10 Big Really Hard Things We Can Do to Save the Planet

[LongTomH]

Earth Day has come and gone - again. We all know we need to do more to really reduce 'carbon footprints.' We've done many of the 'light green' things like recycling and replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. So what remains to be done? An article at the Worldchanging.com website lists the big things that will make a difference. Please note that there is debate in many quarters as to whether Earth Day is really doing any good in reversing the downward trends in the environment.

But in general, Earth Day is still being used primarily to sell crap that won't make a difference. Our inboxes were still flooded with press announcements touting Earth Day solar bikinis; Earth Day buy-this-thing-and-we'll-plant-a-tree promotions; Earth Day specials on a greener SUV.

There are no simple steps worth caring about. We'll only head off disaster by taking steps -- together -- that are massive, societal and thorough. Most of what needs to be done involves political engagement, systems redesign, and cultural change. It can't be done in an afternoon and then forgotten about.

So screw the little things. Here are 10 big, difficult, world-changing concepts we can get behind.

1. Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
   
2. Stabilize the Bottom Billion (People)
   
3. Create A Globally Transparent Society
   
4. Be Prepared Globally
   
5. Empower Women
   
6. Enable a Future Forward Diet
   
7. Document All Life
   
8. Negotiate An Effective Climate Treaty
   
9. Build Bright Green Cities
   
10. Build No New Highways
    

For a full discussion of each issue and links to Worldchanging.com articles on each point, go to: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009774.html

Here's an interesting side issue: I followed a link from a link in the above article and found a fascinating interview with SF author Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson's science fiction contains themes of social justice and environmental 'sustainability'. I use quotes because Robinson himself prefers the term: 'permaculture' to 'sustainability.'

But if you think of yourself as terraforming Earth, and if you think about sustainability, then you can start thinking about permaculture and what permaculture really means. It’s not just sustainable agriculture, but a name for a certain type of history. Because the word sustainability is now code for: let’s make capitalism work over the long haul, without ever getting rid of the hierarchy between rich and poor and without establishing social justice.

Sustainable development, as well: that’s a term that’s been contaminated. It doesn’t even mean sustainable anymore. It means: let us continue to do what we’re doing, but somehow get away with it. By some magic waving of the hands, or some techno silver bullet, suddenly we can make it all right to continue in all our current habits. And yet it’s not just that our habits are destructive, they’re not even satisfying to the people who get to play in them. So there’s a stupidity involved, at the cultural level.

Robinson considers a possible 'alternate history' scenario where the Reagan Revolution never happened:

Well, at the end of the 1960s and through the 70s, what we thought – and this is particularly true in architecture and design terms – was: OK, given these new possibilities for new and different ways of being, how do we design it? What happens in architecture? What happens in urban design?

Well, at the end of the 1960s and through the 70s, what we thought – and this is particularly true in architecture and design terms – was: OK, given these new possibilities for new and different ways of being, how do we design it? What happens in architecture? What happens in urban design?

As an aside, during the '70s I was rather turned off by the Appropriate Technologies movement. I saw it as being technophobic and regressive, what is now being called 'Dark Green.' I think it's a positive development that many of the really useful ideas of the Appropriate Technologies movement are now resurfacing as part of the 'Bright Green' movement. According to Alex Steffen, one of the founders of the Bright Green movement:

What is bright green? In its simplest form, bright green environmentalism is a belief that sustainable innovation is the best path to lasting prosperity, and that any vision of sustainability which does not offer prosperity and well-being will not succeed. In short, it's the belief that for the future to be green, it must also be bright. Bright green environmentalism is a call to use innovation, design, urban revitalization and entrepreneurial zeal to transform the systems that support our lives.

Alex Steffen, Kim Stanley Robinson and others, including progressive futurists: Mike Treder, Doug Rushkoff and Jamais Cascio are creating a new, positive vision of the future which can include both social justice and sustainable development / permaculture (choose your term).

[keep_it_real]

1. The best thing we can do is STOP eating animal flesh

It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein.

# An American saves more global warming pollution by going vegan than by switching their car to a hybrid Prius.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/137737/13_breathtaking_effects_of_cutting_back_on_meat/

[DCKit]

2. But it's so hard!!!!

And it will cost too much (if you ignore all the green jobs, tax revenues, newly created wealth and money saved/not given to non-democratic countries).

K&R

[izquierdista]

3. Replant the Sahara

Five thousand years ago, the Sahara was a grassland with hippos and giraffes and lions. This is not something that man can restore, but it can be made more hospitable to life by using human ingenuity to improve the flora of the area. Heat and drought tolerant plants can be planted in washes and man-made rain catchments and man can help to make 6" of rain effectively 12" or 15". As more plants grow to maturity, they will cool the land and increase the precipitation until the area is no longer desert, but simply semi-arid. The result: more habitable land for a world with advancing oceans.