes, to higher up fruit and nut trees.

This is not a new concept, though.  But then - sometimes we need to revisit old ideas from a fresh perspective and a higher perch.  Thanks to the suggestion of a friend, I recently read the book 1491 by Charles Mann and learned about milpasMilpas are South American planting compositions that comprise up to a dozen crops (maize, avocados, squashes and beans, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potatoes, jicama, amaranth, and mucuna), which all "complement one another nutritionally and environmentally."  Some milpas, I learned, have been in existence for four thousand years without depleting the soil!!!

One of the problems of our conventional farming methods, which is exacerbated in monocultures, is the lack of diversity in crops, because a lack of diversity in the insect/grub/bird population follows it.  This disconnect between agriculture and nature then depletes the soil on top of it all.

I am never advocating a return to the past!  However, new for the sake of new is often short sighted.  In this case we have two inspirational and sustainable agricultural models whose principles are worthwhile knowing about.  (please also visit a previous post on "spiritual farming.")

the meat quandary - in 2 more installments

DSC076982. on eating produce Will Tuttle in his World Peace Dietand the China Study, among many, are fervently advocating vegetarian and even vegan diets.  The two main arguments are that the industrial meat industry's carbon foot print, in combination with continually increasing demand for animal protein due to a still growing (and ever more affluent) world population, is disastrous to our environmental health (which it is), and that  meat eating contributes to, or causes, cancer and other civilization diseases (which it only does under certain conditions, some of which I mentioned in my last post).

Yet, the fact that the vegetarian/vegan movement is becoming so prominent points to a shift in awareness (of the abominable industrial meat industry, its contribution to global warming, and of the unhealthiness of industrial meat and cornfed beef).  Michael Pollan's famous advice to  "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" is good advice for most of us, indeed.

On another vegetably note, the basis for our existence is light, water and soil.  Produce is closer to light energy than meat is.  As we all know, plants grow through direct conversion of sunlight to energy.  When we eat plants we take in sun energy just one step removed.  When we consume meat, we are one step further removed from that light energy because we eat the animal that fed on plants that fed on sunlight.  And incidentally, humans don't usually eat predator meat because that is yet one step further removed from sun energy than meat from vegan animals.

However, as long as we keep subjecting our crops and soil to synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides (and killing the bees along with the birds in the process), and monoculturing our produce crops, and not demanding GMO labeling (which has already happened in Europe, Japan, Russia and many other industrialized countries), we are not achieving that much with vegetarianism/veganism.  We'll keep subjecting farm workers to the health dangers of working in chemically laced fields, big-ag will keep doing its thing with produce, Monsanto & Co. are still on the loose, and we are still ingesting mineral poor and poison sprayed food grown in depleted soil that had to be artificially enriched.  So, going vegetably must mean going organic/sustainable/biodynamic to have meaningful impact on body and environment.

to be continued...