On the 9th February, there was a Post on Learning from Dogs about the flower industry. Here’s a small extract.
At flower farms in Ecuador and Colombia — the countries that export the most to the U.S. — two-thirds of the workers are women. These women are routinely subjected to harassment and even rape from their male supervisors. They suffer eye infections and miscarriages from consistent contact with dangerous pesticides.
In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, they’re routinely forced to work 80-hour weeks with no overtime pay. Attempts to form a union are met with opposition by police and armed forces.
Apparently some 40% of annual purchases of flowers are purchased for Valentine’s Day in the USA. Anyway, in today’s in-box is this lovely update from Change.org
Dear Paul,
We are blown away by the incredible impact Change.org members have made around the world by starting, joining, and winning dozens of meaningful campaigns over the past few weeks. So we wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you. And congratulations. And let’s keep fighting.
Here are a few of the top victories and successes we’ve had together:
Late last week, the largest florist in the world, 1-800-Flowers, responded to 54,000 Change.org members and agreed to begin selling Fair Trade flowers and insist on a strong code of conduct for all their suppliers to counteract the deplorable working conditions that thousands of female flower workers face in South America. They’ve promised to offer Fair Trade flowers in time for Mother’s Day, making 1-800-Flowers a leader in the industry. (Click here to write a thank you message on 1-800-Flowers’ Facebook wall.)
Nice one! The website Change.org can be found here.
The third chapter of Lester Brown‘s book, World on the Edge.
This pivotal book is being explore for you, dear reader, chapter by chapter. Chapter One set the background, Chapter Two looked at Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests, this next Chapter looks at the land itself.
Chapter Three, Eroding Soils and Expanding Deserts.
On March 20th, 2010 a huge and suffocating dust storm first affected 250 million people in Eastern China before moving on to
No sustenance here!
South Korea. It was described by the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) as the worst dust storm on record.
The thin layer of topsoil that covers the earth’s land surface is typically measured in inches and is the foundation of our civilization.
Journalist Stephen Leahy writes in Earth Island Journal that soil erosion is “the silent global crisis.” A gradual, unobserved process that has potentially catastrophic consequences if ignored for too long.
Today, roughly a third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil at an excessive rate.
Studies on soil erosion in the U.S. shows that for every inch of topsoil lost, wheat and corn crop yields declined by 6 percent.
A U.S. Embassy report entitled, “Desert Mergers and Acquisitions” describes satellite images showing two deserts in north-central China expanding and merging to form a single, larger desert overlapping Inner Mongolia and Gansu Provinces.
India, with scarcely 2 percent of the world’s land area, is struggling to support 17 percent of the world’s people and 18 percent of its cattle.
As countries lose their topsoil, they eventually lose the capacity to feed themselves.
Countries facing this problem include Lesotho, Haiti, Mongolia, and North Korea.
As this chapter concludes, “the health of the people cannot be separated from the health of the land itself.”
Human Activities
OK, another grim chapter covered in this series simply to underscore the grave seriousness that our beautiful planet faces if it is to continue to sustain all our peoples. Lester Brown says that now, not tomorrow or the next day, now is the time to change direction, to stop the wholesale destruction of the very environment that we all, yes ALL OF US, depend on for our existence. It has to be done radically and passionately.
But the book ultimately carries an extremely positive second half. That there is a Plan B that is viable, achievable and cost-effective, and that many countries are committed to making a life-saving difference. So while these posts carry some pretty grim messages, and will for a while, please remain hopeful and positive that you, and I, and all those around us, can make a difference once we know what to do.
Really tight on time at this moment (Sunday afternoon) so all I want to do is to lightly introduce this great thinker to those that haven’t come across him before.
Joseph Campbell died in 1987 but his influence continues to be strong and powerful, positively increasing year by year.
His works, his life and his messages are wonderfully promulgated by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Becoming a JCF Associate is free!
More on the way we are most likely treating Planet Earth.
At the start of the week the first of a shortish series of articles was published, reflecting my support of the book, World on the Edge. Here’s what I wrote then:
I have mentioned before the Earth Policy Institute and Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge. Details of the book are here.
At the time of writing this Post (10am US Mountain Time on the 4th Feb.) I have read through to the end of Chapter 5 of the book and will have it completed soon. It’s opening my eyes hugely!
I have decided over the next week or so to summarise each chapter, hoping that this encourages many readers of Learning from Dogs to reflect, go to the EPI website, buy the book or think about making a difference in any way that you can.
So today, I move on to the next chapter.
Chapter two, Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests.
The term ‘fossil aquifer’ demonstrated that not all aquifers are the same. Let me quote, “There are two sources of irrigation water: underground water and surface water. Most underground water comes from aquifers that are regularly replenished with rainfall; these can be pumped indefinitely as long as water extraction does not exceed recharge. But a distinct minority of aquifers are fossil aquifers – containing water put down eons ago. Since these do not recharge, irrigation ends whenever they are pumped dry.“
Saudi Arabia started drilling for water from their underground fossil aquifer when after the Arab oil-export in the 1970s, the Saudis realised that they were dependent on imported grain and set out to create self-sufficiency in grain by way of irrigation.
In January 2008 the Saudis announced that this huge aquifer was largely depleted!
From 2007 to 2010 the Saudi wheat harvest dropped from nearly 3 million tons to around 1 million tons.
The likelihood is that the last Saudi harvest will be around 2012.
One can’t imagine how the management of a fine and proud country such as Saudi Arabia could be so foolish! But slightly closer to home …..
In most of the leading U.S. irrigation states, the amount of irrigated area has peaked and begun to decline.
California, historically the irrigation leader, has seen irrigated areas fall from nearly 9 million acres in 1997 to an estimated 7.5 million acres in 2010, that’s a 16% drop! Why?
Aquifer depletion and diversion of water to fast-growing cities!
Then there’s Texas. Their irrigated area peaked in 1978 at 7 million acres, now down to 5 million acres, a loss of 29%, as the Ogallala fossil aquifer under the Texas panhandle becomes depleted.
Colorado has seen its irrigated are shrink by 15%
Arizona’s irrigated area is shrinking.
Florida’s irrigated area is shrinking.
Then there’s India. Then there’s Mexico. And on and on. I could quote so much more from this single chapter but – you get the message!
Here’s how the chapter ends.
Today more than half the world’s peoples live in countries with food bubbles. The question for each of these countries is not whether the bubble will burst, but when – and how the government will cope with it. [Read that last sentence again, folks. Ed]
Will governments be able to import grain to offset production losses? For some countries, the bursting of the bubble may well be catastrophic. For the world as a whole, the near-simultaneous bursting of several national food bubbles, as aquifers are depleted could create unmanageable food shortages.
This situation poses an imminent threat to food security and political stability. We have a choice to make. We can continue with over-pumping as usual and suffer the consequences. Or we can launch a worldwide effort to stabilise aquifers by raising water productivity – patterning the campaign on the highly successful effort to raise grainland productivity that was launched a half-century ago.
H’mmm. Tough reading.
Amazon Drought in 2005.
The above photograph was taken from this website; here’s an extract from the accompanying article.
Food inflation is here and it’s here to stay. We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs. These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.
This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation’s supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism. The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We’ve seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism.
But as I wrote in the previous article, “Be worried, be concerned but don’t panic – you and I, all of us, have the collective power to sort this all out.” Lester Brown’s book sets out some strong advice on the way forward.
This opened my eyes; thought I would share it with you.
I know that many of the several hundred readers of Learning from Dogs are not in the USA. But many are. Hence me deciding, after mulling it over, to publish in full the contents of an email that came in a short while ago from the organisation Change.
Here’s that email.
Dear Paul,
Valentine’s Day, which accounts for 40% of fresh flower sales annually, is fast approaching.
Not always a sweet smell.
If you’re planning to order a bouquet from 1-800-Flowers — the world’s largest florist — you should know where most of those flowers really come from.
At flower farms in Ecuador and Colombia — the countries that export the most to the U.S. — two-thirds of the workers are women. These women are routinely subjected to harassment and even rape from their male supervisors. They suffer eye infections and miscarriages from consistent contact with dangerous pesticides.
In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, they’re routinely forced to work 80-hour weeks with no overtime pay. Attempts to form a union are met with opposition by police and armed forces.
Many retailers — such as Whole Foods and Stop & Shop — have taken the important first step of offering Fair Trade flowers to consumers who want no part of these abuses. Fair Trade certified farms must adhere to strict standards for workers’ rights, which prevents the abuses described above.
1-800-Flowers is the largest florist in the world. Yet they offer no Fair Trade flowers at all.
1-800-Flowers uses a certifying agency called Florverde, which ensures that its flower farms measure up to certain environmental standards — this is a good thing. But Florverde has almost no labor standards: A farm can be certified even if it uses forced labor.Indeed, Florverde is owned by the Association of Colombian Flower Exporters, so it has a financial incentive to keep wages low and suppress workers’ rights.
This is the week before Valentine’s Day — more people will purchase flowers during the next seven days than any other week this year. This is our best opportunity to demand a promise from 1-800-Flowers to join its competitors in offering Fair Trade flowers. So after you sign the petition, please share this email widely and post on Facebook — do everything you can topressure 1-800-Flowers to show a little respect for the women who toil in unbearable circumstances. The women without whom they’d have no flowers to sell.
Click the link below to tell 1-800-Flowers to make a promise this Valentine’s Day to sell Fair Trade flowers:
Since this campaign began, the company has emailed to tell us that it will post more information on its website about the farms that supply their flowers. But this is a far cry from selling fair trade products — and we have much more to do to make sure workers are protected. This is the week to do it.
Thanks for taking action,
Patrick and the Change.org team
If you feel so minded to sign the petition, which can be done by people outside the USA, then that may be done here.
An interesting companion to the World on the Edge book
Regular readers of the Blog will know that yesterday an article was published, the first of a series, looking more closely at the book by Lester Brown of EPI called World on the Edge. That article followed on from this Post, Group Human Insanity, and yesterday’s Post, Total, Utter Madness, Pt 1.
Today, if you will forgive the emotional battering that the book and this film create, I want to draw your attention to a film that was produced in 2007, called What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire.
It was lent to us by John Hulburt, who lives in Payson, and holds many views that are close to the views of the founders of Learning from Dogs. John has offered to write the odd guest article for the Blog, which is fantastic.
Anyway, back to the film. Here are a couple of trailers.
A 2-minute trailer giving an overview of the film ..
and another one dipping into more detail.
And if you still want more, then here’s an interview of the two behind the film, Producer Sally Erickson and Writer/Director Tim Bennett. Twenty-seven minutes long but so what. Watch it!
We really do have so much to learn from dogs! (Before it’s too late!)
The way we are most likely treating Planet Earth is almost beyond comprehension.
I have mentioned before the Earth Policy Institute and Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge. Details of the book are here.
At the time of writing this Post (10am US Mountain Time on the 4th Feb.) I have read through to the end of Chapter 5 of the book and will have it completed soon. It’s opening my eyes hugely!
I have decided over the next week or so to summarise each chapter, hoping that this encourages many readers of Learning from Dogs to reflect, go to the EPI website, buy the book or think about making a difference in any way that you can.
Chapter One, On the Edge, sets the background:
Summer of 2010 sees record-high temperates in Moscow, Russia’s grain harvest shrank by 40 million tons (40%) to 60 million tons.
Record high temperatures in south-central Pakistan were recorded. Snow and glaciers in the Himalayas melted fast, 20 million Pakistanis were affected by the resultant flooding, 2,000 died, 6 million acres of crops damaged.
A 2002 study by Mathis Wackernagel concluded that, “humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. By 1999, global demand’s on the earth’s natural systems exceeded sustainable yields by 20 percent. Ongoing calculations show it at 50 percent in 2007. Stated otherwise, it would take 1.5 Earths to sustain our current consumption.” [my emphasis]
“No previous civilisation has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports. Nor will ours.”
Let’s turn to NOAA. A few salient points from there State of the Climate – Global Review for 2010.
For 2010, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature tied with 2005 as the warmest such period on record, at 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). 1998 is the third warmest year-to-date on record, at 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average.
The 2010 Northern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest year on record, at 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average. The 2010 Southern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the sixth warmest year on record, at 0.51°C (0.92°F) above the 20th century average.
The global land surface temperature for 2010 tied with 2005 as the second warmest on record, at 0.96°C (1.73°F) above the 20th century average. The warmest such period on record occurred in 2007, at 0.99°C (1.78°F) above the 20th century average.
2010 is becoming the year of the heatwave, with record temperatures set in 17 countries.
Record highs have occurred in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – the three nations at the centre of the eastern European heatwave which has lasted for more than three weeks – but also African, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries.
Temperatures in Moscow, which have been consistently 20C above normal, today fell to 31C (86F), and President Dmitry Medvedev cancelled a state of emergency in three out of seven Russian regions affected by forest fires.
Thousand of hectares of forest burned in the fires, killing 54 people and leaving thousands homeless. For days, Moscow was shrouded in smog, and environmentalists raised fears that the blaze could release radioactive particles from areas contaminated in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Wildfires have also swept through northern Portugal, killing two firefighters and destroying 18,000 hectares (44,500 acres) of forests and bushland since late July. Some 600 firefighters were today struggling to contain 29 separate fires.
But the extreme heat experienced in Europe would barely have registered in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Pakistan and Sudan, all of which have recorded temperatures of more than 47C (115F) since June. The number of record highs is itself a record – the previous record was for 14 new high temperatures in 2007.
The freak weather conditions, which have devastated crops and wildlife, are believed to have killed thousands of elderly people, especially in Russia and northern India. The 2003 European heatwave killed about 15,000 people.
Be worried, be concerned but don’t panic – you and I, all of us, have the collective power to sort this all out. More about this soon.
Mixed emotions about those other worlds out there.
In recent times, Learning from Dogs has been reflecting on the magic, and fragility, of the planet we all live on.
There was the photograph of the Earthrise that attracted quite a few comments. That was followed up by the amazing photograph of the Earth from Voyager 1 taken in 1990 from 3,762,136,324 miles away! Then the lovely poem from Sue.
So it was interesting to note my mixed emotions to a piece on the BBC News website yesterday. Here’s a flavour.
Worlds away
Astronomers have identified some 54 new planets where conditions may be suitable for life.
Five of the candidates are Earth-sized.
The announcement from the Kepler space telescope team brings the total number of exoplanet candidates they have identified to more than 1,200.
The data release also confirmed a unique sextet of planets around a single star and 170 further solar systems that include more than one planet circling far-flung stars.
Read the rest of the item here. (and there’s a fuller version on NetworkWorld)
So here are those mixed emotions.
Man has been, and still continues to be, wonderfully curious to the point of spending huge sums of money on projects that appear to do nothing more than satisfy that curiosity. (The (Kepler) mission‘s life-cycle cost is estimated at US$600 million, including funding for 3.5 years of operation, from here.) That’s a beautiful trait, in my humble opinion.
Homo Sapiens is a wonderfully innovative and creative species, as so wonderfully presented by Alan Alda on a recent PBS Programme called The Human Spark. (See the YouTube intro at the end of this Post.)
Look at all the inventions and incredible advances to our species that are all around us – including the PC I am using and the World Wide Web that is aiding this message!
For such an intelligent species as us, why is it that we are treating Planet Earth in such a suicidal manner through greed, pollution and over-consumption!
As was reported yesterday, we could be on the verge of total and utter chaos in terms of food. Then also yesterday was a small item about food prices reaching a new global record.
It always struck me as absurd to conclude that this planet is the only habitable planet in the universe – ‘Astronomers estimate there are 1021 stars in the universe. With a conservative estimate of three planets per star (some could have many more, some would have none at all) this puts the estimated number of planets into millions of billions.‘ From here.
So the data coming in from Kepler is truly astounding and, personally, underlines this era as a great time to be alive.
But there simply is no choice in that for decades ahead, if not centuries ahead, Planet Earth is all there is for us. So why do we do it so much harm!
Our civilisation is likely to go to the very limits of survivability before the message that the existing ‘model’ is broken is picked up by every major political party in the world. That is very, very scary to contemplate.
So it looks as though, soon, mankind will face the ultimate decision of all time. Give up and let the chaos overwhelm us all, or … or what? In other words millions of us will have to live with the consequences of our greed.
The ‘or what?’ can only be a faith that it will be OK.
A faith that mankind will use the power of dreams, imagination and energy to create a new future that will, at long last, be a new dawn of democratic and just, integrous existence.
And maybe, just maybe, that could be the Second Coming and maybe, just maybe, the world’s Churches and religions will be our saving grace.
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Matthew 24:36
Fascinating times – a Chinese proverb, ‘It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period.’
Finally, here’s that video of the series preview to The Human Spark.
A guest post from Dr John W Lewis. John and I have known each other for some years now, both of us sharing a group aircraft that was based in Exeter, SW England. His areas of interest and competence are described here. But these days when John and I chat about the world in general and nothing in particular we often come back to the topic of innovation. So bear that in mind as John muses on the rather gloomy nature of a recent post on Learning from Dogs.
John writes:
John Lewis
Having read the recent Post, Group Human Insanity, my first instinct is that I have nothing particular worthwhile to say that has not been said before. But, of course, the time to apply minds is exactly when the answers don’t readily come to mind, so I will continue!
In a way, it’s probably a case of applying the sentiment on the old wartime poster, “Keep calm and carry on!” or as Winston Churchill said, “I’f you’re going through hell, keep going!”.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to change, because we do. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to put a lot more effort into things that matter, because we do. But, as has been said before, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward, only looking backwards”. In other words, “it is very difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”.
Reading about this kind of thing in books, such as “Freakonomics” or “Drive” or “Switch” suggests that we don’t really understand the mechanism by which behavioural changes happen in populations, although some of the discoveries of Everett Rogers about the diffusion of innovations is relevant here. To refer to another book, there is probably going to be a lot of “Who moved my cheese?” hemming and hawing behaviour going on too.
All we really know is that when the environment (in the most general sense) is changing rapidly, populations are much better off if they are diverse in their characteristics and behaviour; also I believe (but am not sure) that it’s true to say that increased communication assists populations in adapting to changes in the environment.
So the most important thing to do is to let lots of different people do lots of different things in search of ways forward. If you like, we need to split up (within the multidimensional behavioural space in which we operate) into smaller groups to dodge the big boulders.
We need to communicate lots of information and lots of ways of interpreting and verifying not only the information itself, but also the operational implications of that information (which may be very different things). Hopefully this will reduce (but it will never eliminate) instances of mass movements (as in stampedes) based on partial information which misdirect substantial resources into activities that turn out to be dead ends.
If we don’t believe that there are any viable ways forward, then we might as well give up and just enjoy what’s left of the good times!
But if there are ways forward, then the way to find them is to have lots of people scouting ahead on lots of fronts and passing information around so that we maximise the chances of finding those ways forward, and having lots of other people striving to find ways to make use of that information and testing out those ways forward.
Whether this is all obvious, or not, I don’t know; but it probably is. One thing we do know is that telling people what to do is emphatically not going to work! Just look at some of the stories on the Breaking The Mould website.
Instead, we are better off when people are asking questions, gathering information and passing it around. I believe that if these behaviours are adopted in a population, as a result of ‘external’ pressures building up, then changes and innovations will inevitably occur, and this is about the best that we can do! Fortunately, I think that is what tends to happen anyway.
So, in a sense, as I referred to above: “Keep calm and carry on” (By the way, a Google search on that phrase unearths a variety of interesting stuff and variations such as “Get excited and make stuff”)
This is a real British passport application letter!!
Dear Minister,
I’m in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.
How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?
How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government?
How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.
Do you people do this by hand?
You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30-odd years. It’s on my health insurance card, my driver’s licence, on the last four passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother’s name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father’s name is Robert, and I’d be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!
I apologise Minister. I’m obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture.
Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to activate the Fifth Reich for God’s sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week’s well-earned rest away from all this crap.
Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You’d rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it’s really me on thegoddamn picture – you know… the one where we’re not allowed to smile in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!
Hey, you know why we can’t smile? ‘Cause we’re totally jacked off!
I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London . I have had security clearances which allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the first Gulf War and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am — you know, someone like my doctor… who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN…
Learning from Dogs 