Hi Derek
Your post (from last year) I just had an opportunity to reread, and I was surprised I did not comment on it when I first saw it. I think you've done an excellent job of framing an overview of the conservationist's dilemma - that logically, it can't succeed- that something more is required as well as pointing toward some other options that might be more successful
One thing I'm always fascinated in is "political constraints" and I use that term in a general way because I haven't figured out a better one yet to more clearly define the totality of the concept. What I mean by it is how people allow themselves to be controlled by others in ways that suit the others agenda and not their own. One example is how we allow others to define the terms of a problem. Allowing those who have created a problem to then define it and come up with how WE must change to solve the problem is like allowing the fox to redesign the fence around the chicken coup. By allowing the fox to set the terms of the problem, he might just say, the problem is not so much that hens go missing, but that we have people instead of foxes designing the fence. So, let us discuss whether we should have red foxes or grey foxes design the next fence.
As you have so clearly pointed out, solving our challenges of imbalance will require going well beyond putting out a recycling box or even becoming activist in changing our local municipal policies around consumption, recycling and reuse etc. But that is how the problem has been framed: Only YOU can prevent global warming - and here's how you are going to do it... The hypocrisy of our very own government is there for all to see: they say conserve our water, for example, and come around door to door with free shower heads even, and then they open the door for mining, and oil companies to destroy entire water systems. We need to judge by actions not talk, and these actions demonstrate a complete lack of honesty around this issue. A lack of honesty due to political constraints - they need to preserve their agenda, to reinforce the way they have framed the crisis and thus the solution (that it is we, the average Joe who needs to buy more Green stuff to save the planet) We need to stop being so gullible and wake up to the fact that those who are managing THEIR agenda are doing so in an environment with a paucity of critical evaluation of the FRAMING of the discussion (which is not surprising since they own the media). Your post challenges status quo beautifully. You challenge the framing of the discussion and that is exactly what needs to happen (and is so easily missed by those who have been essentially brainwashed into accepting the terms of the discussion). Real solutions begin with this kind of questioning and dialogue. Notice this blog is all but dead. Why? Do people feel powerless? Regardless of what happens to this blog, there will be those who take up the torch, and "fight" for what I believe ultimately is going to be a battle for freedom. This battle may be one that is as much internal as external- in other words we have to strive to take our next step in personal/ human development and personal responsibility and get beyond our own dysfunctional behaviour. We need to (re?)discover how to get beyond our small selves and tap into a greater consciousness. A greater awareness is the weapon we will need to take onto any battlefield of the future. So, there's lots to do since this "battle" or self- work begins at home. Cheers.
Sunday, 7 November, 2010
Tuesday, 27 October, 2009
Upping the Stakes, Forget Shorter Showers
Reposted - Written and Credited by Derrick Jensen
WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?
Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”
Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.
So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.
Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.
The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”
The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.
The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.
The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.
WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”
Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.
So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.
Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.
The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”
The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.
The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.
The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.
Monday, 8 June, 2009
Green thumb paramedics growing a garden
Posted By Mark Hoult
Posted 6 hours ago
Asphodel-Norwood - Peterborough County EMS paramedics stationed in Norwood are growing fresh produce to help improve the health of local residents.
With the support of the Norwood Fair board, the municipality and Morello's Independent Grocers in Peterborough, the paramedics have expanded what was originally a narrow strip of garden alongside the ambulance station into a larger plot at the edge of the Norwood fairgrounds.
There they have planted tomatoes, zucchini, squash, eggplant, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce and brussels sprouts, which will be given away free through the local food bank and the medical centre next to the EMS station. In addition, the garden will produce some fresh garlic because “garlic is one of the main things for fending off cancer,” said paramedic Mark Cameron, who became an avid gardener as a means of reducing stress.
Cameron and the other seven paramedics at the station put the vegetables from their original strip garden in baskets and left them in the doctor's office for patients to take home. This year, when Cameron received a call from Morello's with an offer of help with the community garden, he at first refused because they didn't have the space. Then, acting on a suggestion to approach the fair board, Cameron talked to secretary Paul Quinlan, who gave the go-ahead and in turn talked to Reeve Doug Pearcy. The result was a crew of township employees and their equipment arriving to help paramedics stake out a garden along the fence separating the ambulance station from the fairgrounds. And Sunday three Morello's employees arrived to help with the planting of the vegetables. “And we're going to give all of it away; everything is going,” Cameron said, noting that although everyone will be welcome to the produce, the main purpose of the garden is to distribute fresh vegetables to seniors.
Cameron estimates that the approximately $150 worth of seeds and plants donated by Morello's will generate more than $4,000 worth of produce, an example of how much can be generated by a single moderately sized vegetable garden.
“Gardening is not expensive, although it is hard work,” he said. “But I think that everything that comes out of the garden is the best way. We have gotten so farm away from knowing where our food comes from.”
Cameron said most of the vegetables in the garden are high yield. Zucchinis can be picked and more will continue to grow; and tomatoes are also easy to grow “as long as your soil in good and you add a little fertilizer.”
At this point the vegetable plot is “a fledgling garden,” Camerons said. But he expects that the garden will flourish as they add better soil and fertilizer, perhaps even some manure left over from a local farm. “Our ultimate goal is to have people come in and pick their own,” he said.
Saturday, 30 May, 2009
Paramedic Stations as Waste Generators: Are Yours Registered?
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How often do you find yourself throwing your gloves in the garbage? Or a vomit suction containers? Bloody dressings? These items end up in landfills. There is a better option.
All Paramedic stations need to be registered as “waste generators” with the Province of Ontario. Plastic bins should be supplied at each station by a proper biohazard company like Stericycle.
Bio hazard bags are still required to be used inside the plastic bins. Signed manifests are to be available at each registered station eliminating any need for Paramedics to be involved in the pick-up process.
This is in accordance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Environmental Protection Act, SO 1990, Part V, Section 19 and 27; Part XVII, Section 197, and Infection Control Guidelines and The Management of Biomedical Waste in Ontario Guide Guideline FC-4, Public Health Agency Canada.
Please place all biohazardous waste in the supplied containers and ensure no garbage is discarded in them.
Note: In the interests of health and safety, paramedics are not to return transport soiled linens or biohazard products back to their stations. Biohazard receptacles need to be available at hospital destinations.
Friday, 4 April, 2008
Disposal of Medical Waste
Medication Return Program - so that families, patients and families of deceased patients do not flush medications into the toilet. Shoppers Drugmart should hand out a bag with every medication pickup.
http://www.medicationsreturn.ca
http://www.medicationsreturn.ca
Monday, 31 March, 2008
Decreasing Emissions by Increasing efficiency of buildings
take a look at this article. (Click here) Considering most EMS stations are cinderblock construction, I'm sure there is a lot that could be done to improve their efficiency.
Friday, 28 March, 2008
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