I was one of those precocious kids discussing the environment on TV and at conferences just around the time the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – the Rio ’92 “Earth Summit” – took place.

I had tried but failed to get there, to an event that would make “sustainable development” enter public consciousness, have Severn Cullis-Suzuki become the voice of the young generation that spoke to the world (leader)’s conscience, infamously get then-U.S. president George Bush sr. remark that the American way of life was not up for discussion – and fail to really change anything much about the path we took.

Now, Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is coming up…

It’s only recently, on an even more personal note, that I’ve been looking into the history of my grandmother’s (short and failed)  emigration to Brazil, accompanying her father as a young child of 7-8 years, going by boat (of course), seeing the construction of the famous Jesus statue and the arrival of the LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” airship on its Europe-Pan American flight of 1930.

Understandably, I would love to make it to Rio de Janeiro and this year’s Rio+20 conference.

There’s only one little problem:
The Conundrum with our overconsumptive ways of life being as it is, everyone who flies to Rio from halfway around the world just for a conference bringing together people who are already convinced that something has to be done, just quarreling over “the solution” that will make everyone do what they themselves don’t, is a hypocrite.

Who is ever to believe that everybody must do their part and that better lives are indeed lived better – with less consumption, less pollution and destruction, and with more creativity and integration into this world’s ecological functioning as well as more happiness – if the people who are most aware of the problems and most motivated to do something against them don’t even do what they themselves can easily do?

Isn’t there much less consumption of energy and resources if we use communications technology to connect, forget about Rio if we are not close-by, and rather than meet in one place at tremendous cost, organize thousands of local unconferences?

Haven’t we been seeing that people coming together can create an impetus towards change, and people collaborating to support each other with knowledge and skills, creating local economies and working on the practical, actual transition to less consumption and more integration into local environments can really create better lives?

So, how about we forget about the U.N. conference trying to forge rules for everyone and disregarding the rules of ecology and happiness that always connect us all?

Let’s instead create a network of unconferences.
Let’s interact locally in real life to change our actual ways of living and making a living.
Let’s collaborate virtually to build global momentum and learn from each other!

Coming together as locally-living global citizens, with local food, and setting to work changing local practices, all around the world, taking a cue from the Arab Spring, the collaborative effect could well create a “World Spring” that would really change the world, because it does not just talk and try to convince, but gets on the path of a thousand solutions, as diverse as local environments and needs are, and finally changing things – starting with our own lives – for better.

“Green” concerns have been moving further into the mainstream of business, companies proclaim their sustainability and CSR (corporate social responsibility) engagement, the rich and famous create philanthropic foundations to address poverty and (other) human rights issues … and in all the excitement over the pretty Band-Aids, radical reason goes out the window.

Apart from radically, really living better, making better economies, bringing our lives into better alignment with our humanity as well as the ecological contexts that they are embedded in, however, there is no way forward.

Foundations and donations, supposedly socially aware corporations that are and remain nothing but behemoths driven by the need for quarterly financial profit, governments that (no matter who heads them) replicate the same power structures over and over again – they are not going to create the necessary change.

Rio+20, the 20-year anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, is coming up this year, and provides a case in point: By and large, the verdict over the last twenty years is that all the good talk over sustainable development was for nothing – and more talk is not going to change anything.

We knew about the problems of overconsumption then – just check out that BBC “commercial” from ~1992:

Caught up in the “need” for economic growth and with all the new toys and superficial pleasures it has brought, it was all not taken in earnest, though.

“Sustainable development” was re-interpreted, in fact, not to mean that human/economic workings would have to fit into the world so that they could continue without destroying their very foundations (in resources and ecosystem functioning), but rather that whatever was necessary had to be done for economic growth to go on indefinitely – nevermind that this is impossible, and not even leading to the better lives we thought it would give us.

Hopeful Cycles of Destruction

The problem is the same – or maybe worse – in the very areas that involve us more directly, that may even make you feel good about all the things you are doing for the environment, or to help others:

All the various NGOs ask for donations so that they can do their good work – but where does the money really go to, and perhaps more importantly, where does it come from?
Piles of paper newsletters get sent out asking for donations from people who use tons of paper in their work in order to get money to be used for protecting the forests?

Same with corporations: “Green” products are added to the portfolio to also sell to the environmentally-minded consumers. And so, even though we know that overconsumption beyond planetary boundaries (and beyond the equitable) is one of our great problems, we don’t even try to shift beyond the consumer economy, we just try and make it sound better.

Meanwhile, philanthropic foundations try to help the poor, using the money their founders and donors give them – but the very ways those moneys were made may in fact be a major contributor to the causes of that same poverty:

And then there is the vexed question of whether these billions are really the billionaires’ to give away in the first place. When Microsoft was on its board, the American Electronics Association, the AeA, challenged European Union proposals for a ban on toxic components and for the use of a minimum 5% recycled plastic in the manufacture of electronic goods.

AeA took the EU to the World Trade Organisation on a charge of erecting artificial trade barriers. (And according to the American NGO Public Citizen, “made the astounding claim that there is no evidence that heavy metals, like lead, pose a threat to human health or the environment”.)

Now, the EU is big enough and ugly enough to have fought and won the case. But many an African country lacks the war chest for such a fight, and so will end up paying for the healthcare of those exposed to leaky old PCs’ cadmium, chromium or mercury, instead of embarking on, let’s say, a nationwide anti-malaria strategy. Bill Gates himself may not indeed have known about what the AeA was doing on Microsoft’s behalf, but the fact remains that if a philanthropist’s money comes from externalising corporate costs to taxpayers, and that if Microsoft is listed for its own tax purposes as a partly Puerto Rican and Singaporean company, then the real philanthropists behind these glittering foundations might be a sight more ragged-trousered than Bill and Melinda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/27/philanthropy-enemy-of-justice

It does not even have to be the radical perspective that looks for greater change – even if that should be necessary – to suggest that companies might want to do better for their employees, not just talk so much about their CSR efforts. For example, in raising wages the way that Henry Ford famously did…

Take a look at the recent infographic on what would happen if Apple used 1 billion of its profit to increase the wages of their supplier’s (Foxconn’s) workers (which also goes around the constant “Would the consumers pay more for their iPads if it helped the poor workers?”):

Source: http://ninety9.tumblr.com/post/16997979949 (and read the short article at Business Insider for a few thoughts surrounding the notion....)

Henry Ford’s wage increase may have been more of a ploy to make tedious assembly-line work more appealing, and thus of questionable value to society at large; it would also increase consumption, having less-than-ideal ecological effects.
Compare, however, what we apparently see happening because companies try to increase their brand value – and, of course, sales and profits – through “incentives”:

“A management consultant observed in 2006 that ‘U.S. employers spend $100 billion a year on incentives like T-shirts, golf outings and free trips to Florida in the belief that they somehow motivate and inspire their employees.’”

In: Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-sided

 Turning Away from BAU – Business-as-Usual – with a Good Spin

The best motivation is work that itself motivates and inspires, the best way to show social responsibility is not a donation to a charitable NGO but maybe, just maybe, to treat employees like human beings rather than cogs in the machine…

But, shareholder value trumps everything The business of business is business. And so, when profits can be increased by laying off workers but talking about CSR, by increasing sales of quite unnecessary, throw-away consumer goods, and maybe even by marketing them as “green,” why act really responsibly?

We, all of us, people and corporations, are so caught up in these vicious rat races of working “just over broke” and chasing happiness in consumption, looking to increase consumption of the ever-increasing production just to keep a company afloat… we don’t even see the potential for alternatives.

Better-Entrepreneurship

Now, that may all be taken as anti-capitalist, but it’s not.

In calling for better (rather than more in terms of money and stuff alone) -

less consumption, more community;
less shopping, more sense;
less unwanted and unseen destruction,
more ‘reconciliation’ and working with ecology;
less philanthropy and more justice

- this approach may actually be more capitalist than what we have now.
Only with more information, more clarity about its different aims and impacts, could there be a free market shaped by the “invisible hand” of market forces – which we are, all of us – after all.

Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" anti-ad of "Black Friday" 2011... thought-worthy example, even on the pages of Forbes

It certainly is more entrepreneurial an approach. It calls for social businesses, lifestyle businesses, “Mittelstand” firms, community-supported agriculture and local, boutique, pop-up “shops” (of various stripes, not least the local food and crafts-kind)…

After all, what we very much need, for the very change that is necessary and good, are all those entrepreneurial approaches that are not aimed at taking over the world and raking in the millions.
Rather, they aim to make a living doing good work, to provide necessary and desired goods and services without costing the world or having to stoke raging fires of consumerist desire for soon-to-be-obsolete junk, making us ourselves more disposable than human.

Isn’t that something to work towards, in all the meanings of this phrase?

A note on The Ecology of Happiness (as a kind of work):

It’s difficult to make something a viable business that people don’t want to pay for, and for a largely web-based, in a way, educational, initiative like “the ecology of happiness”, that may be even more so.

Still, in light of the above thoughts, I don’t want to create an NGO asking for donations, but orient this work entrepreneurially: it should pay for itself, be (part of) a way to make a living by providing value to others.

So, if you feel that this work helps you to consume less and live more, saving money and gaining happiness, I’d accept a payment for that help. If you gain impetus or are given ideas to change for better, in life and work – or for that matter, in business practices – likewise.

Stuck in work that is not satisfying, that only tries to get people to buy more and more things they don’t need, that leaves you yourself empty and wasted – I suggest that you learn more ways to live more and spend less, start to make more in better ways, and keep your money until you do.

Indulgences fell out of favor a long time ago, even with the church. It’s high time we abandoned them in life and work, too.

When you actually look at the people who are expecting a collapse of the contemporary “normal,” and are doing something about it, a different picture emerges, though – a much more “ecohappy” one.

In all its radicality, if you consider how normal change is, it is even a much more normal picture than often considered. Even business pundits with all too little an idea of actual human beings (rather than the homo economicus), let alone of ecological workings, expect change, after all; “disruptive” business is one of the current buzzwords.

There is also quite enough questioning of the validity of the current system and its promises – but it still feels more comfortable than the unknown that lies ahead.

So, it’s time to point to some nice examples of (other) voices suggesting how we can get to greater happiness as well as, and indeed through, ecologically better fitting lives – in effect, eco-logically, really, better lives.
(These have been shared on The Ecology of Happiness’s Facebook page before, by the way – if you haven’t yet done so, you may want to “like” it to keep in touch.)

From the unhappy proposition of peak oil and climate change as double threats to civilization, “Somewhere in New Mexico Before the End of Time” about Guy McPherson of “Nature Bats Last” and his view of the crisis comes to an inkling (but not much more) of the better, happier, that is being created:

On a different note, but because the power of the individual to make any relevant change is so often questioned, David Korten on “Walking Away from the King” is a voice worth listening to:

David Korten: Walking Away From the King from Katie Teague on Vimeo.

From none less than “The End of Growth”-Richard Heinberg, one of the purported prophets of peak oil and the trouble we’ll be in, comes one of the nicest examples of a person walking their talk – and it all not ending in a decision to just put an end to it all, but in the realization that the “end of growth can mean more happiness:”

Finally, a bit of reading that points to ways of bringing together the joys and advantages we’ve seen information and communications technology (and similar high-tech) to bring and the necessity and potential of more local living (a theme that will be explored further in forthcoming posts): Local Economies for a Global Future. Yes, we need to relocalize—but that doesn’t mean we’re headed for provincialism. Anticipating our near-heavy, far-light future.

“It’s no good believing in somebody else

If you can’t believe in yourself

You give them the reason to take all the power and wealth”

(“Turn It Up” – Alan Parsons Project)

There is a very strange paradox of power about today.

Never before has such a large part of humanity lived so well, and in conditions that make it possible – if not essential – for those of us like that to make good use of the power we have been given. It’s not all good, after all.Many people still live in less-than-ideal conditions. Even in “affluence,” the idea of jobs for life, chosen and determined career paths, even the very stability of our ecological contexts (from resource availability via food security to climate) are all uncertain.
Yet, with only a smartphone and a data plan, or a computer in an internet café, you could conceivably stir up a revolution, learn just about anything, and create a global business.

At the same time, though, there is such a disregard for learning, such a level of complaint about locked-in systems, things being just the way they are and totally outside of our influence, that the technology often ends up being used as toys rather than tools.

Those obviously with power and wealth continue their games trying to acquire more power and wealth; those without either try to join them or distract themselves in the illusion of a life well-lived, with parties and fun, or with kids and struggling in two jobs.

All the knowledge we would have devolves into cannon fodder for intellectual battles trying to change everyone’s consciousness to one realization, to argue endlessly about “the” solution – never realizing that change better not just be said, but made, in a plethora of solutions fitting into their respective, relevant contexts.

The paradox is all the more striking because matters such as “the economy”, “the environment”, “sustainability”… all seem so complicated.
It leaves an individual person feeling totally powerless. Denial and small rearguard actions ensue: at least I donate money (which is probably part of the problem), recycle, buy “green” products.
The more you learn, the less influence and even understanding you may seem to have. Then, we end with the older generation of environmentally-concerned people fawning over the young “greens,” proclaiming how they will change the world – and thereby giving away their own power and absolving themselves of any responsibility to themselves get to work – with their hands and brains, not just in thought and speech – and change things.

The feeling of powerlessness only lasts until you get to action, in practical ways, with your own hands and for and in your own life, though.

It is easily the craziest point about this paradox that the skills first needed to be re-learnt are those that have always been at the very foundation of decent human lives: surviving and thriving by growing and cooking food, taking care of one’s own health and household…

The more you do and master, and especially in practical skills and looking to make a living doing better, the more you see your own power. The knowledge of what needs to be done then combines with the ability to do something, and chances become visible.

Yes, it is not all you alone. Building change requires communities and citizens. It will also not change everything at once – but nothing ever will (not for the better, anyways).

Still, why complain about corporations selling too much “junk” – while buying it yourself rather than learning to make “good”? It will at least give you yourself some satisfaction, on several levels at once, and it just may change your local community, or your virtual circles, or create a new, more sensible market.

Why only occupy spaces in protest when you can also create the change you want, not just in the rhetoric, but also in the ways that lives are lived?

We don’t, after all, need *the* change – we need *to* change.

This is an issue I’ve been thinking about for a while, a realization I’m working on instituting ever more in my own life. It came to a head, for this post, through The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “The Future of American Colleges May Lie, Literally, in Students’ Hands”

I encourage you to read that, and think about practical things you could do.
Myself, I’ve been embarking on more practical things, and a focus on presenting those connections, partly here, partly on my more personally-oriented blog at www.zhangschmidt.com… More to come

Your Comfort Zone - and Where the Magic Happens (image making the rounds on Facebook)

Often enough, it looks as if we were all too happy to just settle for a bit of comfort. A cozy home, enough food, a little entertainment, a little excitement every now and then. Housework and jobs make for enough stress and drained energy, anyways.

Indeed, in looking at the big picture, it’s obvious that it takes both the intrepid explorers and “crazy” innovators, and the down-to-earth folks and “boring,” pedestrian people.
In fact, even the most conservative traditionalist probably has his/her passions that seem unconventional to at least some others, and even the most daring adventurer may want to come back to a comfortable home and hearth, sleep in his own bed and not in a bivouac.

We humans have an unfortunate tendency to overdo it, though – and the same way that so much of politics and economics is headed in a wrong direction by focusing near-exclusively on (GDP) growth and monetary profit, all too many lives and lifestyles are suffering from an exaggerated focus on comfort and convenience.

Lifestyles that overdo it one way or another, falling into the comfortable routine of following the path once started on, easily get caught up in a rut, though.
Work may be crazy, but at least it’s a job; life may be a drag, but at least it’s all comfortingly predictable. Shopping may not satisfy anything more than a quick urge to reward oneself, but at least it does present a treat. Followed by dread, perhaps, but it is a comfortable normality.

Even when people supposedly break free from their daily routines, going on vacations or even to work in other countries, there is a widespread tendency to just go for the full-service, all-you-can-eat, pampered experience and fall into comfortable routines of thinking and doing ever the same.

It’s killing us, and it’s making us less than truly human.

Food is so easily available and so convenient, people forget one of the very foundations of human existence: cooking skill. Convenience foods feel good for being quick and easy to prepare (i.e., heat up), fast food only just needs buying (and is never far away), both are made to appeal to the basest of human instincts about eating… and obesity and civilizational diseases are the result (along with many other problems).

The full pleasure of meals well-prepared, taken in good company, providing healthy sustenance and manifold taste experiences, and representing a chance for increasing skills, is never realized.

Physical fitness, another of the natural elements constituting the activity that life normally is, has also been going down the drain.
Sure, many people have gym memberships, some actually put themselves through punishing regimens in order to stay fit and not get fat. Lean looks are not necessarily what fitness really is about, though. It certainly is not about weight.
It starts with the simple necessity of being able to move, to walk for miles, to run away, to climb up somewhere, carry something or someone. From that come both skills and the pleasure of moving.

Modern information and communications technologies have opened up a tremendous potential for learning more, interacting with diverse groups, finding help and support in getting better, happier, more at home in this world – and then so much of them is used for lolcatz and hearing more of the same voices we already think of as right. Frustration about “first world problems” makes life seem bad, even when conditions are good. Maybe too good.

Comfortable and convenient cries for a return to “normal” are all around; it is decried that life was supposed to be like it has (supposedly) been just recently, not as it is.
The past is nostalgically re-interpreted as much better, and the present seen with a focus on the problems. When it isn’t, then current conditions are seen as comfortably and comfortingly great and getting better, without notice of the now-and-future problems, or the current potential for better.

It is only human to act like that, easy to complain about the problems, comforting to kvetch and moan along with all the others doing so – but it is also human to learn, and think, and act to become better, even if it means “per aspera ad astra” – through the rough, to the stars.

We can develop better habits, greater skill, more understanding of ourselves, others, and the world, when we get out of our comfort zones. Better lives creating better futures, for us now and for the world, can get realized if we can see their potential and work towards them.

As Vivian Greene said,

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass…
It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”

We have great chances for doing that now, if only we realize them and get going. Will you come and “dance” with me?