Consuming Thoughts: G

G is for Good, of Which We Need More. Tom Waits: You got to keep the devil way down in the hole. Disposable diapers. The mark of a sophisticated consumer society. No muss, no fuss, take ‘em up and toss ‘em into the nearest available trash receptacle. That amounts to over 4,000,000 tons of turd bombs trucked to landfills yearly in the US alone. Shocking. What’s our response to shock? We recoil, pull back and, physiologically prepare for fight or flight. Fleeing, we fling our filth away, deliberately in denial, we cut our selves off from considering the consequences. Fighting, we campaign in outrage, demand responsibility through reduction, writing rants, we burn off our anger in opposition. We’re demanding rather stridently that we change behavior. For some reason, this rarely yields the results intended…

John Cleese: And now for something completely different. What if we re-thought, re-designed, re-branded and marketed disposable diapers that allowed us to stay in our throw away rut and that were also nutritious (for worms, that is). Well, it’s been done and gDiapers is doing it right. Disposable diapers that disappear as compost (residential or commercial). Certified as cradle to cradle, they go back to where they came from, closing the loop. Think of this as an aiki-solution. No fight, no flight, re-direction of disastrous behavior into virtuous, value-generating action. Same babies, same parents, same behaviors, different diapers, good waste.

Of all the things, more good from wasteful behavior. Chevy Chase: Ahahahaha … I like it!

Tags: aiki, and now for something completely different, Chevy Chase, compost, Cradle to cradle, disposable diapers, gdiapers, John Cleese, Tom Waits, you got to keep the devil way down in the hole

Moving the Needle: From Less Bad to Abundance

Imagine you’re looking at a gauge. The left half of the gauge has black hash marks with numbers that go from “-10″ to “0″ at the top. The background color on this half is red. The right half of the gauge has numbers that start from “0″ at the top of the gauge and go to “+10″ on the lower right. Let’s say the background color for the right half is green.

The goal is simple. As much as possible, keep the needle in the green. Keep things positive.

In Cradle to Cradle Will McDonough writes that eco-efficiency (aiming for “-2 instead of, say, “-8″) really isn’t an option. It’s like being the frog in the pot of boiling water. The water warms slowly. The frog sits comfortably. By the time the water is too hot, it’s too late to jump out. We’re already half cooked. We’ve boiled ourselves to death slowly.

“Life creates the conditions conducive to life” – Janine Benyus. This is true except for when we’re in the red, the negative half of the gauge. When we’re in the red, we’re burning through resources, devouring capital, depleting our savings. When we’re in the red we’re actually creating conditions that make life hard. We’re degrading the systems that support life, that support us. We’re creating our own Hell, cycles of suffering and destruction. From a mindset of scarcity (use what I can, when I can, to maximize my short-term benefit) we create scarcity.

The other half of the gauge is abundance. When the needle is in the green we, ourselves, businesses, communities, cities, nations and the economies that support us are creating conditions conducive to life. We’re strengthening the systems that support life. Well-being emerges from well-being. We’re creating and sustaining life-generating, life-giving cycles. From a mindset of abundance (use what I can to create long-term prosperity for myself by sustaining and enhancing that which supports and sustains me) we create abundance.

The goal is simple. Keep things positive. Making the changes in the ways we think, see, and act in our lives, communities and our work are difficult, daunting. Sustainability is something we do together. Abundance is something we create together.

Red or green? You make the call.

Tags: abundance, Cradle to cradle, Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions conducive to life, sustainability, Will McDonough

Cradle to Cradle Wisdom

Here’s a couple of perspectives from Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart taken from Cradle to Cradle:

If we were to have intentionally designed the industrial revolution here are some of the specs we would have needed to follow:

• put billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water and soil every year
• produce some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations
• create gigantic amounts of waste
• put valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• require thousands of complex regulations-not to keep people and natural systems safe, but rather to keep them from being poisoned too quickly
• measure productivity by how few people are working
• create prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burying them or burning them
• erode the diversity of species and cultural practices

Now, if we were to do a redesign around eco-efficiency and other current definitions of doing less harm the specs would look like this:

• release fewer pounds of toxic wastes into the air, soil and water every year
• measure prosperity by less activity
• meet the stipulations of thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• produce fewer materials that are so dangerous that they will require future generations to maintain constant vigilance while living in terror
• create smaller amounts of useless waste
• put smaller amounts of valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved

A couple of key points here. No one designed the industrial revolution and, really, we aren’t doing a very good job of designing for a sustainable, much less an abundant future. No one intended to flood their communities with toxic compounds, create large whorls of plastic trash in our oceans, collapse the banking system and kick off a worldwide recession or alter the climate of the planet on which we depend for existence.

We, all of us, just drove on oblivious to the signs warning that a pretty precipitous cliff lay dead ahead. Now we are flailing around with a lot of our energy being expended on figuring out how to drive toward (and off) the cliff more slowly. Not good.

It’s hard. Just ask Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, the rest of the House of Representatives and legislators, policy makers and leaders all over the world as they wrestle with climate change legislation and regulations. Let’s face it, most of us, in some way, depend on the current state of things to get by.

Yet, the question I think we should be asking is not “How to we keep what we’ve got?” but “How do we give up what we’ve got in order to get more for all of us in the future?” In aikido (thanks to the late Terry Dobson)  we call this “giving in to get your way”

So, what to do? We’ve got to get everyone involved. Less bad is still bad. Less bad is unsustainable. As we continue to meet the needs of the present we’ve got to come together and design for a future that is not less bad but more good. While meeting the needs of the present we need to collectively imagine, design and implement a future that gives us, our children and grandchildren our best shot at living lives of sustainable abundance. 

This goes beyond ideology, industry and ego. It is at the heart of community and living and working together well. This is a game we all can play. The rules? Design, develop and implement for a sustainable present and abundant future. Do it together. Do it well. Be present, build resilience. Be disciplined. Do it ASAP. Have fun!

Tags: aikido, banking system, Bill McDonough, climate change, climate change legislation, collapse, Cradle to cradle, design, eco-efficiency, Ed Markey, Henry Waxman, Michael Braungart, recession, resilience, Terry Dobson, toxic material, waste