As people begin to freak out about $5 a gallon gas we must remember there are other options and that much of the rest of the world has been paying more for many years. Ask a friend in Europe how they’d feel about a five u.s. dollar gallon of gas and they’d likely jump with joy. Here’s a reminder about our country’s use of oil:
There are a few topics that Americans don’t like to talk about, they are for the most part topics I do like to talk and learn about; such as the failure of our prison system and our odd relationship with trash.
We have such a weird relationship to consumption and to trash. A friend who was visiting from Sweden this summer was talking about her country’s campaign to get people aware of wasting food. She was raised in America and is astonished with our relationship to food after living overseas so long. I have often thought if we could raise people’s awareness of not wasting food here we could resolve the problem of food insecurity that is a growing issue in America with the struggling economy.
Infographics always delight me and this one called Trashonomics illustrates some of our relationship with our garbage.
A documentary that will change your relationship with trash is called Waste Land From their website: ” Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT and COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) and co-directors João Jardim and Karen Harley have great access to the entire process and, in the end, offer stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.”
It is an excellent film.
As if this isn’t enough take a moment to listen to the Diane Rehm’s WAMU radio program talking frankly about hoarding . This will bring new insights to this phenomena and bend your thinking about what you do and don’t keep. Pass it on if you haven’t used it in the past year… This is a bit like “Scared Straight” for people who have a tendency of being a pack rat!
It was said that Halloween marked the day that the world population reached seven billion.
Many people I surveyed had no idea how to get their heads around that number and didn’t have any idea how many zeros that really was. We can comprehend ten, hundred, and thousand easily and routinely but then the numbers get to move into more zeros they are less familiar.
Population control is one of those taboo topics I have always been interested in, along with prison reform and end of life choice. There was an excellent New York Times opinion piece by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF this week called the “Birth Control Solution” urging us to look more realistically at controlling family size vs. listening to religious people many of whom have taken a vow of chastity.
If you are interested in exploring various countries and their birth rates here’s a link that will ring your bell.
If you would like to see an estimate where you fall in the population of the world based on your birthday give this a whirl.
Take a moment this week to talk about population by posing the question to your friends and family if they know how many zeros there are in a billion and use it as a starting point to discuss the world’s resources and the growing strains population puts on Mother Earth.
Kavita Ramdas is a powerful speaker, and was at the time of the talk the President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women who appears on the KQED radio show Forum. Listen and you will be impressed by her intelligent comments about women globally. During her tenure at the Global Fund for Women the fund’s assets have increased from $6 million to $21 million and their grant making has risen to $8 million a year to over 160 countries. The fund was founded with the belief that “…women’s human rights and dignity were essential to the advancement of global agendas for social, economic, and political change.” They believed that by “putting resources into the hands of grassroots women leaders, women would change the world ” (from their website).
Another Forum program that is worth a listen features Dr. Nadine Burke, who runs The Bayview Child Health Center, a clinic in San Francisco. She talks about the correlation between traumatic situations—known as Adverse Childhood Experiences and chronic health problems ranging from depression and obesity, to cancer and heart disease, in later life. Her work was featured in the New Yorker’s March 21, 2011 issue and her passion about her work is to be deeply admired.
For something totally different tune into Bob Edwards segment with Robin Nagle talking about her work as an anthropologist for the New York City Department of Sanitation since 2006. She hopes to create a Museum of Sanitation to bring to the public more awareness of all we throw in the trash and try to keep “out of sight out of mind.” She has said “garbage is very scary to us culturally, and it is also… one of the single most fascinating things you could ever study.” Her talk about trash will give you a new perspective on what you pitch and what can be seen from space. If this short interview makes you want to know more read Alex Carp‘s interview with her here.
A few beauties of Mother Nature
The National Geographic has put together a powerful short video about the planet’s population that is a terrific look at what we are facing as people keep having kids all over the world to accompany their printed article.
If you live in the northern hemisphere you think about the light, at this time of the year especially. The light is beginning to change and for those who are particularly light sensitive there is hope that winter will end and spring will come even if it is still cold.
This was an interesting visual representation of our Vitamin D needs done by David McCandless. Again I admit that I am a sucker for these visual displays of information as clever ways to convey important data.
Here’s Jane Brody’s take on it from the New York Times.
Okay, the holidays are over, and many are reeling from the sting of credit card bills, for the orgy that many Americans find themselves involved with, every December. Wisebread, reports, “According to Consumer Reports, shopping with credit cards during the holidays often leads to overspending by an average of 16%. This is part of the reason that the same Consumer Reports survey revealed that 13.6 million Americans were still paying off holiday purchases from 2009 in November of 2010.”
Lifehacker has an amazing info-graphic called “Holiday Misgivings: The Surprising Personal Economics Behind Holiday Gift-giving” that shows the gift valuation gap, the gift card valuation gap, and the gift gender gap. It’s a sobering look at the consuming that has become a part of every day life with little thinking of what all this consuming means for the planet, or how many people are living without work and with more food insecurity than ever before.
If, after digesting this graphic you think you’d like to reform your ways you might go to the library and look to borrow the book The Cheapskate Next Door by Jeff Yeager, a book about living below your means that is full of colorful tales and humor about frugality.
What a heartache to consider the number of people go without adequate nutrition in our country and the amount of food that is pitched into the landfills and compost bins daily. It has been reported by the New York Times that 27% of the food in America is wasted. Europeans are much more careful about food because they shop daily and have limited space in which to store it in their smaller refrigerators, things tend not to be misplaced.
Two articles that are worth reading from the New York Times are Tera Parker-Pope’s article “From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can” and Andrew Martin’s article ” One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal” written a few years past.
Just think of what we could do to stop hunger if we took even half of what we spent on wasted food and gave it instead to the local food pantry so all could eat?
Swiss Art in the Alps
I am a HUGE fan of well done visual display of information. These are a terrific way to show people data they might absorb less easily in written form. Here’s one that is a great look at Food Consumption in America.
Here’s another look at consumption from Erin Hanson featuring the difference between needs and wants in a chart that is called NEED TO WANT LESS that we could all take a moment to study more carefully. “When I was 6 I wanted a puppy…” If you want more check out some of her other work called One Minute Photoshop Thoughts—smart and sassy!
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