Sustainablog

Life, Money and Illuision is not about the magical arts or wizardry, though it does demystify money and Wall Street’s greedy aspirations abetted by the global push for more growth and consumption (and jobs).

Life, Money and Illuision: Living on Earth as if we want to stay (New Society, 2009) by Mike Nickerson is a driving tome that reconciles how our economy operates in relationship to the ecological and social systems on which we all depend.

In this second revised edition of Life, Money and Illusion, Nickerson explains that “Life” refers to the biological processes by which living things maintain themselves over time. “Money” represents our economic ideology that claims that as long as the volume of money changing hands increases, all will be well. “Illusion” refers to the fact that these two perspectives are directly opposed in terms of how they would solve current problems.

As one might imagine, a book of this stature and ambition — if providing meaningful analysis and argumentation (which it does superbly) — is not a cursory or a casual read. Running 448 pages, Life, Money and Illusion is meticulously fashioned in easy-to-understand language that makes Nickerson’s arguments and ideas both compelling and provocative. It draws from numerous fields, including ecology, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and, of course, economics.

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This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on October14.

If you didn’t hear yet about Zumbox, you need to recheck your news resources.

In the last couple of weeks you hear about them everywhere - from an announcement on two new clients: the cities of San Francisco and Newark (NJ) that will start using their web-based mail delivery system to an announcement on a partnership with New York City for Five Borough Pilot Program.

So what is exactly Zumbox? according to their website “Zumbox delivers paperless mail online – from street address to street address. What used to only be sent as paper mail can now be sent without the paper. How? We’ve created a nationwide paperless postal system with a Zumbox for every street address in the United States, including yours.”

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Around 1300 c.e. the Yao and Zhuang people of Guangdong Province in Southern China faced a serious problem.  In the Longsheng area there was a growing population, but their mountainous surroundings gave them very little land that could be used for farming.  They needed more food and so they turned to technology for the solution.  What they did was to terrace their mountainsides even up to slopes of 45%. I’m sure that the method was perfected over the 400 years of building.  What they were able to do is still an impressive example of civil engineering, even today.  Using stones and mud they built terrace walls that stand firm even with the torrential downpours that are common in the area.  They used bamboo piping to distribute water to each paddy - some so narrow that they only have room for two rows of rice.  This production system has remained productive for centuries when many other contemporary farming societies around the world simply depleted one area and moved on to the next.  These terraces are called Longji, or the ”Dragon’s Spine” and they now extend over 66 square kilometers.  They are both beautiful and inspiring.

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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily speaks with Tom Schey, President of Minimal Productions. Schey is now leading green home building in Southern California and is the author of an upcoming book on fun ways to green up your life. 737conserve is an incredibly advanced, beautiful intellectual home. One of the most advanced smart homes ever built. The structure will most certainly generate more electricity than it uses. A home that embraces water and energy conservation in ways not yet part of the residential building landscape.

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October 7, 2009

Our Global Ponzi Economy

Lester R. Brown

Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earnings are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself. A Ponzi scheme investment fund can last only as long as the flow of new investments is sufficient to sustain the high rates of return paid out to previous investors. When this is no longer possible, the scheme collapses-just as Bernard Madoff’s $65-billion investment fund did in December 2008.

Although the functioning of the global economy and a Ponzi investment scheme are not entirely analogous, there are some disturbing parallels. As recently as 1950 or so, the world economy was living more or less within its means, consuming only the sustainable yield, the interest of the natural systems that support it. But then as the economy doubled, and doubled again, and yet again, multiplying eightfold, it began to outrun sustainable yields and to consume the asset base itself.

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Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas‘ Editor-In-Chief, discusses the use of intelligent irrigation technologies to save water and green your landscaping with Chris Spain, CEO of Hydropoint.

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I just got back from three days at one of my favorite ag industry meetings: The Produce Marketing Association “Fresh Summit.”  To those in the industry this is just known as the PMA.   This is an event where the vast majority of the fresh produce and flower industry gathers to show off their products, their new ideas and all the technologies that help process, sort, package and preserve the freshness of the produce.    There are more than a thousand booths and a great many of them offer samples like the one pictured above.  You get to see new and exotic fruits and vegetables, some of which eventually make it into the mainstream (I’ll talk about some examples in a later post).  

So, basically I juist got to spend three days talking to people about produce, traceability, food safety and sustainability - all the while eating delicious produce samples.  If it didn’t cost $700 to get in I’m sure this event would be over-run.  I think they should have an additional week for consumers at some lower cost (maybe with a lottery for who gets to come).  

Anyway, I was encouraged to find that “sustainability” was a major theme this year - far more than two years ago which was the last time I got to go to the PMA.  I could blog for days about what I saw, but I’ll hit some highlights. 

There was a very cool alternative to the traditional cardboard “flat.” Most fresh produce is shipped in case boxes or in “flats” which are the units that retailers put out on the display if they don’t actually transfer the produce into bulk displays.  ECOPACK has come up with something they call a Green Box which is made of stackable flats or trays made of recyclable or returnable plastic that are 1/2 the weight of the cardboard.  The marketing and traceability information is on small sleeves attached to the ends of the tray. The link I will give you is directed to the produce industry, but you can see it’s sustainability focus.

I talked with some folks from  CSX who are involved in shipments of produce by rail.  They have done a lot of work to understand the carbon footprint of their transport and have monthly contests for their train engineers to see who can achieve the best fuel efficiency.  They are working on ways to make rail a more competitive option with trucking, even for fresh produce, by providing points of freight consolidation.  Especially for or those of you who live in places with that thing called “winter,” this is great for increasing the sustainability of your fresh produce supply.

On the trucking front, there was a company called Universal Container Inc. that has developed a refrigerated container technology for fresh produce shipping (could be on trucks, trains or ships) that uses liquid nitrogen for cooling rather than the standard diesel compressor technology.  It consumes little energy and has no carbon, particulate, NOX emissions or noise in operation.  Its only emission is nitrogen gas which is already ~80% of the atmosphere.  There is obviously energy involved in producing the liquid nitrogen, but that is really largely a co-product from companies that are after other atmospheric gases.  I’d like to see a full-blown LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) on this because I’d bet money that this will come out on top in terms of GHG in addition to the air and noise pollution advantages.

There were also some really cool sustainability things in the packaging area.  I’ll put that in a later post.

Perhaps the best example of sustainability innovation by a produce company came from the largest Onion company in the US, Gills Onions.  They put in an anaerobic digester to deal with the waste from their operations and are now generating enough energy to power 460 homes.  

I was encouraged, because even though I met some folks at the PMA who didn’t even have sustainability on their radar, I met far more produce industry people who were on-board with the importance of this issue.   I’m not at all saying that the sustainability challenge has been fully addressed by the fresh produce industry, but I was very impressed with the momentum I observed.

Your are welcome to comment on this site.  You can also email me at feedback.sdsavage@gmail.com.

All images from me, Steve Savage (Not a great photographer).

I’ll come back to the Mycotoxin issue soon.  Instead, I’ll talk today about my serious worries about Climate Change.  

People involved in world agriculture have no patience with the supposed “debate” about climate change.  We are already seeing the effects, and the projections for the future are not encouraging.  The most troubling feature of this phenomenon (and one that occurs even if you don’t believe that it is human-driven) is that we are facing increasing variation in climatic events.  The yearly changes in average temperature or even annual rainfall may not be dramatic, but what we are anticipating is that there will be more extreme weather events.  Climate averages are not what matters for crop production - Variation is.  A few days of intense rain or heat at the wrong time can devastate a crop.  A few weeks of drought can do the same.  A single hail or frost event can make all the difference in what a farmer can harvest.  We have always had those risks for farming and only long term data will demonstrate whether there has been an increasing trend as is predicted.  For instance, It isn’t possible yet to say that the current, extended drought in Australia is caused by elevated greenhouse gasses, but some day we will know whether it was by looking back historically.  Of course that will be too late.  Our actions have to come now.  The other huge threat from climate change is that water supplies will be more limiting in many areas that are irrigated today.  Though that area is much smaller than rain-fed areas, it is very important to the food supply.

Some have predicted that “Global warming” and elevated CO2 will boost crop production in certain areas.  There might be some occasions where higher temperatures will enhance some yields in normally cold areas, but if the warmth comes with other extreme weather events, the benefits will be diminished.  It also turns out that plants can’t really take full advantage of high CO2 levels.  Basically,  there is no real “up-side” of climate change for farming.

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Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas‘ Editor-In-Chief, discusses the topic of the smaller homes living movement, and how downsizing helps you go green with Shay Solomon, author of Little House on a Small Planet and Co-Founder of The Small House Society.

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Lots of people in America are worried about their food - usually not about having enough food, but mostly about things that might be in their food that could potentially hurt them or their children.  People also worry about the environmental impacts of food production.  At one level I’m glad that people are engaged in this way and I do believe that there are legitimate concerns.   I happen to think that some of the fear about food is misplaced.

I believe that much of this fear stems from a limited understanding of toxicology, molecular genetics, and also what farming is actually about today.  Very few Americans have any real contact with farming.  Frankly, some of this fear is also driven by the activities of businesses and organizations with a vested economic interest in alarming people.

I’ve been working as an agricultural scientist for 32 years.  I’ve had the opportunity to learn about lots of crops grown all over the world.  I’ve been involved with all sorts of different technologies.  I’ve seen huge changes in agriculture over time. So from all of this experience, do I worry about anything to do with food?  Yes, absolutely I do worry! But my list of worries is a little different from the norm

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