Blog Action Day Post - Fight Climate Change

Well here it is. Blog Action Day 2009. As I sit here in my 6th day of some sort of mild but persistent flu I am still thinking about the environment. This post will likely be short as I'm not feeling well but I have to do something. This is my mantra. Do something. You have to do SOMETHING. Do something.

Amazing that my last post was about joining Transition Town Brixton in South London (UK)as, 10 months later, I find my self a member of Sustainable Streatham (just down the road from Brixton) This might be the biggest step I've taken so far. Feels a bit like coming out of the Environmental closet. I discovered Sustainable Streatham when I was attending an event at Transition Town Brixton. I'm still a member of Transition Town Brixton but I hope that Sustainable Streatham will become a transition town eventually. If it doesn't, not matter. The objectives are the same.

If you're not sure what Transition Towns is you should look into it. It's been described as one of the most important movements of our times and it's just incredible. I first discovered it when I started this blog. It started in Totnes and there were lots in small towns within a year or two of the movement starting, but now it's all over London as well (which I honestly didn't think would be possible). An incredible idea run by inspiring citizens. Check it out and start your own. Sustainable Streatham is likely to be turning into a Transition Town Streatham in the future but that's up to the members.

Our official launch is tomorrow and Saturday at The White Lion Pub in Streatham, South London! Whoo hoo! We're for real.

Final message before I crawl back into bed.

Do something everyone. Do something. The collection of our small actions creates big change.

Thanks for reading.

David

I've joined Transition Towns Brixton!

"Once you have glimpsed the world as it might be, as it ought to be, as it’s going to be (however that vision appears to you), it is impossible to live compliant and complacent anymore in the world as it is."

-Victoria Stafford

I've joined Transition Towns Brixton. I discovered Transition Towns when I first did research for this environmental blog. Transition Towns are in the links on the side over there: http://www.transitiontowns.org/

I'm really excited! Time to take the next step and create change beyond my own personal actions and the eco-footprint of my home!Transition towns is a global movement that started in small town England. The goal is to transition your town or city to one which is low carbon and environmentally sustainable. It's amazing how the movement has gone global. It has spread on the initiative and power of those who simply care and are determined to do something about the problems we face.I've discovered a great blog: If you want to join or discover any information check this out. http://transitionculture.org/

Goodbye Economics, Hello Quality of life

Just in case the last post sounded like the rantings of a madman here is an article from The Toronto Star from Toronto Canada which illustrates just what I was talking about. Although I've put a lot of deep thought into this it only takes some common sense to see quite clearly that GDP is a false prophet. It is completely misleading and drives us towards socities which are measured as economically healthy and yet contain poor qualities of life. We need a new measurement and it has to take the environment into account. When we destroy our industries by eliminating our resources we destroy the very means of our survival in a quest for "advancement." It's insane.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GlobalVoices/article/574754

A better way to track economy's health

'Genuine Progress Indicator' recognizes that when it comes to economic activity, money isn't everything

Jan 26, 2009 04:30 AM
Craig and Marc Kielburger
It’s about time we start doing a little more to rev up the economy.
Here are some suggestions. Get a divorce. Drive over the speed limit possibly resulting in a collision on a major freeway. Sink an oil tanker so we can clean up the mess.
Not the most desirable actions for our social welfare, but in the sometimes-weird world of economics, economists will be cheering.
No offense meant to any of the economists we know, but how on earth is this helping? As the global financial crisis leads us down the road to recession, the gross domestic product is our guide. Recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP – and the economic activity wrought by car accidents and natural disasters are contributors to that all-important number.
You see, when GDP says it tallies the total market value of all goods and services produced within the country, it means everything. But, when it tries to measure our economic health and well-being, the number falls short.
Introduced in World War II to measure how much of the economy could be put towards wartime production, GDP quickly developed into our primary economic indicator. But that was never its original purpose.
Simon Kuznets, the economist who helped standardize the measurement, said in 1962, "Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth."
Unfortunately, we didn’t heed his warning – a warning that could have prevented our current mess.
As industry has grown, so have the problems surrounding it. Unbridled consumerism at home and the two-dollar-a-day wages overseas both contribute to a nation’s GDP. A forest of trees contributes nothing. Clear-cut that forest and the economy swings into high gear.
"Some of the expenditures don’t make anyone better off or even keep our current welfare in tact," says John Talberth, Director of the Sustainability Indicators Program at Redefining Progress. "But there are also benefits that aren’t included in GDP – parenting, housework, volunteers. Those are our quality of life."
Other indicators do take these socially-positive actions into account. Those indicators tell a different story. The Genuine Progress Indicator broadens its scope to account for the societal costs of some monetary transactions and the benefits of some non-monetary transactions.
"In a nutshell, it gives a dollar amount to beneficial activities that wouldn’t be recorded in GDP," says Talberth. "It also puts a negative cost on things like environmental degradation, the time we spend commuting and loss of our natural resources."
It also puts a dollar value on accumulated debt and borrowing – factors that have been leading causes in the current financial meltdown.
"GPI realized that the more we borrow, the less sustainable it is," says Talberth. "You can’t borrow forever."
When those figures are calculated, the two indicators show very different routes to recession.
GDP per capita has more than doubled in the United States since the 1950s as many Americans live the dream of a television, two cars and a house in the suburbs. When GPI takes into account the environmental costs and the debt families have accumulated to pay for that dream, the indicator has dropped 45 per cent since the 1970s.
As Kuznets said, there’s a distinction between quantity and quality. Had we heeded his warning, we could be in a very different spot on the economic map.
Obviously, no economist is cheering for oil spills. We know some wonderful economists who recognize that a stay-at-home mom is contributing more to the economy than a building another prison. So why are we letting these monetary transactions be the primary definition of our progress?
We all know that money isn’t everything. By going beyond our gross domestic product, maybe we can start solving our gross domestic problems.

The End of Economics and What it Will Do for You!

The time to end economics is NOW!

What? End economics?

That's right I said it.

"But isn't economics important?" you may ask.

Well...what is economics?

Economics is a human construct developed by brainy mathematical people to study money. That's my definition anyway. Dictionary.com defines economics as: the science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of humankind.

I missed out the part about the "welfare of human kind." I'm not so surprised as the "welfare of human kind" doesn't actually factor into traditional economics. See that's the problem with allowing brainy mathematical people to rule the world. Anyone that good at math has GOT to have a corresponding emotional and empathy deficit. Either that or its just a conincidence that all my math teachers have been quite cold fish.

Consider the fact that modern economies MUST expand in order to be considered healthy. The entire economic system on which we live and which we depend on for survival is built upon the theory that never ending expansion is the key to our health and well being. Unfortunately we have a finite number of resources on this planet. The more we expand and use them up, the more scarce and expensive they come and the more unstable our economies become - which leads catastrophic economic meltdown like....

...a complete lack of credit and the failure of the world's financial system.

But that would never happen. Would it?

I was recently on treehugger.com and noticed an interview with David Suzuki under the radio links. David Suzuki is Canada's premier environmentalist. Listen to what he has to say at the following link.

http://ads.treehugger.com/thtv_files/audio/TH%20Radio/Podcasts/TH%20Radio%2024.mp3

Consider this: If the concept of never ending expansion of economic activity (ie. use of resources expands on a never ending scale) is impossible then we MUST go through recession and economic hard times every few years or decades and, perhaps, massive depressions every 70 - 100 years or so.

Now, with the current financial crisis at hand, we have the chance to fix this fatally flawed model and to save ourselves and our planet. I mean, massive changes are going to be made to our economic models and the way we define wealth as a result of this so let's get it right. This means that you will have a more secure future, be able to make more money long term, will live in a less polluted world, enjoy greater health, and a more positive outlook for your children. It all boils down to sustainability. Economists have created an unsustainable system which only measures money and it's exchange as the basis for our well being. It's time we factored our resources, our health, our quality of life, and the legacy we leave behind for our children into the equation. How do we do this?

Listen to David Suzuki and come back another day for some ideas

Next up: GDP - Gross Domestic Product or Gosh Darn Problem?

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See & The Manpollo Project

Watch this video folks. It could change your life.

The Most Terrifying Video You Will Ever See
There is now a link to this video and the follow up videos that were posted on YouTube in the upper right hand corner of this blog.

The Manpollo Project
The Manpollo Project is a simple to follow index of the follow up videos to The Most Terrifying Video You Will Ever See. It's useful because when you're on YouTube the videos don't appear in the correct order and you have to keep searching for them. It was created by someone other than the original person who posted on YouTube under the name Manpollo Project after the name of one of the videos in the series.


Take your time and watch them all over the next few days or weeks. If it does nothing more than improve your ability to think critically and to understand the nature of science then it has served its purpose. Very impressive and mind expanding stuff.

Here's the Effortless thing you can do. Email it or send it to friends. Spread the word. Now THAT'S easy.

Who Knew Gore Could be so Inspirational

Here's an article about Al Gore at the climate conference in Bali. Seems I'm not the only one to draw the line between the inaction on climate change and the inaction on Nazism in WWII.

Gore Urges Climate-Change Action Regardless of U.S.

By Kim Chipman and Gemma Daley

Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore urged countries to aggressively move ahead on a new global climate change treaty in the face of opposition from his home country.

Nations pushing to set tough new mandatory limits on global warming pollution must ``find the grace to navigate around this enormous obstacle,'' Gore told delegates on the Indonesian island of Bali at United Nations-sponsored talks on climate change.

Gore's criticism of the U.S. received applause from delegates. The Bush administration's refusal to accept specific emissions-reduction targets is spurring division at the UN talks, with the European Union and China insisting on targets. The Bali meeting is aimed at starting negotiations for a climate accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012.

``I'm not an official of the U.S. and not bound by official niceties,'' said Gore, 59, who earlier this week received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising awareness of climate change. ``I'm going to speak an inconvenient truth: my own country --the U.S. -- is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.''

Gore urged delegates to move past their anger at the U.S. and forge ahead with the understanding that Bush will be leaving office in almost a year. A new administration, whether Democrat or Republican, probably will embrace more climate-friendly policies, he said.

`Blank Space'

``Do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large, open, blank space in your document and put a footnote by it,'' Gore said. Negotiators should write: ``This doc is incomplete, but we are going to move forward anyway.''

Gore also stressed that mandatory emissions targets must be part of a climate treaty that takes effect in 2010, two years before the current pact expires.

``We can't afford to wait another five years to replace Kyoto,'' Gore said, adding that some scientists say the world may have less than 10 years to start curbing emissions to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

Gore cited recent floods throughout Africa, fires in the U.S., droughts in Australia and ``massive flooding'' in Mexico, unexpected melting in Antarctica and the disappearing polar ice cap as signs of what he calls a ``planetary emergency.''

``That phrase still sounds shrill to some ears but it's deadly accurate,'' Gore said. ``These and other challenges are getting more difficult to ignore.''

Climate Research

More than a century of climate change research, including this year's findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, says that the burning of fossil fuels through cars, power plants and other human activities is causing the world's temperatures and sea levels to rise.

The IPCC said earlier this year that humans are very likely contributing to climate change, and the planet's warming emissions must peak in 2015 and then begin to decline to avoid large scale, irreversible climate shifts.

``Why haven't we yet reacted?'' Gore asked. He later compared what he considers the passivity of some nations in the face of the ``climate crisis'' to world leaders in 1938 who didn't take seriously the threat of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Gore's appearance at the UN climate talks put him back in a familiar arena. As former President Bill Clinton's vice president, Gore spearheaded efforts to persuade countries to reach agreement on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which came close to collapsing several times.

Gore's Influence

``When Gore came to Kyoto as vice president, he gave a speech that turned the negotiations around,'' David Doniger, former head of climate policy at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, said in an interview after Gore's speech today.

``He also did a lot of work in the back rooms that turned the negotiations around, and I think he's doing that again,'' said Doniger, now policy director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ``I'm sure he's working face- to-face in the back rooms to give people the fortitude and the courage to do this.''

The UN meeting, which is set to end tomorrow, has attracted politicians including Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spoke in Bali today.

Shifting Attitudes

Like Gore, Bloomberg stressed the shifting attitudes in the U.S. toward climate change, exemplified by legislation in Congress to cap national carbon emissions. The climate bill was approved by a Senate committee last week.

``The fact that our Congress is seriously debating cap-and- trade legislation shows just how far America has come in just the last year,'' Bloomberg said in a speech at a Bali event sponsored by Environmental Defense, a New York-based advocacy group.

Bloomberg called for ``robust public debate'' on caps and a tax on all U.S. oil, natural gas and coal producers to encourage reduced use of fuels that contribute the most to air pollution and global warming. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, at kchipman@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: December 13, 2007 11:55 EST

Do Something!

An Great Article from the London Times

From The Times

November 8, 2007

Wake up and smell the smoke of disaster

Camilla Cavendish; Why are we so cool about climate change?

A collective groan in the office when I mutter that I might write about the UN's “state of the planet” report. What a turn-off: gloomy stats about mankind changing the weather, and destroying species and forests.

Environmentalists may get off on climate porn, but most people just turn away. “If it was really so bad, they'd do something,” says one colleague, without specifying who “they” are. The human tendency to convince yourself that everything is OK, because no one else is worried, is deeply ingrained.

Psychologists studied this phenomenon after the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese. She was repeatedly attacked, outside her New York flat, by a stranger over the space of half an hour. Witness to that event were 38 people who stood at their windows but did not even dial for help. They just peered into the dark, listening to her screams, until she died.

John Darley and Bibb Latané later ran a series of experiments that confirmed that the more people who witness an event the less responsible any one of them feels. We assume that someone else is better qualified to respond. We are afraid to be the only one to make a fuss. “Social etiquette” trumps common sense.

Background

• Today’s forecast: another blast of hot air

• The inconvenient truth about Al Gore

• Pay-as-you-throw rubbish tax approved

• Pope urges young people to take care of the planet

Our tendency to shrug off responsibility seems to hold true even when we ourselves are in danger. Darley and Latané asked a series of college students to sit in a room and fill out a questionnaire. When smoke started to pour into the room through a vent, the others, all actors, ignored it and went on writing calmly. Ninety per cent of subjects copied the actors, even when the smoke became so thick that they could barely see and were coughing. But subjects who were alone in the room, under the same conditions, almost all reported the smoke as an emergency. That is an astonishing finding - that the inaction of other people can make us underestimate threats to our own safety.

In the past few weeks we have been told, by reputable sources, that the oceans are warming faster than anyone predicted. That species are becoming extinct a hundred times faster than fossils record. That fresh water supplies, critical to food production, are under strain. That we are approaching tipping points that may make climate change irreversible. This stuff makes me feel pretty desperate. I would think that other people would worry too. But then I go to the office, and to friends' houses, and no one mentions it. Nor do the politicians.

I am not claiming that there is a conspiracy of silence about environmental issues. On the contrary, some people argue there is too much noise. In most British offices, as the wisps come up the vent, the influence of the media probably means that there is more than one person looking concerned. But not a critical mass. When Darley and Latané put three non-actors in the room, they were more likely to call for help. But still only a third did.

It is human nature to wait for someone else to go first. So despite the noise from green groups, we look for get-out clauses. We blame India and China, or big corporations. People who write cheques to save cute monkeys from extinction also buy soap and margarine made from palm oil, whose production is devastating the tropical forests where the monkeys live. People who buy cloth shopping bags to reduce waste then fill them with water in plastic bottles that are shipped to China to be burnt. The part of our brain that is programmed to imitate dominates the part cued to self-preservation — especially when the threats are complex and long-term.

Could we send the herd in the other direction? Maybe. Ten years after Darley and Latané defined the bystander effect, another professor taught his pupils to overcome it. Arthur Beaman showed students films of the smoke experiment. He explained the psychology. And in future those students were, apparently, almost twice as likely as others to react to help other people.

Given the importance that companies and governments apparently place on environmental issues, it is astonishing how little attention has been paid to the psychological aspects.

Two years ago a small study for the Sustainable Development Commission found that UK households that generated their own energy, through solar power, wind turbines or air source heat pumps, became more likely to conserve energy. They would buy A-rated appliances and turn things off.

This didn't just apply to rich eco-fanatics: it applied equally to social housing tenants. Irrespective of whether they had chosen it or not, the process of generating their own energy seems to have given many people an “emotional connection”, says the study. The visibility of the solar panels or wind turbines made them proud to be pioneers.

In January I counted a Toyota Prius hybrid car on almost every one of the rich streets in a part of London just east of my house. Yesterday I did another count. They seemed to have spawned into two or three. That is the power of imitation, for people who can afford it. But how do you get other people to imitate behaviour that is less visible: buying less, travelling less or changing their electricity supplier? The answers must surely lie in social etiquette. If we are programmed to act like lemmings, then we must give some people incentives to break out and publicise their activities. Opinion- formers need to make visible changes in their own behaviour, which they have notably failed to do.

But the smoke is coming up through the vent. If enough people start talking about the smoke, perhaps others will start to see it too. And if enough people act, the rest may follow. For that, it seems, is human nature.

Kill Standby Drainage With this Handy Device

I've discovered a great new store called Nigel's Eco Store - www.nigelsecostore.com

Direct link to the product is: http://nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/OneClick_IntelliPlug.html

On it I discovered this lovely little device. Granted its not sexy but what it does is quite exciting! You can get it elsewhere but here they explain what it is, how it works and, perhaps most importantly, that is recommended by the Energy Saving Trust. I've already recommended this organisation so I trust that this device does what it says it does. Also it was a good deal cheaper than some other similar devices I've seen out there.



Here's the description:

Plug your desktop computer into the master socket on the IntelliPlug, and your peripheral devices (printer, monitor, scanner, etc) into the other sockets and when you turn your computer on (or off), the IntelliPlug detects this and turns everything else on (or off) - saving you the hassle, and most importantly, stopping you from leaving them on standby.

• Leaving appliances on standby wastes a huge amount of energy, making the IntelliPlug a great tool for helping you to live a more eco-friendly life.
• It will also work with your hi-fi amplifier and separates (CD player, tuner etc).
• Recommended by the Energy Saving Trust, it has received a number of excellent reviews.
• Specification:
  • - this unit will automatically determine the on and off power level of any desktop computer or hi-fi audio visual amplifier to automatically power peripheral equipment, only when in use.
  • Lowest standby power of 0.4 of a watt saving an average 35 watts per hour depending on the number of connected peripherals.
  • Reaction time 5 seconds.
  • Maximum Power 13 amps.
• This product can pay for itself in less than a year of use.
• PLEASE NOTE: NOT SUITABLE FOR LAPTOPS