Woods and the Trees

We're pretty interesting as a species.

We experiment, spend time/effort/money to make automobiles just that 5-10% more efficient. Even a light 1000kg car - with 2 passengers - essentially uses most of the power to move itself.

We invented CFLs, LEDs and increasingly way more efficient forms of lighting. To light pathways, roads, streets and places with a near-zero human population or movement all night. In fact, a city is praised for "being well lit" all night even tho the number of bulbs faaaaar outnumber the number of people all night.

We watch "reality" on TV.

We ALL want exclusive, unique experiences.

We want super efficient production - the goal being the elimination of as many people from the production cycle as possible. In heavy engineering, in agriculture, even in software. We also have started replacing consumers with super efficient ones that support "growth" is price/sales - via commodity trading! All so human beings can lead better, happier lives.

We define and seek templates for how to break the mould, think out of the box and chase our dreams.

We all want to better than average at most things.

We believe in notions of equality, fairness. We also use or invent all available ways to assert dominance, authority and superiority over everyone we can.

We want a better future for ourselves and our kids. We're mostly caught up is quarterly results and short term goals.

We want to explore the world for newer, stranger experiences. We are investing heavily into, and using readily, technology to connect more and more with "people like us" and ideas we agree with.

We have more, faster tools for communication. And we do much more tof this:

We have more information than ever. Attention spans have shortened and deep thought has fled us.

We have cut down forests, directly and indirectly. And support "plant a tree" initiatives all the time.

We are all expressing ourselves more often, more widely and more loudly. To an audience that has less and less time, or inclination to listen in toviews other than their own, or to anything thats not entertaining.

We want our impact on the planet to lessen. Starting after we are done buying the SUV, or large screen TV, or 5 more energy consuming devices.

We want dustbins in every corner. So we can "safely" dispose of - read move out of sight - all the junk that we did not need to generate and throw into garbage cans in the first place.

We have invented increasingly complex monetary systems that none of us understand or control anymore.

We spread and support democracy with a missionary zeal. Yet a few companies control most foodgrain, and a handful control most production and monetary flows in the world - much fewer than ever before.

We are inventing shoes that help you feel you're running barefoot. Expensive shoes :)

We fly across the globe as ecologically conscious tourists.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

I don't think its hypocrisy. Its probably some kind of blindness, or at least myopia. We really cannot see the disappearing woods and get caught up in delighting at the artificially grown trees as part of our massive landscaping effort.

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.

Fears

They play on our fears

Only because we have them

And choose let them rule us

We pray, pay and prepare

We cross the line, oftentimes

The "truths" continue to fool us

The spirit dies

Our existence is just that

Freedom is when fear's no more

The lips move, conforming

Speak of goodness and shoulds

What cost, to make us so secure ?

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

Honesty

Like that cigarette packs carry warnings, and scary pictures.

Shouldn't car ads show the 2.3kgs of CO2 ?

Shouldn't "convenient" sachets and packaging show the mountains of plastic piled up everywhere ?

Shouldn't the super-floor-cleaners, and soaps, and detergents, carry "screwing-your-groundwater" signs ?

Shouldn't food mention the pesticides used ?

Its all about convenient truths or inconvenient lies. Some, we just ignore. 

Of course I do not support smoking. I'm just saying we need to apportion our horror and disgust to other equally worrying problems as well. Irrespective of how benign advertising and media messages makes them seem (esp car ads!)

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

R-oh-I

There's an ongoing debate about the need for recharge wells that we're trying to sink in our apartment complex. During this, someone threw in, "I would like to know what the ROI on this is."

This is a question thats brought into many debates - including some at my earlier jobs - as a red herring. Its often done without homework, or imagination, or creative, proactive thought. 

For instance, to continue with the case for water itself :

How valuable is water ? 10/- a litre ? How much would you be willing to pay if there weren't any ? Thats starting to happen to Bangalore! How do you calculate a number for this ? Intuitively, and with some homework about Bangalore's water situation, the answer is reasonably clear - we all need to turn producers, not just consumers of this dwindling resource, and recharge from stormwater drains is a major strategy thats part of this. It also counters a lot of the runoff losses caused by the concretization of surfaces, and its proven to be faster than shallow, surface level water recharging as is done through lakes etc. 

There's also the question of priorities. Whats the ROI on your car ? The fuel it uses ? The LED TV you've bought ? Sure, the answer is likely that its what I choose for myself and the satisfaction and happiness it provides me. But very similar to the same sentiment is the set of choices we make collectively, and the satisfaction those will provide to us collectively. There's also the responsibility that we have collectively that we should not, and increasingly, cannot shirk just because there's a Government. 

Think a little, and you'll see that the ROI question is moot.

I'd opined earlier why I thought apartment living might be unsustainable in the medium term, and now I add one more reason to it - the hardening of the consumer attitudes of our society as a whole. It's unfair to blame individuals for it, for we've moved in this direction as a whole. Our sense of entitlement, and resistance to having to do things ourselves has trounced all other attributes. We live together as a community, locality, city, state, but see ourselves more or less independently, only banding together reactively for certain causes. Go to store-pick from shelf-checkout is our sum total of actions towards living, society and the world around us. Anything else must forst prove its ROI in hard numbers.

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

Who we are

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

Nuff said.

Update : Found some more...

Sustainability : Needs, Possession and Sharing

The Story of Stuff video that I mentioned in my last post talks about how consumption was pretty much engineered to keep the ever higher production capacities going. It mentions that 99% of all stuff produced in the US gets discarded within 6 months! People are egged to buy, buy more and keep buying by messages that communicated the strategies of planned and perceived obsolescence to consumers.

Need ?

Some words thrown in this mix of marketing, messaging are cool, need, efficient, faster, cheaper, savings. Its either a sense of comparison with the rest of the world around you, and often a false sense of missing out on something thats started to define even what used to be basic "needs".

Brushes that tell you they're due for a change. Phones which are so out of date in year that you have not even used a small fraction of its features, but that new one is so much sleeker. Cars which drive perfectly alright, but hey we're not keeping parts available beyond 2010.

Water ? Yes, even good old h2o has gone aspirational with major lifestyle water brands!

Possess!

Even worse is stuff that we use maybe a couple of weeks in a year, but each of us must have!

We have a ladder at home that's needed once is a while. A couple of people asked how much it was, etc, and I suggested they could use ours since we didn't need it at that point. It now gets circulated a lot within our apartment complex and its saved a lot of people a lot of space, money and all of us a lot of needless products sold!

Sharing is a simple tool that will work for a lot many things like it worked for the ladder!

Kids, for instance, see a lot of toys with their friends, and there's an immediate follow-up at home with a demand that the same be mad available. Parents, especially those with busy schedules and decent disposable incomes, by and large give in to "not deny my kids simple pleasures". The alternative, which a few parents around where we live have started practicing, is to encourage kids to interact, and share whatever they have. Not only does it avoid unnecessary purchases (have you seen the number of toys that just live inside boxes and under beds once they're brought home?) - but also helps social interaction, negotiation skills, and a respect for valuation of considered needs and desires over every impulse to own this and have that.

What else can we share ?

Carpooling is a form of sharing as well. Taking a bus is sharing-nirvana!

I remember a whole bunch of us sitting around our neighbour's TV set during major cricket series when we were kids. It was actually a whole lot more fun than watching the matches alone, as is the norm now. Hand-me-downs still keep my daughter's wardrobe quite fresh and there's a minor freecycling movement of sorts in our apartment around kids prams, cots, clothes, shoes, etc!

Its sometimes economics that forces these choices. But I have increasingly felt a need for these choices driving our economics. Built it around services that work for sustainability, and not consumption.

The Story of Stuff, the Price of Things, Etc

Came across this awesomely done video that explains in brief what we've been doing wrong.

I'd written earlier about us not paying for the "real costs" and the need for building those into economic models so long term damage to the ecology, our health, our social structures is tougher to get away with. The video talks about that point, amongst other things. Its a very good way to understand what is really broken holistically.

The sad part is, the consumption led model and its associated economic, marketing theory was sold very aggresively through all the literature created around it, and all the institutions that sell it through multiple fora - both economic and social. Our world trade models, the basis of and assumptions for free trade, and even key economic indicators of growth, poverty and properity are influenced by these motivations and models. Its all pretty broken, and depressing. Modern economists are more or less at a loss when it comes to figuring out fixes that look beyond these problems that have led to ecological, social and more recently, even financial distress across the globe.

I think the solution is not top down, but bottom-up - like the video suggests as well. We need to move away from consumption at our individual levels, and stop identifying and defining our lives through the brands we own or consume and consumer choices we make all the time. It'll force a rethink and change at various levels, and best of all, will lower aspirational stress, improve our conenctions as producers and nourishers - not just consumers, and force the evolution of alternative models for economic success and growth.

Someone please save us

Everyone I know is worried about climate change. But as this article points out - the disconnect in what we do as individuals and its impact on the environment, and on the polity which is responsible for affecting changes to policy for reducing this impact, is so high that most people shrug their shoulders, and, in essence, collectively continue to wait for environmental-doomsday.

I've personally started cycling, and am avoiding "upgrading" appliances, the car, etc for the heck of it. At home we try and reuse as much as possible. I try keeping the showers short and the buckets have shrunk in size. We're now also reusing the "waste" water from the RO filter.

Yet I so easily "forget" to switch off appliances at the socket - lots continue to run in standby. Our apartment's per capita consumption of energy is probably closer to levels in the developed world rather than the rest of India.

Why should fossil-fuel derived energy be cheap and plentiful (not a murmur when petrol prices dropped!)? Why should plastic be handed out with everything that comes wrapped in plastic at the store ? Why can't we calculate the real cost of these ? It should really really hurt to commute long distances in private cars - especially 1/2 people in a car.

I quite like the idea of growing some food on your own - as the article urges - and reconnect to the less specialized roles human civilization used to have. "But I have no time" is the easy one.

I guess human beings really have little time as a species - but looking beyond our noses isn't something we've gotten good at. We'll learn when the flooding happens even more often, and the hurricanes, or the out-of-turn snow, and droughts. Or maybe not even then.

Maybe its ok - whoever said we should never go extinct.

Edit:

For a while we've happily pointed fingers west saying "oh the US contributes 25% for 5% of the world's population" - no more - look at our meteoric "growth" on the pollution charts here.