New Quarter

Today's the first day of a new quarter at school... last week was full of presentations and a final exam on Friday, then a three-day weekend. I was pretty lazy for the weekend -- my body and mind both said it was time to veg out for a bit... so I watched a few movies, played with my plants a little, and spent a couple of evenings preparing and eating dinner at friend's houses and talking about whatever we would think of to talk about. Friday night involved making chinese dumplings and last night involved japanese noodles. My tummy has been happy!

I don't have any good sustainability issues at the top of my mind today. As I was checking the news yesterday, I did notice that there was quite a bit of discussion about climate change in the news -- I'm thinking that Stern's report on the economic effects of climate change came out, so perhaps that has been garnering some attention.

When all else fails, talk about the weather, right? Well let me tell you... it's been getting windy around here! Right now there are 30-40 km/hr winds... (20-25 mph) that are quite sustained... and that seems to be the norm over the last week. When I looked at the forecast yesterday, snow was predicted for later in the week, but when I checked back this morning, the temperature was forecasted a couple of degrees higher and the snow had been taken out. Either way, I think we've entered the gray season here... as indicated both by the weather and the variety of food that is available at the farmer's market... we're down to potatos, onions, apples, bakery items and maybe some flowers... most of the fruits and fresh veggies are now out of season... and of course, my garden isn't producing just yet.

Well. I think I'll go find breakfast. We're starting off with a fairly long day of class -- this morning is an introduction to one of the two choices we have as an elective class for the next two months -- I think it's called "Sustainable Product Development" or something along those lines... it's supposed to be the more scientific aspect of what we do, as opposed to the other elective which is more about organizational leadership, so choosing an elective might be a tough decision!

Namaste

Where'd the weekend go?

It's late-afternoon on Sunday... after not having any class on Friday, it's been a long weekend. We do have plenty to work on -- with a group presentation early tomorrow morning and final exam over materials from the last 2 months, I have plenty to read, study, and review. But first things first...

On the garden front, there's not been any visible progress to speak of as far as the plants are concerned, but I've made some other significant changes in the garden setup that should lead to some big progress over the next week. First, I received several things on Friday that are key to moving forward -- primarily the coconut coir that will serve as my growing medium. It's ground-up coconut shell... it's what I'll start the seeds in from now on (sponges weren't doing so hot). I did take some pics, but haven't posted them yet... will have to take some more and make them available to you.

Last night we had a halloween / costume party. Halloween isn't a big tradition here, though it seems to be growing in recent years. One of my classmates went as Trinity from the Matrix movies... so I want as Mr. Smith... pretty easy to put on a suit, sunglasses, and an earpiece...

Next weekend I'm taking a ferry to Poland with a few classmates. There are at least four of us, possibly more. I have no idea where we are going or staying... should be an interesting trip!

The weather is still in the mid-50's, but the forecast shows it cooling off significantly by the end of the week, such that lows will be in the mid-30's.

Ok... I'm out of words for now, and have started thinking about a group meeting -- we're meeting in a little while to go once more over the presentation we will give tomorrow about the Millennium Development Goals.

Seeds going into water

A couple of pepper seeds have a root – maybe 1/8” long – decided to see what would happen if I plant them in the water flow. Some other seeds have cracked; decided to put them in also to see what would happen. Still have many, many seeds in sponges under warming light.

So now have 2-3 red and 2-3 orange pepper seeds with roots, along with carrots, dill, lettuce and flowers in the sphagnum moss that I was able to find. It’s not an ideal substance for this – kind of messy – so as the water flows through it, it gets all over. Am hoping that the rockwool will arrive tomorrow.

The light that is over them is a 2700k 105watt fluorescent – basically a very large compact fluorescent bulb. Will have to watch closely to make sure that my desklamp socket doesn’t get too hot. Set up a paper reflection system to help keep the light in the realm available to the plants… might have to find a better long-term solution, but it should work for a couple of days.

Need to be taking pictures!

Untitled

I'd been trying to put posts up every weekend... didn't quite make it this past weekend. I did, however, just put three short posts over the last week to talk about my garden's progress... it's been quite interesting, this attempt at growing veggies in water. And the adventure has really only just begun... unless the building burns down or something... which I'm wondering as I mix grow lights, a water pump, and electricity in a small corner of my bedroom.

The idea is to be able to grow food in water without soil. Right now I've just got some sphagnum moss as a growing medium -- it's not ideal, but it's all I could find here in town. I think I've got a package waiting for me someplace here in town -- I've ordered rockwool as a more appropriate growing medium -- as well as some nutrient solution. To get me through a couple of days, I've been using a supplemental mixture that you might use with houseplants or something... I'm sure it's sufficient to get me going.

The way it works... the nutrients that plants need are in water... so in my setup, I have three trays that are about a yard long and 6" wide by 6" deep sitting on a small coffee table. On the ground, I have a 12-or-so gallon tub with a small bilge pump in it. The pump is on a timer -- it's 15 mins on and 15 mins off during the day. I haven't decided what to do with it at night -- don't know if I'll need to run it in order to keep the roots moist or if I'll be able to get away with shutting it off... but considering that it's about 4 feet from where I sleep... I'm thinking it might have to be turned off because all of the water moving is pretty dang loud. So. Water pumps through the trays, the runs back into the tub. The idea is that plants take nutrients out of the water... then have 15 minutes to access oxygen before being flooded with nutrients again.

I've also got a very bright light set up for them... it's specially made for growing plants -- meaning that it has the kind of light that they grow best under. There are actually lots of different kinds of grow lights; the one that I have comes in two light spectrums -- one for regular growing and one for blooming. So if/when tomatos and peppers start to come in... I'll have to find a blooming light. For now... the grow light is enough.

So anyway... that's what's happening on the water garden front.


Class... has continued to be quite good and quite involved. Last week was organizational learning and leadership week. I don't remember anything really extraordinary in all of it, but there have been many great conversations with classmates about what leadership means to us and how we might plug ourselves into the growing opportunities as people begin to realize the seriousness of the crunch the world currently finds itself in. Pretty exciting stuff.

What's not so exciting is the fact that we're nearly through our first quarter -- our final exam is a week from Friday. Uffda. And to add to the excitement, we have group presentations of various topics on M,T,W -- the topics are various tools that are relevant to the sustainability world... ecological footprint, life cycle assessment, ISO 14001, natural capitalism... those kinds of things. My group -- consisting of Paul (Swedish) and Viviana (Columbian) and me -- is working on the Millennium Development Goals put forth by the United Nations.

The MDGs are the target of a massive campaign involving all kinds of people... it's very closely tied to the One Campaign www.one.org... and these 8 goals focus on addressing the "world's main development challenges" like poverty, hunger, gender equity, maternal health, etc. On the surface the sound like, and really are, quite good goals that everyone can more or less agree with. The challenge comes when you start to dig into the goals... which comprise 18 targets which comprise 48 indicators.

First of all... because our assignment is to evaluate them from a strategic sustainable development (SSD) standpoint... let me say that they have little to do with sustainability as we've come to know the four sustainability principles. Even though they would seem to address system condition IV -- which basically says that people need to have the capacity to meet their own needs -- they really don't do that very well. And some of the targets and indicators are really quite senseless... like halving the number of people who live on less than one US dollar per day. Well... since the targets are to be acheived by 2015... if we just sit back and wait this goal should be achieved on its own simply by inflation!

A couple of other indicators measure the ratio of men:women (i.e. in education). I think it's great that we're looking at gender disparity and working to improve that... but does it make any sense to only measure the ratio?? Stop educating enough men to shrink the gap... wouldn't that be the easiest and least expensive solution? I'm not advocating for that senseless idea, mind you... education is clearly one of the most important things that can be done.

As I've been working to learn about the MDGs, there are a few great ironies that stand out. One is the idea that "developed" countries are working to assist "under-developed" countries. There's an on-going joke in our class that perhaps some countries are "over-developed." Of course, that's not really the case... it's more like some countries are "wrongly-developed"... but that's a topic for another day.

Overall, it's interesting to watch as so many resources are being poured into the MDGs. And, overall, if in 2015 we can celebrate having achieved them, I think it will be a truly celebratory event... more because we -- as an entire world -- will have worked together toward achieving something significantly big than because the MDGs are so important for human survival. Of course, 10 years from now when we're all aware of the significant environmental challenges we face, we'll have a model for how to overcome this newly-realized set of challenges.

Notice that I completely side-stepped any conversation about the assumption of capitalism being the way forward (which is VERY prevalent throughout the MDGs, and is a large reason why they are not well supported across the entire globe) as well as the focus on corporations being a significant part of the solution. It's a hard pill to swallow when many multi-national corporations are (rightfully!) being blamed for so many of the problems in the first place. But I digress...

Ok. I need to go do some reading about systems thinking -- also known as systems science. Pretty cool stuff... but as usual, involves me needing to do a great deal of reading.

Cheers.

A title? Why bother?

Titles never seem to make any sense when they're on my posts... anybody who has read my writings know that my writings are a frog's joyride on a lilly-pad hopping adventure.

Having said that, let's review the last week. It started out with 2 1/2 days of lecture/discussion with Manfred Max-Neef, a gentleman in his mid-70's known around the world for his work as a human-focused economist. Yes, I said human-focused economist. Yes - it's an apparent contradiction. Economists aren't typically focused on humans. This guy has coined the phrase "human scale development" and I'm confident that one of his favorite phrases is "the economy exists to serve people, it's not that people exist to serve the economy." It's a pretty good point. We focus on the GDP, when in reality the GDP is pretty silly as a measurement of progress when you take time to think about it -- it measures all economic activity, whether or not that activity is "good." So the costs associated with cancer treatments or the costs for asbestos abatement or the costs for recalling defective products all add to the GDP... and thus are "good" for the economy... while clearly they are not so good for people.

Max-Neef talked quite a bit about the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) -- a tool for considering both the quality and the distribution of economic growth. Read more about the GPI here: http://www.rprogress.org/newpubs/2004/gpi_march2004update.pdf Just for the record, he was clear that the GPI should NOT replace the GDP, but rather should complement it... that both have a place in the world. He also showed charts for over a dozen countries that show how the GDP keeps going up, but that in "developed" countries the GPI (or instead of the GPI, the ISEW - Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) has flattened. In the US the GPI started flattening out in the 1970's and turned slightly downward in the 1980's, while in developed countries around the globe the ISEW started going down in the 1980's. A classmate leaned over and asked my what happened in the 80's... the only thing that popped into my head was Reagan... so that's what I whispered back, along with the suggestion to ask the question out loud. She asked the question, and the response was: Reaganomics. I felt smart.

Then we talked a bit about what Reagan and Thatcher's economic policies were... the idea that if the tide rises, then all boats will rise -- that if the rich get richer, then it will trickle down to everyone else also. But in fact throughout the 1980's that was not the case in the US; the poorest one-fifth of the population lost 0.5% of their income each year, while the income of the top 5% increased 3.9% per year. Max-Neef said that what Reagan claimed - that increasing the top would increase everyone -- was clearly not the case. I volunteered that Reagan's policies did exactly what he intended them to do: to increase the wealth of the wealthy with no regard for the rest. Max-Neef went off on a brief tirade in which he appeared to agree with my statement, but was somewhat concerned that I would voice such a true and yet impossible-to-admit statement. And so still I wonder -- when we will wake up to the obvious economic truths of our times: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And chances are good that if you're reading this blog, you're somewhere in the upper-middle of that continuum.

So that was Monday through Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon brought forth Goran Carstedt, a former top-exec with Volvo and IKEA, as well as a leading member of the Society for Organizational Learning (www.solonline.org) and now chair of The Natural Step International. Dr. Carstedt is a very bright guy -- and he's planning to come back in November to visit our class again.

On Thursday the class spent the day exploring Max-Neef's theory on human needs that I mentioned last week, and on Friday David Cook (CEO of The Natural Step International) joined us for the day. All in all it was a VERY full week, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around all that we saw, heard, and experienced -- including Chinese cane dancing at a potluck on Monday night.

This weekend I made progress on my hydro garden... don't actually have anything planted yet, but I do have a rather serious looking contraption consisting of 3 one-meter long window box trays, a 50-liter (~ 14 gallon) tub, a bilge pump, and a few hoses connecting them. For several hours on Saturday I was using an exact-o knife to cut holes in the tubs for hoses and to cut out bits of an old bicycle inner-tube for gaskets. Then finding a power adapter that would work to run the 12-volt pump is proving to be quite a challenge -- I've only found a temporary solution that involves converting from 220 to 110 to 12 volts... far too complicated for my "simple" little project.

And all of that messing around has put me a few hours behind in my reading. Again. So I'm off to get some sleep and then to hit the ground running this week. We have a quite large group project due soon focusing on the United Nation's Millenium Development Goals -- so be looking forward to hearing about them in the week to come.

How do we measure the depths of one's soul?

First... October 1st, that is. Where has the time gone?? Already I've been here in Sweden for six weeks!! While many good friendships have developed, I still feel as though I've only dipped my big toe into the massive pool of our studies.

But that may well change this week. We will be visited by Manfred Max-Neef, a Chilean economist who - from what I gather - is not your typical economist. He makes a strong case for that which we most like to measure means very little... that we need to take time to slow down and be more in tune with those things in life that are pleasurable and beautiful. He lists 9 human needs that go far beyond the "food, clothing, shelter" (and sometimes "love") that we were taught as being the basics of human needs... those 9 include: subsistence, protecion, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity, and freedom. You can catch a glimpse of this man speaking at http://big-picture.tv -- Max-Neef is listed down the left side, along with scores of other big thinkers in the sustainability movement. Those that are listed each have 1 or more videos of a few minutes that you can watch -- Karl-Henrik Robèrt is also there (the founder and frequent lecturer of the program I am in).

Last week we also talked about public policy and economics. It was a pretty full week... I think the gist that I'm taking away is that -- particularly within the realm of economics -- we have very short memories. My impression is that the way economics is being taught in the vast majority of schools around the world is the way of neoclassical economics... the way in which the world has operated over the last century or so... with no thought given to the millenia prior to that time, nor the change that has occurred over those thousands of years. It leaves students - and professionals - today with the impression that the way things are done now is the only way things have ever been done and thus the only way things are ever likely to be done. Economics is certainly not the only thing that is being taught this way.

Physics is another example... while we occassionaly admit that people once thought the world to be flat, we seldom take time to consider the implications of such a major shift in thinking -- when you've grown up thinking that the world is flat and all of a sudden one day are told that the world is round -- how willing to believe such a statement are you? Today physics is going through some very interesting trials regarding the validity of Newton's laws of motion because they do not seem to hold true with the very smallest particles... and so these natural 'laws' may be in jeopardy... and that opens some very interesting doors. "What the bleap do we know" is a documentary that addresses this point -- though be warned it is a bit... dizzying.

Something far less dizzying to watch but far more dizzying to consider is a lecture by Dr. Albert Bartlett at the University of Colorado entitled "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy" (available online in video, audio, or a transcript at http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461) This is the simplest yet most sensible explanation for why energy (specifically oil) use will be a problem very soon. Basically he talks about how energy use is increasing by a certain percentage each year... 5% or 7% or something... and how that translates into a doubling every so many years. Then he draws a picture (and maybe even uses the story -- I can't remember now) illustrated by the question: if you have the following two options, which gives you more at the end of one month? Option A: $1 million on the first day and nothing the rest of the month, or Option B: $.01 on the first day, twice that amount on the second day, twice the second day's amount on the third day, and so on.

Choose option B and you would receive $1,342,177.28 on the 28th day of the month (so even if it's February, you'd still come out ahead!) -- which is exactly one penny more than the $1,342,177.27 that you would have accumalated through the first 27 days of the month. Assuming the month has more than 28 days... on the 29th day you would receive $2,684,354.56 -- again, a penny more than you'd receive on all of the previous days added together. The point: we're doing the same thing with oil every 5-10 years: we're using the same amount in less than one decade than has been used in all of history up to that decade. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

And the world's population is doing the same thing... which Dr. Bartlett points out as being rather interesting at the community level when Boulder's planners talk about wanting to grow at an annual rate of 3-7%. Even with the US population growing at 1% -- that's an additional 3,000,000 people each year -- we soon run into problems. So Dr. Bartlett's point is that we need to strive for ZERO population growth. Soon. I guess there are some things that we need to keep measuring, eh?

Bringing this conversation back to economics... the assumption under which our current economists operate is that growth is good. So the question becomes -- can an economy continue to grow if the population does not? I'll have to get back to this later...

One more thing before I jump off real quick, just in case anything I've said so far is not controversial or thought-provoking enough -- check out http://www.worldcantwait.net/ It's a group planning a nation-wide (world-wide?) protest on October 5th against the Bush Regime. Yes, yes... I know you all think it's too extreme. And I think that they don't even list some of the key reasons for the need for such a protest... key among them: PEAK OIL! The thing that I like most about what they write: democrats won't solve the problem either. So protesting the Bush regime is important -- but more important is making the statement that the US is headed in the wrong direction on sooo many fronts. (yes, this paragraph was a late add-in because I just came across it...) It will be interesting to see what kind of media coverage it pulls off... regardless -- make me proud and do something on October 5th to let your political leaders know that you want to save the US and the world before it's too late... if joining a protest is too much, write your members of congress!

I'd like to keep writing... to tell tales of our fondue party last night, or of our viewing of "Who killed the electric car?" last Friday... but alas, my roommate is trying to make me feel guilty for not cleaning -- today is my cleaning day, and while it's not even 11AM, apparently there is some rule that I'm supposed to clean immediately upon getting up... I'll write it off to cultural differences. Also on the to-do list today is preparing a dish for tomorrow night's potluck... still haven't figured out how I'm going to pull this off... I'm planning twice-baked potatos again (they are popular, easy, cheap, and filling -- all the requirements for a potluck dish), but I have class in the morning and afternoon, plus a potentially-more-than-an-hour meeting planning meeting for the student environmental group (of which I am the secretary) that begins at 5:00... with the potluck scheduled for 6. I could skip the potluck, except that it is with Manfred, and I'd like to spend as much time with the guy as possible in the 2-3 days that he's here. Ohhhh.... decisions.

Ok. Laundry and cleaning -- woo-hoo.