Rethinking Economics

Most adults in the UK, and I guess the ‘developed’ world are aware of the economic recession that is in progress, along with some of the unprecedented actions that governments are taking to ease us out of this situation (but hopefully not back into the one that created the problem in the first place).

David Korten

David Korten, a psychologist, presents a different view on economics, specifically in relation to ‘Peak Oil’ (ie the fact that oil production has or is about to peak, and from this point onwards oil will become increasingly more expensive).

I watched a short film clip of Korten, taken from a new movie called Blind Spot (all about Peak Oil) and found his view interesting to say the least. Here’s a transcript of the excerpt:

There’s no way we’re going to fix this mess by adjustments at the margin.

This is about a fundamental rethinking of what it means to be human. A fundamental rethinking of our relationships with one another, our institutions, our culture.

And it means exposing and penetrating the stories of empire that keep us locked in to this system, that create a kind of cultural trance that say this is just, this is right, it’s the only way it can be.

So all our economic stories about economic growth, about you need wealthy investors to grow the economy, that you shouldn’t have welfare programs because they just coddle lazy people, all our stories about money - money is wealth, people who are making money are creating wealth so therefore they own it. This is all clouding the reality that economic growth is all about rich people expropriating the property of poor people and turning it into garbage to make money for rich people.

If you’re interested in the effect that consumption of goods has on the environment and other people, do check out Annie Leonard’s ‘Story of Stuff‘.

More information:

www.blindspotdoc.com
www.davidkorten.org
www.storyofstuff.com

Climate Camp 2008

Sunday August 3rd is the official start of Climate Camp 2008 at Kingsnorth in Kent. I wish I was able to go but work and other commitments means I can’t, which is a shame ;-(

On Wednesday afternoon, a hundred climate campers secretly converged and occupied the site for this year’s Camp for Climate Action, a kilometer away Kingnorth power station.

Dozens of marquees were slowly put up, neighbourhoods arrived from all over the country, solar panels popped up, a central kitchen dished out three delicious meals a day and compost toilets were being built. A vision of a sustainable self- managed world is being put together piece by piece in a field in Kent, less than 45 minutes from London. All are welcome to come down as soon as they can to join in with the creation of Climate Camp 2008, in preparation for the opening on Sunday, 3rd August, when hundreds more will come and begin the week of workshops and action preparations. More

Show the forests some love

Greenpeace has made a wonderfully suggestive video and asked everyone to show forests some love! Those who are rather prudish should realise that everything is ’suggested’ and if you are offended it’s because you have joined the dots - they have not been joined for you! More

Food miles, and miles, and miles

The New York Times reported on some startling examples of silly food miles. All made possible because of (relatively) cheap oil/transportations costs and lower wages in some parts of the world. Unfortunately whilst this may keep some people in work in china or wherever, it does mean that the local people who used to do the job are out of work, and all in the name of cheap food…

Here are some of the silly examples:

• Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale
• Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground
• Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya
• Britain imports -and exports- 15,000 tons of waffles every yea

Fuel used for international transport is tax-free, thanks to a treaty signed in 1944 to help the airline industry - so who is paying for the pollution and carbon dumped into the atmosphere? It’s about time that the governments of the world got together and put forward a unified ‘polluter pays’ policy that would help see an end to this ridiculous practice.

Hat tip to TreeHugger for reporting on the above article.

Food miles don’t feed climate change - meat does

That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.

An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer’s carbon footprint.

Visit the NewScientist website for the full article.

Modbury - the first plastic bag free town in the UK

Modbury is a small market town in Devon, UK. Although there is seasonal (holiday) trade, many of the local shops serve and rely on the local community. In May 2007, Modbury became the first town in the UK to stop issuing plastic bags when goods are purchased.

Every single trader in Modbury has signed up for it (which is pretty amazing in itself) and they encourage their customers to use their own shopping bags, or where this is not possible, the shops offer reusable and environmentally friendly carrier bags.

Some plastic bag facts:

• A person uses a plastic carrier bag on average for only 12 minutes
• A plastic bag can take between 500 to 1000 years to break down in the environment.
• In the UK at least 200 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks ever year.
• When a plastic bag enters the ocean it becomes a harmful piece of litter. Many marine animals mistake plastic bags for food and swallow them, with painful and often fatal consequences.

One of the many interesting aspects to the campaign within Modbury has been the spin-off benefits and the depth and breadth at which people have looked into. Rather than just replacing the plastic carrier bags with a bio-degradable bag, or a paper bag, they asked the question “what is the cost (to the earth) of producing that paper bag in the first place” in other words, they looked in detail at the current alternatives to plastic to see whether they were in fact better or worse. They also looked at where and how the alternatives where made ie where jute bags made in sweatshops, was the glue used environmentally benign and so on.

A year on, Modbury has thrived on being plastic bag free and the whole experience has made people take a wider look at their impact on the environment, both locally and farther afield.

The Modbury Plastic Bag Free website is packed with great information on the reasons why, their community, the transition, facts on bags, the alternatives, suppliers and so on. Well worth a visit.

Modbury Plastic Bag Free website

EPA - turning the other cheek on farm pollution

In the USA, the organisation responsible for implementing and checking on pollution etc is the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). The following report on TreeHugger throws things in a different light:

EPA Doesn’t Want To Know About Factory Farm Pollution

Some people think that EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency; for the Bush Administration, it might be Evidence of Pollution is Annoying. Right now a factory farm has to report to federal, state and local officials when ammonia emissions exceed a hundred pounds per day, which in 2004 the EPA said could irritate the respiratory tract, eyes and mucus membranes for a few days. Hydrogen sulfide at that level could have the same but longer-lasting effects accompanied by memory problems, headaches and dizziness, and have to be reported as well.

But there are no limits or rules on this, so the EPA says that the reports create an unnecessary burden on the giant factory farms like the one in Oregon that puts out 15,500 pounds per day. Said a spokesman: “It is…consistent with the agency’s goal to reduce reporting burden where there would likely be no federal, state or local emergency response to such release reports” Because we know the EPA is there to save paper and energy, don’t we.

According to Erica Werner in the Associated Press:

There are no federal laws or regulations capping release of these substances from animal waste so EPA critics argue that the reporting requirements are the only way for communities to know what they’re being exposed to.

“If the public doesn’t know that the emissions in their area are hazardous to their health how are they going to find out unless the sources are required to report?” asked Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Becker said the reports are used by some states to respond to local concerns about farm pollution.

Of course the cattle people disagree. “In the end what we’re talking about here is not a hazardous substance,” said spokeswoman Karen Batra. “It’s not toxic sludge or a chemical spill. It’s cow manure.”

Biofuels make climate change worse, scientific study concludes

An article in today’s Independent shed interesting light on the good/bad biofuels debate. A scientific study looked at the carbon dioxide released when land was converted to biofuel production and came to some shocking conclusions.

A cornfield in South Africa

“All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly. Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture,” said Joe Fargioine of the US Nature Conservancy who was the lead scientist in one of the studies.

The study found that when peat-lands in Indonesia are converted to palm-oil plantations, it would take 423 years to pay off the carbon debt. Cutting down amazonian trees to grow soya beans immediately creates a carbon debt of 319 years. Some production has more indirect effects such as in the US where farmers used to rotate between soyabean and corn crops and now just grow corn for biofuel - the has led to increased production of Soya (to meet the supply deficit) in the Amazon and hence even more trees are lost.

“Such conversions of land to grow corn (maize) and sugarcane for biodiesel, or palm oil and soybean for bioethanol, release between 17 and 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels, the scientists calculated.

One of the choice paragraphs in the report is; “In finding solutions to climate change, we must ensure that the cure is not worse than the disease”.

You can see the full article in the Independent Online here.

Peak Oil is almost here says Shell

Well it’s been an interesting time for the oil industry! Last week, Shell announced record annual profits of £13.9bn, whereas this week BP saw profits fall sharply to a ‘disappointing’ £8.76bn. These figures however have been dwarfed by Exxon Mobil, who announced profits of $40.6bn - a record for a US firm.

Of course, big profits for UK-based companies are a good thing for the government - Shell’s profits will land around $1bn into the lap of the treasury by way of taxation. All of this makes me a little skeptical about the real effort the government is putting into tackling climate change - with the treasury getting money from all fuel sales, plus the profits from the companies selling, extracting and refining the fuel, they really do need to look at alternative ways of funding from the taxation of oil if they are going to avoid a deficit whilst at the same time, encouraging people away from cars and our current carbon-consuming lifestyles.

This week, Shell also ‘acknowledged’ Peak Oil could be here within a few years. In an email sent to all Shell employees, Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell said;

“Regardless of which route we choose, the world’s current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand”

He went on to criticise policy makers;

“Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption - until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.”

Heads up to TreeHugger.com for publishing the above information.

Whatever it takes for the government to react properly and urgently to address energy consumption and curb greenhouse gas emissions, it’s clear that the car lobby is not going to give up without a fight. Governments are pushing the car makers to improve vehicle efficiency, but these moves are being met with huge resistance. Car makers say that owners of less efficient vehicles are already paying their dues with increased road tax duty and high fuel prices.

Shell’s former chairman, Sir Mark Moody Stuart has joined the debate by saying that the rich should not be allowed to ‘buy’ their way out of responsibility for tackling climate change.

On the BBC website, he said; “Nobody needs a car that does 10 or 15 miles to the gallon. In my opinion, it simply shouldn’t be allowed.”

Sir Mark currently owns a Toyota Prius - the MPG is not stunning, but is better than most similar-sized vehicles, and the big bonus is in reduced CO2 emissions.

The SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) naturally takes the view of motorists already ‘paying through the nose’ and how wrong it would be to take away the ‘freedom of choice’ for the motorist. I wonder whether freedom to breathe clean air is a more fundamental right?

Maybe the oil companies are in the last throws of high profitability before their fall from grace? I heard an interview on Radio 4 recently with Jeremy Leggett (a former oil-man who now champions the peak-oil reality and the ‘Transition Towns‘ movement), who said that oil companies need to embrace renewables properly and become ‘total energy’ companies. When asked about the work that BP did with renewables, he said this was pretty much a smoke screen, designed to get some positive PR but lacked any real commitment. Time will tell.

Most UK milk, dairy products and pork produced using GM

Nearly all the milk, dairy products and pork in the UK supermarkets are being produced from animals fed on GM (Genetically Modified) crops, and none of this is labelled, according to a Soil Association investigation. Tests of animal feed and a survey of company policies have revealed that all the supermarkets are widely allowing the use of GM feed. The report found that around 60% of the maize and 30% of the soya fed to dairy cattle and pigs is GM. Most consumers are unwittingly eating food produced from GM crops everyday.

Although food from GM-fed animals does not have to be labelled, animal feed does have to be labelled if it contains GM ingredients. Most feed (75%) is now labelled as ‘GM’, however, the survey found that most farmers (59%) did not know if their feed was GM. Soil Association tests also revealed a high level of breaches of the EU labelling laws - nearly 20% of feed contained GM soya above the 0.9% labelling threshold but bore no GM label. The Food Standards Agency is responsible for enforcing the legislation but is not conducting any tests to do so.

Due to the fact that at present, no field-scale GM crops are being grown in the UK, the GM feed is coming in from abroad, which massively increases the true food miles of the beef, pork or dairy produce. Both the ‘Red Tractor’ and RSPCA ‘Freedom Foods’ certification permit the use of GM feed to livestock - the only current guarantee is ‘Organic’.

You can see the full report at the Soil Association website.