Week 4: Sustainability Course - Organisations and sustainability

4.1 EXPLORING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY

That certainly is something to think about, though one has to wonder just how much one should consider health when living is not a matter of preserving life, but is rather about living it. Something that seems to have been lost on much of the population.

The problem is that like with most things in our modern times, we are moving away from the natural to the fads, fashions and routines of the masses. Technology has us sitting on our behinds a great deal more than we possibly should and yet that wouldn't be the case for someone in a wheelchair. It still might take too much of their time away from getting upper body exercise if they would remain as healthy and active as is possible for their restrictions. Motorised wheelchairs make things easier but not better.

Food has very much become a thing to enjoy more than anything else in life and it is more easily obtained than it ever was, especially the exotic and out of season. Cooking shows don't specialise in the what’s in season or local. The best tasting food is heavily laced with salt and sugars that should probably be taken in moderation and of course, as all cooks know, fat is flavour and makes eating a comfort. Big meals are not a problem as long as one does big work. The labourers of old ate huge meals three times a day and worked them off during the long hours of toil in which they participated. Now most people do less physical work or anything for that matter and have to watch their weight, want flavour without the fat that kills.

Few people work that hard or as long in this day and age so we have to eat accordingly.

Then we have to take into account the individual persons metabolism. Some people burn energy in great quantities even when they do very little, others have been survivors through the ages because they put their food in a good skin and do well on little. Becoming obese when they eat a bit much without labouring to burn the energy that the body then turns to fat. Their metabolism being fond of fat will first take reserves from muscle tissue because it an be more easily replaced in hard times than fat, so losing the weight is not easy.

As mentioned previously, sustainable eating is consuming food in season in our locality. It being both fresh and using very little fossil fuel to transport it to our plates. None at all if we grow it in our garden, which also helps to burn energy if we maintain it ourselves. We also know what has been put into or on our home grown food. Organically home grown foods greatest advantage is that it doesn't contain any chemical residue. Because the jury is still out on the issue of that it's better than conventionally grown food.

Eco friendly toilets is something that should have been legislated to be in all new housing estates for decades at least. Using fresh clean water to wash away waste is a silliness and I wonder who could think up such a thing?

To correctly compost toilet waste will produce a earth smelling nutrient rich fertiliser that, due to what is eaten in the way of bought food, may be a bit too overloaded with heavy metals because of this addition to the diet. But is otherwise a desirable addition to fruit trees even if not the vegetable garden. Human waste not properly composted can be a health hazard, but if it isn't used in the vegetable garden, in contact with root vegetables and those grown on the ground and buried deep enough to prevent flies from accessing it, will generally become very useful fertiliser over time through the actions of soil flora and fauna.

Most people have a distaste and even a fear associated with human or animal waste and that makes them want it out of the way and out of mind as quickly as possible. Sadly this aversion is also going to ensure the seas and river waters and all who live in it are going to remain polluted.

Human beings become more plentiful and therefore must start taking responsibility in all these matters, be sensible and reason through their fears and worries about the natural elements of the world

Sustainable Mental Health.

The physical health aspect of washing your own car rather than going to a car wash, or doing your own gardening, rather than have the double cost of paying a gardener and paying a gym fee is well known.

Sustainable mental health is not so much mentioned. Time for contemplation or giving something the opportunity of life or of living when planting a seed or seedling. Exercising the mind when planning a garden or the tasks to be done in a garden. The calm and pleasing aspect of owning a pet.

Physical things done that allow the mind to wander, to let go of thoughts that enter it, creating a flow of cleansing energy for the mind.

The feeling of well being and comfort from mind relaxed and muscles revived.

These are sustainable pleasures that have no hidden cost or any cost at all.

Sustainable Sanitation.

I've explained our system of sanitation. But will do so again in this module.

Ours is an outside toilet. This partly because the door remains open and we look out on a garden area with Tagasaste trees that is alive with all manner of birds from Superb Wrens and Shrike Thrush's to honey eaters and rosellas and at night brushtail possums.

We use a toilet bucket rather than a long drop, septic tank or anything like that. The septic tank is not a good system for us because we need to be frugal with water, septic tanks still require water to flush the waste out of sight out of mind.

The toilet itself has a large block of wood where you place your feet, that puts you into the squat position by lifting your feet some 250 mm above the floor and the seat is also lower than the average toilet seat height.

Once the toilet discipline has been finished there is a bucket of wood ash from the fire that has a scoop in it, and one scoop of ash is sprinkled over the waste each time someone uses the toilet.

The bucket is emptied when about half full. It is emptied into a hole that has been dug when the last bucket of waste had been buried. The digging of the new hole is what covers the hole where the bucket has been emptied.

There are several aspects to this that might be considered sustainable and healthy:

• The squatting position
• 
  
• The second time use of the wood ash from the fire which is generally more alkaline and therefore adds another element to the personal waste
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• The exercise required to dig the hole and wash the bucket
• 
  
• The improvement of an area of the property that is generally not rich in nutrient nor very efficient in holding moisture
• 
  
• The planting of fruit or fodder trees in that area
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• The area can be reused for the purpose of waste disposal again after 12 months or the area is just expanded.

The water use is minimal, because washing the bucket and pouring that water into the hole is not wasted and creates a ideal environment for the soil flora and fauna that will value add the waste.

Over time, an area like this actually maintains the flora and fauna that break down the waste, breaking it down faster than was the case when soil that hadn't had this valuable addition.

Waste water from shower and bathroom and kitchen sinks water a walnut tree and mint bed as well as some of an ornamental garden. Very little soap and detergent is used for washing.

Corporate World.

[Disclaimer]
I don't trust corporations of any kind, any more than I trust governments. Both function of a different level from that which is good for communities.
[end disclaimer]

So I will just say this:

The shaking hands photo of the corporate clones turned out by universities and other institutions is a bit disconcerting to me. To use sustainability in the same sentence as corporations of any kind just doesn't sit right. Business, corporations are created and nurtured to generate wealth for owners and shareholders who do nothing except risk what they have in ample supply. Money. Or if they don't have it in ample supply are willing to risk what they have because of greed.

Business people, and those who serve them have different priorities to an average man like myself.

So I don't can't get excited about the changes that businesses and corporations say they will make. The priority they have is profit at any cost to appease the shareholders.

Best I don't say more, other than, if sustainability isn't first on the list the things of a business or corporation, like well being of employees, safety etc., and profit last. It means nothing. It's sustainability that will always be eroded, the loser.

Comments on Section 3

Precious Water

Our water is harvested from the roof during rain and is caught and stored in water tanks. In very wet conditions, a lot of rain we find that we don't have sufficient tanks, and the water run off ends up in a dam at the bottom of the property. All the water on the 40 acres doesn't go into that dam. To contain the water from the whole property and allow none to travel down through the usually dry creek and into the dams of people who live further down the mountain from us, we would need 4 dams.

We don't do this, the first and main reason being: 

• that we don't want to keep all the water that falls as rain and runs off from our property and deprive those further down the foothills
• we want to allow the dry gullies to once more become wet and therefore function as nature intended
• we are not greedy
• there is also always the lack of money, but even with sufficient money we would not entertain the idea.

We would have to build dams and improve the clay of the dam with something like bentonite clay. The soil where the dams would be built are not water holding soils. We could place the dams into clay and use water races to direct the run off into the dam that way.

The dam we have built has or rather had, a water race leading past it with flags that would direct the water into it. At the start, after the first flush of water, it with all the debris on the water race was allowed to pass by and run into the gully off the property. Then when the water was clear, we would direct it into the dam with flags.

However we have so little water that actually runs off that we have abandoned the flags and directly feed even the first flush of water carrying sticks and leaf matter into the dam. We hope the water creatures find these as food and homes and this material will hopefully not be so plentiful that it will fill our dam with a rich soil.

Our water to the cottage is gravity fed from header tanks that are higher on the slopes.

We use a gas, on demand water heater. That way we think we conserve and husband energy.

Our washing machine is modern, with reasonable rating for water and electricity use and has many settings which allow us to try to use the least possible water and power. We have solar power over deep cycle batteries with a generator backup.

Water Use:

[quote]

All water that is piped into homes in the UK is treated to very high EU quality standards. Much of the water we use domestically is consumed in non-potable uses such as gardening and flushing toilets. Only uses including drinking, cooking and for baths and showers need to be potable for health reasons. These uses account for only around one third of total supply.

[end quote]

We don't treat our water, but as the air becomes more and more polluted there is a chance that our rain water will pick up pollution from the air. Already people are talking about acid rain, and that could be a problem even in our environment in the future.

We don't have a flush toilet. We have a dry toilet and allow the material to become plant nutrient by composting in the soil. We just refuse to use good quality rain water to flush away our personal waste. By not doing so we improve the nutrition and water holding capacity of our dry soils.

Living with a finite water supply:

We live with an unpredictable and unreliable water supply. That means we gauge the weather constantly and attempt to make certain that we have enough water in reserve for such things as fire fighting, in case a fire should impact our home. We adjust our water usage by the amount that's available, we have shorter showers, save our household shower and washing water to water the plants as the water supply gets less.
Often rain is forecast, but we also know the forecasters, they are generally wrong, so it's up to us in the main. We have to take responsibility for the things that many people take for granted and if there is insufficient, have someone to complain to. We have only ourselves to blame and that makes us a bit more careful a bit more frugal, but we have an internal water gauge, the same as we have an internal power meter. Knowing just how much water we are using and how much electricity we are using when we have a laptop computer or washing machine or both on at the same time.
It's not particularly clever, just something that develops with time and we don't think anything of it any more.

Water Footprint:

The end result said: Your total water footprint = 2074 cubic meter per year.

Laughing. I suddenly realised that ours is not going to be average.

We do one load of washing each day, and that's mostly for soiled animal bedding. We are a wildlife shelter and so our dairy, or marsupial milk replacer consumption is higher. I also realise that I drink about 10 to 15 cups of coffee a day, does that really lift the bar? Not the water in my cup, but the water used in the production of the coffee bean and the process that grinds it? Maybe even the water beneath the keel of the boat that carries it across the ocean. [laughing]

We eat a lot of vegetables but very little if any meat at any time. Not because we don't like it, but because we can't afford it, we have marsupial milk replacer and food to buy. Meat is so expensive buy. So when we do eat meat, usually we kill our own sheep and poultry. Eat a lot of eggs during spring and summer that our free range Pekin bantams produce.

So what else is making this much water use? I drink about 2 litres of water a day, sometimes more depending what I doing outside in the warmer months and 1 litre or more a day during the winter. I don't think our dam holds that much [2074 cubic metres] water, our water tanks hold about 12,000 gallons of water, 5,000 of that is never touched, held for fire fighting.

It seems to me it's more to do with what commercial growers use to grow the vegetable plants the people want. There are better ways to grow vegetables than the French raised bed method, though it's easier to lose vegetable crops in a wet year if grown in a different way. There is a requirement to have a better idea of weather conditions that might present in the future if vegetables are not grown on a raised bed. 

Hydroponics might be a better use of water?

Our apple trees are not irrigated and we have about 25 varieties. In a drought they lose all their apples before the birds can get get them. Most other years we lose a lot to the crimson rosella's and bower birds. We have to start looking at nets to keep the birds off the ripening fruit. Making nets might use a lot of water.

We have bees, and they do use water, but I'm not certain of their consumption, maybe not that much as they could find evaporation of moisture from the nectar to produce the honey is enough for their needs?

Our vegetables are grown with less water than some people use. But then our crops and vegetables are not as large as some, and sometimes a little more fibrous.

Did the guide on the page take an average of how vegetables were grown commercially? Was water wastage taken into account? I have seen market gardens that have water flowing down the paths between the rows as the sprinklers just keep pumping it out. There is a lot of water wastage.

We never wash cars, except in the rain and we don;t have any driveway aprons or such to wash down.

Anyway, the amount above was presented when I did the survey.

The language of food.

The language of food for us is simple instruction.

We eat what we can afford, mainly what we can grow and a great deal of what we can buy cheaply trying to maintain a reasonably low level of fat, sugars and salt in any processed food we buy.

It's not rocket science really. We bottle fruits that grow on our trees that the birds have left for us. Wild craft asparagus, cherry plums, mushrooms. blackberries, rose hips and anything else that we find in the area round us.

These “natural” foods often seen as weeds rather than plants out of place are shunned by many who find it quaint that anyone would eat these things. The danger is that farmers spray blackberries that cover areas of pasture which doesn't yield as much in volume of grass as the berry thicket. 

Wasteland, what a crazy term, grows much of this food. It's there for the taking and is taken by people who are aware of its value.

The food we eat probably shows that we are not well off financially or as I think, that we have other priorities that must attract our money. We are fortunate in that we never go hungry, and though we may not feed on caviar or such luxuries, are not deprived in any way having hardly ever tasted them even as an experiment.

There is no security, so therefore there can be no food security for the simple reason of weather, though not alone. Pollution of areas previously clean and the madness of price and price wars that impact not only on food for the consumer, but food production. What we really need is food adaptability.

I have always been of the opinion that food should be eaten as was intended since time began, in season. When apricots are ripening, they should become a staple with any other food that's coming into the season. Spring and summer is the time to eat eggs, and winter is the time to kill and out aside meat, in the cold climates the animal fats that will keep people warm.

Since modern times we have no more need of the animal fats as most people heat their houses so that they can walk round in shirt sleeves in every part of it. This isn't the way humans evolved, there was a time when we needed to put on more clothes, but now summer is all year round.

If we move back a bit, and use the seasons as a guide, we wouldn't be pulling food from across the seas, where the growers might be using chemicals banned in our own country and many more things like that.

Further to this, if technology is sustainable then how physically strong and big do people have to be? To reduce the body size will also mean in most cases, reducing the food consumption size.

Waste is a real problem and there are many people who already look through the rubbish skips of larger supermarket chains to find the food marked as not suitable for sale, but quite edible, though in most cases the packaging is just broken and in the most sever cases the food might just need a bit of attention to remove parts that are either unsightly or slightly off.

Food Sources Ignored.

Looking at the Mesolithic food pyramid one wonders that it wasn't what created the more active brain activity which is exhibited in humans and yet doesn't happen in the apes. Though the apes do eat small amounts of meat, consuming mainly meat in the form of flesh from fish and other animals and birds was probably the difference, and if the truth be known is important for the developing brain of the child? Just an idea.

So where do we go from here, where the grains nuts and vegetables are the most sustainable as far as land use is concerned?

There are many pests that are edible and just killed and allowed to rot. Foolishness that makes no sense, locusts being one such, feral pigs in places all over my country, deer of various kind that are shot and killed only so their heads can be caped out and hung as a trophy on a wall. Even wildlife like kangaroos are culled and allowed to rot, instead of being used as all creatures should be to give their lives and deaths meaning and purpose.

Rabbits have been poisoned and inflicted with disease myxomatosis and calcivirus [Viral Haemorrhaging Disease] rather than harvested for food. Yet it's well documented that in earlier times poor Australian farming families lived on rabbits, many have used the skins of rabbits in past decades to better their financial situation.

The situation with people now expecting to buy the “bred” or manufactured is something that has developed and even been encouraged by the government. Few people keep cows for milking even on farms and most hobby farmers don't even keep a got or two for milking or sheep for house rations. It seems people are afraid of what? Disease?

I wonder how many people died of zoonosis in the days of yore?

Though they are so versatile and food valuable, few people keep poultry, preferring to put their scraps which are generally too plentiful, into bins to go into landfill.

Pigeons are good to eat labelled a pest and no longer kept and eaten. The advantages of many of these feral and other animals that take very little maintenance and supply rich and varied sources of protein are seldom part of the modern families lifestyle. Milk and eggs both come from the supermarkets in cartons, albeit a bit different to one another.

Many reasons can be found why we don't use a local resource. There is the killing and cleaning actions most people don't enjoy because they may get dirty or they can't eat a cute and cuddly rabbit, but can buy and eat lamb chops. These are meat and they are divorced from the image of a lamb frolicking in amongst the spring flowers on the pasture. Denial? Convenience?

Food Depletion.

Having been born to parents who came through and survived a war, I have found myself like them, looking at things differently. All food is good and as we all know, food is medicine. If it sustains us, supplies our needs and satisfies our taste food of any kind serves the purpose. 

Usually the people who have a food “culture” know how to preserve the source of that food by not over harvesting or such. There are certain things that must be observed which cannot always be controlled if many people, not versed in the food sources need harvest it. Things like asparagus must not be harvested for at least the first year and every year after that it's wise to allow the last spears of the season to remain unharvested and to grow as the plant intended to replenish it's roots with food ready for next years growth.

Is there any food of my culture that is not sustainable? All food, if the population keeps growing and eats all the breeders as well as the seed. Not allowing plants to regain their strength before harvest the following year. Cloning plants that will not be able to adapt to the changing conditions they find through their seed.

Artificially inseminating animals with what appears to be a sire of desirable traits that could be later discovered to have some hidden flaw, as has happened in the dairying industry. Food sources are threatened if we restrict diversity, if we think we know best in a world we don't know very well.

Cloning and artificial insemination is madness. Science responding to treating the symptom rather than the cause. Though that's what science is best at and of course gets us into trouble. Was DDT the first of these things that made us start to suspect science, or was that the atomic bomb?

So.........

It's really the never ending story of humanity being so superior that we think we know everything. That we think depositing out bodily wastes into the sea or rivers or such places is acceptable because out of sight out of mind? We believe that if we buy “meat” we don't have to think of the things that were done to animals to put this product into the butcher shops or supermarkets. That we can just poison pest or feral animals and leave them to rot instead of eating them where they are food very suitable for human beings. Thus creating a double cost, the cost of the toxic chemicals that are manufactured and labour to administer them out in the field and the damage to the environment.

That the energy we use is not so bad but is wasteful at the moment, that governments don't subsidise or encourage renewable energy and most politicians are not even aware what that is.

There are things we can do better. Not use computers would be a good energy saver. [laughing] But using a laptop is better for us because we have solar only power, and of course in our heads is a metre that records what we are plugging into power sockets, turning off all “standby” appliances and generally aware of our electricity use.

We are the same with water. Very frugal use of water and using water twice if that's possible and it is in some instances.

Waste? Well there is waste. The kitchen waste goes out to the poultry and water fowl and dogs, the human waste gets buried in the ground where the soil flora and fauna compost it and create a beautiful fertiliser for plants. Mainly for trees and pasture grasses, and the animals that eat these feed us with flesh and eggs. In the case of poultry they also keep the pests away from the vegetables we grow, and supply other rich sources of manure to sustain these plants.

We see plants out of place as something desirable. There is a little work involved to keep blackberry thickets at a reasonable size by allowing sheep and goats to keep them trimmed, subsidising the animals feed. The few thistles that grow as a source of nectar and pollen for the bees and and so are not useless, nor do they need destroying, because the grasses grow vigorously and there are little open earth in which they can take a hold.

Water is stored in food grade polypropylene tanks and is our main water supply.

We have satellite television and internet connection and live simply, in that we don't go out to restaurants or plays or the movies.

I think that we have much to learn from nature. The bee and ant colony, the forests the pasture. The way things grow in natural harmony which includes rivalry and even wars, there is survival and sustainability.

Our situation..........

We attempt to have the smallest possible footprint, carbon or otherwise. It's actually quite difficult to achieve, we question everything and identify needs and wants.

By having no electricity grid connection solar power only, we are not electricity sufficient. We do need to run a petrol engine generator at times, to do anything that our 700 watt inverter can't handle. Try to use the generator as little as possible. Sweep rather than vacuum, have wooden floors rather than carpet, don't iron clothes and don't go to places where ironed clothes are expected to be worn. Such things suit our natures.

We recycle our organic waste matter in that we put it in the ground to be modified and enriched by by the process of earthworms feeding, and the earthworms help in feeding the poultry and waterfowl and these in turn manure the garden and so on and on.

We catch our own water in tanks off the roof of our modest, fully insulated walls and roof, warm in winter and cool in summer cottage. With the only water supply being that which falls from the sky onto our land, and that's not much. At the bottom of our property is a dam, which catches some but not all the run-off we can't harvest.

We use propane gas as a cooking fuel and to run our refrigerator, burn wood sourced from our own property for heating. It does the job thrice, once when we walk up the hills to get it, once when we chop or saw it and once when we burn it, then it becomes slightly alkaline source of potash, and so it goes.

It can be seen that all this is not ideal. It's an attempt to make a difference but it's not anywhere near what possibly a third world country person is doing to preserve the environment.

Working with the natural world, leave ego and arrogance behind:

The thing that people think is great or even heroic, is fighting and beating something that's bigger and stronger than themselves, bending this to their will. A horse, or the natural world, and yet neither need to be fought if we lose the ego and take up the soft, clever option of working with it. The horse can be trained and finally help us, work with us, all but the most brutish people realise the that training is better than breaking a horse.

Working with weather is sustainable, but what do people do. They develop new technology and by loving this new toy they try to justify it's existence by showing what it can do in the fight against nature, the natural order of things. We are fighting nature to show we can beat it and losing, destroying it in the process.

Instead of trying to to fight against drought, learn to predict it, learn to live with it, develop plants and plans that when a drought is coming that the plants which are best suited to it are planted in the field. In arrogance, ego we lay huge acres of land aside to catch water using huge resources to create the storage to maintain a fragile insipid plant in not even a drought, just a dry year.

We still spend millions on sprays that poison people to kill locusts which are eating the fragile plants. We should be allowing them to do just that, not call it a plague but a blessing and eat the locust. You don't have to be a lateral thinker to realise that. You just have to look around you to discover that meal worms are a great source of protein and deliver more of that per kilo to feed them than any cow.

I'm tired and might not be thinking straight. What we're doing is not sustainable, but we can have sustainable systems working if we are both flexible and cleverly working with the natural world.

In Australia, there is a conflict with all wildlife that moves, all animals that do not produce meat, wool or any product in demand by human beings. All creatures that are outside the farming system that has been developed here are blamed by farmers for their plight of not being the wealthiest people on the planet and poison and shoot them all.

There are some farmers who are exceptions to this barbarism, but not many. All point back to generally, their English ancestors who like in the Lord of the Rings tore down forests to create something more ugly, but better suited to the introduced animals that they wanted to husband

The Best Place:

In my youth, from the age of 14 years I travelled and there were many places that I loved living, even if it was only for a short time, but by the time I reached my early 30's suddenly realised that every place I ever lived was good. That none were better than any other, and we ended up the mountains that some people couldn't stand, because of the winding narrow roads leading in and out. Mountains instead of a desert as it is mostly known, with drifting dunes and otherwise flat land and gibba plains.

This place we live is special now. We have pulled together the things we love and at first pulled together the things we thought we loved and then jettisoned the ones we couldn't use, or weren't possible to have round us here, leaving those we love and would endure. That's what makes the place special, it was never about landscape or weather, it was all about having close at hand the interests that we like to pursue and could fit into the natures configuration for this area.

I often muse on why people go on holiday, if they go to all the trouble and expense of buying land and building, generally a large home, and then leave it each year and dread coming back off their holiday, what value does it have to them other than a status symbol in a society that has lost the understanding of value.

The old chestnuts come out, of having a stable family life for the kids, yet it entails both parents working more hours than is wise, never seeing their kids or the house [dream home] as they strive to get enough money to pay the mortgage, the child minder, pay for the holiday that they love. Which takes them away from their dream home into another place where they argue with their kids. They should have bought the long term holiday rather than the house and land.

Their is a certain madness in humanity. People generally have no idea how to seek out the things they really want, and not just show off to everyone but from which to create a meaningful sustainable lifestyle.

I am reminded of the farmer who rang the the agribusiness extension officer and said that he wanted to know of ways to be able to make more money from his land. The extension officer asked if that was really the idea. He was assured it was the thing this farmer wanted. A visit to the farm by the extension officer was arranged.

The day arrived and the extension officer sat the farmer down and asked again if making more money from his property was what the farmer wanted and was again assured this to be the case. So they discussed the farm and the extension officer said that he would now have to look around the property to be able to make suggestions.

The first paddock they came to had grass aplenty and as high as the bellies of the few sheep that were grazing in it. The extension officer said to the farmer I can increase the production of this paddock alone by about 5 fold just from the look of it here. That simply by increasing the stocking rate to what it is at least five times as the the sheep are over fat and there is too much grass not being utilised. The farmer looked at his adviser in horror, “Oh no, I couldn't do that he said. I want my next door neighbour to look over our dividing fence and say, “look at all the fat sheep and the long grass that man has. He is a great farmer”.

It's the same as the wool grower who wants to have the wool bales only filled to the minimum weight, so he can tell his cronies at the pub how many bales of wool he cut off his acreage. To fill them as heavily as allowed would halve the amount of bales, would halve his cartage costs and halve his wool store/auction costs, but that didn't matter to him.

Do we really want to become sustainable or do we just want to be seen to be living sustainably and have everyone admire us for our commitment? It's easy for us, because we have made the decision commitment for just about all our lives. We would have had a lower footprint had I stayed travelling maybe, but it would need some figuring out to see if that's actually true.

Musing Sustainability

I was mainly thinking about sustainability on the level of the environment when I joined this course. Imagining the flow on effect of sustainability in the natural world, upon which we depend for survival as individuals and a species, would permeate through every aspect of society and each individuals life. People who hurt and kill animals can and quite often do hurt and sometimes even kill people. There is a flow on effect that seems to be at work there, so maybe in the other direction it will work as well, or so is my thinking.

Too Precious to Lose

However, once conversant with the importance of sustainability in the world we inhabit people would no longer do things that was destroying any more of the natural world and the balance evolution was trying to restore. The problem is bending peoples minds round to the obvious can be extremely challenging.

Having attempted to introduce people to another way of thinking on other subjects and aware of the difficulty, think, in all areas one must first consider and attempt to get through to the members of the human race. Not because we are the most clever species, but rather because they are the species with the greatest capability of destruction. This capability would not be a dangerous thing in the hands of a clever species, but in our own it's incredibly worrying and constantly used to achieve some horrendous outcomes.

For the moment moving past the base of our existence and the sustainable continuation of our tenure here, the planet and its environment. We can examine sustainability in other areas and they will lead us back to the base at any rate and the lack of respect we have for the planet.

The sustainable next generation of beekeeper.

Just a moments aside.

The new generation of beekeeper. A sustainable transition which the natural world can handle without any stress or needing to tighten up. Much is lost as children find the new cities the place to be. Maybe this one will find it the same. But as he is my grandson he will first be introduced to and taught how wonderful the natural world is, and how to survive in it, so he will ever have a safety net that will not only assist him with understanding, but catch him should he ever fall.

If all goes well he will never be far from the sound of cicadas, the sweet scent of nectar being cured to become honey in the air and the lovely surprise of a wallaby or wombat stumbled upon in his day or night wanderings.

Sustainable government.

Sustainable government relies on the ballot box, but it also relies on people then accepting what has been decided by the majority's vote for the term agreed upon by plebiscite of referendum. However, democracy is not all that great, but it does give every individual of voting age in the population the opportunity to make a mistake. Which can be corrected when the vote comes round again.

Sustainable government is not what we have in most developed countries, because the politicians are **not** the servant of the people as they claim. They are the masters, the gods of our society. They ask for a chance to represent by serving the communities of their electorate and once they have the votes become the master, a representative of their own ideas. Though some do listen when many of their constituents get behind a cause even if only to save their job. The result is not always good. As we are aware most popular is not always best and it may not be sustainable, but it does allow the most people to get their way.

Sustainable government is to know about legislation before it's presented to parliament. First to discuss it with friends and family and with modern technology have that legislation go to the people and allow them to have their say. If their elected representative wants to sell it to their electorate, they have to meet the people and get their message across before they are asked to have an electronic vote on the legislation.

This will come into being slowly, as the electorates representative get briefed and then go out and try to convince their constituents just how good is, and why they should vote the way of the party that is in government. That will be sustainable, because people will feel they own their governance.

When the people with all the information available to them, have a chance to speak and be the main driver in decision making, are in fact the shakers and movers. A government is sustainable and only those in government who do the wrong thing will need to be removed.

Education:

Education as it stands currently is not sustainable. More and more parents are already starting to home educate their children. Why? The reasons are different. In some cases people are starting to believe that the education system is driving their children to become one of a few that will have only academic tools and need to challenge others with the same tools for the same few jobs. A wider practical education is more important, something that builds the child, reinforcing their strengths and strengthening their weaknesses is more important in their lives than just a one string bow of academic achievement.

Education has slipped to making people expert in a very small area of expertise rather than helping them become a whole person.

Education is focussed on turning out people who will be fodder of industry and for corporations, rather than a whole people who have wide interests and skills, deriving pleasure from more, and generating it in their job.career.

The way education is evolving isn't sustainable in the long term because there is no horizon, there is no pleasure except that which money can buy. Self satisfaction is less and self worth gauged by being advanced by employer accolades or lost because of mistakes made or being dismissed from their job or career because there is another who can perform better.

Education should be a series of nodes where the population of all ages can go to for information, visual and tactile, which is learning, for instruction verbal and hands on, which is also learning, to discuss ideas and thoughts which is also learning.

Education should bring people together, those who know and those who want to know and those who think they want to know, who can drop out when they discover they have made the wrong choice and have the option to find something that suits them better. Educating the community rather than just the young. By bringing in those who can recount their mistakes so the person new to the discipline or trade is forewarned but not forbidden to attempt the same thing in a different way.

Education a huge subject and the reason that centres of “learning” attendance is falling is because it's not serving the needs of people and community and is only catering mainly for those who wish to be in the academic workplace rat race. This isn't sustainable and will create enormous rifts in society. It wants to implant knowledge it believes a student should have rather than have it searched for and be found by an interest for it.

Over Population:

Someone in, or should that be on, the course suggested that the mention of over population is “taboo”. But I think not. What the planet can't support will perish and that's already happening except, that those more “advanced” countries and societies are exploiting those who are not as well situated keeping them down as servants to their wants.

It's possible to sustain the population we have now if our consumerism can be reeled in and controlled. Birth control left to the individual will probably not create the outcome that will save the planet. Like all species, just about every human wants to create children of their own. This is again where humans like the idea of god, and create people in their own image.

A sustainable population is one that realises what sustainable means and acts accordingly. Human beings become a dangerous planetary parasite the moment they create injury to their host and this is happening as well. A parasite that is symbiotic with it's host, is part of it, nurtures it, this is a clever parasite which knows it's survival relies on the host it inhabits and is a well governed community.

People in numbers too numerous for the planet to sustain are poison. There is no other way to describe it. People on the planet demanding more from it than can be obtained, weakening it will destroy it, but destroy themselves first. Using all manner of dubious enhancements, i.e. cloning, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms and generally chasing production without looking out past that aim are the most toxic and treating again, doing what humans do best. Treating the symptom rather than the cause.

The Feel Good Factor of Recycling:

The conundrum of certain “good” habits.

Recycling is a much touted desirable thing to do. This isn't all bad, though it would be better in the “good” sense if it was called repairable. Instead of throwing away the things that are broken we become once more the society that repairs and doesn't discard so easily. That cleans rather than renews everything.

In that sense recycling would be very desirable. But in the other sense, recycling packages we are again coming in from the attending to a symptom rather than a cause. To educate manufactures to use less packaging, to use better packaging and to possibly create packaging that has a practical reuse other than being put in the recycle instead of the rubbish bin and made into something lesser.

Products made from recyclable material are much more expensive in some cases than that made from the raw material. This makes one wonder?

It can be assumed the process to recycle, remove and transport the particular material and then the resources needed to manufacture the product from this substance after it's been cleaned of impurities attached to it or contained in it are enormous. Hence the high price. But it could also just be because the “feel good” factor allows the manufacturer to suspect that it will be favoured and place a larger mark up on the product because people will buy it?

Either way, recycling would be better if there was less packaging and better, purposeful and other use packaging first and then, becomes the lowest common denominator, recycled material is used to manufacture items that don't actually use huge amounts of resources like electricity and water.

1.7 Sustainability Course

First thought.

[quote] It is important to recognise that the concepts of ‘environment’ and ‘development’ are used and understood in many ways. [end quote]

It's recognising that development is used and understood in so many different ways that makes it, and most words that sound harmless enough, very frightening. Mainly because to some of us the use of these words describe a concept that's destructive but at the same time disguise it, even make it attractive coated with justification.

Much like progress. Using that word also permits many iniquities to be disguised, and/or justified. Who would be against progress? Because most people think progress is a wonderful thing without knowing exactly what the speaker means when using that word. Thinking it means what they believe. The hackneyed saying “you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs” sounds reasonable, even clever but it takes the attention away from the broken eggs and deflects us from questioning if we need the omelet and if the price the eggs pay is really worth it?

Development has been happening and is still. Yet nothing is better, depending of course where you stand, and the development of elements and its movement creates something that is just different worse for others.

There are those driven by a want or perceived need for money who push development in the direction where they will gain the most immediate personal financial benefit and accolade. Yet make the long term outlook for their actions appear to benefit everyone and suggest often mendaciously, it's what everyone wants? Many just follow the suggestion, have done in the past, will do in the future.

Those who develop and construct high rise buildings or more “efficient” fish farming techniques, justify it pointing to the problem of over population. They say people need more food and places to live where space is a premium. Their solutions not only treat the symptom, they make money by creating conditions that will allow the symptom to become worse and by their development be felt less and therefore not be an immediate warning of the dangers of the worsening cause that will bring our society low, and eventually destroy it altogether.

The Taoist in me sits back and thinks maybe this is what should happen? That a development like breeding cows that produce human milk is a thing that should be left alone, a symptom treated, a cause left to increase in destructive potential?

Then survival:

[quote] Each person in the world requires resources to survive so naturally there will follow exponential graphs for world resource use over the same time period. [end quote]

What definition of survival? Is it just to stay alive?

Each country and each individual has a different definition and level that they call survival. Is survival just staying alive within a sustainable government by force or ballot, that generally consists of people who need a great deal more than the ordinary person requires to survive?

Or is survival something more. A reasonable, sustainable quality of life that allows the citizens of a country to expand their knowledge in all areas and strive to fit better into the environment around them?

Survival to some is to be wealthy, to have a great deal of financial back fat which will sustain them through the toughest times. Allowing them to bow not at all to any catastrophe? Other than when food or clean drinkable water is so valuable that the growers and those who have it won't sell at any price. When money becomes useless and can't even be eaten?

To sustain life is survival, but most people can sustain dignity as well, and some no matter how much they have of anything will never have any dignity. But it's arguable that dignity is required for survival or anything else.

In this instance, possibly to sustain ones life is not survival, maybe it is really to sustain others, all beings, that we know or believe to be sentient or not, and they in their turn will sustain us as well? Sustaining a fair government and a just system of law as well as an environment that we are proud to hand over to our children and grandchildren may be survival. But that's impossible to define, it's very individual and complex.

[quote Steven Mac Andrew] The solutions might have to borrow from different disciplines or views. For example, is eco-tourism not a culmination of ecologist, environmentalist and economist view? [end quote]

That sounds a good mix? But it would depend on the percentage and priority of each of those that would make it sustainable.

I knew a city person once who had a small piece of land and upon it were more sheep than it could sustain. It was told to me that the number of sheep grazing on that paddock were required to put the amount of meat the family consumed on the table. So there could be no less sheep.

The sheep ate themselves out of grass, some died and some suffered and there was no meat on the table from those sheep that year because the survivors were all in to poor condition. A few less sheep, a little less meat on the table over the year, or to bring in a little food to sustain the flock would have been a better mix and sustainable. Instead all the meat for the table had to be bought at top price that year.

It's all about the mix and the priorities.

It's best to understand the needs of of what you wish to harvest and what it grows on, and adapt your own needs to that as well. Because it seems to me to survive you first have to ensure what you're surviving on will also survive. If it thrives, so will you. No matter if its a fair council or a store that survives on the custom of the local people. It means you may have to pay a little more to sustain it. But then, what cost convenience and a sustainable community?

Begin the course.

The course has begun, and it's interesting to see the different ideas about sustainability, all valid, all relevant. However it's mainly about what everyone can do, no one wants to leave anything to evolve around them. The latter can't be done of course, because just being, just peeing, one changes things irrevocably and evolution has to slide in and adjust.

The problem is trying to understand how being is affecting other elements and lifeforms of our planet. Being a source of food to prepare it for breeding for a female mosquito, because being in its flight range, changes things. Changes so much that we can't discern just how far the ripple reaches or the amount of ripples created.

Young people are interested in this and that's heartening. Young people want to change things, but can young people be happy with the real challenge, the delicate ministrations of evolution rather than destructive, hasty revolution? It hasn't happened so far. Money seems to be very desirable and the need to possess it flushes everything else.