Where do These Footprints Lead?

(A few excerpts from Simple Prosperity, Waiting for Q, and The New Normal)

An ecological footprint is the total acreage of land and sea required to cook up an individual or collective lifestyle, whether simple or extravagant. Not surprisingly, the mainstream American lifestyle requires twenty acres per person – – about twenty football fields of resources from all over the planet, year after year. That’s roughly twice the average Italian or German footprint and seven times the Indian footprint.

Given the finite acreage available on this small but very popular planet, the arithmetic seems to grant each human a theoretical “right” to about 3.7 acres, but it’s not that easy! Those biological and geological resources are unequally distributed, and not insignificantly must also meet the needs of the rest of the world’s species. (By weight, humanity is only 0.01 percent of the life on Earth). Considering inadequate savings rates; high levels of stress and dissatisfaction; corruption at national levels and yes, the apocalyptic decline in natural resilience, it’s obvious our own footprints will soon be shrinking, and many are okay with that. With any luck they’ll adjust to a pre-Pop Tart-era lifestyle when we had less pocket money but arguably higher levels of gladness to be alive.

Here’s the key question: given this scientifically proven prognosis, what joyfully moderate lifestyle can we co-invent (quickly!) to create a less genocidal way of life? Why not artfully ride the horse in the direction it’s going? Won’t other species be eternally grateful for a saner, more evolved crew of humans?

In Radical Simplicity, author and activist Jim Merkel describes a project in which 75 teachers and students spent six weeks researching and demonstrating a three acre-footprint. With a spare three acres as a base of support, a person can consume enough food to remain healthy, but items like wine, beer, cheese, butter, and meat aren’t feasible. They only appear in the slightly larger six-acre footprint. Likewise, air travel and transportation by taxi are not part of the three-acre budget. Telephone use, medicine, medical insurance, small appliances, and computer use are available, but only in small, cooperative proportions.  Still, Merkel observed that participants adapted quickly to a small footprint without much discomfort. “Just like going overseas or moving to a new town, once the culture shock is over, the new life is just the new life,” he says.

Merkel, who has personally experienced all scales of footprint, believes passionately that with our current 20-acre blow-out we’ll destroy the survival zone we and our fellow species evolved with. Surgically lopping off 4/5 of that footprint, he insists, “With careful choices that reduce our mobility needs and housing size, a six-acre option could look like a typical North American lifestyle, only downsized, with less clutter and less waste.”

Related thoughts from Waiting for Q, a turning point novel

Marc thought about the average eco-footprint of a Denver resident, whose water was typically imported along with many of the ‘required’ consumer goods. Although Denver had a world-class light rail system, cars were eating up the metro landscape like vultures at a roadkill. Yet there were many opportunities for improvement: if a given Denver resident’s lifestyle was low in meat consumption as well as food processing and packaging – and if much of it came from regional sources, his footprint would begin to fall below average. If air travel was occasional rather than routine, and if this individual converted Colorado sunshine into kilowatts, he might boast a 12-acre footprint, especially in mild (old-fashioned?) weather when furnaces required less gas and houses needed less cooling.

As Marc told his students, Earth has in recent decades been running an ecological deficit since it now takes natural systems one and a half years to regenerate what humanity uses in a year. Simply put, there’s literally more destruction going on than production. Any region that runs a deficit meets its demands by importing from other regions. Typically a footprint debtor cashes out its own ecological assets and also emits more carbon dioxide than local forests, grasslands, and oceans can absorb. Marc shook his head woefully as he walked, wondering how many acres the Trump “household” required. Certainly way more than 100, and if every human lived at that greedy level, humanity would need the resources of at least ten additional Earths. (Sorry, Not Available).

Marc advocated for sustainable redevelopment of towns and cities, based on what a given region could supply, perpetually. Though Denver’s biological capacity should define how many people could live there, Denver was perceived as a lifestyle mecca and its population was projected to double by 2050. Thoughts like these weighed heavily on this well-intentioned citizen, as if he were carrying a 50-pound sack of coal on his back.

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Related Thoughts from Simple Prosperity, The New Normal, and Affluenza

“We live in a time in which every living system is in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating as our economy grows.” Paul Hawken

Author and change-agent Paul Hawken views our dilemma level-headedly: “Join a diverse group of people in a room—different genders, races, ages, occupations, and levels of education—and ask them to describe a world they want to live in 10 years from now. “Do we want to drive two hours to work? No. Do we want to be healthy? Yes. Do we want to live in places that are safe? Do we want our children to grow up in a world where they are hopeful? Do we want to be able to worship without fear of persecution? Do we want to live in a world where nature is rebounding and not declining? No one disagrees; our vision is the same. What we need to do is identify, together, the design criteria for how we get there.”

 

Don’t these warning signs look a little too familiar? One of the most time-worn slogans of an acncient way of thinking is, “An economy must always grow, in service to both the Royalty and the peasants.” While it’s true that our current $20 trillion of debt drives a perceived need for growth (to make debt payments or go bankrupt), I’m convinced most humans would rather steadily buy back that debt, then dramatically shift our cultural identity, giving ourselves more time to take care of things. If the buyer must always beware and if our economy is destroying the nature we call home, why not just write a new script with a less deadly plot line?

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Physicist, author and humanist Donnella Meadows asked poignantly, “Since the Earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature’s diversity is gone?” Eco-psychologist Terrance O’Connor believes ‘saving the world’ is really about enlightened self-interest. “I act not out of guilt but out of self-love. I break through my denial and see that humankind is facing an absolutely unprecedented crisis. I act not out of obligation or idealism, but because I live in a straw house and I smell smoke.”

Meadows, a co-author of the Club of Rome’s prescient but largely ignored, “The Limits of Growth,” advocated an economy based on meeting needs precisely. After all, if a sustainable culture is built on trust, natural wealth, and fairness, what else do we really need? “People don’t need enormous cars, they need respect,” she wrote. “They don’t need closets full of clothes, they need to feel attractive and they need excitement and variety and beauty. People don’t need electronic equipment; they need something worthwhile to do with their lives. People need identity, community, challenge, acknowledgement, love, and joy.” Her point is that these intrinsic forms of wealth can often be acquired without financial transactions and the various stressors that come with those transactions.

I like the analogy of a backpacker when I think about the emerging American lifestyle. The backpacker doesn’t want a lot of junk in her backpack. She wants only items that are ingeniously designed, like a Whisper Lite cook stove, a warm fleece sweater, a good pair of boots that can go the extra miles, and food that’s full of slow-release energy. The backpacker brings along skills she has learned, the stories she can tell, a well-designed tent, maybe a flute or a great book. On her journey, the world is a splash of light and shadow, with mountain peaks in the distance and bighorn sheep standing guard. If we’re smart, the awakening American lifestyle will deliver clarity, a sense of wonder, and great health, as if life itself was an energizing, mind-bending backpacking trip.

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In a thorough study of twenty-two civilizations throughout history, historian Arnold Toynbee concluded that the most successful among them made graceful transitions (soft landings) from materially-dominated values to spiritual, aesthetic, and artistic values — what he called the path of “progressive simplification.” Essentially, they learned how to meet the most needs with the least amount of resources and effort, developing an ethic that supported and ritualized this approach. They implemented policies that valued cultural traditions; they took care of nature with terraces that minimized erosion from hillside farms; they minimized conflict with other countries and cultures. One example is the Japan culture shift in the 17^th century. Land was in short supply, forest resources were being depleted, and minerals such as gold, silver, and copper were suddenly scarce as well. Japan went from being resource-rich to resource-poor, but its culture adapted by developing a national ethic that centered on moderation and efficiency.

An attachment to the material things in life was seen as demeaning, while the advancement of crafts and human knowledge were seen as lofty goals. The real wealth was more time, relationships, and experiences. Training and education in aesthetics and ritualistic arts flourished, resulting in disciplines like fencing, martial arts, the tea ceremony, flower arranging, literature, art, and skillful use of the abacus. Shoguns established strict policies for reforestation. The three largest cities in Japan had 1500 bookstores among them, and most people had access to basic education, health care, and the necessities of life, further enriching a culture that required very few resources per unit of happiness. (More smiles per hour).

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Warning Signs of “Overshoot” and Potential Collapse of Civilizations

 

Resource stocks fall; wastes and pollution accumulate.

 

Exploitation of scarcer, more distant, deeper, or more dilute resources.

 

Growing demands for capital, resources, and labor used by the military or industry to gain access to and defend resources that are increasingly concentrated in more remote or hostile regions.

 

Growing chaos in natural systems, with “natural” disasters more frequent and more severe because of less resilience in the environmental system.

 

Capital, resources, and labor are diverted to activities compensating for the loss of services formerly provided without cost by nature (for example, water purification, flood control, pest control and pollination.

 

Investment in human resources (education, healthcare, shelter, and infrastructure) postponed in order to pay debt, increase security, or build capital.

 

Declining respect for the instruments of collective government as they are used increasingly by the elites to preserve or increase their share of a declining resource.

Adapted from Beyond the Limits: the 30 year update of Limits to Growth, Chelsea Green

Social critic John de Graaf refers to current U.S. taxation policies as “you’re on your ownership.” A forty-year trend of income tax rollbacks has decreased quality of life overall in the U.S., reducing levels of trust, family cohesion, literacy, happiness, and pre-school education in tangibly tragic ways.  In contrast, Western European countries invested in their social contracts; their social infrastructure. “Their provision of more public goods like healthcare, education, transportation, and common space, reduced the need and desire of individuals to stressfully maximize their own incomes,” says de Graaf.

 

Cultural change occurs everywhere: in churches, workplaces, cafes and cyber salons, associations, and discussion groups; in the media, where actors, columnists, and newscasters imprint behavior; in stores, where what we buy often expresses who we are; in the chambers of city councils, state legislatures, and U.S. Congress. But most importantly, cultural changes occur in our minds, and this is where the tide is turning.  (May it turn quickly, like a flock of geese or school of brilliantly colored fish!)

 

The Shape of an Affordable Economy

* As our collective demand for products falls, so will prices, as we’ve seen repeatedly with gasoline after the recessions hit.

 

* When we design communities to fit human needs rather than developer or automobile needs, our whole lifestyle requires less money. Public transit will be far less expensive per capita than America’s current, inefficient fleet of cars.

 

* Protecting and restoring nature delivers free services like water purification, pollination, and recreation that we now pay for. For example, restoring wetlands in New Orleans, along the Mississippi River, and elsewhere will potentially save hundreds of billions of dollars by preventing floods.

 

* Getting rid of packaging, glossy green lawns, and food waste also takes a huge chunk out of the collective cost of our lifestyle. So does advertising; we currently spend $900 per capita to be shelled with unwanted information, which of course is embedded in the cost of products and services. Less consumption means less advertising as well as less debt. And less debt means less interest on the debt.

 

* Reasonable reductions in meat consumption, air travel, and energy-intensive materials like cement, aluminum, paper, and synthetic chemicals increase personal and national income because producing them uses a lot of expensive energy.

 

* Green chemistry, which shortens the steps and softens the environmental cost of making chemicals, in turn lowers the cost of everything manufactured.

 

* Credit unions can lend capital at lower interest rates, and already save borrowers $8 billion a year in interest on loans.

 

* Preventive health approaches and more empathetic, service-oriented doctors and nurses lower the cost of maintaining our health. Similarly, better industrial design prevents unhealthy pollution.

 

* Eliminating subsidies that result in the destruction of ecosystems will save the world about $700 billion annually, about a third of that in the U.S. Rather than drawing down aquifers, letting soil erode, clear-cutting forests, and over-fishing the world’s fish species, we will learn how to make best use of each resource, and how to harvest only a sustainable yield.

 

* In the new economy, recycling will become a ritualized, standard practice, embedded in design and policy, so less costly extraction is required.

 

* In a world with fewer materialistic goals and priorities, there is less need for crime control, lawsuits, and security systems. An emphasis on social support as well as greater equality nurtures a society that is more trusting, less fearful and has less “status anxiety” – a direct cause of crime.

 

* When we avoid designing for the “worst case scenario,” we save huge amounts of money. For example, why spend a third more for an office building’s oversized air conditioning system to handle the hottest day of the year? Why not instead let employees work at home on that day?

Source: David Wann, The New Normal, St. Martin’s Press, New York

 

A number of years ago, I found an explanation for the pleasant feelings I often experience when I’m writing, gardening, playing music, or spending time in nature. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that name three times backwards) calls it “flow.” He describes this phenomenon as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” Csikszentmihalyi’s research demonstrates that the process of an activity can be more important than the end product. When we are fully in the process, fully focused on a task, we feel alive. The activity becomes its own reward. After a flow experience, we are not only refreshed, but we’ve increased our skills, sensitivity, and self-confidence.

 

To be genuinely happy, he observes, we need to actively create our experiences and our lives, rather than passively letting media and marketers create it for us. The pathway to greatest happiness goes beyond mindless consuming to the heightened, enlightened realm of mindful challenge, where we are engaged, connected, and alive. Becoming actively engaged in what we’re doing transforms moments of our lives from the routine to the extraordinary.

 

A friend of mine, Lana Wagner, is in the flow when she’s working in her garden. “I like what it does for my head. Sometimes, when I’m watering a healthy crop, or planting seeds, or cultivating between rows, I’m not thinking about anything at all—a radical switch from my previous life as an overworked bureaucrat.” She came to her senses eight or ten years ago, choosing a pathway to mental clarity in her gardens. “People tell me I should take care of my crops more efficiently—by using store-bought seedlings, toxic fertilizers and pesticides — so I could spend less time out there. But that way of growing disconnects me and diminishes the quality of the garden. The whole point is to spend more time taking care of the plants and less time in front of the TV and at the mall.” She added, “I love the opportunity to take care of one little chunk of the Earth, and to feel like I’m in control of at least one thing in my life.”

 

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“The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. . . . It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.” Robert Kennedy, 1968

 

Imagine receiving an annual holiday letter from distant friends, reporting their best year in terms of money spent. It began during the rainy season when the roof sprang leaks and their yard in the East Bay hills started to slide. The many layers of roofing had to be stripped to the rafters before the roof could be reconstructed, and engineers fought to keep the yard from eroding away. Shortly after, Jane suffered a broken leg in a car accident (alas, her fault). A hospital stay, surgery, physical therapy, replacing the car, and a spike in insurance swept away their savings. Then they were robbed and had to replace computers art, and TVs. They also bought a home security system, to keep these new purchases safe – they hoped.

This poor family spent more money than ever and contributed far more to GDP, but were they happier? Not likely, in that year from hell! And what about a nation in which GDP continues to grow and grow? Are its citizens happier? Not necessarily, because if all the dysfunctional aspects of the U.S. economy were subtracted from the Gross Domestic Product — cancer from cigarette smoking; oil spills; forest fires from climate change; deaths from mis-prescribed drugs, and poorly designed products that last only a single use, would economists still be able to say our economy is growing, qualitatively? Probably not.

In contrast to GDP—which lumps all monetary transactions together and calls it macaroni—a measurement of success called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) evaluates the expenses, adding in “invisible” assets such as housework, parenting, and volunteer work, but subtracting “bads” like these:

Cost of crime

Cost of family breakdown

Loss of Leisure Time

Cost of Underemployment

Cost of commuting

Cost of Household Pollution

Cost of Automobile Accidents

Cost of Water Pollution

Cost of Air Pollution

Cost of Noise Pollution

Depletion of Natural Resources

Cost of Climate change

Loss of Old-Growth forest

 

Wouldn’t the GPI be a far more accurate diagnostic for how we are actually doing than GDP?

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In a project called The Compact, another, more fortunate family committed to a 12-month flight from the frenzy of consumerism. Says Sandy Clark, “My wife and I decided we valued time with each other and with our daughter more than things, and peace of mind more than things.” With tongue in cheek, he continues, “It helped that I hated advertising. Try this sometime as a thought experiment: just picture the face of Stalin wherever you see an ad that you can’t turn off or throw away!”

“We started looking for activities that didn’t cost anything. Recreational shopping was out, camping was in. Walks and parks were hip, movies at the multiplex became uncool. Games became a great pastime with friends. A great game lasts a lifetime. We create more, work on the home more, and travel more. We also got rid of a car. My wife started taking public transit. It’s only fifteen minutes longer and she doesn’t have to drive. Instead, she reads an extra book a week. Believe it or not, we went from 38,000 miles a year to 3,800.”

 

How a Healthy Lifestyle Generates a Million Dollars of Value   Thousands of dollars a year avoided for purchases, maintenance costs and high-interest loan payments for cars, gadgets, and clothes you no longer covet because you’ve found other values to be passionate about.   Much lower monthly payments because you have very little debt.   Energy, water, and resource bills cut in half because your car is more efficient, you live in a more compact, resource-efficient house, and the things you need are close by.   Expensive, resort-style vacations you don’t need because you’ve learned it’s cheaper to create your own, culturally rich vacations, and also because you’re more content being home than you were before you changed your life.   Reduced food costs by cutting restaurant dining in half, preparing food at home that’s higher in nutritional value, so less food is needed.   Reduced lawn care, day care, wrinkle care because you convert your lawn to a vegetable and flower garden; you share childcare with your spouse by having flexible work schedules; and a less stressful lifestyle results in fewer wrinkles (and less concern about them).   Entertainment costs avoided for spectator sports and concert tickets because active entertainment is more stimulating: playing rather than watching sports; talking with neighbors; practicing a craft; playing an instrument.   Diet programs, self-help books, CDs, classes, psychiatrists, and over the counter drugs not necessary because you’re not overweight.   No dental problems from chronic soda, candy and cigarette consumption. You’ve discovered that prevention is better than treatment, e.g., that foods like yogurt, and frequent exercise have been proven to prevent gum disease that can cost thousands of dollars to treat.   Lower mortgage payments and less consumption necessary after selling a house larger than you really need. All remaining debt paid off with the profit from selling the house.

 

Though a million dollars in lifetime returns might seem far-fetched to some readers, blogger and self-made millionaire Jen Smith can easily substantiate that estimate with transportation savings alone. She told me, “Twenty-two years ago, my husband and I sold one of our cars to pay for our wedding and honeymoon. We intended to replace the sold vehicle eventually — after we built up our credit score so we could get a car loan — but as time went by, we discovered that sharing one car between the two of us was no big deal. They never bought the second car, and for several years she invested the roughly $10,000 saved annually from just having one car (fuel, routine maintenance, tires, insurance, license and registration, loan finance charges and depreciation costs) which in the next twenty- odd years yielded a million dollars.

 

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We may assume it’s the iPad we want when really we’re after the social recognition that comes with it. There are more direct ways to connect socially, and to meet other basic needs, too. Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef identifies nine categories of essential needs: subsistence, protection, participation, affection, identity, understanding, creativity, leisure, and freedom. Though it’s a bit painful to think about, the average American works and commutes up to 100,000 hours per lifetime in an attempt to meet these basic needs – constant throughout human history, on all corners of the globe. The household decisions we make should be based on security, safety, meaning, and ways of expressing ourselves rather than on the dusty smell of stuff.

In household spending, identity is near the top of the list. The way we decorate, the way we use space, and the activities we do in our houses all reflect how we want the world to see us. Identity can be a key leverage point in shifting the culture in a more sensible direction. What if we intentionally alter our identities to reflect changing realities in the world? All of a sudden, solar panels – which we once considered ugly – might begin to look quite beautiful. They signify a new way of meeting essential needs like freedom (from mainstream rules of aesthetics); protection (a secure source of energy); participation (in a cultural revolution). Installing solar panels is like hoisting your new identity up a flagpole.

Now that you are expressing different values, the household budget begins to change. There are no bigger-screen TVs on your wish list. Having a new outfit every month seems much less important, so trips to the mall become less frequent. Much of your free time is devoted to remodeling the basement so you can set up a loom, a ping-pong table, and a cool space (literally) to make homemade wine and store produce from the garden.

All these activities bring down your expenses for entertainment. You’re watching life less and living it more.  You invite neighbors over more, which reduces transportation expenses, because you used to travel across town to see friends. Maybe you form a food co-op with some of your neighbors, buying produce directly from a local farmer, who soon becomes a friend himself. You arrange to work a few days a week from home, and convert one end of the living room to a home office, further reducing your transportation expenses without sacrifice or deprivation.

 The point is not to “give up” the good life to save money, but rather to redefine the meaning of “good life.” A musician friend of mine calls it “Waking Up from the American Dream.” Many Europeans woke up long ago and have six weeks of vacation and national healthcare to prove it.  (Hmmm… why do countries like Denmark and France always out-rank the U.S. in happiness polls? For tangible, measurable reasons: the U.S. is at the top in per capita GDP, average house size, obesity, and defense spending; but at the bottom in things like health care expenses, infant mortality, child poverty, murder rate, government corruption, air pollution, water use per capita and paid family sick leave.)      

What if fifty sinful (rather than simple) things could save the earth? Wouldn’t that be a hoot? If greed resulted in universal happiness and restored the balance of nature? Even environmentalists could put down their protest signs and join the fun. Instead of “Doing all I can to save the earth,” they could light-heartedly consume all they wanted to save the earth. What if cigarettes increased lung capacity and prevented cancer; SUVs filtered the pollution out of urban air; and luxury beach vacations enhanced the health of habitats like coral reefs and once-abundant fisheries? The problem is, they don’t. Damn.

OK then, what if fifty simple things could save the earth? Individual choices and actions that don’t require substantial changes in mainstream lifestyle. If each of us kept a few reusable grocery sacks in the car, planted a tree, and screwed in some compact fluorescent light bulbs, maybe we could collectively “save the planet.” That, too, would be great, but it’s not nearly enough to make nature happy. Our economy and the majority of its products are not designed to save the planet, they’re designed to make money. We can voluntarily cut back and do simple things by the boatload, but we’ll still be kayaking against a flash-flood, no-conscience economy that’s not designed to make sense (“Dissatisfaction Guaranteed”).

For example, we’re willing to recycle a few sacks of aluminum cans, but we may have to drive twenty miles to do it. We’ll pay a little more for nontoxic paints and cleaners, but we use them in houses glued together with toxic adhesives. We choose to buy natural fibers like cotton, generally unaware that conventionally grown cotton is drenched with pesticides (about a third of all pesticides used in the United States are applied to cotton crops). As Einstein observed, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” To get the results we truly need, only ecology-sensitive design and thinking will work. We need a blend of both technologic and biologic.

           

THREE-STEP PROGRAM FOR NEW WAY OF LIFE

Admit, together, that we have a MAJOR problem.

Seek support, build alliances; invent new technical and social tools

Create a new, less destructive identity, converting shame to pride.

 

Do humans have the guts to become a joyfully moderate civilization? Of course we do. (The Roman Empire became Italy, the British Empire became the UK). We’ve always loved the idea of rising to the occasion, of being heroes in the last minutes of a game. We’ve revered heroism for many thousand years in our myths and scriptures. We’re ready, in these most critical times, to continue the transition — individually and culturally — from the demand for consumer goods to the demand for a more moderate, humble, and sustainable way of living.