Climate change in the National Business Review

I was in a cafe today and thought I'd peruse the NBR - The National Business Review -  dated 3rd May 2019.
I read on the front page an article saying that King Salmon are keen to see the Government do something about climate change because rising sea temperatures are affecting the survival of salmon in the Marlborough sounds.  I that article King Salmon chief executive Grant Rosewarne points out  the Government's lack of political will and how the company losing up to 800 tonnes of farmed salmon due to warming seas.
Bravo I thought - it is good to see businesses discussing how climate change is affecting them.

I turned a few more pages and read some quite interesting articles mostly about business as usual in many different spheres and then I came across this patronising article from Rodney Hide who clearly hasn't talked with any ecologists, biologists, physicists or climate scientists about our changing planet and if he has he just prefers to deny the science.

At a time when so may news outlets are not printing articles that so completely demonstrate a denial of climate change, perhaps we should be working on media outlets such as the NBR which purport to provide well reasoned and supported advice.
What are they doing and can we really trust ANYTHING that they publish if they are prepared to publish this kind of tripe? 

Mindfulness and what it has meant to me

A couple of decades ago I was invited to go on a 5 day meditation retreat which set me on an interesting and useful path. I learned that this kind of meditation (Vipassana or Insight meditation) was a way of studying the workings of my own wayward brain, which, I've learned, is like most other people's brains.

Our minds are amazing tools with a life of their own. They come up with the most inopportune thoughts seemingly for no reason.  But they also make useful connections and can be incredibly creative.  They can also focus and help us learn.  But this is not all they do. 

Anyone who has watched their own mind and its workings will know that it tends towards the negative:  It jumps to false conclusions, generates negative emotions and often leads us to actions that make situations worse.  We can, however, train ourselves to see things differently and to understand what is happening inside other human beings when they do things that trigger us (and often they intended no harm at all).

Mindfulness is a form of brain training in which we try to reinforce and use pathways that lead us to be kinder and happier rather than being controlled by brains that tend to focus on the negative and being driven by our deepest, unexplored fears.   Like all training, it takes time and when it comes to performance, we can have good days and bad days - sometimes being kind is easy while on others it is hard to remember to even try.  Despite that, training helps us to do things better more often and to notice it when we don't and see it for what it is.


I found it incredibly useful and have found that by understanding my own mind, I can understand much more about others.  It helps me recognise pain that is often disguised as aggression. And THAT means that when people are horrid and mean I don't have to take it personally.  That on its own has been and invaluable result of participating in practices that foster mindfulness. 

The Bystander Effect and Climate Change

As I listen to this video of Greta Thunberg doing a TED talk in Stokholm,  I"m reminded of a number of studies of human beings - some psychological and some anthropological that help explain why humans are doing very little to save themselves from the rather horrible consequences of climate change.  

 

It reminded me of a number of incidents in which people (usually women) were attacked and killed in front of bystanders without those bystanders doing anything to assist them.  Melissa Berkley outlines one of the incidents as follows and there are more documented here:

On October 24th, 2009, as many as 20 witnesses watched as a 15 year old girl was brutally assaulted and raped outside a homecoming dance in Richmond, CA. The viciousness of the attack was shocking, but what was even more shocking was the fact that so many people witnessed the attack and yet failed to intervene or call police. As one of the police officers involved in the case states, "what makes it even more disturbing is the presence of others. People came by, saw what was happening and failed to report it." Some of the bystanders reportedly even laughed and took photos of the assault with their cell phones.

 Psychologists have studied this and have learned that there are two factors which come into play that can mean people don't take any action in emergency situations.  These are termed "pluralistic ignorance" and "diffusion of responsibility" and they are part of the reason for a general lack of action on climate change.

Pluralistic ignorance is basically the idea that people understand situations by the way others are behaving around them and that tends to mean that if nobody registers concerned then the situation is generally read as a situation not to be concerned about.  In other words, if nobody acts, nobody acts.  In situations where nobody knows each other, if one person starts to act there is a high likelihood that others will join in and help.   
This is also complicated by our perceptions of the person who acts, if someone does.  If the person acting is part of an out group then they are also less likely to align themselves with that person.   At the moment, for example, a large part of the population figures it is just treehuggers that are making noise about climate change and they don't identify with treehuggers and so they are likely to interpret the situation differently and in a way that gives less credence to treehuggers. We all do this.  A scientist is unlikely to give as much credence to a UFO chaser than they are to another scientist for example in terms of working with them.  Likewise when people see climate scientists who say they are worried constantly flying round the world and taking few personal steps to change their own ways, people watching can read the situation as "not that important" too. 

This can be exacerbated by the diffusion of responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility means that we all think that someone else will do something about it.  As Greta points out here (and as I have heard many others pointing out), she figured that surely if our survival was threatened, we would be talking about nothing else.  Others have put it to me that surely if it were real the Government would be taking much greater steps to do something about it and since they are not doing much, then it can't be the issue that some are saying.   Diffusion of responsibility is the reason why leaks and potholes take a long time to get fixed.  Everyone sees them and everyone figures that someone will have rung the Council (but often nobody does)!  

Of course if nobody is acting because nobody is acting then unless someone steps up and takes on the responsbility of getting on with doing something about the situation, nobody else will.  Governments often need pushing.  Councillors and MPs can't argue a point strongly unless they can point to people with those opinions.  That's the way democracy works.  Governments seldom lead (although they can) because if they are too far ahead of people, they get voted out.  So often the reality is that Governments follow public opinion rather than lead.  
Since nobody acts people read the situation as "not that much of a worry" and the delusion continues.   Of course there area bunch of other social, cultural and political factors that come into this but the Bystander effect can help us understand why it might be important to be talking to people about climate change and talking about why you think it is a worry.  Every conversation, however hopeless it seems might actually be sowing a seed of change in someone's mind and if you are actually seen to be doing something to make changes, that can be even more powerful.

Wishbone in CCC facilties - why I am concerned!

I raised the problems that I have with Wishbone being leased the cafe in Te Hapua (the new Halswell Centre) and am chuffed to see that there has been some discussion of this in the local media (see Western News onP2 of Monday 15th February ).  This blog post is a bit of a response to that.

First, in essence  I am not singling Wishbone out and blaming them for what the CCC has done in awarding them the contract.  My main concern is that the Christchurch City Council who, on one hand, spend money to support local economic development, waste minimisation and action to prevent carbon pollution and with the other hand, have awarded a lease that undermines all of these things.   It simply does not make sense! 

Despite this I am concerned to avoid using Wishbone for the same reasons I think the CCC should not have leased the café to them. If a local business had the same set of practices, I would not buy from them either!

Not Supporting the Local Economy

Wishbone say they hire 2 full time local people – what they do not say is that this would be considerably more if the café were owned locally and the food were bought and prepared in Christchurch.  Instead of paying people in Christchurch, when we buy from Wishbone, we are paying bakers, chefs, vegetable growers,  transport people, accountants and marketers etc. from Wellington (when we could be paying people in Christchurch for all of these things).    

If the business were locally owned and operated, there would be more jobs, and more of the money we spend would be respent in Christchurch instead of in Wellington or further afield.  Naturally this would be better for Christchurch people.

How money circulates in the local economy when you spend in a local business

Carbon Footprint

Because Wishbone makes everything in Wellington, the food is flown down to Christchurch, so the carbon footprint of that food is considerably higher than it would be if it were made in Christchurch.  Climate change is happening.  We need to be questioning the idea of flying food around the country (as they also do now in our hospital system, which I also regard as appalling in this day and age).

Waste Implications

They say that their packaging is recyclable, however is it actually being recycled?  if so how?  Given that plastics need to be clean of food contamination and that CCC recycling processes cannot easily sort a lot of the wrapping on Wishbone products, it seems unlikely that any recycling is actually happening.   I notice also that in the article, they don't say it is recycled - only that is is recyclable. 

I understand there is little we can do about Wishbone being in our local community centre, however there is quite a bit we can do about any future leases by getting the CCC to change their procurement processes.  

Email your local community board members and councillors (the formula for CCC email addresses is firstname.surname@ccc.govt.nz and copy in info@ccc.govt.nz).

Ask them to review their policy around how tenders are sought, the tendering process and how leases are awarded. The process needs to attract more applications from local businesses, should allow businesses with a history in the facility to retender if a new applicant has offered a very different amount, should work in partnership with communities who use the café, and include strong consideration of environmental and local economic effects.

Money & Community

I heard an interesting group of speakers last week, who really got me thinking about how we all understand and work with money (or the lack of it!). 

Allen Cookson, an ecological economist, noted that money has been flowing out of NZ faster than it flows in for many years – decades, even.  I was surprised to see that this is not because of a trade imbalance, but because most of our banks are overseas-owned, and they effectively siphon large amounts of money out of the country every year. 

Every time someone in New Zealand takes out a loan, like a mortgage or putting something on a credit card, the bank credits our accounts mostly with money they do not necessarily have so we can pass it on to the person selling.  The interest we all pay on our debt is largely taken out of New Zealand as bank profit.  We have a high level of this kind of debt and this means that each year we lose money to the countries in which the banks choose to report their profit in a classic trickle up pattern

Yes.  Trickle up.  Contrary to what we keep being told, I’ve not seen any examples of money trickling down without the help of well-constructed tax systems. Mostly it trickles up – mainly because those with money make money by investing it in things that give them more money back than what they invested).

This means a few things. 

1. Interest payments cost New Zealand heaps, and as long as the system stays the way it is, and we keep doing as we’ve always done, we will never be able to clear our debt.  From what I’ve read, this is one of the reasons why we are all working so much harder now, but not getting ahead.  It is also part of the reason why there is an ever-increasing income gap. 
2.  We need to look for ways that we can manage our debt better so that money stays within New Zealand for longer and is available for people to use and spend here.   
3. Attracting overseas investment may not be as good for us as our government would like us to think.  In the short term, it may bring money into the country, but in the longer term, we are going to be sending that money back overseas to the investor and paying interest to them as well.   
4. Getting a loan from a New Zealand-owned bank (Kiwibank, TSB, SBS and the Cooperative banks are the only ones I know of) is better than getting one from the overseas-owned banks.  

This just reinforces how our money system is not just weird but is not good for our long term wellbeing either.

The speakers also talked about ways to stop this trickle up effect and to keep money in local economies.  There are great ideas out there, all of which are already in use or developing around Christchurch.  I'm going to have a go at explaining them in subsequent blogs.

 

Money is weird when you start looking at it closely

Having recently started work at the Addington Timebank I've been having lots of conversations about trading and money amongst other things, and I've concluded that money is not the straightforward means of exchange that we take it to be.    

Looking at what has been going on in Greece, I can see there are huge problems when a financial system collapses.  But, like Charles Eisenstein, in Sacred Economics,  I wonder, why do things grind to a halt when there is a financial crash and banks close?  

Banks don’t do any real work - they simply shuffle money around and, make money out of nothing (more about this another time!).    At the same time, farmers and gardeners are still growing food. We still have people who can cook, care, cure, build, clean, organise, entertain and all the other things that people need.  Surely it is a little odd that we need the blessing of a bank to make this continue.  

To take the odd nature of it even further most "money" as it is used today is a bunch of 0s and 1s recorded on computers, and doesn’t actually exist in any other form. When you take time to stand back and look at all this, it is clear that our real assets are our own skills, connections and communities, along with the ecological systems that provide us with the things we need to survive and thrive. 

This is one of the premises of the Timebanking idea that was first developed by Edgar Cahn.  Joining a timebank such as the Addington Timebank in Christchurch is one way  to learn about the many skills and abilities that people around us  have.  It introduces us to the idea of a local currency (time credits) and helps use imagine how we might survive in a world without money.

Timebanks also provides us with a way to imagine a world without banks and financiers, who simply make money out of money and who at present are creaming it because we've forgotten how to imagine a world that does not rely on them. 

Climate change & feeling crazy: some personal reflections

A few years ago, I wanted to believe that my life and the lives of people around me would go on the way they have up until now. And I'm still tempted to do that. It looks easier!  In the short term it IS easier.
The trouble is that I realised my mind had to work hard to manage this disconnect.  There I was talking about the science of climate change, of mass extinctions, of unsustainable lifestyles on the one hand, but continuing to get into planes, to drive, to eat and to live what I recognised logically was a completely unsustainable life without really thinking about what I was doing.

I tried out a lot of justifications and I'm still tempted to use them sometimes.  These include things like:

I can't really make a difference as one person, so why try?
I'm doing so much in other parts of my life that I deserve to have some fun sometimes, or
I'm travelling for work, so this doesn't really count as my personal consumption. 


The part of me that keeps looking for ways out has also tried these approaches:   


Well,  nobody else is doing anything, so I may as well enjoy myself while I can,
They'll all think I"m crazy,
Maybe this is not real and I might be completely wrong because nobody else seems worried, or

I don't want to be THAT person (the one that rants on incessantly and makes life uncomfortable for everyone).

On top of this, I sit in on a lot of conversations about people's fantastic trips to amazing places where my mind tells me that I'm just plain boring.


But then I think about the children I know whose lives might be very difficult, or worse, perhaps even very short.  I think about the people I love and I don't want to see them suffering.  And that makes me want to do everything I can to make whatever difference I can, to the best of my ability. 

When I do look at it squarely, I see that if we could pull out of the mire of our foolish busyness, and work together build a future (any future!), it would be possible to effect the change we need, and to have good, happy lives as well.  And yet, I see a lot of good people turning their heads away from the truth of what this really needs because the path to disaster takes less attention, thought and effort.