Archive for February, 2011
Water Efficiency The Resource Matrix Part 4 of 4
Water Efficiency The Resource Matrix Part 4 of 4
The Resource Matrix IV: Layers
A new-age freak grinned at me last Friday and shared her relevation, “Everything’s energy. And everything’s connected. Don’t you get it, man?”
But you know, she’s right.
Otherwise, how would you explain melting polar ice and island nations disappearing under rising ocean levels? Randomness just doesn’t cut it as a solid excuse anymore.
A couple of years ago, some determined energy interests utilized hired hypnotic practitioners (several US senators and climate scientists) to declare to the public that there is no global warming. Early on, they tried introduce confusion into the debate with their term, “climate change,” which suggested that the environment changes randomly and there’s no proof that global warming is a serious trend.
Unfortunately for them, their efforts didn’t work, and ironically “climate change” is another term for “global warming.”
Have broken through that layer of illusion, the Do-Gooders (concerned scientists and environmental groups) and the Hybrids (for-profit companies that actually do some of those same things that someone who cares about you would do, rather than merely say, “We care about you,” which all companies say) have helped us gain greater awareness and provided with the means to change:
- “Global warming is real, and here’s a CFL lightbulb and more info.”
- “Water shortage is real, and it has nothing to do with long showers.”
Today, in our final article of The Resource Matrix, we peel back layer after layer to get to the core and break the code that sends the whole system crashing down like a ton of bricks. And what you find will surprise — even shock you!
Let’s begin with the first layer:
Layer 1:
the illusion that non-sustainable costs less than sustainable
We began The Resource Matrix by explaining that economics comes out of 18th century political economy, and that political economy itself comes out of moral philosophy, and this moral philosophy apparently had room for colonialism, a fancy term for the answer to the eternal question: “How can I get that for free?”
Within economics and its moral background is the concept of the “free good:” a good that is not scarce. A free good is available in as great a quantity as desired with zero opportunity cost to society. Earlier schools of economic thought proposed that free goods were resources that are so abundant in nature that there is enough for everyone to have as much as they want.
To sustain the illusion that products that pollute the air and water are cheaper than those that don’t create a mess, the scroundels just pay the referees fat sacks of hush money. “What foul? Play ball!”
Layer 2:
the illusion of separation
The next layer we peel away is the seeming “illusion of separation.” The grinning new-age freaky girl has it right again: “Everything’s connected.”
Global warming is not a fossil fuel issue. It’s a consumption issue that involves insane water policies that dictate growing cotton in the Egyptian desert, installing the world’s highest-shooting fountain in the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona to run 12 hours out of every 24, draining rivers to grow rice for exports, polluting the same rivers in India that people drink from with toxic chemicals used for dyeing cotton and wondering why nearly every single person in town died. And on and on ad nauseum.
Layer 3:
it’s up to government and industry to bring change
In the commercial marketplace, you vote with your feet. If you’re sitting in a movie theater and the film sucks, you stand up because you can’t take it any longer. And walk out. Just remember who the lousy director or actor was so you’re not doomed to repeat your history of lousy film choices.
If we leave it to government and industry to form a partnership to solve water usage issues, it will be virtual warfare, as we described in our last article (The Resource Matrix part 3 of 4: the coming cold water waters):
In this game, you start as leader of a country which has certain industries, a growing population, and dwindling water resources. Your objective is to maintain or enhance the lifestyle of your people by shifting water use to other countries in order to prevent internal strife and your eventual overthrow and death by coup d’etat.
And as you read, this game has no winners. It’s not sustainable.
Rather than blindly obeying the on-screen instructions (“Please pick a COUNTRY, PLAYER NAME, and Press the START button to begin now.”), it’s best never to press the START button at all.
Instead of giving your power over to the Government/Industry Gamers, vote with your feet.
Like doing business with those who conduct themselves in line with your own beliefs (cruelty-free products manufacturer, member of your own religious faith), you can make certain individual decisions consciously.
In certain cases, you make conscious decisions that consciously support certain businesses:
- retailers (and the manufacturers) of compact fluorescent bulbs
- shade-grown coffee
- cruelty-free health and beauty products
In certain cases, you make conscious decisions that unconsciously reduce support for certain businesses:
- using daylight instead of manufactured light sources reduces coal production and its polluting effects, in addition to saving energy
How about water? What choices do you have? Here’s possible near-future scenes:
Online resumes now include diet preferences as an indicator of personal water footprint and employment site search tools include diet as a filter.
Business headlines: “Demand for beef-free Hindu programmers causes short squeeze in software development market – low-waterfoot print computer geeks ask for, get 25% more than meat-eating peers” and “All-vegan employee company Sustainatrix International goes public in huge stock offering – market value of $150 billion confirms validity of sustainability in capital and financial modeling”
The Matrix and Vanilla Sky:
Not what it seems
In The Matrix, Morpheus explains that “the Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
In the 2001 Tom Cruise psychological thriller Vanilla Sky, built layer upon layer of seeming reality, Cruise’s handsome character enjoys the charmed rich life, then gets into an accident that mars his face, over which he needs to wear a mask. Eventually distraught, he goes out drinking, and ends up literally in the gutter to sleep it off.
He wakes to continue his life in an sequence of odd experiences. Finally remembering some repressed memories, he gets help and peels back one layer of the illusion: all his “experiences” since landing in the gutter have been a dream.
Trying to cope with his shattered worldview, he peels back another layer: worse, he’s been “dead” for 150 years and in a state of suspended animation.
And yet, the movie itself is not what it seems. Vanilla Sky was a Hollywood idle rich American kid adaptation of the 1997 Spanish original entitled Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) and also co-starred Penelope Cruz in her same role.
I introduced this four-part series by explaining that:
the Resource Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
You take the blue pill and the story ends.
You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
I’ve shown you how deep the rabbit hole goes, and now you can wake in your bed and choose to continue to live like Tom Cruise, or you can break the code.
To break the code that creates the graphical user interface and see the illusion for what it really is, you need only do one thing, as repeated by Tom Cruise’s alarm clock each morning in Vanilla Sky:
Open your eyes.
And see the Resource Matrix, everywhere, all around you.
Thanks for letting us keep you updated . . .
To your green, brighter future,
Cinnamon Alvarez,
A19
And now I would like to offer you free access to powerful info on energy efficiency that’s easy to read and cuts through all this “green” information clutter — so you can literally start making positive changes today.
You can access it now by going to: http://www.a19.com/pub/articles/
From Cinnamon Alvarez: Founder, A19 — woman-owned green manufacturer of hand-made ceramic lighting fixtures
Green Energy Technologies
Common Policies For Common Good
Common Policies For Common Good
Concerns about dangerous climate change and large biodiversity loss are visible throughout the world: unprecedented rates of temperature increases and species extinctions are a reality. In 1999 Dr. Peter Raven, president of the International Botanical Congress, published a paper in which he states that “current extinction rate is now approaching 1,000 times the background rate and may climb to 10,000 times the background rate during the next century, if present trends continue. At this rate, one-third to two-thirds of all species of plants, animals, and other organisms would be lost during the second half of the 21st century, a loss that would easily equal those of past extinctions”. He then outlined seven “Points to Slow the Extinction of Plants”, including financial and capacity building instruments to help developing countries protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity they host. As far as climate change is concerned, the responsibility of developed countries is high in providing the most threatened regions in the world with good instruments to cope with this challenge (or at least examples of them to implement autonomously).
Climate change plays a significant role in this human-induced mass extinction because it is increasing the already large biodiversity losses caused by habitat destruction and fragmentation, water and air pollution, introduction of invasive species. Marine ecosystems will be affected by an increase in sea temperature, but also by ocean acidification, because of the higher concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide (carbonic acid): in fact this reduces the shell formation ability in many organisms. Polar (and mountain) ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change, with effects such as thawing permafrost, decreased snow cover, losses from ice sheets and changes in ocean temperatures. Large impacts on Arctic biodiversity are already evident, pictures of polar bears wandering lost on small icebergs being a scary and sad symbol of the era we live in (even former U.S. President Bush, at the end of his mandate, recalled this image to show his fellow citizens he cared about climate change …)
In this rapidly changing environment it is therefore extremely important that conservation plans include adaption measures for ecosystems accordingly to the predicted regional climate patterns (but models need still to be improved a lot at this scale): dynamic approaches are needed to set good options for future ecosystems and landscapes. It will be necessary to facilitate the movement of species to new geographical locations, as they follow the shifting habitats.
The public concern is growing: in Africa last 28 February young people organized a march from impoverished urban areas to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness on climate change, together with the Kilimanjaro Initiative and the UN’s global UNite to Combat Climate Change campaign. It seems though that the global attention on climate change doesn’t fully consider implications for biodiversity yet: while the negotiations and speeches on climate issues are very popular (and the Nobel Prize was awarded to the entire IPCC together with Al Gore in 2007) the meetings and decisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity (http://www.cbd.int/) don’t raise comparable interest. Is it because the anthropocentrism is (still) the prevailing philosophy and animals and plants are mainly seen by people as beautiful “supporting actors” on the planet we live on? Right when we are losing control of the global situation it is probably time to reflect on our role of dominant species and acknowledge the fundamental contribution of other organisms to our livelihoods, despite many of us live in the so called Technosphere.
Policies to protect the climate avoiding irreversible effects on the ecosystems need to be strongly interconnected with conservation strategies: preserving natural areas while helping them adapt to the changing climate means hopefully to leave better, or not as compromised, ecosystems to future generations. Climate and biodiversity, though ever changing and evolving, are common goods and they need common policies: if we reduce the human Ecological Footprint both the atmosphere and the biosphere will be better off (and our children and grandchildren living in them).
Written by Luca Marazzi on behalf of Responding to Climate Change.
For further information on Climate Change please visit the Responding to Climate Change website – http://www.rtcc.org
The Ecological Footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. For 2005, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.3 planet Earths – in other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.3 times faster than Earths can renew them. See also: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/
Green Millennium Photocatalyst