Mary Odum vs. Lawns

Here Mary Odum, Howard T. Odum’s daughter, talks about “a prosperous way down“. If someone named Odum thinks we are going down, there is a good chance we are. It’s pretty depressing stuff that seems like an individual could have little impact on, but later she suggests that doing away with your lawn is a good first step.

Many chaotic current compete for our attention, yet the speed with which they are occurring suggests we are in an era of tipping points. How does one describe the collapse of an empire—where do we start with so much chaos in the world, and a global world view that promotes the mandate for economic growth? Do we begin with politics, or culture, or the financial system, pollution, or even renewable energy? Those competing current events are all related, but only if we use systems thinking to view the picture at a larger scale. The focus of most people on single causes such as climate change, or politics, or tech-happy solar futures, is comforting, since reductionism to single cause issues creates solutions such as adding technology (and thus more energy and pollution) allows us to keep on with our lifestyles. We tell ourselves (or we read too much Grist or Treehugger who tell us) that we don’t have to do anything except to buy more technology—we can keep what we’ve got, and the problems lie at the larger scale with us as helpless victims. We can buy a Prius, or a solar panel, and just keep on trucking, while blaming a powerful other, such as a presidential candidate, or Exxon, when it is the entire system, including us, who is responsible. Voting for one political party or the other is inadequate. Staying quiet while xenophobia and gun violence takes hold of your country is inadequate. Focusing on single cause environmentalist issues is not enough.

Reductionism closes the conversation to the real problem of growth, and the big picture, creating denial and a comforting absolution to Business as Usual (BAU). Reductionism allows us to fit in culturally to a world whose religion is economic growth, but it is a form of self-deceit. Our mandate that insists on the economic need for growth has to change in order for us to accept our personal responsibilities in all of this, and not blame our problems on scapegoats or find solutions that just make things worse.

I pretty much agree with all this. It’s not that the ideal concept of “growth” or improvement in our standard of living is wrong at its core. There is no theoretical limit to how much we could improve ourselves. But as long as we are dependent on planet Earth and its resources, there is a physical limit to how large our ecological footprint can grow without causing overshoot and collapse. Some technologies enable us to reduce our footprint per person or per joule of energy used or per dollar exchanged in the course of our economic lives, but when we adopt these technologies we often just take it as an opportunity to add more people, use more energy and exchange more dollars. And of course, not all technologies reduce our unit footprint – many increase it. In aggregate, our footprint is continuing to grow, most likely at an accelerating pace. There are only two possible endpoints – either a serious setback that forcibly reduces our footprint for us (like, god forbid, catastrophic war/plague/famine), or a turning point in technology/policy that allows us to begin shrinking our footprint while still improving ourselves. While the latter is theoretically possible, I don’t see any evidence that we are anywhere near it. Instead, we pat ourselves on the back for small reductions in our footprint per unit of growth, or even a reduction in the rate of growth of our rate of growth! For example, a reduction in our annual carbon emissions, despite the fact that they are too high and every year they are too high makes the situation worse, not better. That’s not the system thinking that H.T. Odum advocated.

Which brings me to Mary’s lawn. Ecological gardening is one of those “simple things you can do to save the Earth”. Not sufficient, but necessary. So let’s do it!

We can be the change, beginning today. Plant trees, as they take a long time to grow. Convert your lawn to native plants. Stop irrigating, except for watering new plantings by hand. Stop using fertilizers and pesticides. Begin building soil instead of depleting it. Compost on your property, Return hardscapes to permeable surfaces, and use rain barrels and rain gardens to limit runoff. Use a corner to plant an organic vegetable garden if there’s room and sun, to add to your sustainability. Foster a complete ecosystem for the critters. And finally, talk to your neighbors and friends about the changes and why you’re doing them. While you’re at it, talk to the person who manages your kid’s soccer field, or the golf course. Why are you letting your children roll around on a carpet of pesticides, or eat food grown by a poison-maker?

Habitica

This app turns your to-do list into a game. It’s a cool idea – basically you are setting goals and tracking your progress toward them, not exactly a new idea. But it could be a fun idea that gets you over the hump of a goal that has been eluding you, or the gimmick that gets a team of smart but bored individuals (and smart individuals have a tendency to be bored) to come together and complete an important but less than intellectually stimulating work task.

NAFTA, Appalachia, and Trump

This article caught my eye just because (a) it is in the BBC and (b) it is about Martinsville, Virginia. It just so happens I was born in Martinsville in 1975 and lived there until 1985. Many of my relatives worked in the furniture and textile factories there between the end of World War II and when most of the factory jobs left in the 80s and 90s. Once upon a time Martinsville was an Appalachian manufacturing powerhouse and a place working class people could get decent paying jobs. Race relations were not perfect by any means but still, white and black and spanish-speaking working people shared in the relative prosperity. Workplace health and safety was also not perfect – my grandfather was minus a foot and an aunt was minus a few fingers at one point, although they were later reattached. Given all that, there was relative prosperity, health, and modern amenities for people whose parents and grandparents were subsistence farmers. The article talks about how NAFTA destroyed most of those jobs and most of that prosperity, and people are still bitter about it.

Now, I find the ideology of free trade attractive as a general principle. I think those industries were on the wane and those jobs were on the way out, and NAFTA just hastened them along. Still, it was a very abrupt and drastic change in Martinsville, and the people who were hurt are real people that I know. It illustrates that abstract measures of average economic prosperity that look good on paper have to be tempered with an understanding of what is going on with a broad cross-section of people across geographies, for example working class white and black and Hispanic people in Appalachia. People need viable options to be retrained and relocated in some cases to remain economically viable, and obviously their children need to be well educated. There has to be a safety net for the people who still fall through the cracks.

Sadly, the people interviewed in this article don’t seem supportive of the very policies that might help them, like universal health care. They were supportive of Obama but felt let down by him when he wasn’t able to deliver substantive change in their lives during his years in office. They don’t support anyone named Clinton because they associate that name with NAFTA. So, despite the fact that the people interviewed in this article are kind hearted, moral, and anything but bigots, which fits my personal experience in Appalachia, they are left with Trump as the only available choice that makes sense to them.

public buses vs. Uber Pool

This article talks about the idea of shifting from public bus systems to Uber Pool, and comes out against it.

Uber Pool’s cost disadvantage over public transit might disappear if a new pilot program in Boston catches on. This month, Uber announced that it would introduce monthly Uber Pool passes—like transit passes—for just $2 per ride, or less than the MBTA’s $2.25 fare. While these temporary low fares are no doubt a money-losing loss leader, if UberPool fares are anywhere close to the price of public transit it would seem like we’re probably looking at a massive shift from public transit to these sorts of ride-hailing services. And wouldn’t that be a good thing, if it’s both faster and nearly as cheap?

But here’s where the importance space-efficiency comes in. When one person switches from the bus to Uber, two things happen. One is that they get a faster trip almost by definition: A vehicle that makes many stops (the bus) is going to be slower than a vehicle that makes few or no stops (the Uber) unless the bus has some other advantage, like transit lanes that allow it to avoid traffic congestion. And the vast majority of American bus lines are given no such benefit.

The second thing is that they switch from a very space-efficient vehicle, where they probably take up only a few square feet on the road, to a very space-inefficient vehicle, where they take up many, many times more.

It seems to me there is a middle ground here. A technology like Uber Pool, whether in private or public hands, could put the right size vehicles on the right routes at the right times. On some routes at some times, that might be a golf cart, and at others it might be a double decker bus. A system like this could be very flexible and adaptable.  Of course, using our own muscle power for as many trips as possible is also an important part of the equation and if we really want to be sustainable we need to design our towns and lives so that is the best choice for the majority of our daily trips. Communication technology and even virtual reality are another part of the equation because they could allow us to have the personal interaction we need in our work and social lives without physical distance being a factor.

housing vouchers for all?

This article argues that if the U.S. took away the mortgage interest tax deduction, it could provide a housing voucher to everyone below the median household income. That’s hard to believe, but the key is probably that the median is well below the average, because of course the income distribution is skewed toward the top. I like my mortgage interest deduction. It is an important part of my retirement strategy and as I am a bit above the median (but hardly rich) it would be hard for me to support this policy.

Here’s another article on BillMoyers.com that says if you took away the mortgage interest tax deduction, the cap on social security deductions, the lower rate on capital gains, and tax-advantaged retirement accounts, you could double Social Security benefits for everyone. There’s a bit of a trick here – these ideas are presented as revenue neutral, because you can think of all these tax breaks as money the government is spending, rather than money it is not collecting compared to what it could be collecting or what it has collected under some past policy. It would be very easy to paint these as tax increases instead, of course. Still, I could be more easily persuaded to support this policy that the first one, because I would be guaranteed to get a portion of the higher taxes I am paying now back when I am older, and I wouldn’t have to worry so much about savings or home equity now. I would know that people who are both richer and poorer than me would all get the same share I would get, which I might be able to accept on grounds of fairness. I’m not out in the streets campaigning for this policy yet, I have to think about it.

the bottom line on fat

I’ve been confused by the seemingly conflicting studies and guidelines on saturated fat that have been released the past few years. This study from Harvard School of Public Health makes a pretty strong case that it really does make sense to replace saturated fat with unsaturated fat.

When it comes to saturated fat, what you replace it with matters. People who replaced saturated fat in their diets with unsaturated fats—especially polyunsaturated fats—had a far lower risk of death from any cause, as well as death due to cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and respiratory disease. Those who replaced saturated fat with carbohydrates only slightly lowered mortality risk. This is most likely because carbohydrates in typical American diets are high in refined starch and sugar, which have a similar influence on mortality risk as saturated fats…

The recent widespread confusion about the health effects of specific types of dietary fat is in part caused by a misleading 2014 Annals of Internal Medicine paper, which concluded there is no evidence supporting the longstanding recommendation to limit saturated fat consumption and replace it with unsaturated fats. The authors of this paper employed a meta-analysis (a statistical analysis that summarizes data from many different studies), and therefore could not look at specific macronutrient comparisons with saturated fat. In addition, this paper also had errors in data extraction, omitted important studies, and only examined coronary heart disease.

In addition, a recently published BMJ paper based on 1960’s data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment suggested that replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid was not protective against death from coronary heart disease or all causes, which appeared to challenge current guidelines and added further confusion. However, this study was of very short duration, extremely low in follow-up rate, and the intervention likely reduced intake of important omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. The extreme intervention diet was also never consumed by any appreciable number of Americans and likely confounded by intake of trans fat.

Finally, a new systematic review and meta-analysis looking at the association of butter consumption (a concentrated source of saturated fat) with chronic disease and all-cause mortality resulted in headlines touting “butter is back,” even though the findings were predominantly neutral, and the authors pointed out that unsaturated fats were found to be a better choice than butter.

teenagers and green environments

This article says that teenagers in green environments are less aggressive, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors.

The researchers describe several “possible pathways” that could explain their results. Easy access to the natural world may reduce maternal stress, which can lead to children acting out. It can encourage physical activity, reduce air pollution levels, and “act as a buffer for ambient noise.”

In addition, they write, green space in urban areas has been shown to preserve “the microbial biodiversity needed to drive immunoregulation, and to optimize brain health.”

biodiversity and ecosystem services in decisions

Here’s an “open-source software tool for integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services into impact assessment and mitigation decisions“.

Governments and financial institutions increasingly require that environmental impact assessment and mitigation account for consequences to both biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here we present a new software tool, OPAL (Offset Portfolio Analyzer and Locator), which maps and quantifies the impacts of development on habitat and ecosystem services, and facilitates the selection of mitigation activities to offset losses. We demonstrate its application with an oil and gas extraction facility in Colombia. OPAL is the first tool to provide direct consideration of the distribution of ecosystem service benefits among people in a mitigation context. Previous biodiversity-focused efforts led to redistribution or loss of ecosystem services with environmental justice implications. Joint consideration of biodiversity and ecosystem services enables targeting of offsets to benefit both nature and society. OPAL reduces the time and technical expertise required for these analyses and has the flexibility to be used across a range of geographic and policy contexts.

new book on soil

Here’s a review on a new book on soil.

Soils had not excited many ecologists until, two decades ago, soil ecologists started emphasizing that many aboveground phenomena are under belowground control. Richard Bardgett is one of the most eloquent and knowledgeable of the soil scientists who have contributed to the current enthusiasm about soils. In his recent book Earth Matters: How Soil Underlies Civilization he explains how much human societies depend on soil. He writes about how soils are formed, how they influence biodiversity and food quality, and what role they play in cities and in war, and introduces us to the interplay of soils and climate change.

the iceberg model

The “iceberg model” is supposed to help you think through the parts of a problem that are obvious and visible versus the (possibly much more significant) parts that are hidden beneath the surface.

LEVELS OF THINKING

1. The Event Level

The event level is the level at which we typically perceive the world—for instance, waking up one morning to find we have caught a cold. While problems observed at the event level can often be addressed with a simple readjustment, the iceberg model pushes us not to assume that every issue can be solved by simply treating the symptom or adjusting at the event level.

2. The Pattern Level

If we look just below the event level, we often notice patterns. Similar events have been taking place over time — we may have been catching more colds when we haven’t been resting enough. Observing patterns allows us to forecast and forestall events.

3. The Structure Level

Below the pattern level lies the structure level. When we ask, “What is causing the pattern we are observing?” the answer is usually some kind of structure. Increased stress at work due to the new promotion policy, the habit of eating poorly when under stress, or the inconvenient location of healthy food sources could all be structures at play in our catching a cold. According to Professor John Gerber, structures can include the following:

1. Physical things — like vending machines, roads, traffic lights or terrain.

2. Organizations — like corporations, governments, and schools.

3. Policies — like laws, regulations, and tax structures.

4. Ritual — habitual behaviors so ingrained that they are not conscious.

4. The Mental Model Level

Mental models are the attitudes, beliefs, morals, expectations, and values that allow structures to continue functioning as they are. These are the beliefs that we often learn subconsciously from our society or family and are likely unaware of. Mental models that could be involved in us catching a cold could include: a belief that career is deeply important to our identity, that healthy food is too expensive, or that rest is for the unmotivated.

– See more at: https://nwei.org/resources/iceberg/#sthash.XutaQX5M.dpuf