Consciousness Nurtures Contentment

Riding to work this morning I heard that U.S. retail sales were down again in April. While the announcer presented this as bad news, I think it’s great news!

There is an inverse relationship between retail sales and national measures of well being - the less we consume the happier we get, which is not surprising if you think about it. Contentment is the absence of wanting. If we decide we don’t need to buy so much stuff the pressure is off. Whether it’s because we can’t afford it or because we are painfully aware of how our insatiable appetites are literally consuming the earth – we can stop worrying about what we don’t have and start appreciating what we do have, including the people and experiences in our lives that make us truly rich.

This brings up a bigger question: why are we so obsessed with things like retail sales and Gross Domestic Product as measure of how we are doing as a country? It’s time to jettison that outdated way of thinking.

Look at GDP, for example. It simply measures economic activity, it doesn’t distinguish whether it’s good or bad activity. After hurricane Katrina, GDP spiked because of all the money spent on rescue and repair. The swine flu causes GDP to go up as we spend millions on vaccines and prevention. War causes GDP to go up as we spend trillions of dollars to fight the enemy.

But GDP doesn’t measure things like the value of education, the health of our children, the condition of our infrastructure and buildings, or the negative value (cost) of crime, degradation of the environment or our carbon footprint.

Several new measuring systems are under development and many countries, including France, are working on adopting one. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a good one to check out:
http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm

The image at the top of this entry is from Chris Jordan, a brilliant artist from Seattle. The top image is the entire art piece and the images below are closer and closer details of the art, until you can see that the image is composed of 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour. All of the plastic in the image was collected from the Pacific Ocean. This will help you visualize the size and impact of our out of control consumer culture.

To see other amazing works by Chris Jordan, check out his website:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Out of the Wilderness

By all accounts the Republicans are lost in the wilderness. Their misguided belief that it’s every man for himself created a politics of fear, driving them so far right they landed beyond the fringe of American thought. To paraphrase a Zen koan, if a Republican falls in the forest and there’s no one there to see it, does anyone care?

Well, I do, actually, which is ironic coming from a lifelong Democrat. As a Democrat, of course, I’m in 7th heaven with Obama at the helm of this country. I agree with him on pretty much everything, including the need for a vigorous debate about the issues we face at this critical time in history. The problem is there’s no opposition party to enliven the national dialogue. Obama even tried to emulate a Republican (Lincoln) by putting a “team of rivals” on his cabinet that would provide opposing viewpoints for all to consider, but there were no Republicans available with any ideas.

So now we, the Democrats, are basically talking to ourselves. I mean, if the views of Robert Rubin and Robert Reich form the outer edges of our debate on finance, for example, then we may not get the kind of bold new thinking we need to reinvent economics for the 21st century. I’m a big fan of Reich’s and he’s capable of pushing the idea envelope a long ways, but he, like all of us, would benefit from someone who could challenge his assumptions, point out blind spots and shine a light on areas he might not have considered. I don’t think Rubin, Larry Summers or even Paul Volcker (Democrats all) can do that effectively.

As a Democrat, I loved reading David Leonhardt’s interview with Obama in the Sunday NY Times Magazine. His clear understanding of the issues and ability to articulate his response was thrilling after 8 years of Bush idiocy, er, Presidency. But I missed having Obama tackle the really big questions, like how are we going to reintegrate nature into our economics to include the value of eco-systems services, which are currently an externality on balance sheets? This is, after all, at the heart of why we keep abusing the environment, because we are not accounting for the true costs of goods and services. And what about recalibrating our measure of success using something like the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) instead of simply GDP? The GPI measures the value of things like education and the durability of our infrastructure, 2 of the many things GDP doesn’t measure (more on this in my next blog).

Would conservatives push Obama to tackle these big questions, which I believe are part of the key to changing our thinking about the relationship between business and the environment? Is it possible they could argue for an even more rigorous approach than the Dems to solving the climate crisis?

Are you kidding?!?!?!?

Well, actually, they might. Not American conservatives, of course, but the new British brand of conservative thinking.

In the current issue of World Architecture magazine the Right Honourable John Gummer MP, a key member of the conservative party, is quoted as saying: “Architects should prepare themselves for a revolution the magnitude of which hasn’t been seen since the industrial revolution." Gummer, who would likely be in charge of the country’s planning if the conservatives are elected next year, believes that we should be delivering Zero Carbon buildings, now. “The environment can’t wait ten years,” he proclaims.

Gummer went on to say that “if zero carbon is mandatory, then the market will find a way to deliver the volume at a competitive price.” Talk about faith in the market! Gummer even came up with some IDEAS (!!!!!) about how the financing might work.

The Conservatives are investigating a radical restructuring of finance for buildings, where energy supply is as much an integral part of a building’s cost as interest on a mortgage.
Gummer said that they (the Conservatives) were negotiating with utilities to create a finance package that will allow building owners to pre-purchase energy at a reduced rate, possibly even linked to the building’s mortgage. The savings made on energy costs would be used to finance the energy saving improvements to the building.

As the Brits say, “brilliant!”

What’s going on here??? Could it be that a conservative is interested in conserving energy? What a concept!

Not that long ago the British conservatives were wandering in the wilderness just like the Republicans. Defeated by the liberal Labour party amidst sex scandals and economic collapse, for years they kept pushing the same old ideas and for years they kept losing. Finally, along came David Cameron, a young, media savvy conservative who understood the importance of the environment, especially to the next generation. He quickly came up with a new logo, a tree (see top of this article). He also recognized that we are all in this together, a key mindset difference from the Republicans.

So what if the Republicans took a cue from the British right and embraced the environment and a more collective mindset? Imagine how much progress we might make on climate change and reinventing the economy. And we might do it in a way that encouraged business to play a powerful part and maybe, just maybe, maintain a sense of fiscal conservancy as well.

So here’s a new bumper sticker for you: INVIGORATE THE DEBATE - REINVENT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

And here’s hoping the Republicans find their way out of the wilderness. Ironically, the best way for them to do it might be to recognize the value of the real wilderness and bio-mimic the British right.