Sustainability Talk by Paul Hanley

I just listened to a sustainability talk by Paul Hanley, author of Eleven (2014), referring to the UN's 2100 population prediction. Highlights:

The spectacle of entangled addictions of entertainment and drugs in the US constitutes over $10.5 Trillion (15% of GDP). This is related to people's high-cost lifestyles, especially with homes and cars, and the waste and devaluation of food. This is all uneconomic growth: where our GDP values illness, waste, pollution, and disasters as positives for the economy and creating growth and consumption of more products and services. We're reaching the futility limit, producing more problems than goods.

(As an aside, today is the Superbowl, which Paul alluded to by showing a football arena. It's an event similar to the gladiatorial games of the crumbling Roman Empire, an example of a corrupt government encouraging a distracted, apathetic citizenry to be engaged in massive consumption of alcohol while watching the sadistic competition and cruelty towards both man and 'beasts' in the arena.

The Patriots' amazing victory is to be celebrated. It was a great game. It's a powerful moment for Unity, pride and prestige with my extended family and regional tribe, to overcome superficial differences. But, essential to this celebration is a communal feast that is not superficial but has significant, critical social meaning; it's where cultural values are expressed and I do not identify with the mob-rule that's contributing to the leading cause of death and disease of humans and non-humans alike, and the leading cause of the ecocidal mass extinction and our collective suicide, which is founded on blatant criminality, injustices, and immorality (killing over 270 million animals daily, unnecessarily compared to 12m victims over 9-years of WWII). It's a culture that deviates far from acceptable practices. Higher standards are desperately needed.

We could publicly grieve over this tragedy any day but it was important for the Superbowl because a plant-based celebration is necessary to affirm Unity, authentic freedom, and fellowship: a new mythos and culture struggling to be born. It's critical to see the web of connections between our sports, our food, our individual and cultural health, our planetary ecology, our spirituality, our attitudes and beliefs, and the quality of our relationships.

Anywho, I attribute the win to the long-sleeve hoodie and strategic grieving. I only say controversial things out of an intense cosmic love for the Patriots and my New England family. - EPN)

980 Loss Events: Natural Disasters in 2014. 

Note that 18 events were valued at over $1.5 Billion.

Imagining Alternatives

• New Culture: values and ethics are everything. Social equality and ecological sustainability go hand in hand.
• New Agriculture: Agroecology with more small farmers.
• New Human Race

Food Systems: Hanley defines meta-economic values for an ethically mature agrifood system(based on this review of the book):

a. enlightenment, the goal of combined scientific and spiritual enquiry
b. health as a leading value for agriculture, people and the ecosphere
c. unity and social equity, with the oneness of humanity replacing the fundamental inequities built into the global economic order;
d. centrality, acknowledging that agriculture is the basis of civilization, and putting farmers first.

Community Models:

• Millennium Villages Project: addresses the challenges of extreme poverty in many overlapping areas: agriculture, education, health, infrastructure, gender equality, and business development.
• Ruhi Institute: based on the Bahá'í idea for transforming society by enhancing the capacity of individuals and communities to serve humanity. It's about selfless service and shifting away from today's power and money perspective. (Also, see this blog-post on the problems with this model, questioning whether the Ruhi changes are cosmetic or can truly address the urgency and magnitude of changes that are necessary).

Panarchy Theory: The book, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature (2001): "The term panarchy was coined as an antithesis to the word hierarchy (literally, sacred rules). Our view is that panarchy is a framework of nature's rules, hinted at by the name of the Greek god of nature, Pan. . . . Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal."