It’s blog action day, and as the theme this year is climate change it is a no-brainer for me to participate.

First of all, if you are one of the people who is sceptical about humans causing climate change, get yo’ baddass over to the sceptical science website. It’s a website of scientists who are spectical about climate scepticism. (You might want to read that last sentence twice before you get it.) Also, be aware that the ‘business as usual’ lobby, made up of coal, petrochemical, tobacco and other serial polluters have poured millions into persuading people that either (1) there isn’t a problem, (2) the science isn’t clear, or (3) there is nothing we can do about it anyway. Want to know more about how they committed the crime of the century? Look here.

I’ve blogged previously about how to deal with climate sceptics, so let’s move on to the big question: What can we do about it?I’ve written previously that the most effective action we can take by far is to get engaged politically. Join Avaaz (and Get Up if you’re in Australia) and sign the petitions. Get informed (for example by reading Joe Romm’s excellent blog Climate Progress). Go and see your local political representatives. My friend Mary, who is in shall we say the ‘autumn of her life’, pounded the streets knocking on doors collecting signatures to a petition on climate change. Her petition was tabled in parliament, with one of the Senators mentioning Mary by name as an indication of the concern in the community. The local paper interviewed Mary and a feature story and photo appeared.

But the activism rings hollow if we aren’t also trying to reduce our own impact on the environment and the climate. This is where some people get intimidated by the thought that they can’t afford to buy a Prius, eat only organic food, and put zillions of solar panels on their roof. Yes, if you’ve got money to spare those are good ways to spend it. But there are plenty of things we can do that don’t cost money.

I think one of the hard things for a lot of people is to realize that even the little things we do can make a difference. Stop buying bottled water, for example. A shift from eating processed foods to buying fresh fruit and veg and meat can really reduce your carbon footprint. Better still, start to cut down on meat and dairy. Cows are a huge source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is much more potent than CO2.

Here in Melbourne, most car journeys are less than 5km. So ride a bike! My workplace is 13km from my home and I have recently started riding a bike in. Not only do you help save the planet, it is also great for your health.

And what about your electricity use? Do you need to keep the computer running for hours when you are not using it? Do you really need to boil half a kettle just to make one cup of tea? Do you need all that heating or air-conditioning, or should you put on an extra sweater or invest in better insulation? Here in Victoria we have some of the world’s dirtiest electricity, mostly made from burning brown coal. Each KWH causes 1.31 Kg of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.

In the second world war, there was a slogan ‘careless talk costs lives’. I think we need a similar slogan, ‘careless living costs lives’. When you think about the millions of people, particularly in Asia and the Pacific, who face food shortages or flooding (find out more here) it shouldn’t be too hard to make the link. Perhaps some economist can make the calculation of the human cost of CO2 in terms of how much CO2 causes one death from flooding or starvation. Would that make us think twice about turning on the kettle?

Birthday cake

Today is my 46th birthday. I don’t normally like to draw attention to myself, but as it is my birthday I ask your permission for a few moments of your time to read this birthday message.

This year may well be the most important year in human history. An incredible statement I know, and not one that is original to me (it first came across my radar in a letter at the beginning of the year from Tom Burke, one of Britain’s influential campaigners on environmental issues).  Take a moment to think what that means. More significant than 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down. More significant than 1969, the year we landed on the moon. More significant than 1945, or 1917, 1788, 1066 or any other significant date you can think of.

Why is this year so important?  Because what happens this year will largely determine whether our grandchildren live in an enhanced and stable world, or whether they toil, cursing us, in a kind of hell. The whole of human recorded history and civilization has occurred within a fairly narrow temperature range.

Sweet spot

The signs now are that we are heading out of this range, and if we do not commit to taking serious significant action this year, we will set ourselves on an irreversible path leading to a 5-7C warming by the end of this century.  In December this year, in Copenhagen, a new climate treaty will be negotiated.  According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world must commit to halving CO2 emmisions by 2050 if we are to have a chance of keeping global warming within 2C.

But the signs are that we have to act soon.  So far global temperatures have risen by less than 1C, and we are already experiencing catastrophic droughts, floods, hurricanes and the melting of glaciers (the melt water from Himalayan glaciers feed millions in Asia). A recent survey of the Arctic found that the average ice thickness is now just 1.7M and that by 2020 (just over 10 years time) the Arctic will be ice-free in summer. The first population evacuations due to rising sea levels have already taken place and the people of the Maldives are looking for a new home. In my local supermarket the price of rice has doubled in the last couple of years, and will no doubt go higher because 95% of the NSW rice harvest has been lost to drought and floods.

Some people may comfort themselves with the idea that the scientists have got it wrong.  The media (who love controversy) have given lots of exposure to the climate change sceptics.  If you fall into this category, please look at the New Scientist articles on Climate Change, a Guide to the Perplexed, which deals with all the arguments of climate-change sceptics convincingly. And no, global warming is not all because of changes in the sun.  And if you are one of the people who is convinced by Prof. Ian Pilmer’s book Heaven and Earth, I suggest you read this critique of his arguments.

Lots of other people know that we must make these changes but are playing a waiting game.  For example politicians waiting for other countries to commit to CO2 reductions before we commit ourselves.  Or people waiting for new technologies to come along and save us.

There is a branch of social sciences called Game Theory which could be applied to the political scene. Game theory deals with situations where co-operation is needed and benefits all, but where individual players can gain a temporary advantage by acting selfishly.  Game theory predicts that acting selfishly is not a winning strategy in the long term because cooperation breaks down and everyone loses.  The way to win is to encourage cooperation by standing up and taking risks: being prepared to ‘do the right thing’ even if, at first, others do not.  It signals that we are trustworthy and perpared to cooperate.  On the international scene, everyone knows that we must get China on board.  There are signs that the Chinese leadership are aware of the need for action and are prepared to come to the table at Copenhagen. But they are insisting that the developed world makes bigger cuts than the developing world.  This seems to me to be fair enough on the principle that everyone on this planet it entitled to the same carbon footprint.  But, of course, the Western politicians are resisting this.

As far as waiting for technology to save us, well, the technology is already here. And it is not too expensive either ( 0.12%, or about a tenth of a cent on the dollar, on GDP)  What is missing is the political will to apply it.  Big oil and big coal are spending millions of dollars lobbying governments to delay action.

What can we do?  First of all, get informed (follow some of the links in this message, subscribe to the posts from http://climateprogress.org). Then go and see your local politician and keep writing to them. They may not be that well informed themselves. Politicians often don’t have time to think and simply respond to pressure.  Inform others (pass on this email if you like).  And take action in your own life. It doesn’t have to cost anything – even going vegetarian one more meal a week and buying less processed food can make a big difference.  But if I had to choose between being personally more green or campaigning for political action, I believe the more effective choice would be to become politically active.

If you have got this far, then I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this. It is the best birthday gift you could give me.

A marketing guru once told me, ‘Fear sells’.

I generally try to bear that in mind when the media is getting hysterical about something.  Fear sells newspapers.  Fear gets an audience on TV and radio. Fear brings visitors to websites.

I once read that more people are killed each year by vending machines than by sharks.  But while shark attacks make great newspaper copy (with suitably gory photos), when was the last time you read about someone being killed by a vending machine?

The latest global pandemic turns out to be no more dangerous than ordinary influenza viruses.  Make no mistake, ordinary influenza can be a killer if you are elderly, weak or immunologically compromised.  But it is not something I generally get too worried about.  Eating a healthy diet, supplemented, where necessary, by vitamins (especially vitamins C and D) probably provides more protection than influenza vaccines (which only protect against one strain of influenza).  In fact, if you are following the advice on this website you are probably doing OK.

However, my kids were quite affected by all the media talk (understandably) and asked me to explain what it was all about.  This is what I told them:

1. The influenza virus is found in several species, including humans, pigs and birds.  It has developed the art of ‘mutating’ into new forms as an effective survival mechanism. This means that unlike other viruses such as measles and mumps, getting the ‘flu once is no guarantee that you will not get it again.  Actually, strictly speaking it doesn’t ‘mutate’ but it swaps genes with other flu strains to produce new genetic variations which our immune systems do not recognize. Clever huh!
2. Normally pig flu only infects pigs, bird flu only infects birds and human flu only infects humans.  But when humans and pigs or humans and birds live in close proximity it can happen that humans get infected with swine or bird flu.  This by itself is not dangerous (except for the person concerned) because the pig or bird flu can still not be transmitted from human to human.  But, if a person becomes inflected with human and pig (or bird) flu at the same time then there is a chance that the viruses can do their gene-swapping thing and produce a new strain that is part human virus and part animal virus.  Such a ‘new’ virus could be transmissible from human to human, and would be sufficiently foreign to our systems that we would have no natural immunity to it.  This is what has happened with the new Mexican swine flu. Fortunately it appears to not be too deadly to most of those who catch it.
3. The new strain of avian flu, which we heard a lot about a couple of years ago does seem to be particularly deadly to humans.  So far, however, it has not mutated into a form which is transmitted from human to human. If that happens then we have a more serious problem.  The panic-mongers often refer to the 1918-1919 global pandemic which affected about half of the word’s population and killed up to 100 million. However some new research indicates that many of those fatalities were due to a secondary infection by the Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria.  Nowadays that can be treated by antibiotics and would not be a killer.
4. Factory farms are breeding grounds for new flu strains.  Having lots of animals, often not in the best of health, cramped alongside each other creates the ideal situation for viruses to multiply and cross-infect.  Throw regular contact with humans into the mix (often poorly-paid farm workers are not in the best health either) and BANG, there you have it! Switch to free-range eggs and meat if you haven’t already done so (or go vegetarian).
5. Some common-sense steps can help you avoid any flu, including any new nasties.

• Keep healthy, get enough sleep and exercise and eat healthy foods.  This includes vitamin supplements, probiotics and anti-oxidants.
• Flu is transmitted via air-born water droplets when people sneeze.  Wearing a simple face-mask over the nose and mouth can help avoid breathing in those droplets when you are in public spaces. Confined spaces, such as crowded trains and buses, are particularly vulnerable to this kind of transmission.
• Our hands come into regular contact with potentially infected surfaces.  Think of door knobs, hand-rails, money, all of them are touched by thousands of hands. For this reason it is particularly important to wash our hands regularly and thoroughly, especially before eating.  If you really want to be careful you could even wear some disposable gloves when you are out, taking them off when you get home and when eating.
• Knowing that not everybody is as careful about hygiene, you might consider only eating food that you have prepared yourself (or where you know the person preparing it has been careful).

I hope this helps.  Stay well!

Women marching for peace (photo: Vertigonen, Flickr)

Reaffirming Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Vision

Julia Ward Howe offered her Mother’s Day Proclamation to the world in 1870. Her dream was the establishment of an international Mothers’ Day Festival dedicated to the cause of nonviolent resolution of conflict and international solidarity among all women. Her pacifist consciousness had been provoked by the bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War. Her activism was cultivated in the struggles for abolition of slavery and the quest for women’s suffrage. She had the proclamation translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, working for the establishment of Mother’s Day in concert with women internationally celebrating peace and women’s empowerment.

Howe died in 1910, four years before President Woodrow Wilson officially declared the day in 1914 in response to the burgeoning success of the movement she inspired. But Wilson avoided any mention of the thrust of Howe’s cause in his declaration, instead emphasizing only the nurturing “home and hearth” dimension of motherhood. He also spurned the internationalist concern that was central to Howe’s consciousness, distorting this into American nationalism. Howe’s central concerns, the universality of motherhood and its natural expression in anti-war sentiment, was excised from the official meaning of the day.

President Wilson proclaimed: “Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the said Joint Resolution, do hereby direct the government officials to display the United States flag on all government buildings and do invite the people of the United States to display the flag at their homes or other suitable places on the second Sunday in May as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”

Compare this to Howe’s far more high minded vision, still so desperately needed in this suffering divided world. Here is the text of her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation, so prescient in its understanding, so courageous in its call, so plaintiff in its currency nearly a century and a half later.

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

This is by Jonathan Klate (via the Network of Spiritual Progressives) who resides in Amherst, Massachusetts where he writes frequently about spirituality, compassionate politics, and the relationship between these two. Please feel welcome to forward.

Sticking their head in the sand

From time to time we may come across people who either:

a) deny that climate change is happening, or
b) say that climate change is normal and nothing to worry about, or
c) deny that the present climate change is the result of human activity.

Such people may present various convincing and scientific-sounding arguments.  Some of them may even be Republican politicians (most of whom, apparently, don’t believe that climate change poses a threat).

It is important, where we can, to answer such arguments. Back in the 1950s there was an overwhelming scientific consensus that smoking tobacco is dangerous to health.  The tobacco companies produced lots of supposedly scientific studies and quotes from “scientists” to show that it was not harmful.  Their aim was not to win the argument (they knew they could not) but to create enough doubt in the minds of most people to prevent any action being taken.  The same is true today with climate change.  Doubt leads to inaction.

If we come across such people it helps to know how to spot the standard arguments and how to deal with them.  This is a short guide, which I hope may prove helpful.  All of these issues are covered in depth in a New Scientist article: Climate Change: a guide for the perplexed

1.Global temperatures have been falling over the last decade. People saying this may cite a Met Office Hadley Centre report which stated that 1997/98 was the warmest year and that since 2003 temperatures have cooled.  In fact the Met Office now says that the ten warmest years on record have been since 1997 (see http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081216.html ) and that human activity is the cause.  The earlier data did not take into account sea temperatures (which cover 2/3 of the earth’s surface).  Measurements from satellites also appear to show global cooling.  In reality this is evidence of the greenhouse effect, because the earth is losing less heat. (If you look through a thermal imager at two people at the North Pole, one wearing a T-shirt and the other wearing full insulated furs, the one wearing the furs will appear cooler)  For a full discussion of this see See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14527-climate-myths-global-warming-stopped-in-1998.html
A variation of this argument is that Antarctic temperatures have been falling. This may be true, but is the result of changes in circular winds at the antarctic preventing warmer air reaching it. It is not evidence that the planet as a whole is cooling. See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11648

2. Historically CO2 levels have been much higher.  This is true, but not something to take comfort in.  The highest CO2 concentrations were during the Triassic period when the earth was much hotter and drier than now.  The poles were ice-free and sea levels were high. Much of the USA was a shallow lagoon!  Over millions of years that CO2 was captured by plants and trees and deposited in the earth in the form of fossil fuels.  By burning fossil fuels we are busy reversing the process.

3. Rising CO2 is a result of global warming, not the cause of it. This is a partial truth, and again not something to give us any comfort.  The oceans are huge sinks of dissolved CO2.  As temperatures rise the capacity of the oceans to store CO2 goes down and some of the dissolved CO2 is released.  Historically, it may be true that rises in CO2 have followed global temperature rises.  But historically climate change was not caused by humans burning fossil fuels.  The scary thing is that this is another of those ‘tipping points’ where human activity can trigger an accelerating feedback loop.  See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11640

4. Climate change is a natural phenomenon which happens independently of human activity.  Again, this is a partial truth.  In geological terms, humans have only been around very very recently, so obviously we have not been the cause of the quite large climate variations which have happened in the past.  Other causes of climate change include sunspot activity (lots of sunspots = lower temperatures) atmospheric dust caused by volcanos or meteorite impact (perhaps triggering ice-ages) and slight changes in the earth’s tilt and orbit (Milankovich cycles). However none of these factors can explain the current warming. Sunspot activity has a relatively small impact on climate, and there is no correlation between sunspot activity the the warming over the last 40 years. Milankovich cycle theory does not predict any change in the next 20,000 to 50,000 years. And we don’t have any major volcanoes or meteorites happening right now.  See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650

5.  Lots of eminent scientists question global warming. This depends on what you call ‘lots’ and ‘eminent’. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change represents a cautious consensus position of thousands of scientists and scientific organizations. A January 2009 poll of 3146 earth scientists found that 82% answered yes to the question: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”. Of the 77 climatologists actively engaged in research, 75 answered yes (97.4%). The scientists most likely to answer no were petroleum geologists and meteorologists. Even scientists funded by the coal and oil industry reported back in 1995 that ‘The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,’ (see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html)  In fact it is rare to have such a high degree of scientific consensus.  See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11654

6. It is a conspiracy to keep the developing nations from advancing economically. Al Gore has made $50 million from his film. The sad facts are that global warming will hurt the poorest (most of whom are in developing nations) most and first. We are already seeing the results in the form of rising food prices – something that will only get worse.  Many of the scientists involved in the IGPCC are from developing nations, including the chairman Rajendra Pachauri from India.
Al Gore went on record a few days ago to say that everything he has made from the film, the book and his green investments, has gone into a not-for profit educational charity.  See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMJ3Xow9ZGM&feature=player_embedded

7. Climate change may be a good thing and we will adapt to it.

civilisation has become possible in a fairly narrow range of temperatures

On a cold winter’s morning when you are struggling to keep warm it can be tempting to think this way. But it ignores the incredible fragility of the earth’s ecosystems. Species adapt to a particular climate and environment and the kind of rapid change we are experiencing (and will continue to experience) leads to mass extinctions. No species is an island. The loss of any one species affects many more. More importantly, this ignores the fact that we are not talking a minor change. So far we have only experienced less than 1C rise on pre-industrial temperatures. If we are to limit temperatures to a 2C rise, we will need to cut back emissions to half of 1990 levels by the year 2050. If we continue on our present path (ie, do nothing) then we are talking about a catastrophic 5-6C rise by the end of the century. Note this is an average temperature rise. Over land it will be much higher.

Unless we can cut emissions by half by 2050 we are looking at catastropic temperature rises (source: Nature, May 2009)

With that we can expect 50% of species lost, vast deserts in what are currently the world’s food baskets and up to 2M sea levels rise.  See http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/22/an-introduction-to-global-warming-impacts-hell-and-high-water/

(For the graphics and much more information I am indebted to http://climageprogress.org , the indispensible blog on the subject.

This post, Our Moral Obligation to Act by Lise Van Susteren, M.D., was first published on HuffingtonPost and has also appeared on the Climate Progress blog.

I find this an encouraging sign that awareness of climate change is reaching beyond the “green” and “environmentalist” sectors. Politicians started to take it seriously when an economist, Lord Stern, wrote about the impact of climate change on the economy. If the medical professions start to take this threat seriously it can only help move things forward. After all, we are all concerned about our health and are willing to put our dollars – whether directly or through taxes – into looking after our health.

Once the health sector starts telling us that climate change is a serious threat to our health, perhaps we might consider investing in things like solar panels and insulation alongside our other health expenditure.

Here is the article:

I am a doctor. A psychiatrist. Over the years I have heard many troubling stories about the human condition. I have worked with individuals who were “on the ledge” emotionally. I have worked with people who fantasize about killing people, and some who have. I have listened to people recount being tortured, abused. I have evaluated the psychological states of foreign leaders who threaten world security. I have heard the details about children who have died at the hands of people who were out of their minds with drugs or illness. People have died in my arms, dropped dead at my feet.

Nothing has prepared me for what I am currently hearing: scientists all over the world warning us about the threat of catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

As a member of several organizations that involve professionals working in the field of mental health, I am stunned that this threat to the health of the planet and the public is so underplayed by these organizations and their members. An official from one leading organization expressed regrets that she was unable to attend a recent forum wrestling with the psychological and mental health aspects of climate change and noted, “no one on the staff is interested.” The person she anointed in her place cancelled.

One of the missions of these associations is to relieve human suffering. As practitioners we help people to face reality. We chip away at their denial knowing it can be a cover for behaviors that destroy their lives. When they see the world more clearly, we urge them to take charge – warning of the dangers of being passive.

Scientists every day are telling us that climate change is happening far faster than anyone had predicted and that the magnitude of the problem is unfathomable. “We have an emergency,” warns NASA scientist James Hansen. “People don’t know that. Continued ignorance and denial could make tragic consequences unavoidable.”

Why are the organizations and their members, those most skilled at exposing the danger of denial and destructive behaviors, so silent about this crisis? Are they in denial themselves? Surely the science isn’t disputed. Surely we don’t believe that destroying life on our planet is “not our problem.”

Our canon of ethics says we have a duty to protect the public health and to participate in activities that contribute to it.

Where, then, are the journal articles, the committee reports, the mission statements, action plans, letters to the editor, presentations, etc that attest to the gravity of what we are hearing? Where are the recommendations that show how to break through denial and get people to change – quickly? Are we not the very organizations to seize upon warnings and confront the world before it is too late?

We see through resistance, excuses, faulty reasoning. We “get” urgency, we “get” life-long consequences. We see the anger, anxiety and depression caused by the mistakes and shortcomings of a previous generation. We know about trauma from repeated exposure to horrifying events. We are trained, indeed we are ethically bound, to respond to emergencies.

What are we waiting for?

We are already seeing wildfires, floods, sea level rise, storms, droughts, risks to our national security, and a mass extinction.

Lethal global overheating – strike the innocuous sounding “global warming” – is not something that may happen in the next century or even mid-century – it is happening now.

All of us, urgently and collectively, have a duty to warn our patients, co-workers, families, neighbors, friends. We have a duty to act – within our professional organizations, in our communities, offices and homes. Climate scientists are desperately trying to tell us to reduce our carbon emissions – to stop building new coal plants, to switch to clean renewable energy, to embrace energy efficiency – to “pay any price, bear any burden.”

Mental health professionals vigorously endorse requirements to report cases of child abuse. It is a legal obligation, but it is also a moral one.

Is it any less compelling a moral obligation, in the name of all children now and in the future, to report that we are on track to hand over a planet that may be destroyed for generations to come?

I respectfully request that we, as mental health professionals, make a unified stand insupport of actions to reduce the threat of catastrophic climate change.

Albrecht Durer: Apocalypse of St John

God ‘will not give us a happy ending’, says the Archbishop of Canterbury, if we don’t ‘turn away from the selfishness and greed’ which lead us to ignore our interdependence with the natural world.

It is good to hear this kind of message. Some of the things I have read from parts of the Christian evangelical movement suggest that they are not overly concerned about the environment because we are in the last days when God is going to decisively intervene again in history.  Well, sorry guys, but that is just a cop out.   The Jews at Masada thought among much the same lines, and look what happened to them.

In fact all religions say that we should try to live in harmony with the environment – though they come at it from different perspectives.  The Abrahamic religions see mankind as steward of the earth with a responsibility to look after it. Buddhism and the Eastern religions think more in terms of overcoming our addiction to posessions and recognizing the law of karma – that our actions have consequences that will catch up with us, whether in this lifetime or beyond.

The next Parliament of the World’s Religions (Melbourne, December 3-9 2009) will major on the environment and, no doubt, have lots of religious leaders telling us that we need to mend our ways. I am much more interested in exploring the HOW of that question.  Yes, our present lifestyle and economy is unsustainable.  What might an alternative look like?  What do spiritual communities have to contribute?

A recent article in Tikkun magazine by David Korten on The Economics Obama Needs to Know did look at these issues and concluded:

As we consider the need for bold initiatives by visionary leaders, we must also keep in mind the deeper questions that rarely find their way into political debates or public discourse. “What is the source of true happiness and well-being?” “What is the purpose of economic life?” “What does it mean to be human on a living spaceship with finite resources?” “What is the human role in the great drama of evolution’s continued unfolding?”

These are deeply spiritual questions that call us to an epic quest of discovery and the great work of redesigning our societies to bring forth the world of our shared human dream. There is a need for people of faith to step forward to make these questions a part of our public conversation

What follows are some of my thoughts on areas to explore.  As I wrote on the Initiatives of Change website:

Economic life is about meeting the needs of people. But all too often it seems that the basic needs of people take second place to other imperatives – whether it is economic dogmas, political ideologies, or the selfish interests of shareholders, executives or trades unions. Where selfish interests dominate, corruption follows, undermining a society’s democratic and legal protections and impoverishing everyone.

From the earliest days of Initiatives of Change, people from all sides of industry – workers, management, farmers and financiers have found common cause in working together to meet the needs of humanity. There is a change that happens when people look beyond their own self-interest, or the narrow interests of their group, which releases new energies and creative teamwork.

With our growing knowledge of the environmental impact of our economic activities, there is a further shift that needs to be made: how to meet the needs of people, not just today but for the future. Activities which degrade the environment are stealing from future generations for the sake of today’s unsustainable lifestyles.

Some areas to look at might be:

• Job sharing. (An idea which gained some ground during the mini-recession of the early ’80s but then died when that recession ended.)  If technology continually makes each worker more productive, then full employment can only be achieved if we keep producing more and more. Since the environment tells us that this is no longer an option, we have to look at reducing employment.  Job sharing is a way of sharing that employment around. We all keep working but all of us work less hours.  For it to work takes qualities of unselfishness and teamwork.  Prima donnas don’t easily job-share.
• Community living.  We have fantastic neighbours who are always ready to lend us stuff and we will do the same.  Not every house needs a lawnmower and a full set of power tools. In less affluent times and places this is (was) second nature. People help each other out and share what little they have. But it is not always easy. As with job-sharing, it take a graciousness and unselfishness which are spiritual qualities.
• Investing in our souls.  Instead of spending our wealth on having more, how about spending it on being more. Could it become normal for people to spend a third of their income on self-development, whether in spiritual communities or secular alternatives.  All the evidence suggests that we would be happier for it. In fact this kind of investment is probably necessary if we are to make the changes necessary for community living and job-sharing.  And of course, don’t lets forget the arts.  Unleashing our inner creativity, participating in art (as opposed to just owning art) is part and parcel of investing our souls.

There is probably much more to say on this and areas to explore. What do you think?  What are the conversations we need to be having to shape a sustainable and healthy future?

A while back when I checked my carbon footprint I was surprised to see that my eating habits are one of the biggest factors in the 1.8 planets it would take if everyone lived like me.  And this is despite the fact that we eat hardly any processed foods.  Nevertheless, I do want to live more sustainably and this means making some changes.

The good news is that foods which are good for the planet are also the healthiest for us! Here are some guidelines to eating sustainably.

• Avoid processed foods.  Not only is it bad for you, it has probably contains ingredients which have travelled long distances, has been processed in factories using much energy and water, and is wrapped in packaging which carries it’s own environmental cost.
• Buy locally grown produce from local markets or greengrocers.  It is more likely to be ripened naturally if it has not had to travel long distances, and will taste better.
• Eat mostly plants.  It takes far more of the earth’s land and water to produce meat than grains, fruits, nuts and vegetables.
• Eat organic, where possible, and don’t peel your potatoes or carrots.  The healthiest stuff is in the skin anyway and if you are eating organic you can eat the skin without fear of pesticides.
• If you must eat meat then try to stick to free-range poultry (fed off scraps if possible).  Cows are particularly problematic as they produce a lot of methane and use a lot of water.  For us Aussies, Kangaroo is probably the best meat – it is very low fat, and has a very low environmental impact.  Kangas eat native grasses and can live in very arid conditions.
• Try to avoid dairy for the same reasons. Sadly Kangaroos don’t produce much milk, so you won’t see Kangaroo cheese on the shelves any time soon.
• Best of all, if you have got a garden (and a water tank if you live in Australia), then try to grow your own veggies.

A friend, Simon Kerr (also an awesome musician) has been reading Michael Polan’s In Defence of Food, which seems to bring some much needed common sense to the whole question of what we should be eating in order to be healthy.

Polan criticizes the attempt to deconstruct food – to break it down into it’s constituent ‘nutrients’ in order to then re-constitute those nutrients as manufactured food.  As usual, when we attemtp to reduce things to their components we miss something vital. As an illustration, there is a big difference between my wife and the bag of different chemicals (mostly water) that she is made of. However this “reductionism” is the way that science often works.

In the field of nutrition, the result has been a series of health fads – obsessions with the latest “essential nutrient” which is the key to health.  Low-fat diets, high-fibre diets, avoiding saturated fats, taking vitamin supplements, essential fatty acids, trace minerals, anti-oxidants etc etc.  The list goes on.  Polan’s advice seems to be to chill and just go back to eating old-fashioned real food (as opposed to processed food), not too much of it and mostly plants.  As guidelines he suggests:

1. Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food (Mums are as confused as the rest of us, so best to go back a couple of generations before the advent of processed food).
2. Avoid food products which come with health claims (low fat, high fibre, etc) – they are likely to be highly processed.
3. Especially avoid food products with ingredients which are (a) unfamiliar (b) unpronounceable and (c) more than five in number. These are likely to be highly processed.
4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. Farmers markets are great places to find fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality (in other words, when it is ripe)
5. Pay more, eat less.  Real food is more expensive to produce because it involves less short-cuts than mass-produced factory-farmed produce. And most of us eat more than we need to (and waste a lot of what we buy)
6. Eat mostly plants – especially leaves.
7. Eat more like the French/Japanese/Italians/Greeks – cultures with a traditional healthy diet. Traditions exist because they work and have lasted the ages. Pay attention to how a culture eats, not just what it eats. For example the French culture of small portions, no snacking between meals, eating communally and slowly.
8. Cook, and if you can, plant a garden. It is the best way to escape the fast food culture.
9. Eat like an omnivore – try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. Variety is good, and promotes diversity in the fields (which is a good thing).

This is taken from a lengthy article by Polan in the New York Times giving his ideas (read it here). It might be an alternative to reading the book (which I haven’t read).

As has often been pointed out, we are facing a perfect storm of crises:  The economic crisis, the environmental crisis – and before that there was the food crisis (it is still there, it is just that the other crises have pushed it out of the headlines) and in the developed world we also have the health crisis – soaring rates of cancers, diabetes, heart disease, autism and Alzheimers.

It strikes me that all of these different crises have their roots in one aspect of our culture: the fact that businesses and corporations focus on their profits while leaving it to others (governments, future generations, people in other countries etc) to take responsibility for the wider ethical consequences of their actions.

As Albert Einstein once said, “the problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”  It is no use trying to prop up the system and get back to the way things were.  The system itself is what has caused the problems and we have to create a new system.

As others have pointed out, Adam Smith, the father of capitalism always said that capitalism would only work if people behaved morally and ethically.  I take that to mean that businesses and people working in those businesses have to take moral responsibility for the consequences of their activities.  For example, the food industry needs to look at the effects on people’s health, banks need to lend responsibly and avoid the abstractions and distortions of leveraging, and all of us need to take responsibility for global warming.

200 years ago, people in Britain were sent to the gulags of Australia’s prison gangs for stealing a loaf of bread or poaching a rabbit.  Those of us today who are living unsustainably are stealing from future generations.  We need a revolution of thought to make that just as unacceptable as stealing someone’s wallet is today.