[Iowa-dx] FW: [irenew] Sustainable society within reach, ecological designer says
tpfeiff@earthlink.net
tpfeiff@earthlink.net
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:12:12 -0500
Couldn't this person be related to Larry Orr? :-)
Ted Pfeiff
Scott County
> [Original Message]
> From: tallex2002 <altenergynetwork@alternate-energy.net>
> To: <irenew@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: 9/23/2007 3:57:51 PM
> Subject: [irenew] Sustainable society within reach, ecological designer
says
>
> Sustainable society within reach, ecological designer says
>
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
> f=/c/a/2007/09/22/HOR9MRFI6.DTL
>
>
> If the summer's crop of drought and wildfire headlines threatened to
> send you sliding into a sweaty, globally warmed pit of despair,
> you'll find the words of David Orr inspiring, albeit in a tough-love
> kind of way. According to Orr, a pioneer in ecological design and
> Paul Sears Distinguished Professor and chair of the environmental
> studies program at Oberlin College, we already have the technology
> and know-how to create a world where every individual alive today can
> live a fulfilling, sustainable life. But only - and here's our kick
> in the pants - if we act immediately to reduce our consumption of
> fossil fuels.
>
> Consider, for starters, that to meet the goal of reducing annual
> global carbon emissions from the current 8.5 billion tons to a more
> sustainable 3 billion tons, Americans will have to reduce per-person
> carbon emissions from an average of 5 tons per year to roughly 0.3 of
> a ton per year. "The average car driven the average U.S. mileage
> emits its weight in carbon each year," says Orr. "So, if you drive a
> 2-ton SUV for one year, you've exceeded your carbon emission
> allotment for the year seven times over before anything else is
> counted."
>
> Lest you're tempted to slump back in front of the air-conditioner,
> Orr maps out a plan for reducing consumption step by step. Just make
> those steps quick ones. "Changes in our fossil energy consumption -
> hence, carbon emissions - are not optional but mandatory," says
> Orr. "Our choice is whether we organize the transition or let
> circumstance and nature do it for us. The former path permits
> cautious optimism; the latter would be catastrophic at a scale
> difficult to imagine."
>
> Peeling the onion
> "This is like the proverbial onion, and we have to start peeling off
> the layers," says Orr. "First we stop buying things none of us really
> want to buy." No one, he suggests, wants to buy pesticide residues or
> to spend money on gas wasted idling in traffic jams, or to pay - as a
> result of inefficient design - for two to three times more energy
> than we really need to run our homes and businesses. At the first
> level of reducing consumption we switch, as quickly as possible, to
> technologies that shrink our ecological footprint: We eat organic
> food, drive smaller and alternative-energy cars and use mass transit.
> We buy energy-efficient appliances and convert to solar energy.
>
> Orr would like to see the government prod our adoption of these
> technologies with a guaranteed annual increase in the price of fuels
> until prices reflect the fuels' ecological costs. He also calls for a
> federal transportation policy to install a high-speed rail network
> across the country. Such a system, complemented by urban light-rail,
> would help us to get out of our cars and to remain mobile and
> economically viable as oil reserves and production decline. (Calgary,
> Alberta, not only has a light-rail system, but it also runs on wind
> power.)
>
> When asked about the costs of adopting these technologies, Orr
> suggests we weigh their cost against the cost of the rampant
> inflation and ongoing oil wars that will otherwise ensue as oil grows
> scarce.
>
> Plus, Orr has little patience for monetary excuses. "Tell me how much
> we spend as a nation on pet psychologists, on Botox. Let's start down
> the list of silly stuff that we buy, and pretty soon we'll be talking
> about tens of billions of dollars. This economy has a lot of slack."
>
> Reducing consumption
> Peeling back the second layer of the onion requires that we take
> stock of our spending patterns and reduce unnecessary consumption,
> remembering that most of what we purchase requires the expenditure of
> fossil fuels to produce, distribute and dispose of or recycle. Orr
> suggests that a good place to start is with things we buy that we
> know lower our quality of life.
>
> Too much of the wrong kind of food is an example that will resonate
> with many of us, and one that Orr finds particularly apt. "That's a
> lose-lose-lose situation," says Orr. "Society loses because we have
> to go fight oil wars to make sure we have enough oil to haul our
> excess body fat around. (Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of
> Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently calculated that Americans are
> using approximately 1 billion more gallons of gas per year to power
> our cars than we did in 1960 because of our collective weight gain.)
> It's a double loss on the individual level because you die early of a
> heart attack or Type II diabetes, and you've lived a highly immobile
> life, which is a less rich life than you really wanted to live
> anyway."
>
> After we start buying less of what's not good for us, we can take a
> look at where we're substituting shopping and possessions for family
> and community. We stop believing the advertisements that tell us we
> will be loved, happy and leading an easier life if only we spend
> enough. Instead we focus on building relationships and vibrant
> communities. "Could we design a life that is rather like a European
> village life with a vibrant town square where things are happening
> and consumption is fairly minimal? Why not? What's the downside?
> That's the concept behind what's being called the new urbanism -
> design that gives us access without having to have mobility, and a
> place to gather other than the mall. We pay a lot of money to fly to
> Europe to see places exactly like that," says Orr.
>
> There is a fourth layer of the onion: giving up things that we truly
> need and desire in order that someone else today, or in the future,
> can live well - something, says Orr, our heroes of former generations
> often did.
>
> Whether we have to peel down to that layer will depend upon the steps
> we take now to reduce consumption. "This culture is hamstrung because
> we don't recognize limits," says Orr. "Ironically, if we refuse to
> recognize our limits, we will impose even greater limits on
> ourselves."
>
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