column for August: Outliving Their Garbage.
A bit early I know, but I’m going to be busy working on some other things this week, then I’m off to Taos, NM for a few days. So here it is. Enjoy.
On 7/7/07, more than 10 million people tuned in to watch Al Gore’s Live Earth™, “The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis.” In case you were in a coma that day, Live Earth was a 24-hour, 7 continent (including Antarctica—I’ve heard they’ve got a great music scene there) concert series that brought together more than 100 mainstream music artists and 2 billion people to “trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.”
I really tried not to be cynical about this thing because I do appreciate the increased awareness. Plus Al Gore and Madonna certainly have the power to reach populations of people that would never give me the time-a-day. Perhaps the millions of people who signed the Live Earth Pledge™ will act on their commitment and think critically about it. Or, maybe they just wanted to see their name appear on the Live Earth jumbo-tron.
On the surface, it would seem that any environmentalist would be doing back flips in their Chacos upon hearing word of a global concert that raises awareness about global warming. I mean, one couldn’t turn the television on that day without hearing the word “green,” and every other Myspace bulletin I received hyped up the event. So why did I think the whole thing was a sham?
Increased awareness is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. We need everyone on board if we are going to have a planet that will support life in the future. But what kind of awareness and “solutions” are being touted here?
Let’s take a look at the content of The Live Earth Pledge™ and we’ll see what Al Gore says will save the planet. “1. I will change four light bulbs to CFLs at my home.” “2. I will ride public transit or carpool one or more times per week.” 3. I will shop for the most energy efficient electronics and appliances.” “4. I will forward a Live Earth email message to 5 friends” (at this point, I have coffee coming out of my nose). “6. I will shut off my equipment and lights whenever I’m not using them.”
The list goes on. It does get a little better, but like these first 6 commitments, they all reinforce the notion that nothing fundamental about the way we live on this planet has to change. Perhaps most importantly, none of these things are solutions to global warming, and they should not be touted as such.
My pledge would be short and to the point: “I will do whatever it takes to stop industrial logging, stop industrial agriculture, stop the murder of the oceans, put an end to factory farms, remove dams to liberate rivers, and put an end to the destruction of communities, both foreign and domestic.”
Perhaps after all these CFL light bulbs burn out in 7 years and the toxic mercury contained in them seeps into our local environment, people will begin to look at things differently. Perhaps, at this point, our culture might finally realize that the environmental problems we face are much more complex, that real solutions are tied to the institutional foundations from which our civilization is based.
Last month, I interrogated the discourse on sustainability in the hopes that people might begin thinking about what sustainability really means and what sort of products, such as automobiles, will never characterize a sustainable future. In short, we’re not going to buy our way out of our environmental problems. Change will come when we look at our existence on this planet in a new way (which is actually a very old way).
We will have to give up a lot; that is simply the reality. I’m not in a position to say exactly how our transition to sustainability will unfold, but right now we have the choice to make this transition a voluntary one. In the near future, we won’t have that luxury. Part of this process, which thoughtfully interrogates and restructures the way we live on this planet, requires that we also think critically about our conceptualization of waste.
First of all, what does sustainability really mean? It is worth noting that there is currently no standard definition, from which standards are gauged, for sustainability. Maybe this is why we’re so confused. There is a little irony here. If one believes the stories of science, we’re the most intelligent beings on the planet, yet we’re the only animals that don’t know what it means to live sustainably.
We’re also the only animals on the planet that, simply by living here, do nothing to improve the land. We take and take and denude the landscape until there is nothing left. We’re the only ones, save perhaps cyclical locust invasions, that do this. Even in death, as we rot in caskets 6-feet under the ground, we block the land from using our bodies as we decompose.
I’ll take a stab at a reasonable definition, and I’m open to suggestions. A sustainable existence may be defined as any way of living that gives as much as it takes, thus supporting, respecting, and engaging in active relationships with those systems of live necessary to support ones own life. This means, if I eat elk, and rely on elk for my life, I am responsible for the continuation of the elk and its community—meaning everything that supports the life of the elk. If I don’t take responsibility, if I don’t engage in that relationship, there will be no more elk and my way of life will not last. And every animal knows this but us.
Live Earth taught me, if it taught me anything, that we are only capable of baby steps. I spoke on the phone with our local Sustainability Manager, Nicole Woodman. Part of her job, as is mine, is to engage the public and to help influence the way in which our city thinks about our impact on the land around us.
“When you talk about consumption, you need to also talk about education,” Nicole said. At this point, “we’re trying to instill a level of accountability.” It is hard to be accountable for problems that are largely invisible to the public. Flagstaff’s landfill, for example, is located over 10 miles northeast of town. Citizens don’t have to see the consequences of our way of life, which Nicole describes as “a throw away culture.”
“It’s way out there,” she said, “it’s hidden.” Just for kicks, I drove by it this afternoon. The wind was blowing hard, as monsoon rains were approaching. I have to say, the road leading up to the landfill is a beautiful one. Winding through dense forest to the right and spectacular views of the peaks through the prairie grasses to the left, the landfill is about two miles or less from 89 on “Landfill Road”. I was thinking about how vague the word “landfill” is. I mean when you say the world landfill, nobody asks what they’re filling the land with; everyone knows you’re talking about waste.
I often wonder, if aliens came down from outer space, what would they make of the artifacts of our civilization? I think our landfills would be the most telling. From where I’m looking, the garbage—which is constantly being moved, shuffled around, and buried—is mostly paper. Of whatever percentage is paper, roughly 20 to 30 percent of it is fast food remains. There is also a separate pile, towards the front, dedicated to broken televisions. To my left is “green trash,” which can only be described as a giant pile of grass clippings, dirt, and scattered weeds of all varieties.
Trucks drive in, dump, drive out. Trucks drive in, dump, drive out; day in and day out, 362 days out of the year—for-ev-er. The aliens would think we’re very weird indeed.
The first thing I noticed as I walked the fence, however, was the bags. Thousands of white plastic grocery bags flew through the air like a flock of seagulls. The wall seemed to be serving its purpose pretty well, in terms of containing most of the bags. Yet the surrounding area, trees, and shrubs were covered in bags, flapping violently in the cool summer wind.
I was the only one at the landfill in a car, which obviously makes sense. I was also the only one there taking pictures of the trash, which made me stick out even more. Nonetheless, everyone I ran into was very nice. As I walked along the back perimeter fence, careful to look where I was going, I had a clear perspective of the immensity of our landfill. It’s huge. It’s also well-managed, considering what they’re up against.
Nicole told me that Flagstaff currently spends tens of thousands of dollars on cleanup efforts, and bags are not very easy to get out of trees. The bags need to go. They, like many of the thoughtless consumables produced, should never have been made in the first place.
I thought of the ordinance that San Francisco recently passed, which places a ban on all plastic bags from grocery stores and pharmacies and Eugene, OR, which banned Styrofoam a few years back. San Francisco is now beginning to offer compostable bags made of cornstarch instead of oil.
I went home and called San Francisco. I was curious how such an ordinance was passed. I talked to Boris Delepine, the aide of Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who sponsored the ordinance. He said the idea is really catching on, that Seattle, Baltimore, and Annapolis are trying to pass similar legislation. “We went after the largest producers of bags,” said Delepine, “namely the grocery stores and pharmacies.”
Flagstaff has like 17 grocery stores, so I’m sure if such an ordinance was passed here, it would be similar. I got excited and asked Nicole if similar legislation could be passed here. “I’m researching our options at this point.” At first, I have to say, I thought she was just giving me lip service…as one who has interviewed many city officials during my writing career, I’m pretty used to it. Nicole, however, went on to explain the issue from a practical local level, which I really appreciated.
“The landscape of Flagstaff, Arizona is much different” than the land under and around San Francisco. San Francisco has a municipal compost service, so citizens can throw all their biodegradable material in one of these compostable bags and the city will pick it up. Flagstaff doesn’t have municipal compost due to the dry climate of the area. “While San Francisco can offer that service because it only takes the bags 10 to 45 days to compost, it would take roughly 2 years here.”
That makes sense, but it doesn’t stop the fact that the oil-dependent plastic bags should not exist in the first place. Plastic bags and Styrofoam are just the tip of the melting ice burg in terms of what needs to go. A thousand years after one takes their last sip of that nasty gas station coffee, the Styrofoam cup will remain. There is no excuse for that.
It’s 2007 and the Earth and all its life support systems are in crisis. Why do manufacturers continue to produce packaging that can only be used once? If it can’t be recycled and used again in one way or another, such as many plastics and specific papers, why do they still exist in the market?
I asked this question on my website and received the answer immediately from a friend of mine in Eugene. “Throwaway products continue to be produced because they are cheap, in the sense that many of their true costs are externalized and the cost to industry is minimal relative to alternatives,” he said.
In a culture that continues to put the needs of the economic system above the needs of the natural world, I can follow the attempt at logic. It’s still insane, however, and it still can’t last. Nicole touched on this subject as well. “We don’t look at the full cost of anything.” When we buy something and throw it out, it’s as if it disappeared. We’re privileged enough not to think about the fact that, like Styrofoam, our trash will outlive us.
Personally, I don’t want to pay the true cost of anything either. I don’t think you can put a price on a piece of trash that will continue to toxify the environment for a thousand years. Simply put, products that come with such extreme environmental consequences should not be manufactured. Period. And this list, of course, goes far beyond plastic bags and Styrofoam.
Nicole said it all comes back to making smart choices, but we have to be real with ourselves and make truly informed choices. And when no suitable choices exist, citizens need to demand alternatives.
“Contact City Council and express your concerns,” said Nicole. The Sustainability Commission meetings are held on the second Wednesday of every month. The next one is 4:30 P.M., August 8th, at City Hall. Nicole will bring the issue of plastic bags to the table. See you there!
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July 24th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Very good write Kyle! I agree on everything that you state except for a few things. On the pledge first. It does take action against global warming. Using CFL light bulbs are better than indecent light bulbs . Yes, CFL light bulbs have mercury in them, but so does the coal that you use to burn to make the electricity to run indecent light bulbs. You produce more mercury through the burning of coal than the minute amount of mercury in the light bulbs. Second, using mass transit. It is better than having each and every American on the road with a car. Third, energy efficient appliances, again burning of coal, which also produces CO2. Four, e-mail cuts down on paper waste that fills our landfills.
Also, you state that every other animal consciously “knows” that if they eat all there food, or elk in your example, that they will not substain. I give you the Moose and Wolf population on Isle Royal in Michigan. The moose is the major food source of the wolf. The wolf kills all the moose off and they crash. Then the wolf straves because of this and they crash. The moose comes back and then the wolf come back. It is a normal crash and rebound cycle that you have in a closed environment. No human influelnce. No cars, no hunting, only camping is alllowed on the island.
I like your pledge too Kyle. Stop corporate farming that is subsidized by the government. Stop daming of rivers that lets the natural flood pulse that fish needs each year. Stop logging because we need trees to reduce CO2. I can go on. American need to cut back because they over-consume, more than any other country in the world. Good example of this is look at how obese American are. They eat more, the plate serving are more. Go to a resteraunt, plates are heeping….I am going on a tangent. But look at Europe, they are doing much more than we are at fighting global warming and become substainable than any other continent. So, I have to agree with what Al Gore has been doing to raise awareness and start to take action against global warming and pollution. We have to start somewhere, we cannot do a total reversal all at once in how we live. Baby steps.
But, yes good write…
July 24th, 2007 at 6:14 am
I heard about Live Earth but didn’t watch any of the shows, nor will I. One thing I find skeptical in the list of “recommendations for a better, greener world” is the lack of attention to businesses/corporations/manufacturers.
While I may switch the type of light bulb I use, what about the MalWart down the road?
I always think back to when I was in elementary school and they told us about turning off the water while we brushed our teeth. What about all the processing plants and cooling needs of the corporate world? What about folks in dry climates who have to ship in water for their grassy lawns?
Why aren’t they being told to watch their consumption?
It also irks me for the same reason it irks you: no mention of how we will have to significantly alter our way of being in the world if we hope to see any change. Switching out a light bulb doesn’t make more oil magically appear so we can continue to drive around town in a fucking hummer.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing these little steps, or that it’s not helpful to try to get folks informed; I’m just saying we also need to direct our efforts at those who are larger than us and who have a great deal more financial stake involved.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Jason, with respect to your first comment on light bulbs and transportations…etc., I think you missed my point. These things are, indeed, “better” than what’s going on right now, but they are not solutions. If everyone in the first world followed this list exactly, we would not solve global warming. These things still rely on an infrastructure that was never designed with sustainability in mind. People always say that it’s the little things that matter; I think it’s the opposite…the big things (industry, agriculture, our massive electrical grids, hydro plants…etc.) are what is hammering the earth. This list of things furthermore (as Ann said) takes the emphasis off industry and governments–the real ecoterrorists–and unfairly places it on citizens.
And the wolf/moose thing: I can’t speak for every anomaly out there. Of course things might be different on an island. I do know that wolves naturally eat much more than just moose. My point there was that when you consume the flesh of another, in a natural sense, you are engaged in a relationship with that animal. Plus, that cycle seems to work for them. If one population became too large, the island would be over run. If there were tons of moose, the island would run out of food and space. And animals don’t have to be consciously aware of their actions to know how to live sustainably. We’re the only ones that need it spelled out for us.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:38 am
oh and….you said: “Four, e-mail cuts down on paper waste that fills our landfills.”
This is actually a big myth. Years ago, everyone was talking about how technology and the rise of the computer would create a “paperless society.” With the rise of the computer came the rise of the photocopier, not to mention all the printers hooked up to computers. In fact, technology has single handedly created more paperwaste than anything before, and it’s only getting worse. From Wikipedia….
115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers [Source: Worldwatch Institute].
It is estimated that paper consumption will rise by 50% by 2010. [Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997:78]
July 24th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Kyle, I see where you are coming from with the “infrastructre” and how things need to be changed. But changes can’t be dramatic…if things are changed dramatically, it will have too much resistance. These are just slight changes for transportation, consumtion of electricity, throw away society, etc. We need slight changes to bring on big changes in the end. I see that you stated the problem, but what are your actions for a solution? Can one propose one? By cutting down on consumtion by using things that use less is one way for now and these slight changes can bring big one in the end (if all combined).
On your comment on the moose/wolf thing: it is how nature naturally works, not an anolomy; the thing is everything is influenced by humans, if you take humans out of the equation (i.e., an island), things become natural. We don’t have a predator and our population will eventually crash. I was commenting that you said that “every animal knows this but us.” I read that as stating that all animals consciously know how to be substainable but us. Animals don’t consiously know how to substain themselves. I’m sorry if I read this wrong. If the animal doesn’t have a predator, then it over runs the land eating all the prey, they prey population crashes, then eventually the predator population crashes…the predator keep killing until there is nothing left. That is not substainable. So we don’t have a major predator, we don’t have anything that preys on us, except disease.
The e-mail thing, I may have been wrong. With the rise of the printer, there has been more paper waste, but I believe it has been cut down with the rise of e-mail. I wouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source, it is not primary research. The reason for the rise of use of everything is the exponential growth of population.
July 24th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Thank you for this great discussion.
Change, no matter what the scale, always encounters resistance. I’d like to think we all want to live in a sustainable future. The problem is, we barely have an understanding of what that is or what it looks like. Most members of our culture are not ready to confront the fact that some fundamental things about the way we live will have to change (WAY beyond simply changing a few daily routines). The most I can do, as a writer, is plant seeds and make sure people know that there are serious and thoughtful critiques of this rising environmental consciousness. There are, on the other hand, readers who are right there with me, ready to be pushed a little further.
People in my position are always criticized for not providing solutions along with their critiques. I think that’s kinda lame. It’s like if I say, “It’s a fact that Styrofoam is terrible for the environment so we should stop making it,” and someone answers, “well how are we going to drink our McDonald’s coffee?” You know? That’s really not the damn point anymore. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve got a pretty sharp bullshit detector. And, as a writer, I’d like to think I can play a role in helping people understand exactly what we’ve got ourselves into here. It’s up to individuals to decide where to go from there.
I think we agree with each other regarding your moose/wolf example. Population is determined by food supply. Members of our culture forgot that applies to us as well. That’s one of the privileges of being so disconnected from our food. That’s what I was trying to highlight.
Oh and a 50% increase is use of paper in less than 10 years has little, if anything, to do with population growth. I hate wikipedia too, but the sources don’t come from them and their pretty easy to find elsewhere.
July 28th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Hey Kyle. Great post! It’s interesting that you wrote “Even in death, as we rot in caskets 6-feet under the ground, we block the land from using our bodies as we decompose,” because I wrote something very similar back in February. I wrote a post about the premises of medicine and this was my last paragraph:
“And all of this complexity, all of this huge infrastructure involved in stripping the earth of her resources and polluting her with our waste…all of this is simply to cheat death for another day. But none of us makes it out alive. We die anyway, and get buried into polluted, desecrated ground. We further insult the earth by not even giving ourselves to her in death. We get buried in caskets inside cement vaults keeping our life-giving nutrients from Mother Earth in one last final act of disrespect.”
Anyway, great post. I agree that most people are in some state of denial, thinking we can do little things like use energy efficient appliances. What about all the energy that went into making those stupid appliances in the first place?
And animals aren’t really sustainable. The rise and fall of predator and prey populations is just natural law. Humans decided to work around natural law because they can. Wolves can’t build corrals and round up all the moose and then make them breed more moose so that they always have a steady food supply.
I’m quite upset that people are really hanging their hopes on this whole biodeisel thing, instead of going to the root of the problem and questioning the wisdom of having created the modern combustion engine in the first place.
But I think it was a previous post of yours where you said that sustainability is not economically feasible, and that’s why I think nothing will change. We can’t imagine a world without corporate control and having to go to jobs everyday. Because of that, when the crash comes, it will probably come in the form of a fucking police state where the middle and lower classes will probably be corraled into camps where they’ll just fucking kill us. The rich will eventually die b/c they lack any sort of survival skill, other than paying people to do the work for them. So maybe they’ll keep a few of us around to sniff out truffles for them or something.
August 15th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
[…] High fives to Sale Kirkpatrick for writing this fantastic essay. It’s few years old, but pretty on point with my thoughts on the Live Earth fiasco (here and here. I found it when I was researching my thesis and meant to post it. Here is a great excerpt. The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them. Take our crazy energy consumption. For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption – residential, by private car, and so on – is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution. I mean, sure, go ahead and live a responsible environmental life; recycle, compost, ride a push-bike; but do it because it is the right, moral thing to do – not because it’s going to save the planet. […]
September 13th, 2007 at 11:07 am
[…] One of the first things on the table is a plastic bag ban. I’ve been on board with this since the beginning….I even wrote about it for the August issue of The Noise. They will begin reaching out to the community and helping to make them aware….getting as many people to support the ban as possible. Most of the discourse around sustainability is focused on development and sustainable design. I think that is realistically, however, a secondary priority. I’m behind this plastic bag ban because of what it represents, because of the line of thinking that it promotes. Part of what it means to move to a sustainable society should include an evaluation of details about our society that will never be sustainable. Many things need to go: plastic bags are just the tip of the melting ice berg (who didn’t like that analogy?). […]