Freedom to be Wrong
by Matt DeNoto
How do we change people’s behaviors?
In Seattle, a ballot measure was recently defeated to impose a 20-cent fee on paper and plastic bags from grocery stores. People from Seattle are generally considered to be fairly progressive, environmentally-minded folk. More people already use reusable shopping bags in Seattle than most other places in the country (though it’s still only 20-30%). It’s easy to imagine that they know exactly why this fee is being proposed, and the good that it could accomplish.
Originally, the City Council simply voted to impose the fee. But the American Chemistry Council decided to put up a fight (and more than $1 million) to get the measure first put on the ballot for a public vote, and then to make sure that vote was “No.”
Given the choice between doing the right thing and the easy thing, the people of Seattle chose the easy thing. They chose to make it easier for themselves to forget their reusable bags in the car or at home, because who cares? The bags at the grocery store are free. Maybe next time.
If the people are unwilling to give themselves the incentives to change, how will anything get done? It’s clear that people aren’t simply making the right choices on their own. If that were the case, Seattle wouldn’t have needed a fee in the first place.
But perhaps that’s a bit too hopeless (and drastic) of a viewpoint. Despite the outcome, perhaps some good was done simply by getting the information out there and making people at least consider the consequences of their actions. Perhaps this vote won’t mandate change, but a few more citizens will voluntarily take up the reusable bags now than would have otherwise.
Even if the fee had been enacted, it’s not as though that would make the kind of change we need. Plastic bags are, on the whole, a tiny piece of the pollution problem.
On the other hand, it’s a tiny piece that is easily accessible. Everybody knows about grocery store bags, and it’s easy to see that they are wasteful. If we could get everybody to make just one change, then the next would be easier.
But that’s not how this country works. We were founded on principles of freedom, including the freedom to be wrong.
So how do we change people’s behaviors?
Not one behavior at a time, but one person at a time.
Prism of Patriotism
by Matt DeNoto
It’s good that people love the country in which they live. In America, nationalism has always been fundamental. And for good reason. This country was founded on strong democratic principles, revolutionary for their time. Even in its infancy, there was something unquestionable about people in America believing that they lived in the greatest country in the world. It was an idea only reinforced by America’s massive influence in WWII. And then the Space Race. We are a Superpower.
America has a long history of seeing itself as the best. So it’s only natural that its citizens make that claim somewhat without thought. But accepting something without examination is dangerous. So let me take a second to ask…
Is America the greatest nation in the world? How do we judge?
Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that suggests that we, the people of America, are not the best. We are not the smartest (That’s South Korea). We are not the healthiest (Iceland). We do not live the longest (Canada). For all our boasting, we’re not even the happiest (Denmark). Heck, we don’t even crack the top ten in the list of most democratic countries (Sweden’s #1). We pay more for most things (except those that are government-subsidized). We’re not the greenest either.
If you have questions about where I got this information from, that’s good. Do some research to satisfy yourself about the statistics. Don’t accept it without examination.
I often hear that America is the ‘richest’ country. But I’m not rich. Are you rich? I would imagine that citizens of the richest country in the world never have to worry about money. But we’re all in debt. And can we really consider ourselves to be rich when everything we buy and all the money our government spends both come from China?
There are people going to well-reported ‘town hall’ meetings and screaming at their representatives about the terrible danger posed by the government trying to give its people health care reform. They cower in terror from the slightest whiff of socialism (even though the police, fire and public school systems have been socialized for years).
Is this how civilized debate works in the world’s greatest country? What are we really trying to protect?
Claims that America is the best without any evidence to back it up isn’t nationalism, it’s delusion. What if America wasn’t the best? Would that let us be more objective about our problems? Would that give us more freedom to accept that when we try to fix things, there’s always a chance it might not work?
I grew up in New York, watching the Knicks with my dad. The Knicks haven’t won an NBA Championship since 1972. Sometimes, the team is great, sometimes (the last decade or so) the team isn’t so great. But that’s just how it goes. At the end of the day, I root for them not because they’re the best (they’re not), but because the Knicks are my team.
America’s pretty great. But it’s not the best, and that’s okay. Not being the best gives us not only something to strive for, it also means there are other countries that we can learn from. It takes strength to be humble.
Green When You’ve Gone
by Matt DeNoto
In my first article on this site, I wrote about the confusion landfills have always caused in me. Today I’d like to write about another source of confusion – graveyards.
Graveyards have always seemed to me like an incredible waste of space. Acres of land kept practically barren in an eternal tribute to death. Bodies preserved unnaturally using chemicals, buried in expensive, pointlessly comfortable boxes. We are ‘returned to the Earth’ in the most contradictory way imaginable.
The only other option seemed to be cremation. Have your body burned to ashes, to be stored forever in an urn or spread somewhere.
It is an interesting indication of this mentality humanity seems to hold about everything having a finite period of usefulness, and of our not really knowing what to do with anything once that use has been fulfilled. When we’ve eaten our fast food, we throw away the wrapper. When our TV stops working, we toss it and get a new one. We always need new clothes or shoes, because we’ve been taught that these things are less a practical means of keeping ourselves warm or protected, and more about expressing how we feel at any given moment.
Getting rid of these objects is easy. We set them out at the curb and someone comes to take them away to t he landfill. We need never consider them again.
We seem to be following the same impulse when we die. Get rid of the ‘trash.’ But because this waste used to be a person, it’s not so simple. We must be honored. So we each get our own mini-landfill.
But just like with regular landfills, this tradition is ultimately unsustainable. This practice of coddling our dead is, in more ways than one, hurting us.
Besides the space issue, there is another practical concern. A large number of people die every year because of a lack of donated organs. Our strange obsession with preserving ourselves after we die is now literally costing people their lives.
But as it is with many of the facets of the Green Revolution, we are starting to reexamine death. We are starting to come around. Already, many of us have marked on our driver’s licenses that we wish for our organs to be donated after we’ve died, so that our passing may give life to someone else who needs it.
Others are going even further. The Centre for Natural Burial is an organization 
promoting a way of reintroducing our lifeless bodies back into the Earth’s cycle, wherein the body is prepared for burial without using chemicals and buried in a way that encourages decomposition. A grave may be marked with a tree or a shrub that does not intrude on the natural landscape.
Or, for the green extreme, you can have yourself composted. It’s not quite legal yet, but in some parts of the world it may be catching on. Think of it. Your body will be used to fertilize and grow the food for the next generation.
Doesn’t that sound more interesting that spending eternity in a box?
Closed System
by Matt DeNoto
Up until about a week ago, my kitchen was infested with fruit flies. They pop up every summer, seemingly from out of nowhere, makes annoyances of themselves and, eventually, go away. Usually I try not to pay them any mind. I let them go about their business and they let me go about mine. But my kitchen was apparently a bit too fruitful for the flies, and their numbers started to grow beyond annoying into simply gross.
So I took a day, rolled up my sleeves and cleaned the kitchen thoroughly. Then I used the hose attachment on my vacuum to commit a little fruit fly genocide.
And silly though it may sound, I felt a little bad. I understand that they’re not intelligent creatures and that they don’t live long lives anyway, but I still try to hold as much as I can to the principle that living things generally have the right to go on living.
In my mind I began musing on the subject of niches. When we as humans started to become ‘civilized,’ living in houses with walls and roofs, we didn’t really reserve a place for the rest of nature’s creatures. Our homes are for us, and nothing else. And we have accepted this as natural, despite the fact that our dwellings take up significantly more space than we do as individuals.
Obviously we do not wish for the whole world to be standardized in this way. Even in our own neighborhoods we value parks and green spaces. National wildlife reserves protect species that might otherwise be endangered. But we have become addicted to control, drawing very thick lines between what parts of nature we are prepared to allow and which ones we are not. Hence pesticides and weed killers and immaculate lawns, to say nothing of the spaces inside our homes. Hard, flat surfaces and straight lines everywhere, so very unlike nature. They are designed for the comfort of humans, to the detriment of everything else. To those creatures that would dare to try and make themselves at home in our space we have given the name pests.
Of course, recently we have begun to see the benefits of the natural system. Over the centuries, the world has developed processes that keep things balanced. We are not yet so mature.
But we are starting to learn. We can now replace sewage systems with living, breathing mini-ecosystems that use our waste as food. We can build natural pools that utilize the inherent balances in nature, instead of harsh chemicals, to keep them clean and beautiful.
By slowly learning to reintegrate nature with our cold, selfish society, we not only benefit ourselves by cutting out those dangerous materials we used to keep the rest of the world at bay, we allow the rest of nature to do what it does best – allow every creature to perform its function to everyone’s benefit.
Corporate Power
by Matt DeNoto
According to economists, one ingredient crucial to a stable, capitalistic society is a strong set of property laws. If consumers don’t feel confident that they own what they buy, they won’t bother buying at all.
This was somewhat interestingly demonstrated recently when Amazon started messing with its customers’ Kindle e-book readers without their knowledge or permission. When a publisher decided to pull a couple of books off the virtual shelves (George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, appropriately enough), Amazon deleted the books even from customers who had already bought them, refundin g the money that had been paid.
While this is clearly an example of a corporation overstepping its bounds, it does provide a somewhat stumbling segue into how the Green Revolution must make us re-evaluate the concept of what we ‘own.’ Just because we’re paying for the water that comes out of our kitchen faucet, that doesn’t make it okay to leave the faucet on all night, regardless of whether or not we can afford it. We are, at best, renting or borrowing much from the Earth, and we will have to reorient our thinking to reflect that.
This goes double for large corporations, who seem to be in the habit of assuming they own pretty much everything except the waste that they dump into your backyard. That’s your problem.
But even that may be changing. Wal-Mart, that paragon of consumerism, has been making small but significant strides towards becoming a more responsible company, at least insofar as its carbon footprint is concerned. It looks like it is getting ready to take a much bigger stride. Starting soon, products on Wal-Mart’s shelves will begin appearing with ‘sustainability scores,’ which will take into account all parts of a product’s manufacturing, transportation, etc. This will give customers more information on which to base their shopping decisions. It’s a great, bold move, and we can only hope other retailers follow Wal-Mart’s lead.
See? Corporate power can be used for good.
Strange Bedfellows
by Matt DeNoto
In an earlier article, I suggested that one way to influence the unsustainable practices of large corporations was to buy stock in those corporations, thereby giving environmentally-minded people not only information in what the company was up to, but also a voice and a vote at stockholder meetings that decide future practices.
If that option seems a bit confrontational to you, but you still want to use your investment dollars in a green way, GreenBiz.com reports that many stock indices are offering special lists that categorize companies by environmental impact. This provides you with an easy source of information about which companies are being environmentally-responsible. The cynic in me requires that I point out, however, that it is of course always best to do your own research as well before committing your hard-earned dollars.
Speaking of research, the Breakthrough Institute is a progressive West Coast-based think tank that says that the recently-passed American Clean Energy & Security Act (formerly known as the Waxman-Markey bill) is not going to have a positive effect on the environment. According to the BI, what is truly needed now is heavy federal investment in new green technologies to increase their effectiveness while dropping their costs, in order to make them truly competitive with current technologies. Of course, with the big news these days being cap-and-trade, the BI’s best hope for promoting its ideas might be going to an unusual source…
Republicans.
Not well-known for their environmental stance, the GOP has been trying to discredit the cap-and-trade plan from the start. But instead of suggesting a reasonable alternative, the party has been quoting, or more accurately, misquoting a MIT report that says the new plan will cost every American over three grand per year. It almost sounds like Republicans care about the little guy, until you remember that the GOP is a bunch of rich old white guys who have spent the last eight years doing everything in their power to promote the interests of business over citizens at just about every turn.
The Republicans need a new angle. They can’t just be ‘against’ everything. So I’d like to take this opportunity to formally introduce the Republicans to the Breakthrough Institute.
Republicans, meet the Breakthrough Institute. BI, these are Republicans.
There. Now, Republicans, I know the BI plan doesn’t jive with your usual system. I know you don’t like government spending, but you also don’t like taxes. And at this point, the government has to do SOMETHING about the environment. Democrats have already jumped on the cap-and-trade bandwagon, so we know you won’t deign to go there.
Just give it a chance. Maybe you’ll see that standing up ‘for’ something, something that could make the world a truly better place, (instead of just trying to scare everybody all the time,) not only makes people like you, but makes you like yourself.
It’s a long shot, I know. Just sleep on it, okay?
Waste Not
by Matt DeNoto
STAR TREK has always been praised for its optimistic take on humanity’s future. It suggests that a few centuries from now we will all live in a more or less peaceful world where there is no discrimination and no need for money. Every man and woman works willingly to make the world a better place, whether that means captaining starships or piloting starships or engineering on starships… You get the point. But when I think about these futuristic utopias where people work not because they need money but in order to better society, one question always pops into my mind…
Who cleans the toilets?
If the day were to come where our basic needs are all easily met and there is no need to compete with each other, jobs will become time fillers that we volunteer ourselves for mostly, I suspect, out of some interest that the job would fulfill. Those interested in keeping the peace become law enforcement officers. Those interested in caring for the sick will become doctors and nurses. But what about the dirty jobs that are done not because anyone wants to do them, but because they are necessary and they pay?
This question nagged at me for a long time until I saw something that suggested that our reality was finally catching up with STAR TREK’s fantasy: the Living Machine waste treatment system.
In the Living Machine system, human waste is deposited into a mini-ecosystem filled with various algae and plants that use the waste as food. It creates a small, pleasant wetland and at the other end useful gray water exits that can be used to irrigate landscaping or simply returned to the environment.
Of course there are other systems out there looking to make us rethink the idea of the material we now call ‘waste.’ Most of these revolve around the idea of ‘dry’ toilets which compost our waste into useful fertilizer. It’s a good idea which hasn’t yet quite evolved to fit our urban lifestyles.
Until we can transport our waste into the Sun, there’s always the ‘milk-bottle-in-the-water-tank’ trick, which you can use today to cut down on the amount of water that gets flushed away, another important consideration when we think about toilets. 20Or you can try the more extreme ‘if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down’ option.
The point is that in the future, waste won’t be seen as waste. It’ll be a useful part of some bigger process. So no one will have to volunteer to be a sewer technician. Instead waste handling will be lumped in with horticulture or farming, and the person who has to deal with it will hopefully still feel personally fulfilled knowing that s/he is making a meaningful contribution to the world.
Anyway, it makes me feel better.
To Your Health
by Matt DeNoto
I turned 30 over the weekend, and my parents flew out from Long Island to visit me. My mom brought me a very special gift: a cold. Over the last couple of days I’ve dealt with severe post-nasal drip, a very runny nose and a lack of appetite. But I don’t have health insurance, so I will not be heading out to see a doctor. Instead, I self-medicate with over the counter cold medicine that makes my brain feel ever so slightly detached from my body in a way that makes me glad I’m not operating any heavy machinery today.
So I thought this might be a good day to talk about health care. After all, the Green Revolution is all about treating the world better, and naturally that includes our own bodies. I got into a bit of a debate about health care with another family member last week. He held that socialized medicine doesn’t work, an opinion he formed on the basis of testimonies from friends who live abroad. My opinion was that any system must work better than ours. From my standpoint (as one of the many uninsured), government-run health care is better than depending on the emergency room for everything.
The debate ended with us agreeing that Congress couldn’t legislate its way out of a cardboard box and we went on with our meal. But a point came to me later that I wish we could have discussed further.
You see, he doesn’t want government-run health care because he thinks government cannot run anything intelligently on a large scale for a long term. I’m inclined to agree. However, I feel more strongly that health care as an industry should not be in private hands, because those hands will inevitably put profit above all else, including the well being of those insurance companies supposedly serve.
The idea has come into my mind several times over the last decade or so that things might run more smoothly if we built flexibility into the system. What I mean by that is it is not set in stone that the government can run certain things and private companies others. There are many places in the country right now where institutions that had been in government hands for a long time are being rented out to private companies, who are running those institutions better. Municipal services, prisons, even schools are being handed over. And for now, the private companies are doing it better because the government systems they replaced had grown too large, too bureaucratic and too expensive.
But eventually, those private companies will fall into their own trap. They will squeeze services too thin for the sake of profit margins. They will ignore the customer because they are a monopoly.
When that time comes, government will most likely need to take back over.
It’s a cycle that, when looked at objectively, seems fairly natural. One system takes on a task until it loses focus, at which time the task is handed over to a different system. If everyone were to take some perspective on it and accept that this situation is okay, that this is just how things are supposed to go, perhaps the idea of the hand-off wouldn’t be so dramatic.
Of course, nothing is that easy. Especially when it involves large organizations, profit, and the lives of private citizens. Washington is currently attempting to do what the Clinton Administration failed to do (and what other administrations in recent history didn’t even try to do): reform the health care industry. How does the country improve service while lowering costs without making the system completely unprofitable? Should there be a non-profit, government-funded intermediary between doctors and insurance companies to take over the authorization of services? After all, one of the big debates right now is that it is often more profitable for insurance companies to deny coverage, so what if we took that decision out of their hands? Insurance companies would obviously balk at the idea of giving that power to the doctors, so perhaps an independent body not driven by money should take over. On the other hand, would another level of bureaucracy really make the industry more efficient?
While you figure it all out, it’s time for another dose of DayQuil.
Bringing It Home
by Matt DeNoto
It’s true. The Green Revolution does mean more work for you. It means you will be expected to put thought and effort into reducing the amount of… well, everything you use. It means remembering to grab those reusable bags before heading off to the grocery store. It means looking for ways to cut out waste. And for some people, that alone is enough to turn them off entirely. Life is busy enough as it is, and one more thing to worry about would just… bring about the end of the world or something.
Fortunately, a lot of smart people are looking for ways to make it as easy as possible for us. After all, we’re living in the Information Age, where all the data to help us make our lives better is right at our fingertips.
For instance, Google has teamed up with a number of utility companies to take advantage of ‘smart meter’ technology to create an easy-to-use PowerMeter widget, which lets residents track exactly how much power they’re using in real time. Having that kind of instant feedback can be a powerful tool to inspire folks to turn off the appliances they’re not using, or perhaps take the extra moment to unplug those ‘vampire devices’ that suck down energy even when they’re off.
Another helpful tool to make greening your life a little easier is Earth 911’s iRecycle app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which helps you quickly find local disposal locations for all your different kinds of recyclable waste.
And of course, the less water, gas and electricity you use, the less you have to pay for.
But the best way to save electricity is to not use any at all. Villages in Brazil have been reusing old 2-liter soda bottles to get free light all day long. How do they do it? Check out this short video to see the clever method and its fantastic results. They even compare the light quality between the soda bottle method and regular light bulbs. For those looking for something a little more stylish than soda bottles hanging from the ce iling, there are companies like Solatube installing similar systems right here at home.
I’m afraid it’s time to begin reevaluating those things we feel we have a ‘right’ to. Just because you work all day does not mean you can come home and leave lights on all over the house. Just because you have so many kids to take care of doesn’t mean the water can be left running while you brush your teeth. The world doesn’t ask much, just a bit of consideration.
You are The System
by Matt DeNoto
Corporations are scary things. Mindless, soulless profit machines that want above all else growth. They’re a bit like the viruses of the financial world, and for the last few decades they’ve been getting their way. Profit and growth have been priority number one, with everything else a distant second, including treating their employees fairly and taking environmental responsibility. They are powerful, and their power makes them extremely intimidating. It often seems futile to try and beat the system.
But corporations are ultimately controlled by people. And that may be their saving grace.
An idea came to me as I read about the recent Chevron shareholder’s meeting, where a small but passionate group of environmental activists tried to bring about change in Chevron’s policies, particularly regarding the legal suit Chevron is fighting in Ecuador over the pollution committed by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001.
Unfortunately, as has traditionally been the case, the great majority of shareholders do not care about Chevron’s pollution in Ecuador and they do not care about Chevron’s commitment to human rights. They care only about the pieces of paper they own labeled ‘shares,’ and how much money those pieces of paper are worth. Anything which might lessen the value of those pieces of paper, be it the cost of cleaning up years worth of sludge poured into the water supply of an innocent village or acknowledging the environmental impact of current practices, is considered to be unacceptable. Shareholders, by and large, have no emotional stake in a company. They do not care if it does business fairly, or if it produces goods the world truly needs in a responsible manner. It’s all about those little pieces of paper.
The thing about it is, anyone can buy shares in a company. I began to imagine a movement whereby responsibly minded individuals banded together, chose a corporation in need of a reality check, and began purchasing shares of said corporation en masse. It might be difficult for the group to acquire a majority ownership, but simply the influence that might be exerted by a group not focused solely on profits could have a very interesting impact on the concept of a corporation as we know it.
Corporations are very good at making profits. And that’s okay. We want them to be able to make profits. We need companies to provide goods and services. We need them to compete and to innovate.
And we need them to take responsibility for their actions. We need them to stop fighting tooth and nail every time they’re forced to clean up a mess they’ve made, and then we need to put in place a system that encourages them not to make any messes in the first place. We need corporations to equate making money with making the world a better place.
We can do it. We can change the system. We are the system.
In case you’re feeling inspired, the web address www.environmentalshareholders.com is available for purchase.
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