Blog Reflection

Affluenza is a condition that has swept across the wealthy populations. It is highly contagious and it is fueled by the desire for more. It is defined by John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylo as "The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses." & "An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by the pursuit of the American Dream." or "An unsustainable addiction to economic growth." This term combines the two words affluence and influenza to clearly state the word's meaning. Every privileged Canadian has felt the effects of it at one time or another as it is what fuels many industry so vigorously. Living in a society today that bombardeds us with images of something that will make us happier for the right price has no doubt affected us psychologically. The idea is to work harder to buy more which should equal happiness. With this other aspects of life have suffered. Families and friends are becoming more distant as a result of the time spent trying to get ahead. To cure our condition we must get of this hamster wheel of consumption, to value personal interaction more than material goods. Carl Honre "Time is scarce so what do we do? well, we speed up... We try to more and more with less and less time, We turn every moment of every day into a race to the finish line, a finish line that we never reach but a finish line none the less."
My life as a first year student can be stressful especially with the impending exams and deadlines that are waiting for me in the following weeks. Most of my time is spent is studying or looking for something more stimulating to do with the extra time I should be studying. Usually when people become to over burden with work family and other obligations the most attractive solution would be a vacation. As is the case for me when ever I feel over encumbered with the pressures of my present life I escape to the possibilities of future "dream vacation". But as satisfying as that may be it is escape. When I think about the future that is time of the present that could have been more enjoyable or more meaningful to me in the present. Being cheap as I am I do not consume as much as I'd like to think. Though my problem is on the opposite end because I am a bit of a hoarder. I seem to see useless value in something that is just useless to me I don't feel inclined to through something away. This may be side affect of my own affluenza. My biggest issue is that I don't wish to waste. Perhaps to rid myself of this affliction I must give the useful stuff away and through the useless crap away. The one issue with giving something away is that I am spreading affluenza. To give something I don't need to someone else is not exactly my the cure but it would help me. Affluenza is a social illness that requires the will of the ill to get better before the can help others. I believe that the ideals International Slow Movement that Carl Honore spoke about can be as contagious as affluenza itself.

Citations:
Carl Honore praises slowness
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylo

Picture:
http://financialphilosopher.typepad.com/

Carl Honore praises slowness

Carl Honore talks about today’s fast paced society and that most people need to slow down. There is slow movement in which people are savouring the moment rather than trying to keep up with a tight schedule. "Things that are slow in nature we try to speed up" This is especially true in western society, the will strive for excellence in one aspect of life (longer working hours) risks throwing other aspects by the wayside. "In other cultures time is cyclical its seen as moving in great unhurried circles its always renewing and refreshing itself. While in the west time is linear it is a finite resource you either use it or lose it... "Time is money as Benjamin Franklin once said". This creates a psychological burden on people in which they are constantly trying to speed up. But "there is this global backlash against the idea that tells us that faster is better. and that busier is best... although conventional wisdom tells you that if you slow down your road kill but it turns out the opposite is true." Honore calls this the international slow movement. He provides examples of how certain workplaces across the world work hours are going down for many this means hourly productivity has gone up "countries in Europe notably Nordic Europe have shown that its possible to have a kick ass economy with out having to be a workaholic, Norway, Sweden and Finland have become part of the top six most competitive markets and they work the number of hours that would make the average American weep with envy." This is effective for some but very difficult for certain nations (western society) to implement as they see it as a cultural taboo. Speed is fun its sexy and the adrenaline rush can be intoxicating. "Speed is a metaphysical dimension a way of walling or selves off from more deeper questions, we fill our heads with business with distraction so we don't ask ourselves "am I well?, am I happy?, are my children growing up right?, are politicians making good decisions on my behalf?". Of course slow is not the whole answer there is a bad kind of slow. But there is also such thing as good slow. Carl Honore states that slowing down can greatly enrich life as it lets you savour the moment.

Citations:
Carl Honore praises slowness
www.ted.com

Picture:
http://images.vimeo.com/

Controversy at Love Canal

This article is by Beverly Paigen who was a scientist employed to research the health implications to the residents of Love Canal who's community was built on a toxic waste dump. "In 1942 Hooker Electrochemical Corporation (now Hooker Chemicals and Plastics, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation) began to fill an abandoned canal half-mile long with toxic chemicals from the manufacture of chlorinated hydrocarbons and caustics. More than 21,000 tons of 200 or more chemicals had been deposited in the canal when Niagara Falls Board of Education approached Hooker Chemical about purchasing the site for a school. Hooker claims that it warned the Board of Education that the site was not appropriate for a school. The company says it sold the property for a token $1.00 only when the Broad threatened to take the property by eminent domain. None of the people who were board members at the time are living to confirm or deny the claim, and the minutes of the meetings do not bear out the claim. The deed transferring the property from Hooker to the Board of Education does contain a clause that, Hooker says releases the company from liability." Five years later residents and city officials noted oily mixtures in the topsoil. "As early as 1958 Hooker Chemical and city officials were informed that three children had suffered from chemical burns from exposed wastes on the surface of the canal. The Niagara Falls Health Department and other local officials took no action. This went on unnoticed until 1978 when the EPA and the New York State Department of Health stepped in. "These agencies identified many chemicals in the air of Love Canal homes immediately adjacent to Love Canal." Families closest to the canal where relocated. "In the early fall of 1978 the department announced the preliminary results of these studies; officials assured the Love Canal residents that the neighbourhood was a safe place to live and that the community beyond the homes that had already been evacuated was not at any increased health risk. This announcement was based on data showing that the miscarriage rate in homes beyond the barrier was no higher than elsewhere. The community was not reassured, citing visible seepage through basement walls, chemical odours in homes, and at storm sewer openings as evidence that chemicals migrated beyond the fence. The residents also questioned why certain families living three to four blocks from the canal had multiple miscarriages and other illnesses."
Beverly Paigen did here own research independently and discovered that homes that were built near streams or former swamps "had a threefold increase in miscarriages". This meant that the chemicals had migrated beyond the original boundaries. This was accepted by both parties as a whole but a controversy arose on the degree of the effects. "The two opposing sides in the Love Canal controversy were the community and the New York State Department of Health Department. This was somewhat surprising, since the Health Department had declared the health emergency in the first place. However, when the community turned to the agency they regarded as their ally and protector, they felt the response was inadequate." "In this case the state had much to gain from delay. Since over 600 other hazardous waste site existed in New York, any action taken at Love Canal would set a precedent. Any state official who recommended positive action at Love Canal would have had to justify spending more than the $42,000,000 the state had already allowed for construction to prevent further leakage and relocation of the families living closest to the canal."

Citations:
Controversy at Love Canal by Beverly Paigen

Picture:
http://a.abcnews.com/images/

Restoring Rivers

The article talks about the water shortage in the U.S.A and current restoration practices. "Between 1973 and 1998, U.S. fresh waters and rivers were getting cleaner. But that trend has reversed. If the reverse continues, U.S rivers will be as dirty in 2016 as they were in the mid-1970s. Water quality is not the only problem. In parts of the United States, the extraction of surface water and ground water is so extreme that some major rivers no longer flow to the sea year round, and water shortages in local communities are a reality." Restoration projects are underway all over the country but only "10% of all restoration project records in the database put together by the National River Restoration Science Synthesis (NRRSS) - included any mention of assessment or evaluation. The study concluded that it is currently impossible to use existing databases to determine whether the desired environmental benefits of river restoration are being achieved. Even when monitoring was reported, it typically was an assessment of project implementation, not ecological outcomes." This is troublesome as it makes it difficult to assess who should be held accountable for the ecological degradation of these watersheds. This is especially true because the amount of human development that has been happening near fresh water. "Despite these and many other efforts to minimize the environmental impact of developing the land or extracting natural resources (such as mining),streams and rivers have continued to degrade. The controls have simply not been able to keep up with the rate of development and associated watershed damage. Moreover, many rivers and streams where suffering years before conservation programs were enacted." A study must be conducted to understand restoration projects as a whole.
"There are more than 40 federal programs that fund stream and river restoration projects. Although large scale high profile projects such as those in the Everglades receive a great deal of attention, most projects in the United States are small in spatial extent. The cumulative costs and benefits of the many small restoration projects can be very high, which argues for better coordination." A more homogenous spread in funding is required which takes into account the extent of the damage to individual watersheds.the ser But currently many federal programs that involve river restoration are being cut, not increased... River restoration is a necessity, not al luxury. U.S. citizens depend on services that healthy streams and rivers provide. People from all walks of life are demanding cleaner, restored waterways. Replacing serices that healthy streams and rivers provide with human-made alternatives is extremely expensive, so river restoration is akin to investments such as highways, municipal works, or electric transmission. Congress already commits billions of taxpayer dollars in public infrastructure through the transportation bill or WRDA. It should make similar investments in natural capital."

Citations:
Restoring Rivers by Margaret A. palmer and J. David Allen

Pictures:
http://www.timpalmer.org/

World Comission on Environment and Development

This article goes into depth about sustainable development and what is required for development to be considered sustainable. "Sustainable development is what meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: "The concept of "needs", in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs". "A world in which poverty and equity are endemic will always be prone to ecological and other crisis." The fact that much of the world can't satisfy their basic needs means that they will always value their lives and those of their families above ecological integrity. This requires economic growth in places were there is none. "But growth by itself is not enough. High levels of productive activity and widespread poverty can coexist, and can endanger the environment. Hence societies meet human needs both by increasing productive potential and by ensuring equitable opportunities for all."
Sustainable development also means minimizing the amount of human intervention on the natural systems that supports life on earth. "Economic growth and development obviously involve changes in the physical ecosystem. Every ecosystem everywhere cannot be preserved intact. A forest may be depleted in one part of a watershed and extended elsewhere, which is not a bad thing if the exploitation has been planned and the effects on soil erosion rates, water regimes, and genetic losses have been taken into account." Conservation is also very important because more extinction means less diversity for the future meaning less options.
"In essence, sustainable development is a process of change in which exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations." Individuals need to be persuaded to take sustainable action but that can be difficult so the benefits must be presented, benefits in the short term or present are usually more effective than those in the long term.
"The common theme throughout this strategy is sustainable development is the need to integrate economic and ecological considerations in decision making. They are after all, integrated in the workings of the real world. This will require a change in attitudes and objectives and in institutional arrangements at every level."

Citations:
Towards Sustainable Development by: The World Commission on Environment and Development.

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http://psysr.files.wordpress.com

Blog Reflection

The following readings and activities were about the food industry. How it was, How it is, and what it may be like in the future. Food is is an element that is essential to life. If we were to stop burning fuel for energy and stopped harvesting materials for shelter we would still survive, (there are some who live in the world today with neither). But without food life would be impossible. As Carol Steel pointed out civilization (urbanism) itself was possible only with agriculture at the center.

Like every other resource given to us as a species we have managed to overuse and destroy food materials and an alarming rate even without the entire population benefiting from it. The affluent western society has expanded and grown out of control. Farmers have been forced from a lifestyle of quality, health and sustainability to a world of quantity, a unsustainable and uncertain future.

I looked at my own diet for the first time in this light. In the last 48 hours everything aside from a few fruits and vegetables were frozen and packaged at one time or another and most likely shipped large distances at one time. Most of the fruits I eat are those grown in California and Florida because they cheapest foods at the store. I drink alot of milk and I eat meat often though not on a daily basis. What I see as more relevant is how disconnected I am from what I eat. Once its gone I forget it was ever there. The only time I think of food is when I'm contemplating what to have next. This blind consuming is habit of the majority of people today especially urban-living people. It has come to the point were everybody is fixated on there own business. It would require an unnecessary amount of time for most to think about what they are actually eating, where it came from, and where the leftovers will end up. When I think about my own diet I realize that my taste for extravagance is an issue. I do not like eating the same thing within a few days this requires more exportation of a wider variety of produce. But I have made it a habit of eating whats on my plate so my waste is usually minimal, I also have the luxury of living in a city surrounded by agriculture so much of my food doesn't have to travel far. I can easily take more action on the problem in buying local, I would greatly reduce my footprint without hindering curious appetite.

Photo:
http://www.liquidmatrix.org/blog/

How Food Shapes Our Cities

Carolyn Steel examines the deep connection of people to food past and present. She describes how city weas shaped around food in pre-industrial times. City markets were the center of urban settlements which was the social fabric of the community. Buying food was back then the opportunity to socialize and network with others throughout the settlement. "Ounce (food) roots in the city are established they very rarely move". Society lived with food at the center food was how humanity is connected to nature. But "after the trains came cars and this marks the end of this process, its the final emancipation of the city from any apparent relationship with nature at all." It meant that meat did not need to be brought in the city but outside and out of society as well as grains and crops could be moved greater distances in less time preventing it from going bad. Before "cities used to be constrained by geography"
The connection with nature and essentially the social fabric that came along with buying food was gone. Now it is possible to drive to the grocery store and buy your food and not talk to anyone but the cashier. The sacred significance of food was lost "we don't value food, we don't trust it instead of trusting it we fear it, and instead of valuing it with throw it away". This has distanced us from nature and is unsustainable "A billion of us are obese and another cant get enough". "It takes 10 calories (of fossil fuel) to produce 1 calorie of food in the western world". "A 3rd of annual grain crop is fed to animals". These are just a few examples that Steel shares about current food produce and eating practices.
Her solution is to somehow put food back into the center of life. More people are needed to think about food on a regular basis be it male or female. She imagines a utopia or "sitopia" as she calls it where all society is once again focused and centralized around food. "sitopia exist as little pockets everywhere the trick is to join them up." The solution the global food crisis will involve a change in the public's opinion toward food. "We know we are what we eat we need to realize that the world is also what we eat."

Citations: www.ted.com
by Carolyn Steel

Picture:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/

Women's Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity Conservation

Vandana Shiva suggests that ecological exploitation is linked to female exploitation. She describes how "Women as farmers, have remained invisible despite their contribution. Economists tend to discount woman's work as "production" because it falls outside the so-called "production boundary". These omissions arise not because to few women work, but too many women do too much work of too many different kinds." Because the work done by women of rural communities cannot be measured in wages their contribution is usually overlooked. It is in the variety of contributions of women that makes them "custodians of biodiversity". "There are a number of crucial ways in which the Third World woman's relationship to biodiversity differs from corporate man's relationship to biodiversity. Women produce through biodiversity, whereas corporate scientists produce through uniformity. For women farmers, biodiversity has intrinsic value-for global seed and agribusiness corporations, biodiversity derives its value as "raw material" for the biotechnology industry. For women farmers the essence of the seed is the continuity of life. For multinational corporations, the value of the seed lies in the discontinuity of its life. Seed corporations deliberately breed seeds that cannot give rise to future generations so that farmers are transformed from seed custodians into seed consumers." "Patents on seeds are thus a twenty-first century form of piracy, through which the shared heritage and custody of third world women peasants is robbed and depleted by multinational corporations, helped by global institutions like GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)." Though GMOs have not yet been proved unsafe Shiva states that the same groups who we are supposed to trust with GMO food are the same companies that gave us pesticides in our food. As Jack Kloppenberg has recently said, "Having been recognized as wolves, the industrial semioticians want to redefine themselves as sheep, and green sheep at that."

Citations:
Women's Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity Conversation.
by: Vandana Shiva

Photo:
http://sdaenvironmentalism.files.wordpress.com/

The Agricultural Crisis as a Crisis of Culture

Wendell Berry examines the cultural shift of small family farming to large industrialized agriculture. Farming communities are being reduced in size to make room for the crops of big business. The desire for greater efficiency and production has replaced workmanship pride and the culture that came with it. Before this most food produced was raised by the families themselves or as a collaborative effort of the entire community. When modern mechanized farming techniques profits became greater due to technological advances the benefits became more centralized to those who exploited it the most. "I remember, during the fifties, the outrage with which our political leaders spoke of the forced removal of the populations of villages in communist countries. I also remember that at the same time, in Washington, the word on farming was "Get big or get out" -a policy which is still in effect and which has taken an enormous toll. The only difference is that of method: the fore used by the communists was military; with us, it has been economic- a "free market" in which the freest were the richest. The attitudes are equally cruel, and I believe that results will prove equally damaging, not just to the concerns of human value and spirit, but to the practicalities of survival.. And this community killing agriculture, with its monomia of bigness, is not primarily the work of farmers, though it has burgeoned on their weaknesses. It is experts, the bureaucrats, and the "agribuisnessmen," who have promoted so-called efficiency at the expense of community (and of real efficiency), and quantity at the expense of quality." This has shifted the decision making from local farmers to agri-corporations with a personal agenda which is to maximize production and efficiency rather then supply a healthy sustainable communities of the work force. What is lost the is the quality that had been valued so greatly by the previous system, now disregarded more and more by the general public. This is causing catastrophic health and environmental damge as well as a destroying a type of culture that lay the foundation to civilization, the farmer's culture.

Citations:
The Agricultural Crisis as a Crisis of Culture
by Wendell Berry

Photo:
http://scienceblogs.com/sciencepunk/

Environmental, Energetic, and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems

This article explains the sustainable benefits to organic farming."The estimated environmental and health care costs of pesticide use at recommended levels and health care costs of pesticide use at recommended levels in the United States run about $12 billion every year." This is mostly attributed to runoff from ground water in lakes and streams used for irrigation as well as drinking water. Because of the health and environmental concerns attributed to pesticide use on cropland there has been a push toward pesticide free farming or organic farming. "The aim of organic agriculture is to augment ecological processes that foster plant nutrition yet conserve soil and water resources. Organic systems eliminate agrochemicals and reduce other external inputs to improve the environment and farm economics."
"From 1981 through 2002, field investigations were conducted at the Rodale Institute FST in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, on 6.1 ha. The soil at the study site is a moderately well-drained Comly silt loam. The growing climate is sub humid temperature." The field was divided into three equal plots one with "The conventional cropping system", based on synthetic fertilizer and herbicide use, represented a typical cash grain, row crop farming unit and used simple 5-year crop rotation (corn, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans) that reflects commercial conventional operations in the regions throughout the Midwest." Another third was organic "animal-based cropping". "This system represented a typical livestock operation in which grain crops were grown for animal feed not cash sale... Aged cattle manure served as nitrogen source and was applied at a rate of 5.6 metric tons (t) per ha (dry), 2 years out of every 5, immediately before plowing soil for corn." The third and last plot consisted of "organic legume-based cropping". "This system represented a cash grain operation, without livestock. Like the conventional system, it produced a cash grain crop every year; however, it used no commercial synthetic fertilizers, relying instead on nitrogen-fixing green manure crops as a nitrogen source." The results showed a greater amount of carbon retention within the soil in organic methods than conventional. Less fossil fuel was also used during organic farming then conventional. "Except for the 1999 drought year, the crop yields for corn and soybeans were similar in the organic animal, organic legume, and conventional farming systems." "Two primary problems with the organic system... were nitrogen deficiency and weed competition." The nitrogen deficiency was solved with legume crop cover and because organic farming is limited to biological and mechanical deterrents pest control must be handled based on geographic location. The article describes that organic farming not only provides a sustainable solution but a beneficial one as well "although labor inputs average about 15% higher in organic farming systems (ranging from 7% to 75% higher), they are more evenly distributed over the year in organic farming systems then in conventional farming systems."

Citations:
Environmental, Energetic, and Economic Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems.
by: David Pimentel et al.

Photo:
http://uwstudentweb.uwyo.edu/

Food Scarcity: An Environmental Wakeup Call

This article speaks upon the environmental crisis of food and water scarcity. These two factors will be were environmental deterioration and economic decline will become parallel in the years to come. Overpopulation is increasing the pressures on the cropland and aquifers. This increases soil erosion and leads less productivity the following years causing food shortages and political instability. The world population is expanding by 80 million people a year. "Even without further environmental degradation, we approach the new millennium with 800 million hungry and malnourished people." With more people becoming more affluent "the amount of cropland available to produce grain will continue to decline, shrinking to 0.08 hectares per person in 2030."
The same can be said for water because it is so crucial to agriculture "since 1979, the growth in irrigation has fallen behind that of population, shrinking the irrigated area per person by some 7%. This trend, now well established, will undoubtedly continue as the demand for water presses ever more tightly against available supplies." More water is also being used for non-food purposes further increasing the drop. "As water is pulled away from agriculture, production often drops, forcing the country to import grain. Importing a ton of grain is, in effect, importing thousands of tons of water. For countries with water shortages, importing grain is the most efficient way to import water."
During the late spring and early summer of 1996 world wheat and corn prices set highs under pressure from a 1995 harvest reduced by heat waves in the U.S. Corn Belt and from China's emergence as the world's second-largest grain importer. Wheat traded at over $7 a bushel, more than double the price in early 1995. In mid-July, corn traded at an all-time high of $5.54 a bushel, also double the level of a year earlier." This increase is catastrophic for the worlds poor. These increases will likely be what forces the world to take more sustainable but desperate action.

Citations: Food Scarcity: An Environmental Wakeup Call
by Lester Brown

Picture:
http://www.inkcinct.com.au/web/cartoons/2007/2007-627P-water-price-scale.jpg