Defining Sustainability

[Deb]

I have been chewing on this idea of sustainable design for awhile now. Here are some questions for y'all...and I don't mean them to be rhetorical...I mean for them to be contemplated deeply and (hopefully) for more thoughts to be shared here.

I think it is important for us to DEFINE our TERMS.

If our goal is "sustainability" or more specifically a "sustainable town" or a "sustainable town center", HOW is that goal MEASURED?

How is building in a flood plain sustainable? The flood line is 76' now, but what about global warming and melting ice caps?

How is "no net fill" sustainable? I get the idea of how earth can be moved and made into berms and swales and how that impacts how the water relates to the land. But I don't get how moving land so basically the low levels are higher and now acceptable for building is in accord with sustainability principles.

How is building anything that uses materials that come from lands far away sustainable? Including foreign oil that inevitably will be used at some, if not most, points in the process.

How is modern retail sustainable? Ever? Really? Fair trade is a nice idea, but I just don't know how you can call shipping things from half way across the world sustainable. Is it green or is it green washing? The line is not always so clear.

I have been exploring the realm of green design for a few years now...it is actually what got me studying conventional interior design. I have contemplated this a lot and I am conflicted about my career direction because of it. Green design may be BETTER than what we are doing now, but I don't for a minute think that it is SUSTAINABLE.

I think SUSTAINABLE DESIGN takes TIME. And because we don't have much time in the specific planning process I think it is important to be VERY clear and conservative about how we define SUSTAINABILITY.

Thanks for considering a little more food for thought.
Blessings,
Deb

[Shepherd]

Is Sustainability enough? Or do we need something deeper--like Regeneration. Sustainable has become such a buzzword that I fear that it has lost a lot of its meaning. Sustainability is a large tent under which many people gather these days, so it has merit in that sense. But given that so much of our natural environment has already been degraded, perhaps some of us need to be simultaneously working to regenerate what has been damaged.

I want to do more than just sustain Sebastopol as it is today. Change is inevitable. We need to consider the impact of declining fossil fuels and the energy vulnerability that this will create, which will surely change our town. I think it is possible to work to improve Sebastopol as it and the rest of the globe goes through the decline of petroleum. It is already a great town and we have lots to work with, including natural and social capital.

I appreciate the stimulus of Deb's three emails on design, planning, and sustainability. They help focus us. Since she asked us to define sustainability, I looked it up in the dictionary. It is not there, but sustain is. Of the 8 defintions, the one I liked best was # 4: "to strengthen the spirits, courage, etc of; comfort, buoy up; encourage." So in addition to the economic and political considerations, there are also spiritual issues when seeking to sustain or support something.

[gavio]

I agree, Shepard, that just applying the word "sustainability" to a thing doesn't make it so. I have been studying sustainable design for some time now, and have been moving away from even using the word anymore, due to its untenable nature.

The generally accepted definition of sustainability is to provide for the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to provide for their needs.

Lovely thought, that, but by some indicators, we are currently using the resource reserves of the 13th generation in to the future. Whoa! That to me just puts a whole different spin on it. Our very existence is already compromising the ability of future generations.

Combine that with the fact that we are currently in the midst of a significant mass extinction (the last one was 66 million years ago when the Dinosaurs gave up the ghost) and a climate change cycle of dramatic proportions and the idea of "sustaining" becomes pretty challenged.

The word sustainability does get thrown around a lot these days, and folks often seem to get pretty annoyed by the notion that Deb or anyone else would challenge what they mean by it. I say hurrah to Deb and others who ask the question "what do you mean by sustainability?" Yes, it may be inconvenient to take some time to answer that question, but if you can't answer it in a way that can be applied specifically in the current context, then what good is it?

So where I keep coming to is that I would see myself practicing "conscious design." I bring the most awareness and sensitivity I can to the work I am doing - to create the best outcome for the health of clients, community, and environment while making the best use of available resources. This feels like a doable goal, even faced with the overall "unsustainability" of my participation in the precarious state of existence in which our species is perched.

I like the idea of the word "regenerative" as opposed to sustainable, as it seems to speak to the type of relationship we need to develop with our natural environment in order to ride out the turbulent times ahead and not go the way the dominant species went during the last mass extinction.

My thoughts for now.

Blessings

Gavio

[hearthstone]

Defining Sustainability.
https://www.modelearth.org/defsus.html

It appears that as the subject of "sustainability" is gaining popularity, the definition of sustainability is becoming less focused; although there is a myriad of projects whose concern is professedly "sustainability", "sustainability" is becoming progressively less likely achievable, because it is hard to achieve something that we don't know clearly what it actually is.
It is not that individuals would not know what "sustainability" might mean to them, but it is that each person's "sustainability" might be very different, if not even at odds with, from what "sustainability" might mean to others.

Not the least problem with "sustainability" is that mercenary concerns rate, in most instances, higher than any other; thus "sustainability" might just be an excuse for achieving higher economical gains. This distorts the meaning of "sustainable"/"sustainability" considerably even further.

"Sustainability" could be modeled, creating a "picture" of what an ideal "sustainable" future of any geopolitical entity on Earth should be, using as input all the various ideas that virtually all people might have about what "sustainability" might mean together with the sum total of what we know of Earth in order to see how each and any of those ideas would fare under "real" conditions in a model.
The Earth is facing unprecedented hardships caused by human ignorance, and by modeling the future we would eliminate the very costly process of deciding what works and what doesn't--in trying to remedy the situation--by the currently used "hit, or miss" method.

The Earth future, at any point of time, is a result of the actions all the inhabitants of the Earth take in order to ensure a satisfactory future for themselves and for those whose future matters to them. But because our desires for a satisfactory future are, not infrequently, at odds with the desires of others, the final outcome--the future that we experience now-- usually pleases only a few.

It would be different should all the differences that there are among all the individuals' wishes for future resolved harmlessly in a model, rather than with often tragic consequences in real life.

Such modeling of our common future would be a profound educational experience for all those who would participate in this modeling process, because individually we usually have but a very limited view of all the factors that go into making a future to happen, and the modeling process would show clearly where all those deficiencies might lie. In the modeling of our common future we would learn what we actually need to learn for a satisfactory future to happen.
By directly participating in designing our own future in a model our education would become meaningful to us; furthermore--we would learn at our own pace, and only that that would make sense to us--we would learn "on-the-job". We would not be learning something that would not have a direct connection with our lives.

We have all the technology necessary for designing of the future. By using "distributed computing", for an instance, software for which is available in the form of "open source", the model could "reside" on all of the participants' computers thus eliminating the need for any physical structures. The process would be accessible to anyone interested in having a hand in the creation of one's future--something that our current reality denies to most.

Would there exist a model of what to all an optimal future should look like, the currently available process of creating our common future that currently is in the hands of people whose interests are not necessarily identical with that of those they represent would benefit by the fact that every one could compare the performance of those who govern to that what actually should be happening.

The possible uses for such a model would be many.

Please, let me know what you think of the idea. There is more about the idea at:
https://www.modelearth.org

Notes.
A general observation pertaining to the sustainability of a solution to problems of sustainability could be that simpler, more "transparent", less complex social structure permits easier monitoring of processes affecting the ecological conditions, and, vice versa, that simpler solutions to ecological sustainability problems require a less complex society to implement those.

Thank you, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

--
Designing Sustainable Sebastopol:
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/

[alanora]

How can one accurately model something he does not completely understand? Seems there are too many unknown factors to consider. At the same time, I would love to see what results. Suppose our goal is roof over head clothes to wear food to eat, all with positive or negligible effects for our planet, for everyone.


Defining Sustainability.
https://www.modelearth.org/defsus.html

It appears that as the subject of "sustainability" is gaining popularity, the definition of sustainability is becoming less focused; although there is a myriad of projects whose concern is professedly "sustainability", "sustainability" is becoming progressively less likely achievable, because it is hard to achieve something that we don't know clearly what it actually is.
It is not that individuals would not know what "sustainability" might mean to them, but it is that each person's "sustainability" might be very different, if not even at odds with, from what "sustainability" might mean to others.

Not the least problem with "sustainability" is that mercenary concerns rate, in most instances, higher than any other; thus "sustainability" might just be an excuse for achieving higher economical gains. This distorts the meaning of "sustainable"/"sustainability" considerably even further.

"Sustainability" could be modeled, creating a "picture" of what an ideal "sustainable" future of any geopolitical entity on Earth should be, using as input all the various ideas that virtually all people might have about what "sustainability" might mean together with the sum total of what we know of Earth in order to see how each and any of those ideas would fare under "real" conditions in a model.
The Earth is facing unprecedented hardships caused by human ignorance, and by modeling the future we would eliminate the very costly process of deciding what works and what doesn't--in trying to remedy the situation--by the currently used "hit, or miss" method.

The Earth future, at any point of time, is a result of the actions all the inhabitants of the Earth take in order to ensure a satisfactory future for themselves and for those whose future matters to them. But because our desires for a satisfactory future are, not infrequently, at odds with the desires of others, the final outcome--the future that we experience now-- usually pleases only a few.

It would be different should all the differences that there are among all the individuals' wishes for future resolved harmlessly in a model, rather than with often tragic consequences in real life.

Such modeling of our common future would be a profound educational experience for all those who would participate in this modeling process, because individually we usually have but a very limited view of all the factors that go into making a future to happen, and the modeling process would show clearly where all those deficiencies might lie. In the modeling of our common future we would learn what we actually need to learn for a satisfactory future to happen.
By directly participating in designing our own future in a model our education would become meaningful to us; furthermore--we would learn at our own pace, and only that that would make sense to us--we would learn "on-the-job". We would not be learning something that would not have a direct connection with our lives.

We have all the technology necessary for designing of the future. By using "distributed computing", for an instance, software for which is available in the form of "open source", the model could "reside" on all of the participants' computers thus eliminating the need for any physical structures. The process would be accessible to anyone interested in having a hand in the creation of one's future--something that our current reality denies to most.

Would there exist a model of what to all an optimal future should look like, the currently available process of creating our common future that currently is in the hands of people whose interests are not necessarily identical with that of those they represent would benefit by the fact that every one could compare the performance of those who govern to that what actually should be happening.

The possible uses for such a model would be many.

Please, let me know what you think of the idea. There is more about the idea at:
https://www.modelearth.org

Notes.
A general observation pertaining to the sustainability of a solution to problems of sustainability could be that simpler, more "transparent", less complex social structure permits easier monitoring of processes affecting the ecological conditions, and, vice versa, that simpler solutions to ecological sustainability problems require a less complex society to implement those.

Thank you, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

--
Designing Sustainable Sebastopol:
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/

[hearthstone]

How can one accurately model something he does not completely understand? Seems there are too many unknown factors to consider. At the same time, I would love to see what results. Suppose our goal is roof over head clothes to wear food to eat, all with positive or negligible effects for our planet, for everyone.

This is exactly the more a reason to model sustainability! As it is now, we already have a plenty definitions of sustainability, which presents a problem--we, individually, might hold definitions of sustainability that are even at severe odds with each other. We set out to realize our individual definitions of the term in real life, and we each hope for our favored definition to win over the definitions of others. This process is costly in resources, in energy, time (and we don't have enough time, it would seem--the rate of environmental and societal destruction is proceeding at a faster clip than our, so far, ineffectual efforts to, at least, catch up with those), etc.

To see which of our definitions of sustainability (no matter how little, or how much, we understand sustainability) are better than others would be to let those various definitions "compete" in models where it would be more readily obvious which are better than others, instead of trying to perceive which definitions are better by letting them do the same in real life. In this way a *lot* waste of resources, energy and time could be avoided.

In a model you could see where your roof over your head, clothes, food come from to a fine detail, and you could see what impact those processes would have on the planet, without having to wait to see all that in real life with, who knows, what results.

The state-of-art of modeling is already advanced enough to include enough many factors necessary for a usable modeling--just Internet search "modeling AND military AND 'social science'"--this would give you an idea of what modeling could accomplish in modeling sustainability.

Thank you, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

--
Designing Sustainable Sebastopol:
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/

[hearthstone]

Designing Sustainable Sebastopol.

(Online with links to related subjects, copyright, credit, and dedication at www.modelearth.org/SustainableSebastopol.html (https://www.modelearth.org/SustainableSebastopol.html).)

• The need for designing a sustainable community.

Why should there be any need for designing a sustainable community?

The point of designing the future is to replicate, as closely as possible, in models that that would happen in reality anyhow, but with a very distinct, very important difference--resolving differences and controversies that there are among us in real life causes real waste of resources and time, and causes real (sometimes irreparable) harm to ourselves and other beings in the world; resolving the very same differences and controversies in models would prevent real waste and harm from occurring in real life.

It would be much easier to achieve sustainability if we knew, into as minute detail as possible, what the ideal that we are trying to achieve actually is, what the ideal should look like--it is always easier to get something when we know what that something is. When we are unsure, or--as in the case of a commonly desired goal--we are not all wanting the same thing, reaching the goal is much harder, if not impossible.

As it is now, do we know what we mean when we utter "sustainable"? Do we really all mean the same thing, do we all imagine "sustainable" anything into the same extent of detail? Might there even exist ideas that would be mutually incompatible/contrary to other ideas of what "sustainable" anything should be like?

We all know what we do not want in our ideal world, but do we know what we do want there?
Unless we know, unless we collectively design what a sustainable anything--from a local community to the entire world--should look like into the least possible detail, we will have a hard time achieving sustainability.

• How to do the designing?

People would be able to pool all their ideas they have about what their community should look like if it were really sustainable, and then it would be decided what ideas are more "sustainable" than others, and those selected ideas would be used in portraying what the community would look like when it would be sustainable.
It would not matter at this moment how exactly this would be done--a discussion list at the start would probably suffice; for anything more involved, especially at global level, there already are computer programs and technology (to mind come all the various games and "distributed computing") that would make it possible.

The ideas should contain:
• What would be the sustainable way of obtaining the basic necessities for life in Sebastopol--food, materials for shelter, clothing, utensils, tools, etc,. etc. ... ?
• What would be a sustainable Sebastopol's social structure?
• What would a sustainable Sebastopol's government look like?
• What all else should there be in a sustainable Sebastopol? (Please note that it would be useless to submit ideas about what there should not be in a sustainable Sebastopol, because an absence of anything would not make the picture of the ideal any clearer.)

Discussing the subject at:
Sustainable Sebastopol at Yahoo Groups (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol)

Thank you, Mr. Jan Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

[Hot Compost]

The ideas should contain:
• What would be the sustainable way of obtaining the basic necessities for life in Sebastopol--food, materials for shelter, clothing, utensils, tools, etc,. etc. ... ?
• What would be a sustainable Sebastopol's social structure?
• What would a sustainable Sebastopol's government look like?
• What all else should there be in a sustainable Sebastopol? (Please note that it would be useless to submit ideas about what there should not be in a sustainable Sebastopol, because an absence of anything would not make the picture of the ideal any clearer.)

Discussing the subject at:
Sustainable Sebastopol at Yahoo Groups (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol)

Thank you, Mr. Jan Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .


I visited Sebastopol for the first time in 2007. Up till then I had seen it on the map, as I lived other places (Silicon Valley, San Francisco, San Diego).

I thought it was this "hippie mecca" - in the good sense of the word. I went to a biodiesel workshop in SF that reinforced this - one of the better mechanics, and a group that was really good at explaining biodiesel - was in Sebastopol.

So, when I got to Sebastopol, I was surprised at how car-based it is. Admittedly, I observed this while driving in my car - so one of my steps toward sustainability is learning to take the bus from Santa Rosa to Ragle Park, as an example.

#1
So, one step towards making Sebastopol truly sustainable relates to transportation. Right now, we curse Bush & Cheney. I imagine them sitting in their offices chuckling & saying, "protest all you want, just keep sending us those petro-dollars."

I made a step towards divorcing my car (truck actually). I went from 15,000 miles a year to about 2500 miles a year. Using mass transit most of the time - that I can do.

But, what mass transit is there for the people of Sebastopol ? For the mass transit that is available, why aren't people using it ? When I lived in San Francisco, I moved my truck once a week for street-cleaning. The rest of the time it sat, because I was taking Muni. This involved me getting used to walking the half mile sometimes from the bus stop to my home, and also developing a "lifestyle rhythm" where I had the energy to walk that half mile, and was used to and even enjoyed just standing at a bus stop next to Golden Gate Park.

#2
"food, materials for shelter, clothing, utensils, tools, etc,. etc"
this relates to manufacturing, which relates to my background. I worked in Silicon Valley from 1980 to 2004 as a design engineer & hands-on manager, meaning I always worked in R&D, working closely with manufacturing.

Taking a spoon as an example - if I had the vision, I could make you a set of spoons. If you agree that I deserve to be paid $10 an hour, then one set of spoons (8 spoons) would take about 4 hours to make - if I had the tooling to make them (which itself has a cost in time and money). Would you be willing to pay $10 each for a set of spoons made by a local artisan ? Given that manufacturing work has its hazards, do I deserve medical care if I cut myself, or get something in my eye, even if I'm being careful ? In order to manufacture locally, people need affordable health care.

The system we have now, a machine makes millions of spoons somewhere like China, and the workers have no health care. They are treated as expendable. If they get hurt, there is a line of people waiting to take their job. To me, that treatment of workers as expendable, that is not sustainable.

One of the speakers at the UU church in Santa Rosa talked about his trip to Mexico, where he visited a maquiladora, a manufacturing plant. The workers were paid about 39 cents an hour. All I could think was, my God, how do they afford dental care ?

So I'm suggesting that the sustainable solution in the short term is to utilize the excess from our previous less-sustainable lifestyle. And to adapt, in the longer term, to a re-localization of manufacturing, which involves all sorts of social changes.

#2b FOOD
Somoma County has a decent head start there. I get about 10% of my food from a community garden and by foraging (picking apples & walnuts).

Part of the answer relates to what we do with our "waste". A lot of yard waste in Sonoma Country is trucked 15 miles to Sonoma Compost on Meacham off Stonypoint. 300 tons a day. They use diesel-powered machines to turn it into high-quality dirt under the supervision of a soil scientist. If you want some of their dirt, you have to drive to their place - 15 miles each way, a 30 mile round trip.

It makes a lot more sense to take that yard waste and set up local neighborhood composting, under the supervision of people who have been trained by people like Will Bakx, the soil scientist at Sonoma Compost, who teaches a class in composting, as part of the Sustainable Agriculture Department at SRJC. So you carry, or ask your neighbor to carry, your lawn trimmings and compostable food stuffs, 100 yards down the street to a designated place, unless you have room to do it in your own backyard. (Unless you've gotten to the place where you're replaced your lawn with a food garden. :): )

Then it makes sense to build the compost pile right on top of the garden plot that will be getting the dirt. It does its thing, it heats up, it decomposes. If you're working on a small scale, the result is about 50% high quality soil, 50% mulch. You rake it out onto the garden plot, it's done.

Learning these kinds of skills relates to growing our food locally.

There is one other aspect of growing food locally, and that is the handling & management of manures - cow & chicken manures, earthworm castings, and yes, even human manures. However I don't really feel like talking about that detail of soil science & sustainability right now. :Yinyangv:

[hearthstone]

Hot Compost:
I visited Sebastopol for the first time in 2007. Up till then I had seen it on the map, as I lived other places (Silicon Valley, San Francisco, San Diego).

I thought it was this "hippie mecca" - in the good sense of the word. I went to a biodiesel workshop in SF that reinforced this - one of the better mechanics, and a group that was really good at explaining biodiesel - was in Sebastopol.

So, when I got to Sebastopol, I was surprised at how car-based it is. Admittedly, I observed this while driving in my car - so one of my steps toward sustainability is learning to take the bus from Santa Rosa to Ragle Park, as an example.

#1
So, one step towards making Sebastopol truly sustainable relates to transportation. Right now, we curse Bush & Cheney. I imagine them sitting in their offices chuckling & saying, "protest all you want, just keep sending us those petro-dollars."

I made a step towards divorcing my car (truck actually). I went from 15,000 miles a year to about 2500 miles a year. Using mass transit most of the time - that I can do.

But, what mass transit is there for the people of Sebastopol ? For the mass transit that is available, why aren't people using it ? When I lived in San Francisco, I moved my truck once a week for street-cleaning. The rest of the time it sat, because I was taking Muni. This involved me getting used to walking the half mile sometimes from the bus stop to my home, and also developing a "lifestyle rhythm" where I had the energy to walk that half mile, and was used to and even enjoyed just standing at a bus stop next to Golden Gate Park.
Hearthstone:
There is a difference between improving on the present and designing the future, and then getting there after we know what kind of future we want, although it might seem to be the same thing. The difference here is made by whether we know what the ultimate step (what the desired kind of future) is supposed to be, or not--in which case we just might want to keep on improving and improving--a process that might take for ever, and do we really have the time to take for ever in our present day emergency? Knowing what we want in our future makes the process much more streamlined and incomparably faster (useful in emergencies!). Improving on the ideal by discussions, modeling, or whatever means is more expeditious than for ever improving on the present situation, which, arguably could get us into an ideal future also (if ever) but is much more tortuous and costly (in terms of time, resources, etc.) than knowing aforehand what the end-product ought to be.

Thus--having a superb public transportation (while it certainly would be a good thing to have) is an improvement on present, but, what, in your opinion, should the ideal situation in regards to transportation be?
Hot Compost:
#2
"food, materials for shelter, clothing, utensils, tools, etc,. etc"
this relates to manufacturing, which relates to my background. I worked in Silicon Valley from 1980 to 2004 as a design engineer & hands-on manager, meaning I always worked in R&D, working closely with manufacturing.

Taking a spoon as an example - if I had the vision, I could make you a set of spoons. If you agree that I deserve to be paid $10 an hour, then one set of spoons (8 spoons) would take about 4 hours to make - if I had the tooling to make them (which itself has a cost in time and money). Would you be willing to pay $10 each for a set of spoons made by a local artisan ? Given that manufacturing work has its hazards, do I deserve medical care if I cut myself, or get something in my eye, even if I'm being careful ? In order to manufacture locally, people need affordable health care.

The system we have now, a machine makes millions of spoons somewhere like China, and the workers have no health care. They are treated as expendable. If they get hurt, there is a line of people waiting to take their job. To me, that treatment of workers as expendable, that is not sustainable.

One of the speakers at the UU church in Santa Rosa talked about his trip to Mexico, where he visited a maquiladora, a manufacturing plant. The workers were paid about 39 cents an hour. All I could think was, my God, how do they afford dental care ?

So I'm suggesting that the sustainable solution in the short term is to utilize the excess from our previous less-sustainable lifestyle. And to adapt, in the longer term, to a re-localization of manufacturing, which involves all sorts of social changes.

Hearthstone:
Again:
What should the ideal situation in regards of obtaining spoons be? Meaning--the best imaginable situation that could improve in the future, but at the present it would be the best we can come up with?
Hot Compost:
#2b FOOD
Sonoma County has a decent head start there. I get about 10% of my food from a community garden and by foraging (picking apples & walnuts).

Part of the answer relates to what we do with our "waste". A lot of yard waste in Sonoma Country is trucked 15 miles to Sonoma Compost on Meacham off Stonypoint. 300 tons a day. They use diesel-powered machines to turn it into high-quality dirt under the supervision of a soil scientist. If you want some of their dirt, you have to drive to their place - 15 miles each way, a 30 mile round trip.

It makes a lot more sense to take that yard waste and set up local neighborhood composting, under the supervision of people who have been trained by people like Will Bakx, the soil scientist at Sonoma Compost, who teaches a class in composting, as part of the Sustainable Agriculture Department at SRJC. So you carry, or ask your neighbor to carry, your lawn trimmings and compostable food stuffs, 100 yards down the street to a designated place, unless you have room to do it in your own backyard. (Unless you've gotten to the place where you're replaced your lawn with a food garden. )

Then it makes sense to build the compost pile right on top of the garden plot that will be getting the dirt. It does its thing, it heats up, it decomposes. If you're working on a small scale, the result is about 50% high quality soil, 50% mulch. You rake it out onto the garden plot, it's done.

Learning these kinds of skills relates to growing our food locally.

There is one other aspect of growing food locally, and that is the handling & management of manures - cow & chicken manures, earthworm castings, and yes, even human manures. However I don't really feel like talking about that detail of soil science & sustainability right now. Hearthstone:
At present, it would be hard to imagine anything better, in the way of composting, than composting right where the food is grown, indeed!

Would you mind if I post your input at the Sustainable Sebastopol Forum Sustainable Sebastopol Forum (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/)?

Thanks, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

[Hot Compost]

Thus--having a superb public transportation (while it certainly would be a good thing to have) is an improvement on present, but, what, in your opinion, should the ideal situation in regards to transportation be?

it has to be low energy consumption & the pieces have to be manufactured using processes that do not pollute. for example, no gold plated connectors - as reliable as they are, about 249 tons of cyanide go into each ton of gold mined. not sustainable.

America had a good light rail system about 80 years ago. People walked. Horses dropped free fertilizer in the streets. All of that was sustainable.


Again: What should the ideal situation in regards of obtaining spoons be? Meaning--the best imaginable situation that could improve in the future, but at the present it would be the best we can come up with?Eating with your hands or with bamboo chopsticks gets the job done sustainably but side-steps the question. Or, drinking from the bowl, Slurp Slurp, the way it's done in some cultures.

I would say the typical pre-electronic-era hard-automated set-up, using technology that I saw most recently on display at the Schlage lock factory in South San Francisco in about 1976, would be an example. In that case, they spent millions on the tooling, but the production volume was huge - hundreds of thousands of locks in a typical production run, and they could just as easily be spoons.

Probably one of the least sustainable things about that factory was that everybody drove to work.



Would you mind if I post your input at the Sustainable Sebastopol Forum Sustainable Sebastopol Forum (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/)?

Thanks, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .Actually I went ahead and posted it there too.

[hearthstone]

Soon enough, with ideas flowing in about what a sustainable community would/should look like, we'd better know what criteria to use in order to decide what is more sustainable and what is less sustainable--something that anyone could use with ease.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

---
If we, the people, were really sincere about having real Peace in the world, we would spend more on actively creating Peace--by using peaceful means--than what we spend on the military!

Creating Lasting Peace:
https://www.modelearth.org/peace.html

[Sciguy]

My work on sustainability is extensive and expressed in large part on my website at www.zerowasteinstitute.org. With the Transition Town model in front of us, it is time to be organizing Sebastopol along some more innovative lines. Please stay in touch with me as plans mature.
Paul Palmer



Soon enough, with ideas flowing in about what a sustainable community would/should look like, we'd better know what criteria to use in order to decide what is more sustainable and what is less sustainable--something that anyone could use with ease.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org .

---
If we, the people, were really sincere about having real Peace in the world, we would spend more on actively creating Peace--by using peaceful means--than what we spend on the military!

Creating Lasting Peace:
https://www.modelearth.org/peace.html

[hearthstone]

We--humans collectively--have enough knowledge to make this world a paradise. We have had this knowledge all along.

The reason that we are not living in a paradise yet is that we all have different ideas of what a "paradise" should look like--we all strive for OUR own version of ideal reality, and in the end no one achieves any satisfactory results for long, if ever.

What would improve on things greatly would be to bring all of our ideas of what the ideal state of being on this Earth should be, and reconcile the differences among our ideas in models (or using whatever is convenient) instead of in real life with all the waste (time, resources, lives, ...) that comes from our trying to force our image of what the reality should be unto the world that we all share (or, rather--should share without fighting) together.

This reconciling of our ideas in models (or whatever way we employ to do so) is very similar to what is going in real life, but--without the waste.

Once we arrive at a version of reality that is optimally suitable to all of those who take a part in designing of this reality in models (or arriving at it by whatever expedient means), it would be much faster and waste (of whatever kind)-free to achieve this agreed upon reality in real life.


I am sure that your ideas about what is sustainable, as expressed at your ZWI site, could be challenged by many who might have different ideas of what a sustainable community should look like.

Which brings up the question again: What criteria should be used to decide which ideas are more (or less) sustainable than others?
Your input on this would be appreciated! We need to have a simple, and by as many people acceptable, set of rules that could be used in deciding the question of what, actually, is sustainable.

Discussion Group: Sustainable Sebastopol Forum (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/)


My work on sustainability is extensive and expressed in large part on my website at www.zerowasteinstitute.org (https://www.zerowasteinstitute.org). With the Transition Town model in front of us, it is time to be organizing Sebastopol along some more innovative lines. Please stay in touch with me as plans mature.
Paul Palmer

[Sciguy]

From Sciguy:

Shepherd Bliss posted an article recently outside of Wacco about the spill of coal fly ash and sludge that broke thru a barrier, washing away houses and polluting rivers. I took note of this part:

<quote>
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/cid:[email protected]�December 25, 2008 Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards
By SHAILA DEWAN (https://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/shaila_dewan/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
KINGSTON, Tenn. � What may be the nation�s largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.
Federal studies have long shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee (https://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/tennessee/index.html?inline=nyt-geo), displaced residents spent Christmas Eve worried about their health and their property, and wondering what to do.
</quote>

when I wrote my book Getting To Zero Waste, I pointed out the one fact about Love Canal that you would never hear anywhere else - that most of the solvents that caused such anguish to the residents because they were dumped there were actually valuable and easily recovered. And that the difference between distilling them off and reusing them and dumping them was probably a matter of a few cents per pound. And again I ask the same question - do we want the health of the planet and localities to be forever determined by saving a few cents (or even a dollar) per pound or is saving the planet equal in priority to saving Wall Street (currently at about $50 million per pound of overstuffed executive).


I ask this because I note that the harmful ingredients in coal fly ash are also all useful products: arsenic, lead, thallium, chromium, nickel, cadmium, selenium etc. are all metals with established commercial uses. And those that have no sufficiently large scale uses today could, in metallic form, be safely stored in warehouses since they would take up a tiny fraction of the volume of fly ash in metallic form. Most metals have a history of finding commercial uses eventually. Think of columbium, gallium, indium for example - all used now in electronics.
Which leads to the obvious question: is there any other way to create sustainable uses of resources other than reusing them over and over. To which I answer: none that I can find.
So the conclusion is this: why can't we as a society insist that the dangerous metals coming out of coal burning MUST be recovered at any cost. If that drives the price of coal up, so what? That will be the market price of burning coal. I thought the power elites believed in free markets. Well the only reason that coal is as cheap as it is is that the coal companies gain an enormous subsidy. They don't pay it but the rest of us do. Instead of having to reuse the carbon dioxide and the heavy metals, instead of having to restore the mined and scarred land to its original beauty, instead of having to reuse rivers and streams forever, they can destroy and abuse it all. And the regulations, as always, carve out a portion of the earth as having no rights that an American is bound to respect (cf: the Dred Scott decision). Regulation may be a start but it quickly becomes obsolete. It is no way to deal with dangerous chemicals. The only way to deal with chemicals is called Zero Waste which is the perpetual reuse of everything.

Go ahead, tell me we can't afford it. Tell me destroying the planet is much more economical. I've heard it before.
Paul Palmer
www.zerowasteinstitute.org




We--humans collectively--have enough knowledge to make this world a paradise. We have had this knowledge all along.

The reason that we are not living in a paradise yet is that we all have different ideas of what a "paradise" should look like--we all strive for OUR own version of ideal reality, and in the end no one achieves any satisfactory results for long, if ever.

What would improve on things greatly would be to bring all of our ideas of what the ideal state of being on this Earth should be, and reconcile the differences among our ideas in models (or using whatever is convenient) instead of in real life with all the waste (time, resources, lives, ...) that comes from our trying to force our image of what the reality should be unto the world that we all share (or, rather--should share without fighting) together.

This reconciling of our ideas in models (or whatever way we employ to do so) is very similar to what is going in real life, but--without the waste.

Once we arrive at a version of reality that is optimally suitable to all of those who take a part in designing of this reality in models (or arriving at it by whatever expedient means), it would be much faster and waste (of whatever kind)-free to achieve this agreed upon reality in real life.


I am sure that your ideas about what is sustainable, as expressed at your ZWI site, could be challenged by many who might have different ideas of what a sustainable community should look like.

Which brings up the question again: What criteria should be used to decide which ideas are more (or less) sustainable than others?
Your input on this would be appreciated! We need to have a simple, and by as many people acceptable, set of rules that could be used in deciding the question of what, actually, is sustainable.

Discussion Group: Sustainable Sebastopol Forum (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SustainableSebastopol/)

[PeriodThree]

I have been having trouble with the current energy/greenhouse gas/pollution debates.

Everything is set in stark dramatic terms - the economy versus the health of the earth - and the arguments are filled with absolutes.

But it appears that the real costs to offset the risks which we know about really are of the 'pennies a pound' variety.

Carbon offsets cost from $2 - 50 per metric ton:
https://www.tvcnp.com/individual-offset.php

I am not sure but it seems like a cap and trade system (or other mechanism) would not cost that much (certainly much less than our recent gas price increases!) and the cost would provide money for people working on carbon mitigation efforts.



From Sciguy:
when I wrote my book Getting To Zero Waste, I pointed out the one fact about Love Canal that you would never hear anywhere else - that most of the solvents that caused such anguish to the residents because they were dumped there were actually valuable and easily recovered. And that the difference between distilling them off and reusing them and dumping them was probably a matter of a few cents per pound.

[hearthstone]

A "transition" means a change between two states - A and B, let's say;

In the case of "Transition Town"--what should the state B be? I was trying to find the answer at www.zerowasteinstitute.org (https://www.zerowasteinstitute.org/), but could not.

Could you point me to what a "Transition Town" would metamorphose to after the transition is done?

Thanks, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org (https://www.modelearth.org) .

--
If we, the people, were really sincere about having real Peace in
the world, we would spend more on actively creating Peace--by using
peaceful means--than what we spend on the military!

Creating Lasting Peace:
creating peace on earth collectively, cooperatively, to prevent conflicts from happening in real life, since the earth can have one future only. (https://www.modelearth.org/peace.html)



My work on sustainability is extensive and expressed in large part on my website at www.zerowasteinstitute.org (https://www.zerowasteinstitute.org). With the Transition Town model in front of us, it is time to be organizing Sebastopol along some more innovative lines. Please stay in touch with me as plans mature.
Paul Palmer

[Hot Compost]

A "transition" means a change between two states - A and B, let's say;

In the case of "Transition Town"--what should the state B be? I was trying to find the answer at www.zerowasteinstitute.org (https://www.zerowasteinstitute.org/), but could not.

Could you point me to what a "Transition Town" would metamorphose to after the transition is done?

Thanks, Hearthstone - ModelEarth.Org (https://www.modelearth.org) .


i think a good model is in our past. for example, small American farm towns, and cities with trolleys, in the time range 1910-1960.

also, the Amish provide a model. side-stepping the issue of the rigid sexual roles of the Amish - there's a great video on the WWW of a young woman using a scythe to clear a half acre of wheat. she's like the Terminator, except just a slender young woman who knows how to use a scythe. she also sharpens the scythe as part of the demonstration. she just makes it clear that farm work is for everybody, not just male farm workers, in a localized farming economy.

as an aside, one thing i've seen today's farm-workers do, men picking lettuce, is run across fields of lettuce in 100 degree weather with a 50 pound box of lettuce on their head. all day long, picking the lettuce in between their sprints across the field.

honestly, if we use models of American towns in our not so recent past, sans the racism & sexism and with improved dental care - i think they provide a good model for Energy Transition.

also, obviously, if you only make $40 a day because you are an American farm laborer, you will need a break on the price of your health care.

most of the prominent future thinkers of the day suggest the number of people employed in farming will go up. e.g. Richard Heinberg. unfortunately, there's a pattern of harassment of the small-scale farmers by the USDA & Monsanto that makes it very difficult to make a living as a farmer, for some farmers.

[Shepherd]

Personally, I think that models from the past for the transition that we are currently going through are of limited merit, though the Amish and Richard Heinberg are helpful. Premature "answers" at this stage of the multiple, converging transitions also seem to me of limited value.

This is the first global transition of this kind that the planet has ever experienced, in my opinion. We live it on a local level, but we must understand it on a global level. We are between and betwixt the no-longer and the not-yet. Though I share the desire to know what is coming, I think we must learn to live in this uncertainty.

I had a conversation last night at an art opening with artist Adam Wolpert, who is from the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. I used a term like "empire collapse" to describe what we are going through. He said that given the world-wide nature of what is happening that it is far more than the collapse of empires like Rome and Great Britain. The words "Recession" and even "Depression" do not even begin to describe what is happening. James Howard Kunstler is one person who has written about this.

I have also written about related matters, including agrotherapy (farms as healing places) in an essay in the new book "Enduring War: Stories of What We've Learned," a display copy of which is available at Copperfields Books in Sebastopol, where more copies will soon arrive. Then in May Sierra Club Books will publish my essay "In Praise of Sweet Darkness" in its book "Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind." This transition will be difficult, but I hope that we can also perceive the benevolence within it, even when it is inconvenient to humans.
Shepherd


i think a good model is in our past. for example, small American farm towns, and cities with trolleys, in the time range 1910-1960.

also, the Amish provide a model. side-stepping the issue of the rigid sexual roles of the Amish - there's a great video on the WWW of a young woman using a scythe to clear a half acre of wheat. she's like the Terminator, except just a slender young woman who knows how to use a scythe. she also sharpens the scythe as part of the demonstration. she just makes it clear that farm work is for everybody, not just male farm workers, in a localized farming economy.

as an aside, one thing i've seen today's farm-workers do, men picking lettuce, is run across fields of lettuce in 100 degree weather with a 50 pound box of lettuce on their head. all day long, picking the lettuce in between their sprints across the field.

honestly, if we use models of American towns in our not so recent past, sans the racism & sexism and with improved dental care - i think they provide a good model for Energy Transition.

also, obviously, if you only make $40 a day because you are an American farm laborer, you will need a break on the price of your health care.

most of the prominent future thinkers of the day suggest the number of people employed in farming will go up. e.g. Richard Heinberg. unfortunately, there's a pattern of harassment of the small-scale farmers by the USDA & Monsanto that makes it very difficult to make a living as a farmer, for some farmers.

[Sciguy]

<style></style>Shepherd et al:

You and I were both at the recent Transition Town meeting at Aubergine and I have looked thru Rob Hopkin's seminal book Transition Handbook.

I have heard a lot of qualitative or semi-anecdotal reports on the goal of a Transition. They seem to be summarizable as "back to the land".

What I haven't heard is the numbers. For argument's sake, let's say the United States with 300 million people was feeding itself entirely using backyard farms, urban lot farms and small farms scattered everywhere. How many people would be required to work on all those farms and how much food could they provide to the entire population, both in total weight and in total calories and any other measures that create constraints? Would that imply that people would be working all day harvesting lettuce and strawberries and other products that are backbreaking? Or would those products have to be in short supply? Or is there some basic assumption that those difficult-to-grow-and-harvest products would still be grown on mega-plantations harvested by poorly paid immigrants. Where would the starchy grain carbohydrates be coming from when all those small farms are growing vegetables and poultry?



I ask this because I don't know if there is a dissonance (or a raging conflict) between the bloated population of the world (my bias) and of each country, and a simpler life that does not rely on factory farming to churn out huge gobs of food. I wonder to myself if the above scenario of home-grown food means that a lot of people will starve to death before the new experiment can be made to work. Will we necessarily be back to pre-industrial levels of having sixty percent or so of our population involved in food production? The pictures of post oil life I encounter seem to imply that life will be more or less the same as today except for food and enhanced community so let's not even think about the rest.

The next problem that I perceive is the source of all those large and technical products that we are used to. Where are the ships and locomotives and airplanes (if they still exist??) going to be made? The railroad tracks and the bicycles and automobiles (upgraded but still needed in the multi-millions)? And the chemical-dependent batteries for running cars and houses? All the pharmaceuticals and the washing powders and industrial cleaners? The enormous quantities of plastics that become CD's and DVD's and bottles and shoes and clothing? What will the gigantic electronic industry look like, considering its voracious appetite for dopants and hydrofluoric acid and pure silicon and gallum? Can a world scrambling to grow food afford land for growing cotton and hemp for fiber and starch for plastics and corn for ethanol? Isn't it time that we begin to adopt what I always argue for - an end to the wasteful burning of valuable petroleum in favor of using those luxuriantly complex molecules as chemical raw materials in newly designed processes that allow them to be reused perpetually after all the dumps are closed? Most people seem quite comfortable with dumps and garbage lasting forever.

I have repeatedly stressed, in many forums, the need for changes in the wasteful way we run our society but though I receive thanks, I rarely get the kind of positive feedback that comes from taking change seriously, such as active discussion. In my estimation, we need to go beyond the back-to- the-land movement and talk seriously about how to keep industry running in a post peak oil world.
We need to redesign the ways that chemicals are manufactured and used, not simply scare-monger them as though they could all be banned.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels and begin to respect them as incredible sources of molecular complexity, all of which will need to be reconstituted the hard way, after they are gone.
We need to get rid of on-time departure and move instead to on-full departure of vehicles. This is no joke.

We need to stop reassuring ourselves that "there will always be waste" and begin to redesign society so that everything is recovered in its highest functional forms.
We need to stop thinking of recycling as an ultimate resource-conserving method and recognize it as a still wasteful stopgap.
We need to stop trusting the government to define the ways in which we use and conserve resources. Let's create citizen staffed research institutes.
We need to understand that energy does not solve everything, but we need material resources and products as well. With all the solar and wind energy in the world, we will still have serious problems. For example, where are those cars and batteries coming from that we want to stuff with solar electricity?
And about a million more super structure items that have little to do with growing food. If we don't deal with these issues that are so critical to modern life and focus only on food and community, no matter how important those are, we will be swimming upstream against a powerful tide of rejection of all changes by most of society which highly values modern life and will fight like tigers to maintain it by any means possible. We have already seen that in the push for biofuels, which threatens food for the less powerful in order to keep vehicles running for the more wealthy.

In short, the peak oil movement and the transition movement, while critically important, need an injection of realism. Let's get started! Join in the work of the Zero Waste Institute.

Paul Palmer
www.zerowasteinstitute.org (https://www.zerowasteinstitute.org/)

[Hot Compost]

The next problem that I perceive is the source of all those large and technical products that we are used to. Where are the ships and locomotives and airplanes (if they still exist??) going to be made? The railroad tracks and the bicycles and automobiles (upgraded but still needed in the multi-millions)? And the chemical-dependent batteries for running cars and houses? All the pharmaceuticals and the washing powders and industrial cleaners? The enormous quantities of plastics that become CD's and DVD's and bottles and shoes and clothing? What will the gigantic electronic industry look like, considering its voracious appetite for dopants and hydrofluoric acid and pure silicon and gallum? Can a world scrambling to grow food afford land for growing cotton and hemp for fiber and starch for plastics and corn for ethanol?

a good comprehensive list of technologies that are not sustainable.

there's a lot of things we can live without. a lot of us have already started living with out them, voluntarily.

i think generally, it is accurate to say that voluntary change is less stressful than involuntary change (change that is forced upon you.)

as far as the manufacturing and acquisition of 'stuff', besides the necessities like food & shelter, i think we could live quite a while on the stuff we've already bought, assuming that when one household is done with their stuff they take it to Good Will etc. instead of throwing it away.

that relates to one of the aspects of our energy intensive lifestyles. we waste so much energy that we could live quite royally on half the energy we do now.

the problem is, the way the economy is constructed, jobs are dependent on industries related to the creation & distribution of 'stuff'.

so getting by with less is good for sustainability, but it doesn't address the way jobs have been created in America for most of our collective lifetimes.

[Sciguy]

Compost:
I think you wanted to prove my point. Anyway, thanks for doing just that.

I hope you won't take umbrage if I take your reply to be representative of the back-to-the-land and Transition viewpoints. If not, you can correct me.

While I don't doubt your ability to do without a lot of things, I know you are not doing without your computer. You also are not doing without the modem and router and hard drive and CD-ROM drive manufacturers. Not to mention the screen or monitor mfrs. Your computer probably sits on a desk or table so you need that also. If you are at all typical of West County (or the USA) you drive a car or take a bus or a train. Maybe a plane ride once in a while. You patronize stores that use all those things too and more. You wear clothes that are not all uniformly light tan i.e. that use chemical dyes. Where do you think that dye comes from? Or the pigment in your favorite paint? You probably wear some kind of polyester in your clothes. You probably wear shoes, nearly all of which today are made of polyurethane (an amazing substance) cheaply in a third world country. If you choose to mail, you use paper (white bleached envelope?) and depend on a post office that uses millions of tons of "stuff". Do you have any metal in your life? Where does it come from? What was used to make the flux and the slag? Mined chemicals! And the metal itself had to come from somewhere. Maybe your floor is super green bamboo slats. What do you imagine holds the little strips together into one unitary floor? Acrylic glues probably. And the coating? Polyurethane varnish. Where does the solvent in the varnish come from? Petroleum refining. I haven't even gotten to the high tech medical equipment and drugs you want available when you get sick. I could go on endlessly, boring every reader, but the point is simple. You may think you use LESS but you still use A LOT. The back-to-the-land movement likes to kid itself about how much it is doing without, and maybe many people including myself are using much less than the "standard" roster of stuff, but we are not going to have a livable life (by most standards) using only vegetables and hemp and chickens and wooden tools.

The point here is that we may think we can get along without industry and commerce but we are kidding ourselves.

Now to an even more important observation. You immediately jump up and decree industrial products to be "unsustainable". May I ask how you know that? Is there some item by item study that supports this contention. I doubt it very much. I would guess that you just don't feel as comfortable designing an X-ray machine as you do figuring out how to design a garden of potatoes and so one seems intrinsically sustainable while the other doesn't. Go take a degree in industrial technical design and get back to me in a few years. I'll bet you have a different outlook then.

I have spent my recent professional career as a broadly educated chemist trying to find new ways to redesign many products and processes so that they can be reused perpetually (except for things that are intrinsically consumed in use). It's the same with everything else too. The food you eat is not sustainable. It either gets eaten or it rots. It's not the food that is sustainable but the tools used to create it. Properly cared for and composted, land might continue to produce that food in perpetuity. How to do that is not so obvious though. I've seen Wes Jackson explaining the role of animals in maintaining land. His methods are hardly compatible with vegetarian lifestyles. It can get complicated.

Right now, standard industrial practice is to always design with the dump in the distance. Products are made, used and soon discarded. Americans of every stripe, definitely including most of the back-to-the-landers, take this distorted design for granted. Many will defend it vigorously. I know because I have had to argue with many people who tell me, after thinking it over deeply for a quarter of a second, "there has always been garbage and there always will be!" Translation: I'm happy in my cage and my master feeds me well so keep on petting me.

I agree that voluntary change is the best. That's what I am trying to explain. Let's stop pretending that we are going to live without modern medicine, no transportation, no movies, no TV, no computers, leather sandals etc. and let's get real. Let's not pretend that solar panels and windmill generators are going to be made by rubbing a lamp that we find in an antique shop, or pretend that giving worn out stuff to Goodwill is going to maintain modern life for generations. Let's think actively about these things, let's plan for a better kind of industry and commerce and let's move into the new world with our eyes open, munching a celery stick, but not with blinders on.

I'm still looking for help in moving this epiphany forward.

Paul Palmer
www.zerowasteinstitute.org (https://www.zerowasteinstitute.org)




a good comprehensive list of technologies that are not sustainable.

there's a lot of things we can live without. a lot of us have already started living with out them, voluntarily.

i think generally, it is accurate to say that voluntary change is less stressful than involuntary change (change that is forced upon you.)

as far as the manufacturing and acquisition of 'stuff', besides the necessities like food & shelter, i think we could live quite a while on the stuff we've already bought, assuming that when one household is done with their stuff they take it to Good Will etc. instead of throwing it away.

that relates to one of the aspects of our energy intensive lifestyles. we waste so much energy that we could live quite royally on half the energy we do now.

the problem is, the way the economy is constructed, jobs are dependent on industries related to the creation & distribution of 'stuff'.

so getting by with less is good for sustainability, but it doesn't address the way jobs have been created in America for most of our collective lifetimes.

[Hot Compost]

Compost:
I think you wanted to prove my point. Anyway, thanks for doing just that.

yeah, i didn't mean everything in the list was unsustainable.

true about what Shepherd said, there are some basic differences between 2008 & the pre-high-technology American society. there are a lot more people now, and a lot more guns.