Nudging communities towards sustainability

Yesterday afternoon I was working from a local coffeeshop and chatting with the owner as I got my tea and settled in. It was typical small talk, for the most part, but we did spend some time on how food can kill a family budget. It's been in the back of my mind since that I'll put in the effort to make and bring lunch everyday, but I'm happy to spend $2 bucks on tea that can't cost more than a few cents to make.

I'm happy to do this because it supports a local business and I want to live in a place where local businesses thrive. I like being able to walk or bike places. I like being a regular. I also think it makes the community stronger, both socially and economically, to have locally owned businesses. A few people who think about long term community development can't change the landscape much by simply buying overpriced coffee at the local bookstore. But I don't think we can (or should) convince others to ban or boycott Borders and their ilk. A subtler, more workable approach is needed.

One of the themes that comes up repeatedly in attempts to address climate change, and with many approaches to all kinds of environmental challenges, is how to work environmental issues into economic models. Externalities is a word that comes up often. The idea is that there are costs associated with pollution that the polluter doesn't pay directly. (Keep in mind that I am NOT an economist. I don't even read the magazine.) If we could make most or all of that cost go back to the polluters via taxes or penalties, then pollution might drop via market pressures without having the government take a too heavy-handed approach.

There must be similar logic in community development. It's in the interest of the town to have more local business, but you can't just ban big box stores. Well, you can, but it a hotly debated idea. I'm sure there are good policies being developed out there for building strong community centric economies. But, once they've been identified, how do you get them implemented on a wide scale?

Another recent hot topic in politics is the nudge. Popularized in the book Nudge, the idea is that changing the default option is almost as effective as sweeping mandates with a lot less effort. You don't have to outlaw frito chili pie at the school cafeteria, just make the healthier choices easier and more obvious.

Maybe instead of trying to generalize local successes to statewide laws, maybe the best approach is to make it easier for municipalities to implement regulations appropriate to their situations. I'm not sure what for this would take and I also suspect that there are folks out there doing this already. I just haven't heard about it.

One of the things I'm picturing is a database of regulations and plans that have been implemented across the country and the world. It would make it easier for planners and city and town officials to apply these ideas in their own community. Maybe even include generalized versions of successful plans and regulations.

Curtailment

This book review over at Sustainablog got me thinking about ways the next century may play out. I got so lost in my thoughts, that I didn't finish the first paragraph of the review.

First of all, forget about global warming for now. Yes, it's real and we should address it, but it is just one of many reasons why there will be a lack of resources (by western standards) in the future. There are lots of ways this could play out, but if things don't change, there the bottom billion or two are in for some serious hurt. Meanwhile, those of us who helped cause the problem will have to cut back. The question in my mind is whether we can change our ways before anything really bad happens.

The Earth is a complex system of energy and resource cycles fueled mainly by the sun. If things get too out of balance, there will be a correction. Think famine and disease more than "The Day After Tomorrow." If it's not economically and politically feasible to preemptively change our ways, maybe we should try to more the global economy towards a system that will gracefully reach it's stable point rather than grossly over shoot it require a serious correction.

No Child Left Inside

http://www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_sub_actioncenter_federal_nclb_amendment

This proposed amendment to NCLB would provide grant money for get children outside to learn. This seems like a great goal to me and a decent way to push in that direction. In the current climate of hyper-testing, it seems to me that it would take a truly special teacher to get kids outside to learn if there isn't already some precedent at his/her school. Maybe the availability of these grants would help motivate schools and districts to set up programs for outdoor learning.

Blue is the new green? WTF?

Greenwashing (to use a loaded word) and global warming (as real and important as it is) were good to get the movement going, but are beginning to distract from the need for sustainability across the board, not just the carbon cycle

sustainability-is-not-a-color-sustainability-is-transparent/

100 mile diet for America!

In the not too distant past, energy conservation and renewable power sources were just the concern of tree huggers and "cocaine sniffing sierra club yuppies." I think it was 5 years ago, I first read something arguing that energy conservation should also be the concern of hawkish conservatives. This was the first time I saw the term "energy independence". Now, with the addition of religious groups who see humans as the stewards of God's creation, there is some momentum to take on climate change.

However, as I've complained before, global warming is just one of many bad things caused by unsustainable practices. The reckless burning of fossil fuels is just one of many bad things we are doing to the planet and ourselves in the name of short-term profit. There are very few regulations on what can be dumped into landfills and waste water. Nor are there enough controls on what goes into food and consumer goods. This is a problem both for the planet because chemicals and antibiotics that we are dumping both commercially and from our homes will do bad things to ecosystems. It's also bad for people, because there has been no testing for what these chemicals do to people in small doses. This is just one more of many things that is going to come down harder on those without the resources or education to speak up for themselves.

Anyway all this is why we decided earlier this week to try to reduce the amount of prepared and mass-produced food in our diet. It's not the 100 mile diet, but it's more small producers and locally grown stuff. Not long after we made this decision, it came out that something else was contaminated in China. While the tainted Chinese milk likely was not a terrorist act, it underscored to us just how easy it would be to sicken and kill a whole lot of people by putting something in the food supply. The chain is so long with mass produced food that it'd be pretty easy to do.

In addition to making me a little uneasy, it got me thinking that, like energy independence before it, food security will be the next formerly eco-friendly idea to get taken up by the right in the name of national security.