What a Riot

While England recovers from its latest night of broken glass and the traditional finger-pointing begins (bad parents, laziness, computer games etc. etc.) I thought I'd share a quote from a fellow Fifer. Book one, chapter one. Something that's been in print since 1776 and which surely one or two of our millionaire cabinet members will have read.

"It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people."

Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations

A friend of mine made the observation that pretty much any civilisation's golden age (Roman, Egyptian, British, French...) begins with massive industry, productivity and "universal opulence", and ends with an enormously rich and powerful elite that have normalised their own corruption and have become far removed from the society they were chosen to govern. It seems to be the nature of things that, rather than trickling downwards, wealth and power gradually percolates to the top.

The corruption of the elite becomes so engrained that we begin to accept it as the truth by which we all must live. So we accept being robbed by well-groomed, smooth-talking men and women in expensive suits, but we are somehow shocked and angered when a tiny minority of hoodies and chavs take control of large parts of the country for a couple of days.

Sigh.

Rioting for Fun and Profit. A practical guide to the redistribution of wealth. This photo was looted from the Daily Mail, a self-styled "newspaper" with right wing leanings, printed in England.

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."


The Wealth Of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII

The Root of All Evil

I read an article recently about a bicycle "upcycling" (the sexier added-value marketing version of recycling) operation in Daylesford, Victoria where the author claimed that any technology developed after the Stone Age was to blame for the planet being “in a mess”. This sort of woolly thinking is pretty common amongst the rank and file of the environmental movement, and the article finally prompted me to pull some of it apart for closer inspection.

Now, first off, unless the author is citing the Flintstones as his primary source material, the wheel is not a Stone Age technology. The oldest known wheel was built by the Sumerians in 3500 BC. I’ll also skip the fact that double-butted steel tubing, aluminium alloy, and the pneumatic tyre are also considerably more contemporary and, especially in the case of aluminium, hardly enviroguilt-free.

Then there’s the tacit assumption that the world is “in a mess”. It isn’t. Globally we have never been so healthy, wealthy and peaceful. Yes, there is suffering aplenty still going on. There is inequity, repression and violence in some parts of the world, but there are also large parts of it that are stable, reasonably peaceful and allow their citizens more freedom, food and subsidised dentistry than at any time in history. The fact that this is built to an extent on the inequity, repression and violence in other parts of the world is part of this post so stay with me, I’m not finished.

A lot of the world isn’t in a mess. In fact in so-called-developed countries the thought of losing our pleasant lifestyle is part of what makes so many of us afraid of the future. Our lifestyle allows us sufficient leisure time to create and nurture fears and it’s these fears, often stoked by the media and manipulated by the institutions of power, that turn any ring of change into the clanging chimes of catastrophe. The world isn’t in a mess, but it seems there’s always a mess waiting for us just around the corner. There must be, the thinking goes, because it’s nothing less than we deserve for being so comfortable. Sod’s Law.

Climate change may well be upon us. A large majority of climate experts agree that it is, and it seems reasonable to accept that is the case. Regardless of whether the cause is part of a natural cycle or the fact that we left the lights on last night, there’s a probability of some large changes in the world in the next few decades as populations shift, and it’s up to us to figure out ways to accommodate these changes.

Some folks fear change, others embrace it, and these two camps break down in the climate debate into adaptation and mitigation. Change isn’t bad, it’s how the world works whether we like it or not, and large scale change can offer us chances to make things better for many more folks in the world… if we’re smart and can grasp them. In the face of the perceived threat of climate change there’s the potential for unprecedented cooperation between nations, the opportunity to scrutinise and pick apart the iniquitous and exploitative systems that the global economy is built upon (see, I said I'd come back to it), and a million chances to do things better individually, as a community, nationally and globally. And the great thing about making these changes is that, even if climate sceptics are right, the effort won’t have been wasted because our world will be a better place than it was before. Win win.

Now on to the belief that technology is evil. Technology is not to blame for climate change any more than language is to blame for bad diplomacy. Laying blame on abstract concepts like technology which have no inherent will, agenda or direction is woolly thinking at its finest. Merino thinking.

Damning technology as the cause of the world’s ills is as pointless as holding it up to be the saviour of our future. Technology will be with us for as long as we are here, and every new invention will bring associated benefits and costs. Witness sustainable power generation. Solar? Wind? Hydro?Tidal? Flooded valleys, noise pollution, high production costs… nothing is free, nothing is without consequence. It’s up to us to debate and decide which consequences we can live with.

Those who believe in technology as a saviour seek comfort in a consequence-free future of time travel, anti-matter and fusion reactors. Those railing against technology comfort themselves by feeling they are opposing the institutions, governments and corporations that shape the development and deployment of technology. However, railing against technology plays into the hands of the capitalist system, giving producers new avenues to diversify their market, producing so-called “green” or “environmentally friendly” versions of the same product. Put “Eco” in front of the name and you can shift another million units of pretty much any old crap.

Problem or solution, any debate about technology is a distraction from more important questions. Harder questions. We would be better to examine our use of technology. We could examine technology’s unholy relationship with the institutions of power that have shaped the direction technology has taken; we could examine the marketing of technology and the confection of wants. Then we could dig deeper. We could examine our needs and desires. We could question our greed, our sense of fulfilment, our need for status or power. We could ask ourselves which pieces of the technology story, good or bad, we are willing to ignore when we tell it.

It seems we have a talent for filtering self-examination out of issues. Many folks today misuse the Christian New Testament quote when they say “money is the root of all evil”, neatly scapegoating yet another non-deterministic concept. Add back “the love of” to the quote and we have a much more penetrating critique. Let’s do the same for our relationships with technology, with power structures and with each other. Then we can start a conversation that’s going somewhere.

Children, Violence and Pigs

I read recently that, according to the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Family Physicians and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, media violence affects children’s behaviour, attitudes and values.

Well, I guess it does. All these heavyweight associations for our well-being agree that our children are exposed to images of violence more than at any time in our history. Apparently it makes them desensitized… but desensitized to what?

I was involved in a project to bring urban children out to farms to learn about where food comes from. These were exactly the sort of desensitized kids everyone imagines: vacant-eyed teenage skells straight out of a Porcupine Tree video, permanently hooked into their iPhones, iPods and X-Boxes. My experience was that when you put one of these desensitized fourteen year olds in front of a pig - in all its aromatic, hairy, snorty, slobbery, muscley, random, inquisitive pigginess – you see just how sensitive they really are. Pretty damn sensitive in my experience.

So, media violence may well desensitize our children to media violence, but certainly not to real live farm animals in search of an apple.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that media violence does “affect children’s behaviour, attitudes and values” in a way that is permanent and undesirable. What should we do? The answer that we should somehow ban these images or prevent children from being exposed to them seems obvious. But here’s my argument: children today are not over-stimulated and desensitized. Children today are not more sophisticated than in the past. Compared to previous generations, children today - and I’m talking about western-urban children - live a thin, beige, flavourless existence where most of what they experience is vicarious and pre-packaged by media companies, global restaurant chains, and indoor leisure facilities. Their experience of the world outside their homes begins with the ballroom at Ikea and ends with the bus shelter opposite McDonalds. Their desensitization is not due to over-stimulation but to the terminal blandness of their immediate environment.

Children live an imprisoned life because of the fears their parents acquire from sensationalist media reportage. Perhaps desensitization to media violence is some sort of reaction to their parent’s fear. Perhaps it’s a preparation for going out into the world that they believe is just like the one the media report.

Creating communities and environments where children are free to roam outdoors, to experience things for themselves, to fall out of trees, to ride bikes, make mud pies, encounter strangers (shock!) and be home for dinner is the best antidote to media images of violence. And, because these images occur through television and the internet, if kids are outdoors finding out what the world is really like, they aren’t indoors watching them.

The 75kg Mobile Phone

What does your mobile phone say about you? Is it the stylish, hot, latest touch-screen PDA model or do you cringe with embarrassment when forced to answer in public your three year old brick that’s held together with parcel tape and still plays that factory ringtone because you never figured out how to change it? Or do you not cringe with embarrassment? Do you wear your parcel tape and tinkly ring tone with pride, a sign that you are apart from the herd; that you know that all phones are, at bottom, just phones.

Mobile phones are slimmer and lighter than ever before, and yet every mobile phone weighs a whopping 75kg. That’s 165lbs in Roman numerals. How can we possibly carry this sort of burden around with us every day?

Every product we buy has what is known in the naturally lit corridors of eco-world as an "ecological rucksack", the amount of waste generated in producing one unit of a product. According to the guide The Management of WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) the manufacture of a computer uses up nearly 1,500 kg of resources, a laptop 400 kg, and a mobile phone 75 kg. Add together all the mobile phones you've ever owned for an even more impressive figure!

That chic new upgrade has just used up 75kg of resources; some of them rare, some hazardous, and many extracted in countries where labour conditions are suspect and environmental degradation unpoliced. Did we really need that new phone, or did we just want it... really, really badly? Maybe the upgrade was just part of the contract and our provider was almost threatening to take us to court if we didn’t upgrade (know the feeling)? This is why, up against global marketing and the need of business to keep selling us stuff, knitting our own shopping bags doesn’t even begin to cut it when it comes to making a difference to our environment. One decision to NOT upgrade our mobile phone and we have, at a stroke, performed the equivalent of a year’s domestic recycling, a lifetime’s reusable bag carrying or probably a thousand years’ worth of “not printing out this blog”.

This is the nub of the Envirobitch argument. The global capitalist system works by selling us stuff. In order to sustain itself it must sell us more the following year, and the year after that. The mobile phone market is an obvious example of how we are sold and sold again more or less the same product. There have been useful developments such as SMS, but many other extras are more about creating the want than fulfilling any real need. I know… I’m back to wants and needs again, but if we’re really serious about tackling climate change, helping the environment or whatever we want to call it, we could do worse than look at our purchasing decisions. Not the “shall I stump up the extra for the conscience-salving so-called-green version” buying decision, but the “do I really need that” non-buying decision. To buy nothing is also a choice.

Sure, we can recycle our “old” mobile phone, and that’ll go a small way to offsetting the impact of our decision, but it won’t stop the demand that encourages the manufacture of more phones. And hey, if we hadn't ordered the new phone in the first place, there'd be no impact to offset. Come to that we can recycle the box it comes in too… but we’d be fooling ourselves if we thought that compensates in any way for our decision to buy.

So, before we “upgrade” our perfectly functional phone (to one with more stuff we’ll use approximately once, and a shorter battery life) we should consider just why we reckon we need it. Remember, even if your phone is old, even if it's not one of a range of fashion colours, even if the ring tone is something by 50 Cent that your teenage son installed and you've no idea how to remove it, we still love you, okay?

A few folks need the functionality of a Blackberry in order to do their jobs (although how their job has been shaped by this technology in the first place is worthy of another post at some point), but most of us don't, even if we're pretending to ourselves that we do so that we can feel like a captain of industry with all that control at our fingertips. If you want a new phone because you have a lurking desire to place it conspicuously on the table in the pub next to your BMW key ring; if you think the polyphonic ringtone’s a conversation starter; or that folks on the tram will be envious or impressed, you need to ask yourself some serious questions, and they’re not environmental ones.

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If you suffer from insomnia, or you're an enviro-nerd have a browse through The Management of WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) for more information.