The Greening of Gavin

Alive, Beautiful but Hurt

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I am talking about our home, Planet Earth.

Whilst looking after a sick Kim and Ben (both in bed with bad colds and chest infections), I have been reading a lot of great blogs and watching inspiring videos.

As a follow on from yesterday’s post about the consumer culture, I felt that I needed to follow it up with something powerful, and eye opening.  Well I found it.  This video was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

The description on YouTube states;

“This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless ‘consumers’ are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today.”

As I watched this, I found myself breathing in time with the planet, then in awe of its beauty, then angry at the mindless consumers, then sad at the loss of such inspiring people.  It ends on a low note, and then I reflected.

If a simple video can make a grown man smile, grin, frown, then sob, then it is worth watching!

The Irony of the Consumer Culture

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I pride myself in lowering consumption every single day.  So to my surprise along comes an email like this;

“Hi Gavin,

Love your work on The Greening of Gavin! And I wanted to personally invite you to be one of the first Advisors on ShopSquad, a free shopping advice website where shoppers and your readers can ask Advisors (i.e. you!) for advice.
If you recommend something that is purchased, from appliances to clothing to electronics to sporting goods, you get a percentage of the sale. You’re already sharing your expertise through your blog, so why not earn more money for it?
We think your readers would love the chance to get one-on-one advice from you, and ShopSquad is a great platform for you to monetize all your hard work. We’ve built several awesome tools for bloggers, including a referral program in which you can earn $5 for each of your readers who signs up.
Read our great press coverage or learn how ShopSquad works. When you’re ready, sign up free at www.shopsquad.com.
Feel free to ask me any questions: joycie.chen@shopsquad.com.
Thanks!”

Thanks Joycie!  Once upon a time, I would have ignored the email, but today it was just too good an opportunity to not pass comment on. 

So here goes.  Please dear readers, don’t be fooled by the simple, alluring, and siren like message above.  It is designed to appeal to your sense of greed and artificial desires and wants.  I will not be your shopping advisor, not now nor never in the future.

Joycie obviously loves my work (not), and having read my blog from start to finish (not) knows that I abhor the consumer culture and affluenza in its entirety.  So why in Gaia’s name did she send me this email?  To upset me?  Probably not, she and whatever marketing company she works for thinks I am a normal ‘consumer’!  ShopSquad sounds like just another marketing ploy to increase sales for some multinational selling tat that nobody needs, with a view to record profits and draining the planets finite resources!  Something that does not make me happy.  Sustainable living makes me happy.  Here is why.

The last five years whilst on our journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, we have never been happier. By discarding materialistic habits, and living a simpler life, we have found the bountiful happiness that eluded us for many, many years. It was in front of our faces all along. It was within us and all around us. It was in the joy of feeding the chickens every morning. It was in the gift from nature by watching seeds grow in to edible plants. It was in the conversations with family members at the table at dinner time and in the eating of home grown meals. Happiness was in paying down our credit cards, tripling our mortgage payments, and buying needs, not wants, with cash. It was in the beauty of the Sun, the Moon and the air that we breath. It was in the bees that pollinate my fruit and vegetables. It was just amazing. The old me couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Now my family and I can see everything and am truly happy. I give thanks for simple living and the lessons that it has taught me.

Joy and perceived happiness should never be associated with shopping.  ShopSquad be gone!

My Name Is Gavin and I Was An Addict

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Yes, you heard it correctly folks, I am a recovering carbon addict!  A bit of a shock I know, but I am working on reducing my addiction.  I am not the only one of these recovering carbon addicts, because it is not unusual to find many of them lurking here on this blog, reading these pages.  However, you may be surprised to learn that we have a major social issue right under our noses and that there are full blown carbon junkies all around us.  They might even be standing right next to you as you read this post.  Suffice to say, that if you can read this post, and are a user of the conveniences of modern 21st century life, then you are or were addicted to carbon at some stage of your life.

We burn it in our cars, make things with it, ingest it in our food, and generally use the stuff every minute of the day.  Unless you have totally removed yourself from ‘the grid’ or live in a yurt or cave, the unfortunate news is that you are a user!!!  There is a big downside to a planet full of carbon junkies.  The ramifications are events such as Climate Change, Fossil Fuel depletion, resource depletion, environmental damage, mass species extinction, to name a few.

So if we are all carbon junkies to varying degrees, who are the pushers?  For every addiction, there is a supplier of the goods that cause the addiction.  Well, I can think of a many, but I will just mention a few big, well established ones;

1.  Fossil Fuel pushers.  These shady characters lurk all over the globe.  They are the oil companies, coal companies and suppliers of natural gas that we all use.  They provide the raw materials for our addiction.  Some like Exxon-Mobil try and keep us hooked by stopping us from reducing our use by the use of dis-information campaigns, and others like BP are big on high risk operations with little thought for the consequences.

2.  Auto manufacturer pushers.  Some of these pushers make big petrol guzzling, hydrocarbon burning monsters that satisfy some legitimate needs, but mainly are used to further inflate the ego’s of heavily addicted carbon junkies.  They have been know to stifle competing, non carbon addictive modes of transportation.

3.  Advertising pushers.  All forms of advertising attempt to convince us to want new shiny things made with carbon or manufactured with the help of carbon based energy supplies.  Without these advertising gurus, we would not be so quick to get the violent urge to buy stuff that we don’t need and therefore satisfy our addition with a big hit of stuff.

4.  Economic pushers.  The modern economy is constructed in such away that it needs to grow at all costs or crash into recession.  When it hits a finite resource boundary, such as fossil fuels, growth becomes impossible in its current form.  By growing, we use energy, and most of human energy is generated by carbon laden ancient sunlight stored in fossil fuels.  The economy drives our addictive needs.

I could list more pushers like fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide companies that permeate our Industrial food complex.  I could list fast food companies who have transformed the way we eat and grow our food using these carbon derivatives.  I could list the real estate developers and the housing industry for giving little thought to the sustainability of suburbia.  You get the general idea by now.  However, just because I have pointed out a few obvious pushers, it doesn’t mean we are not partly to blame for being addicted ourselves.  Pushers don’t exist without junkies.

So if we are all addicted to carbon it is many forms, what can we do about it?  Well lets take the example of the three junkies that I met on the train the other day and turn the conversation on its head.  What if, instead of talking about methadone, they were actually articulating their carbon addiction.  This is how the conversation might have transpired;

First bloke, “How many tonnes of carbon are you on?”.
Chick, “55!”
Other bloke, “Shit, I am only on 40 tonnes!
First bloke, “Fuck, I am down to 30.  Where do you get your stuff?”
Chick, “Down at supermarket, see, I got some in my shopping trolley.”
First bloke, “You aught to go to rehab love, there is a free one in Fitzroy, for six weeks.”
Chick, “I need six fucking months mate!”

So as ‘First bloke’ said, and he really did hit the nail on the head, we all have to go into Carbon Rehab, just like any other addicted person would have to.  Whether it be self imposed or legislated by governments, it has to start right now.  Bleeding obvious, but just like an addict, very hard to give up for good.  Hey, I am no angel, I still use the stuff, albeit in much smaller quantities.

During my family’s journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, we have also found it hard to kick the habit, and to ween ourselves from carbon.  Our society is not geared up to go carbon cold turkey, even if we wanted to.  Like our family did, I suggest small reductions over time, tackling the easy and cheap methods first like energy efficiency, which will give you the biggest reduction in carbon usage for the least amount of cost.

Let all try to reduce our addiction, before it is forced upon us.  Peak Oil is looming and in the similar way that any addict gets withdrawal symptoms, we too will all suffer from a carbon shock if the current supply is taken away suddenly!  Anger and denial will be common place unless we take decisive steps now to kick the habit. 

So avoid the junkies if you can, and the road to being clean is a rocky one, however by all weening ourselves together, we might stand half a chance of survival on the other side of the peak.