In defense of socialism?

This interview with Naomi Klein over at Solutions is great food for thought. Below are some of her main points, which are all rational and interesting:

1. The numbers of people who "believe in" climate change in the US are actually falling. These numbers are correlated with ideology (which isn't surprising) but the way she describes the groupings might be. What we traditionally think of as "left" leaning people, she calls communitarian - those who believe we live together and share resources on a global scale, and who are upset by disparities and disadvantaged populations. These people obviously believe in climate change. Those on the "right" hold a more individualistic view or hierarchical view will tend to not believe in climate change. She essentially boils the debate down to an ideological one, with climate change serving as a proxy for the battle between two competing ways of looking at human, nation-state, and global relations.

This is a slightly different way of looking at it, not entirely new, but an intriguing perspective that can change a LOT of how we approach the issue.

2. The market will never solve the problem. She suggests that contrary to what we've been led to believe by our high-profile environmental groups, markets will never be able to undertake everything that needs to be done to really combat climate change.

Although she doesn't out and out say this, I think this is because markets are inherently individualistic. Cap and trade is great, but what we need is interventions to move our systems away from what they look like now - mass-transit infrastructure, changes in our perspectives on housing, and I would add, food production, manufacturing, and industrial design to just name a few.

3. "Who is demanding growth year after year?"

I've begun to really incorporate this line of logic into my thinking and debates in the past few years, as I think this is one of the key structural issues with our current system. As long as we demand unreasonable, indefinite growth, we're going to continue making short-term, damaging decisions. While I agree that corporations are not people, I think they generally make decisions like people do - in common sense and practical ways. Given their circumstances, they will undertake a set of choices and behaviors where long-term consequences are never even factored into the process. This must change.

A case in point - my parents' microwave recently broke - or at least started sounding like it was going to. When I called to find out if it was possible to fix it, they quoted prices to me that made it nearly impossible for a rational person to choose to repair over new. The cost to have someone come out to LOOK at the thing would be about 50% of a new microwave, and there was no guarantees on how much parts and labor would then cost, much less any guarantee that the microwave would then last much longer anyway. So, a normal person would just replace the microwave, despite the fact that it likely needs just one small part changed. Even worse, the microwave is a "hood" version, which combines microwave plus exhaust system for the stove. Thus, I'm forced to throw out a LOT of good stuff because of one small problem that they've priced unreasonably. Further, the company has no responsibility, incentive, or interest in taking the existing piece back and making use of it's component parts. So we essentially have to landfill it? How is this at all rational?

For those who will point out other disposal options that require ME to do hours of homework and then drive 20 miles to take care of it, I say - really? In our convenience-oriented society, can we really expect most regular folks to do this? This is where EPR (extended producer responsibility) really needs to happen, but in our country that's considered more regulation, stifling competition, and anti-jobs/anti-growth. See the problem?

Ms. Klein's answer is to push for a wholly changed system, utilizing the recent groundswell movements and popular demonstration to place pressure on current power structures. It's a very interesting message and one that I think I can get behind. Read the interview here, then tell me what you think!

Re-cycle your old electronics...

and maybe even get some money for them! Wanted to share a website I ran across recently called YouRenew that lets you essentially "sell" your old electronics (phones, mp3 players, video game systems, etc.) to this company which will then re-sell the items on websites like e-Bay so that they don't stop getting used and get tossed into landfills.

Given how disposable our society has become, this seems like a great idea to minimize the electronic waste going straight into our landfills. Of course, as William McDonough has noted, recycling only prolongs the inevitable. Eventually, these items are still going to be disposed of somewhere. Further, if the items are less resource-efficient (i.e. use more energy) then perhaps its not as good an idea to keep them in use. And finally, the real solution isn't to recycle, but to change our disposable economy into something that makes more sense (has anyone noticed that there are virtually no repair shops in existence anymore?)

Yet, as someone who has like four old cell phones in my desk drawer, I find YouRenew's idea pretty engaging. At the very least, older products that are still completely usable can get a new lease on life for a while with someone else, and that's always better than having something just rot away in a landfill OR your desk drawer.

Walmart's Sustainability Index

Just got a blog-feed from Joel Makower at Greenbuzz.com that discusses Walmart's newest green initiative, the "Sutainability Index." You can find the full post here: The Hype and the Reality(Makower). Essentially, Walmart is setting the stage for measuring suppliers against a number of sustainability metrics. As Makower points out, it's the first step in what could become a very ambitious initiative, but right now it is still in its early stages. We likely won't see very much positive consumer-facing effects from this right now, and it may be tempting to call it greenwashing, but I agree with Makower that it's really too early to judge Walmart and that this initiative is shaping up to be much more than just greenwashing.

Walmart and other large multi-nationals get a lot of crap for they way they conduct business and for their past practices. Much of this is not un-deserved. Companies have for too long worked by pillaging the natural world for short term profits. However, the solutions from the radical end of the spectrum is to just get rid of these companies. I think this is also short-sighted and unrealistic. Our economic systems are set up in a way to encourage the growth of companies such as these, and even if Walmart or McDonalds were to disappear tomorrow, other companies would spring into their place and do the same things they do.

Instead, I think we have to support, encourage, cajole, and pressure these companies to make the types of changes that Walmart has been making. While I would love to see radical reform and changes to the way we consume (and admittedly, this would completely destroy Walmart and its entire business) I don't think this will happen anytime soon. Perhaps the answer then, is to push Walmart into changing their business themselves, morphing into something that little resembles what they are now, and can through their reach and their influence, actually change how consumers thing. Imagine, if Walmart could convince 50% of their customers that using plastic bags are bad..... imagine the ramifications of that.

Thus, I think this initiative should be viewed positively, although with a healthy dose of skepticism. That skepticism shouldn't lead to outright dismissal of the Sustainability Index however - it should lead to monitoring and accountability. Walmart has shown a very commendable penchant to engage some of the leading environmentalists and environmental policy makers around in order to help drive their sustainability initiatives. We should acknowledge this and utilize this openness to push the company further forward.

One final note - Makower highlights what might be the most interesting and important aspect of this program at the end of his post too. Walmart is considering pushing for open-source databases to manage and share the information they collect, allowing both consumers and other companies to analyze the companies that are making their products. Greater access to information can only be a good thing. Walmart's openness to not owning this whole process and set of metrics is also promising. Let's see how this develops.

Walmart, like the US, is a huge ship.. it will take a long time to turn them, but it is possible. This is a step in the right direction, and while I hate to hold up Walmart pom-poms, I'm going to be a cheerleader here and say "good for you Walmart."

Is the honeymoon over with organics?

"For those farmers, the promises of going organic — a steady paycheck and salvation for small family farms — have collapsed in the last six months. As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry. Farmers nationwide have been told to cut milk production by as much as 20 percent, and many are talking of shutting down.

“I probably wouldn’t have gone organic if I knew it would end this way,” said Mr. Preston, 53."

This is an excerpt from an article from the New York Times. It seems that the honeymoon with organics might be over, at least from the supplier side. It seems that demand is down and thus markets and distributors are scaling back on orders, leaving farmers - many of them who have just converted to producing organic - are left holding full cans of milk. While this article focuses on dairy, you can see how this situation could be reproduced throughout the agro-business industry with any products that use the organic label to sell their products at a premium. In economic downturns, it seems that all of the customers on the margins - the "organic is nice to have but not a way of life customers," likely a very large market and what has supported the rapid growth of organic farms in the past five years or so - well, in downturns, they seem to go away.

Thus, unfortunately, many small producers - many of the ones who saw organic production as the way to save their farms - are taking a boot in the butt for their decision to go green. Likewise, the credit crunch cannot help these cash-flow strapped small businesses. The article talks about a few ways that farmers are trying to address this issue, but outside of selling at losses or a rampant upswing in demand, it seems like some of these farms will be doomed.

One thing we all can do (if we have the luxury of having extra disposable income) is make sure that we all go out and support organic farms by buying the products. I think we can also help by going out there and buying local and supporting any local farmers who show up with organic products at farmer's markets. Grow that market and perhaps farmers can sell at lower prices, direct to the consumers, and still break even.

Finally, another, slightly unrelated thought. One of the big concerns with organic growing has always been how organic production will be able to satisfy worldwide food needs. While there is plenty of support for the notion that organic production done right can actually increase yields... let's not deal with that here. Instead, it seems the problem right now is not enough demand and wildly enthusiastic production. Perhaps as we begin to re-engage organic production around the world, we can use this as a lesson - we don't want farmers to attach ideas of bankruptcy and hardship with organic, but we also don't want to set small farmers on a path to destruction either. We have to grow the organic market, make organic more price competitive with non-organic products, and ensure that supply does not outstrip demand by too much.

Or is there another way?

Full Article from the NY Times Here

Move over CFLs?

Elisabeth Rosenthal and Felicity Barringer write about the coming of LED lighting in the New York Times. I first heard about commercial applications of LED lighting when doing research for my thesis project on green hotels - some of the hotels I talked to were experimenting with LED lighting. While I've know about LED flashlights and camp lights for a long time, their super bright white light seemed ill-suited to room lighting to me. So it's interesting to know that people are really pushing this technology now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/science/earth/30degrees.html?em

Of course, for good reason though. LED lights are much more energy efficient and material efficient than CFL lights - our current standard for greenness. (Scary fact though - normal CFLs are only about 20% efficient.. meaning, only 1W out of 5W that goes to powering your bulb is actually turned into light. The other 4W become waste heat. This of course is also the reason that CFLs are considered green - relative to traditional incandescents, they're amazing since traditional bulbs typically convert no more than THREE percent to light.)

This will be a trend that will be very interesting to follow as time goes on. Especially, as pointed out in the article) money comes on-line from the government to support new technologies like LEDs. Anyone out there come into contact with LED lightbulbs on a regular basis in a commercial setting?

The Whole Foods Challenge

So Anthony and I were discussing the perceived price discrepancies at Whole Foods one day while doing some grocery shopping up here in Mountain View. I think Whole Foods is pretty ridiculously overpriced - a place where it just costs a lot to buy stuff whose environmental and health impact is debatable. Anthony thinks that Whole Foods gets a bad rap, and that even if it does cost more, he's willing to do so because he feels like there is a better chance that what you buy at Whole Foods is sourced from more environmentally conscious and sustainable companies. This of course, is a different discussion - one that I'll let Anthony post more on later.

Because the second part of the question was more of a debate, we decided to see if we could get some cold hard data on the first part - prices. Thus, the Whole Foods challenge was born. Basically, we decided to create a list of items that a shopper could find at both stores and compare the prices, head to head. Anthony knows Whole Foods pretty well, and his wife shops at Safeway - the main big box, mass market supermarket around in the Bay - occasionally, so we chose these two stores and had his wife list out products that might be at both.

Safeway also has an online presence, which made finding Safeway prices easier - however, we decided we would still go into both stores to find the items and see if online pricing and in-store pricing might be different. We also decided to list both retail prices and sales prices, knowing that stores like Safeway actually make their living off luring people in with fairly regular "sale" prices.

Finally, before we went, we both decided to predict how many items we thought would be higher priced at Whole Foods, how many would be the same at both, and how many would be higher priced at Safeway.

My prediction?
14 higher priced items at Whole Foods and 6 priced the same.

Anthony's?
8 higher priced items at Whole Foods, 8 the same, and 4 higher priced at Safeway.

Some of our friends also had a side bet going - what would the price difference be? Some of the guesses? 10% higher at Whole Foods. 30% higher at Whole Foods. I thought 20%.

So...... what do you all think? Will Whole Foods be more expensive than Safeway on products that you can find at both stores? If so, by how much? If not, does it go the other way? Or, have we gotten the whole debate wrong?