Cue the Apocolypse? Moody’s Cuts Credit Ratings of 15 Big Banks

This isn't good news that was just sent by an NY Times News Alert:

Moody’s Cuts Credit Ratings of 15 Big Banks
Moody’s Investors Service has lowered the ratings of some of the world’s largest banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
The ratings agency said late Thursday that the banks were downgraded because their long-term prospects for profitability and growth are shrinking.

Villagize may help with de-anonymizing cities so we know our neighbors

One of the complaints about modern times is how the technology, and architecture of cities, gets in the way of the humans finding each other.  We can drive a 100 miles in the blink of an eye, travel to the other side of the planet in a day of air travel, but do we know our neighbors?  Those people who live next door, and are always trimming trees in the yard, what are their interests, their names, their needs, their hopes, and so on?  Do they have a set of socket wrenches you need to do a project?  Maybe your power drill would be perfect for their project.  We can read the mad ramblings of a blogger a thousand miles away, but how do we find out what our neighbors think?  We no longer live in old style Villages where everyone knows each other, but instead we live in anonymous cities where nobody knows each other.

Villagize may be a solution to this sort of problem.  Maybe.  See Villagize.com

You sign up with Villagize via a Facebook account, and it has some viral features to spread through your Facebook friends list.  

The main feature on Villagize is to show maps of people.  These people can be your "friends" (as defined by Facebook friend relationships), or friends of friends, or can be anybody in your city or region.  For searches of local people, you can narrow the search for people looking for a kind of resource like a Rake.  

Another feature is "deals" where Villagize collects special deals from businesses using various services like Yipit.

If you're looking for something, like a MIG welder, you can post on Villagize asking if anybody has one.  Or ask what the best deal on a Chinese restaurant is in the area.  

This could be a force for Relocalization, or the conscious purposeful effort to build local community, shop at locally owned markets, and know our local neighbors.  Suppose a significant portion of a local population began using Villagize, sharing connection with each other over who needs a rake, or who needs a lawnmower, or which Chinese restaurant is the best, this would help to build lines of connection within that city to form a web of connectedness.  But - does Villagize have what it takes to play a significant role?

One thing which stands out is that we-the-people don't seem to be able to post a Deal on the website.  

Another is that Villagize offers connections with our neighbors over things we're looking for.  Is this a sufficient range of possible connections to form a significant community?  I doubt it.  What about information on scheduled events?  Or what's the local news activity?  There's a lot of things we could connect with our neighbors over beyond who needs to borrow a rake.

Budweiser's "Grow One Save A Million" idea an example of greenwashing? Or real a water saving idea?

Budweiser, really, is this the best way to save a significant amount of water?  Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Budweiser, proved recently the company should probably lay off drinking so much of its product, when the marketing department sent out a press release urging men to "Grow One, Save a Million".  The gimmick (beyond the near-pornographic headline) is to save water by growing a beard.  The formulation is that men who do not shave, are not spending water while shaving (because they're not shaving), and thereby consuming less water.

Budweiser, What have you been drinking?  Wait, I've been on the factory tour in St. Louis and I know just what you've been drinking.

Somewhat seriously ... some men who shave are consuming water while shaving.  Obviously these are the ones who use shaving cream and a razor.  The water is consumed to clear whiskers and cream off the razor, and to wash up the face later.  Other men who shave do not use water, those are the ones like me who use an electric shaver rather than a razor.  Another class of men who do not use water to shave are those who grow their beards, as Budweiser suggests.

The issue is the water which simply goes down the bathroom sink drain while performing the morning shaving ritual.  What other ways could we save water, while still performing this ritual?

• Use an electric shaver rather than a razor with shaving cream.  The electric razor is simpler, has a much lower risk of butchering ones face, and does not require water.
• Learn to turn off the faucet unless absolutely needed.  The problem with most faucets is they're designed to encourage you to leave the water running, because it's inconvenient to turn the water on and off.  If it were simpler to turn the water on and off I think we could start talking men into doing so.
• Shave every other day?  Or skip shaving on weekends?  In other words, who says you must be totally clean shaven every day?  Okay, maybe it's She Who Must Be Obeyed who says so?  

However I still have to draw attention to the question:  Is this the most significant thing Budweiser could think of to save water?  Really?  This smacks me as an example of greenwashing.  What do you think?  The press release is replicated below.

Budweiser's "Grow One. Save a Million." Campaign Asks Guys to Skip Shaving to Help Save Water for World Environment Day

Actor Nick Offerman Helps Lead the Charge by Asking Both Men and Women to Join the Effort

ST. LOUIS, May 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Shave or save? That's the question Budweiser is asking men across the country to consider each morning as they pick up their razors, for with every shave a man skips, he will save roughly five gallons of water.* The initiative is part of Budweiser's Grow One. Save a Million. water conservation campaign leading up to World Environment Day on Tuesday, June 5.

For the second year in a row, actor Nick Offerman is serving as the campaign's spokesperson, seizing the opportunity to make an impact with his beard.

"Contrary to my usual philosophy, by doing nothing, you can actually do something," says Offerman. "Put down your razor. Step away from the sink. And know that by shaving a few minutes from your morning routine, you're also saving the planet."

Women can get involved by asking a guy to Grow One on their behalf. Both men and women can take additional pledges to shorten their showers and/or turn off the faucet while brushing their teeth. Consumers 21 and older can visit Budweiser's Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/Budweiser) to join Offerman in making a pledge and invite their friends to do the same. Participants can commit to a range of options, from a few days to multiple weeks, as well as upload photos of their stubble and full-grown beards to the Grow OnePhoto Booth.

"It's great to have Nick join us in celebrating World Environment Day and leading the charge to encourage adults to take simple steps to help conserve water," said Kathy Casso, vice president of corporate social responsibility for Anheuser-Busch. "Grow One is a fun way to spread the word about Budweiser's commitment to water conservation. In fact, our breweries have reduced water use by 37 percent in the past four years alone."

As part of its annual recognition of World Environment Day, Budweiser will again donate $150,000 to River Network to help support watershed conservation projects in each of the company's brewery cities, as well as Oklahoma City and Idaho Falls. Some of these projects include:

• Cartersville, Ga. - Working with the Upper Etowah River Alliance to support watershed restoration and educate brewery employees on rainwater collection systems.
• Merrimack, N.H. - Brewery employees are working with the New Hampshire Rivers Council (NHRC) to enhance the McQuesten Brook watershed. On Friday, June 1, volunteers will spruce up the shoreline with the NHRC and project partners from the city of Manchester and the town of Bedford.
• St. Louis, Mo. - Brewery and corporate employees will participate in a cleanup along the St. Louis riverfront with Living Lands & Waters on June 2. This is the eleventh year Anheuser-Busch and its employees have led a large-scale cleanup effort along its hometown's riverfront.

World Environment Day is a day set aside by the United Nations to create awareness of the environment and encourage participation in sustainability programs. Anheuser-Busch and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, annually recognize this day and engage employees around the world in conservation projects that are beneficial to the environment and their local communities.

About River Network

River Network is leading a national watershed protection movement that includes more than 2,000 local, state and regional and local grassroots organizations whose primary mission is to protect rivers and watersheds. For more than twenty years, River Network has worked closely with watershed protection groups from coast to coast - building the capacity of state and local organizations, assisting people grappling with water and environmental health problems, protecting habitat for fish and wildlife, developing blue cities, and reducing our country's use of water and energy. To learn more about River Network, visit www.rivernetwork.org or Facebook.

About Anheuser-Busch

Based in St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch is the leading American brewer, holding a 47.7 percent share of U.S. beer sales to retailers. The company brews Budweiser and Bud Light, two of the world's largest-selling beers. Anheuser-Busch also owns a 50 percent share in Grupo Modelo, Mexico's leading brewer. Anheuser-Busch is a major manufacturer of aluminum cans and has been a leading aluminum recycler for more than 30 years. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the leading global brewer, and continues to operate under the Anheuser-Busch name and logo. For more information, visit www.anheuser-busch.com.

*The average shave uses 3-10 gallons of water.

Used salsa containers filling up landfills needlessly

These salsa containers will be used once then thrown away to sit undecomposing on a landfill for a couple hundred years. Is that right?? It's really goofy from my perspective.

The alternatives are 1)) we bring the things home to drop in recycling bin. 2)) the restaurant uses compostable alternates, or reusable washable things.

Review: Urban Roots - farming in the heart of a major U.S. city

What do you do if your city turns into a burned out husk of its former glory, abandoned buildings for miles upon miles, etc?  This is happening in several cities around the world.  Former hubs of massive commerce and industry, turn into crapped out urban blight when the tides of corporate success change.  I have an amazing movie to recommend that takes a close look at one of these cities, Detroit, and what some of the Detroit citizens are doing to take some control over their lives and rehabilitate their city.

The movie?  Urban Roots.  It takes a look at the Urban Farming scene in Detroit, in several variants of the practice, and it does a great job of making small scale farming look highly appealing.

First, what is Urban Farming?  It's actually one of those misnomer phrases like that joke about "Military Intelligence" being a contradiction in terms.  "Urban" refers to a certain geometry of building height, setback from the sidewalk, and streetscape that we would immediately recognize as "city".  You can have a small town, that has an "urban" core and two blocks away is houses with front yards.  The geometry of the urban core is no front yards, and buildings taller than 3 stories high.  When you take the buildings away it is no longer urban, but something else.

http://minijanejacobs.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/the-shrinking-city/

However, this is a bit of a nitpick, and what this "Urban Farming" is focusing on is the repurposing of land within the city limits of a large city, and placing some of that land to the use of growing crops.  In other words, a farm located within a city.

In the case of Detroit there has been many decades of flight away from the city, growing blight from mile after mile of abandoned buildings, squatters, drugs, violence, crime, and more.  I've never been to Detroit but what I hear it is or was pretty bad.  Yet that area of Michigan is home to some of the largest corporations in the world.  GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc are all headquartered there, and the suburbs around Detroit tend to be some of the richest in the world.

A statistic in the movie is that in the 1950's Detroit was home to 2 million people, today it's under 800,000.

The normalthink paradigm of cities is that each city continually grows in population, and cities do not shrink in population.  However the reality is that many cities, such as Detroit, shrink in population.  What happens to a city whose governmental infrastructure is sized to support 2 million people, but the population shrinks to less than half of that, and the economic base of the city craters?  Half the number of people means drastically smaller tax revenue for the city.  How can the city pay for the police and fire and other services it is responsible for on a drastically smaller tax base?

Basically, Detroit has lots of problems.

What the movie, Urban Roots, shows is a movement of people who see all the empty land -- that is, all those blighted neighborhoods full of vacant burned out buildings?  The city went in and razed all the buildings so that at least the drug people couldn't squat in the buildings and do their drug gang violence thing.  But, that resulted in many blocks with one house left per block, and oodles of vacant spaces between the houses.  The feeling of these areas became rural, and some people saw this empty land as an opportunity.

The city government likely sees that vacant land as a problem, because there's no businesses or houses on the land there is no tax revenue for the city.  However the people in this movie sees the land as an opportunity to garden, grow food, rehabilitate the land, get back in touch with the land, etc.

One of the people interviewed talked about the people of West Africa, who became the Slaves that were brought to America, those people in Africa have a rich agricultural heritage, which is why those people were prized as workers for farms in the Old South.  Many of the people interviewed in the movie were African Americans in Detroit, and the speaker talking about the African agricultural heritage likened this to a reawakening of their cultural heritage.

However, many of the young African Americans had to overcome a stigma that farm work was tantamount to slavery.  The African American heritage of being slaves has stigmatized, for them, the idea of manual labor.  The cure for this stigma is to separate "Working For The Man" (manual labor where someone else gets rich) versus "Working to Build Something for Your Own Benefit" (manual labor, to grow your own garden, grow your own food, that you don't have to buy from a store).

Another thing in the movie is a concept of ad-hoc people powered eminent domain.  That is, suppose you live in these neighborhoods, you want to grow a garden, and there's a vacant lot next door?  Is it correct to just go and plant a garden in that lot regardless of the wishes of the land owner?  Many speakers in the movie were proudly preaching that we should just inhabit the unoccupied fallow land, and put it to good use, consequences be damned.

I rather disagree with that tactic.  Someone owns that land.  The land owner should have the say over what happens on the land they own.  Perhaps it is the city which owns the land that had been abandoned by previous land owners?

Which leads to another issue discussed in the movie.  Zoning and other city regulations.  The land we're talking about primarily was zoned for residential use, where houses were the expected common thing.  The role of a city is to design the fabric of the city, and Zoning regulations are the means to do that.  However in Detroit the people were just going and doing what they wanted, with the city having little ability to exert enough control to enforce Zoning.  City employees, the current Mayor, the former Mayor, etc, were interviewed talking about the role of the city, the zoning regulations, and how the people in these small urban farming operations were working at too small a scale, under the radar, for the city to keep up with them.  But that these small urban farming operations also were not in conformance with the zoning regulations.

http://www.globalsiteplans.com/environmental-design/urban-farms-changing-the-detroit-michigan-landscape/

Again "What do you do if your city turns into a burned out husk of its former glory, abandoned buildings for miles upon miles, etc?"  If you want to ponder these ideas, I highly recommend the movie.

The following is an amazing video of a group of people in Seattle experimenting with reviving sailboats for commerce within Puget Sound. Prior to powered boats, there was zillions of sail powered ships ferrying stuff back and forth across Puget Sound, but today there are highways and trucks and large ferry boats and bridges and other paraphernalia of the modern transportation infrastructure.

However, those of us who know about Peak Oil etc know that it's likely in the not-too-distant-future that those highways and trucks will be useless. Hence, sailing ships could well become important again.

Sail Power Reborn - Transporting Local Goods by Boat - Peak Moment 208: "We are revitalizing an ancient form of transportation using just the power of the wind and the tides to move goods and people," says skipper Fulvio Casali.  In their CSA (community supported agriculture), the Salish Sea Trading Cooperative uses nearly no petroleum to transport organic produce and other goods from the north Olympic Peninsula to northwest Seattle.  By sea they use community volunteer sailboats, and by land an electric delivery truck. Come on board with cofounders Casali, Kathy Pelish, and Alex Tokar, who are patiently redeveloping the skills and infrastructure for the return of "a whole fleet of sailboats blanketing Puget Sound" in the post-petroleum era. [www.salishseatrading.com]

Audio and transcript of this show at http://www.peakmoment.tv/conversations/?p=477

Arsenic found in baby formula? Grow your own food!

I saw the interesting juxtaposition of tweets below that appeared side-by-side in my twitter machine.  The first tweet is a "Food Safety" concern.  Generally, finding poisons like Arsenic in food is a big concern, that is currently known as "Food Safety", which has to do with various chemicals that find their way into the food we eat.  The second tweet is a simple reminder that gardening season is starting.  It may not be obvious, but the second (gardening, and growing your own food) is a solution to the first (food safety concerns like arsenic).

How?  To my mind the issue with food safety is the industrialization of the food system.  Maybe a food processing factory is having to spread arsenic to kill rats and the like, and then the arsenic finds its way into the food being processed in that facility.  On the other hand, when growing your you control what goes into that food.  Of course the gardening supply store does have a selection of poisons whose niceified name is "pesticide", so even growing your own food you can pour various -cide's (a.k.a. poisons) on the garden.  Doing so is your choice, and alternatively its your choice to use organic gardening practices.  The thing about industrialized food is you don't have any choice, because the choices are made by businesses who don't have your best interest in mind.

Let's remember some history.  The Food and Drug Administration came into being because of food safety scandals over 100 years ago.  Businesses at that time proved over and over they were willing to sell poisonous crap food to people, while paying off inspectors to stamp the food as safe even when it wasn't.

What isn't clear from the "Arsenic" article linked below is the amount of Arsenic found in food.  Is the amount well below the level the FDA considers to be safe?  That is, for all these extra bits finding their way into food, the FDA has safe levels.  Scientists have found that, supposedly, small amounts of poison are safe to eat, while large amounts are not.  It of course varies on the poison in question.

Even so, there are doubts over the actual safety of the levels the FDA considers safe.  Chemicals have a way of bioaccumulating, not just in our own bodies but in the environment.  If we eat foods laced with tiny amounts of poison, some of the chemicals bioaccumulate over time to build up to a dangerous amount.  The bioaccumulation occurs in the environment, as chemicals find their way into rivers or lakes, are eaten by the animals there, who in turn are eaten, each time the chemicals laced into this animals bioaccumulate to dangerous amounts.

@mauitable Jenna Haugaard
Maui

Arsenic found in baby formula, baby food, energy bars and more. Its found in rice syrup! Demand safe food. http://t.co/hYgWs5eE

Thu Mar 01 16:31:37 +0000 2012

@Transition_Town Transition_Town_News
http://www.transitiontown.info/

: It's grow time!It's grow time! http://t.co/UXo0Z3m5

Thu Mar 01 17:13:05 +0000 2012

The mysterious rash of tree murders sweeping our nation

A rash of tree murders have popped up in my neighborhood. Trees, 6 feet or so tall, primarily of pine ethnicity, cut down in the prime of life, reportedly the corpses are put on display for bizarre rituals while the tree carcasses are still fresh, and then the dead trees are dumped unceremoniously on the street where cleanup crews have to work extra shifts to clean up the carnage.

We hear reports these murders are going on not just in our town, but around the country, and perhaps, if reports are correct, around the world.

Who knows why these tree murders are happening? It's a puzzling mystery that is now several years old. Looking back in the records we see similar flurries of tree murders every year. It's not clear even how long this has happened or even what the real purpose is.

What we do know is that, if our numbers are accurate, and we hope they aren't, the slaughter numbers in the millions every year. How can so many trees be brutally slain every year and nobody says a peep?

Best Rocket Stove Design Ever - UPDATE

Another Rocket Stove video, this time with a little design tweak.

The best rocket stove design just got better! Airflow was an issue with the original #10 can rocket stove design. I cut some two inch wide "flaps" and pushed them over the top of the rocket stove. This helps keep the top on and allows great airflow. Now the rocket stove is really rockin'.

How to Make a 16 Brick Rocket Stove

Here's another Rocket Stove video, this time showing how to make one with bricks rather than used coffee cans.

Dr. Larry Winiarski makes a clean burning rocket stove using 16 adobe bricks at the Rotary International-sponsored Integrated Cooking Workshop in Tlautla, Mexico

How to Build A Rocket Stove, Step-By-Step

I'm not sure what a Rocket Stove is or what is their advantage.  I understand that it has something to do with efficient fuel usage.  In any case the following video is interesting.

Build a Rocket Stove Step-by-Step. Building a rocket stove is quick and easy. You will need one #10 can and four small cans (soup, corn, beans, etc.). Seeing how to build a rocket stove is much easier then explaining the process in writing. I recommend watching the video and commenting if you have any questions. This is a great alternative heat source and cooking option for camping, emergency preparedness and to cook your food storage on. If you can cook it on a stove you can cook it on a rocket stove.

One way to have a drought resistant lawn

Out here in the Western U.S. we have an issue with little amounts of rain.  In Northern California we kind of ignore the real effect of the lack of rain, and continue growing lawns with grass as if we lived out east where it rains all the time.  Regular grass just doesn't make ecological sense here because we don't get rain for most of the year.  Most years the rain starts around November and ends in March and the rest of the year it's blue skies and no rain, except the last couple years the rain hasn't been starting until February (can you say "global warming"?). 

This morning on my walk I saw this:-

In case it's not clear - this yard is full of rocks.  Specifically the smooth rocks often called "river rock". 

Rocks don't need to be watered, meaning that this part of this family's yard does not require any expenditure of water, meaning that it's drought friendly.  Right?

There are other ways to do "drought friendly" of course.  Such as choosing plants that make sense in the local climate, rather than importing plants that make sense for other climates.  I would rather that this yard have drought friendly plants than rocks, because having more plants in the world helps the atmosphere, but at least they're doing their part to have drought friendly landscaping.

By the way the house across the street had a different take on "drought friendly".  Bare dirt.  No grass or other plants, means the yard doesn't require watering, but it's rather sub-optimal.  The yard next to that one had yet another take -- mulch that suppresses plant growth.  Again, a nice way to avoid having to water the lawn but sub-optimal to the preferential method of planting drought friendly plants.

Who says you have to watch everything on your DVR? Keeping television watching in perspective

Who am I, a guy that hasn't owned a television in over 15 years, to tell y'all how to handle your television watching habits.  eh?  Don't answer that and listen to the story ...

In the most recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts the guy started off by saying that he and his family had "cleared some of the backlog on their DVR" and watched some particular TV show he wanted to talk about on the podcast.  It doesn't matter what show it was or what he had to say, because I stopped at "cleared some of the backlog" from the DVR and had a thought come into my head like a bolt out of the sky.

That's a fallacy .. just because your DVR recorded some TV shows for you doesn't mean you're then obligated to watch those shows.

You can treat the DVR as if it creates obligations for you.  It's similar to how if someone makes you some tea, brings it to you, along with a couple cookies, and even though you don't really want the tea, don't want to eat some cookies, common courtesy has you drink the tea and eat the cookies anyway.  In other words, the DVR dutifully performed a service and recorded some TV shows for you, so is it your common courtesy to watch the TV shows?


Or you can treat the DVR as offering a possibility of things to do, but that it doesn't create any obligations of something you have to do.

Part of the reason I don't even own a television is that I turn into a zombie whenever it's on.  I don't like being zombified by the machines, and my way of keeping from being a television zombie is to simply not have it in my life.

I'm sure that television, when kept at the proper dosage, in proper balance with a healthy lifestyle, can be a positive benefit to your life.  It simply seems to me that someone who "clears backlog" out of their DVR isn't keeping a healthy balance around their television watching in that it sounds like they see the DVR as having created an obligation to watch everything it recorded.  Granted, I could of course be reading too much into what he said, but I'm also certain that this is true for some people in their relationship with their DVR.

Who'd have thought you could reinvent the shovel?

The humble shovel has existed in one form or another for thousands of years.  This means it is a very successful design that you might think cannot be improved upon.  But ...

Does growing plants truly sequester carbon? Or does it just delay the release of carbon?

In the game of decreasing the atmospheric carbon levels thought to be a main culprit in global warming, one effort underway is to grow plants in an effort to sequester the atmospheric carbon.  Basically plants breath in CO2 and breath out O2, meaning the carbon stays in the plant.  Generally speaking there is a harmonic balance between plants and animals where animals breath out CO2, plants breath out O2, and these two chemicals are mutually beneficial for both of us.  In theory then as atmospheric carbon levels are rising, either naturally or on purpose there can or should be an increase in the number of plants, so that the plants can sequester all that carbon for us.

That's what I thought the other day when I came across this in my walk around the block.

This segment of "yard" in front of an apartment complex in the neighborhood had been full of vine-like growth.  I remember it being kind of nice but also unruly, being a bit chaotic in nature.  Recently the owners of that yard can, as you see, cut everything to the ground.  The result is that the plant matter which had grown here went somewhere, so the question is what happened to the carbon that had been sequestered in those plants?

The question is applicable not just to this yard down the street from me, it applies to every yard at every house around the world, and to the tree-planting carbon sequestration projects underway around the world.  By looking at this specific microcosm of an event we can ponder how the same equation is playing out around the world.

For example - companies that want to earn some social responsibility credibility can by "Renewable Energy Credits" from companies that produce some kind of positive benefit.  The REC's are meant to offset whatever harmful thing the company is doing.  It's easy to compare this to Indulgences which were said to be sold to rich people so they could go on with their sinning ways, but perhaps some organizations who create REC's are doing some positive good which those who buy the REC's are supporting with their dollars.

A frequent sort of Renewable Energy Credit enterprise is tree planting.  A group will plant trees, so they can sell REC's.

In other words - the yard down the street grew some viney bushes, sequestering carbon, or the tree planting organizations plant trees, and also sequester carbon.  It's the same sort of activity, just on a different scale.

The goal of these REC producing organizations is to sequester carbon and do good things for the environment, right?  Well, a cynic might say they're just looking to make a buck, hence my analogy to the Indulgences earlier.  So let's consider the life-cycle of a tree for a moment.

A tree can grow pretty darn big, right?  That's a lot of carbon into the body of the tree.  Along the way the tree gathers other values.  It becomes habitat for a variety of animals and bugs and other plants.  Another value is that it's body is made out of wood.  Modern industry has developed a zillion uses for wood and hence desire trees for their wood. 

The tree grown for the purpose of sequestering carbon will eventually be die, or be cut down.  No tree will last forever, so eventually it will meet up with one of those two ends.  What happens to the carbon that tree sequestered?

Likewise - when you cut the grass in your lawn, what happens to the grass and the carbon sequestered into that grass?  There's a zillion different ways around the world how plants grow and then are cut down or die, releasing their sequestered carbon.

Some plants are food, and its carbon might get fed to a cow and later become a hamburger.  Some plants are wood, and could be processed into paper, or into timber.  Paper often gets used willy-nilly and just thrown away, while timber often goes into making buildings which will stand for a few or a few hundred years.  Some plants are flowers, that a lover might receive, look at for a couple days, then put in the trash when they begin to wilt.  Some plants live in the wilds, they grow, they die, the wilt, in nature, and their remains return directly to nature.  On and on and on.. the varieties of destinations for plants are myriad.

Which of those purposes are the most effective at preserving the sequestration of the carbon?  For example a tree might be grown solely for firewood, and once the firewood is burned its carbon is released directly into the atmosphere.  A tree that's grown to become timber, that's then turned into a house that stands for 500 years, that's carbon that stayed sequestered for a long time.  A tree that's grown for pulp to make toilet paper, it's carbon doesn't stay sequestered for very long, eh?

A concrete example is the corn plant.  The main purpose for growing corn is the fruit, the corn kernels on the corn cob.  This is often thought of as food, but increasingly corn is becoming ethanol.  But what about the rest of the plant, the part that's called 'Stover'?  This is the corn husks, the stalks, and the root system.  What happens to Corn Stover?  Traditionally the Stover would be plowed back into the ground to become a kind of compost and enrich the ground.  However modern agriculture isn't about enriching the ground, meaning Corn Stover is seen as a "waste" and the people pushing for cellulosic ethanol look to sources like Corn Stover as feedstock for processes to create fuel.  Ethanol is thought to be a carbon neutral fuel in that it takes carbon out of the atmosphere, but once the ethanol is burned its carbon goes back into the atmosphere.  Hence it's not terribly effective at reducing atmospheric carbon.

So here we come to the end of this pondering.  A neighbor cuts the vines in their yard and then what do they do with the vines?  I don't know.  Maybe they made a pile to burned them, or maybe they made a compost heap and the vines became next years fertilizer.  The main thing we've learned is that the effectiveness of a carbon sequesteration effort depends a lot with what's done with the plants when they die or are cut down.

Permaculture - a Quiet Revolution

A nice introduction to Permaculture that's also an overview of the Permaculture Congress held in Brazil a few years ago that's also nice examples of Permaculture operations in practice.  For example a tour of collecting the feces from pigs and sheep into a pond, that goes into a biodigester, to produce natural gas, that runs a turbine to generate electricity, and the effluent from the biodigester becomes a pond in which they grow water hyacynth's, that are essentially weeds which can be used as feed for the pigs. 

It starts with a quote from Bill Mollison talking about how teaching people to grow their own food is subversive.  It teaches them independence giving them freedom from the system.  Hence it's a kind of revolution, but a quiet one because it's just people gardening.



Permaculture - A Quiet Revolution from Spread Knowledge on Vimeo.

Genetically licensed crops interfering with farming practices, stealing and privatizing our cultural heritage and threatening food safety

A dream about genetically modified livestock just woke me, and the events in the dream was so haunting I had to come to the computer at 3AM to write.  In the dream some farmers were talking about whether the genetics license agreement under which they bought their pigs would allow them to breed pigs they'd bought, and then sell the pigs they'd bred.  Breeding livestock is a normal every-day occurrence for farmers and to think they'd not be allowed to do this thing they do every day smacks of scary centralized control scenarios.  Its a way of asserting centralized corporatized control over the food we are allowed to eat.  And, perhaps the scariest part of genetically modified organisms is not the potential for a messed up food system that gives us bogus food to eat, but the system of corporatized control over the food system that interferes with traditional farming practices from eons which built whole societies.

In the past whole cultures were born upon the ability of farmers to domesticate wild plants and animals through breeding to create useful genetic modifications leading to the modern crops we grow and eat today.  For example the modern dairy cow that's so completely placid and easily led around, I can't imagine such a creature could have formed organically in nature, and has to have been the result of eons of selective breeding producing useful genetic modifications to support the plant or animal being useful to farmers.  Corn or Potato's or Tomato's, both widely grown and used around the world, are the result of selective breeding to produce useful genetic modifications.

Clearly modern biology says that when you selectively breed plants and animals you're producing genetic modifications.  In some cases the selective breeding is in a laboratory and perhaps is bringing genes from other species or something.  In some cases companies like Monsanto create species in the laboratory to be resistant to horrendous poisons so that farmers can spray the poisons on crops to kill weeds.  The side effect is that weeds naturally select to become resistant to the poisons (a.k.a. superweeds) and there's an ever-escalating battle going on with tougher poisons and genetic modifications to resist the poisons.  In some ways the artificial genetic modifications like this are bad for both the quality of the food (what effect is there on us due to the screwed up genetic content of our food), and the side effect of the poisons being poured upon the land.

The other case of selective breeding is the traditional farming techniques of cross fertilization leading to the modern plant and animal species grown at farms around the world.  By our modern understanding of biology this sort of natural selective breeding also creates genetic modifications. 

There's a bit of disingenuousity in the crowd fighting genetically modified organisms when it's obvious that traditional farming practices also create genetic modifications.  Perhaps there needs to be more specificity between artificial selective breeding or artificial genetic modification, and natural selective breeding, but I suppose that sometimes it'll be hard to draw a sharp distinction.

Unfortunately traditional farming techniques are under attack or already destroyed because of farmers being forced into dependence on buying genetically modified seeds from massive agrigiants.  Seeds coming from agrigiants come with licenses not unlike the license that comes with proprietary software.  The licenses force the farmers to abandon a wide variety of traditional farming techniques such as seed saving, cross breeding, and so on.

One wonders if there will come a day when FDA regulations prevent farmers from selling on the open market foods that aren't grown under license from an agrigiant.  This could happen if the agrigiants work with the FDA to prove their seeds meet certain criteria, and that other seeds not matching the criteria cannot be trusted.  In other words the FDA might develop a policy framework of forcing farmers to only grow seeds that can be trusted to be safe, and any seed from an unknown source (such as the seed variety developed by their grandfather that works excellently on THEIR land) is strictly verboten.

• Agronomic Field Crop Seed Certification from the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association talks about "seed certification is to preserve the genetic identity and purity of field crop seed varieties".  They draw a distinction between commercial seed where it's plainly obvious where the seed came from, and other sorts of certified seed where the origin is verified by a certification agency.  
• Great seed robbery is a piece by Vandana Shiva talking about efforts by agrigiant seed companies to "privatize our rich and diverse genetic origins".  She names off several agrigiants who are working on gathering control over seed varieties often starting with traditional seed varieties, and then adding genetic modifications.  The seed companies are cross licensing among each other the genetic traits they've developed, in a way that Vandana Shiva describes as "The giant seed corporations are not competing with each other. They are competing with peasants and farmers over the control of the seed supply. And, in effect, monopolies over seed are being established through mergers and cross-licensing arrangements."
• Monsanto's corporate history page http://www.monsanto.com/whoweare/pages/monsanto-history.aspx lists cross licensing agreements with several fellow agrigiants
• Seed Quality Testing and Certification: Resources Useful in Organic Seed Production - is a list of organizations and information for the U.S. audience
• http://www.gmwatch.org/ - Extensive information on genetically modified organisms

If we get back to our farmers growing pigs and wondering about the genetics license agreement ... it's such a normal scene for farmers to take part in, isn't it?  To breed pigs with each other?  Or cows or whatever?  This sort of scene is what converted our ancestors from hunter-gatherers to farmers.   The oddity of having a "genetic license agreement" attached to a plant or animal is what interferes with the farmers doing this thing they've been doing for millennia.  Namely, through natural genetic modifications (a.k.a. selective breeding) developing strains of plants and animals that are useful and particularly useful in local conditions. 

It puts our food system at risk because of monocropping.  If a disease were to develop which targeted the monocrop, it could do severe damage to food production. 

Another danger is that the seeds are primarily designed by the agrigiants to be non-reproducing.  This turns seeds from a renewable resource (where you get new seeds every time you grow a crop) into a non-renewable resource putting farmers into a dependence arrangement with the agrigiants.

It's a way of recreating serfdom without forcing people into actual slavery.  The agrigiants upon whom the farmers are dependent for seeds could set any price they want for the seeds, and in broad terms the agrigiants have taken a controlling position over food prices and food quality.  They've stolen this position away from the people who developed the food system over millennia, the farmers.

The agrigiants have a big vision for the future of genetically modified organisms that goes way beyond food.  They could start concocting plants and animals that are in effect biochemical laboratories for producing anything. 

In March 2011 a coalition of family farmers, consumers and other critics of corporate agriculture held a town meeting to protest what they see as unfair consolidation of the nation's food system into the hands of a few multinationals. They contend that global biotech seed leader Monsanto controls the U.S. commercial seed market using unfair, and in some cases illegal, practices. They argue that Monsanto, which develops, licenses and markets genetically altered corn, soybeans and other crops, manipulates the seed market by buying up independent seed companies, patenting seed products, and then spiking prices. The group hopes to re-establish farmer rights to save seed from their harvested crops and replant it.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/12/us-seeds-antitrust-idUSTRE62B0A720100312

If Greece is going through a Cuba-like meltdown, what will be their chosen route forward?

I'm reading this article on the NY Times website, With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land, and it's making be think of the meltdown in Cuba and as well makes me think of the prediction many are making of a societal collapse from one or more of a variety of causes:  stresses induced from climate change, stresses induced from peak oil, or stresses induced from inability of the financial system to maintain itself.  The thing in Greece is billed as a result of financial system problems, too much debt in Europe causing serious problems in Europe's financial systems.

The NY Times article follows some Grecians who are turning back to agricultural work in order to survive.

The collective inability to remember the past may have caused us to forget what happened in Cuba not too long ago.  Or maybe the way Cuba has been spun in the media, that they're just an evil dictatorial communist country, has made Americans unable to properly understand what happened in Cuba.

Many see the events which unfolded in Cuba as a dress rehearsal of what will happen to the rest of us due to one or more of the causes I listed earlier.

Cuba's meltdown was artificially induced when their patron, the Soviet Union, itself collapsed and was unable to keep propping up Cuba.  Another aspect of Cuba's meltdown was the U.S. led embargo of that country, which prevented many countries (the ones who want to stay on positive terms with the U.S.) to forming any relationship with Cuba.

As a result they lost access to international financial markets, and to supplies of oil.  Under the influence of the Soviet Union they'd developed a dependency on oil-driven machines to drive everything, and having lost access to oil the machines ground to a halt.  In particular this hit the agricultural system hardest because the tractors etc could no longer run.  Also their agriculture was focused on exports and not for local self-reliance, and Cuba was not feeding itself.

Cuba is spun in Western media as a dictatorship but the path Cuba chose to navigate their meltdown was not a top down dictatorial YOU MUST DO THIS sort of response.  Instead the country took a grass roots community centric response, where each village or each neighborhood was organized for local resilience.  Every nook and cranny of Cuba's cities were converted into community gardens growing healthy organic local produce so that Cuba could become self-sufficient.

An excellent documentary movie that shows how Cuba navigated their collapse is "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil".  The problems they faced are clearly described such as how Cubans collectively lost 20-30 lbs or more over a period of a few years.  The country went from being as modern as the Soviet Union allowed them, to literally overnight forcibly reverted to the way our great grandparents lived.  (One of my Great-Grandmothers lived in a dugout in Western Kansas .. Dugouts were, well, a hole in the ground)

I haven't read too much on what's happening in Greece but the NY Times article linked above sounds eerily like the period Cuba survived, and depicted in The Power of Community.

What isn't covered in The Power of Community is that Cuba wasn't the only country to undergo an imposed collapse.  Another prime example is North Korea and it appears that Greece will be a modern example.  Hence what I asked in the title of this piece is, what path will Greece be taking.

North Korea with their imposed collapse took a different path than Cuba did.  They went for the actual top down ruthless dictatorship with a reliance on the iron fist of the military crushing any dissent.  There's been a lot of news coverage about North Korea so I won't go over the details here.

The point is to demonstrate - artificially induced collapse has happened in several countries around the world.  It happened to Cuba, they choose a path of grass roots community oriented self reliance.  It happened in North Korea and they chose a path of iron fisted military dominance.

What will Greece choose?

BTW many of us think that the U.S. is not safe or immune from this sort of thing happening to us.  What will the U.S. choose when(if) it happens here? 

BTW I'm really fond of the Transition Town movement for the reasons just described.

When businesses are killed by developers plans gone awry

Near where I live in Mountain View is this empty lot surrounded by a chain link fence. It formerly housed a small strip shopping center that had a single business selling specialty ethnic food. Here in Silicon Valley we have lots of ethnicities to serve and by all reports this store was very popular for its community. But the developer wanted to put the land to other uses and razed the building of course killing the business which used to occupy this space.

That was a couple years ago and the lot is still empty and still surrounded by a fence.

Why?

This happens all the time. A developer who owns the land often has visions of the correct use of that land which is incompatible with the current use.

In the wake of this the neighborhood lost a local business and has land tied up for nonproductive use.

Because of land ownership policies we cannot even do something useful with this land like create a community garden.

This serves nobody. Well except maybe the mice who run around in this empty field.

Why is the FDA going after small time raw milk sellers? Corporate greed?

In the past a farmer would buy a cow or two, have milk for his family, and sell any excess to neighbors.  This tradition is under attack from the FDA because of raw milk scares and the supposed urgency to pasteurize everything.

There are a couple risks here.  First, many people see many health benefits from raw milk.  When treated and handled correctly raw milk is safe.  But the FDA knows better, don't they?  And surely they can point to lists of poisonings which occurred from drinking raw milk.  I don't know enough to know how much real concern there is to keep us from having access to raw milk.  Second issue is rather bigger, and has to do with food security especially in the coming years if the expected financial collapse goes the way that's expected.  If our society really does go to a major deep financial collapse it'll be necessary for food security to have local farmers growing food they sell locally, such as harvesting milk for local distribution. 

Dan Brown of Gravelwood Farm :- The State of Maine filed a lawsuit against him for "unlicensed distribution and sale of milk and food products."  Dan Brown is a small-time farmer, owns one cow, produced raw milk for his family and sold excess milk to neighbors.  Brown said in a speech to supporters, "I'm not a milk distributor. I'm a farmer. That's all I've ever wanted to be, it's all I've ever done."

A neighbor of Dan Brown is quoted saying: 

"Much of what the Department does is regulate and oversee specialized operations, whether dairy, poultry, or value-added. By comparison, our model, which has existed in rural communities for a long time, is that of small diversified farms, with some chickens, some pigs and some crops. They didn't understand how our farms worked and what we were doing on ecological principles, promoting animal health so that we could assure safe food."

Commissioner Whitcomb, Maine's Agriculture Commissioner, his grandfather had sold milk in exactly this manner to his neighbors.

The towns in Dan Browns neck of the woods have passed Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinances.  These ordinances permit the sort of sales Brown had been doing.

It's not just Farmer Brown and Maine, there are similar stories around the country.

Maybe it's "progress" to force all milk producers to pasteurize their milk and play along with the big agriculture game.  Or maybe it's unnecessary meddling and unnecessary food processing to force all milk to be pasteurized.  As I said earlier I don't know enough about food safety to know whether pasteurization is the only way to have safe milk.  I have heard raw milk advocates say raw milk, handled correctly, is safe, and is healthier.

What I do know is that food security strongly suggests we must do all we can to support local small-scale farmers as much as possible.



Why Is a Farmer Who Sells Extra Milk From His One Cow to Neighbors Being Sued By the State of Maine?

Regulators Crack Down on Micro-Dairies, But Small Farmers Fight Back With Local Food Sovereignty Ordinances