tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-213248882024-03-23T11:16:14.066-07:00Busy, busy, busy..."'Busy, busy, busy...' is what a Bokononist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is."
From CAT'S CRADLE, by Kurt VonnegutJoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.comBlogger232125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-45065197114180469902014-04-05T07:14:00.001-07:002014-04-05T07:14:13.441-07:00Chemists Without BordersFor the last few weeks I have been blogging for<b> <a href="http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com/">Chemists Without Borders</a></b>. See the "Essays and Articles" menu to the right for links to my posts.<br />
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-- JKJoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-9644417627748929222014-01-13T08:40:00.002-08:002014-01-16T02:48:46.862-08:00For Future Famers and Camel-Riders<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">One of the
positive externalities of episodic insomnia is that occasionally I get to chip
away at the backlog of reading and writing that I have been meaning to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">I just read
the article, "Solutions for a cultivated planet" by JA Foley et al.,
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nature</i> Vol. 478 (2011).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Now, granted,
us scientists have a saying that, “Just because it was published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nature</i> doesn’t make it wrong…” Nonetheless
it did stir my thinking of what's perpetually missing from our conversations in
academia, the media – and everywhere, basically – about "sustainability"
and the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">The authors
posit projected growth in population and thus increasing food demands heading
towards 2050. They rightly indicate that current agricultural practices compound
manifold forms of environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem
services, and contribute to climate change – all while failing to meet the
nutritional needs of a large segment of the human population. (Doh!) They
suggest that “intensification,” and “closing the yield gap” can substantially
increase food production and thus meet growing future demands. But nowhere do
they acknowledge the utter dependence of contemporary agriculture on a steadily
increasing supply of cheap and abundant fossil fuels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Acknowledgement
and consideration of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolutely central
role of our ability to increase the supply of cheap fossil fuels</i> is what is
missing from so many academic analyses and journal articles, University
classroom discussions, national media attention, Presidential debates, NPR
programs, etc., etc., etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Affordable and
accessible fossil fuels underpin our entire contemporary economy. Being able to
continually increase our access to cheap fossil fuels is what has enabled
continued economic growth over the past several decades. The rules of our
economic "operating system" have been developed and deployed under these
circumstances; so we have become "growth-dependent." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Now, as
cheap accessible fossil fuels (primarily oil) peak and begin to decline, in
lieu of increased access to cheap high-net-energy sources we have resorted to attempts to substitute,
for example:</span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; text-indent: -0.25in;">The
inflation of credit bubbles ensnaring, among others, home buyers (often
poor/working class minorities targeted by predatory lenders) and hordes of hapless
Millennial generation university students</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; text-indent: -0.25in;">Engaging
in extreme financialization of the economy and creation of wildly,
preternaturally abstruse instruments such as “collateralized debt obligations,”
“credit default swaps,” and sub-prime “mortgage backed securities” (Warren Buffet
famously labeled derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction…)</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; text-indent: -0.25in;">The
societal countenance of – and <i>bi-partisan
government support of and subservience to</i> – swindle at the highest levels,
and the enshrinement of fraud on Wall Street (“<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216"><b>Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail</b></a>…”)</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; text-indent: -0.25in;">The
feckless pursuit of “ZIRP” and umpteen rounds of QE "money printing"
by the Fed</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; text-indent: -0.25in;">Tragically
overweening hyperbole about “fracking” and shale gas/oil making the US energy
independent and representing some great (cheap) energy bonanza; and…so on….</span></li>
</ul>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">…all in
order to make it appear that we still have a growing economy, and will be able
to have a growing economy indefinitely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">So how does
this relate to things like Foley et al.'s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nature
</i>article, and in general to themes of sustainable development and the future? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Without being
able to increase our access to high-net energy, cheap, accessible and abundant
fossil fuels we cannot have continued economic growth. Without continual economic
growth, under the current political economy we cannot form and deploy financial
capital for socially productive purposes (this is the proper role of the
finance sector). If we cannot deploy increasing sums of capital towards
agricultural intensification we cannot increase food production, according to
Foley et al.'s model which is reflective of most all mainstream ag “development”
intentions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">In fact, if
fossil fuel scarcity increases and energy becomes more expensive and lower
net-energy – as inevitably it shall – then any "solutions" to our
food production dilemma that require vast expenditures of capital and energy
will be nonviable. This applies to anything that is colloquially considered to
be "high-tech," as well as anything organized on a massive scale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">And this
applies not only to “solutions” to our food production problem, but to all
critical sectors of human and community life: transportation, energy, water and
sanitation, consumer goods, health care, the built environment, even
entertainment and recreation. Anything organized on a vast scale and dependent
upon long and intricate supply chains – thus anything that is expensive, energy
intensive, and technologically complex – is therefore vulnerable and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fragile</i>. (Uh-oh.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">So here’s the
punchline: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Any meaningful discussion of strategies
for meeting development goals – in <u>any</u> sector – henceforth has to take
into account increasing scarcity and therefore costliness and lower net-return
on basic energy inputs, and the impairment of capital formation and deployment
implied therein.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">It sounds
common-sense, but turns out nobody is doing it. Not even in the pages of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nature</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">I’d like to
believe that we’ll transform our economy to one that’s sustainable because we
recognize the severe moral failing of permitting the catastrophic loss of biodiversity
that’s already well underway. We won’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">I’d like to
believe that we’ll transform our economy to one that’s sustainable because
we’re hard-nosed utilitarians, fully and rationally abreast of the true value
of the “ecosystem services” we’re currently destroying. We aren’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">I’d like to
believe that we’ll transform our economy to one that’s sustainable because we
are prudent <i>conservatives</i> and thus adherents of the precautionary principle and
therefore adamant to avert the unknown and mostly unknowable deleterious effects of
the climate destabilization we’re causing. We aren’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">The Vietnam
War ended not because it was morally wrong to begin with, not because of
compassion for the suffering of millions of innocent villagers in SE Asia, not
even because it became intensely unpopular among the middle-class constituents
of the US Congress. It ended because it was too expensive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">We are going
to transition to a sustainable economy because our ability to sustain the
unsustainable is rapidly eroding to zero. If we “got our shit together” along
the lines of the above aspirational conjectures, we could do the transition
with substantially less collateral damage (in terms of other species, human lives,
climate stability, etc.). But all you need to abolish any hopes of that
happening, however, is to watch about five minutes of television. (Any channel,
any time of the day will do.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Those of us
contemplating what “sustainability” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really
</i>means (i.e. that our present condition is characterized by extreme
unsustainability and super-fragility) cannot afford to wait for society (i.e.
government, the economic elite, and the culture in general) to “do the right
things for the right reasons.” Ain’t gonna happen. We have to start working now
to develop and spread the local, bioregional, “low-tech” modes of existence
that are going to increasingly predominate in the decades to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">To wit:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Recognizing the finitude of oil and the transience of
oil-derived affluence, the former Emir of Dubai Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al
Maktoum (1912-1990) remarked, “My grandfather rode a camel. My father rode a camel.
I drive a Rolls Royce. My son flies a jet plane. His son will drive a Mercedes.
But his son will ride a camel.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Perhaps some Millennial generation American
will observe, "My great-grandfather worked on a farm. My grandfather
worked in a factory. My father worked in a cubicle. I am unemployed (with $xxx,xxx
in student loan debt). My son will work on a farm..."</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">An ending
note: this is perhaps getting to sound a little apocalyptic, but it isn’t at
all. I’d need another essay to explain fully why this is so, but for now here’s
a short illustration:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">A lower-tech,
poorer (less affluent), more local life that involves manual labor doesn’t
necessarily make you worse off. Presently, we work far, far too many hours fastened
to a computer terminal (see, you can tell something is wrong right there in the
name “terminal”…). This we do in order to make money. A sedentary life spent
under the constant hypnosis of screens – work station, laptop, iPhone, GPS,
iPad, flat screen TV, etc. – makes us pallid, flabby, unfit, and unattractive
(non-sexy). So we need to pay a big portion of the money we make doing all this terminal nonsense to specialists and corporations who compel us to <i>exercise</i>
(e.g. perform aerobics, spin classes, lifting weights, yoga, etc.). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">What your
personal trainer or yoga instructor is doing is leading you through a series of
motions approximating farm labor – bending and stooping, crouching, lunging, twisting and stretching, fetching weight over your head, and so on. These elaborate
gyrations are designed to get your pulse up, burn fat, tone your muscles, and
improve sex-appeal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">The good news
is, when the corporation employing you to inhabit that cubicle goes belly-up in
the collapsing economy and you have to go get a manual labor job on a farm, you
will actually be coming out way ahead. You’ll be getting paid (a little bit) to
become tan, fitter, and more attractive. Now, that’s not so apocalyptic, is it?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">After all, Mephistopheles - that old truth-telling devil - did point out:</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a natural way to make you young...</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Go out in a field </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And start right in to work: dig, hoe, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Keep your thoughts and yourself in that field,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eat the food you raise...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Be willing to manure the field you harvest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And that’s the best way - take it from me! - </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To go on being young at eighty.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-68585130623114227072013-09-26T11:54:00.003-07:002013-09-26T11:56:34.953-07:00Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet<i>I have been thinking about starting up the blog again. This came to me today after sitting in on a university class dealing with the general topic of "sustainable development."</i>
<br />
<br />
********************<br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Infinite Growth on a Finite
Planet</span></b><br />
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<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I
continue to be troubled by what I hear in the media, at conferences, in
university lecture halls, etc. with respect to what basically amounts to the
promotion of "sustainable growth."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You
can't have economic growth forever on a finite planet, resource substitution
and other measures of technological development notwithstanding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We
in the developed world got used to continual growth as "normal" over
several generations' time since the advent of fossil fuels, primarily oil. In
the past, always being able to expand our access to cheap, accessible high
net-energy (high EROEI, Energy-Return-On-Energy-Invested) oil allowed us to
grow our economy and vastly increase in societal and infrastructure
complexity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Subtract
cheap high EROEI oil and growth stalls and reverses into contraction, and
society rapidly decomplexifies. (Some use the term, "collapse.")<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">By
now we've run out of cheap, easily accessible, high quality oil, and have begun
to exploit more dispersed, environmentally risky, geo-politically contentious,
low quality, and therefore more expensive, low EROEI resources (e.g. fracked
shale oil, tar sands, super deepwater offshore deposits). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
question is, what minimum EROEI is required to run a highly globalized and
integrated, sub-/peri-/urbanized, industrialized, hyper-complex society, and
where are we now with respect to that minimum?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In
the first decades of oil drilling in PA and TX, the EROEI was 100:1 or more.
Currently, conventional oil clocks in at around 25:1. Average for US oil today
is about 10:1. Tar sands run from 3:1 to 5:1, biodiesel from soybeans at 1.7:1,
and corn ethanol at a mere 1.3:1. (Solar, wind, and hydro fare better, but are
good for electricity production, not transport, and still require a platform of
cheap fossil fuels in order to be deployed at a meaningful scale.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
fracking "boom" does not represent a real boom in new resources, or
old resources opened up by technological breakthroughs in horizontal drilling.
It is a combination of high ($100+/barrel) oil prices, and Wall Street
financial bubble shenanigans. (The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shale
oil bubble</i> – give it a year or so and this will be a household term – is the
current in a series of US economy bubbles dating back at least to the S&L
scandal of the 80's, the Enron scandal and the tech bubble of the 90's / early
2000's, and the housing bubble and financial crash of the mid-2000s).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
trouble with high oil prices is that they reliably send the economy into a
recession. (Because energy is the “master resource” that effects the production,
and prices, of all other goods and services in the economy.) This destroys
demand; but if oil prices drop, then it is no longer economical for energy
companies to exploit expensive new “tight oil” plays. These upper and lower oil
price bounds have characterized the bumpy plateau of oil production that we
have been on since 2005, and go along way explaining our protracted economic
non-recovery from the crash of 2008. Some analysts think that this indicates we’ve
hit peak oil. Some analysts think this also signals the end of the era of
economic growth – that we are not in a "recession" <i>per se </i>(because
"recession" implies a defined trough ending with an uptrend back to
"normal"), but are experiencing the first symptoms of economic stall
and contraction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We
talk incessantly about sustainability when we should be talking about
un-sustainability. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Economic
growth is unsustainable, by definition, since it implies increasing demands for
energy, resources, and waste assimilation capacity. Substitution, technological
innovation, and gains in efficiency can help, but not beyond the limits
specified by the laws of thermodynamics. Often, efficiency gains end up
backfiring as increased consumption outstrip them. Technological innovation
often creates more problems than it solves through unintended consequences and
diminishing returns. And as ecological economists have demonstrated, human
capital is complimentary to natural capital, not a substitute for it as assumed
by mainstream economists. This limits the extent to which resource substitution
is effective or possible (contrary to cornucopian Julian Simon's winning bet
with biologist Paul Ehrlich regarding the prices of a few metals over a few
years' time).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
current global trend in urbanization is unsustainable. A lot of fact-based
arguments can be made to demonstrate this, but it is a lot easier if you've
simply visited a third-world peri-urban slum to realize these arrangements are
not sustainable. For example, when it comes to providing adequate water, sanitation
and hygiene in such circumstances, the problem is intractable, overwhelming.
That's why no one has been able to do it – not for lack of money, or political
will, or economic incentive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">For
all biological organisms, there is a positive correlation between food supply
and population growth. With industrial agriculture and the Green Revolution, we
have spent the past 100 years turning cheap oil into people. Now the cheap oil
has run out and there are too many people to sustain at a highly energy-and-resource-intensive
way of life. Yet UN (and other agencies) projections of population growth,
economic growth, food production, etc., all show current upward trends
continuing to 2050 and beyond – why?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Is it
because it is unpleasant and politically untenable to publicly consider the
more likely course of economic contraction and population decline?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In
our culture, it is common to assume that humans are not like other biological
organisms. On the contrary we assume that "people are our greatest
resource," and that fabulously innovative human brains grant us
exceptional status in the biological world. We are staking a lot on these
hopes, which amount more to tenants of a modern religious faith in
"progress" and human exceptionalism than on factual, scientific contemplation
of material reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It
deeply troubles me that we talk incessantly of "sustainability"
without acknowledging our unsustainable reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Implied
in the profligate use of the word "sustainable" is that current major
trends in economics, population dynamics, food production, energy acquisition
and use, infrastructure development and maintenance, transportation,
biodiversity, pollution, climate and biogeochemical disturbance are
unsustainable. Anything that cannot continue indefinitely, sooner or later, won't
– the question is not, "if?" but, "when?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So,
"when?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">No
one can put an exact date for when these unsustainable trends really start to
bite. In many instances, especially among the worlds’ poor, they have already
substantially begun to bite. But when they begin to bite us too, in the
(over-)developed West, it will undoubtedly feel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">too soon</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Optimists
in the mainstream may tentatively acknowledge our un-sustainability, but put
any attendant economic or resource crunch several decades into the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I
believe the crunch is coming in our lifetime. I believe the crunch is coming in
the course of our careers. I believe that the next 10, 20, and 30 years are
going to look vastly different than the last 10, 20, 30 years, and nothing at
all like a linear extrapolation upwards based on previous decades' trends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I
believe this has consequences for how we enact our careers and how we live our
lives now. We ought to be in a mode of preparation for a very different future
than what we've been led to expect based on the influence of social
institutions (education, the media, culture, etc.).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In
short, we need to prepare for an energy-constrained existence, and one that
involves a high degree of local production of necessities (e.g. food, basic
household goods, beer – especially beer) for local consumption. Subtract cheap
oil or a stable global economy and international relations and huge transport
distances for food and other critical goods manufactured wherever in the world
labor costs are lowest and/or environmental regulations the most lax become
prohibitive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I'm
not trying to be morbid, predicting the doom of human civilization, etc. I use
stark language because I believe the converging problem of energy, economic, and
environmental unsustainability is something we need to begin addressing
immediately – <i>and yet we are not even talking about it earnestly</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As
someone involved with university education, I feel we have an obligation to do
our utmost to prepare students for a career "in the real world," and
in this case, "the real world" means a world of economic contraction
and re-localization, declining living standards, energy constraints, degraded
environments/ecosystems, and climate irregularities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As
someone involved in "engineering for developing communities" and the
"international WASH sustainable development" establishment, I feel we
have the obligation to recognize that the (over-)developed world is going to
look increasingly like the developing world in the years to come, rather than
the typical assumption of the reverse. We have a lot to learn from poor people
in the developing world about how to cooperatively solve problems, meet needs,
and conduct convivial and purposeful lives under conditions of economic
constraint and relative scarcity. (And to this purpose we would do well to step
aside from conventional "professional development" and careerism
activities to undertake long-term participatory, experiential studies within
so-called developing communities.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Yet
as educators and professionals concerned with environmentally sustainable human
development we are not adequately taking up these tasks in our classroom
curricula or conference agendas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">To
begin to do so means first an acknowledgement that indefinite growth in
anything – GDP/economy, population, food production, efficiency – is an
impossibility theorem and therefore invalid as a programmatic objective. And
second, it means acknowledging that biophysical limits to growth are currently
making themselves felt and will increasingly do so over the course of our
careers and lifetimes (and not at some vague far-off point many decades in the
future). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">With
this renewed and corrected vision of the near- and medium-term future, we can
more responsibly and accurately prepare students, as well as the communities we
serve through our professional activities and even our own communities and
households, to adapt to coming changes and the tough times ahead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-41499227028895366092010-02-02T15:59:00.000-08:002010-02-02T16:04:11.978-08:00Dam in Kachin State, Burma to displace thousands<a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/global-green/100127/burma-dam"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Article + photography on Global Post</span></a> by my friend Ryan on a massive dam project in Kachin State, northern Burma.<br /><br />The dam will flood an area the size of NY city and displace thousands of Kachin villagers in order to supply China with cheap electricity.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-24771838846728025782009-12-11T21:06:00.000-08:002009-12-11T21:12:42.014-08:00"Authentic development" and the Pun Pun modelA while back I was assigned to write an essay for my "sustainable community development class" on the following theme:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">As a program officer for the Gates Foundation, your assignment is to allocate $100,000 for a development project for a rural community (pop. 5,000) in the developing world. As identified by your [participatory research] assessment team, the key issues are mounting population pressures on arable land, food insecurity, deforestation, high morbidity/mortality of [children under age 5] from infectious (especially diarrheal) disease, and a contaminated primary water source (river is contaminated with agricultural runoff-pesticides and fertilizers, grazing livestock fecal matter, and local laundry and bathing). <br /><br />How will you allocate your funding? Why? Explain in detail how your project's output will extend a positive effect on other problem areas...Just to clarify, this grant is for one primary project output.</span><br /><br />In class the profs further clarified that the assignment was to identify one major objective to address (i.e. not addressing all the challenges listed, just one, presumably in a piecemeal fashion), considering the $100k as "seed money" to pilot some project to then use to go after more money down the road.<br /><br />Anyway, I wanted to take the assignment as an opportunity to evince a different approach and a different philosophy than these "development professionals" typically deal with. So I wrote some background about my views of conventional "development" and what I call "authentic development," and I used Pun Pun Farm as a case study in an alternate philosophy/approach and as an experience that has been formative for me.<br /><br />So here's what I wrote...<br /><br />* * *<br /> <br />Let me start by saying something about my fundamental beliefs regarding what constitutes authentic development.<br /><br />I consider that individuals and communities can be happiest and healthiest, enjoy a strong degree of livelihood security, and minimize harmful ecological impacts by meeting the lion’s share of their basic needs (e.g. water/sanitation, energy, food, shelter, goods, medicine and heath care) through their own efforts and skills, according to local indigenous traditions, and though sustainable management and use of local resources. (cf. Hind Swaraj, or village home rule, by MK Gandhi.)<br /><br />I believe this logic applies not only to “developing communities” or communities in lesser-industrialized regions, but equally to industrialized, developed, and over-developed regions like the US.<br /><br />The logic of economic globalization and conventional “development” has been to create dependence: countries of the North such as the US have become dependent upon imports, and the countries of the South have become dependent upon selling their exports (e.g. agricultural commodities) on the so-called “free” market. Native production in the US has dwindled as industries move overseas leaving devastated communities and economic depression in the wake – my home region of Appalachia, the steel towns of western Pennsylvania, the abandoned farming communities of the mid-west, and the manufacturing areas in and around Detroit are examples that attest to this damage. Meanwhile farmers throughout the global South have been forcibly converted to capital- and chemical- intensive forms of agriculture and production for export; many others have been extirpated from their land and crowded into peri-urban slums as a consequence of big “development” projects and must compete against the growing hordes for scarce, underpaid, and often dangerous jobs. Their livelihoods are thus vulnerable to the vagaries of the global economy as their capacity for local self-reliance has been eroded.<br /><br />The globalization of our food system, to take an example, has reached absurd proportions with devastating ecological consequences. I once went into a Safeway in Washington State and found that the apples grown locally cost nearly twice as much as apples imported 7,000 miles from New Zealand. A 2006 report (1) by the New Economics Foundation documented numerous examples of such “ecologically wasteful” trade. For example, “in 2004 the UK imported 17.2 million kilos of chocolate-covered waffles and wafers and exported 17.6 million kilos; [the UK] imported 10.2 million kilos of milk and cream from France and exported 9.9 million. The figures for the same trade with Germany were 15.5 million kilos and 17.2 million. Germany sent us 1.5 million kilos of potatoes and we sent them, yes, 1.5 million kilos of potatoes….”<br /><br />One imagines jumbo-jets full of milk and potatoes passing each other in the night as they traverse the English Channel – an absurdity wrought by the “logic” of economic globalization and so-called “free trade.” <br /><br />So my fundamental belief is that re-creating local economies and engendering local self-reliance among communities worldwide is integral to authentic development everywhere. Attaining this means re-building within communities the capacity for subsistence and livelihood security based primarily upon the stewardship of local resources for local consumption. It means developing knowledge of place and intimate understanding of local ecosystems. It means embracing the type of life a particular place makes possible through its natural attributes rather than forcibly refashioning everyplace into a homogeneous corporate wasteland.<br /><br />Since these are my fundamental beliefs, I advocate a holistic approach to development that augments a community’s native resources – human and ecological – with an integral vision to promote local self-reliance across the multiple dimensions of basic needs. Why is a holistic approach superior to a narrow, piecemeal approach? Because cross-connections are fundamental to nature: surface water quality is strongly influenced by forestation – clear-cutting forests increases erosion and impacts water bodies. Concerns for sanitation cannot be divorced from concerns over agricultural soil productivity as nutrients must be recycled to sustain crop yields. Using the organic manures from animals and humans obviates the need for synthetic chemical fertilizers that lead to runoff and drinking water pollution. Sustainable management of forests provides sources of food, fiber, herbs and medicinals, building materials, and energy, as well as wildlife habitats, biodiversity conservation, and micro-climate stability – in perpetuity. And so on…<br /><br />Local and indigenous knowledge forms, rapidly being lost because of economic globalization, “development”, “modernization,” “education,” urbanization, etc., can help us to see these linkages and explore our own interdependence with ecosystems.<br /><br />The effects of economic globalization have led to overmuch specialization among individuals and communities. University education in the US, for example, is geared to produce narrowly specialized technicians. Livelihood “security” for such individuals almost always involves selling one’s labor as a specialist to a giant corporation in return for a wage that is used to purchase products to meet life’s needs manufactured and sold by other specialists at corporations. This system is inherently insecure as we become increasingly dependent upon multinational corporations to employ us and sell us all our needs for life.<br /><br />In the global South, farmers are increasingly pressured to become specialized growers of cash crops in monoculture for export – a farming style that is particularly vulnerable to pest outbreaks and thus necessitates the use of dangerous chemicals and synthetic fertilizers to guarantee the single-crop yields upon which the farmers’ livelihoods are now dependent. Again this system is inherently insecure and damaging to individuals and communities. The rash of farmers’ suicides in India (2) when faced with mounting, multi-generational debt attests to the damage and insecurity industrial farming has wrought.<br /><br />The solution is not to abandon specialization completely but to move in the direction of a balanced generalism. In other words, as a society we need to recapture the homesteading skills that my grandmother’s generation relied upon to live in relative abundance even during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The small farming communities of Appalachia were “poor” by monetary standards but rich in tradition, skill, and knowledge of how to make a living from the forests and fertile bottomlands of our home region. Regaining these waning skills is my prescription for communities in both the “developed” and “developing” worlds alike.<br /><br />To illustrate how this transition can happen, I’ll take the case study of the Pun Pun farming community in northern Thailand. (3)<br /><br />This community was built from scratch by a nearly penniless couple with a vision to create an agro-biodiversity conservation farm and sustainable living-learning center. Six years ago, Coloradoan Peggy Reents and her partner, Thai farmer Jon Jandai, bought a dilapidated hill farm on the outskirts of a remote village in mountainous northern Thailand. The land had been deforested, cropped in corn for several years until the soil was exhausted, and then abandoned to the rocks and weeds. The land was nearly worthless, so Peggy and Jo could just afford to buy about five acres. Through three seasons of mulching and composting and growing a few banana trees, Peggy and Jo slowly rehabilitated the wasted soil. They began to plant trees of the native hardwood species and fruit orchards for future agro-forestry development.<br /><br />They had so little money they had to learn to make a life in ways that didn’t require money – in my mind this is the best kind of research for developing appropriate technologies and sustainable living practices that can be accessed, emulated, adapted, and improved upon by the poor (by definition, people who do not have money). They built their home from mud bricks made from the local earth and beautifully painted with local clays and pigments mixed with tapioca starch. They made their own soap and toothpaste out of local natural plants and substances. The brewed their own rice wine for celebrations. As their soils improved they were able to grow a greater portion of their own food and depend less upon the gifts of sustenance from visiting friends.<br /><br />Industrial agriculture spread through Thailand while Jo was growing up in a small farming village in the eastern part of the country not far from the border with Laos. With it came hybrid seeds that would not grow without the chemical pesticides and fertilizers sold by the same agribusiness companies. The seeds were not viable after the first planting so it was no use for farmers to practice their tradition of seed saving. The local varieties of vegetables began to disappear and were replaced by a very few hybrid varieties of inferior taste and nutrition, and that were more vulnerable to pests, floods and droughts. As Jo watched the erosion of the traditional vegetable biodiversity, he decided the most important thing he could do was to save seeds and try to perpetuate the local varieties.<br /><br />With their knowledge of natural earthen building and practical self-reliance born of direct experience and some hardship, Peggy and Jo began to build their vision of a seed center and sustainable living-learning center. Local Thai and hill tribe people, as well as like-minded Westerns who heard about their work, began to arrive at Pun Pun (Thai for “thousand varieties”) farm in this remote corner of SE Asia to live, work, learn and be a part of the creative effort.<br /><br />The farm has developed curricula for workshops in local self-reliance and sustainability in meeting basic needs for food, shelter, natural and indigenous approaches to medicine and health, and homespun goods. My colleagues and I have endeavored to add a component of appropriate technologies in water resources to the farm’s educational curriculum. Others have supplemented with decentralized energy technologies. A cooking school showcasing traditional Thai recipes using the local farm produce has been established. Local village women teach and perform traditional therapeutic Thai massage, and the farm has hosted a number of yoga and meditation retreats.<br /><br />Now, hundreds of people from all over Thailand, south/southeast Asia, and around the world visit Pun Pun each year for workshops and programs. Peggy and Jo have started an alliance of organic farmers that is spreading through the northern and northeastern parts of the country, as well as a network of seed savers. They have conducted countless workshops training villagers and groups of Buddhist monks in the techniques of natural and earthen building. Thai, hill tribe, and Western families have moved to the farm community and they are creating a home-farm-school for the children – kids from the neighboring villages will thus have an alternative to the distant English-style Thai government schools.<br /><br />They have opened a successful restaurant in Chiang Mai supplied by local organic farmers that was recently written up in the New York times travel/food section. (4) They have established and helped to supply numerous market stalls for organic produce throughout the region, and are helping many farmers in their village and nearby to make the transition from chemical farming to organic and to get out of debt to the seed and chemical companies. And this year they are hosting a giant seed saving fair complete with rock bands and carnival activities and sponsored by, of all companies, the Red Bull corporation.<br /><br />Peggy and Jo, along with the team of like minded folk that have assembled around them, have had an incalculably powerful transformative effect on the lives of so many. They have helped local Thai and hill tribe farmers out of penury and debt. They have helped local villagers and many visiting Westerners along the road to more sustainable, natural, simple, and enjoyable ways of living.<br /><br />A recent grant of about $25,000 has allowed Pun Pun to enhance their seed saving operations. With this money they have acquired a few additional acres of land to expand seed gardens, increase their water supply and install irrigation equipment. They purchased a hand tractor and wagon to assist with planting and harvesting of rice and materials hauling. They’ve hired local villagers to help with the additional labor, and to train for the management and oversight of the seed bank and distribution system. They’ve hosted large groups of trainees in agroecology workshops. They’ve spawned another organic café in Chiang Mai, expanding the market for local farmers’ produce and generating income for the farm. They’ve facilitated school gardening programs in Chiang Mai coupled with education about the importance of saving seeds. And Jo has given many interviews to the popular television and print media in Thailand describing Pun Pun’s philosophy and practices. He’s recently completed a book on organic agriculture and seed saving written in a style and language accessible to “common” farmers and villagers (most Thai books are written in scholarly style and are read only by university people).<br /><br />In short, Pun Pun has exemplified the maxim of doing a lot with a little. They’re able to accomplish this because of personal integrity and commitment to the principles of simple, natural, ecological living. Rather than employing typical life strategies that depend upon money, they’ve endeavored to minimize dependence upon money wherever possible and substitute ingenuity and creativity, and to emphasize money expenditures that truly maximize well-being and not just keeping up with fads. This philosophy provides the basis for their educational programs – what Jo calls his “brainwashing.” <br /><br />What they are creating is so obviously attractive they do not need much if any conventional marketing or “PR.” So any money that comes in through grants they can make go a very long way to do a lot of good for many people.<br /><br />So what would I do with $100,000 to serve the community in question? I would use it to extend the Pun Pun model of development, addressing sustainability and self-reliance through agroecology and seed saving, natural building using the local materials, decentralized appropriate technologies in energy and water resources, homespun goods and handicrafts, traditional knowledge of medicine and health practices, farm-school education for the children, and development of local businesses and cooperative cottage industries in connection with neighboring communities.<br /><br />Rather than consider the $100k “seed money” to start some project to use to go after more money later, I would use it to build social infrastructure and local resources to avoid the need to get more money in the future. The aim would be to make the community self-sufficient, and to build in the capacity for the community in question to help neighboring communities on the road to local self-sufficiency and ecological sustainability. <br /><br />References<br /><br />1. Simms A, Moran D, Cordon C. UK Dependence Report. New Economics Foundation, 2006. www.neweconomics.org<br />2. See for example: 1,500 farmers commit suicide in India. The Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, April 15, 2009. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/1500-farmers-commit-mass-suicide-in-india-1669018.html<br />3. www.punpunthailand.org<br />4. http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/asia/thailand/chiang-mai/74226/pun-pun/restaurant-detail.htmlJoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-15029579145811491252009-10-26T14:02:00.000-07:002009-10-26T14:04:39.380-07:00Valuing folk crop varieties for agroecology and food security<a href="http://www.bioscienceresource.org/commentaries/article.php?id=42"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Article in Bioscience Resource Project</span></a> by my friend Dr. Debal Deb.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-70691324450949591092009-10-21T13:34:00.000-07:002009-10-22T18:49:51.738-07:00Rambling polemic #2For a class in "sustainable community development" I was recently asked to reflect on the statement by Albert Einstein that “the significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them,” and come up with three areas where major shifts in level-of-thought are required for human society to approach sustainability, well-being, etc....<br /><br />So here's what I wrote.<br /><br />* * * * *<br /><br />What Einstein was alluding to could be called <span style="font-style:italic;">metanoia</span> – a term which originally denoted a change in outlook after spiritual repentance but lately has been interpreted more liberally as reaching beyond existing or conventional thought structures to a deeper understanding. (Although an element of spiritual repentance is still particularly <span style="font-style:italic;">a propos</span> in our modern circumstances.) In this essay I will identify three areas of conventional thinking that require metanoic transformation in order for human communities and society in general to approach authentic development.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Myth #1: (more) growth will save us.</span></span><br /><br />A principle “sacred cow” of Western developmentality is the dictum for economic growth as a panacea to cure all ills, social and environmental. “Sustainable growth” is the primary policy goal of all Western governments and by extension the governments of lesser-developed countries living out the legacy of colonialism and its modern analog “development.” However, “sustainable growth” is what ecological economist Herman Daly has called an <span style="font-style:italic;">impossibility theorem</span>. (3)<br /><br />Indefinite growth of the human economy is impossible on a finite planet and its pursuit attempts to flout the laws of thermodynamics and ecology. More than ample evidence exists demonstrating that for some decades running the human economy has exceeded the biophysical limitations of nature to provide energy and resources and assimilate wastes emitted by the expanding human economy. (3, 4, 7) And yet, what discussion exists in mainstream media sources regarding our extant conditions of ecological overshoot – a concept that a ten-year-old of average intelligence could easily comprehend? What politician could be elected to public office on a campaign platform of “economic shrinkage”? Is this imaginable at present?<br /><br />Furthermore ample evidence exists that economic growth has not alleviated poverty as was allegedly intended at the outset of the post-war period. A 2006 report by the New Economics Foundation (8) indicated that over the past several decades, out of every $100 of growth in the global economy, a mere $0.60 on average has gone to the people at the “bottom of the pyramid.” It is intuitive that rich individuals, corporations, and countries stand to gain the most from economic growth as they are in the best position to capture the benefits – “it takes money to make money” is a familiar nostrum. So it is not surprising that the rich of the world have pursued economic growth with the specious justification that growth will promote “the rising tide that lifts all boats,” despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary.<br /><br />This program has led to the conflating of “development” with “growth.” So a first step in the metanoic transformation away from an economics of “development” based upon export-led growth is making a clear rhetorical distinction between the concepts of “growth” and “development.” Put simply, <span style="font-style:italic;">growth</span> signifies quantitative increase of the material and energy throughput of the human economy; <span style="font-style:italic;">development</span> means qualitative increase in human well-being. (3) <br /><br />At this point, <span style="font-style:italic;">growth</span> should be opposed and in fact the process of growth reversed to a steady-state level that can be physically and ecologically sustained by the bioshpere. There is no theoretical limit to <span style="font-style:italic;">development</span> as defined as increase in well-being. However, in our current state of global ecological overshoot, policies aimed at further increasing growth directly impact well-being in a negative way by eroding the planet’s ecological life support systems. Correcting widespread misconceptions pertaining to “growth” and “development” is a first step in the metanoic shift towards implementing an economics of authentic development.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Myth #2: Urbanization is good, natural, and here to stay.</span></span><br /><br />The second “sacred cow” that I would expose as a sham is the notion that the current trend in urbanization of the human population is somehow “natural,” “inevitable,” and “beneficial.”<br /><br />Anyone who has spent any time in a rapidly urbanizing mega-city in Asia, Africa, or Latin America is immediately confronted with a sense of massive unfolding disaster. In Asia, where the urbanization trend is currently the strongest, inadequate infrastructure fails completely to deal with the influx tide of human bodies and the side-effects and wastes of our production and consumption. Untreated sewage flows into rivers, lakes and streams. Municipal wastes litter the landscape and leach toxic chemicals into the environment. Pollution from motor vehicles chokes the air. Over one million new people arrive in the slums and shanty-towns of urban/peri-urban areas each weak, driving up unemployment and driving down wages, increasing competition for the scarce resources of life, exacerbating overcrowding, escalating crime and violence, and generally intensifying the already hellish conditions of existence.<br /><br />This process is in no way sustainable, nor is it “natural,” “inevitable,” or desirable. The vast majority of the one million people flocking to city slums each week are not choosing to do so because they long to be “modern,” or out of the “desire for a better life” as is commonly supposed by those locked into the mindset of developmentality (except perhaps as understood in the most narrow and reductionistic sense). Recent urban migrants have largely been displaced, often by force and violence, from stable rural existence by the effects of “development,” for example massive hydroelectric dam projects and gas pipelines, and by the spread of industrial (i.e. capital-, energy-, and chemical-intensive) agriculture.<br /><br />But the ideas that cities are where “culture” resides, and that the “modern” effete urbanite lifestyle is natural and what ought to be emulated, are deeply entrenched in the Western developmentalist mindset. That people could be happy living rural agrarian communities with lifestyles based primarily on local production and consumption of resources is uniformly dismissed by elites – “subsistence” agriculture is everywhere denigrated; “import substitution” (i.e. local self-reliance) is a dirty word in orthodox development economics.<br /><br />However, as in all cases where nothing short of a metanoic transformation will suffice to produce positive change, evidence contrary to established conventional norms is lacking or is simply ignored because it doesn’t “fit the model.” But even in the US, one of the longest and most heavily urbanized populations in the world, “the fact that most Americans live in metro areas does not mean it is because they want to live there…a recent Gallup poll asking Americans where they would prefer to live found that 24 percent wanted to live on a farm or in a rural area, with 36 percent preferring small-town life…these preferences have changed little in the last 60 years…As a result, over one-third of Americans are living in metropolitan areas even though they would prefer to live in less populated settings. The fact that the location of jobs does not match the locational preferences of people explains why more Americans don’t move to smaller cities and towns.” (1)<br /><br />If people in developing countries are flocking to cities in droves, it is not because they are enthused about the “opportunities” for employment and modern enculturation that are available there. It is because their former agrarian lifestyles have been made impossible by “development.”<br /><br />Lester Brown has indicated: “It is widely assumed that urbanization will continue. But this is not necessarily so. The growing scarcity of water and the high cost of the energy invested in transporting water over long distances may itself begin to constrain urban growth. For example, some 400 cities in China are already facing a chronic shortage of water.” (2)<br /><br />In October of 2007, for the first time in the history of the planet, more human beings lived in cities than in rural settings. This trend of urbanization is unsustainable and has led to disaster as city life has become drastically less desirable while becoming increasingly resource-intensive. Resettlement of rural areas and re-establishment of predominantly “subsistence” lifestyles based on sustainable use of primarily local resources is the ineluctable course towards authentic development and human well-being from our present out-of-balance state. Understanding this basic fact, however, will require an Einsteinian metanoic shift, in particular among Western educated elites who have the hardest time comprehending ideas that run counter to professional training and urbane social conditioning.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Myth #3: We need more education.</span></span><br /><br />Lastly I would challenge the common orthodoxy regarding the unalloyed benefits of “education.”<br /><br />[The sustainable community development class professor's] current email tagline quotes Mark Twain: “Never let school interfere with your education.” This quote affirms a basic feeling that most of us “educated” folk have that <span style="font-style:italic;">school sucks</span>. In other words, this expresses an irony that even the highly lettered often viscerally feel that school is mainly an impediment to real learning. Why then do we so unhesitatingly affirm the provision of “education” and the building of schools as noble goals in development projects?<br /><br />Funding educational programs, building schools, and in particular getting more girls and young women into the classroom currently has tremendous cachet among WWLs (wealthy white liberals), and subsequently has a “sexiness” that has not gone unrecognized by the courtiers of philanthropy. However, while there is much talk about the need for increased provision of education, there is precious little discussion of substance regarding the <span style="font-style:italic;">quality</span> of that education, or just precisely what we are advocating be taught in these schools for developing communities.<br /><br />A documentary critiquing “development” in Ladakh (5) depicts children reading Wordsworth and Shakespeare in an English-style boarding school classroom. When the filmmakers visited the home village of some of the children and were invited to dinner with their families, they became ill after eating a poison weed that the schoolchildren inadvertently picked when asked by their mothers to gather vegetables for the meal.<br /><br />A generation ago this never would have happened, since all Ladakhi children, having grown up on the family farm, would easily distinguish and avoid poisonous varieties of the local vegetation. Attending far-from-home Western-style boarding schools has had the effect of supplanting Ladakhi young people’s traditional knowledge – knowledge relevant to the local social and ecological context – with forms of knowledge valued by Western institutions. This is one of the more insidious effects of developmentality – an unconscious derogation and dismissal, and thus destruction, of local and indigenous knowledge forms. And yet, the fact that most Ladakhi children now attend such boarding schools is widely touted as a success by the statisticians of “development” as they tabulate increased enrollments. <br /><br />Following Aldo Leopold, we are led to ask, “Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth?”<br /><br />David Orr has pointed out that “it is a matter of no small consequence that the only people who have lived sustainably on the planet for any length of time could not read.” Orr notes that the destructive effects of globalization and development upon the climate, ecosystems, and traditional cultures, “is not the work of ignorant people. It is, rather, largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs.” (6)<br /><br />This is a clear indictment of Western globalist educational institutions, which are predicated upon the myth that our culture represents the pinnacle of human achievement – what Orr identifies as “a cultural arrogance of the worst sort, [representing] a gross misreading of history and anthropology.”<br /><br />So the metanoic shift called for in education must begin with a re-envisioning of what education is <span style="font-style:italic;">for</span>. It’s conventionally held that the purpose of education is that of giving students the means for upward mobility and “success.” Thomas Merton identified this as “the mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade.” (Merton went on to admonish his students to “be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing – success.”)<br /><br />TS Eliot asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" Much of contemporary education is comprised by a protracted cramming of all manner of disembodied facts, techniques and information (“data”) into students’ heads. Presumably this is to equip them to more effectively compete with one another and society at large in a race to accumulate status and wealth. Extension of this pedagogy to developing communities thus represents the broad-scale ensnarement even greater numbers of children and young adults into the squirrel cage as they, like us, strive for “professional success,” and to “be competitive in the global economy.” It is a likely eventuality, then, that they also will come to the conclusion that <span style="font-style:italic;">school sucks</span>.<br /><br />The metanoic shift in education thus represents a turn towards pedagogy for the development of ecological conscience and appreciation for local and indigenous knowledge systems. Education must come to be seen as a tool for students to use in the forging of their personhood, in their processes of discovery of themselves and the world, and in their understanding of their place in the greater biotic community. My experiences among the “uneducated” farming folk of South Asia suggests that they have much more to teach us than we them when it comes to redefining our educational systems around students’ development of ecological conscience, a storehouse of local knowledge, practical competence and labor skills, native intuition, and wisdom.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">References</span><br /><br />1.) Atkinson RD. Reversing rural America’s economic decline: The case for a national balanced growth strategy. Progressive Policy Institute, 2004. (http://www.ppionline.org/documents/rural_economy_0204.pdf)<br /><br />2.) Brown LR. The Ecology of Cities. The Globalist, 2006. (http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5638)<br /><br />3.) Daly, HE. Economics in a Full World. Scientific American magazine, 2005. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=economics-in-a-full-world)<br /><br />4.) Global Footprint Network. September 25 is Overshoot Day 2009. (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/)<br /><br />5.) International Society for Ecology and Culture. Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh (film). (www.isec.org.uk)<br /><br />6.) Orr, D. What is Education For? Six myths about the foundations of modern education, and six new principles to replace them. The Learning Revolution, 1991. (http://www.davidworr.com/files/What_is_Education_For.pdf)<br /><br />7.) Rockstrom et al. Special Feature: A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, p. 472-475, 24 September 1990. (http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html)<br /><br />8.) Woodward D and Simms A. Growth Isn’t Working. New Economics Foundation, 2006. (http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/hrfu5w555mzd3f55m2vqwty502022006112929.pdf)Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-30783411352972606732009-09-15T20:27:00.000-07:002009-09-15T20:29:06.830-07:00NYT series on US toxic waters<a href="http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Toxic Waters: A series about the worsening pollution in American waters and regulators' response</span></span></a>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-91762461475355619542009-08-25T08:13:00.000-07:002009-08-25T08:37:23.802-07:00Atrazine weed-killer in US drinking water supply<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9iJQvrEOIjU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9iJQvrEOIjU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />See also the Huffington Post, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/23/epa-fails-to-inform-publi_n_266686.html"><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">EPA fails to inform public about weed-killer in drinking water</span></span></a><br /><br />...and DemocracyNow's <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/25/epa_fails_to_inform_public_about"><span style="font-weight:bold;">coverage of the story</span></a>.<br /><br />Atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide in groundwater and surface water.<br /><br />The <a href="http://pesticideinfo.org"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pesticide Info Database</span></a> maintained by the <a href="http://www.panna.org/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pesticide Action Network</span></a> identifies atrazine as a carcinogen, suspected endocrine disruptor, and posing a very high risk for groundwater contamination. For these reasons they classify the herbicide as a "Bad Actor." See the Pesticide Info <a href="http://pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC35042"><span style="font-weight:bold;">entry for atrazine</span></a> for more information about its ecological and human health effects.<br /><br />For more information on pesticide environmental toxicology, see the following:<br /><br /><a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2005/1291/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pesticides in the Nation’s Streams and Groundwater, 1992 – 2001</span></a> Report by the US Geological Survey.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.awwarf.org/research/TopicsandProjects/execSum/PDFReports/2938.pdf"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pesticide Degradates of Concern to the Drinking Water Community</span></a> Report by the American Water Works Association.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.bodyburden.org/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Human Toxome Project</span></a> Datasets on the human body burden of hundreds of industrial chemicals and pollutants including pesticides.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.who.int/heli/risks/toxics/chemicalsdirectory/en/index.html"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Agrochemicals, Health and Environment Directory</span></a> of resources from the World Health Organization.<br /><br /><a href="http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">TOXNET Toxicology Data Network</span></a> A cluster of databases on toxicology and hazardous chemicals, including pesticides, gateways to search engines for both research literature on health impacts, and guidance/policymaking materials from the US National Library of Medicine.<br /><br /><a href="http://aghealth.nci.nih.gov/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Agricultural Health Study</span></a> A study of over 89 000 people that explores the health impacts of pesticide use among farmers and their families, and among commercial pesticide applicators, in the US. Many links to papers on aspects of health risk from use of pesticides, including risks of cancers and premature mortality. National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environment Health Sciences, USEPA.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.who.int/ipcs/publications/pds/en/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pesticide Safety Data Sheets</span></a> Basic information on toxicology and use of pesticides. World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.foodnews.org/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">A Shopper’s Guide to Pesticide Residues in Food</span></a> by the Environmental Working Group.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/espm118/articles/consumer_u_food_safety.pdf">D<span style="font-weight:bold;">o You Know What You’re Eating?</span></a> An analysis of US government data on pesticide residues in food by the Consumers Union of the US.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">What’s On My Food?</span></a> Guide to pesticide residues in food.<br /><br /><a href="http://extoxnet.orst.edu/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">EXTOXNET</span></a> The Extension Toxicology Network. A database providing a variety of information about pesticides, toxicology, and environmental chemistry. Compiled and maintained by University of California-Davis, Oregon State University, Michigan State University, and the University of Idaho.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-13186959420005717422009-07-08T07:34:00.000-07:002009-07-08T07:35:18.976-07:00NEW short video intro to AqCheck out the <a href="http://www.aqsolutions.org/?page_id=3"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Aqueous Solutions website</span></span></a> for a new short video introduction to our work!Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-17382819862936558972009-07-06T09:21:00.000-07:002009-07-06T09:28:43.238-07:00Food, Inc.<object data="http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/modules/takepart/takepart_video/swf/player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="360" width="640"> <param name="flashvars" value="bc=26576134001&autoplay=false"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#202020"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> </object><br /><br /><a href="http://www.foodincmovie.com/"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Food, Inc.</span></span></a> -- Go see it.<br /><br /><br />See also <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text"><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty</span></span></a>, National Geographic Magazine, June 2009.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-3893479422961710272009-06-15T20:40:00.000-07:002009-06-15T20:43:35.136-07:00Some days I am a preta.....<span style="font-style:italic;">Pretas</span> = hungry ghosts, chronically frustrated spirits. Creatures with enormous bellies and tiny mouths, i.e. huge appetites and limited means for satisfying those appetites.....<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXlTqKxHXlYk87_RB0C-a7i5PYbxo4mvFzWJ-DhzZEKr9clqVbZQasMZq9RGlySlWlL8uT2Mu7Bxu5DAoDPPmqgZxZogeWd5CIsq01J8lbwsklyKqCVWELjklAYoUI4I1ifi_/s1600-h/preta.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 302px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXlTqKxHXlYk87_RB0C-a7i5PYbxo4mvFzWJ-DhzZEKr9clqVbZQasMZq9RGlySlWlL8uT2Mu7Bxu5DAoDPPmqgZxZogeWd5CIsq01J8lbwsklyKqCVWELjklAYoUI4I1ifi_/s400/preta.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5347765707880750418" /></a>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-56710005271475203112009-05-27T11:38:00.000-07:002009-05-27T11:41:53.827-07:00Natural building workshop this July in ColoradoSign up now! Spaces are limited...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.punpunthailand.org/internships.html#buildwithus2"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Natural Building in the mountains of CO</span></a><br /><br />July 10-13, 2009<br /><br />The workshop will include:<br /><br />Introduction to our "compound", our vision and tour of the other strawbale house on site as well as our present project, an earthship under construction <br /><br />Basic design principles for environmental citing, climatic considerations, and aesthetics <br /><br />Adobe brick making <br /><br />Adobe wall construction<br /><br />Intros and smaller projects using other earthen building techniques including wattle-and-daub, cob, and earth bag <br /><br />Earthen plasters for earthen walls and strawbale walls <br /><br />Natural clay/starch paints, linseed oil, beeswax and other options for finishing sealants, etc <br /><br />And more...<br /><br />Evening/afternoon activities and exchanges will also be included. These include; an introduction to earthen building, introduction to Thai cooking, Thai massage, seed saving and our work in Thailand at Pun Pun organic farm, sustainable living learning center and seed center.<br /><br />See <a href="http://www.punpunthailand.org"><span style="font-weight:bold;">www.punpunthailand.org</span></a> for more info.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-86343843663094443552009-05-21T05:27:00.000-07:002009-05-21T05:40:50.103-07:00Meet my new gal...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuAK5fXQLFnOTFR7IJacGaYQYwA1B3daSMVTC4Jo8RrlmaYF6-oA8gBWM_h0TQcFZWny-iSzRDuwKjbWPH3QsJjbGFKDzHhDPujnDA71CoO4dYUZUeTEYnXtTZvgMkHUTYUWTB/s1600-h/IMG_0381.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuAK5fXQLFnOTFR7IJacGaYQYwA1B3daSMVTC4Jo8RrlmaYF6-oA8gBWM_h0TQcFZWny-iSzRDuwKjbWPH3QsJjbGFKDzHhDPujnDA71CoO4dYUZUeTEYnXtTZvgMkHUTYUWTB/s320/IMG_0381.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338253289229287650" /></a>I need a name for 'er. Suggestions? <br /><br />I was thinkin maybe "Lola," reminiscent of the sexually ambiguous character, noted for his/her surprising strength, a la The Kinks...<br /><br />...or maybe "Rocinante." That was the name of Steinbeck's truck-camper, featured in the peerless work of travel writing <span style="font-style:italic;">Travels with Charley</span>. It was also the name of Don Quixote's horse, which is where Steinbeck got the name. Incidentally, <span style="font-style:italic;">rocin</span> in Spanish means "work horse"...<br /><br />Ideas for names for my gal? Leave 'em in the comments section...Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-60925129795847042962009-05-17T07:59:00.001-07:002009-05-17T07:59:48.312-07:00Hilarious and frightening....<table style='font:11px arial; color:#333; background-color:#f5f5f5' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='360' height='353'><tbody><tr style='background-color:#e5e5e5' valign='middle'><td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;'><a target='_blank' style='color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/'>The Daily Show With Jon Stewart</a></td><td style='padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; text-align:right; font-weight:bold;'>M - Th 11p / 10c</td></tr><tr style='height:14px;' valign='middle'><td style='padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;' colspan='2'><a target='_blank' style='color:#333; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=227353&title=little-crop-of-horrors'>Little Crop of Horrors</a></td></tr><tr style='height:14px; background-color:#353535' valign='middle'><td colspan='2' style='padding:2px 5px 0px 5px; width:360px; overflow:hidden; text-align:right'><a target='_blank' style='color:#96deff; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/'>thedailyshow.com</a></td></tr><tr valign='middle'><td style='padding:0px;' colspan='2'><embed style='display:block' src='http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:227353' width='360' height='301' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='window' allowFullscreen='true' flashvars='autoPlay=false' allowscriptaccess='always' allownetworking='all' bgcolor='#000000'></embed></td></tr><tr style='height:18px;' valign='middle'><td style='padding:0px;' colspan='2'><table style='margin:0px; text-align:center' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='100%' height='100%'><tr valign='middle'><td style='padding:3px; width:33%;'><a target='_blank' style='font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml'>Daily Show<br/> Full Episodes</a></td><td style='padding:3px; width:33%;'><a target='_blank' style='font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/tagSearchResults.jhtml?term=Clusterf%23%40k+to+the+Poor+House'>Economic Crisis</a></td><td style='padding:3px; width:33%;'><a target='_blank' style='font:10px arial; color:#333; text-decoration:none;' href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/tagSearchResults.jhtml?term=Republicans'>Political Humor</a></td></tr></table></td></tr></tbody></table>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-17340860577135418012009-05-14T15:13:00.000-07:002009-05-14T15:20:34.325-07:00Jobs at Aqueous SolutionsLooking for an opportunity to work internationally in water and sanitation?<br /><br />Aqueous Solutions is seeking a qualified individual to serve as program coordinator for our projects in Thailand in the Burma border areas.<br /><br />See <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.aqsolutions.org"><span style="font-weight:bold;">www.aqsolutions.org</span></a> to download a job description and information on how to apply!<br /><br />This and other opportunities to work with Aqueous Solutions' research and field projects projects are listed on our <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.aqsolutions.org/?page_id=14">Get Involved</a></span></span> page.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-25150185603140349892009-05-02T09:16:00.000-07:002009-05-02T09:21:00.950-07:00Safe Haven Children's Home<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBolLJLRbWafzQ6vwvezFtyExnJY9zHBiwwGLgD_2s-8pVIutEThwcgfSH9L6Z661fZ2wtoIit-vYMrlEkWpXtjKkmfQp4JuOpDzq7bBIZ2jvPuCmiDTH-Wq2g-H19UcIQcmj/s1600-h/IMG_3771.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBolLJLRbWafzQ6vwvezFtyExnJY9zHBiwwGLgD_2s-8pVIutEThwcgfSH9L6Z661fZ2wtoIit-vYMrlEkWpXtjKkmfQp4JuOpDzq7bBIZ2jvPuCmiDTH-Wq2g-H19UcIQcmj/s320/IMG_3771.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331262203991396514" /></a>Aqueous Solutions completes rainwater harvesting and filter systems for Safe Haven Children’s Home - an ethnic <span style="font-style:italic;">Karen</span> community for displaced persons, widows and orphaned children on the Thai-Burma border.<br /><br />See <a href="http://aqueoussolutions.shutterfly.com/"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">our photo galleries</span></span></a> for images of the community and the water systems project. (Photography courtesy of Line Ramstad...for more about Safe Haven and <span style="font-style:italic;">Karen</span> life see also <a href="http://www.lineramstad.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Line's blog</span></span></a>.)Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-80020790859690988762009-04-14T07:25:00.000-07:002009-04-14T07:33:56.204-07:00DN! spots on the economy.....Chomsky drops some science on the global economic crisis:<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap; "><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed_show_v1/300/2009/4/13/segment/1"></script></span><br /></div><br />...and a town in central NC is ahead of the game, creating local living economies....<br /><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed_show_v1/300/2009/4/9/segment/3"></script>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-39353689561974802382009-03-30T06:54:00.000-07:002009-03-30T06:56:44.555-07:00Line's blog rocks!My friend Line: landscape architect, people person, adopted by the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Karen</span> people of Burma/Thailand....<a href="http://www.lineramstad.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">see her blog</span></a>.....Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-38926835150590799552009-03-17T03:27:00.000-07:002009-03-17T03:36:04.699-07:00Aqueous Solutions 2008 Annual Report online<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinr6sAplapsYVT8ru1w83Y_a0FkwkTUUBpa6D0X-75PUfVR8rZ7bEqC_QaojZofYMNRck9kvz4XQf8_nHRpDchqW2AInxccJxhd5CncQg72I0E5D0UVsfyrfj2e1UYWStIbJwP/s1600-h/Annual+Report+2008-2009.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 142px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinr6sAplapsYVT8ru1w83Y_a0FkwkTUUBpa6D0X-75PUfVR8rZ7bEqC_QaojZofYMNRck9kvz4XQf8_nHRpDchqW2AInxccJxhd5CncQg72I0E5D0UVsfyrfj2e1UYWStIbJwP/s200/Annual+Report+2008-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314101915760984226" /></a><br />The Aqueous 2008 Annual Report is now <a href="http://www.aqsolutions.org/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">online and available for download</span></a> - check it out!<div><br /><div></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqBUwA6Nu_bf7iauclSYAELmd9cck0grpqTPUBAi13mwchsYRJt4fhlw4GHzmyEKTzoQttyLCIjwf6GjFUvxdJVjwfBMsaWIVhNiqz7nVce6BJ8y628uAjLmkj_g1OumGpjyvU/s1600-h/kids+playing+in+concrete+ring.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqBUwA6Nu_bf7iauclSYAELmd9cck0grpqTPUBAi13mwchsYRJt4fhlw4GHzmyEKTzoQttyLCIjwf6GjFUvxdJVjwfBMsaWIVhNiqz7nVce6BJ8y628uAjLmkj_g1OumGpjyvU/s200/kids+playing+in+concrete+ring.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314102258905867250" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>And don't forget to visit our new <a href="http://aqueoussolutions.shutterfly.com/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">online photo gallery</span></a>!<br /></div></div>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-58691521118772118842009-03-09T22:09:00.000-07:002009-03-09T22:16:06.966-07:00Friedman gets it?OK, so normally I think NYT columnist Tom Friedman is a total douchebag. But check out this quote from his recent op-ed piece:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”</span><br /><br />Holy crap. If Tom Friedman is willing to call into question this fundamental axiom in the reigning economic dogma, then (1) we really are up sh*t crick without a paddle, and (2) things may be fixin to change - and fast.<br /><br />So hold on folks! If Friedman is starting to get it then we're in for a ride. When he starts preaching local (bioregional) self-reliance then we'll know we're on our way....<br /><br />Read the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=1&emc=eta1"><span style="font-weight:bold;">full piece</span></a> on the NYT website.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-22333016807637700092009-03-07T06:35:00.001-08:002009-03-07T06:37:02.524-08:00PPR in NYT! Hellz yeah!Pun Pun Restaurant <a href="http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/asia/thailand/chiang-mai/restaurant-detail.html?vid=1194838179536&inline=nyt-classifier"><span style="font-weight:bold;">written up in the travel/food section</span></a> of the New York Times. Killer!Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-71645122312875986132009-03-01T02:41:00.000-08:002009-03-08T01:07:04.932-08:00sick climbing in ton sai!Last month went rock climbing in Railay and Ton Sai in the south of Thailand. It was totally sick.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8W07PRnuEzZ-OMCP7A-UnSZGFXPHS3IA8buifDeKlgbMSFfZvgo3PZRYh0Fr5lb0HqmY3FjrXDVe5POxLVPF_rj3zx5Qp_1sxcBBB0pRXSV3nby1999zEyXC8Gbacw4_QFh3/s1600-h/IMG_1787.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 304px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8W07PRnuEzZ-OMCP7A-UnSZGFXPHS3IA8buifDeKlgbMSFfZvgo3PZRYh0Fr5lb0HqmY3FjrXDVe5POxLVPF_rj3zx5Qp_1sxcBBB0pRXSV3nby1999zEyXC8Gbacw4_QFh3/s400/IMG_1787.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310740521719202322" /></a><br />My camera's still busted, but thanks to my climbing partners, the beautiful and talented Line and Birgit (from Norway, pictured just below, Birgit on the left), we have these fantastic pics to enjoy...<br /><br /><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDoMeP22mM2yN8HqBLZ-v53mfnxvifspOyp7bWcz_5lqD_HWKLQ5moM9vxXNCpFkfAW6LMFbcO66M1nwEbJiR7VdxkMZTD27ksZYRxv9EAjkn3dbj2jGVYaGMpYtS5-ste81nG/s1600-h/IMG_1730.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDoMeP22mM2yN8HqBLZ-v53mfnxvifspOyp7bWcz_5lqD_HWKLQ5moM9vxXNCpFkfAW6LMFbcO66M1nwEbJiR7VdxkMZTD27ksZYRxv9EAjkn3dbj2jGVYaGMpYtS5-ste81nG/s400/IMG_1730.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169793578585026" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3kanRtUn5VeBjoHOL1KSsyr-TOtT_zGe_6PCC-JypBIYhY2-nssLRG6YZqbwMAW05HjFSH0-Yap24XzpR3iQbtQxF7ubf1yB7aIuvhzklfOl_k6BZy37w3-axesBbdth5ZblS/s1600-h/P1310113.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3kanRtUn5VeBjoHOL1KSsyr-TOtT_zGe_6PCC-JypBIYhY2-nssLRG6YZqbwMAW05HjFSH0-Yap24XzpR3iQbtQxF7ubf1yB7aIuvhzklfOl_k6BZy37w3-axesBbdth5ZblS/s400/P1310113.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169627427237026" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhADIMRXqBwC2gl0ehhfDYTkxDFSOLFhVovvKEw3AG8qErxngPIXD-1r2PEwT1w5toRT2gS9m4upBPUoTfr2kvB1WZaKGG6xyCJGjq_xNAy6caGHEe_5l2v797DvlTaAwXSrEVn/s1600-h/P1290075.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhADIMRXqBwC2gl0ehhfDYTkxDFSOLFhVovvKEw3AG8qErxngPIXD-1r2PEwT1w5toRT2gS9m4upBPUoTfr2kvB1WZaKGG6xyCJGjq_xNAy6caGHEe_5l2v797DvlTaAwXSrEVn/s400/P1290075.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169624051106834" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3eI0RAJWEl86YAvY91wdTaaWhuPgicGVXd0bbhFWvdCpXOoVABKvJmYX5YB-aJDj1IQ5K-qQiORdikxHbFvJCwMAmIzMEz2CrQDjJAcY37B-dZJ7XoLTlN4TOV_NJT0kiyo0q/s1600-h/P1290069.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3eI0RAJWEl86YAvY91wdTaaWhuPgicGVXd0bbhFWvdCpXOoVABKvJmYX5YB-aJDj1IQ5K-qQiORdikxHbFvJCwMAmIzMEz2CrQDjJAcY37B-dZJ7XoLTlN4TOV_NJT0kiyo0q/s400/P1290069.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169621419064706" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcv57BUDz_a6jdl2iJXjAGymScb2kbIgI9gimu8Y91D4lwN4Yqn0xFd0Q3Ar3lHmCIpgS3rQFmTlYyfT9HOdhW8b10w5bGpF_pPFdTqPr8paWTI9cPfzupEi1mjHPV2YUtqQu/s1600-h/P1290057.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcv57BUDz_a6jdl2iJXjAGymScb2kbIgI9gimu8Y91D4lwN4Yqn0xFd0Q3Ar3lHmCIpgS3rQFmTlYyfT9HOdhW8b10w5bGpF_pPFdTqPr8paWTI9cPfzupEi1mjHPV2YUtqQu/s400/P1290057.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169619755091250" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnZpA10fB9DevZkOXPeUIbV7zvQAD_P6akcZ3Qz-QfxQA610OGhYfF1ygNHC1Y_rv4af7oBw9XVQfxxLTLq3jTtpd2tmwl6JxgRx1fe_RuNb69Skgsx0L5lhkurLO_i4cwl-pL/s1600-h/P1280040.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnZpA10fB9DevZkOXPeUIbV7zvQAD_P6akcZ3Qz-QfxQA610OGhYfF1ygNHC1Y_rv4af7oBw9XVQfxxLTLq3jTtpd2tmwl6JxgRx1fe_RuNb69Skgsx0L5lhkurLO_i4cwl-pL/s400/P1280040.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169170753293042" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn5w6TH4Vi75gDJqpoF8Iw2pT7KnVaN0BAOFlLUCqA2opkooRLQCT58_e0HI7HqoxWQbPhaZ8ZsVCIHgSYQjJwanT6KFPZiMJAQetxc_U-kM9KMfhpRnQiFcGth0cKkPd4_Q7c/s1600-h/P1280039.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn5w6TH4Vi75gDJqpoF8Iw2pT7KnVaN0BAOFlLUCqA2opkooRLQCT58_e0HI7HqoxWQbPhaZ8ZsVCIHgSYQjJwanT6KFPZiMJAQetxc_U-kM9KMfhpRnQiFcGth0cKkPd4_Q7c/s400/P1280039.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169168215289602" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh35LLRiNZskChASiO49IaI_cwmaXpW2AZIKfK3o5gWOBVXsNIEq9HXaUjRXbqR_8rRJeRkXrUdAvbQwX2txNnrle7QlxkdHz4v3cYPadcgSqaAcqgsdK_NstTrt-ANKp2VhVFc/s1600-h/P1270001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh35LLRiNZskChASiO49IaI_cwmaXpW2AZIKfK3o5gWOBVXsNIEq9HXaUjRXbqR_8rRJeRkXrUdAvbQwX2txNnrle7QlxkdHz4v3cYPadcgSqaAcqgsdK_NstTrt-ANKp2VhVFc/s400/P1270001.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169170375830626" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirltuYga2-yNu9UQWWkHhn_vf27zGKY8Xf8fnBpQR-jM6QJP9meRUgjiFRerdrIzAX78pfXx0xYIR8SeXhdfIPPSNT-BJ1D-fA3unFY-6W4zsqCR-d-_wiX2US9jsPv2cMLCsV/s1600-h/IMG_1917.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirltuYga2-yNu9UQWWkHhn_vf27zGKY8Xf8fnBpQR-jM6QJP9meRUgjiFRerdrIzAX78pfXx0xYIR8SeXhdfIPPSNT-BJ1D-fA3unFY-6W4zsqCR-d-_wiX2US9jsPv2cMLCsV/s400/IMG_1917.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169164912857682" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Qk-Kbd7BubnvXw6DL7Aun-Ce7dsdTqEC-sEp1d3od9rvv7x6P8nDG0sQrNhn6Oa1weJXJyjq_vp57epJ6FcJ2KiryAOLbSFSUWO90nuNKdA6MI-pdStsPJKPu9Xse1nOYYGR/s1600-h/IMG_1885.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Qk-Kbd7BubnvXw6DL7Aun-Ce7dsdTqEC-sEp1d3od9rvv7x6P8nDG0sQrNhn6Oa1weJXJyjq_vp57epJ6FcJ2KiryAOLbSFSUWO90nuNKdA6MI-pdStsPJKPu9Xse1nOYYGR/s400/IMG_1885.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308169159641336466" /></a><br /><div>Line gets strapped in to belay me on some totally manky undercling.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUggZTPQtXyAyRJO8uLZ6Hea8f3on7Z6kSGNzBSD5mxnMoUa1FNNiwOObsIuE0cjzwB_FfbqPld6Z6AKHOIYbb5yAI1R72xPBR5St0jQskqfqAEkxW521EXKxSBgxlsMc_aOEJ/s1600-h/IMG_1825.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUggZTPQtXyAyRJO8uLZ6Hea8f3on7Z6kSGNzBSD5mxnMoUa1FNNiwOObsIuE0cjzwB_FfbqPld6Z6AKHOIYbb5yAI1R72xPBR5St0jQskqfqAEkxW521EXKxSBgxlsMc_aOEJ/s400/IMG_1825.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308168354726565858" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyzTpzJzLrFiufOnoEpcNPF6ccTceLi_EhU_OYweG0CLPAzECUS1YARLBtHJqcJvgCxvrm-DyG_aUCYtUXsqaB0CW9af9UQdmRteKvjmM8nFU7q9ErITHwp2Cjgsc_zpU5YSB7/s1600-h/IMG_1817.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyzTpzJzLrFiufOnoEpcNPF6ccTceLi_EhU_OYweG0CLPAzECUS1YARLBtHJqcJvgCxvrm-DyG_aUCYtUXsqaB0CW9af9UQdmRteKvjmM8nFU7q9ErITHwp2Cjgsc_zpU5YSB7/s400/IMG_1817.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308168353242833570" /></a><br /></div><div>Has anyone got a needle and thread? Cos I am ripped! Ha!</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUXy5wKfgcLA5scI3jrs3VDelkQ9xqXigLdX6gEPZo60Ka-ifGWQNxcWSa2pniSd7XcHM-wyGT7i9NjxWP5eulq1-lMt21rYMjOdCzqu3qMvCGs2lO7D3_N_6GGk71__wrR5b/s1600-h/IMG_1769.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUXy5wKfgcLA5scI3jrs3VDelkQ9xqXigLdX6gEPZo60Ka-ifGWQNxcWSa2pniSd7XcHM-wyGT7i9NjxWP5eulq1-lMt21rYMjOdCzqu3qMvCGs2lO7D3_N_6GGk71__wrR5b/s400/IMG_1769.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308168350873950370" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-C4YqynhSjcGLOgUWBz8X9ftV36KAYSFgTpE1Kgq_938qIocO8NURzlDL_XdNd68RkvBVEK8ijCTCwLN4MdPeGjhkIbYAMksV7ycEWNhPxeDvgt78sIM2qj9bysQa7BrediH/s1600-h/IMG_0688.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-C4YqynhSjcGLOgUWBz8X9ftV36KAYSFgTpE1Kgq_938qIocO8NURzlDL_XdNd68RkvBVEK8ijCTCwLN4MdPeGjhkIbYAMksV7ycEWNhPxeDvgt78sIM2qj9bysQa7BrediH/s400/IMG_0688.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308168348611128530" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHU8kxkVI3z8yAZDomDtRo6I3_D5vEvNE8Q7SRqmOkHrg7CjXFrhjFu-vgqF-WUWOHQs2wkI3BRXe4yY4W8nbKCfAISPUZ3VqqzA_KCUKlaLp_Zbo3bx5RvjC0YjRjUF5ycyQb/s1600-h/P2030040.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHU8kxkVI3z8yAZDomDtRo6I3_D5vEvNE8Q7SRqmOkHrg7CjXFrhjFu-vgqF-WUWOHQs2wkI3BRXe4yY4W8nbKCfAISPUZ3VqqzA_KCUKlaLp_Zbo3bx5RvjC0YjRjUF5ycyQb/s400/P2030040.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310452357369135810" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVULL7q3mAMlcIOQH9KKMk9M8FvEj1g3aUj3qF7aaFocQjsWT805fnsFbxuOmQqQpg1YaVnoJ5LXPpoxqajjRrzYyFVjAep9rj407K6TSS0c_txBAMa7hOb7As0jtQJIX-Rbpp/s1600-h/P2030020.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVULL7q3mAMlcIOQH9KKMk9M8FvEj1g3aUj3qF7aaFocQjsWT805fnsFbxuOmQqQpg1YaVnoJ5LXPpoxqajjRrzYyFVjAep9rj407K6TSS0c_txBAMa7hOb7As0jtQJIX-Rbpp/s400/P2030020.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310452354112488194" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkmHqKeBM2_xT8IHrfW6u3WgeKnit4h3mCitfiN1Rk1rx0IK1oOeP4fpCzpFKJRDP67uTJkNmHjqQ3Jh-5VLz3u4eV61EJBa2W6g6MmxfJvq0rVlNp9VvFIlgwdDo2RLebY2UI/s1600-h/P2030015.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkmHqKeBM2_xT8IHrfW6u3WgeKnit4h3mCitfiN1Rk1rx0IK1oOeP4fpCzpFKJRDP67uTJkNmHjqQ3Jh-5VLz3u4eV61EJBa2W6g6MmxfJvq0rVlNp9VvFIlgwdDo2RLebY2UI/s400/P2030015.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310452348299120562" /></a><br />Our climbing guide, P'Nuang. He's awesome.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-98CbS0yuD6666FevPnyzJPv6A7NFA2do5HK43hpu4BBRkYju6-NVOEq-BSt1QqetmgBjjpT-8ROMQhTXNQvS6lE_G0t0TEJrC5Wt8PFmsXRNqldKsVaU1g_y28XV3eIReadj/s1600-h/P2020132.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-98CbS0yuD6666FevPnyzJPv6A7NFA2do5HK43hpu4BBRkYju6-NVOEq-BSt1QqetmgBjjpT-8ROMQhTXNQvS6lE_G0t0TEJrC5Wt8PFmsXRNqldKsVaU1g_y28XV3eIReadj/s400/P2020132.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310452342817600418" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZv8hBmnG5JQ4-DrAU4ab2etGpL_LrJY0QeSJ2TDvEX1CIs3c90gJcc6le4sQStpS_1thLLOluVqiqqlTF4Q7TzgvIoDdk9pzMPuLA2URsJppSVottYSK2fwQ_sD8JfwmLM-fa/s1600-h/P2030086.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZv8hBmnG5JQ4-DrAU4ab2etGpL_LrJY0QeSJ2TDvEX1CIs3c90gJcc6le4sQStpS_1thLLOluVqiqqlTF4Q7TzgvIoDdk9pzMPuLA2URsJppSVottYSK2fwQ_sD8JfwmLM-fa/s400/P2030086.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310453201241998882" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSD0avNucPZwS0YPpQmYParFaCZQkVPWEu2yyj_PKu26ffuHNlA6eMRt7OLJsZNqVnosvmEm_udJ9myWg4tH_yDGWNIiSbhni90inwoL_3RFIEMCkAYXtWltGzLM9613fi7a1X/s1600-h/P2030069.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSD0avNucPZwS0YPpQmYParFaCZQkVPWEu2yyj_PKu26ffuHNlA6eMRt7OLJsZNqVnosvmEm_udJ9myWg4tH_yDGWNIiSbhni90inwoL_3RFIEMCkAYXtWltGzLM9613fi7a1X/s400/P2030069.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310453194005683842" /></a><br /><br /></div></div>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-24037347611142829172009-01-15T03:43:00.000-08:002009-01-15T03:52:53.305-08:00Mitch Hedberg The Great<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJADR0SXD1folV1_aMP9V2tLQfZp9ZpoCUQKaFpGHfV266Sg4S36DWw0xjy15Q_OPnforSYNOXWiGmXs8fGKxKGoeR3taGZEyyqiuMYCNG3grZVT5oektA2aI6Hlpdn8eNgo8/s1600-h/mitch_smile.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJADR0SXD1folV1_aMP9V2tLQfZp9ZpoCUQKaFpGHfV266Sg4S36DWw0xjy15Q_OPnforSYNOXWiGmXs8fGKxKGoeR3taGZEyyqiuMYCNG3grZVT5oektA2aI6Hlpdn8eNgo8/s320/mitch_smile.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291485971835415458" /></a><br />Totally sweet website for downloading Mitch Hedberg recordings and memorabilia - <a href="http://hedburgh.com/index.shtml"><span style="font-weight:bold;">hedburgh.com</span></a>.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">If you have trouble sleeping, count sheep. Do not count endangered species - you will run out!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div> - Mitch Hedberg</div>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21324888.post-76666894523352359882009-01-13T21:16:00.001-08:002009-01-13T21:16:41.078-08:00Ruminations on Appropriate Technologies and Ecological EducationI recently submitted an application for a PhD program in “environmental engineering for developing communities,” wherein I’m hoping to continue my research activities in simple water purification systems.<br /><br />For part of the application I had to make a statement about my professional and career goals. So I felt like I needed to say something about appropriate technologies, and an ecologically informed pedagogical philosophy. What follows is an adaptation from my personal statement, just for your potential reading enjoyment. Comments are always welcome!<br /><br />…<br /><br />I envision a career that spans academia and the non-profit/NGO sector as a researcher and educator in the natural sciences, focusing in the multidisciplinary fields of sustainability science and appropriate technologies. Briefly outlined below are the commitments that shape my intentions and motivate my pursuit of this as a career:<br /><br />I am committed to the development of appropriate technologies that empower households and communities to meet their basic needs – such as that of safe drinking water – using materials that are ecologically apposite and naturally abundant. I strongly advocate techniques that engender local self-reliance and decentralized, democratic control in their creation and operation, and moreover, are conscientious of the local culture and traditions and thereby operate as means of harnessing and celebrating local wisdom and labor skills.<br /><br />Furthermore, I am committed to facilitating the development of an ecological conscience and broadened cultural worldview among Western science and engineering students through holistic, multidisciplinary, and experiential approaches to education. <br /><br />I also hope to continue my professional development within academia and in the non-profit/NGO arena through my work as director of science and research for Aqueous Solutions. I intend to be an integral part of the collaborative effort to develop the capacity, breadth and capabilities of Aqueous Solutions as a service organization.<br /><br />Appropriate technologies<br /><br />The term “appropriate technologies,” like “sustainability,” is a currently fashionable buzzword and is thereby in danger of becoming cliché. Hence I feel a certain responsibility to evince careful consideration and a more thoroughgoing approach in my research and advocacy of “appropriate technologies.”<br /><br />As I understand it, an appropriate technology must at a minimum exercise propriety of scale; embody humility, caution and compassion; respect the integrity of local ecosystems and the limits implied therein; adapt itself to life rather than the reverse; and enable good work by humans in community and in place.<br /><br />The need for a distinction of “appropriate” technologies arises in the first place given the justifiable skepticism felt by most people today about the capability of more and more advanced and bigger technologies to remedy the manifold social and ecological breakdowns which have themselves been brought about in large measure by the willy-nilly proliferation of powerful technologies over a vast (global) scale. This has occurred as a result of the industrial revolution and the industrial mindset. Today there is a growing skepticism of the conventional notion that science is self-correcting – a notion which has so far prompted the conventional industrial mind to the homeopathic prescription of more and better science and additional technological developments to cure the present ills originating primarily as by-products of past science and technological developments.<br /><br />One of the principal characteristics of the modern industrial mind is its willingness to work on too big a scale, and thereby to put too much at risk. The worldwide overhauling of traditional and local economies to fit the narrow orthodoxy of Western corporate globalization and “free trade,” accompanied by the forceful refashioning of diverse local cultures into a global consumer monoculture, is perhaps the most obvious evidence and blatant expression of this tendency. From the perspective of human civilization, this is the equivalent of “putting all our eggs in one basket,” and thus ultimately puts all ways of life at risk through their homogenization. An “appropriate” technology, on the other hand, recognizes the extent to which as a species our ignorance exceeds our knowledge and therefore limits our ability to responsibly and harmlessly control. An appropriate technology respects the patchwork of diversity in human cultures and natural ecosystems and therefore is necessarily small in scale. <br /><br />It is tempting, especially given our Western cultural biases, to seek giant “solutions” to the giant (global) ecological and social challenges facing human society today – but there is a conspicuous shortage of large-scale corrections for problems that have large-scale causes. As Kentucky farmer and author Wendell Berry has written, “our great modern powers of science, technology, and industry are always offering themselves to us with the suggestion that we know enough to use them well, that we are intelligent enough to act without limit in our own behalf.” Thus the issue of propriety of scale is typically overlooked in our super-heroic quests to “save the world.” But as author and environmentalist Bill McKibben has surmised, there almost certainly will be no “silver bullet” to take out our manifold global maladies – though perhaps many “silver buckshot,” each targeting a relatively small portion of the whole.<br /><br />It is for this reason that the employment of “appropriate” technologies requires our humility of spirit – in light of the expanse of our ignorance regarding the complexity of the universe and our inability to foresee all outcomes and unwanted consequences. “Appropriate” technologies subscribe to the precautionary principle, a kind of Hippocratic oath for scientists and engineers to “first do no harm,” and to limit risk as much as possible when potentially damaging outcomes and side-effects are unforeseen and frequently unforeseeable. <br /><br />The contemporary touchstones of “appropriate” and “sustainable” find their mutual support when we consider the implications of limits to our economic expansion and the scope and application of our technologies. An economic system whose health is predicated upon indefinite expansion in the context of a finite planet and ultimately restricted material and energy flows is, as ecological economist Herman Daly has frequently remarked, “an impossibility theorem.” A durable economy cannot be based upon the continually accelerated degradation of its ecological base; moreover, a technology which does not support a durable economy cannot be considered “appropriate.” <br /><br />Thus an appropriate technology perforce recognizes and respects ecological limits and is preservative of ecosystem integrity. It does this by adapting itself to natural patterns rather than attempting to refashion nature to suit its own ends. Innovation under the rubric of “appropriate technology,” as Wendell Berry has written, seeks to promote “a better adaptation of the human organism to its natural habitat, [the improvement] of our fundamental relationship to the earth, [and] harmony between our human economy and the natural world.” Appropriate technologies adhere to Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, wherein “the role of Homo sapiens changes from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.” <br /><br />The last criterion for a technology to qualify as “appropriate” is that it enable good work by humans in community and in place. The common conviction in our society today is to justify nearly all work on narrowly economic grounds; in other words, any work one is paid for qualifies as “good work.” I would like to expand this thinking along ecological dimensions, and thus define “good work” as that which tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the land and the greater biotic community in which the work and the worker are situated. It is in this spirit that Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet concludes, “Work is love made visible.”<br /><br />Ecological conscience in science and engineering education<br /><br />The recognition of “ecological good work” and its pursuit as distinct from conventionally defined modes of social and material “success” thus implies the development of ecological awareness and an ecological conscience. Over the past few years I have attempted to give expression to these traits through my teaching and project work in the appropriate technologies program of the learning center at Pun Pun Organic Farm in northern Thailand. My ultimate professional aspiration is to facilitate their proliferation and development among Western university students of science and engineering.<br /><br />In this vein, then, the term “environmental engineering” is deceptive in that it suggests that our surroundings – the environment – are what can and ought to be engineered and managed. But given the complexity of the planet and its living systems, “the environment” can never be safely “managed” or “engineered” by humans as one species among tens of millions. What might be managed is ourselves – our human desires, our economies, our built environments and communities, our modes of thinking about and interacting with and modifying natural systems. <br /><br />I believe a similar inversion of perspective – from the outward-looking to the inward-looking – is required in contemporary education. It’s conventionally held that the purpose of education is that of giving students the means for upward mobility and success. Thomas Merton identified this as “the mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade.” (Merton went on to admonish his students to “be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing – success.”)<br /><br />TS Eliot asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" Much of contemporary education is comprised by a protracted cramming of all manner of disembodied facts, techniques and information (“data”) into students’ heads. Presumably this is to equip them to more effectively compete with one another and society at large in a race to accumulate status and wealth. This, however, progressively impoverishes our society in terms of wisdom and reason, which Edward Abbey defined as “knowledge informed by sympathy, intelligence in the arms of love.”<br /><br />I see education as a tool for students to use in the forging of their personhood, in their processes of discovery of themselves and the world, and in their understanding of their place in the greater biotic community. The development of ecological awareness and ecological conscience as an outgrowth of the educational process is what connects knowledge and information with context – context is that which imbues information with the qualities that permit the development of sympathy, understanding, compassion and love. These characteristics in turn augment the storage of mere disembodied facts to facilitate the accretion of authentic wisdom.<br /><br />Knowledge therefore carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world. My commitment as a professional educator is to imbue students with this sense of responsibility, towards their fellow humans as well as the myriad other members of Earth’s biotic community. Research and design in the field of “appropriate technologies” implies this sense of responsibility and its attendant ecological conscience and provides a situation for their cultivation and development.<br /><br />Experiential education in appropriate technologies and cultural exchange<br /><br />As an educator, I strive to embrace a holistic approach to learning that stresses the development of students’ worldview, philosophy of life, and connection with nature equally with technical proficiency and competence in the relevant disciplinary subject matters. Hence my approach aims to provide the requisite factual knowledge, technical tools and the scientific theoretical and conceptual comprehension within a learning environment that is conducive to students gaining key contextual understanding that situates their practical and scientific education within the complex ecological and social realities of our world.<br /><br />My vision of an effective means to promote this kind of education is through the facilitation of international exchange programs between science and engineering university students and traditional, agrarian, locally self-reliant and subsistence cultures in the “developing” world. I envision myself as a mentor for university students in these potentially life-changing and transformative experiences involving international travel and working together with local communities – for example through connections with groups such as Engineers Without Borders. Such programs provide cultural exchange and opportunities for experiential education that contribute to holistic learning and the development of ecological conscience, and furthermore often profoundly affect the way students view themselves and the career decisions they face. It is my commitment as an educator to create such opportunities for students’ spiritual transformation and intellectual development.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16569470584046690610noreply@blogger.com3