consumerism - a dud sell

"Normal" in our world is to buy stuff, the latest this and the newest that - and it's respectable to be working our lives away to pay it. I've long felt a slave to this system and find it difficult to fight. But I still get caught up in buying things, having things; and having to work - as much as I hate it.

And what's more, it's not real, it's not even necessary.  We've been sold a dud. Our society has been deliberately engineered - literally - to a consumer culture. To see that we have been sold this helps me challenge this 'conventional wisdom' but living this challenge is not easy. 

Two useful articles are
1.  Anti-Consumerism is the new democracy
A choice not to consume is far more than an environmental choice to reduce resource use. It is a political statement about the structure and function of our society.


The choice about the placement of our dollars is a different kind of democracy - like a vote, it sends a message to those that contribute to our economy. A choice of one company over another communicates - through a lengthy supply chain - your preferences as a consumer. Whether your preferences are based primarily on price, animal testing, environment-friendly packaging, or simply because it came in a nice colour, the message is transmitted.


2. The Gospel of Consumption
Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along with many of his corporate cohorts, he was defining a strategic shift for American industry—from fulfilling basic human needs to creating new ones.


In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Filming

The film crew there for interviews.

Solar panels on the apartment building

Yesterday was the big day. Since about May last year I've been working on a project to have energy efficient measures installed on our apartment building. Doing this through an owners corporation is a different kettle of fish because the project has to meet the approval of 60 owners. Yesterday, it all came together. More of the background story is to come.

Floods, Cyclones and Solar Panels

It's hard to not think of climate change with all the weather events we've had here.  Of course, no single event can be attributed to climate change.  It's the frequency and intensity of the events that's the indicator.  We've had floods in Queensland for years, almost everyone's heard the references to the 1974 floods.  This year the floods stretched from Rockhampton to Brisbane - a stretch of approx 800km.  The flash flood in Toowoomba is unthinkable because it sits on a tableland- mountain range- with no creeks or rivers at all. The town sits in a crater of an old volcano and all the water came from the sky only.

Then there's cyclone Yasi, a category 5 cyclone. Australians are an understated lot.  One fellow described the night saying, "Yeah..... it was a bit windy...." People who'd experienced serious cyclones before described it as being like nothing else they'd ever known.

I'm happy to be starting to do something practical with climate change.  I've recently been involved on a project to retro-fit energy efficient measures in our ageing apartment complex.  The LEDs are installed and the solar panels are being put into place next week.  The project is being documented by our local paper and film crew that the local council have organised, our story seems to be of particular interest.  I will publish details over the coming week, and when I can share the video footage.

Peak Oil

 Excerpts from a recent Radio National interview
Flow Rate
the fact is that we cannot pull out as much from an oil field that many people think is possible to do. I used to compare it with money; if you have $1 million in your bank account and you only can use $60,000 each year, are you a millionaire then or not? Because that is the fact, you can only pull out something like 6% of the oil per year, and that is a flow rate problem, as we discussed.

Production rates
They say that up until 2030 we should find something like 114 billion barrels of new oil in new oil fields. These oil fields should give a rate of production that is 19 million barrels per day. In comparison with the North Sea, that was the latest region we found, they had a maximum of six million barrels per day at the peak in the production rate. So what they're saying in principle is that we should find three new regions of the size of the North Sea now and put it into production immediately. And we see that there is a decline in the discovery rate instead of an increase, so the numbers don't come together.

Peak Oil occcured in 2008: Macquarie Bank here in Australia just a year or so ago, one of their analysts said they couldn't see oil production going up past 2008 or 2009

The high oil price we had in 2008 was, according to my opinion, the thing that triggered the downscale of the economy....

Because it all started in the United States, you know. There you don't have any taxes on gasoline and so on, so suddenly people get a twice as expensive oil bill to come into work and so on, and they couldn't afford to pay for their houses, and they have a system where you just can leave the house and say, okay, I'm just leaving, and the bank has to take care of it, and the bank had made some kind of stupid systems that everything was just falling apart, you know. But the trigger was the oil price.
Jonica Newby: You actually believe hitting peak oil triggered off the global financial crisis?
Kjell Aleklett: Yes, and the exact month for peak oil was in July 2008.

2011. 7 billion people

Free: Workshop on Installing a Rainwater Tank

TANK TALK

Date/Time:      Wednesday 2 February, 6.30pm - 8.00pm

Venue:             34 Devonshire Street

Bookings:        9777 1000

This workshop will introduce both the practical and regulatory issues associated with installing a rainwater tank as well as government rebates, health considerations, greywater reuse and sizing to ensure maximum benefit.