This film is an old one, but well worth a watch and a little bit frightening. I’ve been meaning to do a series of articles on food security and the politics surrounding food for over a year now…one of these days.

Have you read these articles?:

1. food for thought thursday – status anxiety
2. food for thought thursday – another reason to build a stockpile of food
3. Food for thought thursday–one reason why we might be allergic to food

Today’s Food for Thought comes from Jonathan Fields: Everyone wants better, no-one wants change (via Lifehacker).

“Everyone wants to own the result, nobody wants to own the process. Especially when it involves change or disruption to the patterns around which they’ve grown accustomed.”

This article is true for so many things in life. In the context of sustainability, we all want a sustainable future, but aren’t always willing (or able) to put in the effort today to make the necessary changes (I put myself in that boat, too).

It’s an insightful article, you can read it in full here.

Have you read these articles?:

1. food for thought thursday – another reason to build a stockpile of food
2. food for thought Thursday – Australians volunteer
3. food for thought thursday – what does it matter?

The reality is that the global population is growing and growing quickly. We are all going to need a place to live, and for the vast majority of us, that place will be in cities and urban areas. This video comes from the Sydney TEDx convention held last month. Rob Adams presents a positive, constructive approach to city planning and urban dwelling. I really hope that this is how we are planning our cities for the future.

Have you read these articles?:

1. Food for thought thursday–one reason why we might be allergic to food
2. food for thought thursday – space to garden
3. food for thought thursday – status anxiety

Have you read these articles?:

1. food for thought thursday – another reason to build a stockpile of food
2. food for thought thursday–everyone wants better, no-one wants change
3. food for thought Thursday – Australians volunteer

Increased energy efficiency is often touted as a solution to our environmental problems. The more energy efficient our contraptions are (like cars and light bulbs), and the less non-renewable resources we use, the better off the environment, right?

Jevons argues no.

In 1865, the economist William Stanley Jevons observed that despite improvements in technology and resulting increased energy efficiency, coal consumption continued to rise. This idea was adopted by later economists and they explained that improved efficiency lowers the cost of using a resource, which in turn increases the demand for the resource (simplistically put, an energy efficient car is cheaper to run, so you can now afford to drive further).

So according to Jevon and later economists, the more efficient we are at consuming non-renewable resources, the more we consume.

On the other hand, modern case studies have generally found that there has been little increase in consumption due to increased efficiency. Not many people are going to drive more just because they have a more efficient car. The question that begs to be asked however is, how are people spending the savings gained by using more efficient goods, and how much non-renewable resource do these alternatives consume? For example, if you buy an energy efficient car which is cheaper to run, you now have extra cash to buy doodads made from oil (plastic), that consumes electricity during manufacture as well as consumes electricity to when being used.

I’m not at all suggesting that we should stop investing in energy efficient technologies. But as carbon tax is topical, I think it is important to be aware of the unexpected consequences that come with progress so that we continue to ask the question ‘can this be done better?’

Or maybe more pertinent:

‘can this be done differently?’

Have you read these articles?:

1. food for thought thursday – Kinetic innovation
2. Food for thought thursday–one reason why we might be allergic to food
3. food for thought thursdays – peak oil video

I recently saw a very interesting documentary series on why, in the wealthiest period in human history, we are at our most unhappy. The Status Anxiety series is narrated by Allain De Botton, philosopher and author of The Architecture of Happiness.

“The past 200 years in the West have seen staggering increases in wealth and economic opportunity. And yet, there have been no comparable increases in our level of happiness. Despite being so much richer than a few generations ago, we’re often more anxious about our own importance and achievements than our grandparents were. I call this modern state of restlessness and dissatisfaction, status anxiety.” [introduction]

In this series, De Botton explores not only why we are so wealthy (compared to past generations) yet so unhappy and dissatisfied with life but also some of our underlying cultural values and how they affects our happiness as well as our view of the world and each other. He argues that our culture defines ‘status’ as financial achievement and reveals some of the reasons why this is problematic. If you have some spare time, this three part documentary is well worth the look, however he distills the essence of the documentary in a shorter TED talk (below).

Have you read these articles?:

1. food for thought thursday–the world according to monsanto
2. Food for thought thursday–one reason why we might be allergic to food
3. food for thought thursday–everyone wants better, no-one wants change

source

Today’s thought is a quote by Rhonda from the Down to Earth blog. Her post was about being prepared for emergencies but it was this quote about Australians volunteering that really resonated with me:

“They were reaching out to fellow Australians and it didn’t matter that they didn’t know them, it only mattered that they needed help NOW. There are many clichés tossed about these days about the Aussie spirit and what it means to be an Australian, but to all those who think it means us winning at cricket or being the best swimmers, I reckon you just have to look at what happened in the aftermath of Brisbane to know what it really means.”

You can read her full article here.

I did a bit of digging about volunteering in Australia and found some interesting stats:

• 41% of the adult population participates in formal volunteering.
• 46% of women living in Australia volunteer and 36% of men.
• The age group that contributes the highest number of volunteers is the 34 – 44 year old age group.
• The people who put in the most voluntary hours are full time workers, followed by retirees, part time workers and those not in the work force nor looking to be (ie SAHM). The unemployed volunteer the least. 50% of people who work part time volunteer.
• Single parents volunteer more frequently and for more hours than those in two parent families.
• 60% of total donations come from people who also volunteer.
• The sector that receives the most voluntary hours is the welfare sector, followed by the education sector.

I find it interesting that those who have the least amount of time to give (full time workers and single parents) are the ones who give the most. I guess it’s a good case in point for the old adage ‘if you need something done, ask a busy person.’

Have you read these articles?:

1. Food for thought thursday–one reason why we might be allergic to food
2. food for thought thursday–everyone wants better, no-one wants change
3. food for thought thursday–the price of goods

I must be the last person on the planet to have seen it, but I finally watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Now I am one of the pre-converted. I don’t need to hear a bunch of stats and studies to convince me that our modern lifestyle is affecting the environment in potentially catastrophic ways. Just as well, because this doco was more about Al Gore than it was about climate change. I know, blasphemy.

When I watch or read this kind of information, my first response is “right, then what can we do in a practical way to fix the problem?” No need to blow hot air at summits in foreign cities like Copenhagen. I want practical solutions that I can put into action right now.

So I jumped straight on the net and looked into how to become carbon neutral, as Mr Gore suggests. Instead of practical solutions, I became mired in a bog of carbon emissions trading, carbon accounting, and carbon offsetting. The complexities of this stuff is mind blowing.

I started this article with the idea that it would be an “if we do this, this and this we can be carbon neutral” kind of article. You know, buy a tree and you can drive your SUV (as we seem to now be calling then in Australia) guilt free (it even rhymes, it could be a slogan). I’ve learned a lot over the past few days as I’ve wended my way through the climate change debate and so instead I want to try to distil some of the information I have gleaned. I need to write so that I can synthesise and understand all that information. There’s a lot of it, so it might make for a few posts.

What does all this talk of carbon mean anyway?

All living things contain carbon. We breath in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide. Plants on the other hand, breath in carbon dioxide and breath out oxygen. A perfect symbiotic relationship. Through this natural process, carbon cycles through the terrestrial ecosystem, the ocean and the atmosphere. It is absorbed and released, breathed in and breathed out.

As living organisms die and decompose the carbon remains and over millions of years it is buried, compressed and fossilised into coal, oil, gas and limestone. The vast majority of the earth’s carbon (over 90% as I can figure¹) lives underground. Sometimes this carbon is released back above ground through volcanic eruptions and limestone reactions. But the simple truth is that we are digging it up and burning it (and releasing it above ground) in a tiny fraction of the time it took to accumulate.

The world has been industrialised since the mid 1700s. Since then we have been burning fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate. Throw developing countries with massive populations like China and India into the mix, and our use of fossil fuels is exploding. The climate change debate might be raging, but I don’t think you need to be a scientist to see the basic issue hear: in just a couple of hundred years, we have been releasing into the atmosphere carbon that has been stored over millions of years. That just can’t work out well.

Graph from the movie showing the correlation between carbon levels in the atmosphere and temperature

Decoding the carbon jargon

There’s a lot of eco-catch phrases bandied around these days. ‘Carbon footprint’, ‘carbon neutrality’, ‘carbon trading’… I admit that before I did a bit of reading up, I didn’t know my footprint from my emissions.

Carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our everyday activities have on the environment, particularly how the consumption of carbon impacts climate change. CO₂ emissions are apparently relatively easy to measure. Check out any of the dozens of carbon calculators online, and you will see that all you have to do is plug in details of your lifestyle, like how much you travel and how much electricity you use, and the website will tell you your carbon emissions for the year.

Carbon neutrality is the idea that we can achieve zero net carbon emissions by offsetting the carbon we release into the atmosphere (our carbon footprint) with an equivalent carbon offset². Once we’ve calculated our carbon footprint, all we have to do is invest in things that draw carbon out of the atmosphere and store it. In other words, plant a few trees and you can offset your carbon footprint and sleep at night guilt free.

There are dozens of reasons why this doesn’t work, the most important being that until we dig it up, most of the planet’s carbon is stored in the sedimentary rock underground. By releasing stored carbon at an ever increasing rate, we are creating a massive imbalance that the above ground ecosystem and atmosphere can’t handle. And we call this imbalance climate change.

In a 2008 TED Talk, Al Gore shows a comparison between Earth and the planet Venus. Same size, same amount of carbon, but on Earth most of the carbon is underground, whereas on Venus most of the carbon is in the atmosphere. The average temperature on earth is 15°C, on Venus it is 457°C. And it’s not because Venus is closer to the sun. Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus yet Venus is three times hotter than Mercury.³

The biologist Tim Flannery states that “there is so much carbon buried in the world’s coal seams [alone] that, should it find its way back to the surface, it would make the planet hostile to life as we know it.”⁴

Can we buy our way out of climate change?

“Reduce your carbon dioxide emissions with the full range of choices that you make, and then purchase or acquire offsets for the remainder that you have not completely reduced.” ~Al Gore⁵

At some point ‘they’ decided that climate change was an economic market problem and thus the solution lay in the market. As a result, climate change is quickly becoming a money making bonanza. Carbon tax aside, the voluntary carbon offset industry is booming. Individuals or businesses pay can an offset company an amount equal to their carbon emissions and this amount is then invested (supposedly) in projects that will offset carbon emissions. A solution to climate change or a money making  scam?⁶ Many argue that this unregulated market is the latter.

Planting more trees and investing in renewable energy and sustainable technologies can only be a good thing. But the main purpose of offsetting isn’t to solve climate change. Instead offsets are viewed as “an important policy tool to maintain stable economies”.⁷

Below is a list of just some of the problems inherent in carbon offsetting:

• While it may be easy to measure carbon emissions, just how much carbon a tree (one of the main means of offsetting carbon) absorbs and stores is more difficult to measure.
• Trees expire carbon dioxide when they die, when parts of them die and fall off, when they loose their leaves, when they burn in bush fires and when they are cut down. While tree planting is good for a whole heap of reasons, it is only a temporary ‘fix’ to carbon emissions (if that).
• Different trees absorb differing levels of carbon. The same tree may absorb different carbon levels depending on it’s age and size.
• The carbon offset schemes are causing social injustice in poorer third world nations. People are being forced off their land in order to plant trees. People are starving as more food crops are being turned into biofuels. “Offsetting is a guilt-assuaging quick fix for decadence and over-consumption…[that] comes at the expense of people in developing nations, who are once again being punished by Western business schemes.”⁸
• I recently wrote about the potential of soil sequestering. While soil does hold carbon, it is re-released once it is tilled. As modern agriculture uses chemicals that kill the organisms in the soil that absorb carbon, it effectively prevents carbon absorption by the soil. I didn’t realise it before, but carbon storage isn’t a matter of soil v atmosphere, it’s a matter of everything above ground v carbon stored deep below the ground.
• The ocean is the biggest carbon sink (above ground). Carbon dioxide, when mixed with water, creates carbonic acid, which is raising the PH level in the ocean, killing coral and plankton, the very things absorbing carbon in the first place.⁹
• Investing in renewable energy is good, but it is only reducing potential future carbon emissions. It is not actually offsetting current emissions nor is it making the world or an individual or business’ activities neutral.
• Since carbon trading and offsetting has started, the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere has increased dramatically, giving evidence to the argument that offsetting doesn’t work.

The reality of the carbon offsetting market is that it’s a feel good distraction from taking action that is actually effective. To underline the point, this website satirises the idea of carbon offsetting:

“When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere. Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience. First you should look at ways of reducing your cheating. Once you’ve done this you can use Cheatneutral to offset the remaining, unavoidable cheating.” Cheatneutral.com

So how can we take effective action against climate change?

Reduce.

Reduce emissions.

Reduce pollution.

If our world leaders want to make climate change a market problem, then we as consumers can use the market to force a better global solution. Vote with your wallet. Demand more of your government.

Plant trees, invest in renewable energy, buy energy efficient, support sustainable technology, use less, consume less, recycle more, drive less, walk more.

All of these things are good, but there no need to waste your money on dodgy offset schemes.

There is only one solution and that is to leave the carbon where it should be: underground.

References

1. The carbon cycle

2. Carbon Neutral Definition from Wikipedia

3. Al Gore’s New Thinking on the Climate Crisis TED Talk 2008

4. Carbon trading: how it works and why it fails [PDF]

5. Al Gore on averting climate crisis TED Talk 2006

6. Carbon Offset Companies: The new snake oil salesman?

7. Carbon Offsets Wikipedia

8 The carbon offset industry is booming, but how fair is the trade?

9. The acid ocean – the other problem with CO2 emissions

10. The big question: Does carbon offsetting really help in the fight against climate change? The Independent

11. The Carbon Neutral Myth. Offset indulgences for your climate sins

Have you read these articles?:

1. Saving The Environment. Are We Just Lost In The Smog?
2. an energy saving alternative to solar – an addendum
3. tip tuesday – wash your plastic bags

It is Wednesday afternoon. At the time of writing this, we still don’t have a government. Maybe by Friday when this post is published, politics will have sorted itself out. In the meantime, it seems that the top job is up for grabs.

So any takers? What would you do if you were the Prime Minister?

This is an open invitation for you to bring out your soap box. You can be as controversial as you like. Us Aussies are good at criticising our government. But I don’t think we really appreciate the complexities of running a country.

So I’m asking, what is your solution to one of the many issues facing Australia at the moment? Consider the following questions:

• What portfolio would you tackle?
• What are the main problem that you see that portfolio faces?
• What would you do to improve / fix it?
• How would you sell your solution to the people?
• How would you fund it?

For example, maybe it is healthcare that you want to improve. How would you fix the healthcare problem? More staff? More beds? Better facilities? More private care? How much would it cost? Where would you get the money to pay for your new policies? How would you convince the voting public that your idea is a good one?

I started thinking about this just this afternoon. Below is an idea that I came up with off the cuff. It isn’t going to be popular. I even looked up the Federal Budget to find out how much money I have to play around with. Just over $320 billion if you are wondering.

Any policy is going to need an allocation of money to fund it. Below is a graph of income and expenditure percentages for the 2010-2011 federal budget to give you an idea of how the current? previous? government has allocated funds. If you are curious like I am about the actual federal finances you can find more information here.[source] 

My Policy Idea – Literacy and Numeracy

This idea will be controversial but here it goes:

Our standard of education needs improving, especially in the basic areas of literacy and numeracy. The main purpose at the centre where I teach as a volunteer is to teach adult literacy and numeracy. A growing number of students are coming in straight out of high school. It is evident that our schooling system is failing a lot of students.

The way I propose to improve literacy and numeracy is to reduce the teacher student ratio by increasing the number of teacher aides in classrooms. Each classroom would ultimately have at least 2 –3 helpers for one-on-one reading, writing and yes, arithmetic help.

How would this be funded? Here comes the controversial part. We are already funding it. As per the above graph, 83% of revenue collected from individuals income taxation goes to social security and welfare. Of this amount about 40% goes to the old age pension. What I’m saying is, this idea is already paid for.

How would I sell it? I wouldn’t. Assuming basic health and mobility, it would be part of the pension package.

Possible additional benefits? A greater sense of community. Fellowship between age groups. A means to reducing the possible loneliness, isolation and depression that can occur amongst the elderly. One possible way, I hope, of reducing crime, violence, alcohol and drug abuse among the youth by providing positive role models (particularly positive male role models) for children who may lack good role models. I would envision other skills above and beyond literacy and numeracy would be passed down from older generation to the younger.

So, what would you do if you were PM? Share your thoughts, or critique the one above.

I’m not sure that I should be making this a public confession, but I have a history of criminal activity.

It all began the year Roxette’s Joy Ride made it to number one on the charts. It was the first time I remember being allowed to stay up after my bed time and I painstakingly recorded the top 100 off the radio – ‘the best of 1991’ for my personal music collection. And I still have that cassette somewhere.

With today’s technology, it’s pretty easy to copy copyrighted material. I have a stack of recipes photocopied from library books, a friend burned me a copy of a CD, I’ve downloaded music off YouTube, visited bit torrent sites, placed a DVD on hold at the library with the explicit purpose of copying it for future use…

There is no end to my criminal activities.

I was mistakenly under the impression that copying things for ‘private use’ was ok. However, after checking out Australia’s copyright laws, I’ve been set straight.

You can view an information sheet (PDF) on Australian copyright law in regards to personal use here, care of the Australian Copyright Council. But to summarise you are allowed to:

• Time-shift
• Format-shift; and
• Space-shift.

Time-shift

You can record something from TV or radio for viewing or listening to at a time more convenient, but not in order to increase your personal library of movies and programmes.

Format-shift

You can make a  copy of books, periodicals, photographs and videos (not DVDs) that you already own, into another format (must be a different format, must only be a single copy and if you sell or give away the original, your copy will be a copyright infringement). And most importantly:

"…you cannot, for example…copy a video owned by a friend or items borrowed from a library.”

Space-shift

You can make multiple copies of a sound recording that you own into any format for private use, ie you can copy a CD onto your iPod, and you can lend music to other members of your household (although I consider listening to some of DH’s music a crime).

Oops.

It’s definitely frugal to make a copy of something for free rather than pay for it. But does that make it ok?

In the effort to save a few dollars here and there, we don’t always view copying material for our own personal use as being something illegal or amoral and it’s something that most of us do at least a couple of times in our lives if not on a regular basis.

Obviously, after admitting I partake in this kind of behaviour, I can’t come out and condemn it as morally wrong. Logically, I can see the problem with infringing copyright laws, but infringe them I have. This brings me to Larry Lessig.

I’m the first to admit that the quote below is taken out of context. Larry Lessig isn’t talking about copying stuff to save a couple of bucks, he’s talking about using snippets of intellectual property and remixing it into art, like a DJ does when mixing tunes. However, I think what he is saying is poignant and transferable to the fact that many of us live outside the law on a daily basis.

“It is technology that has made them [kids] different, and as we see what this technology can do we need to recognize you can’t kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground. We can’t make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, "pirates." And is that good? We live in this weird time, it’s kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law, and that’s what I — we — are doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting.” Larry Lessig

You can watch Larry Lessig speak about laws that choke creativity on TED.

PS. If you’ve ever been wondering, all photos (unless specified otherwise) are royalty free and come from stock.xchng – nothing pirated (at least not on purpose) on this site!

Have you read these articles?:

1. finding time to craft Part One–making time
2. finding time to craft part two – making the most of your time
3. stop your friends from breaking your budget