Day 206: Bring your Own Cup and Help Save the Planet!

The other day we went to a shop to get some take-away coffee. Right next to where you get your coffee is a big stand with the prices and types of coffee, and at the bottom in a big font and size it says ‘Bring your own cup and help save the planet!’ and ‘The Earth says: thank you!”.

I’ve seen such statements many times before, but seeing it that day it really dawned to me just how ridiculous a statement like that is. I mean seriously, bring your own cup and help save the planet?

We live in a world where the economic system that runs the world is in direct violation of the Earth’s well-being – where the capacity of the Earth has been stretched to its ultimate for the sake of indefinite growth and profit. And yet somehow the corporations and politicians have to arrogance and audacity to ask people to ‘bring their own cup’ or ‘bring their own bag’ in order to ‘Help Save the Planet’?!

Surely, the waste of take-away cups and plastic-bags is just a SPEC in the face of the actual problem, which is the entirety and totality of both our individual lifestyles and the global lifestyle we have adopted as consumerism and greed. Bringing your own cup and bringing your own bag is not going to Save the Planet. It’s like trying to conserve water by catching a raindrop a day whilst letting all the taps in your house gush out water non-stop. It’s just ridiculous and kind of offending to tell people to ‘bring their own cup’ and make it look like you’re a ‘Responsible Company’ that ‘Cares about the Environment’ while everything a company that runs by the principle of Capitalism represents is the very Disregard an Destruction it is now apparently trying to abate.

Let’s have a look at for instance the whole ‘bring you own bag and save the planet’ motto.

In Britain a study was done where the results showed that on average a Brit uses 134 plastic bags in a year. This equals to 2kgs of carbon dioxide emission – while a typical person is responsible for 11 000 kgs of carbon dioxide emission in a year. That is like 0.018% that you’ve just reduced of your total emission as one person – and the Earth is supposed to say ‘Thank You’ to that? Are we now also assuming that the Planet is a complete idiot?

All those ‘little things’ that are asked of people to ‘Save the Planet’ like bringing your own cup, bringing your own bag, turning off your electronics that are on stand-by, boiling no more water in the kettle than what you need, turning off the tap while you brush your teeth, etc. – all make only a marginal difference of maximum 1% in terms of per capita emissions and mostly less than that.

The UK Government has spent £22m in the past on a ‘Do Your Bit’ Campaign promoting these type of ‘easy’ ‘quick fix’ solutions and then had to admit that the campaign produced no measurable change in people’s behaviour.

In fact, promoting these ineffectual little actions perpetuates the problem even more, where ‘bring your own cup’, ‘bringing your own bag’ and doing some recycling:

“Mori concluded that it was becoming an act of "totem behaviour" and that "individuals use recycling as a means of discharging their responsibility to undertake wider changes in lifestyle". In other words, people can adopt the simplest solutions as a part of a deliberate denial strategy that enables them to feel virtuous without changing their real behaviour.

Governments and businesses are, if anything, even more prone to tokenistic behaviour than individuals. Encouraging small voluntary actions by the public, customers or staff looks good and is much safer than passing restrictive legislation or rethinking your entire business model”.

As long as we don’t start re-evaluating our socioeconomic and political system that we live in and by, it does not matter what little token behaviour we participate in because it’s not going to make a damn difference. We need to strip the system down and rebuilt in from the foundation up – create a system that takes into account the environment and what it takes to reach and remain in equilibrium and harmony.

Within Equal Money Capitalism, points like emission and pollution will no longer just be ‘externalities’ that one does not have to account for and that are ‘conveniently’ here to be used at one’s whims. Just as someone gets something in return for their labour in a company, so will nature/the planet/earth receive something in return for what was given. If you for instance use water in the production process of your product and this water gets polluted/contaminated in anyway whatsoever: then it is your responsibility to also handle to process of purification. Only when we give as we like to receive, can we live in a sustainable, harmonious and equilibrated way with and within our environment.

Save Planet Earth? Support Equal Money Capitalism.

[info and numbers come from this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/13/ethicalliving.climatechange]

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Day 159: Energy and Equal Money – Blind Spot

Watch the documentary ‘Blind Spot’ for further perspective and background on the issue of energy:

With all the information that we have available on energy and the pace that we as society are currently extracting and consuming energy – we know one thing for sure: this cannot last.

We’ve constructed an entire society and lifestyle based on the availability of fossil fuels as if they are never ending, while in fact they are limited and will run out. This means that we’ve built a society that is beyond the capacity of the Earth to support and will thus inevitably collapse. This collapse is eminent – and the only question which remains is whether we are going to be passive spectators suffering the collapse, or active participants directing the collapse.

If we choose to be passive spectators, we will simply continue as we are doing things now, and through time, the standard of life will deteriorate for many and eventually some form of disaster will wipe out the virus humanity has become – to restore balance on Earth. In this scenario, we don’t have much of a say and things will just ‘happen’ to us where all we can do is react to the economic and geopolitical disaster as they come along, but it will already be too late to do anything substantial, and much unnecessary harm and suffering will take place.

On the other hand, if we choose to be active participants, we can guide the process of collapse. This means that we won’t just be ‘victims’ of things happening to us, but where we can direct and guide the process of the collapse in a way where we minimize harm and suffering, and can put into place a point of transition where we can minimize the ‘shock’ of being cut off from fossil fuels while moving to renewable energy sources and sustainability.

This collapse, does not only entail the moving away from fossil fuels as our main energy source. It also consists of re-defining our lifestyle as what it means to be a human being as part of a greater Ecological System called Earth, which will affect our decision-making in relation to energy consumption.

Being active participants in the process of collapse, is the preferred route to take – as it lies within the principle of Prevention is the Best Cure.

The main principle guiding decision-making in relation to energy will be that of what is Best for All, both here and for those in the future – to ensure that we do not in any way overshoot the carrying capacity of the Earth and repeat the mistakes of the past.

 It will be the end of the world as we know it, but not the end of the world at large. A decrease in energy consumption and move away from industrialization based on consumerism does not have to go hand in hand with a decrease in the quality and standard of living. Within an Equal Money System, we will in fact do quite the opposite, where we will achieve optimum living conditions with a minimal and sustainable use of energy.

How?

The main point which is currently driving the high rate of energy usage is that of self-interest, which is linked to the profit-motive driving society. Through removing the profit-motive and removing self-interest, we can adopt a new style of production of goods and services, where what will be produced are goods that last a lifetime – where possible – and that are always the best they can be.
As part of the removal of self-interest and the profit-motive, any form of branding and competition between various organizations producing the same product in slightly different ways to ‘win over’ customers – will also disappear, which in itself will result in a drop of energy requirement in the overall production processes of goods, as such rivalry is in fact counterproductive to responsible energy management and conservation.

Any product designed and produced, will have been done so based on the accumulation of all the information and knowledge available regarding materials, methods, production processes, technology etc.-  to align all points within the production and consumption process to what is Best for All.

Within this, concepts such as the application of death-dating/planned obsolescence and redundancy will disappear – which again will result in a significant decrease in the use of energy resources, as well as others, as we won’t be re-producing the same product every two years or so for the sake of driving the economy in the name of profit. Additionally, we will no longer participate in the promotion of psychological obsolescence either – such as for instance the desire to always have ‘the newest phone’ or only buying the products of a particular ‘brand’ because we’ve identified with the brand and want to evolve with the brand’s product line. This form of relationship with goods in society was not always existent, and was a relationship introduced and implemented to accelerate the redundancy of goods for the sake of continued production and consumption in the name of profit. Such relationships are in fact a form of dysfunction, as we shift our attention and focus from creating harmonious relationships between all living things, to developing and creating relationships of harmony between ourselves and our objects of desire. Within this, we’ve created our own ‘separate reality’ with a ‘fake’ form of harmony which only exists within the individual itself – causing actual disharmony as harm and damage to real reality as the physical.

The problem with this harmony in relation to our desires is that it does not last, and in the end, it runs out as the ‘novelty’ wears off – and that is where we will want the next phone and the next phone etc. There is no logical or reasonable explanation why one would want to move from one phone to another, where the only reason one can come up with is because ‘ I like it’ and ‘it fits with who I am’. This ‘who I am’ then becomes a disharmonious disorder that is imposing on the physical reality a consequence because you are forcing your disharmony unto the harmony of nature to its detriment – which evidently, is not Best for All.

The goal is thus the reduction of energy usage paired with the production of optimum goods – and to within this support Dignified and Responsible living on Earth.

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