The Story of Stuff
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor May 28, 2009
Did you know that the average house size in the United States is double what it was in the 1970s? I wonder if it isn’t partly because we need space for all of our stuff?- Did you know that in the U.S. national happiness peaked sometime in the1950s, even though we consume twice as much as we did fifty years ago? All of our stuff doesn’t seem to have helped here.
- Did you know that in the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resources base have been consumed to make all of our stuff?
- Did you know that we each see more advertisements in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime?
- Did you know that for every garbage can of waste you put out on the curb, 70 garbage cans of waste were made upstream to make the junk in that one garbage can you put out on the curb?
- Did you know that 40% of U.S. waterways are now undrinkable, and that to make all of our stuff we now have over 100,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today — only a handful of which have even been tested for human health impacts and NONE have been tested for synergistic health impacts? (source)
Today I’d like to introduce you to the story of stuff….
Comments (1)Why ‘Increased Energy Efficiency’ Won’t Save Us
Consumerism, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor May 27, 2009
There’s a lot of talk in political circles on how technology and ‘increased efficiency’ will save us from our socioeconomic and ecological woes. The U.S., for example, is finally getting a little more serious about vehicle fuel efficiency standards, and we’re sharpening our pencils in many other areas as well.
Saving energy is course a good thing – indeed, it should be seen as an imperative moral duty. I mean, on a cold, windy winter’s day, would you wander around the house in your underwear with the heaters wound to max and curtains flailing wildly through wide open windows? Most would consider this obscene. In the same way, producing vehicles that unashamedly consume vast amounts of ancient forest just for a race between the lights is the ultimate in stupidity.
But, having said all that, too few understand that just making something more efficient doesn’t necessarily translate into an energy saving. On the contrary, it has been repeatedly shown that greater efficiency translates easily into greater consumption.
Comments (8)The Corporation
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor May 11, 2009
"If corporations are legally human – what kind of people are they?"
No green website should go without making a mention of the ‘The Corporation’ movie. We’ll go a step further, and make it easy for you to watch it. Many of you will have seen it – but if you haven’t, take some time to do so. Below you’ll find the complete, highly acclaimed and appropriately disturbing documentary.
If this topic is very new to you, read a little background info in the passages below, as I’ll share some text that may help demonstrate why we need to soberly consider The Corporation presentation. Large corporations, particularly trans-national corporations, have become a law unto themselves – the consequences being that this global corporate system is controlling world governments and labour, damaging the environment, destabilising society, escalating global warming, and more!
The Corporation – Duration: 3 hours
Click for more…
Osama Bin Lowrider: It’s All the Same Culture
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Economics, People Systems, Population, Society, Village Development — by Chuck Burr April 28, 2009
Our political discussions and media coverage are far too shallow to be useful. We must go deeper and much further back to understand the world today and learn how to get where we want to go.
Almost everyone misunderstands what culture is. Most think it is soda pop, pop stars, blue jeans, language, and TV. Some think it is capitalism, communism, or progressivism. Some see culture as Western culture or Eastern culture.
Look at the motorcycle picture. The motorcycles will fool you. All of the people above belong to the same culture, as does a soccer mom in a Chicago suburb. Keep guessing. This makes a huge difference in how we understand what is happening today and where we are going.
Comments (2)Beyond Peak Oil and Climate Change
Global Warming/Climate Change, Society, peak oil — by Marcin Gerwin April 26, 2009
A breakthrough
 Photo: Amehare/Flickr |
When plants grow they convert CO2 and water into carbohydrates with the help of sunlight. This process is called photosynthesis. For many years scientists tried to mimic photosynthesis to produce methanol. It wasn’t easy. The main challenge was to design a catalyst that would allow the whole process to work. And it’s exactly a right catalyst that was recently discovered by professor Dobieslaw Nazimek from Poland. His team also found the way to provide the optimum conditions for production of methanol from CO2 and water. If their method was applied on a commercial scale, it could allow the production of methanol at 3 cents per liter (or US$0.11 per gallon) (1). Methanol can be used directly as a fuel for cars or it can be further processed to create regular gasoline or diesel (e.g. in the Mobil methanol-to-gasoline process). And it would be a clean fuel with no sulfur at all. Artificial photosynthesis can be also used to make fuel for electricity generation, heating or cooking. If designed with the cradle to cradle principles and introduced in a socially desirable way, it could provide a meaningful solution for the post oil future and help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Comments (14)From Each According to Their Ability?
Comedy Break, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Marc Roberts April 25, 2009
 Click for full view Courtesy: Throbgoblins |
The wealthy in the UK are throwing all manner of hissy fits at the very idea of paying their fair share to help pull our collective fat out of the fire. They are once again threatening to leave the country in droves unless we all pucker up. Perhaps a concerted drive is needed to finally establish a clear distinction between the concepts of ‘earn’, ‘receive’ and ‘deserve’. These people are deeply confused.
From each according to their ability. To each according to their need.
As the emissions of rich nations continue to rise, the push for carbon capture picks up steam in a last ditch attempt to create tools to save the likes of orchards, fish and humans from the consequences of habitual greed.
Comments (0)The 11th Hour
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 24, 2009
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2174195060267517042
Comments (3)Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Earth Policy Institute
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, Washington D.C., U.S.A.
 Lester Brown |
In the May issue of Scientific American, Lester Brown discusses how food shortages could be the weak link that brings down civilization. In this feature article, “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” Brown reveals that the biggest threat to global political stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by rising demand and ever worsening environmental degradation.
“In the twentieth century, dramatic rises in grain prices resulted from poor harvests. They were event driven and short-lived,” Brown says. “In contrast, the recent escalation in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to reverse the rise in food prices without a reversal in the trends themselves.”
Demand side trends include the addition of more than 70 million people to the global population each year, 4 billion people moving up the food chain—consuming more grain-intensive meat, milk, and eggs—and the massive diversion of U.S. grain to fuel ethanol distilleries. On the supply side, the trends include falling water tables, eroding soils, and rising temperatures. Higher temperatures lower grain yields. They also melt the glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau whose ice melt sustains the major rivers and irrigation systems of China and India during the dry seasons. Without a massive intervention to reverse these three environmental trends, Brown argues, more and more states will fail, ultimately threatening civilization itself.
In the article, Brown discusses measures to reverse the trends. “Among other steps,” he says, “it will take a massive restructuring of the world energy economy similar in scale and urgency to the wartime restructuring of the U.S. industrial economy in 1942.”
Comments (1)Play the McDonald’s Video Game!
Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 23, 2009
Today we look at another environmental feedback loop, and also put you in the driver’s seat of the world’s biggest fast food chain.
Over the last few years, the term ‘feedback loop’ has become common terminology. For the uninitiated, it’s a concise way to describe how the results of an activity cause a change in the activity itself – subsequently amplifying the outcome of the activity, and beginning an increasingly rapid, and potentially runaway, cycle of change.
If this all sounds a bit confusing, here are few of good examples to illustrate:
- Increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are causing permafrost in the arctic tundra to melt – releasing enormous quantities of methane (approximately 20x more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2), thus escalating the pace of warming, thus releasing more methane, and so on….
- Shrinking forests, like the Amazon, reduce the ability of the forest to water itself through evaporation and precipitation – thus resulting in a rapid drying and an escalating reduction in forest cover, causing forests to transform from carbon sinks into carbon sources – amplifying atmospheric warming, escalating forest drying, and so on….
- Increased CO2 levels cause the oceans (the world’s largest carbon sink) to become over saturated with carbonic acid, causing acidification and stratification of seawater until phytoplankton (also an enormous carbon sink – using photosynthesis to take CO2 out of the water) are no longer able to function (and being at the bottom of the food chain, this has direct consequences for all other creatures…).
Today we learn of a feedback loop that is more economic than it is scientific.
Comments (7)Earth Policy Institute Press Teleconference – How Food Shortages Could Bring Down Civilization
Conferences, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, News, Population, Presentations/Demonstrations, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Earth Policy Institute April 21, 2009
Teleconference: Thursday, April 23, 11:00 AM EDT
Environmental Analyst Lester Brown: How Food Shortages Could Bring Down Civilization
Washington, DC — On Thursday, April 23, 2009, at 11 a.m. EDT, environmental analyst Lester Brown will discuss how food shortages could be the weak link that brings down civilization. In an article featured in the May issue of Scientific American, Brown reveals that the biggest threat to global political stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by rising demand and ever worsening environmental degradation.
Comments (0)The Gospel of Consumption
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 12, 2009
It’s with a degree of dark fascination I watch as the current financial crisis brings substantial funding to the same people who’ve been instrumental in bringing it upon us – and who’ve single handedly manipulated and destroyed the local economies of dozens of countries (see this backgrounder on the food crisis for example).
The cartoon featured here is one of my favourites from the wizard enviro-cartoonist Marc Roberts, and works as a great intro to an article I’d like to draw your attention to, and strongly encourage you to read (see further below).
Click for full view
Small is Beautiful
Comedy Break, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Marc Roberts April 10, 2009
 Click for full view Courtesy: Throbgoblins |
A journey of a thousand miles begins with etc etc.
As ice sheets crack off and ice cover thins, police crack heads and numbers break records.
Some of that mouse shit might be raisins!
Comments (0)Plastic Fetish
Consumerism, Society — by George Monbiot
by George Monbiot – journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist
Do you remember that unspeakably naff designer accessory, I’m Not A Plastic Bag? The “design”, by Anya Hindmarch, involved thinking up the gauchest slogan ever contrived then printing it on a white shopping bag of the kind old ladies used in the 1960s. Tens of thousands were sold, at mind-boggling prices.
More to the point, does anyone still use one? There still seems to be a small market among collectors – there’s one for sale on eBay at the moment for £179.99 – but when did you last see someone shopping with one? This excrescence was supposed to be the antidote to the throwaway society. Perhaps the bags haven’t been thrown away, but no self-respecting celeb would be seen dead with one now. They are sooo last year. Anya Hindmarch doesn’t sell them any more: now she markets a new range of granny bags (starting at £165), printed with glossy pictures of designer children, dogs and motorbikes.
Comments (0)In Memory of Dorothy Stang
Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 21, 2009
Preamble: I post the following today, as next Wednesday night (8pm March 25, 2009) HBO2 in the U.S. is running the new documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy. If you have opportunity, be sure to watch it. Read the following to find out what it’s about.
If you have opportunity to pick up a January 2007 copy of the National Geographic, take it. It’s easily recognisable by the startling image of a forlorn looking tree, standing alone where was once a thick bio-diverse rainforest. The author, Scott Wallace, unfortunately doesn’t follow through very well on the external connections that are causing the Amazon to shrink, instead focusing on some of the main local antagonists in the battle over the land the forest sits on. Despite this weakness, however, I believe that meeting these characters helps bring the whole tug-of-war over the environment a little closer to home, and in this he’s done an excellent work.
Veggie Garden on White House Lawn
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 20, 2009
We asked for it – a veggie garden on the White House lawn. Could this be true?
ABC News’ Brian Hartman Reports: President Obama’s latest shovel-ready project is close to home — in fact, right in his own yard. In an effort to promote healthy eating, the first family will be planting a vegetable garden right on the White House grounds. – ABC News
The ABC news article says one of the Park Service workers confirmed that the garden will become reality, and went on to state that it will be organised by White House residence staff, not the Park Service staff that normally maintain the grounds. This infers that Michelle Obama will be in charge of the garden, as she is head of residence staff.
Comments (3)
