This sprawling article in Ecological Economics talks about human civilization as a “superorganism” that exists only to dissipate energy, fouling its environment in the process. What I found somewhat interesting was the links it tries to make between natural capital depletion and financial debt.
Simultaneously, we get daily reminders the global economy isn’t working as it used to (Stokes, 2017) such as rising wealth and income inequality, heavy reliance on debt and government guarantees, populist political movements, increasing apathy, tension and violence, and ecological decay. To avoid facing the consequences of our biophysical reality, we’re now obtaining growth in increasingly unsustainable ways. The developed world is using finance to enable the extraction of things we couldn’t otherwise afford to extract to produce things we otherwise couldn’t afford to consume.
I’m not sure this article has a coherent story to tell, but I find it interesting to think what kind of indicators we might be able to look at to tell if an ecological reckoning might be around the corner. The prices of food and energy certainly come to mind. Financial debt, if it is indeed a measure of how much our expectations of the future are out of line with our capacity to innovate and to produce the energy and other materials and find the waste sinks we need to keep going. But there is clearly a lot of noise and short-term fluctuations in all these signals that might make it difficult or impossible to come up with any kind of useful predictive index.
A guy at Yale Law School compiles a list of most notable quotes each year. For 2019, the list includes Donald Trump asking Ukraine to “do us a favor”, and quotes by Greta Thunberg, Elija Cummings, Boris Johnson, Robert Mueller, and Elizabeth Warren.
Curbed has a list of 10 technologies that affected cities over the last decade: Uber, bike and scooter sharing apps, Airbnb, Instagram, Amazon, WeWork, Waze, Grubhub, and Pokemon Go. I’ve used 5 out of 10, 6 out of 10 if you count the bike sharing app I have used that is a little different than the one they cover. The tone of the article is negative, but if I think back, these technologies have improved my life on balance. I moved close to my job in a walkable city in 2004. At the time, I had one smallish grocery store to choose from (which was great, because many neighborhoods had none). I could rely on taxis around the central city and to and from the airport, but visiting friends outside the city was a problem. I biked for recreation, but didn’t ride to work because I was afraid my bike would be stolen. (I was also afraid of safety – I might nominate improved adoption of bike lanes in U.S. cities as an important urban technology of the last 10 years. Although it’s certainly not new technology, the U.S. has been very slow to adopt and there has been a lot more progress in the last decade than before. There is certainly a long way to go.) I don’t know if I would have managed to stay car-free with two children if it weren’t for ride share, grocery and takeout delivery. These have made a big difference both because of the transportation issue and the tremendous time savings these apps can offer working parents. I tried Instagram once for a project where I was going to document 100 buses running 100 red lights, but a Russian hacker took over my site within days. I am curious about WeWork. I understand their business model hasn’t worked out, but the idea of flexible work spaces as work becomes less tied to physical location (I would nominate Skype and other video and screen sharing apps as critical technology too) appeals to me. I could even see similar concepts working for students and even retirees wanting to get out of the house and pursue various projects for a few hours.
This article in New Scientist (I don’t know anything about this publication) suggests that people who arrived at the hospital technically dead by any standard definition have been chilled to very cold temperatures for a couple hours, operated on, and resuscitated. This is not too surprising because you do occasionally here of people who drown in very cold water and get resuscitated after longer periods of time than you would think. Also, if bears, chipmunks, and frogs can do it with basically the same organs as us, why not us? But still, this is something new that could change the traditional definition of death and maybe lead toward the idea of hibernation present in every space travel story ever.
Estonia is supposedly the most digitally advanced country in the world. Here’s a 2017 article from the New Yorker:
E-Estonia is the most ambitious project in technological statecraft today, for it includes all members of the government, and alters citizens’ daily lives. The normal services that government is involved with—legislation, voting, education, justice, health care, banking, taxes, policing, and so on—have been digitally linked across one platform, wiring up the nation…
Its government presents this digitization as a cost-saving efficiency and an equalizing force. Digitizing processes reportedly saves the state two per cent of its G.D.P. a year in salaries and expenses. Since that’s the same amount it pays to meet the nato threshold for protection (Estonia—which has a notably vexed relationship with Russia—has a comparatively small military), its former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves liked to joke that the country got its national security for free…
The program that resulted is called e-residency, and it permits citizens of another country to become residents of Estonia without ever visiting the place. An e-resident has no leg up at the customs desk, but the program allows individuals to tap into Estonia’s digital services from afar.
A 2% boost to GDP seems like a pretty big deal to me. It’s a pretty clear example of how well-functioning government can provide a platform and level playing field for the economy to thrive. I can imagine this potential being even larger in the U.S. where everything is so decentralized and inefficient, even at the metro scale. Of course, this very inefficiency keeps a lot of people busy that would need to find something else to do if it went away.
Apparently anyone can apply to be an e-resident, and it allows you to essentially do business as though you were from, or in, Estonia. You can also hire them as consultants, of course.
This article is about devices that can supposedly help you get more out of whatever hours of sleep you manage to get. It sound suspicious, but appears to be backed by at least some research and scientific/medical opinion.
One of the most promising techniques to do so works a bit like a metronome counting the brain into the correct rhythms. Experimental participants wear a headset that records their brain activity and notes when they have started to make those slow waves. The device then plays short pulses of gentle sound, beginning in sync with the brain’s natural slow waves, at regular intervals over the night. The sounds are quiet enough to avoid waking the participant, but loud enough to be registered, unconsciously, by the brain.
One of the devices commercially available is made by Phillips and costs around $370 (I do not get any sort of commission if you click on this link or buy one.)
A retrospective on my 2019 garden may not be of great interest to anyone but me, but here it is for my future reference.
My gardening philosophy is basically to try to design a diverse ecosystem that can take care of itself with just a little nudging from me. Every plant should be useful to me in some way, useful to wildlife in some way (which generally means natives), or preferably both. Aesthetics come last, but I find that a diverse array of useful plants arranged in a gently guided ecosystem tends to be interesting at a minimum, and beautiful at best. Sterile, ornamental plants are pretty boring to me. I’ve been influenced by the permaculture and native plant movements, among other things. Anyway, here we go…
what did well this year:
My 4-year-old Asian pear tree grew a pretty impressive crop of fruit. The final score? Squirrels – 20 or so, humans – 0. But nonetheless, the tree seems to be doing well. My 3-year-old Asian persimmon tree grew its first persimmon. The final score? Squirrels – 1, humans 0.
Spring color – violets, dandelions, chives. These are all common plants that a lot of my neighbors probably consider weeds. But they add up to some nice color right when you need it in the spring. I also have a nice carpet of green and gold, a nursery-grown cultivar of a native species listed as threatened in Pennsylvania. All but the green and gold are edible if I am so inclined, and all are tough competitors that can hold their own against the urban weeds.
Milkweeds are everywhere. Particularly butterfly milkweed, which has some really cool orange flowers. But also common milkweed, which I don’t plant on purpose but leave alone whenever and wherever it decides to crop up. And the monarchs did indeed make an appearance.
Anise hyssop, beebalm, and mountain mint all are doing well without getting completely out of control. These are attracting a ton of pollinators, particularly bumblebees.
monarch butterfly, Black-eyed Susan and butterfly milkweed
too much of a good thing?
fennel – When I planted a few fennel plants from the farmer’s market a few years ago, I didn’t really understand that it was a different thing than dill, specifically a perennial that comes back year after year from the root, spreads aggressively by seed, and is hard to dig up. Don’t get me wrong – it’s an attractive plant, looks and smells nice for most of the year, attracts a ton of pollinators and caterpillars, and is edible from root to stem to leaf although I haven’t availed myself of it much. It’s just becoming a thicket that I will need to start limiting next year.
lemon balm – This is attractive, out-competes weeds and is nice in tea. It’s tough enough that it is starting to invade a lot of my ground covers and out-compete other desirable plants, however. I may have to start limiting it.
Black-eyed Susans – These are in two big clumps and looked absolutely fantastic in mid- to late-summer. They are expanding and aggressively out-competing other plants so I may need to limit them if I don’t want a garden of nothing but Black-eyed Susans. Pollinators love them, but so, surprisingly, do mice. After gorging themselves on Black-eyed Susan seeds, sure enough the mice came in at the first sign of frost to hang out in my nice warm kitchen.
garlic (Chinese) chives – These are nice-looking, grassy, edible, beloved of pollinators and also spiders and predatory insects that like to eat pollinators. They are aggressive enough that they are spreading into groundcovers in the front of the garden, and I kind of wish I had planted them in the back.
Sunchokes – planted four little raisin-sized tubers in a desperate bid to block a neighbor’s plants from invading. They took a long time to sprout, but just when I had written them off as either DOA or eaten by the squirrels – boom! in the space of a week or two my living fence popped up. They did exactly what they were supposed to do, creating a biological moat that nothing could cross, and attracting lots of bees and butterflies. I didn’t try digging up and eating any but I know that is a possibility. I have seen them get aggressive elsewhere so I will have to keep an eye on them.
caterpillars munching on the fennel thicket – probably black swallowtails although I’m not sure why these two look differentblack swallowtail hanging out on the neighbor’s ornamental grass, persimmon leaves in the foreground
desirable species still there but not competing well
white clover – Surprisingly, it is there but unobtrusive. This is okay with me, and I don’t plan to add or subtract any, just let it do what it is going to do.
chicory – I think it is there, but it wasn’t distinguishable from the dandelions this year and didn’t put up any flower stalks. Perhaps it has a biennial habit and will be back next year. Most people consider this a weed but I think it is cool, and another plant that I don’t get around to eating but take some pleasure in knowing I could.
miner’s lettuce – I left this for dead seasons ago but one sad little plant did pop up. It disappeared again shortly due to whatever animal it is that likes to dig at night in that particular part of the garden.
wild strawberries and garden strawberries – The problem here is not animals, but friendly, well-intentioned human neighbors who keep pulling what they are certain are “weeds”. Well, they never get all the roots and the strawberries will be back. They are in a losing battle with the Black-eyed Susans however and may need some help even if I can get the neighbors to leave them alone.
what didn’t make it
French sorrel – I had a healthy clump of this for several years and it was just nowhere to be found this year. I’m not sure I will miss it.
prairie smoke – This was something I was enticed to plant by a nursery catalog. It didn’t survive the digging animals.
cucumbers – They are supposed to be easy, but I planted some and they either didn’t sprout or withered and died before I could even be sure they were there. They were hard to distinguish from the pumpkins.
problem species
ornamental ground covers and grasses. The neighbors tend to like these, or in some cases neighbors from years or decades gone by liked them. It’s a forever war.
general urban weeds – the trick is keeping them under control March-June. If you do this, your desired plants can take over and out-compete them by mid-summer on.
mosquitoes – I use bacillus thuringiensis and try to avoid all standing water. It doesn’t matter. By June on they are out there and just vicious. I don’t want to use harsher chemicals so we rely on insect repellant.
notable sitings
monarchs, as I mentioned earlier. Other butterflies too, particularly black swallowtails which love the fennel, parsely and celery, and yellow swallowtails which like some of the neighbors bushes. These last two aren’t rare but give no end of pleasure to kids and the young-at-heart.
praying mantises, both the native Carolina mantis and the introduced (but still cool) Chinese mantis. The native mantis liked to hang out on my introduced Chinese chives, so go figure. But when the Chinese chives flowered, they attracted a ton of little flies and wasps which were probably easy pickings. The Chinese mantis liked to climb my house. I can’t explain that one, unless it was for the warmth of the bricks.
Carolina mantis hanging out upside down on garlic chivesChinese mantis climbing my house
the pots
Asian yard-long beans – these are prolific, interesting, and delicious.
Thai sweet basil and holy basil – these are beautiful, delicious and tough. We cook with them all summer. Leave italian basil alone in the sun for one mid-summer weekend and it is done, but the Thai version can handle the heat no problem and bounce back from a dry spell within reason.
interesting volunteers and self-seeders
Virginia creeper – it’s native so I let it go
Thai chillis – didn’t plant them but got lots of them, probably from the compost. They are so spicy they grew more than we could ever practically eat.
sweet peppers – didn’t plant these but got some, most likely just from last year’s kitchen scraps thrown in the compost. They were good, and there was no sign of cross pollination with the hot peppers.
pumpkins – probably because I tossed the previous year’s Halloween pumpkin in the compost. I thinned to just one per half barrel out front, but still they got massive. They flowered but didn’t set any fruit.
celery – planted last year because I mistook them for flat-leafed parsley. Self-seeded. The black swallowtails like them.
parsley – the curly-leaf kind. Survives the winter and self-seeds. A surprisingly tough competitor in the urban garden.
So that is the gardening year that was. Kind of sad when everything is so brown and lifeless now. But that is how the seasons, and eventually years and decades, go by. I mulched the trees with a summer’s worth of coffee grounds, kitchen scraps and garden trimmings today, and the kids helped me sweep up the leaves and put them in the compost for next year’s garden.
I’ll give some thought to new things I want to try in the 2020 garden sometime soon.
Planetizen blog puts this out every year. Here are a few that caught my eye:
Better Buses, Better Cities. I ride buses a lot. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about best practices in running a bus authority. I would miss them if they went away in my city, but I also know they could be a lot better. I’m talking to you, Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.
Cities, the First 6,000 Years. It sounds like this book goes into ancient cities and how they functioned on the ground.
Choked: Life and Death in the Age of Air Pollution. Because it’s possible that if we tackled only one environmental issue in cities, this should be it. Solving air pollution would be a huge gain for public health in itself and would force us to make progress on a lot of other problems.
Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life. Because the pictures look really cool, and coming back from a European city and telling your friends in words how much better it is than our cities just doesn’t cut it. They just need to go there. But a book with really cool cartoons of European cities might be an affordable start.
Vancouverism. It’s about Vancouver. Actually, I don’t know that I am likely to read this. But I have heard good things, have never been, and would like to go. I’ve also heard that housing prices are a problem there. But I’m going to state the inconvenient truth: most U.S. cities are not that great. Cities that are great are in very short supply, and thus the wealthy bid up prices there until only they are able to live there. So let’s build more cities that are at least good.
This might be the clearest explanation of modern monetary theory for the layman (like me) that I have seen so far. This is specifically in a developing country context.
Kaboub is an advocate of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), an approach that views states as the source of money creation through the issuing of currency, and taxation as the destruction of that money supply. In this formulation, states do not use taxes to fund policies but rather create funding through issuing currencies, while taxation is used to curb inflation or disincentivize social practices that are seen as harmful, such as pollution or extreme inequality. MMT has grown increasingly popular among left-leaning politicians in North America and Western Europe, and is beginning to make its way into African political discourse as well.
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
Money is a store of value and a means of exchange, I learned in my one or two lectures on the subject in the 1990s. I’ve always wondered if you could separate the two by having one form of money that has an expiration date and one that does not. Of course you can – think of coupons or frequent flyer miles. If you need to stimulate the domestic economy, you can use the one with the expiration date. You would use the other in international trade, for retirement savings, etc. You would have to decide if you would let people pay taxes in the temporary currency. Businesses would have to decide if they are willing to accept the temporary currency, unless you forced them. An exchange rate would probably develop between the two forms of currency, unless you outlawed that. Prices and exchange rates could be volatile. New mutant forms of debt and derivatives would probably arise. Foreigners and corporations would speculate and manipulate unless you tried to stop them. Come to think of it, maybe there is a reason currency is the way it is and the status quo is hard to change.
