Author: jennynazak

About all this climate stuff. At the end of the day, what if we’re wrong? Maybe there’s no problem at all. Some people don’t seem to think there is.

Well, I’m a big fan of the precautionary principle, and the “theory of anyway” (as Sharon Astyk puts it — doing things because it’s the right thing to do anyway, regardless of whether or not there’s an eco crisis).

My new theory of anyway is that I do it anyway because I hate ugliness in the world. I also hate unnecessary work. So basically, I’m just an artistically minded person who is also very lazy.

Along these lines, I also don’t like to think very hard to get dressed in the morning. So even if there’s not a climate crisis, I’m going to keep aiming for a capsule wardrobe (albeit sort of a wacky boho version), eschewing trashy-looking single-use plastic cups, resisting the burden of car ownership, and so on.

And, environment aside, I am very likely to continue my participation in government, particularly local government and neighborhood governments. The reason being that human ergonomics are at stake. Livable human settlements. Oh, yes, and beauty also. Maybe I really do need to ramp up the aesthetically offended artist identity ha ha. People seem to listen when I talk about how this or that is tacky and ugly.

People might also say, well, if you’re wrong, haven’t you’ve been wasting your time all these years? Writing a book, writing this blog, showing up at city commission meetings, all that nonsense.

And my answer would be no. Because I have always found multiple benefits in whatever I am advocating and whatever I’m doing. And showing people how they too can get multiple benefits from everyday lifestyle choices related to the environment.

I would actually love to be wrong about some of the stuff I am reading and hearing. It’s really horrific. Supposedly even plants are starting to die out. Like, from not being able to deal with the environment we’ve created.

I checked in on Twitter early this morning for the first time in a while, and one of the first threads I stumbled on was a very grim thread about climate stuff. Definitely would love to be wrong about it. But, I can’t just dismiss it either.

It’s healthy to not be too rigid about our beliefs. Passion and conviction are good, but need to be tempered with mental flexibility.

That said, I’m going to share some of the links I saw in the Twitter thread. (Yes, Twitter is known as X now. I miss the little birdie, and think Twitter was a much better name.)

• Here’s the thread itself, from Aashis Joshi. “Three recent pieces of research show that climate change has gone beyond any hope for control. Ecosystems are facing utter ruin & with them, our societies & civilization. We need to be aware to prepare ourselves, at least psychologically, at least to some extent.”

• One of the articles screenshot says that trees are struggling to “breathe” and store CO2 as the climate warms (Eric Ralls; earth.com).

• The other two bits of grim news are that extreme wildfires are increasing (Guardian); and that the climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases that had been thought.

• And I concur with Lobo’s comment, and continue to take the same approach: “The only hope for preventing runaway global heating, and also collapse from other forms of ecological overshoot, has been deep societal austerity, a kin to the ‘home efforts’ of World War II. If any hope remains, the same approaches are the only rational path.”

Decades ago, at one of the camping festivals I used to attend back when I was living in Austin, I learned a very happy lesson about self-correcting problems. We were admiring a beautiful fat bumblebee who had flown up underneath one of our tent canopies. Several minutes passed, and we became concerned because Bombus was not finding his or her way back out, but rather, remained focused on the top point of the canopy and seemed to be trying to get out that way, where there was no hole to escape.

Several of us were like, Oh no! Our beloved bee is trapped! Whatever will we do!

Whereupon upon a wiser member of our group pointed out that this was a self-correcting situation. In other words, the bee would fly back out into the open as soon as he or she got tired enough to be forced to to drop down from the closed top point of the canopy and sensed the open air again. And sure enough, in a very short time, that is exactly what happened.

I have carried with me this very wonderful lesson about self-correcting problems. Unfortunately, not all such problems are so short and simple. And some of them have more serious consequences. Still, we have to know when it’s best to let go and let the consequences play out.

One example happened the other day, when, for the umpteenth time, I was inwardly lamenting the industrial human habit of stripping all the vegetation out of drainage canals in a supposed effort to help the flooding situation. From everything I’ve learned, vegetation wicks water and reduces flooding. And denuded sand or soil, besides not absorbing as much water as vegetation, also doesn’t filter out pollutants. And furthermore, the denuded banks will eventually (or quickly) erode and ultimately collapse.

It struck me suddenly, as I was walking past one such canal: Well, this is a self-correcting situation. If the banks of enough denuded canals collapse, various government entities and property stewards will realize we shouldn’t denude canals of vegetation.

(Or — a possibility I’m always open to — I could be wrong. After all, I would rather be wrong about this than be right about terrible consequences.)

But if I’m right, the flooding could be worse this year. A consequence I would hate for my fellow humans to have to endure. And also, I would hate for the dirt and debris carried downstream to even further pollute rivers and oceans, harming all other species as well as us.

But, after talking publicly about the crucial role of vegetation for some years now, through as many channels as I can find, and quoting as many experts as I can find, I realize it’s time to take a seat and just let things play out until such time as I might be able to have a helpful role. And it’s not a spiteful, “I told you so” sort of feeling I’m having. It’s more like a practical compassionate feeling.

And, various consequences give lots of different people a chance to be helpers and heroes. That’s a good thing. It’s nice when we can take turns feeling like we helped solve a problem.

In an even more extreme case, the consequence playing out might be the extinction of human life on earth. But let’s hope we don’t let things come to that.

A lot of us in the Permaculture movement and aligned movements such as Degrowth and Deep Adaptation, have been assuming there would come some sort of “corrective crash” that will “reset” the economy and society.

Many of us are starting to realize that while it may happen, we can’t count on that. A lot of times, what ends up happening is that money and resources get concentrated into fewer hands each time it seems there’s going to be some kind of corrective thing happening with the economy. As one example, the housing market never really seems to crash, such that people at the low rungs can afford to buy a house.

And really, there are lots of examples throughout history. For example, even during the Great Depression, some people got richer even while huge swaths of the population were in dire straits.

And besides, a thing I thought of a few years back is that wanting a crash is basically wishing ill on a lot of people who are not the bad guys. For example, I used to really wish the stock market would crash bigtime. But that would just cause so much suffering among people who are not the culprits of the big problems. Far healthier to wish for a vibrant economy that is beyond the financial sector.

Mike Hoag made a good comment on this thread he started in the Transformative Adventures group. I’m quoting his comment here, and pasting my reply.

I was a big advocate of the Permaculture ‘crash on demand’ strategy (as Holmgren put it.) This was the idea that one of the main mechanisms of Permaculture was leveraging de-consumption to crash some of the most destructive parts of the economy. I’m now re-evaluating my thoughts on this post Covid. We had a major world-wide economic blow and governments borrowed heavily and taxed the common people heavily to avoid a collapse. It worked! And while atmospheric carbon and other forms of pollution took a major short-term hit, the governments heavily subsidized other industries like single-use plastics, to make up the shortfall, and a whole new major pollution problem arose. The sorts of economic corrections that governments allow to happen now are very clearly planned events that shore up the economic status quo, and redistribute ever more money to the ruling classes. After about 25 years of expecting a major economic collapse, I’m not sure it’s the leverage point I once thought.”

— I too have started to notice that some kind of healthy corrective crash never really happens. My version of the constructive crash now is that those of us who are able, we voluntarily start to be able to thrive near the “bottom” so that we minimize the amount of work we have to do in servitude to destructive entities. And maximize the proportion of our work that goes into the land, our neighbors, our communities, restoring planetary cycles & ecosystems.

And actually, in permaculture design class, we did learn a lot about the concept of basically constructing a grassroots parallel economy that was not directly trying to take down the big mainstream economy. And did not need to. I think the more attention we put on this emphasis, the better off we will all be.

Further Reading:

• I highly recommend Mike Hoag’s books, Beauty in Abundance and Growing FREE. (Full disclosure: I am a contributing author to the latter.) And the Transformative Adventures group, of which he is the founder and admin. Visit Mike’s website here; it will lead you to his other platforms as well.

Another great post today from one of my favorites, Revitalize or Die:

“No one should have to travel to visit beautiful places. We must invest in making our own towns livable and lovable.”

YES! And ….
(Warning: Ranty comment ahead, to my fellow “green Boomers”)

And, I would even further go on to say, to my fellow “Woodstock/Earth Day” Boomers, especially those of us who have traveled a lot in our younger years, should STOP the overseas travel, and instead get our thrills from using our resources to make our home places lovable & livable, and support the livelihoods & dreams of the younger generations.

We owe it to them. We are the most-resourced generation in history, and however unintentionally it may have been, we have gotten our wealth and security on the backs of the global majority & the rest of the planet. And borrowed ecological capital from younger generations.

Seeing the social-media posts of fellow eco Boomers, I often feel a heartsick cognitive dissonance. The endless rounds of cruises, annual European vacations, etc.

Does our demographic even notice the irony of us bemoaning the planet burning, but continuing the super-high-end travel habits & other consumerism? How are we any different from the “climate deniers” who we claim are the problem???

All these fellow eco-Boomers’ travel-porn social-media posts like, “what a quaint village, oh I love the public transportation in this country” etc. Sorry but this makes me want to retch.

Maybe if we stayed put in our own country and devoted more of our money and labor to actually changing things here?

I know, I know, a lot of you are going to say how much you do. And I believe you. However, high-end travel habits and other conspicuous consumption totally undermine whatever we do.

Not only undermine our credibility, but also actually undermine whatever political will the leaders might have, because our habits are creating massive demand for fossil fuels and other resources.

— Voting is great and necessary, but it’s not enough.
— Protesting is great and necessary, but it’s not enough.
— Writing letters to corporations is great and necessary, but it’s not enough. Same with showing up to speak at government meetings and so on.
— Running for office is wonderful and downright heroic, for those who manage it, but even that is not always enough.

The missing ingredient is where and how we are continuing to spend our big fat wallets of money. Even if you don’t feel like you have a fat wallet, all of us Boomers have a fat wallet in comparison to pretty much everyone else in the world.

Where and how we spend, or don’t spend, matters! There are so many many of us, and our habits are adding up big time. For better and for worse.

I will say something for the climate-deniers and Magas (and other groups/people who we love to self-righteously contrast our own selves with): At least they are not living in outright contradiction with their beliefs about what’s up with the biosphere!!

To put it another way: If our mouths and our wallets are saying opposite things, guess which one is going to carry more weight in the world. If we keep not matching, we have only ourselves to blame.

The admin of the “zero waste, zero judgment” group posted a #TrashAuditTuesday last week (June 24).

It’s a private group, so if you want to see the full post and the other people’s responses, you’ll need to join the group. It’s on Facebook. In the meantime, here is what I wrote:

I love this post, thank you Admin!

Just looking at my own trash, my main type of trash is plastic food packaging, including those big bags lined with shiny silvery stuff (that crackers and chips & things come in), that I am unable to avoid. It’s very frustrating, I do end up just doing without certain foods sometimes but other times I would have a hard time feeding myself properly.

I do not exaggerate when I say it was a game-changer when my local organic food store (the small intimate one, the only one near me — not any of the corporate ones) started being able to carry nutritional yeast in bulk instead of in those obnoxious thick plastic bag things (that a lot of healthy & organic foods seem to come in nowadays).

I compost all food and cardboard and paper, and do not buy any paper towels or any kind of plastic bags. And refuse plastic shopping bags at the store.

I have two housemates. They have gotten mostly on-board with composting food scraps and cardboard and such. However, one of them cooks quite a bit (a great thing for the wallet and the health!), and uses a lot of plastic Ziploc baggies which ends up being a pretty substantial part of our trash. They are usually covered with oil and marinade and stuff. So it would be a lot of labor and materials to try to clean them and reuse them. Plus there are just way too many for me to want to reuse. Still and all, it is very lightweight and not a high volume of material.

(I do put them in a mesh basket in the yard and allow the ants and other bugs to enjoy, so they get pretty clean, but I still just would not have any use for so many plastic bags.)

Same with tiny plastic yogurt containers. It’s a certain brand of yogurt that one of my housemates likes. So we just have a lot of those plastic containers. Sometimes I am able to use them in an art project or something. But most of them will ultimately be destined for trash, once the bugs & other yard-babies have cleaned them out.

And, all of us get takeout sometimes and end up with Styrofoam containers. Although, I’m starting to zero in on the establishments that either use cardboard containers, or let me bring my own container.

Mostly our trash is pretty lightweight. I would say estimate maybe two pounds/ one kilo a week. When I’m by myself, it’s more like 2 pounds or less per month. And in addition to being light in weight, our trash is fairly low-volume as well. One of the huge benefits to composting paper products and kitchen scraps.

Recent trash-cutting wins for me:

•A neighbor started roasting coffee, which he packages in widemouth mason jars. He actually wants us to return the jars so we can keep reusing them. Before, the only way I could get coffee was in these thick foil-like bags which I could never find enough uses for. I used to be able to buy coffee in bulk when I lived near a supermarket but not now. And anyway I think they have stopped offering bulk coffee in the supermarkets here anymore.

•Also, I recently started getting milk and yogurt in giant glass jars that various friends and/or commercial establishments will take back.

Further Exploration:

• (Regarding the eco-footprint of waste, someone in the ZWZJ group shared the following, and I feel OK posting it out here since it’s not a personal comment, but is about a publicly available book.) “Peter Kalmus aka Climate Human has the following annual amounts listed on p.163 of his book Being the Change.
“700 kg CO2e from food and yard waste (less 200kg CO2e if you compost all food waste, less 200 kg CO2e if you compost all yard waste, less 300 kg CO2e if you get at least 1/4 of your food from freeganism); 150 kg CO2e from sewage (unless you practice humanure.)”
“300 kg CO2e comes from paper waste (assuming you recycle paper and cardboard, otherwise it would be higher), and 300 kg CO2e from textiles. If much of your clothes are secondhand reduce your textile waste proportionally.”
“BTW I highly recommend his book. Available (low carbon) at most libraries or used at Thriftbooks.”

Various variations of this question are floating around. For example, I started working at age 14, etc.

My response:

I see your point (about having worked since your teen years or younger), but on the other hand …

Speaking as someone who, like you, remembers things were different back then.

For one thing, jobs didn’t suck anywhere near as bad back then. I mean the terms were a lot more human in a lot of ways. Even some of the really low-level fast food jobs I took, it was better in a lot of ways than it is now.

And there was always babysitting, and mowing lawns and such. Nowadays ppl are so litigious so I don’t even know if teenagers get to do that anymore.

For another thing, even with those teen jobs and pt/summer type jobs it was still possible to get a whole apartment by ourselves! Or at least a very big nice room in a house. And still have money left over to party and pay for some education. I did it many times.

Added later:
Plus with all the crazy stuff going on, wars and housing crisis and biospheric collapse and all, one can hardly blame today’s young people for wondering what is the effing point!

I actually salute people, of ALL ages, for working as little as possible, quite honestly. Enough “J-O-B” work to get by, and then use the rest of the time for your creativity and your REAL work. Whatever that is. Some of us are fortunate enough for it to overlap, which is a great goal but doesn’t always happen for everyone.

This question is out there a lot. Basically some version of, “Why should I make reductions when the elites and the fatcats are jetsetting around consuming all they can buy, and we are just going to be forced to eat bugs?”

(In response to a post in one of the Facebook eco/permie groups, about solar panels covering up acres and acres of land, I commented: “Radical reduction in electricity consumption is a huge part of the equation.” Someone posted the bug question in response to my comment.)

— “Why should we make reductions when Bill Gates is flying his personal jet everywhere? All the reductions are going to be on us, and the elites are going to force us to eat bugs.” The person also commented that whatever Bill Gates does could just as easily be done by Zoom.

This is something I often hear people say. And I can understand the line of thinking.

But: Reductions can & do bring great benefits personally. Huge money savings, and huge time savings, for example. And sheer peace of mind, from being less vulnerable. For example, learning how to do without electricity for long periods of time, with no hardship, is great freedom.

Also, there are millions of us, and only a few fatcats. Even if we just count the eco activists, and just the Boomers, there are still millions of us, and we have big wallets! Our behavior en masse is what will move the needle & shape the future.

Regarding eating bugs … Well I’ve eaten a few bugs and they’re actually not that bad. Prepared properly, they can actually be nice little tasty protein nuggets, hyperlocal, and nice and low on the food chain.

But to address the bug comment in the spirit in which it is intended …

Do you know who the last people being forced to eat bugs will be?

• People who form tight community, people who reduce their dependence on large centralized institutions, people who wean themselves off of hyperconsumerism.

• People who support their local farmers, people who know how to collect rainwater and grow food. And who know how to cooperate with their neighbors.

• People who are willing to stand up to their HOA’s. People who refuse to be totally dependent on private car ownership. And people refuse to be totally dependent on running water, electricity, artificial cooling, appliances, and all the other things we modern people take for granted are necessary.

• People who refuse to keep flying in airplanes. Or at least, people who decide to stop being dependent on flying in airplanes. Especially important for those of us who love our families.

I’m not saying those conveniences aren’t nice; I’m just saying we need to train ourselves to be able to do without them for arbitrarily long periods of time, forever if necessary.

And the more we are willing to make this training an everyday thing — to strive to minimize our consumption in everyday life — the more we will make a difference in the profit margins at the top.

If it helps to remind yourself that you are supporting war every time you unnecessarily burn energy, go ahead and tell yourself that. I sometimes tell people that, when they think I’m oh so radical and extreme for refusing to own a car anymore, and for refraining from using car transportation except on occasion.

• And people who refuse to buy more computers and other technology than they absolutely need to get by. Just what we need for communication, micro commerce, and skill-sharing. If even a percentage of us were refusing constant upgrades, the fatcats would be a lot less wealthy than they are now.

• And last but not least: People who know how to constantly find joy and peace and satisfaction in their everyday life. As opposed to needing to “get away,” buy something that won’t make you happy, etc.

PS. I am so on board the zoom thing! I’m sure pretty much everything Bill Gates or any other wealthy dude does could probably be done just as easily by zoom. Or he could hire locals to be boots on the ground. And I am particularly appalled that people — corporate fatcat, politician, academic, whatever — fly to climate conferences. (As a meme from awhile back says, if there’s anything that should be done by zoom, it’s a climate conference …)

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE. Something I thought of days after writing this. Inspired by more than one fellow environmentalist friend who told me they became burned-out; got sick of making sacrifices when they realized that all of their reductions didn’t even offset one week of a rich fatcat’s life.

And that is, we are not setting out to make reductions in order to offset other people’s overconsumption. That would be physically impossible, and no wonder people are getting demoralized if they are trying to do this.

Rather, the reason why we must make reductions is to reset the norms of what has come, in our hyperconsumerist “first world,” to be defined as a good life. (Basically the norms have been sent by USA American popular culture and then gone on to infect other wealthy countries.)

It’s not about offsetting; it’s about resetting the norms. It’s about normalizing living within limits. It’s about de-normalizing entitlement.

Why?

To bring ourselves in line with the physical ecological limits of the planet. (These have been widely documented by science.) We quite simply have a moral obligation to not take more than our share. We cannot use wealthy mega consumers as a benchmark. We need to use the 2 ton benchmark.

It’s already how the global majority lives, by default. What we in the “first world” have a responsibility to do is show how living within Earth’s limits can be done comfortably, with enough to eat, safe clean water, access to healthcare, access to learning, humane livelihoods, comfortable dwellings for all.

As eco activists we pride ourselves on listening to science, and on being fair and equitable. We must live up to our own awareness of what’s right and fair. We must walk our talk! I cannot emphasize this point enough. We will never be truly happy otherwise, and of course that gnawing dissatisfaction just leads to more consumerism.

My entire mission is about helping fellow eco folks walk our talk. My book, this blog, my talks & consults. And my house, which I have turned into a low-footprint lifestyle demonstration laboratory (visible from the sidewalk, and partly open to the public!). I call it my “Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm for Humans.”

You are not alone. There are many, many more of us than you might think. Take heart! And please don’t give up. I am 100% here for you.

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This blog presents topics as they occur to me. Typically in rambling fashion. If you would prefer a more focused, organized document, read my book DEEP GREEN. It’s available to read for free on this site. There are at any given time sometimes a few print copies available as well. I believe I still have 15 or so copies left from my last micro print run. It’s only available by ordering direct through me.

Also, I am available to give talks for your neighborhood association, community, church, club, or other group. My talks are by Zoom or equivalent, so I’m available to you wherever you’re located. For more information, click on “talks and appearances” in the menu for this site. Contact me and we’ll set a date!