Halloween 2011: The Curse of Thomas Malthus!

Tonight, October 31, 2011, is Halloween, a night when children (of all ages it seems) dress up in scary costumes and go tricking people and/or collecting sweet treats. At least those celebrating this pagan holiday here in America (and other countries in the American cultural empire) do so. I watched my younger daughter's first grade class participate in a costume parade this morning at her school: under the watchful eye of all their teachers and many a parent, in their school yard secure behind a high fence to keep the children safe in the downtown neighborhood which is scary year-round to people from more affluent parts of town. Tonight, I will walk with her in our own perhaps safer neighborhood, joining with neighbors' kids in the fun annual ritual that started with celebrating the harvest and nature's spirits, but is now mostly about making us buy cheap plastic crap and candy - to the tune of at least 7 billion dollars this year in the US, according to National Public Radio.

7 Billion dollars. That is quite a market for scares in this scarily declining American economy.

 

7 Billion is also a number that is scaring the pants off of many in my environmentalist fraternity this Halloween. Because today is the date that the UN has chosen (rather arbitrarily, of course, given that we add about 216,000 people every day, but appropriately for this scary day) to mark the official birth of the 7 Billionth human being alive on this planet!

via un.org

Yes, we are 7 billion now. Doesn't that give you the heebie-jeebies? Especially if you've been listening to Paul Ehrlich, that reliable environmental scaremonger who is again in the news, of course, as the expert who rang the 20th century's loudest alarm bell about the human Population Bomb - and that was when we were a mere 3 billion or so!! We've managed to double, somehow, without experiencing complete collapse of civilization (arguably), but we continue to dance ever closer to the brink. Collapse is now imminent, says Ehrlich. Even Bill McKibben, more focused on climate change issues, worries about the population problem.

There are many reasons to be worried about the consequences of having so many of us crowding this pale blue dot of a planet, of course. Especially if so many of us are keen to continue spending billions of dollars on seemingly cheap plastic junk (and candy) that is actually rather expensive if we factor in the environmental costs of manufacturing (we don't) and getting rid of after tonight (we don't do that either). Yet, the signs may be more hopeful than in your nightmares painted by Ehrlich, our generation's Malthus, who continues to focus on population per se as being the big problem, even while acknowledging the role of how much we consume. Other, more careful analyses of human demographics suggest, though, that our population growth is slowing down considerably, and we may not even hit the 10 billion mark projected by the UN. Rather than rehash the arguments on this otherwise busy day (even before take my child out trick-or-treating), I suggest you read this thought-provoking post about the demographic transition and what it means for us.

 

And while thinking about how many of us there are, how much we consume, and how our technology is also helping empower women to take control of reproduction and slow down our explosion, see also a wonderful talk by Hans Rosling, on the magic of washing machines.

 

A quick tangential true story: Sometime back in 1991-92, after I'd been in the US for my first year or two of graduate school, a good friend asked me a standard question that immigrants inevitably get asked at some point: what is the best thing about life in America, now that I had lived here for a while? My spontaneous answer: washing machines! Honest! No one had them in India until the late 1990s, and I was truly appreciative of the benefits of that technology. My friend (expecting perhaps something about freedom or the American dream) was nonplussed.

 

Little did I know that I was anticipating the genius of Rosling, in this lovely TED talk:

Finally, since it is Halloween and we are most haunted by the ghost of Thomas Malthus, allow me to recycle one of my musings on the topic, posted several years ago:

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Don't let other people tell you that women can't do science

October 21, 2011
| 1:56 | Public Domain

The Presidential Early Career Scientists and Engineer Honorees share their advice to young women interested in getting involved in Science, Engineering, Math or Technology. http://whitehouse.gov/cwg

Download mp4 (10.3MB)

Read the Transcript

via whitehouse.gov

 

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How do we get our global economy off the endless "growth" express and on to a human-scale path of plenitude?

An image I found and shared on Facebook this week, featuring a quote from the Dalai Lama, seems to have hit a nerve among my circle of friends there:

I'm not surprised, given the kinds of circles I hang out in, that this thought had such resonance. Most of us concerned about what we are doing to our environment and our own wellbeing and future appreciate and find much to ponder in that observation. Of course, it is nice of the Lama to share his profound insight from on high (so to speak) in his role as spiritual leader and a monk observing the rest of humanity with his cultivated sense of detachment. Would that the rest of us could also detach ourselves from the daily grind and engage in more meaningful quests for our lives. Most of us, of course, don't really have that luxury—or have a terrible time finding a way towards that serenity. So we pause, briefly, at this poster, and share it among our friends (stepping lightly over the irony of doing so on these hyper-social online networks which may seem the very antithesis of what the Lama is talking about), file it away for contemplation, and hope we get the chance to do something about it in some small way in our own lives. And for that, we must be grateful to the Dalai Lama, for pulling us up short in our headlong rush of a life, even if for a brief moment of contemplation.

A bigger question, though, is how do we—those uf us not able to immediately extricate ourselves from the larger economy which pushes us into the endless pursuit of ever elusive wealth—begin to challenge and change the system? The dominant economic paradigm of our time is completely wedded to this pursuit of wealth, for individuals, corporations, and entire nations chasing endless growth. Even people who talk about sustainability within this paradigm talk about "sustainable growth", an oxymoronic concept if there ever was one, given the natural resource constraints on this only planet we inhabit. More radical environmentalists and leftists have a deeper critique (e.g., read John Bellamy Foster's "The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth") of the growth economy paradigm—but reading them often leads to more despair at the scale of the revolution we seemingly need to overthrow that paradigm.

The growth paradigm so dominates our entire public discourse that even moderately centre-leaning right-wing capitalists like Obama get labelled as communists who want to socialize everything! How then can we push the system onto a completely different path, one that may actually be sustainable in a truer sense of the word?

The burgeoning movement to Occupy Wall Street seems to have lit a spark across the US, creating opportunities to challenge at least parts of the capitalist finance-driven system. Breaking through the media narrative about how we must only "grow" our way out of the current economic crises, is an accomplishment worthy of note. The real challenge for this excitingly amorphous movement though is to present not only a coherent set of demands but actually offer alternative models (e.g. at steadystate.org) for recovering the economy, alternatives which can redress the vast social inequities of the present as well as begin healing our ecosystems. We also need models that don't call for radical / violent overthrow of the system with alternatives that are also imposed from the top-down (putting environmentalists and ecological economists in charge, for example)—but offer instead more distributed, diverse, grassroots alternatives that have a better chance of sustaining us in the long haul; models that build upon stuff many of us are already doing in our daily lives to break free of the dominant growth paradigm and take control of our lives in more meaningful ways.

One such alternative is seen in this video from the Center for a New American Dream, visualizing economist Juliet Schor's alternative model of a Plenitude Economy:

via vimeo.com

What I particularly like about this vision is that it draws its strengths from stuff we ordinary people are already doing in the US (and elsewhere) to find our own ways out of the ravages of the collapsed economy during this current great depression. Unlike the last great depression of the 1930s in the US, this time around we don't have the political leadership or will to create and offer solutions from above, unfortunately. That does not mean, however, that people are simply standing still in despair (although there is plenty of that to go around), waiting for handouts from the government or from charities. We are, in small ways, taking charge of some of the means of production (urban farming and homesteading being great examples) and creating/reviving alternative means of sharing what we produce, away from the globalized economic mainstream. These smaller scale actions offer a good antidote against despair at the ever increasingly gloomy global picture. This is how we can really start rebuilding our world, one garden, one rooftop, one school, one swap-meet, one community at a time, each with its own local adaptation to find its own unique solution. Who needs a world revolution from above when we can have a multitude of these smaller revolutions growing from below?

Life on this planet has always thrived on diversity and local adaptation; it is time for us environmentalists to also truly embrace that truth, and participate in these many movements within our own neighborhoods, even as we seek to change the overarching paradigm globally. As that seemingly forgotten early prophet of ecological economics, E. F. Schumacher, observed a few decades ago: Small is Beautiful, after all! It is useful to remember that.

As a friend remarked upon reading the Dalai Lama's words: not all of us sacrifice our health in order to make money; some of us do so in pursuit of environmental and human justice, to help create a better world. But maybe, just maybe, we don't have to sacrifice our health for that either: instead, let us find the time and space to sink our hands into the soil, get dirt under our fingernails as we grow our own food and create habitats for other species amid our urban sprawl; to chat with our neighbors as we exchange vegetables from each other's yards or balcony container gardens; to rebuild the social fabric that we worry is fraying under globalization; and take that time to also breathe in the air and simply enjoy living in the present.

I'm sure the Dalai Lama would approve of that (even if we choose to talk about it online)!

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

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Baba Brinkman's "DNA": a nice twist on what we all share... and on rap music videos!

via youtube.com

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Don't Drink the Water... for this too is California

via fresnobee.com

This is not a scenario from some generic developing third world banana republic where environmental regulation is lax and the government/economy is weak and there is simply no wherewithal to provide safe drinking water to the public.

This is here in the central valley of California. In some of the richest most productive agricultural areas of the world, home to some of the world's richest farmers (or agriculture corporations), in an American state whose economy rivals some of the richest nations in the world.

This is not the third world. Or is it?

While the US is plunging towards third-world-dom, lead by a priceless bunch of narrow-minded rightwing (that includes both political parties) "leaders", the central valley of California has probably always had an air of the third world about it. My own first inklings of the economic disparities and deprivations hidden underneath America's shiny global facade came from reading Steinbeck's epic "Grapes of Wrath", much of which is set right here in the valley. That book, along with "East of Eden" (both of which I devoured while in college in Bombay) also gave me my first new mental images of California that diverged from the more romantic ones perpetuated through Hollywood's glamour on the one hand, and Ansel Adams' Yosemite landscapes on the other. Here in this valley, sandwiched between those two more picturesque, salubrious California dreamlands, lies a third world that tells many a different tale: of massive land transformation and farm-worker exploitation; of green revolutions and pesticides; of laser-leveled land crisscrossed by massive canals and shrinking aquifers; of dried up prehistoric swamps and over-irrigated farmland abandoned to leaching selenium; of Steinbeck's Okies and today's illegal aliens; of big agribusiness and industrial animal farms; of sprawling suburbs and highways; of endangered species and disappearing ecosystems; of exotic invasive species (the other "illegal aliens") and designer GMOs; of weed and meth and gangs and prisons; of vineyards and fruit orchards and nut farms overflowing with riches; of migrant farmworkers dying of dehydration and schools where feeding the malnourished children must take precedence over any "education"; of some of the nation's foulest air and dirtiest water. This too is California.

That last item on litany above, Water, is the subject of a special investigative series by Mark Grossi, currently being published by the Fresno Bee under the headline "Don't Drink the Water"! Now that's a standard warning I'm is used to hearing when talking about travel to India or Mexico, or other developing countries. The Bee is telling us local residents here in this rich, poor, messed up valley: Don't Drink the Water! At least read the special report first, and find out what cocktail may be flowing out of your faucet.


Don't Drink the Water!

Welcome to California. This is indeed the third world within the first.

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

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What a bummer if we create a better world for nothing!

That would be a bummer, wouldn't it?! A real bummer...

(As seen spreading on Facebook)

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How to make a dent in the universe before you die...

via youtube.com

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." - he said, while speaking of his own first brush with that change agent. And now that single biggest invention of Life has taken perhaps the single biggest inventor of our times.

via npr.org

Way to "stay hungry, stay foolish", Mr. Jobs... right up until the day you die (how many called Apple foolish for releasing merely an iPhone 4S just yesterday?. You certainly made a dent in my universe. Rest in peace.

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Let this not be a eulogy for our pale blue dot...

via youtube.com

... even though it is a eulogy for several environmentalists who laid their lives down in defending our home, Earth.

This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

Content credit: The principal source for the footage was Yann Arthus-Bertrand's incredible film HOME http://www.homethemovie.org/. The music was by Armand Amar. Thank you too Greenpeace and http://timescapes.org/

(Hat-tip: David Inouye and Bittu Sahgal)

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