Pp. 188-193- Traditional to Modenrized Poverty

Bill McKibben was on the IUPUI campus two weeks ago speaking to an eager crowd of students, faculty and community members.  Listening to the author after reading “Deep Economy” was a great experience.  His message is not only relevant and timely but also thought provocative, challenging our current way of thinking.  McKibben highlighted that each of us have a part to play in making a difference, and within our shared, global community, we must become active. He illuminated this point through photos from the International Day of Climate Action showing some of the most impoverished nations advocating change.  

Mckibben writes…

“There are a couple of other problems with the idea that the poor nations of the world are going to grow their way out of poverty by draining their country sides, moving into shantytowns, working in factories, and exporting stuff to the rest of the world. …”

“…. in virtually every corner of the developing world, Western economic planners have “underwritten policies that diverted once independent farmer toward the chemical-intensive production of cash crops… For the marginalized farmers throughout the world, this has brought an increasing dependence on unstable world crop prices, rising indebtedness for costly equipment and chemical inputs, and, often, the forced removal of people from traditional lands that have sustained their communities for countless generations.”  The effect …. has been to transform “traditional poverty into modernized poverty designed to function smoothly in the world economic system.”¹⁸ In practice, that means moving people off farms and into slums.  A few places like China, are actually seeing real cities arise; in most places, though, …, what’s growing are empires of corrugated tin and cardboard, miles of hovels filled with people who have nothing to do.  Ninety-five percent of the population growth this century will occur in the cities of the developing world, “overwhelmingly in poor cities, and the majority of it in slums”¹⁹”

You may be thinking “what does this have to do with me?  I have no plans of being a farmer or live alone in the country side on a farm…” Or you could even be saying, “Living in a slum… you’ve got be kidding… not me!”  You may be absolutely right not you and not now.  

Following the same trend of thought “why should I be concerned about what is happening in the North Pole, and of all the things… Polar bears!?  Who cares if the ice is melting?  I have no plans of ever moving to the barren Polar Regions… not in a million years… maybe Alaska (it has been on the news lately) even that may pushing it!”

Taking this thought a little further, “Climate change…why should I pay attention to that?  Let the politicians take care of that…I will be long gone by the time the predicted happens…”

Certainly “Deep Economy” is an interesting read for just about anybody.  McKibben captures the reader’s attention.  He presents a way to think globally at the same time act locally to improve our local communities.

Bringing it home to Indianapolis, maybe we should pay attention to what is happening to the small farmer in Indiana.  After all Indiana is among the breadbaskets of America.  Could it be possible the smaller farmers in Indiana are experiencing what is mentioned above?

When there is a freeze in Florida… it quickly shows up when we go to purchase OJ in the supermarket.

When there is instability in the oil producing nations, it quickly shows up at the gas pump… higher gas price.

McKibben forces us to recognize that–yes–we actually have a stake in these issues. He encourages us to look beyond the present and embrace new ways of thinking to solve these complex problems.

As we approach the midpoint of our discussion on Deep Economy, have your thoughts changed on local/global consumption or on what Consuming Well really means?

-Peter Orono

Pp. 168-172- Direct Democracy

Bill McKibben’s thesis in Deep Economy is that our focus on increasing wealth has driven the planet’s ecological systems to the brink of failure, without making us happier. He asks: How did we screw up? We assumed that by making more money more stuff more efficiently our happiness would increase. Since happiness has increased with income in the past, we assumed it would do so in the future.  However, it is a fallacy. McKibben’s aim in Deep Economy is relatively modest. It is to change minds, to present a new mental model of the possible.  He suggests more progress toward local economies.  His analysis of localization for food, radio, and energy, can be applied to almost any commodity.  If we start thinking a little differently we can do the same for our democracy. 

Mckibben explains the problem with our current system of democracy, “once government reaches a certain size, it becomes hard to imagine that the individual citizen matters.” He proposes an alternate model of direct democracy similar to the one in Vermont.  In general, the term “direct democracy” usually refers to citizens making policy and law decisions in person, without going through representatives and legislatures.  McKibben states anyone can participate in direct democracy regardless of ideology, “Vermont’s independence isn’t rooted in ideology.  For a hundred years after the Civil War, it was the most reliably Republican state in the Union, these days; it elects both a conservative governor and a socialist senator.”

“In Vermont, every March, residents assemble in town halls to town meetings.  The meetings last all day-people take it off from work.  People sit next to their neighbors and debate the issues the town faces.”  Mckibben advocates town meeting as a format for citizens to circumvent our current legislative system. As I was reading about town meetings in Deep Economy, it got me thinking if this model of democracy could be applied to the health care debate.  Not only for citizens to debate the issue of health care reform in town meetings but to have an actual legislative input.  Providing healthcare coverage for all Americans is a goal that has long been debated and discussed. Providers, payers, policymakers and consumers all agree that something must be done, yet few agree on exactly how we achieve this goal.

 Some societies operate with a combination of both types of democracy.  In some countries, such as France, Switzerland and the Republic of Ireland, some issues, for example, changes to the constitution, can be decided by a popular vote on that specific issue. In some of the small Swiss cantons (states) such as Glarus, all citizens are entitled to attend an annual meeting which votes retrospectively on the laws passed during the preceding year by their representatives. Mckibben explains that,” in those cantons, people say they’re happier with their lives, and it might be partly because they receive better services: democracy works, and as a result their lives are easier.  Are people happier with their lives, when they participate in direct democracy?  Do you think that this model of direct democracy just might be the solution to our health care crisis? Is it enough just to participate or do we need an improvement in policy?

 Could healthcare reform be achieved by everyone participating in direct democracy and making policy? Could local units of government, or states take the lead on health care reform, like they have taken the lead on stem cell research, to medical marijuana to the right to die? Could smaller and more local units of government be nimble enough to address the issue of health care reform?  Just like some of the examples that are offered in Deep Economy: San Francisco adopting solar power, California cutting auto emissions, seven eastern states handling power plant emissions.

-Dina David

Pp 148-152: “Restructuring Our Energy Thinking”

Generally, people think the “cost” of something is its price tag.  People make their decisions from the price tag because they usually lack the financial skills to calculate the actual cost.  When we purchase something we compare the benefits of the purchase to its cost.  If the benefits exceed the cost, we make the purchase.  If the costs exceed the benefits, we do not make the purchase.  The problem is most people do not know how to calculate the actual cost of a purchase.  Most of us can calculate the benefits in our minds quickly.  But, without the financial skills to calculate the cost, the average person is left with the price tag as the cost.  If the cost is underestimated, which most people do, many purchases will be made that would not have been made if the true cost had been known.

 An aspect of “cost” is the environmental cost.  If we look at just the price tag, the average person will choose to purchase energy from large utilities because their “price” appears to be less than alternatives such as solar or wind power.  One thing that is not included in the large utilities “price” is the environmental cost.  If the environmental costs were added to the “price,” the large utilities price would seem much less favorable relative to other alternatives.     

 An exciting aspect of emerging technologies in areas such as solar or wind power is that the average person can become a producer of energy instead of just a consumer.  I am hopeful that more and more people will become interested in dispersed energy production and in becoming producers of energy instead of just consumers, and that they will begin to consider the “total costs” when making their choices. 

William C. Haeberle
Lecturer in Business
Indiana University Purdue University Columbus

yPp. 142-148 -The Myth of Efficient Energy

Last August, Bill McKibben was a guest on the Colbert Report. He said to Stephen Colbert, “We are past the point where we can make the math work one light bulb at a time. What we need is a serious international effort to set a cap on carbon dioxide emissions, and if we do that, we have a chance.”

I found that clip in a search to learn how McKibben’s concepts may have changed since 2007 when Deep Economy was published—since the world’s deep recession and the last presidential election.

McKibben’s message is more urgent now. He stresses the big picture he pointed to in the book’s afterword when he quoted James Lovelock, the British scientist who developed equipment to measure deterioration of the ozone layer. Lovelock said in 2006, “Before this century is over, billions of us will die from the effects (of carbon dioxide emissions).” But what will it actually take for us to pay attention, and act?

We Americans (and not just Americans, of course) like our relatively cheap food and electricity, and how else can we make it through this harrowing recession where companies have collapsed and millions of jobs have been eliminated?

In the chapter “The Wealth of Communities,” McKibben states that America’s highly centralized energy system is efficient, like factory farms, as long as we have the fuel to keep it going, and as long as we choose cheap electricity over curtailing carbon emissions. In fact, McKibben offers a British study that demonstrates centralized energy systems are not only not efficient, but are “extraordinarily wasteful,”  to the point where only “twenty-two percent of primary energy input is eventually used in the home (and) the rest is lost in the centralized system and wasted through domestic energy inefficiency.” So, cheap comes at a high cost overall, particularly in light of the damage caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

Yet, as McKibben says, the power companies are lobbying Washington for more and more money to modernize our country’s current power grids (and to increase nuclear power and “clean coal” operations), rather than considering successful projects in many places around the world that offer effective, exciting alternatives. Japan, for instance, has become the world’s solar energy leader, according to McKibben. He offers Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark as examples of how “local energy networks” can work. And how even a pilot project in Woking, England has already reduced carbon emissions by seventy-seven percent.

Throughout Deep Economy, McKibben cites example after example of possibilities and opportunities—how sustainability and a strong economy can be married. But our government must be seriously onboard, a task that means overhauling the strong-arming of  power company lobbyists, as well as invigorating citizen participation. “America is advanced citizenship,” perhaps should be stamped on every copy of the Pledge of Allegiance and Star Spangled Banner.  Until we create our own citizen lobby, community by community and state by state, or until some unthinkable planetary tragedy, little will change.

 In an interview on eco-chick.com, McKibben acknowledges what many of my students have observed, that “… not caring about the environment is a kind of class privilege. The very poorest people—in this country and around the planet—feel the effects of the damage more than the rest of us do.” His answer is 350.org, a movement to unite leaders around the world in the effort to reduce the CO2 in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million—the upper level scientists consider safe—where we’ll get back to a planet, McKibben said on the Colbert Report, “that works more or less the way it’s worked for the 10,000 years of human civilization.” On October 24, before this blog will be posted, 350.org is staging a planetary day of action, “to send a clear message to leaders…the solutions to climate change must be equitable, they must be grounded in science, and they must meet the scale of the crisis.”

It’s one starting point. I think Generation Y—our young people so connected to each other today via electronic technology—have the means, literally at hand, to spread the message, to start their own movements, to insist we move beyond all the myths of wealth and happiness, hyper-individualism and the inability to actually make change happen. They can lead change, and they can do it now. Their connectedness is power—the real fuel for the future.

 -Sara Harrell

Pp. 130-31, 134-37: “WDEV Local Radio”

Half-way through the fall semester, and half-way through Deep Economy, we come to McKibben’s idea of the “wealth of communities.”  Our first Common Theme borrows this idea, but what is the wealth of our communities?

 McKibben offers the unlikely example of a radio station in Barre, Vermont, a gritty town of tombstone carvers, decrepit shops and a truly local radio station WDEV.  The station is locally-owned, but more remarkable in our world of transcontinental DJs spinning disks for an entire nation is that local people run the station and see to it that they air all of the different local sounds and opinions.  On WDEV you can hear the Thunder Road auto races and the bird-watching hour, along with political views from socialist to conservative.  As McKibben puts it, when you tune into WDEV, “You hear things that other people are interested in.  Which is pretty much the definition of community.” (137)

 This definition opposes the idea of community as sameness, that community is the echo chamber of all your favorite sounds and opinions.  Even at a university, people go their separate ways—to their majors, their departments, their clubs, their meetings.  But the Common Theme is conceived on the proposition that the wealth of communities begins in hearing out what we each are interested in.  This conversation should stretch us.  We should be free to discover surprising new interests and connections worth developing, while holding onto diverse political perspectives and cultural backgrounds.

 This conversation about what we want and how we might build the networks needed to sustain the wealth of our community is taking hold on this campus.  As we head toward November, this conversation is moving toward action.  There is the Sustainability Town Hall in the Campus Center at noon on October 26.  Everyone is invited to bring their questions about sustainability at IUPUI, and students and staff are encouraged to enter the Common Green Contest with proposals for making our campus greener.  Two weeks later, McKibben speaks in the Campus Center at 4:30 on Nov. 9.  His panel on local food follows Nov. 10 at 10:30 at the Indiana State Museum.  These forums are opportunities to “hear things that other people are interested in,” and then to explore how we might cooperate to support the things we can get behind.  (Contest and event details are on the Common Theme website.)

 Only by hearing out our different interests can we answer the question, what is the wealth of our communities?  It is a conversation worth having.  So join in and get ready to take action.

 

David Craig

Religious Studies

Faculty Leader, 2009-2011 Common Theme

Pp.112-116-”Consumer Goods and Happiness”

Are you reeling from economic chaos and desperation for change?

 Reading McKibben’s Deep Economy is a stimulus many of us need; while it’s not a bailout, it’s an intellectual impetus to examine our lives and our views. Those of us discussing the Common Theme question whether McKibben’s ideas are practical and/or inspirational. This week’s section pertains to American productivity, spending, and the wisdom to see how changes could benefit – nay, rebuild – our communities.

 The book explains that Americans increased productivity by 80%, yet our time is still monopolized by work. In most cases, “still” denotes “more” than we as a people historically spent at workplaces. Generations before us labored from dawn to dusk – while farming, for example. These days, salaried positions often drive employees to work excessively to help a company sustain a lean workforce; and, many workers are compelled to take on multiple jobs to make ends meet. 50- to 80-plus hour workweeks are not uncommon. Having lived that American dream over the years, I offer testimonial that juggling three jobs or a salaried position with weekend travel leaves one with few personal choices.

 McKibben observes we accepted these lifestyles rather than cutting back after efficiency increased. Some people saw the power of buying and became addicted; some recognized work as a bottom-line solution to satisfy basic needs. Sometimes, conditions of employment dictated the “choices”; companies saw demand and opportunity and needed our long hours of work in order to thrive. We work, spend money necessarily on fast food, daycare, and dry cleaning to meet the needs of our fast-paced schedules … and aspire not to miss time away from work.

 As McKibben urges us to see, communities suffer. Our perpetual “go-go-go” for what we need and perceive as important compromises time for community involvement. Most of us have learned at one time or another that an extra electronic gadget/gift doesn’t make up for time apart. Specifically, neighborhoods suffer from misspent time …

 McKibben brings up that up to 75% of us don’t know our neighbors. Grappling with stress from a recent burglary and a lack of awareness that burglaries were surging around me, I identify with this. When I was a child, we welcomed a neighbor who had escaped a fire in her home. Under current conditions, we might distrust having such a person enter – for we might fear a gun in the face, something experienced by one of my neighbors. Knowing the people around us could improve our experiences. Or could it? In Michigan, a mom kindly babysits neighbors’ children before their bus arrives – and faces legal trouble for not having a business license.

 Overall, McKibben’s work invites us to think about our lifestyles and priorities. Could we cut back on work, losing an ability to support our demand for “stuff”? If we did, would it enable us to support other goals – like improving community ties? As someone who’s also taken time to volunteer in “downtime,” I’m thinking this vision offers great possibilities — what about you?        

 Angela J. Sisson, 

Department of Communication Studies

Pp. 109-112-”Community and Health”

Recently I visited my daughter at her college in Rochester, New York.  Instead of visiting Wal-Mart, the two of us, along with two of her friends, searched out the Rochester farmer’s market.  We mingled with hundreds of shoppers amongst innumerable booths, booths displaying flowers, beef, apples, lettuce, carrots, blackberries, peaches, even purses.  The misty cool weather did not dampen our spirits or, apparently, those of the other shoppers.  Couples with children in strollers, men, women, teens—the crowd was diverse.  And everyone appeared to be having a great time.  Shopping for produce had become a social event.

This participation in a local market is what McKibben is referring to when he writes, “Think of yourself as a member of a community, and you’ll get a better deal” (108).   He claims that becoming a member of a community will make us mentally healthier.  In fact, here in the United States being part of a group will make us incrementally happier than it would a person living in India because, McKibben asserts,  Americans have “a deficit of companionship” (109).  He offers proof that not only does community make us mentally healthier, but it will make us physically healthier too.  Researchers sprayed cold viruses directly into subject’s nostrils; people with numerous friends were four times less likely to become ill than the friend-deprived (110). None of our group who visited the farmer’s market in the rain became ill, so maybe our socializing counteracted any germs we encountered.

I have been a member of the IUPUI campus for over four years now.  At first, as a part-time faculty member, community was hard to find. I was a nameless instructor in a cubicle. But once I began tutoring in the University Writing Center, my health prospects improved. The center provides a place for me to belong, a place where I am welcomed by name, a place where I can leave my lunchbox during class. Once I found my place on campus, my mental health improved.

This week I looked about the IUPUI campus for signs of community.  Yesterday students were playing Corn hole on the quad.  When I wanted a seat in the sun to eat my lunch I was disappointed; too many others had the same plan.  One of my favorite signs of community occurs every semester as finals approaches.  The lounge on the 4^th floor of Cavanaugh is filled with students practicing for their American Sign Language final.  Few words are spoken, but a lot of communication occurs as students flash signals at their classmates.

Where do you belong on campus?  Have you discovered your place?  Do you think such a place exists?  What have you done this week to improve your health through community?

-Leslie Weaver

Pp. 101-104 – “Individualism and the Illusion of Riches”

My dilemma began in grade school.  In about the fourth grade we studied insects and there seemed to be an extraordinary amount of time spent emphasizing the communal aspects of bees.  Each individual bee is programmed from its conception knowing what role it would take in supporting the community of bees within its hive; the life of the community in the hive is the most important aspect of an individual insect’s life. The dilemma became even more perplexing as I eventually learned that not all bees were equal and that some would eventually leave the hive to serve a new mistress.  For me the dilemma is how to be the individual that U.S. society demands I be and still maintain a strong membership in a community. The conflict was only exacerbated by the fact that I was also taught that my success depended on a display of my riches; a display that could just be an illusion. And while McKibben tells us that “education usually increases civic participation” (101), I find that the more educated I became the more isolated I feel and the more perplexed I become.

For over 35 years I have lived comfortably in the same modest house in what many call a “poor neighborhood.”  But, it is the neighborhood in which my father grew up and in which his parents grew up.  I have to wonder though if living modestly all these years has held me back. Was I passed up for promotions at the bank because I chose not to make a display of my successes through moving to a larger house in a more affluent neighborhood?  Have other opportunities passed me by because I chose stability over mobility?  Had I held myself back by becoming a permanent member of a community that has declined economically, politically, and spiritually over the years?  Should I have worked harder to create the illusion of success? 

Over time many of the couples my wife and I had associated within our parish and community had moved to the suburbs and more complicated lives presenting images of success.  The result has been that many of these couples have divorced.  In their attempts to live more successfully and present the illusion of success through riches they had damaged their relationships not only with themselves, but also with those who considered them friends and family; things they should have perhaps considered treasures.  McKibben tells us that studies show, “that when people live near where they grew up, within reach of family and old friends, their lives are more stable and their marriages are less likely to falter (101).”

The “hyper-Individualism” that McKibben says “allows us to tolerate, and even celebrate, inequality so gross that it’s almost as much farce as tragedy (103)”, comes to life through my observations and studies of the neighborhoods in my community.  I hear the voices of righteous indignation to the notion that we “tolerate, and even celebrate, inequality.”  Those voices belong to Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, every race and creed, and to educated and uneducated alike.  These voices are the same ones who insist that the destitute who beg for change, whether it is on a sidewalk downtown, at street corners, or in civic meetings present a hazard or a bad impression of the illusion of prosperity.

Where are those voices of righteous indignation in the battles to sustain quality education, public works and services, and private enterprises, in the old and “poor” neighborhoods of our cities?  Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future makes many excellent points and presents some wonderful observations.  It is a study based upon social class ideals that maintain the tradition of promoting a quality of life that not everyone has access to.  Whatever the culprit behind our increased sense of individual self-worth that destroys a sense of community, if higher education focused more on developing good citizens rather than provide vocational training then perhaps the United States could become more sustainable.

 

Jack Price

Communication Studies

Pp. 81-87 “Community Supported Agriculture”

CNN recently reported on a new multi-million dollar fund to help preserve agricultural biodiversity. In this report previous world food crises and famines were highlighted. We might think, “So what’s the big deal our stores have plenty of food.” Maybe we should consider some of the facts that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) recently disclosed when they invested $116 million dollars to help ensure essential species for all our major food crops. Dr. Shankeel Bhatti, Secretary of the Treaty states that “Agricultural biodiversity is essential and provides global insurance that in the future we will be able to adapt to problems like climate change and population growth.” He stated that humans have relied on more than 10,000 different plant species to support food needs over the millennia.

Currently we have only 150 of these species being cultivated to provide food. Of these currently cultivated species 12 of them provide 80% of all world food needs. Four of these 12 valuable food sources – corn, wheat, potatoes and rice are now used to provide more than 50% of world energy requirements. Because farmers have moved to more commercialized methods of production and distribution, crop variety continues to be reduced as it enters the commodity driven marketplace. What do we do?

The Quechua Indians from Peru are being paid from this fund to grow rare potatoes that will survive our globe’s ever-changing climate. There are eleven additional communities around the world that have been selected to develop farms and grow crops that will provide food options in case of a world crisis. To help protect the full diversity of common crop species farmers and agriculture communities are encouraged to protect and store seeds for future human needs. In 2008 a world seed bank was opened in Svalbard, Norway and has already collected over 1.1 million seed varieties.

In this weeks readings Bill McKibben offers additional observations and alternatives to our food supply chain. He discusses the concepts of community-supported agriculture. Over 1,500 active farms now exist in communities across America. These urban centered agricultural farms were spawned from the first American community-supported agriculture farm opened in Massachusetts in 1985. Urban community farming is an old concept being re-invented to provide solutions and options to agricultural consolidation. Brian Halweil confirms this by stating that “people are farming the cities.” Urban farming all over the world is thriving and is producing almost a third of food consumed. Bill McKibben offers possibilities to all of the dreamers. He wants us to have a vision of transformation. Turning ruined crumbling cities blighted by the loss of manufacturing, industry and population from “an urban core giving way to an urban prairie.” A prairie populated with mircro-farms, community gardens centered on expanding the number of species cultivated and harvested in our agriculture food supply chain.

It is said that one of the most important inventions in civilization was the plough. Its earliest form is said to have originated in Egypt or Mesopotamia around 4000 BC. Without this invention it would have been impossible to support additional population. Maybe, it is time for more of us to learn about the plough.
What do you think?

Steve Overbey
Department of Communication Studies

Pp. 71-77 – “Cuban Cultivation”

Cuban Cultivation

A recent article from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that becoming a “locavore,” or one who eats only food grown within a radius of 100 miles is not only a tastier but also more nutritious form of consumption. For those concerned with the preservation of the environment, it also provides a more environmentally friendly alternative. Proponents contend it saves on the cost of long-distance transport by saving fossil fuel and reducing the carbon footprint of the food we eat. In effect, it reduces the greenhouse gases put in the air by “producing, harvesting, processing, and transporting the food.”

McKibben, in this week’s reading, tells how Cuba was essentially forced in to Locavorism following the fall of the Soviet Union. Almost overnight, Cuba found that it could no longer rely on its Leninist ally to trade much needed resources and pump much needed funding in to its isolated economy. Cuba had successfully become an island, both literally and figuratively. With strict trade embargos enforced from much of the international economic system, they had to find a way to become self sufficient, if its population was to survive. Cuban political, economic and social interests would never be the same.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the foods Americans eat are increasingly imported because bananas, coffee, chocolate, fish and shellfish, apple juice, cashew nuts, spices, and other imported foods are produced in greater quantity or less expensively abroad or, in some cases, cannot be produced in the U.S. Since 1980, there has been a general upward trend in average import shares for both crops and animal products. After reading McKibben’s reflections on the changes in Cuba’s import practices, it raises the question: Could we survive by producing all of our own food supply if the United States suddenly became isolated from the rest of the world? Moving it a little closer to home, could Indiana survive if we were suddenly cut off from the rest of the United States? What challenges would we encounter? How would our diet change? What social changes might occur? Considering climate, how would society adapt to crop limitations? Would we find most families kept a small “organoponico” of their own, as thousands of Cubans do? If the current bleak outlook on the state of the environment is accurate, was Cuba’s laboratory simply ahead of its time?

As you think about this week’s reading, think about the ways your life would be impacted by eating locally grown products. What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? Do you think this is the wave of the future? Why or why not?

Mary Beth Googasian
Department of Communication Studies