http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/6476 From: David MacClement Date: Mon Dec 16, 2002 7:16 am Subject: a sustainable future world, what could it look like? At 17:24 15/12/2002 +1300, Peter sent to GV Ron's comment: > If you have an audio player, here's a link to the ABC's Background Briefing programme which aired today. Well worth a listen [there's also a transcript]. Will Hutton speaks of European vs. USA values... > > http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/ At 03:02 16/12/2002 +1300 Christiaan wrote (title: Re:Will Hutton Lecture): > > There was a lot of interesting stuff in this but I think Hutton is essentially posing the irrational argument that we are all faced with a choice of the European way or the American way. > This is dangerous, I think, because they both fail to maximise human potential in my opinion. They both falsely assume things like -=# the need for a state to exist #=- in order for economic activity to take place, that -=# productive output needs to be the maain goal #=- of economic activity, that we need markets (which are perhaps the single worst artifact of human creativity), that public and private economic activity need to be dealt with separately. > Indeed, they even both assume Christian and Islamic ideas like the need to punish. > >Put simply, there are other ideas we need to consider, and most of Hutton's have already been tried. > >Christiaan > · I agree that nothing larger than local regions are needed, no states. · I believe recent levels of productive activity (i.e. converting the earth's resources into _things_ at the high rates perfected by the American economy) is _very_ obviously unsustainable. The economy has to change, to focus on renewable resources and sustainable activities like services. · My main point is to assert that we do have a figure that stands for the rate-of-use-of-resources-currently, and that is personal income (assuming that, on the average, the money a person takes in each year is about the same as they spend in a year, on goods and services - _currently_ mostly goods). · So a future _sustainable_ world can IMO be approached by reducing the richer half of world incomes far enough to reduce the median personal income to a level where our total ecological footprint is about 0.6 to 0.85 of the earth's arable-and-pastoral area (leaving 0.4 to 0.15 untouched, for the remaining tens of millions of living things we share earth with). · This reduction-in-incomes-of-the-rich can happen by various economic crashes around the world (we've had recent examples, and even the USA economy is not immune), _or_ it can happen in a planned manner. I don't refer to a "command economy", I refer to the usual democratic political processes, changing the public's idea of what the economy is for, from "getting as rich as possible" to "living comfortably, with satisfaction". · Leaving the economy aside now; what would living in a future sustainable world _look_ like? · It will certainly be different from what we've had in the past, if for no other reason than the huge numbers of people now burdening the world. · But we did do some things right in the past; and to visualise a future, some images have to come from those times when we _have_ done things right · I have been puzzling through this for some months now, writing various letters about aspects like: - the need for the median US (& other OEECD) personal income to drop _to_ one-fifth of what it is now. That fraction is my guess, based on how far the US average income is above the average income of the rest of the world (which doesn't have so far to go as the US, to live sustainably); - the need to reduce transport of goods and people, so the remaining fossil fuels-and-chemical-feedstocks can be used to produce a more valuable result than the thermodynamically wasteful use of just burning them. This would require that food be transported only short distances, for example; and - the need to reduce the spread of humann hard-surfaces over productive land plus the expectation that people need to learn the skills of living at higher densities; so buildings must house more people and be built taller. · I visualise a future sustainable world having many of the characteristics of the last time we were living nearly sustainably, which was IMO sometime between the middle 19th century and the late 1930s (when people everywhere were well aware, because of the Great Depression, of making very good use of what they had - very little waste compared with recent decades). · One of those characteristics was that most lived in towns (or small cities), with their food being supplied from the hinterland of each town. And there was a lot of local work, manufacturing new and repairing old. (NZ Greens currently have the slogan: "Stronger Local Communities!") · Furthermore, _many_ reasons, including having a supporting "community" handy, point to the housing often being about three-and-a-half story high condominiums or apartment-blocks. So you can walk up the stairs, and not have to rely on electricity, which is better supplied at 99% reliability rather than 100% as is the current expectation (99% is: half-to-one-hour power cut per week, on average). · People have lived very happily in such small groups (6 to 15 people) throughout history, which is why I am sure it contributes to sustainable living (and I'm not just referring to reducing housing costs). A New World example is in Manhattan, a couple of streets of brownstones with the Turtle Bay Gardens between them in "the backs". These 150-year-old dwellings have been desired by the likes of Leopold Stokowski, Gloria Vanderbilt, Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, Mary Martin, & Tallulah Bankhead. Dorothy Thompson and Hemingway's editor Maxwell Perkins maintained apartments here. Katharine Hepburn and Stephen Sondheim are the best-known current residents. Kurt Vonnegut lives across the street. · To me, the future has roots in the present, so it should be possible to discern some of our future sustainable world by looking around us now. · I have cut-and-pasted some of my letters on this, at: http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/visualising.html (year-2000 letter) and http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/visualising-2.html , in Nov-Dec 2002. David. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/6447, 476, 477, 482, 600 review of E.B. White's writing about 48th and 49th Streets New York City: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/arts/13TURT.html which had a description of the sort of living I've been visualising for a sustainable future: “.. recalls Peggy McEvoy as we walk among the flora and fauna of Turtle Bay Gardens, the private enclave on East 48th Street where she grew up. "Yet here in the Gardens, it was magical, like another world." An urban oasis, verdant with plant life in spring and summer and enclosed by 10 150-year-old brownstones on East 48th Street and a matching row on 49th, the Gardens have been home to succeeding generations of artists, writers and other creative folk. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Leopold Stokowski and Gloria Vanderbilt, Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, Mary Martin, Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Thompson and Hemingway's editor Maxwell Perkins maintained apartments here. Katharine Hepburn and Stephen Sondheim are the best-known current residents. Kurt Vonnegut lives across the street. I have come here not to ogle celebrities, but in search of a willow tree that was once celebrated by another former resident, the essayist and author E. B. White. In the closing paragraph of his classic 1948 ode to Manhattan, "Here Is New York," White cast "a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire," as a symbol of hope. "In a way, it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete and the steady reaching for the sun."” Steve Dougherty continues: “I wanted to know if the tree survived as a symbol of hope, or if, in its demise, it bore out the woeful fear of White's final sentence: "If it were to go, all would go — this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death." I had another reason for visiting White's Turtle Bay neighborhood. My grandmother lived on that same lovely block on East 48th Street when I was a kid. It was there that as a boy from the provinces — Rochester, in western New York State, qualifies — my dreams of one day living in the city were kindled during summer vacations and holiday visits. The tower on the southeast corner of Third Avenue occupies territory that had once belonged to the west wing of my grandmother's building, which had been cleaved in half to make way for the high-rise. My grandmother's apartment on the fourth floor of the east wing was spared in the cleaving. ... the heart of the block looks much as it did when my grandmother — and White — lived there. Halfway down the south side of 48th Street is a slender town house given a wry, knowing personality by a stone cherub that perches on the cornice above the entranceway, winged and wearing a bemused smile, its chubby legs crossed at the knee. Directly across the street from my grandmother's building stands a celebrated architectural landmark. Its designer, William Lescaze, must have been dreaming about South Miami Beach ... To the east of the Lescaze building are the 10 south-facing Turtle Bay Gardens brownstones, each with a black iron gate and basement entrance. Add carriages and gas lamps and you would think you had arrived at Mayfair during Victoria's reign. Step into the Gardens themselves — accessible through private residences; entrance by invitation only — and you're transported to an ancient evening on the Mediterranean. Fed by the underground stream, the willow has stood there for well over a century, predating the 1919 conversion of the matching rows of tenement brownstones to the Gardens and even the brownstones themselves.” · In my 10 Dec 2002 15:30 "rise of a better rural life" LIM letter {at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/6384 }, I said: “If small regional towns could be built up to _attract_ (back, for some) enough people, the cities could remain in the same land area and build upward (I said: three-and-a-half-floor max height) to keep the growing population within easy walking-and-cycling reach of almost everything needed.” · I don't know what size those brownstones are, but if they were built near the end of the 19th century they were probably designed before electricity was common and therefore don't have elevators. Just two-and-a-half to four stories high, as I was proposing for future living. · I've talked about living on US$5,500 per person (that figure is a fifth of the year-2000 median individual income in the USA); clearly that's not possible currently for one or two people in a building except for extremely rural fading towns there. But I believe the sort of life in old Manhattan described by White and Dougherty fits very well; half to a dozen people living in a brownstone, and sharing amenities like the Turtle Bay Gardens. Not exactly communal living, but having some of its characteristics. David. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/6505 From: David MacClement Date: Wed Dec 18, 2002 8:34 am Subject: Re:a sustainable future world, what could it look like? · Note that, in spite of what I say below, I am not "putting-down" Parecon · It looks, from what Christiaan says: "The strategy for parecon is for people to develop parecon institutions for it, in the shadow of capitalism, off their own backs", as though Parecon should be one of the economic options Greens world-wide should be considering adopting as their policy. · My attitude is that, as someone in the borderland between Green thought and anarchy thought, I have no interest in economic _systems_ since they invariably require organising on a larger scale than the town-size groups that are the _largest_ I see as suitable for keeping heirarchical power to a minimum and the ecological degradation that every human life produces being kept "in-your-face" so the person causing the mess clears it up and avoids similar messes in the future. So I won't be teaching myself about Parecon, though other Greens should. · The word "ecology" seems to mean different things to different people; to some it acts a bit like a religion (this includes some Deep-Ecologists, IMO). To others like myself it means the study of ecological systems, interlinked living and inanimate things, which tend toward an overall stability at a relatively high level of complexity, when left undisturbed. I'm not sure what it means to Christiaan; he says: "I think the only ecocentric economy we can have is a humanist one." · To me, "ecocentric" means maintaining the ecology you're living in with as little disturbance as possible, fitting the criterion: "the human species having no greater effect on the other species than the typical effect of one wide-spread species on the others around it". · My understanding of "humanist" is that the well-being and progress of humans is the focus, as distinct from divine or other-species as the focus. So the label: "humanist ecocentric economy" distorts "humanist" and "ecocentric" so they are quite different from their original (IMO proper) meanings. A mish-mash of ideas at best, with a better label required. · I may be misreading what Christiaan has to say; I guess I don't understand his: "Equity does not have to focus on people." It's just possible that this contradicts his using "humanist", and that he means what I would mean by that phrase, which is: There are roughly (IMO) 500 species that are widespread over most of the biologically-productive land on earth. I do not believe homo sapiens should have a bigger effect on that useful land than the typical effect of _one_ of those other 499 species. That's what _I_ regard as using "Equity" properly in the context of human decisions where the-ecology-the-people-are-part-of is much more important (or valuable) than the-welfare-of-the-people-alone. · Now, to deal with the mistakes in Christiaan's: “I think you're suggesting that ... people aren't ecology. And you're suggesting that I am as happy to separate out human society from ecology as you are. You talk in terms ... of "considering a situation where it makes little difference whether the individual human lives or dies." I don't think this is ecocentric, because it separates human life out. I think it's the other extreme from humanism... that human life is unimportant. I think human life is as important as the rest of ecology. That's a real ecocentric view in my opinion.” · I call it a mistake when he says: “[David's:]"it makes little difference whether the individual human lives or dies" ... separates human life out. · That's precisely what it doesn't do. In a healthy (i.e. normal) ecology, it makes _no_ long-term difference when an individual dies; an ecology is dynamic and adjusts to e.g. a tree falling in a forest. Since empires and humanism arose (at different times), people have begun to see themselves as separate from their environment, they feel no longer an intimate part of the ecology of their region. _I_ want humans to see their living and dying as an intimate part of their region's ecology; IMO that's essential if we're to live sustainably. Only one person in 100 or 1000 has a noticeable long-term effect, the other 99.7% of us are insignificant, and should be. · Here's the basic difference between my views and those of almost everyone else, Christiaan included. He says: "I think human life is as important as the rest of ecology." · Notice the symmetry, around the central phrase: "as important as". "human life" is given the _same_ weight as "the rest of ecology". - - 50:50 - - · That's a _whole_ lot better than the way the vast majority of people in OECD countries see themselves. But while it's a great improvement on the views I was surrounded by as I was growing up (in Canada and New Zealand), it doesn't go far enough. · Humans as a whole _should_ IMO see themselves as maybe 1/10 to 1/100 as important or valuable as the whole of the rest of the ecology they are part of. {· This is why I don't put much value on political or economic discussions} · Here's my last point, about another, lesser, mistake. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >[David M.:] · I don't see sustainability happening until our present type of economy is reduced to about 4% of its current size (1/5 of 1/5). I very much doubt [anyone] wants to discuss radical changes of that magnitude. > [Christiaan: ] I'm discussing it with you now. ... if ... material standard of living [is a problem, we] will need to reduce it, consciously, or planned collectively through institutions such as parecon. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - · “I'm discussing it with you now” is not true, given that I was saying "[present type of economy] reduced to about _4_% of its current size", emphasising that by adding: "radical changes of that magnitude". · I have seen _no_one_ talk about reducing the present type of economy in OECD countries to below between a half and a sixth of its current size. It is dismissed as politically impossible. This is why I see politics as only one of quite _a_number_ of ways to reach something close to sustainable living, and for me, it has little interest. David.