by John de Graaf; David Wann; Thomas H Naylor; David Horsey; Vicki Robin
But Dave was in a different place in his life cycle. Reaching down to the antelope skeleton, he cracked the skull away from the neck, to have a trophy from the hike. The sound of neck vertebrae cracking was one of the most abrupt, jarring sounds he’d ever heard—right up there with the front yard face-off of years before. In fact, Dave was so alarmed he replaced the skull near its rightful place. Although Colin soon forgave the impulsive action, the two spent a few hours that afternoon debating the acquired trait of having nature versus the more unconditional being in nature.
Spoiled by the pace and panorama of TV nature, we’re usually looking for the big event, the spectacle. But more often than adults, kids become absorbed in the small details of nature. “Where did you go?” asks the parent. “Out.” “What did you do?” “Oh, nothing,” answers the kid, but he’s got a vivid image in his head that says otherwise: perhaps a nearly intact robin’s eggshell, partially hidden under a bright red maple leaf.
NATURE’S MAGIC
Wilderness leader Robert Greenway has spent many years on the trail and has allowed the child in himself to remain active. He tries to bring out that trait in others, too, with tangible results. Comments from more than a thousand wilderness-trip participants (both adult and child) indicate that nature is indeed working its magic:
90 percent described an increased sense of aliveness, well-being, and energy;
77 percent described a major life change upon return (in personal relationships, employment, housing, or life-style);
60 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women stated that a major goal of the trip was to conquer fear, challenge themselves, and expand limits;
90 percent broke an addiction such as nicotine, chocolate, and pop;
57 percent of the women and 27 percent of the men stated that a major goal of the trip was to “come home” to nature;
76 percent of all respondents reported dramatic changes in quantity, vividness, and context of dreams after seventy-two hours in the wilderness.7
We know intuitively that nature is beneficial, even if we become estranged from it. Patients recover more quickly when they have beautiful green views to look at. At the Way Station in Maryland, the suicide rate of emotionally and mentally challenged residents dropped dramatically when a sunny new brick and natural-wood building became their new home. Natural light and plants provided by windows and skylights seemed to calm and reassure them.
People like Greenway urge us to “come to our senses.” By literally smelling, touching, and tasting nature, we begin to clear out some of the rubble in our heads. Says Greenway, “On a wilderness trip, it seems to take about four days for people to start dreaming nature dreams rather than ‘busy’ or ‘urban’ dreams. This recurring pattern suggests to me that our culture is only four days deep.”8 In contrast, John McPhee has called the history of life on earth “deep time.” For example, without the ferns, algae, and protozoa of sixty-five million years ago (only yesterday as measured in deep time), we wouldn’t be so preoccupied with petroleum.
COMING TO OUR SENSES
When we experience nature with our own noses, skin, lungs, and reptilian brains, we feel silly about the stress of obsessive projects and timelines. Self-importance begins to melt into something larger. We see that we’re integral members of the Biosphere Club, and it feels great! Rather than perceiving ourselves as simply human-paycheck-house-car, we finally understand who and where we are. We see that in reality, we’re human-soil-grains-fruits-microbes-trees-oxygen-herbivores-fish-salt marshes, and on and on and on! We begin to question the logic and the ethic of parting out nature like a used-up car.
A few years ago, Lana Porter began to come to her senses. The garden she works in Golden, Colorado, is far more than a lush, reclaimed vacant lot—it’s a biological extension of her self, and a way of life. “I eat very well out of this garden, just about all year round,” she says, “and the organic produce gives me energy to grow more produce and get more energy. It’s a cycle of health that has cut my expenses in half. My grocery bills are lower, my health bills are lower, I don’t need to pay for exercise, and my transportation costs are lower because I don’t have to travel so much to amuse myself.”9
Asked what she likes best about her personal Garden of Eden, Porter replies, “I like what it does for my head. Sometimes, when I’m watering a healthy crop, or planting seeds, or cultivating between rows, I’m not thinking anything at all—a radical switch from my previous life as an overworked computer programmer. People tell me I should take care of my crops more efficiently—with irrigation systems on timers, designer fertilizers, and pesticides—so I could spend less time out here. But that way of growing disconnects the grower from the garden. The whole point is to spend more time with the plants, taking care of things, and less time trying to reshape myself to fit the changing whims of the world.”
Like Porter, many other Americans perceive the difference between natural complexity and oversimplified science. Between a juicy, tasty peach that confers health and a pulpy, worthless peach grown in poor soil. Suddenly attuned to the frequency of natural law, they see with new eyes that many of our civilization’s customs are counterproductive because they’re not grounded in biological reality. Just as laying land fallow is a tenet of the Old Testament, optimizing solar income to prevent global warming should be one of the tenets of the Age of Ecology. But it seems that we won’t protect backyard, bioregion, or planet unless we feel connected.
Nature is not “out there”; it’s everywhere. Finding out how well the timber was grown that went into your backyard fence is nature. Knowing if the ingredients in a cake mix are biologically compatible with human nutrition is nature. Walking to the store and stopping to ask your neighbor what kind of perennial flowers he’s planting— that’s nature, too.
AS HAPPY AS A RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
For aquatic biologist and University of Wisconsin professor Calvin DeWitt, the Garden of Eden is a freshwater marsh that’s just beyond his backyard. He knows the marsh so well that he can identify its birds by their calls alone. Standing knee-deep in it, in waders, DeWitt traces the marsh’s many cycles and life events. “When the stalk of the cattail here drops down to the marsh, it’s converted again into soil, and in the structure of that soil grow all sorts of organisms which these geese feed on and the great herons that live here feed on,” he exclaims. “It’s things like this that really excite me, because they instill such a sense of awe and wonder. And I think that awe and wonder are really the things we’re missing today.” DeWitt examines a dragonfly preening on a cattail stalk, then reflects, “This aquatic ecosystem is eleven thousand years old. It’s been doing all this for eleven millennia— without any human intervention.”10
“As you stand for a while, things begin to unfold if you are quiet enough to watch and listen. After a full day, you’re still not fulfilled—there’s so much to learn here. You’re not tired either—you tend to be exhilarated from the experience.” DeWitt steps up on the bank of the marsh, water dripping from his waders. “Perhaps most curiously—in our consumptive society—you come home with your wallet just as full as when you left, and you’ve gotten all this pleasure, education, understanding, peace—for not a single penny.”
CHAPTER 25
The Right medicine
If you think your actions are too small to make
a difference, you’ve never been in bed with
a mosquito.
—ANONYMOUS
If we can harness the ingenuity that has made
North America the richest, most successful
society in history, our environment can start
making a comeback in a single generation.
—ALAN DURNING
We need technologies that more efficiently
digest a given resource, not technologies of
larger jaws and a bigger digestive tract.
—HERMAN DALY
What if fifty sinful things could save the earth? Wouldn’t that be
great? What if, for example, we Americans could deploy our favorite sin, greed, as a vaccine against itself, intentionally extending our spending spree at least a few more decades? Even environmentalists could put down their protest signs and join the fun. Instead of “Doing all I can to save the earth,” they could consume all they wanted to save the earth.
What if cigarettes increased lung capacity and prevented cancer; SUVs filtered the pollution out of urban air; and luxury beach vacations enhanced the health of habitats like coral reefs and once-abundant fisheries? The problem is, they don’t.
OK then, what if fifty simple things could save the earth? We’re talking about individual choices and actions taken by millions of Americans, without substantial changes in lifestyle. If each of us kept a reusable grocery sack in the car, planted a tree, and screwed in some compact fluorescent light bulbs, maybe we could collectively reverse the decline of the planet’s health. That, too, would be fantastic, but nothing on earth is quite that simple. Our economy and the majority of its products are not designed to save the planet. They’re designed to make money.
We can voluntarily cut back and do simple things by the boatload, but we’ll still be paddling against a flash flood, no-conscience economy that’s not designed to make sense. For example, we’re willing to recycle a few sacks of aluminum cans, but we may have to drive twenty miles to do it. We’ll pay a little more for nontoxic paints and cleaners, but we use them in houses glued together with toxic adhesives. We choose to buy natural fibers like cotton, unaware that conventionally grown cotton is drenched with pesticides (about a third of all pesticides used in the United States are applied to cotton crops).
As the author and corporate futurist Paul Hawken points out, 90 percent of the waste we generate never even makes it into products or services but remains at the point of extraction or manufacture, in slash and slag piles and on-site waste impoundments. Of the materials that do become products, 80 percent are thrown away after a single use. In a way, it’s a Catch-22. To save the world, we need strong individual action, yet for effective individual action, we need to redesign the world. (Even a task that huge is achievable—we’ve totally redesigned the world in the last hundred years, haven’t we?) Hawken believes we need to see a wider picture than we’re used to seeing: “We’ve spent the last century working our tails off to make fewer people more productive using more resources. Yet we are doing this at a time when we have more people and fewer resources.”1 Hawken envisions an economy in which resources are many times more productive per molecule, electron, and photon; natural capital (lakes, trees, grassland) is valued as an indispensable, living support system; and people bring their brains, their hearts, and their hands back into the workplace.
NOT ONLY SUFFICIENT BUT ALSO EFFICIENT
Simple environmental fixes can be designed into our economy and political structure so that they become as natural as breathing. By substituting efficient products like low-flow showerheads, compact fluorescent bulbs, and high-efficiency windows and refrigerators, we’ve already prevented millions of tons of pollution and environmental impacts in the last decade—and saved billions of dollars. Because they are “smarter” and designed for efficiency, newly available products like front-load washing machines can deliver better performance using fewer resources. A typical family spends about $200 per year on energy, water, and detergent for doing laundry. A state-of-the-art model will cut that expense by about $75 a year.
Buying devices that score high on Energy Star and other rating systems not only lowers fuel bills but also reduces the threat of global warming, reduces our reliance on unstable sources of energy like Middle Eastern oil, and reduces our guilt, too.
Howard Geller of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy does not believe that simple, individual actions will save the planet by themselves, because many of the challenges we face are extremely complex. We need more earth-friendly economic incentives, more green-product certifications and efficiency ratings, and a revamping of codes and specifications—all designed specifically to make saving the earth a cakewalk.
As an example, Geller cited regulations that mandate efficiency. “The nice thing is, regulations don’t require consumer education or analysis.” Refrigerator standards are one such regulation. “When your old refrigerator gives out, you need to replace it, ASAP. You usually don’t have time to read Consumer Reports. You just make a beeline to the department store and get something with enough cabinet space to keep your teenagers alive.”2
But much of the work to produce better refrigerators has already been done behind the scenes, by lobbyists, legislators, engineers, and managers. As Geller explains, a series of progressive state laws were passed first, but each had different requirements. To reduce confusion and a need for many models of the same product, industry actually supported a standardized federal law that required higher efficiency. That law has produced models that use two-thirds less energy than a 1970s unit but have more space, more features, and better performance. More for less, by design. Appliance standards in general that went into effect in 1990 have already saved more energy than is generated by thirty-one regional power plants. To keep our beer and forgotten leftovers cold, we don’t have to cut back on anything, ponder anything, or become Greenpeace activists; we just need to harvest the fruits of environment-friendly laws. Now that’s simplicity.
“If affluenza compels us to buy something,” Geller says, “why don’t we buy a state-of-the-art refrigerator or front-loading clothes washer—something that improves our quality of life and makes sense environmentally, too?”
Among the many “hidden benefits” of giving the earth a little TLC are steady savings. Sometimes the life-cycle savings from high-efficiency devices like set-back thermostats and “low-E” windows are as good as returns on stock or bond investments, and you don’t have to fret over the market. However, monetary savings are only one of the hidden benefits for the earth.
The changes that take place in our minds are perhaps the most important individual actions of all. We’re discovering that it’s not just how much or how little we consume as individuals that matters, but how well our purchases were produced. It’s not just the quantity of our consumption—although that is important—but also the quality of our designs and choices.
In a super-efficient economy, we’ll all save money because we’re not spending extra to clean up, recover our health, mine new materials, work in jobs we hate— requiring expensive vacations in compensation—and so on. Efficiency is especially beneficial for low-income consumers, who spend higher proportions of their income for utilities. When we learn to “ride the earth in the direction it’s going,” by knowing how nature works and designing appropriately, everyone wins.
DRIVING AN SUV TO THE STEAKHOUSE
Meanwhile, we rejoin our regularly scheduled present-in-progress, where news stories about globally scaled environmental problems sometimes overwhelm us. They seem too big to be solved by informed consumer choices, let alone ignorant ones. But Michael Brower and Warren Leon, authors of The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists, are here to help. Their mission is to exorcise mental clutter and guilt by setting priorities in our consumer choices.3 Rather than stress over which forty things to do, the researchers suggest we address the worst problems first, to get the biggest bang for our collective buck. By their calculations, driving an SUV to the steakhouse is one of the worst consumer actions possible, because automobiles and meat are two primary pathways affluenza takes to infect the earth.
Brower and Leon used a decade’s worth of risk analysis from various agencies and experts to determine that air pollution, global warming, habitat alteration, and water pollution are the most critical consumption-related impacts. Big-pattern flaws in design and production often cause the worst impacts: the way our cities and suburbs are designed, the way we purify wastewater, the way agriculture is practiced, the way energy is generated, and the
way industry designs and manufactures chemicals, computers, and cars. While consumer choices don’t directly affect these production systems, informed choices do result in substantial hidden benefits that can speed the earth’s recovery. When we buy organic produce, for example, we are also buying farming techniques—such as crop rotation—that prevent erosion, insect damage, and other impacts. When we buy a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle, we become rolling advertisements for a cool climate and clean air.
When we reduce our consumption of meat, we also dramatically reduce our impact on land, water, air, and atmosphere. Compared with a nutritionally equivalent intake of whole grains, red meat is responsible for twenty times the land use (because of cattle grazing), seventeen times the common water pollution (because of animal wastes), five times the toxic water pollution and water use (from chemicals applied to feed grains and water for irrigation and livestock), and three times the greenhouse gas emissions (from greater energy use), Brower and Leon contend.
Is the quantity of meat we consume a vestige from frontier days, or is it really more a visual habit? Maybe we apportion servings by the way they should look on a plate. Dinner plate aesthetics—and meat consumption—have changed since 1970, but if we stop and think about it, wouldn’t our plates look just as appetizing and far more colorful with larger proportions of fresh fruits, grains, and vegetables? That might mean reducing our meat intake from four pounds a week to two pounds, and at the same time reducing our risk of heart disease and stroke.
Brower and Leon praise consumer efforts to reduce waste and promote efficiency, but they also urge us to go easy on ourselves. “The demonization of disposable cups, for example, has caused some individuals and groups to spend too much time
