No Impact Man

A way forward for capitalism?

“…it is in this space of influencing life style choices that conservation and resource management is a great leveler among societies at different ends of the energy spectrum: an Indian who consumes 600 kWh/annum and an American who consumes over 15,000 kWh/annum have much to learn from one another. Because if one really thinks about it, the energy each consumes for their day to day needs should be about the same–while one wastes out of a sense of affluence the other is pegged to a lower level of consumption due to circumstances and poverty…”

This was written to me by Srinivasan Padmanabhan, an energy efficiency expert living in India who stumbled across NoImpactMan.com. His point is that Americans and Western Europeans can learn to conserve energy from the solutions developing countries have come to out of economic necessity. In turn, developing countries can gain economically feasible technology from us as we develop it to conserve energy.

It is already happening in some ways: the use of solar panels, developed to help Americans get off the grid, to create lighting in small villages in developing countries that are off the grid because they have no choice. As an example of a swap in the opposite direction, Srinivasan suggested that a non-electric cooler developed for use in India where economic resources are short, the ceramic Mitti Cool (see photo above), might help people like me to conserve energy here in the United States.

The idea of developing technology to serve real needs--either borne out of economic necessity or the urge towards conservation--ties in with the thoughts of Benjamin Barber, the author, most recently, of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, whom I heard talk recently at Demos. Barber suggested that one good aspect of early capitalism was that it tied self-interest to altruism: if I invent something that is good for society and distribute it, then not only will I have helped but I personally will benefit.

The problem is, Barber said, that capitalism in the United States no longer services existing need, because most of our needs are met. Instead, it manufactures need by marketing to us the idea that our cell phones are no longer cool and our TVs are no longer big enough. We feel we better buy new ones, even though we don’t really need them. How wonderful, Barber suggested, if capitalism turned back to its job of filling real, existing needs (read his Op-Ed on this theme here).

The northern, more affluent hemisphere needs technology that requires fewer resources to manufacture and use so as not to harm the planet. The southern, less affluent hemisphere needs the same low-resource technology because it should cost less. How wonderful if capitalism turned from Nintendo and SUVs—manufactured needs—to these real needs.

How do we get there? Commenters, please weigh in. This is what I’d love us to discuss in this post.

As for my two pennies worth, for one, we can help convince corporations that there are markets both here and abroad for low resource products. No Impact Man is, in part, a protest against resource gluttony. If you want me to buy, the idea goes, then prove to me your products won’t hinder the planet. I’m talking here about a consumer rebellion of sorts. But also, we must find a way to get rid of the short-term quick profit ethos. As Ben Barber pointed out in his talk, corporations with a longer view might find a cure for malaria in order to elevate people to become eventual customers.

Finally, let me point you to some people who are already thinking this way and are showing their wares at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The current exhibition, called Design for the Other 90%, shows innovations not designed for the richest 10% of the world, like most products, but those designed for those in developing countries with genuine needs. Bravo.

 

 

Our trip to the farm

Last week we got to spend a wonderful three days at Ghent, New York’s Hawthorne Valley Farm—part research trip, part vacation, part serendipitous avoidance of 90-degree days back in the City, and part getting to know a lot of wonderful farmer-philosophers. HV Farm is certified both organic and biodynamic and has one of the biggest stands at the Union Square farmers’ market, where we get all our local food (part of the No Impact project is only eating food grown within 250 miles—a day’s round trip).

Steffan and Rachel Schneider—the head farmers—hosted us in their own home. They even cooked us a special local-food-only feast! Not to mention the education they gave us.

The pumping heart of HV Farm is the dairy herd. Of 400 acres, only 13 or so are cultivated for vegetables. The rest is largely grazing land where the cows are grass fed. The manure they deposit in the fields fertilizes their own future food; what they deposit in the milking shed is collected to fertilize ours.

What’s most interesting about the biodynamic approach is that Steffan and his help look at the farm as one corpus that is tended for its overall health. The size of the dairy herd is chosen to be in exactly the right proportion to the grazing land, which feeds the cattle, and the size of the vegetable garden, which is in turn fed by the cattle's manure. The treatment of the garden soil with the composted cow manure and cover crops achieves a balance that will support happy vegetables, but not weed infestation. The mix of vegetables is chosen, in part, so as not to encourage the swarming of one particular kind of crop-eating bug (the solar-heated greenhouse is shown here).

In other words, by keeping the whole body of the farm healthy, there is no need for medicines—in the form of chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides (not even those allowed by the USDA’s organic standards). That’s the good news. The bad news is that the techniques are very labor intensive. That’s why organic and biodynamic costs more than conventional.

But if you spend time, as we did, watching the farmers work on the land, you can’t help but appreciate everything thing they do (and all for love of the work, by the way, because the wages are poor). I wouldn’t begrudge them a penny.

Something sad

I remember in childhood the first time that I became aware that countries sent their young men to war to fight out their differences. I remember being incredulous. How did you know who won? Was it decided by whomever managed to kill more of the other’s children? I decided I was a pacifist.

I’d like to say I am still a pacifist but I’m not. Though I still abhor war, my beliefs are more along the lines of what Jimmy Carter said: “War is sometimes a necessary evil, but it’s always an evil, never a good.” World War II is an example of a necessary evil. The Iraq War, to me, is not.

And so, at first, when the politicians said that they were executing the Iraq War to protect the American way of life—my way of life—I was offended and angry. But then I realized how many resources I use in my life, including oil. I used so much that a war might actually be necessary to protect that way of life, to make sure there was enough to supply my endless consumption. If I expect to be allowed to use so many of the world’s resources, aren’t I partly to blame if my government fights to secure those resources?

Part of my motivation for the No Impact experiment was to see if I could develop a way of life that didn’t need quite so much of that kind of protection. We’re fighting for oil. I thought, would it be possible to use less oil and therefore feel less to blame?

This is all background to the NPR segment I want to share today. In it, a young soldier named Peter Mohan returned from Iraq to his wife Anna (pictured above). He refused to open the blinds or go out of his house. He acted as though he was still protecting himself from the enemy. Anna went to a support group and found that Vietnam War wives still attended. Did that mean, she wondered, it would never get better?

How many of our boys and girls have been permanently scarred by this war for resources? Is it worth their sacrifice? Could there be more peace if we were willing to have a little less? Honestly, Peter and Anna's story just made me weep.

If you don't trust the politicians, take matters into your own hands--repost

I'm away, but here's a recycled post some of you newcomers to the blog might not have seen and might want to discuss in the comments.

Winston Churchill said that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all thos other forms that have been tried from time to time." The question is, though, whether we still actually have a working democracy here in the United States.

The film Unreasonable Man, about Ralph Nader, which I saw some time ago with my writer friend William Georgiades, discusses how the Democratic party abandoned liberal ideology in the 1970s in order to get a slice of the big business campaign contribution pie that the Republicans already feasted on. The result is that we have two parties, both funded by corporate interests, neither of which will do anything to threaten the size of their war chests (which is why Nader ran for president). Whether you pull the lever for big business party number one or big business party number two, big business still wins.

The conservative Pat Buchanan, in the film, sat there and said--and I was so shocked to hear it coming from his mouth that I wrote it down--€”that democracy in the United States is a "€œfraud, €”it'€™s a consumer fraud." The politician who wins is not the one who is best for the people but the one with the ideology big business is most willing to support.

You start to worry that cleaning up the world will only come when business tells the politicians it'€™s okay, that they've finally figured out a way to rake in money in an environmental way. But I think it will be a long time coming before, for example, business finds a way to profit from reduced resource consumption. And let's face it, one way or another, we're going to have to face up to a reduced consumption scenario. But if big business doesn'€™t embrace it--and why would they?--the political parties won'€™t consider it.

So what options does that leave us schlubs--€”the voters--€”with? Take matters into our own hands. Don'€™t wait until the Government tells us to stop driving gas guzzlers. Just stop driving them. Don't wait until the Government says not to use your air conditioner all the time. Just stop using it.

Waiting for the Government to tell us to save the world is just ludicrous. Let's just save  it.

The human route

I'm away, but I wrote this before I went:

I have variously spent parts of my life chasing cash, prestige, experience. I have come up with ideas of what life is for, and clinged to them, perhaps because it is to frightening to admit that I just don't know. Why was I born? Why will I die? What am I for? Many times in my life, I've run from these questions.

But if I at least admit that these questions exist, instead of trying to push them away, maybe I can take less seriously my want for more things, more stuff. Maybe I can see that assuming that satiating my many desires my not be the real meaning of my life. And if I can see that, then maybe I may not need take from the planet what it cannot sustainably give me.

Maybe, too, I can see that we're all in this same boat--not knowing where we've come from and where we're going. Maybe that might make me feel a little more compassion for you and your plight, and maybe then, too, I might feel a little responsibility for you, since you are probably just about as lost as I am. Maybe then, I might conclude, that whatever this thing called life is, the best thing to do with it is to help each other get through it.

Which leads me to an ancient Zen poem called The Human Route:

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed--that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

 

Individual action when it comes to declining bees?

As you know, I'm on vacation, but here's a thought from the Guardian. We city slickers can start helping to bolster the dramatically declining bee population!

Beekeepers get busy at Chelsea Flower Show

In pictures: amateur beekeeping

Press Association
Monday May 21, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
 
 City dwellers are being targeted in a bid to bolster the declining British bee population.

The initiative, aimed at encouraging more urbanites to keep bees, was launched today at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) says hives can be installed on rooftops, behind garden walls and on allotments in towns and cities.

It created a show garden to inspire urbanites to keep bees, which have lost some of their natural countryside habitat.

The 'bee friendly' design is stocked with fruit, flowers and vegetables as well as beehives.

But the insects themselves were not included in the garden after being banned by the show's organisers.

Bill Turnbull, a BBC Breakfast presenter who keeps his own bees, was on hand to publicise the design.

"You don't need much space to keep bees and we need all the beekeepers we can get. It's a lovely thing to do," he said.

The BBKA chairman, Tim Lovett, said honeybees play a "vital" ecological role.

"Many new urban beekeepers see working with a colony of honeybees as a healthy change to the stress of office life.

"Tending bees is peaceful, keeps you in touch with nature - and bees only sting when provoked," he said.

There are about 44,000 beekeepers in the UK who look after some 240,000 hives.

The UK produces about 20% of the honey it consumes, according to the BBKA - so an increase in domestic beekeepers could also help reduce food miles.

                                                       

Stopping the junk mail tree killers--repost

As you know, I'm on vacation this week and am putting up old posts and other people's wise words. This is one of my own, from February, that I thought might be helpful to new visitors to No Impact Man. Note that since I wrote this post and tried the methods within, I find I'm still getting junk mail. So I've added one more tool (see point number 5 below).

It’s two months since I began the no impact man stage concerned with stopping trash, but my recycling bin is still filling up with paper I never bought, never used, and never wanted. The junk mail pours in.

Five years ago, I bought my step-mother Beth some flower bulbs. The company has sent me two catalogs a year ever since. The product pushers discovered that Isabella was born but not that she has since aged two years, so we get piles of completely useless baby wear catalogs.

Do I ever look at these bundles of the coagulated flesh of dead trees? Uh, no. Do you?

According to the Native Forest Network guide to stopping junk mail, 100 million trees are ground up each year to make junk mail. Um, didn’t somebody mention that tearing down trees is contributing to global warming?

All in the interests of our economy—right?—except that 44 percent of junk mail gets trashed without ever being opened. Together with other types of paper and paperboard waste, the junk mail adds up to 40% of the solid waste in our landfills.

So here’s what I’m doing to stop the tree killers and keep their trash out of my bin:

1. All the junk mail, including that with plastic windows in the envelopes, goes in the recycling bin. For a guide to recycling in your community, go here.

2. I got my name off the credit card and insurance offer lists by going to the credit bureaus’ centralized service for opting out.

3. I spent a dollar—swear to God, that’s the price—to sign onto the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, which reportedly will reduce my junk mail by 75%.

4. I began calling the 800 number on the catalogs and asking them to take me off their lists

5. Since I first wrote this post in February, my junk mail has reduced but not minimized. I'm now going to try a paid service called Green Dimes, which promises to get rid of junk mail for $36 a year (one green dime a day). If Green Dimes does what it claims, parting with the cash means you don't have to take all the steps above (except recycling, of course!), because Green Dimes does it for you.

Meanwhile, a couple of websites tell you how to make your own recycled paper from junk mail, but well, I’m too busy baking bread from local wheat and washing Isabella’s locally-grown, organic cotton diapers. God save me, please, from myself and this crazy project.

As you know, I'm on vacation this week and am putting up old posts and other people's wise words. This is one of my own, from February, that I thought might be helpful to new visitors to No Impact Man. Note that since I wrote this post and tried the methods within, I find I'm still getting junk mail. So I've added one more tool (see point number 5 below).

It’s two months since I began the no impact man stage concerned with stopping trash, but my recycling bin is still filling up with paper I never bought, never used, and never wanted. The junk mail pours in.

Five years ago, I bought my step-mother Beth some flower bulbs. The company has sent me two catalogs a year ever since. The product pushers discovered that Isabella was born but not that she has since aged two years, so we get piles of completely useless baby wear catalogs.

Do I ever look at these bundles of the coagulated flesh of dead trees? Uh, no. Do you?

According to the Native Forest Network guide to stopping junk mail, 100 million trees are ground up each year to make junk mail. Um, didn’t somebody mention that tearing down trees is contributing to global warming?

All in the interests of our economy—right?—except that 44 percent of junk mail gets trashed without ever being opened. Together with other types of paper and paperboard waste, the junk mail adds up to 40% of the solid waste in our landfills.

So here’s what I’m doing to stop the tree killers and keep their trash out of my bin:

1. All the junk mail, including that with plastic windows in the envelopes, goes in the recycling bin. For a guide to recycling in your community, go here.

2. I got my name off the credit card and insurance offer lists by going to the credit bureaus’ centralized service for opting out.

3. I spent a dollar—swear to God, that’s the price—to sign onto the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, which reportedly will reduce my junk mail by 75%.

4. I began calling the 800 number on the catalogs and asking them to take me off their lists

5. Since I first wrote this post in February, my junk mail has reduced but not minimized. I'm now going to try a paid service called Green Dimes, which promises to get rid of junk mail for $36 a year (one green dime a day). If Green Dimes does what it claims, parting with the cash means you don't have to take all the steps above (except recycling, of course!), because Green Dimes does it for you.

Meanwhile, a couple of websites tell you how to make your own recycled paper from junk mail, but well, I’m too busy baking bread from local wheat and washing Isabella’s locally-grown, organic cotton diapers. God save me, please, from myself and this crazy project.

Some words from my no-shopping mentor

I’m going on vacation at Hawthorne Valley farm in Ghent, New York (and to answer questions about travel: train), so I programmed the computer to serve up some cool thoughts while I’m gone.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned my local eating mentor, Alisa Smith, who co-authored the 100-Mile Diet (titled Plenty in the United   States). So, I felt I also ought to express my gratitude by mentioning Rachel Kessel, one of the original members of the Compact, who has been my go-to person when it comes to learning how to live while not buying anything new. She is the best, best, best. Or, the jargon of people her age instead of mine, she ROCKS! That’s her picture up top (don’t forget to check out her blog).

Big news for her and her blog readers came when, after two years of buying nothing new, she broke down and bought some undies. Meanwhile, here are some of her wise words taken from her blog on the topic of sustainability:

Lately, some other environmentally bent bloggers (Colin Beavan and Sara Gottlieb ) have questioned what we're sustaining, where we draw the lines of our commitments to conservation. Without reading any research on this line of conservation theory, here's a basic outline of what I think sustainability means, and the way that I approach those goals.

When I refer to sustainability, I'm addressing human lifestyles that will allow the persistence of the range of life forms that we currently enjoy on Earth. Most important to me, is the preservation of habitats such that all species can play out their destinies without an overbearing human influence. I take an eco-centric view of life, not prizing humanity above the rest to the extent that this is possible. I am human after all.

Clearly people are part of nature, and thus enjoy the same sanctity that I ascribe to life, in general. Clearly our actions must be viewed in this context of humans as part of nature. Some folks see a division between the tech fix greenies and the simple lifers. I guess I fall closer to the simple lifer side without rejecting the places where technology can help us.

I try to view sustainability through a community lens, which becomes more difficult as we globalize and homogenize, attempting to convince the world that the US standard of living should be a goal. My ecological footprint needs to be such that I'm not personally overdrawing resources to the detriment of other species, and indeed to the detriment of my own kind in less wealthy regions of the world.

As I've come to these conclusions (which I'm sure will transform over time) I've found a need to examine my life in terms of the basics (food, water, shelter, family) and modern human existences (transportation, employment, societial position). I feel I should consume resources at a rate that allows their regeneration in such time that those resources, and any others dependent upon them, do not disappear as a result of my wants.

Colin asked what lines we draw. I feel like I draw the line at my health, and I even weigh that (a bit obsessively) at times. So I'm healthy enough to get around by bike, so I ride. But I need anti-inflammatories so I take them! I'm a healthy vegetarian w/o supplements. I was an unhealthy vegan, even with supplements.

I also draw a line where privilege meets right. This is perhaps the most difficult to define, and it is highly personal. I believe in a right to food, water, shelter, self determination, and knowledge. I find our abilities to attain these are highly variable. I only aspire that my own pursuit of these rights allow other people and life the same opportunities.

--Rachel Kessel

 

And people think I'm extreme

Wanted to let you all know, first of all, that we’re taking next week off to spend a few days at an organic, biodynamic farm, known as Hawthorne Valley, in Ghent, New York. To quote my two-year-old Isabella, we’re going to see “worsies and cockadoodle doos and cows…and lions.”

It’ll be kind of a busman’s holiday because the idea is to learn a little about local farming. It also means I’ll be away from my computer for all of next week, so no new writing. Instead, I’m going to program the blog to serve up a few articles and blog posts written by other people, along with a couple of my own older posts that I particularly liked and feel like rehashing.

As for what I mean by today’s headline, I thought I’d leave you with an article someone sent me about a family who raised a couple of chickens in their Manhattan apartment (that’s their little girl, also called Isabella, in the picture). I think my own Isabella would like it. I wonder what Michelle would say…

PS We woke up this morning to find that Isabella's milk was sour. The pot in the pot isn't working so well. Does anybody have any ideas about keeping our food fresh without an electric fridge?

An interview with Green Options

Amy Stodghill, a writer with Green Options, talked to me by phone a few weeks ago. It turns out she comes awfully close to being better at getting my points across than I am! For that reason (and—I admit—because it lets me off the hook for a day), I thought I’d post my favorite parts of her piece.

Green Options: What are some of the biggest surprises so far?

Colin Beavan: The change of rhythm. Whether hopping in taxis or talking on your cell phone, everything is a big rush. Even on a Saturday, which is supposed to be one of the rest days, you're like okay, I'll have brunch with you at ten, and then I'll head up to the MoMa at noon, and then some friends are having a party for the kids at three, and then you guys are having a dinner at seven.

We just can't move that fast on our bikes and by walking. At first you think you're losing out, but on a weekend day basically we can do one big thing and we savor it much more. That was kind of surprising to me.

GO: Many comments on your blog have been very supportive, but on occasion you'll get some angry comments. Why do you think that is?

CB: I think sometimes people are mad because they think i'm trying to tell everybody else what to do but I'm really not.

One thing that's important about No Impact Man is that it is an experiment that we are doing. I'm not suggesting that anybody else does what we are doing. I'm just saying this is what we're doing.

I think all of us can do what we can do. People who live in the countryside or the suburbs may not be able to drive less. I'm in a fortunate position of not having to use a car. I'm not out there saying, "Don't use your car," but my hope is that maybe the project will cause people to think about their own lives and not ask themselves if they can do what I'm doing, but look at their own lives and ask "What can I do? How would I be happy to contribute to the planet's well-being?"

I support people who are trying to make a difference. Maybe they can't be no impact, but I support people that are making an effort. For the sake of the project I eat local and seasonal, but there is one stand at the farmers market that grows greens in a greenhouse. They're converting their green houses to biodiesel, which is not perfect but they're making the effort. So, I can buy from them because I support what they're doing.

GO: I really like something you said on your blog: "Saving this planet depends on finding a middle path that is neither unconsciously consumerist nor self consciously anti-materialist." Can you explain that?

CB: My favorite model is something that Bill McDonough talks about in Cradle to Cradle. He talks about a tribe called Menomonie, and they harvest lumber. In 1900 there was a certain amount of harvestable trees. Now they have the same amount of land, but they have a lot more harvestable lumber, and meanwhile they've also harvested a whole bunch of lumber. They had so much, they took a lot of it, but they still have more than they started with. The reason why they did that is because instead of taking what they wanted from the forest, they took what the forest had to offer.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have any fun, but we should look at it as, instead of just taking what I want from the planet, saying, what does the planet have to offer? What can it offer with me without it hurting itself? How can i be a good guest?

Don't forget, I'm just a schlub. I'm not an expert. I make mistakes. I'm trying to figure it out as i go along. Chances are I'll make some wrong choices but that's part of the project because so many of us have no idea what to do.

To read the rest of Amy’s interview with me on Green Options, go here.