That’s a GREAT definition. Thank you for sharing it.

Thank everyone for coming out,Riki for hosting, and Bev/Fire Dog Lake for putting everything together!

We only have a few more minutes. Any last minute really pressing questions?

Sorry I realize I only answered half your question.

To me a job with dignity has two halves. The first is on the side of the employer, does she or he treat his workers with respect? Do they pay them a fair wage that allows them to survive in a decent fashion (pay rent, pay food etc)? On the employee side the question is, is your job necessary to society? Does your job make society better? I live in NYC where garbage men are paid well, have solid benefits, good rights and perform a vital service – that’s a job with dignity I think. Defining “better” is tricky, but I think art, music, etc all provide vital, necessary services that can make society better (or worse by reinforcing negative tropes).

This is really cool. I’d love to learn more as this develops!

Hormonal birth control has persistent environmental effects. I’m just kidding. Though it is important to recognize that pharmacology is a growing environmental problem.

I avoid the birth control conversation for a few reasons. The first is we live in a hegemonic and patriarchal society, and population growth tends to be happening in the developing world, and women are viewed as the safeguards of reproduction. So, we’re putting the blame at the hands of those who are actually least in control of their own destinities. As education and wealth increases birth rates decline. The paradox, naturally, is that as education and wealth increases consumption also increases. One American consumes far more resources than your typical Tanzanian for example.

So accept what I’m about to say is focused primarily on the US and on people who are in a position to make choices about their reproduction – men and women.

Of course fewer people on the planet is better for the earth. But that isn’t an absolute rule. 0 people on the planet isn’t necessarily better – indigenous people have been found in many parts of the world to increase biodiversity. So it is totally possible for human beings to make nature more diverse and generally more awesome.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is the way we’re currently living doesn’t allow for that. So, fewer people, living in ways that enrich the planet would be great. And the way of getting there isn’t mandating it, but by creating a culture that respects LIFE including planetary life and encourages people to live within reasonable limits.

Yes, I’m advocating for positive peer pressure ;)

Edward Abbey was pretty awesome. The other thing is early exposure to nature (like before the age of 12) is critical to getting kids invested in the environment.

A couple of thing – I was not anti-cities. I believe in increased density and it’s many co-benefits. What I was pointing out is that when calculating urban effects, urban consumption is often under calculated because we don’t produce things directly, we create waste indirectly.

A friend moved from London to NYC and stopped ordering take out because she couldn’t deal with the sheer volume of takeout waste that New Yorkers produce vs Londoners. It’s something to keep in mind.

I’m right there with you. I only brought it up because I think it’s critical that people take the wide view; the narrow view has caused us many problems.

In a lot of countries stores just aren’t opened one day a week. So like I mentioned upthread when I lived in Southwest France stores were mostly closed on Sundays. Shopping is Americans #1 leisure activity which suggests we shop for reasons other than need. If you make it so they can’t shop on Sundays (and in France grocery stores were open in the early morning), people will naturally buy less stuff since their purchases aren’t driven on need as much as on access. Overconsumption of stuff is a critical piece of our environmental problems, so it makes sense that limiting access to consumption limits overconsumption.

I wasn’t so much into the religiousness of the idea as the idea of stores being closed one day a week.

I actually wrote a policy paper a very long time ago, and I think one of the things that gets forgotten is that industrial agriculture was a response to small scale agriculture that was sometimes (at least in the course of US history) filthy.

As in fecal matter in the milk, cream poured off, and chalk added to make the skim milk less blue and more white.

I support local agriculture and I like local agriculture, but industrial seemed like a relief solution to questionable agriculture that regulators had no capacity to regulate. Pasteurization was a response to milk that was killing people – often children – and governments who felt they couldn’t make sure that the milk was clean could at least make sure that dirty milk was sterilized.

I bring this up, because it’s important that while in recent years it’s easy to get cynical and feel like legislation was designed to simply fatten wealthy people’s wallets, in many cases rules have a history that made sense in the context of their time. In moving forward we should know our history to avoid replicating these mistakes.

Raw milk can be safely consumed (and it is delicious), but there have been incidents in the US where milkers flouted the safety rules created specifically for raw milk and people got sick.

By freeing people from the “need” to shop. Yes in theory it could shift shopping to other days of the week, but since shopping is our #1 leisure activity I doubt it. It would force people to become more creative about engaging in other activities… or you know just send us to our computers to internet shop ;)

Complicated :)
I like that LEED has standards and has people thinking about building performance.

The problem is that (and I touch on this in the book) the greenest building is one that’s already built, and the media likes “new” so attention tends to be paid more on the new, shiny, LEED buildings, not the boring, LEED retrofits, even though the latter are greener and more important (though again not LEED’s fault).

Also, execution and building maintenance is vital to LEED and you can have a certified building that’s actually really inefficient (though they’re working on that).

The other problem, and this isn’t LEED specific but “standard” specific, and that problem is that the LEED performance is based on “standard” building performance. That is LEED buildings have to achieve xxx% better than a conventional building. And conventional buildings are pretty awful in material use and energy use so we’re trying to improve over a pretty abysmal standard. I mean if our standard for Car was a hummer than a Toyota 4-runner would look super efficient by comparison, but we’re kind of ignoring that our standard is pretty messed up in the first place.

Finally, LEED makes no bones about whether a structure makes sense – you can have a 10,000 square foot “green” home. And yes, it may use less energy and better materials than your normal 2,4000 square foot home, but does anyone really need a 10,000 squarefoot home apart from maybe the Duggars?

That’s a really great idea and one I hadn’t really thought about but I think you’re right.

In Montreal one of the things I loved was that shops were open later, later in the week mimicking people’s natural social patterns (i.e. you’re more likely to want to head out on a Thursday with the work week almost over, than on a Tuesday), even the mall opened later (around noon) and closed earlier (around 6) than I was used to. My friend said it was out of respect to the workers.

One of the things I’ve found useful is removing CO2 from the debate. We don’t have to talk about it because it usually goes hand in hand with other eco-issues, ones that you end up on far steadier ground when talking with people who hunt or fish and who aren’t normally considered “environmentalists” but who can see what’s going on in their ecosystem. Some of the most ardent environmentalists are hunters who feel disconnected from the larger environmental movement that often positions the environment as this pristine thing that no one should touch. We often forget the words of Edward Abbey, “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

The picture of cities and urban effects are more complicated. That is, if you factor in the fact of materials destroyed on their behalf – Manhattan doesn’t have many factories but there’s someplace churning out their take away containers on their behalf – the environmental picture gets less rosy.

I love cities and I plan on remaining in cities but it’s important to recognize that cities are kind of weird in that all of their “stuff” comes from someplace and gets thrown away someplace else and that is somehow ignored. We do rate high on using less CO2 because of less driving, but CO2 isn’t the only environmental problem, and it’s important to recognize that while CO2 is a problem it’s a canary in the coal mine. That is it’s our leading, most pressing environmental issue but not our only one. Even if we could magically get rid of our climate problems, we’re still running out of fish in the worlds oceans – a vital resource for many of the world’s populations – biodiversity loss is rapidly expanding, desertification is exacerbated by global warming but not caused by it etc.

It’s interesting because I used to live in Southwest France and even though the French are pretty secular it’s a tradition they’ve maintained. Even supermarkets and bakeries were only open briefly on Sunday mornings, and only a handful of restaurants stayed open. It took me months to get settled on the idea that there was a day in which it was difficult to engage in consumer behaviors, but you’re right it made life a lot better. I think society as a whole would benefit from having one day in which retail establishments were closed, I don’t know if it has to be Sunday though (giving a nod to lots of other religious traditions)… I’ve always hated Wednesdays ;)

YES! Lead by (community) example, and also move away from traditions based in glorifying consumption.

I think it’s also important to recognize that a completely “pure” lifestyle isn’t sufficient to green the planet. Business, agriculture, have to get their acts in gear too.

There are communities doing that. In appalachia some communities have said no to coal power and yes to wind instead. The trick is that while we’re working at the bottom we have to also deal with the structures at the top to support the changes were putting into place. Institutions are supposed to be tempering effects and in recognizing that they’re just doing their job.