There's No Tomorrow (Make sure you watch ALL of this video)

This is a long watch, but do watch it. Its illuminating, thought provoking, and sums things up really really well.

It must be screened at every school. They're the ones who'll have to face it. They're the ones who'll need to discard everything we've taught them to be true and right and relearn, rediscover, experiment. All the while burdened with a terrible terrible legacy that we would have left them with.

The energy, oil economy decided everything, and the monetary system that encouraged growth, has needed more and more and more of it. The bacteria-in-the-bottle analogy is chilling.

Growth (as currently pursued) indeed is a huge problem - its a brave thing to call that one out in the current madness for it as the panacea that can bring democracy, solve hunger, provide for all and solve anything at all. 

Alternative energy, conservation, recycling - these are all twigs we're trying to use to try and hold against the ground to stop the bus hurtling rapidly towards the cliff. Nothing will "solve" it unless we relook at - or are forced to relook at - how we continue to live, and how many of us do. 

Our lack of acknowledgement, our inability to understand and react appropriately to this fundamental truth is apalling, scary and frustrating. 

There's no way of continuing the current way we live and hope technology will solve it enough so we can get away without having to do anything.

Thankfully, the movie does suggest a few fixes, and they're all tough. I don't see many willing or able to adapt to live the better life, and we'll eventually do when forced to.

• Question growth, globalization : they're pure bad as practised, NOT good.
• Walk, cycle more since you'll have to. Drive less. Way lesser.
• Buy less. Please. Everything,
• Buy local, seasonal, unpackaged.
• Fight fears and imagined inconveniences - the big ones haven't hit yet.
• Doing "more physical work" is NOT a bad thing.
• Get out of banking/globalized currency - its tough but make a start
  • A few ideas 
    • Potlucks to substitute restaurants
    • Barter skills and services
    • Co-operate for manpower needs, don't always buy it
    • Use everything longer
    • Optimize the hell out of everything
    • Slower, less commercial forms of entertainment
    • Grow some food
• Learn more about the land, growing food, water
  • We've lost half the topsoil in the last couple of 100 years!
  • We've completely lost any understanding of the carrying capacity of a place
• Learn more about building homes from stuff around you
• Re-invest in community - time and effort, not money

The current financial economy and monetary system are indeed a ponzi scheme. Frustrating that we're so wedded to it and almost powerless to fiind a way out.

Sometimes I think our faith in technology is a mere betrayal of our conceit, but it might just be the stupid-filter masquerading as smartness and intelligence. Our total lack of ability to connect the dots is apalling.

Or maybe we're just too scared to ask questions, change lifestyles that deviate from the marketed/accepted status quo.

2048, I'd say, is the new doomsday. In less dramatic ways but figuratively, yes. I'll probably die before that but in a terrible state of mind.

We're soooooo screwed. Sorry, kids, that we couldn;t see this, couldn't behave ourselves and were too weak to improve things in the face of the instant pleasure.

 

Viewpoints : Crises or Crying Wolf?

There's 2 or 3 sides to the world now. 

One set's enjoying the orchestra of the numerous fiddles hired, well paid Neros are playing on an exquisitely crafted stage (to be followed with a master-chef prepared multi course dinner). They tolerate little argument or interference that breaks this engrossing, rapturous music and do everything in their power to try and make sure it continues - forever.

 

The other is a set that is not inside those concert or dining halls - for reasons as varied as opportunity, ability, circumstances, or a mere continuing of whatever they were doing earlier. Many of these end up supporting the wheels that keep the concerts running, without necessarily even knowing about them. Change has already happened to these, in the other direction - and they're paying the price already.

 

Then there's those who see bigger change coming, or even here, and cannot ignore it. Often they could just switch off and get into the concert, but cannot. They're trying to build lifeboats, and arks, and grow food in a pot, and grab electricity from the wind and sun and everything. Everything as it is seems wrong, worrying and worth questioning. The future is unknown but the present is certainly not pleasant. They see what's happening with the second set, the power that the first set possess but refuse to use, and worry even more.

 

Perhaps it always was like this. But the tension seems pretty heightened right now.

Rethinking Growth

Had wondered about what "Growth" has come to mean. 

 

Since then - have read more about this. Chilean economist wonders whats gone wrong with it - and even why growth is a goal and not development.

 

 

Someone then shared the following infographics about how a handful of corporations consume most of what we consume - from http://frugaldad.com/2011/11/22/media-consolidation-infographic/) Dug a little more and here's more worrying stuff about their control over most of world food production and consumption as well.

 

It popped the question on its own - is the whole idea of the large corporation at the root of a lot of problems we face today? This is not a tirade against free markets. In fact  much freer markets can exist with smaller companies, retail etc. 

 

The smaller guy is more connected to the economy around him, to the people working for them. The smaller guy spends locally, and there's less "accumulation" of wealth which then gets more and more abstracted. There's more churn in players, and there's less of a need for 30% y-o-y growth which needs comparable growth in consumption, whether or not people at the other end really need it and totally not clued in to whether we can collectively afford it in terns of depletion of natural resources, pollution and social activity, welfare.

 

The large corporation is a being in its own right and does not relate to any for of humanity - or human needs. Its needs start to supercede everything else - and as long as its "legal" in a given context, its done. Social, moral, ethical questions are frequently suppressed for "shareholder value" (sounds very much like various other justifictions other extreme "isms" have forwarded for their actions over the centuries). It tends to appeal to the carnal, the base and the common denominator, because it needs scale and the easier path to profitability in the shortest time.

 

The smaller guy, the individual and the locally connected business has to factor in variables other than "shareholder value" into their choices. Their personal likes/dislikes, "what will people say", "is it good for the community" are all part of the landscape. Yes, those are "limitations" too - but hey - we're people with lives, not producers and consumers alone.

 

Its a question which is growing more significant in my head, at least, with each passing day. And I daresay the answer is moving towards the black and white from the earlier greys when I was "with it".

Econsciousness : Updates from Around Here

The grocery store next door - SMART - has started charging folks extra for plastic bags. Just a buck each, but you do see some folks getting their own bags or refusing bags for just a couple of things they could carry home.

Also, started keeping aside plastic packaging (milk, bread, cereal, and pretty much everything else!), tetrapaks, etc in a separate container for pick-up by our cleaning crew who said they can make some extra change by selling it at the local kabaadi-wala. A lot of the organic waste already goes to the composting bin. The fill rate for the dustbin has fallen dramatically again!

A couple of more residents in our apartment complex have picked up cycling.

And a lot many are interested in the bottle-in-the-flushtank idea.

The Conscience of Things We Do(n't)

We, collectively, have a very funny conscience. We've trained it to keep it clean with the much practiced technique of not-digging-deep.

So trash put "neatly" in trash bags and picked up by staff on the premises is "well taken care of"

And an emission check actually makes us believe our vehicles are environment friendly

Water from the deep (borewells) is used just like water from easily renewable sources

And because they said its bio-degradable plastic, we can use as much of it as possible

The "re-cycle" mark on so many products makes it perfectly legitimate to chuck things in dustbins

And the colour green or the label "herbal" actually passes for the real deal

Notions of convenience, comfort, even extreme ideas about safety trump responsibility all the time, and the latter is anyhow outsourced - to service providers, manufacturers, the government. In short, "them".

So we can continue with our lives as we have gotten used to. And do as little as we can.

Eco-friendly Ganesha DIY

This is what we did at home last year (courtesy Shubha's efforts). The plan is to do this as an apartment complex level activity this year. Cheap, eco-friendly and gets the kids involved!

Save the Planet ? Nah, just your own skin...

[ George Carlin was one heck of a stand-up guy and I discovered him on youtube only moments ago. ]

So you want to save the planet ? Well, the Earth doesn't really need saving, we do...

I soo agree with the sentiments he's articulated so entertainingly. We're the pesks, we're the problem, and the earth will probably just shrug us off. We're quite conceited in our assumptions of both our ability to engineer forces around us, and our impact on the planet.

Its probably just us we'll end up obliterating, and that is all we can help avoid, at least for some time.

Who we are

"...billions will inherit the results of the choices we make now"

Nuff said.

Update : Found some more...

What The Hell Are We Doing ? At All ?

Three things I caught on the great expanse of the WWW recently:

The Home Project has one of the best made videos I've seen on the planet and its issues. Its long, at 1hr 33mins, but totally worth a watch. Am planning to screen it in our apartment clubhouse over the next week.



This talks about the problems of the planet from the point of view of how it got formed, why life flourished in and helped accelerate the changes that happened over 4 billion years and what the impact that the the last ten thousand years' activities are having on reversing those changes that support life. A sense of whats holistic, whats important as a species as opposed to what matters in the day to day of an individual, and why these are sometimes at loggerheads, is strongly communicated.

Along the same lines, a more direct call to action is made by the Story of Stuff. (At 20 minutes, this is a much shorter video though there's a lot of new vocabulary thats). There's a direct linkage established between our consumption patterns (and the reasons those exist) to the unsustainability of the model.

And finally, the Onion did a satirical take on most people's stated concern about the environment, and congestion. Of course we all want better air, cleaner rivers, less crowded roads. But there are so many others who could do that for us! Of course we know that air-conditioning ends up causing more heat which justifies more air-conditioning .... but right now its a little warm and I'd rather feel cool.

The choices - often for that extra bit of "convenience" - we make today have costs. And the costs may be mounting rather more rapidly than we as a species can afford to.

Delhi loses 10000+ people to air-pollution related causes every year, and 4% of deaths in the US are linked to the same. If those numbers came off air/train disasters, we'd be gunning for so many heads it would shake up governments. But hey, this is not really immediate, is it ? Its just that a huge percentage of our kids will lead sucky, unhealthy lives.

If now is not the time to take dramatic, drastic steps, I don't know where we're headed as a species. Sure, you can argue that "global warming" might have happened irrespective, but the amount of carbon we helped free up (mostly in the last 50 year - just 50!) from its trapped pockets into the atmosphere is something thats not happened "despite us". And its something thats likely to have a huge impact on life as we know it.

But then, no species survives indefinitely. Its just that some of the pointers (listed below) hint that we're playing catalyst towards our own end.

• By the turn of the century, there'll be nothing left to mine!
• The population has trebled since 1950 - I'm actually wondering if lower mortality having been achieved before education/sustainability will really kill us all, and achieve quite the opposite.
  
• We continue to be carbon-derived energy dependent despite having realized its ills a long time ago
• Individually - we cannot seem to take "a little more sweat" or a little extra inconvenience of any form to reduce our impact. This is seen in choices people always make as affluence sets in.
• 2% people hold 50% of our wealth.
• Most poor live in resource rich countries!
• There may be no ice-caps left in the summers as early as 2015 (thats merely 6 years away!) or in the best case, by 2030 (our kids will be younf adults)
• Freshwater reserves, rainforests which recharge them, wetlands which clean it are shrinking dramatically, and we haven't shown signs of stopping-it-right-now!

By some estimates, in another 10 years it will be too late to reverse what we've done. One does get a sense that natural forces are beginning to deliver us the natural equivalent of "one tight slap". Its proving to be so tough to shake off our inertia and move towards common goals of saving our skins. Right now, we're busy adding neon signs and gloss for individual selves in whatever time we have left.

We - are - so - screwed. And we do not even acknowledge it! I might sound like a prophet-of-doom-on-a-pessimistic day, but I think its critical that - starting now - we err on the side of caution. This is one issue where a 100% proof of causes and effects may be available too late.

Update: What really matters to Bangaloreans ... ?