Reflecting on Ethics for a Better World

As our year comes to a close in a season normally filled with joy and celebration, many hearts are heavy because of the toll both of natural disasters and human tragedies. Is it possible for humans to live in harmony with the Earth and with each other?

Care of People

Care of the Earth

Having a Surplus to Share

Who in today's world follows these three principles? Actually there are so very many that we can list.

Some of the organizations and businesses:
New York Cares  http://www.newyorkcares.org/
Occupy Sandy  http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/
Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/
Acumen Fund   http://www.acumenfund.org/ten/
The Working World  http://www.theworkingworld.org/us/what-we-do/
Habitat for Humanity  http://www.habitatnyc.org/
NY Restoration Project  http://www.nyrp.org/
Just Food  http://justfood.org/
Green Thumb http://greenthumbnyc.org/
City Harvest  http://www.cityharvest.org/
Polyface Farms  http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage  http://www.dancingrabbit.org/

Some of the individuals:
Joe Leuken  (http://now.msn.com/joe-lueken-supermarket-boss-transfers-ownership-of-business-to-employees)
Salman Khan  http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/
Jacqueline Novogratz   http://www.forbes.com/sites/helencoster/2011/11/30/novogratz/
Brendan Martin https://www.ashoka.org/fellow/brendan-martin
Vicki Robin (and deceased partner Joe Dominguez) http://ymoyl.wordpress.com/
Bette Midler http://www.nyrp.org/
Dr. John Todd http://toddecological.com/
Colin Beavan  http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/about-colin-beavan.html
Cecil Scheib  http://roadtripnation.com/CecilScheib
Will Allen  http://www.growingpower.org/
Joel Salatin http://www.polyfacefarms.com/story/
Henry Gifford  http://www.energysavingscience.com/
Chris Benedict  http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/iss/innovators/chris-benedict
Gennaro Brooks-Church http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-gennaro-brooks-church-founder-of-eco-brooklyn
Bill Mollison  http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mollison.html
David Holmgren  http://www.holmgren.com.au/
Sepp Holzer  http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011217.html
Rob Hopkins  http://www.ted.com/speakers/rob_hopkins.html
 
There are so many many more (including my wonderful colleagues at Green New Yorkers Meetup!) Which organizations and individuals would you like to add?

Coincidentally ;-), the three ethics: earth care, people care and fair share  form the foundation for Permaculture Design.  http://permacultureprinciples.com/ethics.php

Can we ever have a modern global society based on these principles rather than the currently popular but highly destructive Social Darwinism? Let's start with Permaculture education and practice. From there we can build a community of social and business networks with likeminded people.

Local Permaculture Teachers:
Claudia Joseph http://permaculture-exchange.org/
Andrew Faust http://www.homebiome.com/
Julie Welch http://www.linkedin.com/pub/julie-welch/5/231/584

Revolutions have started this way. 

On with the Permaculture Revolution!

http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/ethics.php

 

Strategies for Resilience in a Post Sandy Era

Tracks of all tropical cyclones in the northern Atlantic Ocean between 1980 and 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_basins

An insurance company has aired advertisements saying "You didn't choose to be in the path of Sandy..." Sadly for us, this isn't quite true.  We have chosen to live in a known tropical cyclone zone. We have not designed our homes, buildings, subway stations, and subway tunnels to be storm resistant. We have destroyed the original natural storm barriers, namely oyster reefs and salt marsh flats. And despite many warnings, we did not adequately prepare before Sandy struck.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ny-mostly-ignored-reports-warning-superstorm

Where are you on the Flood Zone map? Addresses in NYC can be checked on http://gis.nyc.gov/oem/he/index.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-28/new-york-mayor-orders-evacuation-zone-residents

Climate scientist, Dr. Trenberth, has been  harshly attacked  by climate change deniers for his projection that the risk of harm from severe weather, including hurricanes, would increase. Branding Dr. Trenberth an "alarmist" his critics went further to assert that infrastructure investments to mitigate hurricane damage were unnecessary and a waste of money.

Hopefully our tristate area will listen to Dr. Trenberth and not his critics.

Municipal Initiatives:
Reassess building codes and evacuation zone borders
Determine how best to flood-proof power and transportation networks
Make sure our vulnerable populations, especially those in hospitals and nursing homes, are provided for
Decide how to protect the coast with levees, dunes, natural structures, or a combination
Determine how to fund the many projects that will be needed!

Paying for the infrastructure changes we need will be expensive indeed...however...experts estimate that a dollar spent for prevention will save 4 dollars of damage!  

Permaculture Principle #11 says "use edges and value the marginal"...the interface between two ecosystems can be particularly valuable and productive. I believe that designing with nature instead of waging war with nature will be the best solution. Will our leaders agree? http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/principle_11.php

 



Individual Initiatives:
We need our trusted friends and family...and they need us. In emergencies, we help each other with places to stay, child care, sharing cars, food, supplies, internet access, and so much more.
It's good to know how things work. How to light a stove or oven when we have gas but not electric. How to flush a toilet without running water. How to compost food and yard waste, even sewage waste... etc.
It's important to stay healthy and fit if possible. We are better off if we can walk, bike, climb stairs, carry heavy stuff, perhaps cut fallen tree limbs, shovel sand...etc.

Above all, being willing to creatively use and respond to change, which is Permaculture Principle #12, will lead to positive results! http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/principle_12.php

 


Greenies, what would you add to the list?

Connecting the Dots Between Climate Change and Extreme Weather

Is smoking related to cancer? Does diet affect health? Today we recognize as fact that these are indeed related. Yet in the past, many business and political leaders fostered controversy and doubt about these issues for decades letting millions of people make harmful choices.

Similarly, today, many business and political leaders want doubt and controversy to shroud the question of whether there are dots to connect between extreme weather, climate change, and the fossil fuel industry that pumps carbon into our atmosphere. (Dr Trenberth is one of the climate scientists roundly vilified and branded an "alarmist" for his call to plan for and adapt to a changing climate.) 


As millions of people from the Caribbean to the U.S. and up to Canada suffer heartbreaking devastation from the unprecedented destruction of SuperStorm Sandy, we must address this issue in order to map a course for our future.  Do we assume storms like Hurricanes Katrina, Irene, and Sandy are just a matter of natural variability of "normal" weather so that we should simply rebuild and live life as "usual" or do we recognize that the Earth has changed and that we need to live differently to adapt to the new conditions?

Scientists choose their words carefully and so Climate Deniers think scientists are testifying that recent weather disasters are completely unrelated to Climate Change.

NOT SO!

FACT*:
(Dr. Trenberth) "human-induced global warming has been raising the overall temperature of the surface ocean, by about one degree Fahrenheit since the 1970s. So global warming very likely contributed a notable fraction of the energy on which the storm (Sandy) thrived — perhaps as much as 10 percent"

FACT*:
"The ocean is rising relentlessly, and scientists say this is a direct consequence of global warming. Warm water expands, just as warm air does, and the warming of the ocean is one factor behind the rise. Another is that land ice the world over is starting to melt as the climate grows warmer, dumping extra water into the ocean."

FACT*:
(Dr. Emanuel) "coastal flooding on a scale that once happened only once or twice per century — the scale of Sandy, in other words — will become much more commonplace within the coming decades."

FACT**:

(Dr. Hoerling) "There is a nice historical record of the tide level at the Battery just below Manhattan that goes back to 1850s. And that time series, which is fairly complete up to current, shows a rise in the total sea level of about one foot in the 150 years of that record. Now, we have 14-foot rise related to Sandy. So one foot out of 14 may not be something that is critical. But it may very well be in the sense that that last foot may be the foot that moved the water into very prone areas."

*From NYT Green Blogs - http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/did-global-warming-contribute-to-hurricane-sandys-devastation/?ref=globalwarming
**From NPR interview - http://www.npr.org/2012/10/31/164055672/is-climate-change-responsible-for-sandy

Dr. Trenberth sums up the misunderstanding succinctly: "The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be." He illustrates by pointing out that steroids in a baseball player's system do not cause home runs all by themselves but do make home runs more likely. UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff describes this confusion as arising from the public's misunderstanding of the difference between "direct causation" and "systemic causation". ^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy}

Please submit your photos to http://connect.climatedots.org/

From 350.org

Join Green New Yorkers Meetup in signing up for

Al Gore's 24 hours of Climate Reality Project (Nov  14)

    http://www.meetup.com/GreenNewYorkers/events/84322082/

A Holistic Approach to the Healthcare Crisis

The debate is currently raging in the political, business, and public arenas over the best approach to medical insurance coverage for Americans. It is abundantly clear that our health care costs are painfully high and growing unsustainably!

Conspicuously absent is the recognition that the concept of insurance by definition is about covering eventualities that are unlikely to take place.

We need to do everything we can to make illness an unlikely event in our lives!
If we become healthier as a nation we will solve the healthcare crisis!

Can we accomplish such a challenge?

Fortunately many highly qualified doctors have pointed to holistic ways to achieve excellent health without costly medical interventions.

Take a look:

Dr. David Servan-Schreiber
Credentials: http://www.instincttoheal.org/article.php3?id_article=19#education

ANTICANCER LIFESTYLE

http://www.anticancerbook.com/

MENTAL HEALTH

http://www.instincttoheal.org/

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn
Credentials: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldwell_Esselstyn

CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH

http://www.heartattackproof.com/

Dr. Joel Furhman
Credentials: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_furhman
DIABETES PREVENTION

SUPERIMMUNITY

http://www.drfuhrman.com/

Dr. Mehmet Oz
Credentials: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Oz
COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
http://www.doctoroz.com/

Although these esteemed doctors differ on many of their recommendations (I'm very sure I've never eaten a meal that Dr. Esselstyn would approve of...LOL), they all concur with the gist of Dr. Furhman's statement about nutrition in America:

"Those who eat the standard American Diet with an overabundance of calories but a very low nutrient per calorie intake are in a chronically malnourished condition. This combination of being overweight yet malnourished is the true life threatening epidemic in the modern world resulting in a medical care crisis and avoidable medical tragedies. With the ubiquitous consumption of low nutrient processed foods, nutritional deficiency has become the norm."

 "Health = Nutrients/Calories"

How do we avoid the outsized medical expenses currently typical near the end of our lives? Scott Nearing, famous for demonstrating how to live simply, also shows us a way of graciously exiting our earthly lives. In the words of his wife, Helen, he "quietly breathed away his life at home in Maine 3 weeks after his 100th birthday. He went with dignity, purposely fasting, after a long and good life."
http://www.amazon.com/Loving-Leaving-Good-Helen-Nearing/dp/0930031636#reader_0930031636
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0156004968/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_3#reader_0156004968

Are we willing to accept the challenge
of attaining good health and long life
with low healthcare costs?

"Slowing the Rise of Oceans and Healing the Planet"

From Mitt Romney's August 30th acceptance speech:
"President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans." (LAUGHTER from delegates) "And to heal the planet." (LAUGHTER from delegates) "My promise is to help you and your family." (APPLAUSE from delegates) (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/)

I'm saddened and dismayed that so many politicians and their supporters still don't get it :-(

The increasing imbalance of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere since the 18th century Industrial Revolution is a well documented fact. The coincidental timing of Hurricane Isaac with the start of the Republican Convention seemed to me to be a dramatic wake up call. The Summer of drought, crop failure, and forest fires have amply demonstrated the harm to human habitation that Climate Change causes. Yet environmental concerns were offhandedly belittled by the candidates and delegates alike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuels

Did it ever make sense to burn precious nonrenewable fossil resources at all? When we hear of lottery winners blowing off their fortunes in a short time by going on wild spending sprees we are not filled with admiration are we? Yet, while surrounded by renewable sun, wind, and biomass energy sources, we as a society have proceeded during the last 262 years to wantonly destroy irreplaceable fossil materials and to do so in a manner that harms our habitat.

Extracting fossil resources at the current stage of difficulty is analogous to the choice of the young teenager in China who sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad and iPhone. The young teen became ill after his operation and his furious mother smashed his gadgets.  http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-teen-sells-kidney-buy-iphone-ipad-072601309.html Removing mountaintops for coal, extracting oil from tarsands, building the Keystone XL pipeline over the precious Ogallala acquifer, fracking for natural gas by contaminating water, air, and soil, these procedures amount to damaging the Earth's vital organs.  We harm our future to enjoy a brief interval of wastefulness.

The promised "jobs" and "energy independence" will undoubtedly come from unrestrained drilling and fracking if these political factions have their way. This way of "helping" us and our families is akin to enlisting us to dig our own graves. Yes, we are expected to be elated about sharing in anthropomorphic suicide.

Rob Hopkins is from the region where the Industrial Revolution began.  In his TED presentation about Transitioning to a World Without Oil, he reminds us that the cheap oil our world depends on is running out and points us to a future beyond oil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8meWY0W40OA

There is a better way and we have the tools to implement it!
Grassroots Transition Town movements are implementing an "energy descent plan" and preparing to "power down":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQF09NG00V8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

Rob Hopkins sums up with a quote from Arundhati Roy: "Another world is not only possible, she's on her way and on a quiet day I can hear her breathing."

Greenies, what kind of future do you want to build?

Another World Is Possible: 4 videos for July 4th

This July 4th week, as we celebrate the world's oldest democracy, let's reflect on the many positive grassroots initiatives that are underway.

Please view these 4 videos:

Andrew Faust: "Another world is possible!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivd_BqKtDzY

Nic Esposito: "Right here, right now, I think we humans beings are at our most just, most humane, most Earth conscious, than we have ever been before on this planet."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jibmiiu2uw

Penny Livingston-Stark: "The good news is, the solutions are here, they are available on every scale."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHJwLz_AFG8

Charlie Hoxie:  Passive Passion, a documentary film "introducing the Passive House standard, a design method that incorporates insulation, air tightness, and heat recovery ventilation to achieve staggering reductions in the energy required to heat and cool a building".

http://www.foursevenfive.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=30&chapter=1

In 1976 a computer simulation team led by Wayne Schick at the Small Homes Council at University of Illinois Urbana developed a design called the

Lo-Cal house. The house was never built, but its design features pioneered the key design facets of today's Passive Houses.

http://books.google.com/books?id=H4mEKu4jD6sC&pg=PA513&lpg=PA513&dq=low+calorie+house+small+homes+council+urbana+champaign+illinois&source=bl&ots=KhCZGCOhfo&sig=2SF5gGqXwzVd_YuQCWllxP6q8Q8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_aL-T9vmIIa16wGn2bnXBg&ved=0CFUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Fast forward to 2012, New York architect, Gennaro Brooks-Church is currently building an Earthship House on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

 

http://ecobrooklyn.com/earthship-passive-house/

Wow!

Enjoy the fireworks!

It's Earth Day!

It's Earth Day again, an observance/protest that began in 1970.

Have we made progress?  Yes, in many ways.
Have matters become even more critical? Yes, sadly, in many more ways. http://www.earthday.org/earth-day-history-movement

Here's a 2 pronged approach I plan to take today:

*How much can we reduce our fossil fuel footprint?
Architect Chris Benedict  http://www.meetup.com/GreenNewYorkers/photos/4077822/ recommends reducing our home energy use to the Passive House standard. She states that this drastic reduction is needed in order for renewable sources of energy to be sufficient for our needs.

Today we have the opportunity to tour a Brooklyn brownstone retrofitted by architect Jeremy Shannon to the PH standard. http://www.meetup.com/GreenNewYorkers/events/61492462/

How a strong a message can we send to political and business leaders?
Today we can join the "Rally to Retake Earth Day" http://www.meetup.com/GreenNewYorkers/events/61613292/

Greenies, what are your plans for today?

_____________________________________________

*Oops, I didn't mean to give an impression that I thought it would be easy or cost effective to retrofit all of our homes to the PH standard in the near future.

It is a long term goal that I think we must start working towards ASAP.  Plus, applying the principles PH is based on can reduce our fossil fuel needs within our existing infrastructure.

Examples?

Summer:  Keep the Western window shades closed all day, keep the Eastern window shades closed in the mornings. Use ceiling fans instead of air conditioners.  On cool nights that aren't muggy, bring the cool air inside with fans.  Don't use the oven on hot days.

Winter:  Let the Sun in from the West and South!  Add insulation to the North windows.  Look for and seal up air leaks in windows and doors.  Open windows for ventilation when the sun is shining.

In a small home less fuel is needed for the smaller space.  In a larger home establishing a seasonal pattern of use is helpful.  A tiled basement family room is a cool sanctuary in Summer and the West facing den is the place to read a book in Winter.  Spaces we aren't using don't need to be heated or cooled to the max.

Think of what cats do to be comfortable.  Yes, cats are energy experts ;-)

 On a hot Summer day this kitty

stayed in the middle of the house and stretched out on the vinyl kitchen floor.

On a cold but sunny Winter afternoon

she curled up in the armchair by a Western window. 

How much difference can small low cost DIY measures make?  In my own home, the average daily gas use went down from a max of 6 therms in the Winter of 2004 to only 2.5 therms in the Winter of 2009.   In January of 2010, the furnace (1965 vintage) and hot water heater (2002 vintage) were replaced which brought the average daily gas use to below 2 therms in the Winter and to .5 therm in the summer.  Electricity use is about 5 KWH per day at the Summer max. I don't have any air conditioners.  In short, it's entirely possible to make some progress towards fossil fuel independence without costly investments. 

There's no time to lose.  Let's change our energy habits ASAP!