How appreciation is activist

It is not hard to see that there is much that is not working around us--everything from government's continuing failures to a lack of community resiliency and a reliance on others to make decisions for our personal lives. Much of these failures arise from our continual cultural want for more. We want better infrastructure, cheaper access to things made around the world, continued materialism. And the providers of our wants can't keep up with our demands. Furthermore, there is a differential access to provisions, further exacerbating inequalities that currently exist. I will be the first to admit that this power dynamic must change, but maybe the way we are going about creating the change is futile. Are there ways in which we don't have to directly feed the system and cause these changes? Might appreciation be activist?

Activism as we currently think about it is about taking a stand for something, generally with political motives and outcomes. That something could be promoting firearms legislation allowing everyone easy access to guns. Activism can also be about taking a stand against something, like trying to block firearms legislation that allows such easy access to guns, again, with political motives and outcomes. But I also think that activism can also be about doing something we are not culturally programmed to do, and to appreciate is one of those things. And that's what turns appreciation from an acceptance of the way things are to something that is political.
 
This is a system, a culture, that is driven by a decided unappreciation of everything--of our bodies, of the land beneath our feet, the air we breath, and the water we drink. We cherish and respect the things we appreciate. We seem to violently demolish everything that we don't. And because this is a kind of activism, a way of being that this culture does not know, it does not know how to deal with it. If we are to change "the system" fundamentally, I think that we must act in activist ways that don't lend legitimacy to the system, but rather in ways that destabilise it. Appreciate what you have. This appreciation then opens up our lives to more positivity, and more control over ourselves, rather than continually giving proxies to others.

When push comes to shove, where will you stand?

The hopelessness that pervades environmental issues can be debilitating. Because of the scale of the problems, does the one piece of trash avoided count? How about the car you didn't buy? Does that make a difference? What about the dam that you lobbied against? That surely has an impact, right? Or not? And the civil disobedience in protest against the building of a pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, all the way down to Texas? Does the avoidance of building that make any difference?

Most everyone will tell you no, that these individual things don't matter. What matters really is the policy of action - a systemic change. Andrew Revkin, who has very interesting posts on his environmental blog on the New York Times, Dot Earth, comes down on the side of policy. He says,

But that’s my stance on the project outside of broader contexts. Overall, I think Obama should not stand in the way of the pipeline. While it’s a potent symbol and convenient rallying point for campaigners, it’s a distraction from core issues and opportunities on energy and largely insignificant if your concern is averting a disruptive buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The pipeline plan doesn’t exist in isolation. With the economy in its own tar pit and a presidential election approaching, it’s very much in the national interest for Obama to avoid saddling himself with an unnecessary issue that would be easy for his foes to distort into an Obama anti-jobs position.

This particular pipeline has a good chance of dying on the vine in any case if and when easier, less expensive sources of transportation fuel come online, including domestic oil and natural gas (and there are competing pipeline options and routes).

The greenhouse impact of the oil sands is also far less significant than some claims, particularly given the reality that oil consumption rates are what matters — not the amount of gigatons of carbon sitting in deposits of this sort in the ground.

But this again is a defeatist and elitist attitude towards the environment. Of course, Andrew Revkin and Michael Levi aren't affected by the pipeline directly. Most all of us are unaffected by infrastructural projects - we don't live in the line of the pipeline, and so our mobility, our accessibility, our immediacy isn't what is trampled upon. Here's what one comment in response to his blog says,

I don't see any mention in here of the pipeline being built over the Ogallala Aquifer that provides water to over 30 million people in five states. You may poo-poo the carbon effects, but you can't deny the disaster that will arise with one break in the 1,700 mile pipeline. Further, there is no mention of the destruction of arboreal forest, which covers an area the size of Florida, that the fracking has caused in Alberta. It will continue to grow in size. It is so large it can now be seen from space. Even the oil companies agree it can never be reclaimed. The food and water supplies of indigenous people in N. Alberta is being destroyed. Cancer has increased seven-fold. Caribou meat from a hunt is so full of sores it cannot be eaten.

Revkin says that the pipeline project doesn't exist in isolation [I assume he means it is not a purely "environmental" issues], but rather within the context of President Obama's politics. Of course, if the president wants to do anything, he'll have to wait until his second term, because which president would want to be a one-termer?

Revkin is correct in saying that the pipeline doesn't exist in isolation, but he is not correct in his contextual association. The pipeline in fact exists as a symbol within a wider system of dominance over nature, an unquestioned reliance on technology to solve our problems, of a thirst for energy unabated, of a imaginative and moral deficiency that is debilitating us from doing anything at all. And so we degrade our environment in the name of jobs.

Sure when you view it like that, then protesting against anything doesn't matter at all. But then do we do anything at all? Do we just live in the fear that someone will not get reelected and twiddle our thumbs? Or do we rise to the occasion, and take steps, concrete steps, in our neighbourhoods, communities, cities, to do something, anything?

Individuals and individual actions matter, because they are understood from within the context of their existence, and speak to systemic issues. It is individual efforts that provide tangible examples that provide for reflection, introspection, and consequently systemic change. Mandela, Gandhi, du Toit, Lisitsyn, Kelley, and Pineda are heroes, because they stood their ground, didn't get pushed over, didn't get shoved over, in their efforts to save their homes, their environment, our environment.

Ninety nine is not one hundred.

On the unsustainability of tradeoffs

We're always faced with situations in which we have to choose one or the other. Many times, especially in politics in the US, we choose between two politicians. More often than not, these choices are between two options that are both terrible, and we end up in a bind in which we guarantee a bad outcome, no matter what.

It seems to me that when culture existed in a much different state (say, groups of thirty or forty humans truly living off of the land and in tune with nature), tradeoffs were likely not a problem at all. I may be completely ignorant to the tradeoffs that they were making, but the scale of tradeoffs they were making were nothing like the tradeoffs we deal with today - going to school at a large public university or a small liberal arts college, building a publicly-owned bridge across the Detroit River by displacing many residents or having another privately-owned bridge that won't displace residents. I wonder what the first tradeoff that was ever made was. The most ecologically-impactful tradeoffs probably began when man sought to modify nature in ways that would make things "efficient" for himself. Tradeoffs are complicated issues, and are, to me, one of the fundamental features of decision-making today that leads to unsustainability.

When we say tradeoff, what we are really saying is we are willing to make the choice of doing one thing at the expense of another thing. Take mountaintop removal, for example. Many people have decided that coal is the way we want to power ourselves. What we are doing is powering ourselves, our lives, at the expense of the mountain, the river, the atmosphere. We do this because, to put it in neoclassical (cartoon) economic terms, the "benefits" of powering ourselves through coal are much "higher" than the "costs" of ecological harm. What this necessarily entails, however, are costs, regardless, and someone, some nature, somewhere, is going to feel the negative effects of this choice. There is no skirting this issue, I think we can all agree with that. 

As I have continually written about in the blog, what we do then is we address the "costs," the negative outcomes of our choices, with the very same tradeoff mentality, which results in other "costs." Indeed, it seems like the costs of every decision then have some sort of asymptotic character (basically, the costs are never fully addressed), in which any proposed remedy to those costs has its own asymptotic character. 

How can we live in a world in which the decisions we make don't require tradeoffs? I want to live in a world in which spending time with my friends or family doesn't require nature to be harmed. Here and now, I can make choices in which I respect the existence of nature and the people around me. I feel as though rather than exclude things like trees and rivers from my ethic, my bubble of stakeholders in my decisions, it is easy to include them in my ethic, and make decisions accordingly. What this translates to is meaningful, impactful choices that respect both nature and people. If I want to spend some time with my friend, I can choose to drive out of town with that person, or choose to walk along the river right outside of my home with that person. What I would do in the first instance is pollute the atmosphere, at bare minimum, while spending time with my friend. I will have chosen to spend time with my friend at the expense of the atmosphere. What I would do in the second instance is respect the atmosphere, not pollute it, while at the same time spending time with my friend. These are small choices that each one of us can make, that are easily expanded in scope, easily extrapolated, that truly do have immeasurable, yet profound implications for our world.

We cannot wait

I do not intend this post to be in any way discouraging. Rather, I hope it lays out, to some extent, why it is that matters need to be taken into our own hands, yes, yours and mine.

I had a wonderful day today, which was spent talking with Patrick about the issues raised because of individual action and the arguments for it. One of the major questions that has come up during this past months is, Why focus on individual action? Getting organisations that have impacts much larger than my own to decrease their environmental impact by even 0.01% will dwarf anything I have been able to do over the past fifty-four weeks. I agree. That would be wonderful to do, and I encourage all of us to continue our efforts to do so. The obvious way to get such organisational change is government policy. People might think that we should focus our efforts on getting some national or regional policy passed. Yes, we should, and I encourage all of us to continue our efforts to do so. People have told me that there need to be "incentives" to change behaviour, or at least some policy that pushes people to change their behaviour. Yes, that is needed.

However, my questions in rebuttal are these - Who is going to get the government to enact policy, and what exactly is the nature of that policy? What ethical (and consequently legal and economic) foundations are those changes in behaviour going to be adopted on? Any change that stands a chance at truly addressing the nature of the problems that face us will necessarily require a fundamental rethink of our ethical structure. Furthermore, "incentives" are introduced all the time in our country, and are as quickly taken away - take for example production tax credits for renewable sources of energy. Given the magnitude of the issues that face us, "incentives" that have the potential to be taken away are in some sense a waste of time in trying to get passed, particularly how the sausage factory of the government is adept at watering policies down to be mere lip service. The changes that are required in our society need to be durable.

As I have written about previously, any durable change (here, here, here) that comes can come from nowhere but from our own lives. It is our choice. It is through the collective projection of our lives outwards that we currently allow the existence of ecologically destructive organisations and governments. Also, I highly doubt that a large fraction of people in the US will be willing to do something because the government forces them to, particularly when it comes to the environment. As Professor Andrew Hoffman said, "There’s a segment of the population that sees environmentalists as socialists, trying to control people’s lives."

It is clear to me that not everyone thinks that environmentalists are trying to control people's lives. What that means is that each one of us can be that example, to these people, at least, that shows that making the meaningful changes in our lives is not only necessary, but also doable.

More thoughts on political consumption

At our monthly Graham Fellows meeting today, we further discussed Ethan's dissertation research on political consumption. What Ethan defines as "political consumption" is any consumption that is done with not only yourself or your immediate friends and family in mind, but also people outside of your immediate circle. Examples of political consumption include buying sweat-free clothing to support workers rights, buying organically grown bananas so that labourers don't go sterile by using dibromochloropropane to spray the crop, or going out to eat at a restaurant that is locally owned and run rather than a Denny's. In all of these cases, although the individual consuming their good of choice might as well have done so without taking others into account, the act of thinking beyond themselves is a political choice.

There were several threads of thought that were raised in today's discussion, and all are pertinent to social change, environmental justice, trash and sustainability. I would like to pose these threads as food for thought, not only for myself and for future blog posts, but also for you to think about and send me your thoughts on.

• Many people consume politically because of the perceived benefits of doing so. These benefits may range from social to environmental and economic, and many times, people will make the same choice for different reasons. For example, some people may choose to buy food from the local farmer's market because they would like to keep their money within a certain locale, while others may go to the farmer's market because the other large grocery chain doesn't have a big selection of organic products. What are motivating factors for political consumption?
• It is interesting to see how far people are willing to go to act politically. The most explicit example of this is the price of consumption. Say the organic apple costs $1 more than the conventionally grown apple, would you buy it? Some would say yes. How about if it was $2 more expensive? Would you buy it now? How about $5 more expensive? I think this plays a lot into people's need for convenience for doing anything environmentally related ("The recycling bin was too far away, so I just decided to throw away this aluminium can in the garbage."). How much are you willing to spend to do the right thing?
• People's emotions play a significant role in political consumption. Their choices depend on whether or not they think their choice can make a difference. What communities are people capable of benefiting through their choices?
• One of the most interesting points that came up today was the effect of consuming politically vs. not consuming at all. I would argue that not consuming at all is a political choice, too. But what is the effectiveness of not consuming vs. consuming politically? Maybe political consumption will drive people, companies and governments to adopt new standards that you think should be the norm. Also, money plays no role in not consuming. It doesn't matter whether you are rich or you are poor, you can choose not to buy. What about boycotts? How effective are they in making political statements?
• How much does people's disposable income affect whether or not they consume politically? Preliminary results from Ethan's work show that the emotional mechanisms behind political consumption are the same for those with and those without money. 
• Somewhat tangentially, how does a company's reputation change if they are found to violate social and environmental norms and standards? Apparently, GAP has been in a lot of trouble over the years because many of their suppliers had terrible working conditions. But always, their reputation bounces back...

Choice and political consumption

As you know yourself, we are faced with a multitude of choices each time we try to change our lives in some way - Which of the 23 beds that IKEA sells would be the best bed for me? Should I get 70% cocoa chocolate, or 75%? What wine will my parents like? A late harvest Chardonnay, or a Riesling aged in stainless steel? In the end, we can get flustered with the 93 kinds of cereal available in the cereal aisle of a big grocery store. How can we ever be satisfied with the cell phone we have purchased, knowing that there were 20 other models available at the same or lower price, and that in two months, the newest, most advanced G4 phone ever will be brought into the world? Brett pointed me to The Paradox of Choice in his comment on my post Doing things because we can. He said,

"...sometimes the more choices we have, the less happy we are. "Hey," one thinks, "this is a cool [fill in the blank], but it's not as cool as my friend's. Maybe I should have gotten the other [emphasis added] one at the store; maybe I should get a new [emphasis added] one." This often creates not only an endless stream of needless consumption but also a continual lack of satisfaction due to actual and anticipated buyer's remorse." 

This lack of filling our satisfaction yet continues to fill land, water and air with waste and pollution.

There is another way we can view the issue of choice as related to consumption, and that is what Ethan, another Graham Fellow, is studying by looking into what is termed as "political consumption." Generally, consumption and choice are studied in isolation, not in relation to politics. Generally, we are not thinking politically when we buy a certain product. But about 5-10% of people consume with politics and ethics in mind - how do the choices we make reflect our values, beliefs and morals? For example, many of us choose to buy locally grown, small-scale farm organic foods because we are against the political forces driving the industrial agricultural engine. So here is a loaded question that Ethan posed as a part of his dissertation work: 

When and how does the issue of choice and consumption turn into a political matter?