Science and Technology

How the Light Gets In: Perrucci and Perrucci’s America at Risk

‘There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.’ —Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’

PROPHETIC WORDS OR AN AGE-OLD OBSERVATION of the way change, by necessity, is initiated, that is, breakdown serves as accelerant? In America at Risk: The Crisis of Hope, Trust, and Caring by Purdue sociologists Robert Perrucci and Carolyn Perrucci (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), systemic cracks are painfully dissected—with true and actionable enlightenment, hopefully, to follow. The Perruccis’ thesis:

“We believe that the decline of hope, trust, and caring is the unanticipated consequence of the major transformation over the last thirty years in the kind of goods and services produced in America, in the technology that is used in production, and in the people who are involved in the production process. We call the composite of these changes the new economy.”

Their take on our current collective cachexia, all part and parcel of the “new economy,” makes for compelling reading, and the slender book (including index and notes it’s a mere 160 pages) offers up an array of solutions that deserves further exploration, certainly before we move from Cohen’s “Anthem” to Gibbons’ Decline and Fall … (for instance, from Gibbons: “If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honor”—just plug in “terrorists” in place of “barbarian conquerers” and “America” in place of “Rome,” and wait for the cookie to crumble). Read More »

A Good Time for Radical Change: The International Day of Climate Action

WITHOUT TRYING TO SOUND ALL HELLFIRE AND BRIMSTONE OR DEEP-FRIED SOUTHERN GOTHIC, I’ve got to share the garish headline spiel I ran across on the back of an early-60s paperback I’m currently engrossed in: “step by step … deed by deed … they fashioned their own destruction.” It bejewels a musty, well-worn copy of Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, but I was thinking—for Green Dynamind and with the International Day of Climate Action taking place tomorrow—that it’s an appropriate tag for where we’re heading if we keep on our current path of irresponsible and oblivious mega-consumption. And then the new issue of Scientific American arrived in the post, with its upbeat cover story, “A Plan for a Sustainable Future: How to get all energy from wind, water and solar power by 2030,” (more on this in a bit), and I thought, along with all the coordinated noise many will make across the globe tomorrow, maybe we can turn our spiel into “step by step … deed by deed … they fashioned their own salvation.” Now wouldn’t that be something to get excited about?! Read More »

No Alternative: The GoGreen09 Conference in Portland, Oregon

DOING THE RIGHT THING IS THE SMART THING. I think this was the number-one high-level takeaway from the GoGreen09 “Cultivating Sustainable Business” conference, which took place at the LEED-Platinum-certified Gerding Theater in Portland on Wednesday. To many this may appear a no-brainer: of course, like the good ol’ golden rule, good actions (not just intentions) should produce positive results (in some capacity), which is both right and smart. But in today’s climate of rampant fear-mongering and economic turmoil-cum-uncertainty, what once appeared obvious may, more often than not, no longer be the case. Going green is going to cost me more money—I can’t do that right now and adequately feed my family, take that well-earned vacation, purchase those new ski boots, etc.; or in the case of business … purchase that new employee health plan I’ve promised my peeps all year as we’ve collectively weathered the storm, solarize that roof, add a fleet of hybrids, etc. Ouch!

Panelist after panelist at sold-out* GoGreen09 shared success story after success story of how going green or carrying out a sustainability best practice or innovation was not only the right and necessary thing to do but the smart thing to do, resulting in some kind of bottom-line victory, in many cases of the preferred triple-bottom-line variety, where people, planet and profit all high five as victors. Were we hit over the head with the folly of fossil fuels and the continuing Cassandra complex of carbon-emissions levels? Fortunately, not so much. After all, we were attendees at a green event and should get that part at least. Read on for more impressions from the day. GoGreen09, indeed! Read More »

Global Gehenna: A Wild Week of UN + G-20 ‘Action’

COPENHAGEN ALREADY APPEARS GLOOMY—as it looms, somewhat nebulously, just down the road in December as host city for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. What, with the week we’ve had here in the United States: first in NYC with with the ultimately lackluster U.N. Summit on Climate Change; then in Pittsburgh with the contentious G-20 Summit meetings. Moonwalk-worthy back-peddlings, ramped-up ridiculous rhetoric, bogus posturings and protests, protests, protests! Can we—the world, with the United States and China taking point (one-two producers of more than 40 percent of worldwide carbon emissions)—seriously tackle global warming issues and produce meaningful results, i.e., action plans that will be truly implemented, in Copenhagen? Can the human spirit triumph? Go ahead and cue the Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer soaring soundtrack! Drop in Robert Downey, Jr. amid an ominous smoggy maelstrom of CGI! Time is short, the clock is ticking, it’s GLOBAL GEHENNA!!! and we need an … an army of everyman-and-woman heroes to demand real action! Read More »

A Paean to Organic Agriculture, Oregon Style

‘To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.’ —Wendell Berry

WE’RE AT THE OUTER EDGE OF SUMMER, TEETERING TOWARD FALL, the autumnal equinox mere days away, and celebrating, here in Oregon, another Organically Grown in Oregon Week, now in its twenty-first year. With 425 certified organic farms and organic production covering more than 115,000 acres, Oregon has been a longtime leader in the organic agriculture charge toward sustainability and “good food for all.” And now with an organic vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House (raising a big the-day-has-finally-come HURRAH! from Alice Waters; not so much from Monsanto) and everywhere you turn talk of simple, slow, local, organic and boy, do we ever need to change our nation’s eating habits, let’s hope this movement can gain serious momentum, and requisite backing, to make a real difference in the way food is grown, harvested, sustained and eaten.

As Michael Pollan writes in the introduction to a new collection of essays by Wendell Berry, Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009), “Certainly these are heady days for people who have been working to reform the way Americans grow food and feed themselves—the ‘food movement’ as it is now often called. Markets for alternative kinds of food—local and organic and pastured—are thriving, farmers’ markets are popping up like mushrooms, and for the first time in more than a century the number of farmers tallied in the Department of Agriculture’s census has gone up rather than down.” Read More »

From Hoki to Hokey Practices: The Lure and Lore of Sustainable Fishing

CAN SUSTAINABLE AND FISHING PEACEFULLY COEXIST IN THE SAME SENTENCE? Or are they destined to be oxymoronic combatants forever at odds in obliviously overfished seas, rivers, creeks, streams, lakes, ponds, you name it? Running across a sobering piece about the plight of the hoki by New York Times reporter Bill Broad yesterday brought this debate fresh to mind and got me wondering, Who’s really looking out for life in the sea, and are they having any impact that’s truly quantifiable? (Broad’s story even managed to receive a near-instant rebuttal from the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council—how’s that for muddying the waters from the other side of the planet?!)

With perhaps 20,000 known species of fish swimming around out there, why should we worry about the “ugly” bug-eyed hoki (as described by Broad), a fish, also known as a whiptail, that didn’t even make the cut for inclusion in Richard Ellis’ enthralling Encyclopedia of the Sea (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 2000)? It turns out that there’s a very good reason for concern, and a fish like the hoki, while certainly not as cute or family friendly as darling Nemo, helps bring overfishing further into the collective public consciousness—that plus the work of many, many diligent NGOs. That’s our bait, now let’s get ready for the tackle! Read More »

For (All) the Trees: The Forest Stewardship Council

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS THE FOREST STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL? And why is it held in such high regard? If you’re dealing with products derived from wood anywhere in your business practices (paper or cardboard, perhaps, so really, who isn’t?), if not already, get hip to the FSC (this purview applies equally to us all as consumers). As Brian Dougherty writes in Green Graphic Design, “The Forest Stewardship Council has emerged as the premier standard for assessing the sustainability of forest management practices.” The independent, nonprofit NGO was established in 1993, operates in over 50 countries and demonstratively impacts how a growing and mighty swath of forests is harvested and sustained. Let’s take a closer look at this “forest” that’s for all the trees. Read More »

69|09: The More Things Change …

‘Well, it’s 1969, okay, all across the USA’

ALSO SPRACH JAMES OSTERBERG, aka Iggy Pop, on the Stooges’ eponymous first LP, released 40 years ago—the year the Eagle landed on the moon, the Woodstock music festival celebrated peace and love, John and Yoko held a few “Bed-Ins for Peace,” Ohio’s Cuyahoga River burst into flame, Charlie Manson and “family” ran murderously rampant, Vietnam War protests spread, the Chicago Eight were tried and the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) passed in Congress.

Looking back—after the initial wow factor wears off of just what an amazing year it was in matters social, political, scientific, cultural and environmental—what true change was wrought that has impacted the world today? How firmly was the establishment actually shaken? And keep in mind that while August 1969’s Woodstock spelled peaceful coexistence for the most part, December 1969’s death at Altamont displayed a darker side of the hippie dream. From a green perspective, where it’s always better to be a carpe diem realist than a laissez faire optimist, a lot of positive change was truly wrought, a good portion of the establishment was legitimately shaken. Nineteen-sixty-nine was more than just okay. Read More »