Paul Anastas: words of encouragement

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a small lunch for, and a larger-public lecture by, Professor Paul Anastas--Yale professor, 'father' of green chemistry, and currently the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development and Science Advisor to the EPA.

WOW!  This guy was positive.  Using wise quotes from Einstein (you're not going to solve a problem with the same thinking that created it...) and others, and excellent examples, he talked about why we have to break away from thinking about incremental improvements and focus more on truly transformative technological innovation.  Indeed, he kept saying that the best solution to a problem doesn't involve technology, it involves not using technology at all.  

For example, what's better:  a gas-powered lawn mower, a solar-powered lawn mower, an electric lawn mower, or a push mower?  Thinking only about energy use, you can develop arguments and ways to incrementally improve the efficiency of lawn mowers.  However, that's not the point. What if you planted grass that didn't require cutting because it didn't grow long blades.  No technology is required.  

Or consider phones.  Where should phone lines be?  How can they be made more efficient.  What about not using phone lines at all and have cell-phone towers. 

He talked in general terms about bio-mimicry and how many toxic industrial processes use heat, and dangerous chemicals to catalyze reactions, but nature builds things that are useful to us without the heat and toxic chemicals. These ideas are ripe for the pickin'.

He also talked broadly about the importance of systems thinking.  Despite our best intentions, if we're too focused on a single problem, we may cause more problems in the long-term.  We have to think about the entire system--the Earth's environment in this case.

The salience of transformative thinking was just hammered into me in a discussion I had after the talk.  

Have you seen those new 'green' plastic bottles...the ones that say they are made from natural products?  Turns out that they use plant products (which is as bad as running cars on plants because it takes food out of people's mouths) AND to make the plastics, many of the same toxic chemicals that are used to make regular plastics are used to make so-called 'vegetable' plastics.  UG.  We really need an alternative (recyclable bottles anyone?)!

Coral bleaching: living through a train wreck and being unable to stop it

Have you ever seen a train wreck happen? I’m seeing one right now and it’s terribly sad and a preview of the future. I’m currently teaching my field biology course on a remote marine lab on a Caye off Belize and we’re literally watching the coral bleach. 

Coral, as you might know, has a symbiotic relationship with algae. The colors that coral have result from their algae (called zoozanthellae in the jargon of coral folks). These zoozanthellae are very sensitive to temperature and coral ‘bleaching’ events occur when the zoozanthellae jettison their coral head; something they should not do (imagine the parachute scene from the Woody Allen film “Everything you wanted to know about sex but were too afraid to ask”; Google it if you have to!).

Bleaching is bad: the reef dies if it bleaches and can’t be recolonized by new zoozanthellae. There have been Caribbean-wide bleaching events in the past few decades and some of these have led to widespread destruction of coral reefs. I wonder if we’re about to experience a new one.

I’ve been in the water the past four days. It’s HOT here and the water is warming up. We’ve not had rain in three days and yesterday the water temperature (not just in shallow areas) was over 90°F. This is a magic temperature range because many of these zoozanthellae jettison their coral around this temperature. 

My colleague, a coral reef biologist, pointed out last night that if we didn’t get rain or a wind that would mix in the cold water, we should expect to see a lot of bleaching today. And, while we had a nice sea breeze last night, and the water temperature went down a bit (the air temperature feels like it’s over 100°F), this morning I was shocked to see bleaching coral. Coral heads that were a brilliant yellow yesterday morning are now white. A fan coral, that should be a brilliant purple, is now beached skeletal white.

It’s a compelling sight; made worse because we know what’s going to kill the reef (hot temperatures). We also know what’s going to cause widespread destruction of oceans (acidification). We know that these are a direct result of anthropogenic atmospheric carbon. We know that over-fishing (this will be the subject of another post) eliminates fish populations. We know, yet we continue along our path to a train wreck. Would be fascinating to watch if the consequences were not so profound.

Reefs protect land from storms. Reefs are where fish larvae grow up and thus are important to maintain fisheries. Reefs are going to be the source of new antibiotics that are needed since our current crop of antibiotics is becoming ineffective because of overuse and evolution. Reefs harbor incredible biodiversity; a reason alone for their protection.

Train wreck. Happening. Not very nice to see.

You ever seen a train wreck? Talk about it over dinner. Better yet, discuss ways that we can work together to stop it.

Gas expansion everywhere?

On a flight from Denver to Albuquerque, New Mexico, I looked out to see the Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado and the Creststone Needle...a 14,000' peak that I climbed a wonderful rock route a lifetime ago (my friends and I ended up spending the night on the summit and had a rather epic descent the next day when we got lost and had to rappel (and rappel, and rappel) down another ascent route).  The area is spectacularly beautiful and relatively uninhabited.  I was thrilled to see it from the air!

Thus, it was much to my surprise that I saw what looked like oil/gas exploration roads/drilling pads throughout the area.  In what looked like platted out cul-de-sacs carved into the dry earth, I think these are drill platforms seemingly organized in a systematic way through the landscape. 

Can anyone verify this?  

If they are, it's a wake-up call to our unsustainable lifestyle when our natural resource needs scar relatively pristine earth!

Julien Treasure on listening better

In this excellent TED talk, Julien Treasure tells us 5 ways to listen better; which I believe is the first step towards increasing our civility.  Watch and learn...

Organic, healthy, and humane animals

The Crested Butte Sunday farmer's market has several local ranchers selling free-range, organic, and humanely raised animals at very competitive prices.  I need to ask them about how they're slaughtered and butchered, but superficially, everything, including the pork, looks very well-raised and cared for.  One of them only sells at the farmer's market and directly from their farm.  The other does not sell to stores.  This is too bad.  At my local Whole Foods in LA, these products would cost at least twice the price.  Why?  Clearly, these small farmers are doing well by paying careful attention to their animals.  Why can't more producers do this?  

I'm eating little meat these days but will probably buy some of this to try it out and to support folks who are treating their animals and their land with respect.  I wish they shipped to LA.

Do Green Products Make Us Better People?

Here's the abstract of a recent paper published in the journal Psychological Science:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/21/4/494.short

Do Green Products Make Us Better People?
Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong

Consumer choices reflect not only price and quality preferences but also social and moral values, as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly products. Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we found that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, results showed that people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products. Together, our studies show that consumption is connected to social and ethical behaviors more broadly across domains than previously thought.

In a line, the authors found that people who bought green products were more likely to feel entitled to engage in self-interested behavior. Wow!

Discussion questions:  How do you feel after buying green products? More generally, do you behave in ways where you keep track of 'good' things to enable you to do 'bad' things?  (you know, like eat carrots all day so that you can have the cake at night...).  What are the implications of this finding for changing our consumption patterns?

Reaching out...

Charlie and I gave a book talk yesterday at UCLA for our book "The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It).  About 100 similarly-minded folks showed up.  It was fun.  It was educational for all (including us).  But the main problem was that similarly-minded folks were there--environmental education professionals and those who already care about environmental education.

To really have an effect enhancing civility, we will all need to make an effort to reach out and talk (and eat!) with folks we don't normally talk with.  Otherwise, we'll just continue preaching to the choir, and that's not going to change anything.

Discussion question: 

How can we meet folks with different perspectives?  How can we have civil conversations with them?  Please feel free to post comments!