Occupy the Economy

I've been watching the development of the Occupy Everywhere protests with great interest. It seems that the real "silent majority" has finally been pushed not to the breaking point, but certainly to the boiling point.

The unbridled greed that has characterized the American political and economic landscape for at least the last thirty or forty years has finally led not to "class warfare," but to a level of activism we haven't seen since the Vietnam era.

The Occupy _____ protesters are not "a mob" as some have called them, but responsible citizens who have adopted the only course left to them when politicians, the corporate media, and the private sector generally refuse to acknowledge them.

You may have heard that "lots of economists" believe that the best way to spur recovery is to balance the budget by further taxing the middle class and giving even more to the "job creators." This is nonsense!

Economics is a science -- while it cannot predict the behavior of individuals, statistical methods can and do very accurately forecast the aggregate behavior of large groups. Trickle-down ideologues live in a fact-free world. Therefore they are not economists.

The Occupy protestors have attracted the attention of actual economists -- real people with names: Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Robert Reich, for example. Not a supply-sider among them. I repeat, economics is a science. There are right answers and wrong answers.

Some of the Occupy protests have featured workshops in "alternative economies," a term I dislike. "Alternative" implies a second-class status -- e.g. fossil fuels and nuclear are "real" energy while wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and other sources are "alternative." Sustainable is probably a more accurate and descriptive word.

The word "economics" stems from the Greek oikonomia: meaning management, or administration of a household. It is the study of the allocation and use of resources. Although it is a useful tool, money need not be involved at all.

Look at all the "necessities" you buy now. Rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, grocery bills are pretty universal. They are also precisely the things that our ancestors provided for themselves without any government or corporate involvement.

Once these basics are covered, much of what we consider "essential" is really a function of a lifestyle we didn't really choose as much as it was the only one available to us -- a lifestyle that assumes we are destined to be wage slaves.

We don't necessarily need jobs. What we need is work as a means of livelihood. Whether you spend a fourth of your income on groceries or work in your garden ten hours a week, the result is the same (except that you can undoubtedly grow better food than you'll find at the store.)

You don't need a 20,000 square foot house and a thirty-year mortgage to get out of the rain or to sleep at night -- nor do you have to build your dream home in a single construction phase. In fact, a simple tool shed, well house, or root cellar would be a step up from improvised shelter.

A hundred years ago wood-burning heat might have been the only game in town. It's still available in a pinch, but we have lots of other options now. In short, virtually everything we are accustomed to buying could be provided as well or better by a well-planned local economy, or could be eliminated altogether.

I'll save the many details for later, but there is a lot of "marginal" land in America that is only deemed so because it doesn't lend itself to conventional highly mechanized and capital-intensive exploitation. In countries more densely populated than the U.S. (and with less income disparity) such land would be under cultivation.

With countless baby boomers facing lean retirement prospects, millions of construction workers and young people unemployed, and creative financing arrangements for any occaision, it seems more plausible than ever to form communities.

Social media platforms abound where interested individuals can network and organize virtual communities. With a little energy and attention to detail many of these could easily become more-or-less self-sufficient neighborhoods "in real life."

We can create our own jobs. The question is: "What field produces a product where the demand justifies the investment?" To me the answer is obvious: "We need to grow communities where economic justice is at least as important as profit by any means available."

Intentional Communities

Historically, towns and cities have sprung up spontaneously in locations that were favorable for commerce. Bays, river mouths, mountain passes, mineral deposits, and a variety of other features have given rise to settlements. More recently, man-made structures such as rail centers and highway intersections have played a role.

Today, the Internet and numerous package delivery services have made such considerations far less significant. While urbanization has its advantages, we are becoming increasingly aware of its limitations. Without cheap oil, or viable energy alternatives, there is little doubt that our current patterns of population density are completely unsustainable.

Cities, at least in their present form, produce almost no food. Not only is it necessary to move produce long distances to supply them, but highly mechanized and energy-intensive agricultural methods are also required if a mere 1.4% of the workforce is to be employed in farming.

That is not to say that all intentional communities are rural. They are as varied as the goals of the people who form them, and may include anything from urban co-ops to Buddhist ashrams to right-wing paramilitary camps or anything else one can imagine. Some are formed by developers whose intention is apparently to maximize their own profits.

Intentional communities are not the stereotypical hippie communes, although a growing number can be classified as eco-villages, placing an emphasis on sustainable lifestyles. This may include green architecture, soil and water conservation, alternative energy production, voluntary simplicity, or all of those options.

Voluntary simplicity, like other terms describing these communities, can have a variety of meanings. I would place the emphasis on "voluntary." It is not a matter of doing without things you want, but rather of not wanting some of the things society at large has come to take for granted.

Subsistence farming is another term that is subject to misinterpretation. While "subsistence" may conjure up images of eking out a hardscrabble existence, it actually means raising food primarily for consumption rather than for the wholesale produce market. Many subsistence farms produce considerable surpluses, so that "community supported agriculture" is becoming the preferred term to describe them.

Although intentional communities such as the familiar Amana colonies have existed for centuries, there is more interest in them today than ever before. If you long to live among neighbors who are also friends, you might want to learn more about this trend. If the idea of building community "from then ground up" appeals to you, so much the better. The books listed below offer a good starting point in either case.

Dirt vs. Soil

What is the difference between dirt and soil? If you said "none," you're not wrong. The dictionary definitions are very close synonyms that can be used interchangably. However, there is another sense in which the two are very different.

Organic growers often find it useful to distinguish between the finely divided weathered rock that makes up the mineral content of "dirt" and the more complex growing medium that also includes organic matter and a complex web of micro-organisms that comprise living "soil." The distinction is widely and fairly consistently applied.

This is not to say that dirt isn't important -- it's the basis and foundation of good soil. The point is that dirt is not the whole story. Let's start by looking at dirt. There is no shortage of books on soil science, from those focussing almost entirely on compost to engineering texts interested only in structural capabilities. It's a very important topic. I'm only going to touch upon a couple of very basic points here.

First, dirt is broadly classsified according to particle size. We think of grains of sand as very small, but they are the coarsest particles in the category. Somewhat smaller particles are called silt, which when dry, has a consistency and feel similar to flour. The smallest, microscopic particles are found in clay.

There is no single "ideal" soil: plants have been adapting to an variety of soils for millions of years, and no matter what kind of soil you have something will grow in it. Many culinary and medicinal herbs, for example, thrive in what are generally considered "poor" soils. For the most part, though, plants grow best in a mixture of the three particle sizes called loam.

Take some dry soil and grind it into a loose powder. If you have a graduated cylinder, that would be great, but any tall skinny jar such as the ones olives are sometimes packed in will work. Mix a bit of dirt with several times as much water and shake it up. Then set it down and watch.

Much if not all of the soil organic matter will float to the top. The sand will settle almost immediately. In a half hour or so the silt will drop out of suspension. It may take a couple of days for the clay to sink to the bottom of the jar, leaving relatively clear water on top. Now you have a sort of dirt parfait that allows you to estimate how much of each particle size your soil contains -- very useful information.

Plants like soils that are friable -- that is, soils that will stick together in clumps, but can easily be broken apart. All soils are friable for some range of moisture content. Clay soils easily become gooey plastic masses when wet or hard as rocks when dry. Sand won't stick together unless its very wet. But if the moisture content is just right both of these problem soils exhibit friability.

Organic matter can absorb many times its own weight in water. Thus, it can both keep soils from becoming too wet and from drying out too quickly. As little as 5% organic content can greatly improve the growing properties of any dirt. Organic loam is friable over a wide moisture range, and this promotes good soil structure.

We all know that roots neeed water, but when we think about it, we also know that they need air. We put rocks in the bottom of potted plants to permit excess water to drain out the bottom, because we know that too much water is as much a problem as under-watering. Friable loams maintain good soil structure or "crumb" which means there are spaces in the soil that absorb water, and just as readily draw in air as the rain seeps down into the groundwater.

Red Meat

Diet books are very popular. I reviewed one recently that began with the premise that our digestive systems have evolved over the milennia to digest a particular diet. That seemed quite reasonable. Unfortunately the author's concept of primitive cultures must have come from reading Alley Oop, because he went on to prescribe a diet consisting almost entirely of red meat!

There is a joke where a vegetarian asks a meat-eater if he has never heard of cholesterol to which he replies, "Sure. It's what they put in steak to make it taste so good." There is a lot of truth in that. Most of human history (and pre-history) has been a story of scarcity and privation. Under those conditions, there is an obvious advantage to having a preference for high-octane foods like beef and pork.

In the modern world, however, our main dietary challenge is too much of a good thing. Obesity, diabetes, cardiac and arterial disease and a host of other common ailments can be traced not exclusively to red meat, but to eating as much as we like of whatever tastes good to us. I love a good steak as much as anyone, but there are a lot of other delicious wholesome foods made with poultry or fish or (gasp) no meat at all.

One of the easiest ways to reduce your meat intake is with textured vegetable protein. TVP is defatted soy flour extruded under pressure and dried to have a texture resembling that of meat. It absorbs the flavors of whatever it is cooked with and is a good source of protein. Vegetarians use it as a meat substitute, but it might be more realistic to introduce a bit into your ground meat dishes. I find that a half cup of dry TVP rehydrated and added to a pound of ground meat is barely detectable.

Dried TVP has a shelf life of at least six months, and it is not only a healthy alternative to meat, but is also considerably cheaper. If you use it with ground meat as I suggest above, you can use a lot more in recipes that combine meat with other ingredients. Start with a small amount and experiment with different quantities until you find a ratio that works for you.

Frances Moore Lappe has advocated strictly vegetarian diets for decades, and advances some very reasonable arguments in favor of that option. You must realize that a good deal of knowledge and planning are required to maintain balanced nutrition in an entirely meatless regimen. You should definitely read her books if you want to go that route. Even if you are only interested in adding a few vegetarian dishes to your recipe file, you should read her classic Diet for a Small Planet, which explains protein complementarity and a host of other vegetarian essentials.

I find it ironic that Amazon.com lists healthy cooking and whole foods books under "special diet", but I suppose most people don't think about good nutrition nearly enough. Nutrition books are in the Health: Mind and Body section, as are American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association selections under Diets and Weight Loss. This tends to weed out some of the fad diet books, but also makes the more authoritative sources harder to find.

Biogas

When greenhouse gasses are mentioned carbon dioxide is probably the first one that comes to mind. In fact, as a by-product of the burning of fossil fuels, it is the only one that has recieved any real public attention. However, there are two very common greenhouse gasses that for a given volume are far more damaging.

Decomposing manure releases two main gasses that cause global climate change: nitrous dioxide and methane. Nitrous dioxide warms the atmosphere 310 times more than carbon dioxide and methane 21 times more than carbon dioxide. Methane of course is better known as natural gas. The mixture of methane and other gasses derived from manure and other types of biomass is termed biogas.

There are two main sources of manure -- humans and livestock. The vast majority of the human manure is delivered by sanitary sewer systems to wastewater "treatment" plants which typically perform the bare minimum processing required to comply with the 1970 Clean Water Act. The smell around one of these public dungheaps will tell whether they are at all concerned with air quality.

Personally I am sick and tired of the oil industry's public relations ads about how they are developing technology that might possibly someday be useful. Biogas was first used in Assyria in the tenth century BC. I think its undergone enough "development" as this history shows. Larger and more efficient plants have been constructed over the last several centuries.

Some municipalities have incorporated biogas digesters in their sewage treatment already, and although I'm sure environmental concerns played some part in the initial planning of these projects the fact is that they more than pay for themselves in the value of the fuel they produce alone, as this waste-disposal industry article attests.

So here's a chance to think globally and act locally: Your city council won't let you have a septic system and they would rather tax you for the privelege of being exposed to TOXIC nitrogen dioxide than to upgrade to a revenue-positive green seventeenth-or-eighteenth-century sewage treatment plant. You know the E.P.A. has the authority to regulate toxic gas emissions ...

This doesn't require an elaborate feasibility study boondoggle. Siemens and probably half a dozen other European companies have off-the-shelf turnkey biogas solutions. I'm sure their engineers could help to get the specifications in order to open a project for bids. There may even be an American company or two, but my sense is that we just dont give a ... darn.

Mission Statement

The story is told (whether apocryphal or not) that Benjamin Franklin was approached by a woman outside the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia who asked him: "What sort of government do we have?" To which Franklin supposedly replied, "A republic madame, if you can keep it."

It is impossible to prove that Franklin even said this, much less to know precisely what he meant, but there are at least two immediate dangers inherent in our form of government: First, a republic requires competent, honest leaders to make policy decisions that serve the nation's best interests. Second, in a democratic republic the electorate is responsible to inform themselves on the issues of the day and to choose those leaders wisely.

This blog is not intended to be primarily political. Its purpose is to empower readers to move toward sustainable lifestyles and a sustainable future. If the government was capable of enacting the necessary reforms, this outreach would not be necessary. However, government inevitably has a role to play, if only to stop making the situtation worse by continuing to subsidize destructive practices of the past.

Viewed in isolation, the steps one can readily take toward sustainability may have little impact. Conversely, an individual's contribution to a disastrously unsustainable future might seem equally insignificant -- yet it is the sum of those individual inputs that has us careening toward the collapse of modern civilization if not the mass extinction of all complex life on the planet.

A country where 5 percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's annual extraction of oil has no moral right to excuse itself from international energy planning simply because emerging economies such as India or China currently may not be participating. Similarly, individuals should and must do what they can regardless of how many others may choose to deny that a problem exists.

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama said, "This is our Sputnik moment." The cable news chattering class immediately criticized the speech saying that no clear goal was stated, such as President Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. They missed the point: There is no televised spectacular that will signal our success. We need to transform society piece by piece from the ground up to meet the challenge of the current crisis.

There is no doubt this can be done. There are plenty of people who have been clamoring for action since Pogo first declared, "We have met the enemy and he is us," on or about Earth Day 1970. The question is whether or not it will be done. Environmentally unsustainable policies have been widely recognized for at least 40 years, and very little has been accomplished so far. Engineering a soft landing starting today will require not only an Apollo program, but a Marshall Plan as well with a couple of Berlin Airlifts thrown in for good measure.

With some 38% of the public still scoffing at the very idea, the time for fiddling with small incremental changes around the periphery of environmental catastrophe is long since past. I fully expect to see Florida disappear beneath the waves in my lifetime. Sorry, Pogo.