TwXLT "Consumption and Pessimistic Entropy" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 7

Funny....kind of... :)

The chapter titled “Consumption” in the Story of Stuff gives a detailed sense of just how much we shop, buy…consume.  In 2004 we spent more on watches, shoes and jewelry than for higher education ($100 billion vs. $99 billion).  In 2003 the United States and Europe spent $17 billion on pet food, yet we could end hunger and malnutrition for just $19 billion. The comparative lists go on and on.  We want a two or three car garage to use most of it for storage.  Leonard continues to describe how shopping is viewed as some sort of right, and to challenge our rate of consumption has led her to be labeled by some as “Marx in a ponytail” and for Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man, who lived in NYC experimenting with a minimal-consumption lifestyle, to receive hate mail even including the threat of death.  She also mentions one of my favorite books, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and how he was called “unmanly” and “very wicked and heathenish”! (Leonard, 2010) What?! This blows my mind.  Who could insult this book and the way it leads you through the winding magic of nature?  It gives me peace I can only otherwise find out in, well, nature.

Fleissner and Hofkirchner’s paper titled “Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability” is quite a bit more dense, diving into the physics of sustainability and the contradictions therein. One concept in particular though seemed to resonate with me since I have pondered about on my own before, not knowing it had a name. Georgescu's Law states that “…in a system like the Earth (nearly no exchange of matter with the environment) mechanical work cannot proceed at a constant rate forever, or, there is a law of increasing material entropy. This means that it is not possible to get back all the dissipated matter of, for instance, tires worn out by friction.” (1997). 

This "disorder" makes sense to me.  Nature rules. 

This is very interesting to me, personally.  I would like to know exactly what he means by “get back”, but I would tend to agree with him on the basic (pessimistic?) concept.  I do not believe that people or the planet (in the future as far as we can see it) are capable of returning matter “back” to a natural state, near its source location, as a way to reverse our damage.  I do believe that if humans were to cease to exist the planet would eventually, probably, breakdown and recycle all our messes so that nature could thrive again.  But for the sake of our current reality (a world with humans) I would agree with Georgescu-Roegen: we are doing irreversible damage.  As I have said before, I’ve been told I may be a bit of a pessimist but I would rather make changes now than push our planet any further down a path of doom.  We know we cannot continue to function indefinitely like we are functioning now. Too many companies are using finite resources as if they were infinite.

I found an interesting review of Georgescu-Roegen that refers to him as a “genius pessimist and a philosopher of process”.  The author states that he was a complex character who believed in the inevitable running down of the economic process.  This is what I have always held true and believe to my core; if we are not living in harmony with nature, we are destined to fail.  How could anyone think that that a society that depends on nature, yet is built on the exploitation nature, could survive?  I learned that Georgescu-Roegen and I have our perceived pessimism in common and I gained respect for him because he did not just stay safely in one field.  Georgescu-Roegen was a mathematician and economist who dared to enter the field of physics, and then bring all three studies together.  That is incredible to me and I appreciate his efforts and contributions to the study of sustainability.  We need a wake up call.

Sources

Fleissner, P. & Hofkirchner, W. (1997). Entropy and Its Implications for Sustainability. Implications and Applications of Bioeconomics. Retrieved from https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/menschen/hofkirchner/papers/infoconcept/entropy/entropy.htm

Sers, M. (2017). Georgescu-Roegen: The genius pessimist and the philosopher of process. Economics for the Anthropocene. Retrieved on December 24, 2018 from

https://e4a-net.org/2017/03/29/georgescu-roegen-the-genius-pessimist-and-the-philosopher-of-process-by-martin-sers/

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Annie Leonard / Free Press (publication:2010-03-09)
Read "Consumption"

PhRB "A Vision for Change" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 6

PhRB—

High grasslands showing the beauty of Mother Nature. Andes, Ecuador. 

In her book “The Story of Stuff”, Leonard shares her lifestyle of living in a “tight community” where resources are shared rather than purchased.  The community is more sustainable than most due to the fact that the people buy less Stuff and throw out less trash.  They rely on each other first, and the economy second.  Carpools, shared babysitting, traded goods and borrowed tools are a way of life for her.  However, she is careful to point out that this is not a sustainable life either—closer, yes--but they still function within a system so based on “fossil fuels, carbon emissions, toxic chemicals and wasted resources” that it is IMPOSSIBLE to live a completely sustainable lifestyle without disengaging from society as we know it (Leonard, 2010).

Ecuadorian Shaman shares knowledge of a lifestyle shared with nature.

Up until this point, things are looking pretty bleak.  It’s so easy to get overwhelmed, feel hopeless and want to give up under a cloud of depression.  Thankfully, page 241 of “The Story of Stuff” states my above-mentioned thought almost verbatim.  It’s not enough to just be “greener” or recycle better.  That will just put us on a slower track to the end of nature, the environment and natural resources and, because of that, the end of life and the end of us.  We ARE nature; inexplicably connected whether we acknowledge it or not.  The Vision for Change as explained by Leonard is to change policy and our entire system until the sustainable option IS the DEFAULT option! To start, the suggestion made is to join a movement that you are passionate about.  I am fortunate to work in my passion at an NPO that focuses on sustainable agricultural solutions specific to various areas of the world.  I love my work and feel so much purpose and meaning in it. 

Moss growing in the clouds.  Pichincha, Ecuador. 15,000 ft. elevation.

The website Wiser.org is a great site that serves to connect agencies with each other to grow the movement toward the changes in the world that need to be made for us to be a sustainable, healthy world. I signed up at https://wiser.org/stay-informed/ to be informed of ways to help support that movement via texts and emails.  The idea is that “Things get better everyday, not just less bad” so that our children see that we have a vision for the future, rather than just a way to improve on the grave problems we have created (McDonough, 2015).

Sources:

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

Annie Leonard / Free Press (publication:2010-03-09)
Read "Writing the new story"

Resource Abundance by Design | William McDonough (2015). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKlqL_nuh_c

PhRT "Biomimicry" - Waste Not, Want Not: Relational Summary 5

PhRT –

Tell me again how bad it is.

Sometimes I think I am too much of an empath to work in sustainability.  I get overwhelmed by the immensity of the issues, and the lack of concern from society.  When reading about waste, I often think about the years I spent traveling overseas.  These issues seemed to make more sense.  Maybe it was because I was seeing the problems from the view of the people who struggle to meet their basic needs and therefore, their behavior reflects this and there are fewer choices to actually be made.  It is just the way life is.  Flash forward to the more recent times in the United States, and the things that people do are much more about choice and reflect their own values (or lack thereof).

A small community in rural Ecuador.

Let me think of a concrete example.  In a very small coastal town called Puerto El Morro on the edge of the country of Ecuador, people live in poverty yet, because of the poverty, they see value in things others may not see as valuable. They use rocks to smash plantains to serve with a lunch of rice and shrimp.  The shrimp are from the river running by the town.  The food is local by necessity, but it is sustainable and healthy.  There are walls built from 2 liter bottles because, well, Coca-Cola has reached every corner of the globe.  If those bottle can be used, the people are happy to use them instead of throw them out. Milk and water are sold in bags, which is surely less plastic that a gallon jug.  Also, most grocery plastic bags are used and reused.  The dumps, for example, near Cali, Colombia, are a haven for the poor to find their food and other items still usable in some way.

A typical home near the coast of Ecuador.

Now, that brings us to one of Professor Culhane’s videos about the Zabaleen people in Egypt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kzQCmBspNZo) who are thought to be unholy because of how they pick through, process and use the trash thrown away by their neighbors in the nearby cities. As mentioned in the video, I would certainly agree that we should be thankful to these people instead of viewing them as dirty.  And why do we glorify the kind of wasteful, materialistic, throw-away culture that we subscribe to so often in the United States?  I wish there were no shame in using trash that would otherwise pollute the environment, and I wish there WERE shame in tossing trash like our society does without regard to where it will end up. 

A puppy near a trash pile, rural Ecuador.

A life close to nature in rural Guatemala.

Our society has it all backwards.  The video “Natural Capitalism (taking natural capital into account)” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Cq7Yn5pUJ3A)  explains that Natural Capitalism models nature, a term called “biomimicry” (Sustainability Illustrated, 2016). Everything depends on the environment; both society and the economy.  So why would we NOT put our natural resources as the highest priority to respect and manage?  As the paper titled “The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual economic growth” states, “Such high-entropy matter depletes finite stocks of ecosystem services provided by the ecosphere, hence are incompatible with the long-term growth in the material scale of the economic process.” (Romeiro & Earp, 2012). The very concept of exponential growth is not modeled by nature. Exponential growth is supported by human greed and the idea that more and more and more is somehow better. But it’s not.  Nature teaches us that balance is important.  Matter changing forms into new life is important.  Circular systems are important.  We have so much to learn from nature, if we could just listen. 

Sources:

Culhane, T.H. (2018). Intrigo for Waste Not Want Not Module PhLB: Doing God's work with the Zabaleen. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kzQCmBspNZo

Romeiro, A. R. & S´a Earp, H. N. (2012). The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual economic growth. Institute of Economics. Brazil.

Sustainability Illustrated (2016). Cod fish and natural capitalism—biomimicry. Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Cq7Yn5pUJ3A