Weekly Heroes: St. Mary’s Monastery

The Catholic Benedictine Sisters of St. Mary Monastery, Rock Island, Illinois lead beautiful, sustainable lives.

What is sustainable?

1) The monastery is built to minimize energy use.  The building’s temperature is controlled by a geothermal pond.  Large windows funnel sun onto a huge mass to enable passive solar heating.  Their facilities combine form, function, and sustainability.

2) The nuns lead lives of social sustainability.  The monastery used to run a school.  That has, sadly, closed but the nuns today go out into the community to work in education, social services, religious counselling, and other callings.

3) Community is sustainable.  We can all learn from the group reliance these women give each other.

4) They share this sustainability with others with the Benet House Retreat Center.  I have visited there twice to spend time in quiet introspection.  The visit is inexpensive and the nuns provide food and (if wanted) spiritual counselling.

5) Anti-consumerism.  The nuns examine the things they use and do not buy new items unless absolutely necessary.  This is not a privation, they have everything they need.

Visualizing Sustainability

Defining sustainability is one of the most difficult things to do.  And we cannot hope to achieve sustainability until we can define it.  The UN’s definition of meeting the needs for the future and today promises all things to all people.  The Venn diagram of environment, economy, and society is too vague.

Oxfam International has developed a new framework in Kate Raworth’s report “A safe and just space for humanity: can we life within the doughnut”.  This model establishes a baseline, a ceiling, and a good zone.

Too often, humans get ignored in the environmental framework in which sustainability is usually framed.  The doughnut sets a social floor, where poverty and injustice need to be removed in order for true sustainability to exist.  Without education, health, and jobs, society is not sustainable and all people can never share in a sustainable future.

At the same time, through our lifestyles we are overstepping real environmental boundaries.

Including this floor makes one very important (and often ignored) point.  Without these basic necessities, we cannot begin to take care of the environment.  Environmental protection is (largely) the consideration of those in rich countries.  However, growth – the normal solution to end poverty – is not the way to go either.

These envisionings create real possibilities for solutions – sustainability for all people, not just for some.  I know its changed the way I see things, and my students will get this new view next week.

Alienation and control

“Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.” – Tim DeChristopher

I was reading Tim DeChristopher’s sentencing statement today. (DeChristopher is the man who was sentenced to two years in prison for bidding on public lands open to oil and gas leases, when he had no intention of drilling for oil or gas).   Reading this, I was sitting in my little white house not knowing anyone in my neighborhood except Earl and Jan next door.  In fact, I know few people other than my colleagues at work and my students.

Most of us lead lives much like this, cut of from our neighbors, our government, our environment our world.  And through this we give up the very autonomy we are seeking to protect.

We lead our compartmentalized little lives in our own little boxes (out of Ticky Tacky).  I know I do.  This alienation renders us silent.  We see a problem in the world – and need a home that is clean, healthy, and sustainable.  So we do what we can as individuals.  We recycle.  We scale down.  We eat local.  But, as individuals, we will never make change of the scale that is needed.  For that we need to conquer alienation and know the people and world around us.

A community’s worth of actions is needed to create change that can last.  A state’s worth of actions is needed to create something that can do some real goo.  A country’s worth of actions – that that can really start to tackle something big – like climate change or poverty.

So, how do we get from here to there.

Weekly Heroes: Free fuel edition

Earlier, I scoffed at the man doing public service by advocating for cheaper gas.  Today, I praise a similar program.

My town, Normal, IL, has positioned itself as an EVTown (Electronic Vehicle Town).  The city has purchased electric cars for its fleet and encouraged others to do so as well.  They have created incentives for citizens to by EVs, and even arranged for them to be able to get cars from Mitsubishi earlier than anyone else.

The best plan – free vehicle charging around town for the foreseeable future.  That means, if one charged entirely at these stations, “one could expect to save $5,400 over eight years driving a total of 64,000 miles.”  That is an incentive that could get people on board – add this to the $7,500 tax credit and the $29,125 becomes suddenly affordable to own and operate.  This is a perfect second car (in a country where every family owns two cars): one car to drive distances and the other to go to work and the grocery store.

My applause to Chris Koos and all the others at City Hall who have worked to create the possibility for real change.

You can find any EV charging stations near you using this Dept. of Energy Map.

Cooperative business structure

Co-ops are back, according to Yes! Magazine.   A cooperative is a business structure where a group of people put their money or resources together and share ownership in a democratic structure.  If you belong to a credit union, you’re part of a co-op.  ACE and True Value Hardware are co-ops, and so is Land o’ Lakes.  We don’t think about them because they are staying quiet and being good businesses.

A standard corporation is charged (by the law) with only one task – to make money for its shareholders.  If it tries to do other things, like establish good working conditions or protect the environment, it can be taken to court and forced to turn back to profits.

“Cooperatives, in their various forms, promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people, including women, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples, are becoming a major factor of economic and social development and contribute to the eradication of poverty.” – UN Resolution 64/136, 2010

Co-ops have promise not just in the developed world, but in developing countries as well.  They are a way to get people who individually have very small assets to bring them together in order to be able to so something larger – such as a town getting together to roast the coffee beans they grow or process their own cotton.

Today it becomes most important that, cooperatives “are motivated not by profit, but by service-to meet their members’ needs or affordable and high quality goods or services; Exist solely to serve their members.”  They are owned by their members and surplus monies are returned to their members.

Co-ops are one of several potential new business models that can allow people to conduct real business, while staying accountable to their community and world.

Staying warm on a cold indoor day

I am one of those people who is always cold.  Especially in the winter, and especially after I cuddle down on my sofa in the evening.  My husband and I argue over the thermostat, and I am trying my best to find ways to not to crank up the dial.

1) Hot cocoa or hot tea – don’t even drink it, just hold it in your hands and don’t put it down. This is one of the few methods that work for fingers.

2) Cats – this is the other method that works for cold fingers.  You can substitute dog or rat or bunny – whatever warmblooded fuzzy animal you have on hand.

3) Shawls – I cannot go as far as a snuggie, but I have a pile of shawls to keep  my shoulders warm.

Trey is modelling this years fine wrap.

4) Heating pad or hot water bottle – toss it under a shawl or blanket and it works wonders.

5) Double-curtain your window – or use an insulated / thermal curtain.  Even double paned windows can often use some extra help on a cold day.

6) Check for drafts – walk around the room with incense or a candle to trace and the caulk areas where drafts are getting in.

7) Humidifier – dry house air really adds to the feeling of cold.  Raising the humidity level and add a few degrees to your experienced temperature (same as humidity on a summer day).

8) Plants – they also hold humidity, keep them watered so they don’t dry out.

9) Lap blankets – the more the merrier.  I sometimes have so many on my legs on the sofa that I can barely move (just like as a child in bed with all those blankets.)

10) I hate to push a brand – but – Smart Wool Socks.  Yes,  I love them.

11) Comparisons – slip on your shoes and do a quick lap around the outside of the house.  I guarantee the inside will fill much warmer.

12) Red hots candies – they may not work, but then you still have red hots candies.  Sympathetic magic.

Weekly heroes: Double down and plant it edition

How do you help a devastated neighborhood recover from blight?  In New Orleans, Growing Home from the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has a Good Idea (capitalized just like Winnie the Pooh would).

Image from Growing Home

Hurricane Katrina left many homes destroyed and neighborhoods with dwindling populations facing a scattered pile of overgrown vacant lots.  Growing Home gives homeowners a grant for $10,000 off the price of the lot next door as long as they agree to improve it and plant a garden.  Everybody wins.  The homeowner has a double lot and a higher property value, the community has a lovely garden instead of blight, the city increases tax revenues.

Image from Growing Home

New landowners can grow how they want to: some plant vegetable gardens, some flowers, some create play spaces for children in the neighborhood, and some even open up as community gardens.  Improvements encouraged by the organization include native trees, lot water meters, rain barrels, compost piles, and fences.

Image from Growing Home

If this sounds good, Growing Home has a page full of resources not only for participants in their program, but also those who want to start up programs in other cities.

Five tantalizing tales of bizarre recycling

You recycle, I recycle (at least most of the time) and we think  we’re probably both fairly serious about recycling.  No, no we’re not.  We live in a world where they are extreme recyclers – folks who take it one step beyond.

To be honest, most of these are reusing, which is a step above recycling.  Even better.

Bomb Proof Recycling

London has recently installed a series of newspaper recycling bins that are capable of containing or withstanding a serious bomb blast.  The bins are very expensive, but if they end up making any money, 1% of that will be donated to the World Wildlife Federation

Beer Bottle Temple Builders

A group of Buddhist Monks in Sisaket, Thailand collected very large numbers of bottles to build the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple.  As long as you make sure to wash off the labels, the walls become patterned stained glass windows.

Making paper out of poo

Much pooh contains lots of fiber; paper is made of fiber.  You can make paper out of horse, sheep, moose, panda, donkeys, and more.

My favorite is Mr. Ellie Pooh who makes elephant pooh into paper made into beautiful stationery products.

Freegans

Freegans believe food should be free: that is a right and should accessible to all.  They also see our society as creating way too much waste.  Freegans set their lifestyle by collecting food and other necessary products from any place they can.  This includes dumpster diving, but can also include field gleaning or anything else in order to recycle perfectly good food.

Art Cars

Have a bunch of stuff and don’t know what to do with it?  Glue it to a car, just make it look pretty.  The art car phenomenon was beautifully unhip before recycling ever was.

Living as if the earth mattered

Humans are remarkably short-sighted.  Our culture and economy both tend to pull us toward decisions that benefit us in the short-run without ever examining what is best for us and those around us in the long-run.  In order to be even close to sustainable, we have to develop ways to see this long run and to see the world around us, taking both into decision-making.

For class today, we read Derrick Jensen’s “Playing for Keeps” from Orion Magazine.  Yet again, he was saying about the same ideas that I was reading about separately in Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac.  (This seems to happen a lot.)

Jensen says we need to live in a relationship with the land, and Leopold says in a community with the land.  For both, this starts with listening to and seeing the world around us.  If we see the world around us as a world of objects for us to act on, then we will proceed to destroy it because we have no special tie with random objects.  Rather, if we see all around us as being important and unique – each bird that wakes at a different hour in the morning, each flower that first blooms at a different week of the year – that becomes something important to us.  And if its important, we will act to keep it whole and beautiful.

So, how can we do this:  (all a muddle of Jensen, Leopold, and me)

1) Look down.  We’ve all been told to look up when we walk, but if you look down you will see any number of leaves, worms, flowers, things you come into direct contact with.  Things you could step on or pick up – where your actions make an immediate difference.

2) Think about yourself as living 1000 years.  Are you treating your world (and yourself) as if you were going to last?  Would you choose to buy organic?  Buy less?  Would you choose to write a letter to Congress?  To attend a city council meeting?  Do anything to preserve what we have?

3) Know when the geese fly over.  If you live in one of the many areas of this earth over which the geese fly north in the spring and south in the fall, learn when this happens.  Knowing some basic movements of the earth’s year is an important step towards beginning to see how the earth operates and how we operate with it.

4) Think of everything as alive.  Life means value.  If we see trees and trout and soil as having life, then they are worthy of existing just because they exist.

5)  Listen.  Crack the window when you lay in bed at night.  Turn off the TV, the radio, the fan.  What is out there?  Insects, frogs, birds?  Can you tell?  Do you now have a winter silence?  How will that change in three months?  Is this sound something that is worth trying to protect?  Or, is the only sound you hear your neighbor’s radio and passing traffic?  What is it worth to you to get some real night sound back?

6)  Touch things.  When you were young, you were told not to touch things.  (Don’t tough that worm, don’t touch that burr, they’re dirty.)  Go on a walk and for once touch every natural (or semi-natural) thing you run across.  It’s amazing what adding a new sense to the menu can do.

7)  Make Friends.  Do what my husband does – buy some sunflower seed and cracked corn for some of the life that surrounds us.  Do what I do and plant some native plants for food and shelter for the same critters.  Their initial habitat may be gone (or they may be far from it), but in its absence we can create a new habitat the works for both us and them.

8)  Add a value in something other than money.  When we price things with an abstract commodity, we lose the tie to any real value.  Select something of value – perhaps a grilled cheese sandwich – and go around and try to price things using that currency.  You may find you have very different values than are reflected by our society in general.

9) Write a song about it, or paint it, or write a poem.  Take time to involve yourself in what you are experiencing.  It doesn’t have to be a good song.

10)   Breathe.  Step outside, fine a place to sit down, and just breathe for about 15 minutes.  If you are having a problem listening, this will tune in your antennae.

Photo courtesy of Shae Davidson

We’re number 49!

According to this year’s  Environmental Performance Index by Yale and Columbia Universities, the United States is the 49th most environmental country on the planet.    This puts us smack in the middle of environmental performance world wide.  Not a comfortable place.

The top countries are:

The worst performers?  In from least to, well, less least they are: Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Yemen, Kuwait, India, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya, Eritrea, and Tajikistan.

The Map available from the main Environmental Performance Index Website.  the map shows a clear trend of the Americas, Europe, and Southeast Asia doing well – and the rest of the world lagging behind.

How did we get beaten?

Much of the top 10 have been constant performers: Iceland, Switzerland, France, Costa Rica, Austria, Britain and New Zealand.  Switzerland and Latvia have enacted policies to improve air quality and fight climate change.  Costa Rica wrote environmental protection into their constitution.  Norway and Luxemborg were noted for good environmental governance.  In comparison, most of the countries at the bottom of the pack are plagued by bad governance.

I teach the divisions (and similarities) between the developed and developing worlds.  Last week, we examined the correlation between rising energy use, rising standards of living, and falling population growth.  Realistically, as other countries develop, they will use more energy and likely pollute more unless there is a massive technology transfer from the developed world.  In order to have that transfer, the US (among others) needs to innovate and keep their own energy use down.

Image from the United Nations Developmemt Programme’s 2004 World Energy Assessment.

In short, I’m still rooting for Team USA.  I hate it when we’re 4th in any international contest, let alone 49th.  We can do better than that, let’s goooooooooooo USA!  And get real with some sustainability measures.