Feeling Full?

Herman Daly, an ecological economist, provides a nice explanation for what is wrong with our current economic system in the essay “Economics for a full world”.   Daily’s essay explains how our current economic model was designed from the vantage point of the world being mostly empty (of humans and their impacts).  Economic growth has gotten us to a place of fullness, and it may be time to change our economic models to become more in line with the real world, while we still can. 

The introduction to the essay states:

Because of the exponential economic growth since World War II, we now live in a full world, but we still behave as if it were empty, with ample space and resources for the indefinite future. The founding assumptions of neoclassical economics, developed in the empty world, no longer hold, as the aggregate burden of the human species is reaching—or, in some cases, exceeding—the limits of nature at the local, regional, and planetary levels. The prevailing obsession with economic growth puts us on the path to ecological collapse, sacrificing the very sustenance of our well-being and survival. To reverse this ominous trajectory, we must transition toward a steady-state economy focused on qualitative development, as opposed to quantitative growth, and the interdependence of the human economy and global ecosphere. Developing policies and institutions for a steady-state economy will require us to revisit the question of the purpose and ends of the economy.

Read the entire essay at the following link for more insights on the inherent problems with the current economic model and some suggestions for a revised more realistic model.   http://www.greattransition.org/publication/economics-for-a-full-world

De-comfortzoned.

Thoughts for the week come from an article titled “What is needed to get us out of our comfort zone and fight for our children’s future?” by Christiane Kliemann available here:  http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-06-10/are-we-prepared-to-change-to-prevent-climate-change .  Some highlights follow:

If it’s the way we live, consume and produce that causes climate change, why don’t we simply stop it and start doing things differently?

[…] despite the tremendous efforts that are being invested to convince us that energy efficiency, renewables and new technologies will do the trick, decoupling in absolute terms remains highly unlikely if not impossible in a growing economy.

[…] following the logic of homo economicus that individual profit and competition are the best means to achieve the higher common good. But what if this system logic itself was the root cause of our environmental and social crises—climate change above all—and needed to be replaced by something new to secure our survival on this planet? What if we have constructed a whole system of theories, models, technologies and defence mechanisms just to deny the simple truth?

[…]  despite the tremendous efforts that are being invested to convince us that energy efficiency, renewables and new technologies will do the trick, decoupling in absolute terms remains highly unlikely if not impossible in a growing economy.

Given the vast financial and political power of the global players in these and other sectors, it is no wonder that governments are usually putty in the hands of their interest groups. These play with our fears and assure us that their profitability is essential for keeping our jobs—knowing that politicians fear nothing more than rising unemployment rates.

And indeed, in the current system, this fear of losing one’s job often forces people to choose between a secure livelihood and ethical principles – and to continue to work in jobs that are obviously damaging for the environment.

Aren’t most of us quite happy in our comfort zones enjoying all the superficial pleasures the globalized consumer culture can provide?

We have to bring across that we are really serious about changing the economy and changing our lives, and that we won’t accept any excuse. Otherwise they can rely on us being too deeply attached to our cars, fancy holidays and long-haul flights, globalized supply chains and ever more electronic gadgets—even at the expense of the millions of deaths, increasing violence, wars on resources and ever stronger environmental disasters.

The widespread belief that the white male hypocrites from Silicon Valley and their likes will save us through technological innovations is yet another symptom of our collective denial. These will neither be ecologically sustainable, nor democratic; they will just tighten our dependence on increasingly complex technologies from large monopolist corporations.

Consume less, share more and stand up against fossil fuels, urban sprawl, destructive infrastructures and resource extractivism. And, above all, fight for an economy that can fulfil everyone’s basic needs within the natural boundaries of a healthy planet.

Climbing The Ladder of Awareness -

Written By: Bodhi Paul Chefurka

Originally Posted At: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/LadderOfAwareness.html

When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:

1. Dead asleep. At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behaviour and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.
   
2. Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it's Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
   
3. Awareness of many problems. As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow.  At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems - for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion.  They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the "highest priority" problem.
   
4. Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.
   
   People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what's going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren't very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.
   
5. Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life.  This includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a "Solution" is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.

For those who arrive at Stage 5 there is a real risk that depression will set in. After all, we've learned throughout our lives that our hope for tomorrow lies in  our ability to solve problems today.  When no amount of human cleverness appears able to solve our predicament the possibility of hope can vanish like a the light of a candle flame, to be replaced by the suffocating darkness of despair.

How people cope with despair is of course deeply personal, but it seems to me there are two general routes people take to reconcile themselves with the situation.  These are not mutually exclusive, and most of us will operate out of some mix of the two.  I identify them here as general tendencies, because people seem to be drawn more to one or the other.  I call them theouter path and the inner path.

If one is inclined to choose the outer path, concerns about adaptation and local resilience move into the foreground, as exemplified by the Transition Network and Permaculture Movement. To those on the outer path, community-building and local sustainability initiatives will have great appeal.  Organized party politics seems to be less attractive to people at this stage, however.  Perhaps politics is seen as part of the problem, or perhaps it's just seen as a waste of effort when the real action will take place at the local level.

If one is disinclined to choose the outer path either because of temperament or circumstance, the inner path offers its own set of attractions.

Choosing the inner path involves re-framing the whole thing in terms of consciousness, self-awareness and/or some form of transcendent perception.  For someone on this path it is seen as an attempt to manifest Gandhi's message, "Become the change you wish to see in the world," on the most profoundly personal level.  This message is similarly expressed in the ancient Hermetic saying, "As above, so below." Or in plain language,  "In order to heal the world, first begin by healing yourself."

However, the inner path does not imply a "retreat into religion". Most of the people I've met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics.  Organized religion is usually seen as part of the predicament rather than a valid response to it. Those who have arrived at this point have no interest in hiding from or easing the painful truth, rather they wish to create a coherent personal context for it. Personal spirituality of one sort or another often works for this, but organized religion rarely does.

It's worth mentioning that there is also the possibility of a serious personal difficulty at this point.  If someone cannot choose an outer path for whatever reasons, and is also resistant to the idea of inner growth or spirituality as a response the the crisis of an entire planet, then they are truly in a bind. There are few other doorways out of this depth of despair.  If one remains stuck here for an extended period of time, life can begin to seem awfully bleak, and violence against either the world or oneself may begin begin to seem like a reasonable option.  Please keep a watchful eye on your own progress, and if you encounter someone else who may be in this state, please offer them a supportive ear.

From my observations, each successive stage contains roughly a tenth of the number people as the one before it. So while perhaps 90% of humanity is in Stage 1, less than one person in ten thousand will be at Stage 5 (and none of them are likely to be politicians).  The number of those who have chosen the inner path in Stage 5 also seems to be an order of magnitude smaller than the number who are on the outer path.

I happen to have chosen an inner path as my response to a Stage 5 awareness. It works well for me, but navigating this imminent (transition, shift, metamorphosis - call it what you will), will require all of us - no matter what our chosen paths - to cooperate on making wise decisions in difficult times.

Best wishes for a long, exciting and fulfilling  journey.

---

Bodhi Paul Chefurka
October 19, 2012

Yard and Garden Salad

Lunch from the yard and garden. Basswood tree leaves, common violet leaves and flowers, dandelion flowers, fiddle head ferns, onion and chive volunteers from the garden, topped with sunflower seeds and Gouda cheese, with home brewed cider vinegar. Best salad ever.

Transition Catskills Links

"What is Transition Catskills?" in a nice 8 minute film about New York States Transition Catskills group and can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/116030075.   

They also have an interesting webpage available here:  http://www.transitioncatskills.org/

Shall We Discuss Economic Growth?

Some quotes from George Monbiot’s article titled “It’s Simple.  If we can’t change our economic system, our numbers up.” 

Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.

Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels.

As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world's diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.

Efficiency solves nothing while growth continues.

That's how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it.

Read the full article here:  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/27/if-we-cant-change-economic-system-our-number-is-up

What is Permaculture?

Some highlights from “Permaculture: the design arm of a paradigm shift” by Toby Hemenway.  Read the full article here.  

Much of the difficulty and confusion around permaculture stems from its protean nature: It can be many things to many people. It’s been called a philosophy, a movement, a design approach, a set of techniques, a practice, a worldview, a land use ethic, a science, a pseudoscience, and even a religion.

I’m finding that the most fruitful way for me to think about permaculture is that it is the design arm of a paradigm shift. To be more specific, it’s the design approach for achieving the goals of the sustainability movement. And I mean sustainability in the largest sense, not just environmental sustainability but social and ethical as well.

Permaculture is what we use to put into action our growing understanding that humans must fit into the web-work of the rest of life or we’ll make this planet uninhabitable for us and for countless other species. It gives us tools for social justice and for working together.

Permaculture is a part—and an essential part—of those larger sciences, philosophies, and social movements, but it’s not the whole story. It doesn’t encompass them, it derives from them. And, most importantly, permaculture gives us the tools we need to bring this new understanding of whole systems into the world in physical form and action. Once we have learned to think this new way, permaculture tells us what to do to make it real.

Permaculture, then, is a systematized program for enacting the worldview of the social justice and sustainability movements and for bringing the wisdom of indigenous knowledge into contemporary life. It is whole-systems thinking in action. It’s what we need to do to be living in alignment with the new paradigm, so nicely phrased by Rafter Sass Ferguson, of meeting human needs while retaining and enhancing ecosystem health.

Knowing that permaculture is embedded in a larger movement toward sustainability and in a whole-systems paradigm also constrains us from doing stupid things with it. We won’t use permaculture to try to sustain the unsustainable. Putting a green roof on a pesticide factory can’t be permaculture design. Reducing waste or energy use at a toxics manufacturer isn’t a viable design project because we know that we must take all the system yields into account. A planet-killing process can’t be reformed; it must be eliminated at a higher design level.

What function does permaculture perform in the world? And I would answer that it gives us concrete methods to bring our new understanding of whole systems into reality so that we can live regeneratively. It is the set of tools that the social justice and sustainability movements can use to plan and manifest their vision of a better world. Permaculture is the design arm of the paradigm shift.