Category: low-footprint living

Hmmmm, I thought I had already shared the following comment here on this blog, but maybe I didn’t. Well, if it ends up being a duplicate, please pardon the repetition!

It was a comment I posted in the Deep Adaptation group. In the original post, I had shared the new paper by Degrowth leader Jason Hickel. Title, “How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?”

Several of the more academically oriented members began critiquing various aspects of the paper, and of other relevant works. And citing hard numbers regarding temperature and emissions and so on.

One of the more active members, who I feel very in tune with, observed sadly that despite all the brilliant academic critique, no-one is actually doing degrowth, simple living, just transition, deep adaptation, or whatever we call it — perfectly. But that that is OK with her, and she thinks we just each need to do what makes sense for us, and keep reading, and connecting, and amplifying positive helpful ideas and people.

To which I responded:

For your benefit I am copying pasting a comment that I posted somewhere else that you may or may not have seen because there are multiple threads right now in multiple groups.

This comment was meant to address people who are upset about the lack of hard data, etc.

And also meant to assure those of us who are feeling a bit overwhelmed because we don’t know anyone who is doing this perfectly.

Hope this helps:

In the meantime, there are some people who are very quietly, voluntarily living at 10% of the average USA citizen’s footprint.

We may not be achieving that 10% perfectly all the time, but sometimes we are, and we never stop aiming. We do daily experiments on a household and community level and we share them. When we achieve a reduction, we keep aiming for further reductions.

(That is totally separate from the huge majority of the planet’s population who are already living INvoluntarily at that 10% or less footprint.)

If you want to be a part of the voluntary movement (which will also help create a good standard of living to be accessible to people worldwide), please check out the Riot for Austerity group.

Nobody is doing it perfectly. In fact, the notion of doing it perfectly is a pernicious artifact of capitalist colonizer culture. And it just keeps us stuck. It’s sort of like this myth of the “perfect ideal ecovillage.” We need to stop, and just be right here where we are and do it.

I saw a meme once, to the effect of, the planet doesn’t need one or a few people doing it perfectly; it needs millions of us doing it imperfectly.

Think of it as a huge laboratory. All of us have valuable input. Don’t get hung up on this idea that nobody is doing it perfectly. There is no such thing.

(If you want to read the whole thread, join the Deep Adaptation group on Facebook, and then do a search on “New paper by Jason Hickel. (Author of the books Less Is More; and The Divide.)” )

I always mark the end of hot-hot summer as being the first night I don’t need to sleep on bare tile to sleep through the night. That happened last week. It’s nice to sleep on a mattress again! I can even have a sheet over me!

PS. It never sucks to live in my adopted home state of Florida, what sucks is modern-day buildings that are designed to rely on climate control 24-seven year-round. We need to get the building codes expanded to allow various kinds of regenerative retrofits to existing buildings. And we need to stop the super extreme cutting of trees and other vegetation in urban areas.

Those of us who do without air-conditioning are sort of like experimental lab-rats for the kinds of retrofit we might need. #BackToTheFuture

So what are your personal indicators for your end of hot-hot summer? (Do you have hot-hot summer where you live?)

(This post was prompted by a fellow Floridian, who posted: “And there it is … The moment when it no longer sucks to live in Florida.” I totally get what she means BTW! We can love our chosen bioregion and still recognize that the weather gets extreme sometimes! Also, this person who posted this is a farmer, so she is extra exposed to the heat — and all other weather.)

PS. On my blog I post various RIOT-y stuff, and Degrowth and Deep Adaptation stuff (the three often intersect) on an ongoing basis. Not just the physical aspects but the social dimensions as well, of voluntarily low-footprint living.

Wow, I just realized my blog has been around for six years. How time flies! I owe a very deep thanks and so much love to my dear friend and “Florida sister” Roseanna. For encouraging me to start a blog those years ago. I would not have done it, I didn’t want to do all that work. As it turns out, it has become a major light of my work-day (and super-handy “word tank” that helps me organize my thoughts), and I hope also a helpful resource to the people who I want to support.

#Media #Politics #Analogy

If landscaping people get paid only to cut grass and cut trees, and not plant native shrubs and care for trees, we will have a bunch of attention & resources dedicated to constant, extreme mowing and cutting. It’s inevitable. People’s livelihoods depend on it.

If the media get paid to post extreme sensational stories, then we’re going to be having lots of extreme sensational stories. Even if the media are supposed to be helping the public stay informed, tall tales are going to be an inevitable consequence if the journalists and companies make more money by posting the wild stories than by setting about the more dull business of posting plain facts.

(This post was prompted by overhearing some young men yesterday talking about how every single illegal immigrant to this country is being handed $3000 for food and $150,000 to buy a house.)

Unfortunately we can’t stop the media from posting outrageous stories. But we can and must decide how to process what we see in the media. I personally favor a “probiotic” approach. Reading as much as possible from many many sources.

And also, weighing the stories against my own experience. My experience of observing government grapple with finances, my experience of hearing everyday people’s experiences recounted in the first person, and my experience in my own life.

Photo of my eco landscaped driveway for your visual enjoyment. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/kiPHgFXTZDhgu1Ki/?mibextid=WC7FNe

(One of the perks of not needing to own a car is that I got to convert my driveway into a sweet outdoor room and hangout space.)

See the paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493 “How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?”; by Jason Hickel.

Comments from the author:

“I’m excited to share this new paper: ‘How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?’

“The good news: if we organized production around well-being, we could immediately end poverty and ensure good living standards for 8.5 billion people.

“Modern housing, universal healthcare, education, transit, heating/cooling, induction stoves, fridge-freezers, washing machines, internet, computers, mobile phones etc — all of this can be provided for 8.5 billion people with only 30% of current productive capacity.

My comments:

I’m looking forward to reading this new paper. Jason Hickel is a leading thinker of a Degrowth way of looking at things. His books The Divide and Less Is More are great Degrowth reading.

I would even say that the universal good standard of living he’s talking about might be even more easily attainable, given that so-called “modern housing” isn’t necessarily needed.

Some “modern” housing simply creates the need for air-conditioning and industrially produced building materials (transported from far away). Indigenous styles of housing, which people have uniquely evolved & adapted in all different environments from desert to swamp to actually floating on water, have great value for their natural cooling & heating properties, accessibility of local building materials, and so on.

Washing machines aren’t needed either. And, I personally would like to see community refrigeration and freezers, as opposed to each household needing to own one. Actually, if each neighborhood has a store, that’s community refrigeration and freezing. Some thing that’s largely disappeared in the USA, the neighborhood market. But I would like to bring it back.

My focus is always on how we in the global rich countries can reduce our consumption while still maintaining a high standard of living. By demonstrating ways to live happily and comfortably without — for example — private automobile ownership, electric clothes-washer, individual household freezer.

I know it’s very radical from a USA middle-class standpoint but billions of people all over the world are already living this way. As more of us in the “rich” countries start doing it voluntarily, we’ll be setting a valuable precedent. Resetting the norm of what is a good standard of living.

(Topic: USA politics.) The “eating dogs and cats” story is actually just plain xenophobia. This is why I deleted the pet joke meme off my FB timeline the other day.

It’s not funny, and I should’ve known that right away because I grew up around so many kids & families who were refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and other countries, and people said the same nasty things way back then. This is very dangerous and very un-American.

People have always said nasty things about new people from “foreign” lands. Starting with the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Portuguese, my own Eastern European ancestors, the people from numerous African nations who my English ancestors kidnapped and enslaved, and many others. All the various peoples who have made our country what it is. The whole mix.

Scapegoating immigrants makes an easy target for our economic woes and anything else we think is wrong in our country. But we absolutely must not fall into the trap. Because a trap it is.

Speaking on a general note, beyond just the “eating cats” meme.

We can continue to allow the media and various politicians to cheaply manipulate our emotions, or we can get real. With each other. It starts with something small like just talking with a neighbor.

Instead of falling into the cheap trap of becoming, ourselves, performers in a macabre circus, we need to roll up our sleeves and get down to the work of troubleshooting whatever policies are not serving us. And CREATING BETTER! This will take all of us, together. The human mind channeled constructively is a wondrous instrument.

Plurality of viewpoints is a great asset, not a detriment.

Government is supposed to be by the people. We all need to participate, however we are able to. Even if you don’t feel you have time or money to run for office, or serve on a citizens board, or some other deep involvement. It might just be writing a letter, or making a phone call, sharing the QR code for registering to vote, making sure a neighbor has a ride to the polls, posting a thoughtful post on social media that is genuinely crafted to invite honest discourse. And so on.

Speaking of money, we need to get money out of politics. Many countries do! Many countries purely finance their elections from public monies. It helps dilute the disproportional influence of lobbyists, bad actors, big corporations.

Whichever candidates you plan to vote for, you are a fellow American, and our work is in front of us no matter what.

Here’s a article that goes into the story about the putative pet-eating. “Whom Jupiter Destroys, He First Makes Mad: How 4-chan gave us the cat-eating Haitian Fright.” (Justin Ling; Bug-Eyed and Shameless blog.)

Terra Vance – Marked Melungeon shared this very informative article today on their Facebook page.

The following comment is something I posted in reaction to yet another anti-trans meme on the page of a Facebook acquaintance who is persistently bringing this stuff up.

(Note: One might reasonably ask why I don’t just unfriend this person. For one thing, she’s part of my permaculture / sustainability circles. And diversity is a core principle of permaculture. Her being anti-trans seems to fundamentally contradict that. So I can’t just leave this. Also, some of her other FB friends have been trying to talk sense into her when she makes these posts. They present very good arguments in a civil manner. I feel like unfriending her is not going to solve the problem. This hate is spreading toxically throughout society. I have to at least try to speak up.)

My comment today:

What if we decide that it just doesn’t matter? What if we decide to just honor how someone identifies themselves? How does it hurt us?

Extremely rigid notions of what’s male and what’s female harm us all.

Here is a personal example. I am a cis het female. I am even what would be conventionally called a girly girl. All into the lace and beads and all that kind of stuff.

And yet throughout my life, there have been many many times when people have tried to put me in my place, accusing me of being too masculine and not feminine enough.

I bet almost everybody has been made fun of for being too masculine, or too feminine, or not this enough, or not that enough.

Making fun of trans people, and not wanting to allow them to just exist, is a dreadful, murderous thing to do to other human beings. And furthermore, that kind of rigid patriarchy harms ALL of us. if we can allow everyone to exist, we get the benefits too! It’s silly to be shaming each other for this or that aspect of our appearance, behavior, gender identification, etc.

Women getting shamed for having body hair; men getting shamed for having not enough body hair; women getting shamed for having too many muscles; men getting shamed for not having enough muscles — blah blah blah. We could just drop all of this.

This isn’t just an abstract issue for me. Some of my Trans friends would be dead of suicide today if they hadn’t gotten the support and care they needed.

I know how I have felt when I haven’t been allowed to be myself. It’s absolutely horrible. And I haven’t experienced anywhere near as extreme of anything as what trans people have experienced.

If people are worried about restrooms, we can have unisex restrooms like they do in many countries.

If people are worried about sports and unfair competition, then we can take a look at what the rules are and I’m sure arrive at something that will work. For all I know, those rules and standards are in place already. I’m just not a big follower of sports so I’m not familiar with it.

If we’re worried that somehow someone is making fun of our femininity, like if we’re thinking that someone dressing up and drag is making fun of women – I think it’s actually the opposite, right? But anyway that’s not what’s going on.

If we are worried that society doesn’t respect mothers and motherhood enough, well that is a very valid worry and concern. We really need to work on respecting mothers and motherhood. And really supporting mothers. And supporting children. But marginalizing and hating trans people is not going to help us with that.

Just a few thoughts. Maybe other people will have some insight into this dynamic of hating trans people or anyone we see as different.

Actually I think we have some sort of internalized misogyny, I’ve seen a lot of women impose insane standards on each other and on themselves. We become the fashion police, the food police, the make up police, the body shape and weight police. And I have participated in that crazy sick world when I was younger. Not anymore.

My FB friend responded that her primary concern is the longterm negative health effects of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and unnecessary surgery.

To this I responded:

So if this surgery, medication, etc, were restricted to people over 18, say, does that mean you would have no problem with trans people? (I said 18 because I figure if somebody’s old enough to be drafted into the military they are old enough to decide what gender they are.)

More:

I understand why parents want to know what the teachers are saying to their kids and teaching their kids. Parents have always had the right and the obligation to pay attention to that. And there are lots of ways for parents to give input and get involved in what is being taught at school.

BTW when I was growing up, back in the 70s, it always bothered me that people could not be openly gay and be teachers. The thinking was that gay teachers would teach kids to be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But, as someone who always knew she was female and attracted to boys, I always thought that was really silly and damaging that teachers could not be openly gay.

I feel the same about transgender people. 

As I’m typing this, the core value of mine that I’m feeling motivated by is wanting people to be able to be their authentic selves. And hating fakeness and pretense. I think fakeness and pretense have done a lot of damage, both within the educational system and within the family structure.

BTW freedom of self expression is certainly one form of freedom of speech. I am very much in favor of freedom of speech. I think we can’t have a civilized society without it.

“He who dies with the most toys wins.”

A popular bumper sticker I saw in the Gordon Gekko era of the 80s. And a very popular sentiment for many decades in the USA.

In more recent years, though, the aging of society has brought a new perspective, as many people are tasked with sorting through houses jam-packed with accumulated possessions — their parents’; and their own.

One might almost go so far as to say that the new motto is, “He who dies with the least toys wins.”

Or more precisely, we might say the winners are those who manage to judiciously distribute, wear out, or use up their possessions in a gradual manner as they age. Ideally not being left with anything unused or unwanted.

And also not “cheating” by sending piles of stuff to landfill. Regardless of how good it might feel to clear out one’s junked-up space.

It’s a challenge for sure!