Leverage Points

http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Lever/LeverIntro.html

As some of you may know I am currently taking my permaculture design certification course. As part of the course pre-work, we were asked to read "Leverage Points, Places to Intervene in a system" by Donella Meadows. Meadows wrote this article in response to things she heard while attending a conference on the new world trade system. A system by the way, which should scare the pants off you. It is a meaty article but well worth the read.  I have excerpt a few bits here that I felt summarize the heart of the issue.  

"There was this subdivision of identical houses, the story goes, except that for some reason the electric meter in some of the houses was installed in the basement and in others it was installed in the front hall, where the residents could see it constantly, going round faster or slower as they used more or less electricity. With no other change, with identical prices, electricity consumption was 30 percent lower in the houses where the meter was in the front hall...

A more recent example is the Toxic Release Inventory — the U.S. government’s requirement, instituted in 1986, that every factory releasing hazardous air pollutants report those emissions publicly every year. Suddenly every community could find out precisely what was coming out of the smokestacks in town. There was no law against those emissions, no fines, no determination of “safe” levels, just information. But by 1990 emissions dropped 40 percent. They’ve continued to go down since, not so much because of citizen outrage as because of corporate shame. One chemical company that found itself on the Top Ten Polluters list reduced its emissions by 90 percent, just to “get off that list.”

Both of these examples demonstrate the power of information feedback. We live in what has been called the "information age". Let's take advantage of the power that information gives us in order to affect positive change. What are some ways that we can establish information feedback loops in our own lives? Are there information feedback loops missing from our neighborhoods, communities and schools that could help improve how those institutions relate to each other and to the environment?

Meadows goes on to say,  "Missing feedback is one of the most common causes of system malfunction. Adding or restoring information can be a powerful intervention, usually much easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure...It’s important that the missing feedback be restored to the right place and in compelling form. To take another tragedy of the commons, it’s not enough to inform all the users of an aquifer that the groundwater level is dropping. That could initiate a race to the bottom. It would be more effective to set a water price that rises steeply as the pumping rate begins to exceed the recharge rate. Compelling feedback... Suppose any town or company that puts a water intake pipe in a river had to put it immediately DOWNSTREAM from its own outflow pipe. Suppose any public or private official who made the decision to invest in a nuclear power plant got the waste from that plant stored on his/her lawn. Suppose (this is an old one) the politicians who declare war were required to spend that war in the front lines."

And here's the rub: "There is a systematic tendency on the part of human beings to avoid accountability for their own decisions. That’s why there are so many missing feedback loops — and why this kind of leverage point is so often popular with the masses, unpopular with the powers that be, and effective, if you can get the powers that be to permit it to happen (or go around them and make it happen anyway)."

And here we come to the crux of the issue. The rules of the system, the strength of those rules,  who defines them and how they impact our lives and environment.   

 "The rules of the system define its scope, its boundaries, its degrees of freedom. Thou shalt not kill. Everyone has the right of free speech... If you get caught robbing a bank, you go to jail. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR and opened information flows (glasnost) and changed the economic rules (perestroika), and look what happened. Constitutions are the strongest examples of social rules. Physical laws such as the second law of thermodynamics are absolute rules, whether we understand them or not or like them or not. Laws, punishments, incentives, and informal social agreements are progressively weaker rules.
To demonstrate the power of rules, I like to ask my students to imagine different ones for a college. Suppose the students graded the teachers, or each other. Suppose there were no degrees: you come to college when you want to learn something, and you leave when you’ve learned it. Suppose tenure were awarded to professors according to their ability to solve real-world problems, rather than to publish academic papers. Suppose a class got graded as a group, instead of as individuals.
As we try to imagine restructured rules like that and what our behavior would be under them, we come to understand the power of rules. They are high leverage points. Power over the rules is real power. That’s why lobbyists congregate when Congress writes laws, and why the Supreme Court, which interprets and delineates the Constitution — the rules for writing the rules — has even more power than Congress. If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.
That’s why my systems intuition was sending off alarm bells as the new world trade system was explained to me. It is a system with rules designed by corporations, run by corporations, for the benefit of corporations. Its rules exclude almost any feedback from any other sector of society. Most of its meetings are closed even to the press (no information flow, no feedback). It forces nations into positive loops “racing to the bottom,” competing with each other to weaken environmental and social safeguards in order to attract corporate investment. It’s a recipe for unleashing “success to the successful” loops, until they generate enormous accumulations of power and huge centralized planning systems that will destroy themselves, just as the Soviet Union destroyed itself, and for similar systemic reasons.

Sadly, I believe, many of us feel powerless in the face of these rules.  I want you to remember that we are not powerless. One person can make a difference. Many people can make a great difference. It is clear that the rules need to change. It is clear that the time for change is NOW.

Synthesis; from "Speed" by David Orr

Photo from Hindustan Times

When we struggle to define a problem it is difficult if not impossible to solve it. A good definition can give as a picture of the issue which begins to point us toward solutions. I his article "Speed", David Orr sums up one of the major issues of modern society in this way:

"Water moving too quickly through a landscape does not recharge underground aquifers. The results are floods in wet weather and droughts in the summer. Money moving too quickly through an economy does not recharge the local wellsprings of prosperity, whatever else it does for that great scam called the global economy. The result is an economy polarized between those few who do well in a high velocity economy and those left behind. Information moving too quickly to become knowledge and grow into wisdom does not recharge moral aquifers on which families, communities, and entire nations depend. The result is moral atrophy and public confusion. The common thread between all three is velocity. And they are tied together in a complex system of cause and effect that we have mostly overlooked."

There is an appropriate velocity for water set by geology, soils, vegetation, and ecological relationships in a given landscape. There is an appropriate velocity for money that corresponds to long-term needs of whole communities rooted in particular places and the necessity of preserving ecological capital. There is an appropriate velocity for information, set by the assimilative capacity of the mind and by the collective learning rate of communities and entire societies. Having exceeded the speed limits, we are vulnerable to ecological degradation, economic arrangements that are unjust and unsustainable, and, in the face of great and complex problems, to befuddlement that comes with information overload. 

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I will leave you with that and with this link to another Orr article that addresses this issue of the velocity of our society.  Take your time with it. Really let it sink in....

Variations on a Theme and The No Waste Home

Thanks to: http://www.newphilaoh.com/html/recycling_program.htm

Waste is an excess output of a system which has not been put to beneficial use. When waste reaches extreme levels it becomes pollution. Let's look at one scenario. If you have 2 acres and you have a cow or two, those cows will produce manure adequate to fertilize the soil. Now if you put 20 cows on those same two acres you are going to have way more manure than you will use as fertilizer. The manure will pile up and rot and create methane gas and when it rains the water that runs off  your property and into the nearest stream can lead to excessive algae growth and low oxygen conditions in the water. This same principle of waste becoming pollution applies to far more than just manure. 

Permaculture attempts to design integrated systems in which the output of one element of the system becomes the input of another element ultimately creating closed loops which feedback on themselves and generate no waste. The goal of eliminating waste from our systems is one of the primary goals of the One Earth Revolution. With this in mind I would like to suggest that you have a look at the blog of a family who have been living the no waste life in spades. They've done it and they are doing a great job sharing the message, so there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel. I'm just going to share their link here. 

Enjoy. I hope it will inspire you to embark on a no waste adventure of your own. Whether it be your home, your office, your home school group or girl or boy scout troop. No attempt is too small and certainly none is too large. Your church, your school, your neighborhood, your village....... Take it as far as you like, as far as you can. 

Trade and Commodities

Trade is not inherently bad. Societies have thrived on it for millenia. Where is becomes bad is when we commoditize luxuries. This is bad not only for economies but for societies and cultures. It is bad for the society that is victimized in order to commoditize the item because their environment is pillaged and their people are subjugated. It is also bad for the society that has commoditized it because they have become so accustomed to these things as commodities that they no longer supply the pleasure that they once did, they no longer have the cultural, spiritual or economic significance that they might once have had. There is a flattening of the life experience on both ends of the equation.

It's OK to have cinnamon, but do we have to have it on our toast every day or in our oatmeal or muffins? Wouldn't it be better if cinnamon cost more, If the people who live where the cinnamon is produced could make a living wage from it and protect their environment, culture and way of life? And wouldn't it be better for us if we experienced cinnamon as a wonderful treat that we enjoyed perhaps only a few times each year on special occasions?

Does anyone remember getting the orange in the toe of their Christmas stocking and what a special treat that was? Wouldn't it be nice if more things in our lives had that same special feeling? They could. It's a matter of our choices, of the rituals and meaning that we attach to things and whether we choose to treat things as luxuries or commodities. 

It's not easy, but it's worth it.

Thanks for this great image: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/almir1968/almir19681011/almir1968101100013/8164239-green-earth.jpg

Just over three months into this and I'm finding that it isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. I set off with great expectations and high hopes of changing the world. I find I'm struggling to meet the ambitious goals that I set for myself and coming up against challenges on a daily basis. One of my primary challenges is getting the family on board. It's hard to keep to those lofty goals when Hubby complains that local paper is too expensive and Son wants to live on frozen sandwich pockets and mac-n-cheese. I push and nudge and cajole and get things done the right way just as often as I can, but there are days when Hubby does the shopping and I have to live with what comes into the house.

So what do you do? I just keep trying to live by example and share new information and research with them when I get the opportunity. I have seen them start to take into account what they are putting into their mouths. Son hasn't quit drinking coffee, but he has definitely cut back and he tells me that he is much more conscious now about how he disposes of things, whether they should be composted, recycled or tossed. Hubby is buying less junk food and candy and snacking more on fruit and veggies. And he didn't complain about the local facial tissue. To give him credit, he did encourage me to get involved in our CSA and is volunteering at the farmer's market and buying local meat. 

All in all things are moving in the right direction and I'm taking a more realistic view of things. Goals are goals after all. Something that we work toward. Of course we do have to set time limits on things if we hope to reach our goals. And there are real pressing issues of climate change, population growth and resource depletion that need to be addressed sooner rather than later if we hope to make the needed changes before it's too late. So I'm sticking to my goals and planning to reach them within this One Earth Revolution. 

I hope you all have set goals for yourselves as well. Working together we can make the difference.

One Man's Journey - Ben Falk TEDx Talk

Ben Falk's journey to a sustainable life takes an all too familiar route from growing up in the suburbs to some eye opening experiences in college and finally to a small farm in Vermont  were he is learning and teaching the use of  permaculture principles in creating a sustainable ecosystem on his 10 acre hillside lot. 

Ben's TEDx Talk takes you through those experiences and shares some of those eye openers. They are the reasons that we need to get in front of the movement for change and really start making some decisions in our daily lives that can have a positive impact on where things are going. It's not enough to just recycle a few things. It's not enough to car pool once or twice a week or take public transportation instead of driving. We need a radical cultural shift in the way we live and consume.

Please listen to Ben's talk and really let yourself hear the message. Don't take a jaded view or simply look away when he shows you pictures of the devastation wrought by factory farming and livestock feedlots. When you see pictures of tanks in the desert and when he talks about the desertification of the fertile crescent stop, really stop and think about what you are putting on your table. Think about your daily activities and about the things you buy. Think about the energy and resource demands that you as an individual make on the planet. I think many of us who are trying to be more environmentally conscious think "well at least I'm not as bad as that one. He's driving a huge SUV and lives in a 3000 square foot house." Well that may be true, but I would have to guess that the greater number of us could be doing way more than we are to make this a more just, healthy and equitable planet to live on. 

On God and Oil

The eye with which you see God, is the same eye with which God sees  you. (Adapted from M.  Eckhart)

I started out on this journey by saying that we need a revolution in ecology, economy, community and faith. I've touched a good deal in this blog on the ecology and the economy part. I've scratched the surface when it comes to community, but I don't think I've even skimmed it when it comes to faith. That has to change because this is a major area of concern in our current spiritual world climate where people are killing each other over questions of faith or using faith as an excuse for subjugating, disenfranchising or discriminating against others.  

While it is not my intention to offend anyone,  I have to speak to my convictions and my beliefs. I'm just going to lay this out there the way I see it. Everyone is free to make of it what they will and take from it what they will. So here it is folks. We need to wake up and realize that we are all like blind men fighting over the appearance of an elephant. Each one "sees" what he believes to be the whole, but his perception is limited and he does not see all. A comparative study of major religions will find that, on the key points and principles, there are more similarities than there are differences. While one group worships many gods, they see that these gods are all aspects of one God. While another group sees God as one, they recognize his roll as protector, redeemer, one who sustains you through your trials, avenger of wrongs, guiding light.....etc. and so on.  And we take it further, to the point where those who believe in one God must fight with each other because they disagree on how he should be worshiped. Have we completely missed the point of the message? When you boil it all down, isn't the message of all faiths that we should love God and love our neighbor as ourselves?  If  you truly believe that, how can you degrade, subjugate, disenfranchise, discriminate against and God forbid... harm or kill your neighbor? 

The truth is that while we hear that people are killing one another over their faith, this is only partially true. They are killing each other over power and access to power and much if not all of that is driven by wealth or access to wealth which in turn is driven by our oil saturated economy. This oil saturated economy is a global phenomena, so I feel justified in using "our". Demand for oil's outputs (fuel, fertilizer, plastics, clothing, food.....it seems like everything we touch these days is tainted with oil) may be highest in developed countries, but the negative impacts of this oil greedy culture are felt the most in the oil producing developing nations.

How many beauty pageant contestants and essayist have dreamed of "world peace". If so many people really want world peace why haven't we achieved it yet? Because we are putting the cart before the horse. Because we are treating the symptom rather than the disease. We have rampant poverty, social stratification and wealth disparity, between the first and third world and within each of these. We are not going to have peace while a minority of people grab power for themselves and step on the necks of everyone who gets in their way. We are not going to have peace while we continue to fight over an ever dwindling pool of resources. We are not going to have peace while some of us continue to take more than our fair share. 

So what can we do about it? We need to STOP and reassess our personal consumption habits. we need to do a true needs assessment and learn to live within our means, and I don't just mean within your personal household budgets. I mean we need to realize that on this finite planet there is a finite amount of everything that must be shared among all of us, and we need to look at what we are consuming and ask ourselves if it is really needed and if we are taking more than our share from the resources which belong to ALL of earth's creatures, not just to the ones with the biggest bank accounts and the most guns. We need to wake up to the fact that everything in our daily lives is saturated in fossil fuels, particularly oil, and we need to start looking for alternatives. It might help to stop and remember that we have been exploiting oil in the current fashion only for a little more than a hundred years. For the ten thousand years of recorded human history before that we survived and even thrived at times without it. And we need to remember that we will have to do so again, in a future that is far less distant than many of us think. Let's revive some of the tried and true method of human survival and invent some new less energy intensive methods to see us through the next ten thousand years.

Walk lightly, live lightly, shine brightly!

First Earth - Earth First

Greetings all. Sorry I missed you on Wednesday. But as revolutions can not be stopped by the flu, we are coming to you today from the couch. Very grateful for Hubby who has kept me supplied with plenty of fluids to help keep me hydrated and get me on the mend that much quicker. It is such a blessing to have a warm comfortable home in which to recouperate. There are many people in the world who do not have that. In addition to my warm comfortable home I am fortunate enough to be able to afford this computer on which I communicate with you and the electricity and internet connection with which to operate it. I am truly blessed.

Thinking about how blessed I am makes me think of the many people in the world who are not, and the future generations who certainly will not be blessed if we don't rein in our rampant resource destruction and develop gentler more sustainable methods of living on this planet. 

The embedded video. "First Earth" takes you on a journey around the world to meet people who are learning and teaching such methods. It also delves in the the very deep, personal and spiritual reasons for the importance of adopting natural building practices. In the interest of blogging etiquette, I will warn you that one person drops the f-bomb early on, but other than that I don't recall any explicit language. 

I hope you will enjoy and be impressed and inspired.