Sustainability in Practice

This blog has been rather neglected, while my other blog has been updated at least occasionally. So I decided it merits a short update.

I know the sustainability is fun to talk about, and personally I spend the majority of my spare time arguing that sustainable development should be the only kind of development. (Yup, it's definitely not spent on StumbleUpon.) Discussing the concept doesn't explain how it can be implemented. Sustainable industries put as much of a resource back as they extract, so industries like fishing and logging could be sustainable without much difficulty. Resources like energy and transportation are more difficult, while metal extraction will never be sustainable.

The following are my personal favorites. If you have other ideas, post a comment and I'll add it to the list. Unlike many lists online, these result in very little extra cost or effort, and have distinct benefits. More extensive lists are of course useful, but not if you're trying to convince people to start doing anything. I imagine many of you already do most of this, but you can pass this on to some of your friends, and they can pass it on, and all our problems will eventually be solved. =D!

• Replace paper and styrofoam coffee cups with a traveller's mug. It saves a lot of waste, it's more comfortable and keeps your coffee hot longer, and all it requires is washing your mug out afterwards.
• Buy Fair Trade coffee, certified with the most common logo by Transfair, and beware of imitators. Fair trade coffee is just as expensive as normal coffee, but results in much more being given to the farmer rather than to some giant wholesaler. Coffee is not a high-value product, since it can be grown in many places, and so by buying Fair Trade you are supporting some of the most disadvantaged communities in the world, rather than the wholesaler who gets all of the profit from normal coffee.
• Bike. You've probably been told not to drive your car a zillion times, but biking is the best way to get around within a city. There are huge benefits, but you do have to accept the risk of falling or getting hit by a car if they're pulling out and don't notice you. I don't have hard statistics, but driving is probably more fatal than biking and biking probably has a higher risk of injury, so it's certainly not more dangerous. And it's way better for you.
  
• Buy local food, usually from markets: it's the best food you can find in a city. The food is way tastier and more varied than what supermarkets have to offer. At Safeway, you can get a soggy red tomato. At the Granville Island market in Vancouver, one stall had delicious tomatoes in colours from bright yellow to green to dark purple. Variety is also much better for plants in the long run, because having one type be standard means that the entire crop can be wiped out by a threat affecting that type. And obviously it's much better for the environment if your food doesn't come from halfway across the world. And if you miss having mangoes in winter, then stores like Capers or Whole Foods (in the US) might have ones grown in greenhouses closer by.
• Buy wood from the Forest Stewardship council. Forests are great national treasures and required for our prosperity. Canada is blessed with some of the most beautiful forests in the world, and in great quantity. Thankfully in Canada loggers must replant what they cut down, and we have national parks to preserve the old-growth forests, but not all countries are so eco-conscious. The Forest Stewardship council is an independent, non-profit organization that certifies sustainable loggers, so that you know that no matter where your paper comes from, these gems of nature will continue to exist. The alternative, deforestation, is not only unwholesome but can lead to poverty because wood is required for many societies. Possibly the best example of the difference is illustrated by satellite photos of the Haiti-Dominican Republic border (I'd suggest looking them up right now.)
• Similarly, buy fish from the Marine Stewardship Council. Our stocks of fish are steadily (or rapidly) being depleted, and while it's possible, but not guaranteed, that fish stocks can recover, this slow process is much less efficient than fishing sustainably. Fish farming is an environmental disaster and is no substitute for wild fish. If you'd like your children to be able to eat tuna and salmon, you should make sure the fish you eat now isn't going to prevent that.
• Do NOT drink bottled water! There is no reason that you need a bottle from China, water from a place like Fiji, France, or some tap in America (Dasani and Aquafina are purified tap water) when you can have a reuseable bottle. Most Canadian water is spring water already, and if there's some metallic taste then you can buy a water filter. But please do not get water from around the globe- it doesn't make sense.

And I'm done.

Achieving Change

There are essentially two ways of effecting change on a large scale, and these are top-down and bottom-up actions. Top-down is the traditional way people think change occurs, which is where the government says, "Hey, you silly people, start doing things this way." This works fine in dictatorships, or for example feudal Japan, where the Shogun stopped problems of deforestation by placing strict controls on lumber cutting. In democracies, the government has no right to decree anything other than the will of the people. It should not, and generally cannot, tell the people to start doing something a different way. Activists often forget this when they think, "Oh, we just have to convince the government to do it and then that's that." The other problem with this kind of change is that corporations know that convincing a few politicians is easier than convincing the whole population through mass propaganda, so getting anti-corporate legislation through government is quite difficult.

The other type of change is bottom-up, and this is a lot harder to achieve but is ultimately the superior form, which involves communities banding together to make decisions for themselves. This is change that is enacted by individuals, and it ranges from a town deciding to act against development near the local natural reserve to entire cities of people rising up to protest social injustice (like the civil rights movement, or the privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia.) This requires effort from large numbers of people, which is why, in comparison with forming a special interest lobbying group, this type of change is difficult, but it's ultimately far more effective than any government decree. (Unless this government is authoritarian, in which case it's arguable which is more effective.)

The purpose of activism is to engage enough people to convince the public to act against the problem, and thus motivate the government to take action on our behalf. Bottom-up change is all well and good, but it's hard to motivate an entire nation to change, and only the government had authority over all areas of the nation (or province, in the case of local governments.) The most effective way of achieving change is bottom-up actions leading to top-down policies. Unless we make the sacrifices and take the steps toward confronting a problem, however, the government will not magically step in and solve the problem. Change starts with the individual.

The Image of my Idealism

I do not consider myself a hopeless idealist, but rather a realistic optimist. I have strong ideas on what humanity is doing wrong, as well as not entirely coherent ideas on how we could do better. I don't have a practical plan for change, which is why I am not open about the ideals that I have. My older brother once frankly stated that I'm not passionate about anything. In a sense, he's right because, as you may have already noticed, I am introverted and generally calm, but on the other hand he's wrong because I do feel quite passionately about certain issues. However, passion without a focus is merely wasted, and so I present to you the focus of my passions, such as they are.*

We are at a pivotal moment in human history. Our actions at this point can lead humanity to a golden age of global prosperity, or to a bleak future with lower standards of living, a crippled environment, and continued inequality. No matter what, the status quo will have to change, whether through deliberate change, or global constraints forcing us in a certain direction. The Western rate of consumption cannot be sustained, and while we can choose changes that minimize the impact they have on our standard of living, there will be an impact. Economically, the inequality between the poor and rich in our society is troubling, but it's hardly significant compared to the inequality between the developed world and everyone else. Addressing these problems will require social change, such as better education and transparent government. But the very first step is the hardest one, and that is convincing ourselves that we can make a difference and pressuring our society to critically examine itself.

Obviously, I have not yet taken this first step either. The one concrete action that I could be proud of, eliminating meat from my diet, is now replaced by an only half-assuaged guilt that I tried and failed. (If this is news, then the reason I switched back is because I was losing weight, and I am already "anatomically impossible," as someone once told me.) However, I could not exist in the world, such as it is, and continue living without eventually having to confront it, and thus myself.

The world I envision is the only one that I view as sustainable in the long run. Sustainability is a concept that essentially represents environmentalism (among other things,) and so in this long-term society we will be producing and consuming at a sustainable level. That does not mean we go back to Stone Age style lives, but technology will be so refined that we will lives that are better in unpredictable ways. This is because technology grows exponentially, as one invention leads to the applicability of a current invention and opens the window for new innovation.

Part of the reform of our society will involve the improvement of public government and education. Currently, the very best form of government we've developed is still shackled to problems associated with money and the abuse of power, and transparency is the best way to improve these problems. Public education is also flawed, especially, it seems, in North America, and I have some concrete ideas about how to improve it, but our legislative bodies don't seem to concerned with fixing the status quo. This two actions will be necessary to improve democracy within our own countries, so that we can start having more realistic long-term foreign policies. The kind of policies that people outside of our world actually agree with, rather than resenting and often hating us for them.

We cannot have a model of society based on extreme exclusion with pockets of inclusion, and the majority of the world is rejecting our model and choosing policies that do not lead to mutual benefit. Cooperation for mutual benefit, rather than the benefit of the more powerful party, is the only way that a truly global society can work, unless you think that fascism is an acceptable way to run a planet. Therefore, in my ideal world, your likelihood of living, and eventually your likelihood of enjoying a prosperous life, will not depend in the slightest way on where you happened to be born.

It does not seem to me that this is a particularly far-fetched vision of the future, and I don't believe it is particularly subjective or dependent on political affiliation. There are certain requisites for our long-term survival, and I do not think that the fundamentals, like a robust environment or global equity, are debatable. Now that you know where I am aiming, in further posts I will outline how I plan to get there. The coming years should make for rather interesting ones- quite a time to be alive, wouldn't you say?

*- I'm passionate when I'm drunk. Fancy that! Drunken passions don't really count, though.

The Economics of Vegetarianism

I'm planning to write a paper about the economics of vegetarianism. Like, a scholarly article type of paper, with research. So far, I've written nothing, but I'm just sharing my plan as I have nothing else to write on this blog.

I'm also doing research in global warming, but progress is impeded by laziness and by the fact that issue is more complicated than I thought.

Global Warming- Short post

Hey. This post is just to say that if you're at all curious about the science surrounding the global warming debate, check out http://www.realclimate.org/. It's a blog with posts written by climate scientists with references to scientific journals. Useful information.

(This post will be deleted when I write a real post about global warming. You probably didn't notice, but I removed my posts on the subject from my other blog.)

Soy Juice

I don't drink very much milk-like liquids, but I do need something to put in my cereal, so I buy soy milk. For those that are milk purists, it's fine with me if you call it soy juice, as that's a more accurate descriptor of what it is, but less accurate for what it substitutes. Nutritionally, milk and soy juice are similar in that both have high values of calcium, proteins, and vitamin D. Soy wins because its fats are unsaturated while milk's fats are saturated.

In terms of taste, soy milk fails abysmally. It doesn't taste that bad- people's opinions vary from "good" to "I'd rather drink seawater," but I think you'll find that the chocolate or vanilla flavoured versions are fairly tasty, unless you really despise it. One reason people prefer milk is biological- we drink milk when we're first born (not sure how that tastes) and drink it often for most of our childhood. Our basic food preferences are mostly established during early childhood. So it's possible that if a child drinks soy milk from an early age, said child will enjoy it throughout their life. Personally, I find that milk is alright, soy milk is kinda weird, but both taste the same in my cereal.

The reason I drink soy milk is certainly not one of taste, although I obviously don't dislike
it, and it's not because I'm trying to avoid saturated fat. It's because the dairy industry disgusts me. Cows are immobilised in a stall and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, resulting in a dismal existence for the cow, hormones in the milk, resistant strains of bacteria, and more infections of the udders, some of which affects our milk. Yum! I think I'll stick to my odd plant liquid.

New blog what?

I decided that because a lot of my posts are about what I feel are important social problems, I should have a separate blog where I can write about that, rather than just whatever's going on in my life. But because I do very little besides checking out what my MP thinks and sending off the occasional ignored email, I don't really have enough credit to take the high road, and I am thus an "indolent" activist.

So, welcome.