Step outside your life and thoughts

One of the reasons why it is difficult for us to make changes in our lives is because we are too immersed in them, and people of different socio-economic statuses (SES) are immersed in them in different ways.

Many people of low SES live day to day, paycheck to paycheck, and always live in the uncertainty that the government will make some stupid decision to further trample on their lives "for the greater good". As an outsider to this group, it seems to me that it can be difficult for many people of low SES to think differently of their lives because they struggle to make ends meet. Although it may seem difficult to blame them for this, Wangari Maathai did, with incredible outcomes.

Many of the people of middle SES, like me, are caught up in their lives differently. Although we do not struggle to make ends meet, we are immersed in our lives because we are now constantly distracted; there is no time for us to think about anything other than our material gratification. With constant streams of stimuli and minutiae from things like Facebook and Twitter and e-mail, it is easy to get caught up in cycles of unawareness of what is around us. Tim DeChristopher, more famously known as Bidder #70 believes that this stream of stimuli has been concocted precisely so we remain unaware of what is truly going on around us, so that we do not question how we ought to be living or changing our lives. (Read this revealing conversation about his life and thoughts with Terry Tempest Williams.)

But also just my views on how to live, and what actually makes me happy; how to form a little community out there with a few people; how human actions really work when there isn’t a TV telling us what to do—that all formed out there. And I think that’s part of why some people fight against wilderness, fight to extinguish all of it. I mean, I think there’s definitely a lot of folks who don’t understand it, and have never experienced it. But I think some of the opponents of wilderness really do understand it. They understand...

Those of high SES, like the one percent, are caught up in glamour, glitz, and fashion, and, well, "work". Many of them have purposefully been involved in the creation and coercion of policies that have taken away the wilderness, that have produced the streams of stimuli and minutiae, just so that we remain unaware, uneducated, illiterate, a few steps behind the curve. There isn't really much that I can say about these people, for many have known nothing other than lives full of material and monetary wealth.

What got me thinking about all of this was my time home with my parents, and a claymation video that Acacia showed me a while ago based on Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger. My dad and I have very different views about the world, which makes conversation very interesting and challenging for me. Below you can find the video to Mysterious Stranger. While it is a little freaky and portrays humans in a rather negative light, (at least) I found the manner in which the little village was outside of the children's lives to be a very compelling way of communicating how immersed we are in our lives.



I, too, get caught up in my thoughts, it seems. Over the past years, as I have become more and more immersed in writing and thinking that you see on this blog, I have been guilty of not viewing events from different angles. And I think that this can do a disservice to my advocacy, to the advocacy of the justice movement. It is only if we understand the forces at play from all directions that we can come up with meaningful steps and actions and find chinks in the armor of this culture.

It's still a veil of morality

I wanted to have a specific post to respond to Matthew's thoughtful comments on my post A veil of morality. (I do not mean for this post to be attacking of him in any way, although while re-reading it, it does seem a little intense. Matthew, I hope you understand :))

The dominant form of culture of today is that of materialism guided by industrial capitalism. This approach began in Europe and eventually migrated to North America, and slowly but surely has been implemented in other countries, either out of military coercion, "nation building" (the processes through which the politics of a country or group of people are controlled by controlling their economies, modifying their environments, or making them dependent on a system not traditionally theirs. This happened significantly during the Cold War, with the US building dams in countries in Asia to control the flow of water. For more, see "Containing Communism by Impounding Rivers: American Strategic Interests and the Global Spread of High Dams in the Early Cold War," by Professor Richard Tucker, in Environmental Histories of the Cold War (2010).), or through sanctioning, soft law, or customary international law tactics. At the same time, many of the large "aid" and "development" banks, while giving people access to things they otherwise would not have had, can also be construed as mechanisms to make groups of people reliant on powerful. As Richard Nixon said in the 1968, "Let us remember that the main purpose of aid is not to help other nations but to help ourselves." 

While it may seem that I am myself patronising by saying that a pristine environment is what capitalistically, Western-defined "poor" countries should have, I believe international economic and social pressures impose primarily Western culture on people and places that have not dealt with issues of pollution or contamination before. Many of the benefits of such impositions go to those that want to continue their lifestyles and ways of being, and not to those whose land, air, and water are being degraded. (See Curse of the Black Gold here and here) Of course, any "benefits" are measured in terms of how the dominating country or economy measures them. And so, we are to industrialise this countries for what? So that those countries too can jump on the bandwagon of ecological decline and capitalistic bureaucracy that will be difficult to dismantle, only to then be able to buy back what they lost, if at all?

Wealth, as defined by the West, is absolutely not needed to establish environmental standards, particularly if a group of people or a country chooses not to participate in ecologically-degrading economies such as industrial capitalism. If one is to think of industrial capitalism, then yes, monetary wealth is likely needed to establish standards, or to at least move away from places that have been contaminated by industry. (See, for example, this post on Delray.) The issue, as it seems to me, comes down to definitions. Who defines that is "ecologically sound"? Furthermore, why does every single place on the Earth have to be marred by industrialism?

If money is used as an indicator of wealth, then yes, many colonised countries and regions are likely more monetarily rich, especially because they now participate in a globalised, capitalist economy, most likely as a peripheral economy. There are issues of power that are at play here, and I think it can be dangerous to think that countries that practice violence against their own people and their own land can be any more altruistic to the people and land of other parts of the world. I also disagree with the statement that technology is what we need to adapt to a changing environment. This can easily turn into an argument for the continued investment in a way of thinking that has put us in the current ecological crisis in the first place. Technological development, and its drivers, have fundamentally not changed at all since the so-called "Enlightenment." (part of my dissertation)

I think we absolutely must envision a fundamentally different world. If we are so used to living longer and longer, with more and more perks, more and more decadence, then we will surely accelerate toward the cliff of ecological collapse. The standards of living that we have are decidedly not sustainable. The only ways of living that have proven to be sustainable over long enough periods of time are/were those of pre-agriculturalists and semi-nomads. Industrial capitalism, tradeoffs, neoliberalism, trade in waste and trash is just one way of being in the world. There are others. 

"A long life isn't necessarily a good life, but a good life might be long enough."

~Tony, the homeless man that stands at the intersection of Main and Liberty, featured here.

A veil of morality

In the last two posts, I did no writing whatsoever. Instead, I typed up a memo that Larry Summers had passed around to other World Bank colleagues about how polluting "poor" countries is in the interest of these countries, as pollution can be welfare maximising. In response, The Economist, calls Summers's arguments "morally callous," yet, in the end, agree with Summers's suggestion.

I find this very sad for several reasons. It is unfortunate that this is what we have been taught--that the environment, the biophysical world that supports our very breaths and lives, can and ought to be polluted, at least to a certain extent, for human "welfare." (This of course comes from the human-environment dichotomy.) But, as we've seen in the US and Western Europe, it takes massive amounts of pollution and burning rivers and acid rain for even slightly effective laws to be put in place that reduce pollution, at least in the areas where the laws are enacted.

As we know, however, if our demands for the things that cause pollution don't die down, the pollution just migrates elsewhere under neoliberalism. Under this economic framework (the economy that the United States and powerful organisations such as the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank and most of the world subscribes to), the economic calculations that are the taken into account in these "environmental" laws result in the migration of polluting industry; such results are "logical," as Matthew and Andrew and Ethan have discussed with me. Summers wishes that pollution such as air pollution was indeed fully tradeable, just like "commodities" and material "resources." In neoliberal thinking, in a thinking that tends to maximise profit of money under a monetary economic framework, it is to the advantage of people to be able to trade as much as they can in the name of economic efficiency. Consequently, pristine environment and the value of human lives do not go hand in hand. Rather, the environment must be degraded to bring any value into the world, and, once we are rich enough, we will magically buy back what we've lost.

But what bothers me more, though, is The Economist's response. Indeed, it is patronising and debasing to anyone who truly cares about the Earth we live on. They go so far as to justify pollution, because the control of it is expensive. The response is industry's dream, and endorses wholeheartedly the legal and cultural framework we've created for ourselves. And if given all of laws in the US have only stopped three chemicals from being used, ever, of the many thousands, what chance would there be for the countries we dump these chemicals on to understand what they are trading away for their supposed "welfare"? In the end, from a neoliberal standpoint, it is the rich who stand to benefit, and the poor that stand much to lose--their clean air and water, their environment. Pollution is dangerous, especially because it is demonstrably unregulated, even in the so-called "rich countries," as The Economist calls them. (Think of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Safe Water Drinking Act, and the toxins present in our bodies, which I wrote about here.)

The Economist's arguments are elitist, condescending, and patronising. When the magazine states that "Those who insist on 'clean growth everywhere' must either deny that there is ever a trade-off between growth and pollution control--or else argue that imposing rich-country standards for clean air worldwide matters more than helping millions of people in the third world to escape their poverty," they fail to recognise that it is the policies of imperialism and colonialism of the very nations that The Economist calls "rich" that have led to poverty and conflict in the global south.

What The Economist is arguing for is effectively a continuation of policies that have led to climate change and pollution and unsustainability, under a veil of moral superiority. The magazine says that we ought to be more humane and ethical, while at the same time promoting a way of thinking that systematically throws out ethical considerations. To Larry Summers's credit, at least he is unabashed and open about what he thinks: "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."

Rich people problems

Just because there is inequality in the world doesn't take away from the fact that each and everyone of us is human. And because we are human, most (not all) of us just have problems. (Ok. I was trying to find the link to a picture of a man from Vanuatu, who is probably one of the "happiest men in the world," but I can't find it. I can see his face in my head. Instead, you'll just have to deal with this link...oh...rich person problem...) And, for those of us in the industrialised, agriculturally-based, "civilised" world, we still have our fair share of "problems"...like the ones below.

In our day-to-day lives, it seems then that we end up complaining about the mundane, the inconsequential, the meaningless. Indeed, the meaninglessness of our complaints is embodied and epitomised in our constant unappreciation of what we have. Because, if we appreciated what we had, we would not really complain about anything, and if we didn't complain about anything, it would mean that we are content, and if we are content, we wouldn't want more, and if we didn't want more, another gold mine wouldn't have to be dug in Peru, disrupting indigenous lives and pristine ecosystems; another mountaintop wouldn't have to be blown to smithereens to satisfy our constant urge for energy.

Rich people problems are addressed by rich people solutions, comprised of domination, violence, disrespect; the technologies that have stemmed from our abilities to be able to devote vast amounts of time and effort and nature to them--because of our "richness"--have resulted in vast inequalities, and have resulted in violence and disrespect amongst people and towards nature, maybe just too far away in space and time for us to really care or take notice. One might say, "Darshan, those brutes in [insert name of "developing" part of the world here] are those that use violence, that disrespect human rights, that have authoritarian regimes. Not us. We are the morally sound. We deal with things legally here. We promote peace and justice and fairness and equality." Well, we just exemplify domination, violence, and disrespect in different ways, that's all.

For continued thanksgiving, here's to individual and collective contentment, appreciation, satisfaction, and happiness.

Money - What the rich cannot afford

We have a government that spends money on practically everything, including more than six hundred billion dollars each year on a military machine for "peace" and "democracy." We have a government that at some point decided that it could afford tax cuts on the richest and most powerful in the country, to the tune of two trillion dollars over the lifespan of the cuts. We continue to borrow money from other nations, and the citizens of this very country, to finance government spending. There seems then to be no dearth of money, or "value" more generally in this country. (The value I am talking about here is not what something means to you emotionally, but rather the hard currency value of a "good" or "service.") This country affords to do a lot, and chooses to do things that it thinks it can afford, especially in the name of economy.

If you've spent even an ounce of time reading the news over the past two or three years, you cannot go once without hearing some talking-head or reading some headline about how this nation's, and the world's economy is in peril, that we are in a "recession," and that "investor confidence is low." But it is very difficult to get away from the fact that even in a recession, this country generated on the order of a fourteen trillion dollar gross domestic product (GDP), a quarter of the world's total. Hard to argue with data from one of the very defining institutions of this economy, the World Bank.

The GDP is an indicator of the "value" of goods and services in the economy, and you are right in thinking that this is a "money" value. Of course, the GDP isn't measured in smiles or hugs or quality of the land, but rather dollar or currency terms. Looking at equations used to calculate the GDP, I do not think I am incorrect (I am no expert, of course.) in assuming that the value of these goods and services are tradeable, which is basically what money is an indicator of - the tradeability of value. So, there's a lot that this country can afford to do. I mean, fourteen trillion dollars...

What the numbers tell me is that the economy doesn't care about you or me or your neighbour. It does not care about what is happening in Ann Arbor, or in Detroit. It does not care about the quality of water you are drinking. The way we've structured the economy, especially in our minds, is that it is endless, and that the only way for it to exist is for it to consume itself, for the furtherance of itself. And so what is tossed at the wayside are the air we breathe, the water we drink, and everything that sustains us. But when it actually comes to thinking about life and the environment, we cannot get past the monetary value of the "services we are provided." It seems as if this is the only language we understand. Whether it is a cost put on your life in the cost-benefit analysis done by some government agency, or the monetary value of "ecosystem services," a Pigouvian tax that necessarily results in a degraded environment, or just plain old Pareto-optimality, a monetary value is essential in determining the fate of the environment.

And yet, at every climate change negotiation, at every mention of the phrase "protection of the environment," we are told that this country just cannot afford to value the environment. "We promise we'll protect the environment voluntarily. We'll agree to this accord! We'll also come up with the best new technologies that will not only save the environment, but will spur innovation, grow the economy! Win-win-win!"

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Money - Scott Russell Sanders on the paradoxical nature of money

For today, I wanted to share with you a paragraph of an essay I just read by Scott Russell Sanders, called Breaking The Spell Of Money, in Orion Magazine. I encourage you to read the whole essay, eloquently and thoughtfully written, by clicking here.

"The accumulation of money gives the richest individuals and corporations godlike power over the rest of us. Yet money itself has no intrinsic value; it is a medium of exchange, a token that we have tacitly agreed to recognize and swap for thins that do possess intrinsic value, such as potatoes or poetry, salmon or surgery. Money is a symbolic tool, wholly dependent for its usefulness on an underlying social compact [emphasis added]. It is paradoxical, therefore, that those who have benefited the most financially from the existence of this compact have been the most aggressive in seeking to undermine it, by attacking unions, cooperatives, public education, independent media, social welfare programs, non-profits that serve the poor, land-use planning, and every aspect of government that doesn't directly serve the rich. For the social compact to hold, ordinary people must feel that they are participating in a common enterprise that benefits everyone fairly, and not a pyramid scheme designed to benefit a few at the very top. While the superrich often pretend to oppose government as an imposition on their freedom, they are usually great fans of government contracts, crop subsidies, oil depletion allowances, and other forms of corporate welfare, and ever greater fans of military spending."

On choice, poverty, and sustainability

I have written about choice a few times before, and I've tried to explore the issue in the context of tradeoffs, political consumption, and the choices that may (or should?) be available to us in an ecologically sustainable world. For the past few days, I have continually thought about the issues of choice in light of living on two dollars a day recently (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). I have realised how lucky I am that I can make choices for myself in many regards, while recognising of course that I am still embedded in an ecologically degrading society.

I would like to write a little bit about the linkages between poverty and sustainability through the lens of choice. I pulled the following graphic from the Unhappy Planet Index 2.0 website. What you see for each country is the number of planets that would be required if everyone lived a certain way. For example, if everyone in the world lived as they do in India, what this planet, our Earth, provides for us would be "enough," so to speak. If everyone, however, lived like we do here in the US, well, then we'd need more than four planets worth of provisions to fulfill everyone's lifestyles.

What is not difficult to realise is that all of the countries that are in red are the highly industrialised countries, countries with a lot of choice, and those in yellow and green are the unindustrialised or industrialising countries, countries with limited choice, or growing choice. It is clear that an increase in choice defined through natural resource extraction is unsustainable ecologically. I realised that when I lived (symbolically) on two dollars a day, I made even more sure that my hedonism and profligacy was kept in check, which I am certain reduced my burden on the world. What this meant, however, was that my choices were limited, no doubt. Yet what the above graphic shows me, given the dominant and hegemonic trends of capitalism and natural resource extraction, is that increasing choices that do not take into account ecological burdens, such as choices that have been made for the past couple hundred years in the West, is unsustainable. This is of course clear with ever new technologies and fads. But what a paradox - the countries with the most "choice" (or "freedom" as many would say) are the "richest" yet at the same time the most degrading. The poorest countries are less degrading, with lifestyles being more sustainable.

What the problem of sustainability throws in our way is the issue of limits, which necessarily will limit the choices available to people. I concede that I do not have the answer to what the choices we have should be pared down to, but I do know that this is probably not the right direction to look in, macro to micro. Rather, we should look at ourselves first, and see what it is that we think constitutes a happy and meaningful life, given the constraints the natural world puts on us. I think this is a more tractable approach.

Put yourself in their shoes

This project isn't just about trash, yet trash is a most visceral manifestation of the fundamental problems our societies have created. I just re-read Vanessa Baird's fantastic piece from the New Internationalist, "Trash: inside the heap." Baird articulates the social injustice of the world as viewed through trash and waste. She writes, "The rich make it, the poor deal with it. The rich who make it are generally considered 'clean;' the poor who deal with it are considered 'dirty.'" How true.

Visiting the recycling plant a few weeks ago provided me with the most up-close view of the world of trash processing. The plant accepts materials from all over the region, and the material keeps coming in waves. Entire warehouses are filled with the materials, and as soon as those materials are sorted through, the next roomfull of materials is waiting to be sorted. To me, those materials have lives of their own (in a sense) and stories associated with them. Those materials are other than the air that we breathe and the land we stand on. This means that those materials have human lives associated with them, too. Not just the lives of the people that used those materials, but the lives of people that were involved in both material creation and fate after use.

After the tour of the facility, Caroline and I were wondering about the stories of the people that worked at the recycling plant. We wondered how they might be feeling given the cold day, the loud noise, the putrid smell, and spending their time in the constancy of refuse. We wondered if they were appreciated at all, and whether or not they even wanted to be there. Are they there because they could find nothing else to do? Do they have the choice not to be there? The founding documents of our nations proclaim how people are born equal, yet nothing could be further from the truth. This world has always been a world of haves and have nots, and most every material thing in our lives depends on this inequality, whether it is diamonds, oil, plastic, rare earth minerals, recyclables, trash or wood. We have founded our lives, the lives of those people with choice and power and money, on the bodies, hearts, minds and souls of those less fortunate.

I wonder whether we are willing to do what it takes to provide ourselves with what we want. How wonderful it would be if each one of us, in our upbringing, was made to fully carry out the tasks, at least once, of the people who really make our societies functional. I am not talking about investment bankers or engineers or doctors (the "clean" people), but rather farmers, sanitation men, electricians, plumbers, and people in countries less powerful than the US (the "dirty" people). Maybe if we put ourselves in their shoes, we'll see that not only are we degrading the environment, but we are devaluing the existence of these fellow humans.

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...

Inequality, globalisation, trash and waste

My last post was about Vanessa Baird's 1997 article from the New Internationalist, which talked about the world's ecological classes, the "under-polluted" South, and countries either incinerating their trash, or just simply exporting their trash to other places. As much as technocrats would like to have us believe that inequality across the world is slowly being erased, you should think otherwise. It is absolutely true that the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider, not only in places like India, but also in the US. This has serious implications for trash generation - who produces it, and who deals with it.

As you may have gathered from previous posts, trash is an environmental justice issue. Most of the trash and pollution of the world is produced by so called "rich" countries, regions and locales through industrial processes and private consumption, and this trash is exported to poorer countries, regions and locales. In most cases, I would think the "rich" will pay a nominal fee to the "poor" to keep the trash away from the "rich." An absolutely wonderful and shocking example of this is the 2006 dumping of toxic petrochemical waste in Cote d'Ivoire by a Swiss multinational company of the name Trafigura. I will copy-paste some sections from the Wikipedia entry on it here:

In 2002, Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex began to accumulate significant quantities of coker gasoline, containing large amounts of sulphur and silica, at its Cadereyta refinery. By 2006 Pemex had run out of storage capacity and agreed to sell the coker gasoline to Trafigura. In early 2006, Pemex trucked the coker gasoline to Brownsville, Texas where Trafigura loaded it aboard the Panamian registered Probo Koala tanker, which was owned by Greek shipping company Prime Marine Management Inc and chartered by Trafigura.

Trafigura desired to strip the sulphurous products out of the coker gasoline to produce naphtha which could then be sold. Instead of paying a refinery to do this work, Trafigura used an experimental process onboard the ship called "caustic washing" in which the coker was treated with caustic soda. The process worked, and the resulting naphtha was resold for a reported profit of $19 million. The waste resulting from the caustic washing would typically include highly dangerous substances such as sodium hydroxide, sodium sulphide and phenols.

On August 19, 2006, after balking at a €1000 per cubic metre disposal charge in Amsterdam, and being turned away by several countries, the Probo Koala offloaded more than 500 tons of toxic waste at the Port of Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. This material was then spread, allegedly by subcontractors, across the city and surrounding areas, dumped in waste grounds, public dumps, and along roads in populated areas. The substance gave off toxic gas and resulted in burns to lungs and skin, as well as severe headaches and vomiting. Seventeen people were confirmed to have died, and at least 30,000 were injured. The company has claimed that the waste was dirty water ("slops") used for cleaning the ship's gasoline tanks, but a Dutch government report, as well as an Ivorian investigation dispute this, claiming this was toxic waste delivered from Europe to West Africa, after the ship had previously tried to offload at the port of Amsterdam, but was rejected there. During an ongoing civil lawsuit by over 30,000 Ivorian citizens against Trafigura, Trafigura, following an investigative report by the BBC's Newsnight programme, announced on 16 May 2009 that they will sue the BBC for libel. a Dutch government report concluded that in fact the liquid dumped contained two 'British tonnes' of hydrogen sulphide.


Indeed, the "rich" nations are sweeping dust under the rug. It is wrong to believe the "rich" are clean, and that the "rich" live impeccably by consuming. Since many "poorer" nations are in the "rich" nations' "debt," (however you'd like to define debt - "rich" nations giving loans to "poorer" nations via the IMF, World Bank, or "charitable donations" or "humanitarian aid") it would be easy for "rich" nations to take advantage of the situation by offloading the harmful byproducts of their way of life to the "poorer" nations, and pay them a fee to basically keep them quiet.

The rich create it, the poor deal with it

I found this wonderfully written article by Vanessa Baird, who writes for the New Internationalist, called "Trash: inside the heap." In the article, she argues that creating trash is big business, and it is the rich who create it, for the poor to deal with (although cities in "poorer" nations are pretty badly trashed and polluted). The rich who make trash are generally considered "clean," and the poor who deal with it are considered "dirty." This seems true of most environmental justice related problems. The rich create it by their want of products and goods, and it is the poor who are left with dealing with poor water quality, exposure to chemicals and the like. This article is so interesting, I'll have you read it by posting parts of it here. Everything posted below is by Vanessa Baird (keep in mind that the article was written in 1997, but nothing has really changed since then). Take the time to read it - it is totally worth your time.
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One could wax lyrical about the rubbish pickers and scavengers of this world. How they are pioneer recyclers, the greenest of the green. And in a sense it's true. But such romanticism obscures other truths.

The people who build their lives and homes out of other people's refuse are not viewed as eco-heroes by the societies they live in - no more than people who rummage in dustbins are in the West. They are, for the most part, regarded as little better than the trash they handle.

They don't do this work because they want to, or because like middle-class Californian "dumpster divers' they `believe in recycling'. They do it because poverty and social inequality has given them a pitifully narrow range of options.

The sociology of trash is simple: the rich make it, the poor deal with it. The rich who make it are generally considered `clean'; the poor who deal with it are considered `dirty'.

It's a topsy-turvy sociology.

But then the whole issue of trash is pretty much upside-down and back-to-front.

For a start, there's the economics of waste.

We tend to think of industrial production as being mainly about manufacturers making things we need - or just want - which we then buy. This is what keeps money circulating and the economic roundabout going round.

Think again.

What if, for instance, it weren't production that led to economic growth, but waste? Garbage. Trash. Pollution.

Now that seems crazy.

Not so crazy though, if you take the example of the United States.

For every 100 kilograms of products manufactured, 3,200 kilograms of waste is created. `We are far better at making waste than at making products,' concludes Paul Hawken, author, business person and environmentalist.

Meanwhile the US economy appears to be growing. According to GDP or Gross Domestic Product - the conventional means of measuring growth - it has grown at 2.5 per cent per year since 1973. Yet there is little evidence of improved lives, better infrastructure, higher wages, more leisure or greater economic security. Quite the contrary.

This is because GDP doesn't really measure growth in any meaningful sense. It measures money transactions and calls them economic growth. It is blind to whether this is harmful or beneficial to people and their environment.

So we end up with an insane situation, exemplified by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, where a disaster that causes long-term suffering to people, animals and the natural environment shows up as highly profitable because the clean-up and the insurance pay-outs involve lots of money changing hands.

If GDP were to exclude keeping people in prison, pollution and every bit of litter on the streets, then it's quite conceivable that the US economy would be shown not to be growing at all. What's growing is its production of waste - and its capacity to lay waste.

Hawken proposes that, to remedy this, governments need to subtract such negative impacts from revenue. But, he says, `unfortunately where economic growth is concerned, the Government uses a calculator with no minus sign'.

What happens to it all?

A trip to a major landfill site is not everyone's idea of an excursion. But what you see there are the most amazing mountains of the stuff, much of it plastic-seeming, but still a veritable picnic for scavenging birds. Moving ominously and noisily around the heat and stench, like strange prehistoric beasts, are bulldozers, headlights glaring like eyes.

This is where most waste goes in the industrial world - holes in the ground that no-one wants in their backyard. With reason: landfills are fraught with danger. They emit methane, they overheat, they leak - which becomes increasingly ominous as the quantity of chemical products dumped into landfills in the industrial world is expected to double between 1990 and 2005.

Countries which are short of land, like Japan or Belgium, favour incinerating rubbish. This is no better; many experts say it's a lot worse. It creates air pollution, releasing toxins and dioxins into the atmosphere. More sophisticated incinerators have filters, but still leave residues of toxic ash that need to be buried somewhere.

A few years ago the US raised the alert. The big country had run out of landfill sites. This was in spite of its exporting waste to Canada and Mexico and, of course, many parts of the South. In this the US is not alone. Most developed countries export their waste.

What's more serious is that the North now produces more hazardous and toxic waste than it can accommodate on its own territory.

Lawrence Summers, World Bank Chief Economist, gained notoriety in 1991 when he suggested that Africa was under-populated and `under-polluted' and so the West should send toxic waste there. But he was only reflecting on what was already happening. Since then the former countries of the Soviet Union have been added to the list of favoured dumping grounds.

Most serious of all is something that was brought home to me recently in quite a trivial way when my nephew opened the back of my defunct smoke-alarm to find a label saying: `Contains radioactive material'. `Why?' he innocently asked. I could not answer. The label did not indicate how one was to dispose of the thing.

The reason is, nobody knows. Today the total accumulation of used nuclear fuels in the world stands at 130,000 tonnes - more than twice as much as in 1987. Most of this will be buried hundreds of metres below the earth's crust, although scientists recognize it will make its way back to the surface at some point.

The Basel Convention, which with some success is trying to stop exports of toxic and hazardous waste from rich countries to those of the developing world, does not, significantly, cover nuclear waste. It's too big a problem for the nuclear countries. They want to keep their options open, which is very bad news indeed for people living in impoverished countries like North Korea.

The "under-polluted" South

Lawrence Summers got it wrong, though, when he suggested that the countries of the South were `under-polluted'. Visit any big city in the South and you can see it, feel it, smell it. The piles of garbage in Dar Es Salaam have become a major health hazard. Shanghai, Lagos and Mumbai aren't much better. Air quality in Taipei and Bangkok is the pits. In such industrializing countries of the South, water is rendered undrinkable due to chemical pollutants.

It's not just the North's rubbish that is being dumped on the South but also its dirtiest industrial production. With globalization, more and more companies have their goods made in the South where wages are lower and environmental controls are more lax.

And this is the rotten core of the matter.

For the main problem with trash is not its `back end', as it were. It's not so much what we as individuals throw away, but the waste that has been incurred making the things we so abundantly consume. The focus is almost always on what we see - the garbage cans, the refuse heaps. Not what we don't see.

According to Robert Ayres, an expert on industrial metabolism, about 94 per cent of materials extracted for use in manufacturing become waste before the product is even made. More waste still is generated during manufacture. Overall, he claims, US industry uses as much as 100 times more material and energy than is theoretically required to deliver the goods.

One way of tackling this criminal inefficiency is to bring in tougher legislation that encourages cleaner production and penalizes the waster and the polluter. Sometimes this works even before the laws come into force, as happened in certain parts of German industry. The idea of `extending producer responsibility' is also gaining ground in other parts of Northern Europe.

Another way is to try to convince business that it can save money by being more efficient and creating less waste. This is the line taken by Amory Lovins, L Hunter Lovins and Ernst von Weizsacker in their new study called Factor 4: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use. It tells us how we can live twice as well, using half as much. If that doesn't sell the idea nothing will.

Either way, something is going to have to happen. According to the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, arresting global warming and environmental degradation will require a 50-per-cent reduction in worldwide material consumption, and to do that industrial countries need to aim for a 90-per-cent reduction in their throughput of materials.

The main part we, as individuals, can play is as consumers.

The world's ecological class system

The world's poor - some 1.1 billion people - includes all those households that earn less than $700 a year per member. They are mostly rural Africans, Indians and other South Asians.

The 3.3 billion people in the world's middle-income class earn between $700 and $7,500 per member and live mostly in Latin America, the Middle East, China and East Asia. This class also includes the low-income families of the former Soviet bloc and of Western industrial nations.

The consumer class - the 1.1 billion members of the global consumer society - includes all households whose income per member is above $7,500. They live mainly in North America, Europe and Australasia.

Category of    Consumers       Middle             Poor
Consumption  (1.1 billion)  (3.3 billion)     (1.1 billion)


Diet         meat,          grain, clean   insufficient grain,
           packaged       water          unsafe water
           food, soft
           drinks

Transport    private cars   bicycles,      walking
                          buses

Materials    throwaways     durables       local biomass

Source: Worldwatch Institute

It's not a comfortable role to face up to. When environmental thinker and writer Alan Thein Durning split the world into three ecological classes - 1.1 billion poor, 3.3 billion middle-income class, and 1.1 billion consuming class - he caused quite a stir in some quarters. People who did not consider themselves rich by their own standards were miffed to find themselves defined as part of a global consuming elite (see box). But there's no avoiding it. If you live in the rich, industrialized part of the world your consumption - and the polluting wake you leave behind - is tremendous. A person living in the industrial world will consume 19 times more aluminium, 14 times more paper, 13 times more iron and steel, 10 times more energy, 6 times more meat and 3 times more fresh water than their fellow humans living in the developing world.

The question Alan Durning asks, in his book of the same title, is one we need to keep asking: `How much is enough?' The majority of people living in the South manage with limited resources. They use and re-use many of the things that people in the North and Australasia would automatically throw away. Bottles, bags, cans, rags, old rubber tyres.

People living in the North have limited resources too, though we don't recognize it half the time and certainly don't behave accordingly. As economist Herman Daly has pointed out, we are facing an historic juncture in which, for the first time, the limits to increased prosperity are not the lack of human-made capital but the lack of natural resources, or what is now sometimes called `natural capital'. Plenty of sawmills, not enough trees, in other words.

Many people are responding by trying to alter their personal habits. Recycling is on the increase - though it varies widely from region to region. In parts of Britain recycling has crept up to 5 per cent of household waste; in parts of Australia it's 15 per cent. But in some areas in Canada it's closer to 80 per cent. The greening of politicians and local authorities in some countries - and Britain is a case in point - is happening at a painfully slow rate. Other countries, like Germany, have galloped ahead and made mistakes, but there is at least a commitment to trying to create a different, more sustainable kind of economy.

Throwaway world

The British dump 2.5 billion nappies/diapers a year.

The Japanese use 30 million `disposable' single-roll cameras annually.

North Americans annually discard 183 million razors, 2.7 billion batteries, 140 million cubic metres of Styrofoam packing, 350 million pressurized spray-paint cans, plus enough paper and plastic ware to feed the world a picnic every other month.

(Source: Alan Thein Durning, How much is enough?)

Inevitably, when you look at trash you end up talking about values. Currently most industrial economies are still geared up to using as few people as possible, and thereby creating as little employment as possible to produce as much stuff as possible, much of which is trash or soon becomes it.

In other words, we have been trashing what is really of value - people and their natural environment - in the pursuit of things that have little real value: consumer items we mainly don't need.

There are practical things that we, as individuals, can do - like recycle, re-use, consume carefully and generally consume a lot less. But there also needs to be quite a major mind-shift in the way our economies and our societies operate. We need, metaphorically speaking, to take the lid off the trash-can and turn it on its head. Only then will we get down to grappling with the beast in the bin.

References:

(1) Paul Hawken, Natural Capital, article in Mother Jones, San Francisco, March/April 1997.

(2) Michael Redclift, Wasted, Earthscan, 1996.

(3) Lester Brown, Nicholas Lenssen, Hal Kane/Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 1995/96, Earthscan, 1995.

(4) Ernst von Weizsacker, Amory Lovins and L Hunter Lovins, Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use, Earthscan, London, 1997.

(5) People and the Planet magazine, Vol 4, No 1, 1995.

(6) Alan Thein Durning, How much is enough? Earthscan, 1992.