Blogging from the Bog

   What started out as school project a few years ago has grown into an international effort of creativity, forward thinking, and co-operation among individuals and groups with a view to the future.  Not satisfied with the rhetoric of government, big business, or doomsday theorists these visionaries are proactively making a concerted effort to prepare their communities for the inevitable.  They are not passing judgement, they are not getting entangled in spurious debates or mudslinging, and they are not promising miracles.  They are creating Transition Towns.

   In 2005 Rob Hopkins was teaching a class in the world’s first two-year program of permaculture at a college in Kinsale, County Cork a seaside community on the southern coast of Ireland.  Permaculture, in theory and practice, is the idea of sustainable living and as part of his lecture series Hopkins showed the movie The End of Suburbia to his class.  At a time when the price of oil was still around the $35 per barrel stage the implications of peak oil were not lost on the students and a proposal was drafted designing the Transition Town concept.  The cleaner, greener, community based initiative was adopted by the Kinsale Town Council as proposed by student Louise Rooney and the project was underway.

   The Transition Town concept is becoming more and more relavent, as the price of oil is now $135 a barrel, and deals with how communities will adapt, adjust, and flourish despite being faced with declining natural resources, rising fuel and energy prices or shortages, and climate change.  There are currently 50 towns actively participating in this project and hundreds of others contemplating the idea of getting involved.  Is your town or city considering the prospect?  Check this list of communities around the globe.

   A quote from Rob Hopkins’ website reads, "We are communities, a society, a world in transition, and to do that we need a culture of transition, but also we need the tools for manifesting it."  Indeed we do Rob, indeed we do.

Rob

   In our globalised economy and lifestyle many things have changed here in Ireland.  The increase in discretionary income has allowed for more frequent travel, a larger variety of exotic food and beverages on our grocery shelves, and some changes in our consumption patterns.  One notable item features high on our new shopping list, wine, the Irish are now in love with the nectar of the vine. 

   Amid all the controversy with global warming, fuel prices, and a slumping world economy the French wine growers, Irish truckers, UK and Scottish fisherman, and others around Europe are reacting to rising costs, EU controls and dwindling profits by holding strikes, slow downs and riots.  Is this a sign of the times and a preview of what is to come?  Or, will we take a pro-active stance, adapt as humans are capable of, and rise to the challenges we face as we approach peak oil?

   In late July a ship will quietly leave a dock in France bound for Irish shores, it’s hold will contain 12,000 bottles of wine for the thirsty Irish market, and it will be using free fuel.  A three-masted schooner, the Kathleen & May, is scheduled to deliver her cargo to the Dublin port on the 25th of July.  Over one hundred years old, the sailing vessel is one of many operated by the Compagnie de Transport Maritime a la Voile, and according to company executives will save nearly 5 ounces of carbon emissions per bottle. 

   Will we again see horse drawn wagons and a return of the canal barges in Dublin?  We can only hope! 

   Nearly 40 years ago Alvin Toffler wrote a sociological discourse in the form of a book called Future Shock, and although I read it some time back with only casual interest, these two themes have stuck with me:  data overload, and too much change too soon.  What way will our lives, cultures, and societies deal with and change during this age of informational and technological onslaught?  What role does affluence, globalisation, and the internet play in the evolution of our species?

   We like to consider ourselves social creatures; but, how social are we becoming?  Where once we banded together in groups or clans who shared the tasks, joys, and disappointments of day to day life we have now become independent, isolated, and intolerant of others.  It is becoming evident by recent news that we cannot handle stress, financial pressures, or misfortune without acting out in violence and abuse or some other offensive/defensive manner.

   The family is of course the basic social group or clan and instead of building on that solid structure it seems to be diminishing in importance to this new human.  Are the successes of Social Networking sites the proof that there is a void in our need to belong? somewhere, anywhere?  I wonder.  Once we have acquired some wealth, or in the process of seeking it, we tend to leave those who have nurtured us, taught us, and shared our burdens.  Do we spend the rest of our lives in search of that sense of belonging? 

   A wealthy, well travelled, and high-tech populace is growing on all continents and within all cultures.  We can communicate instantaneously to all regions of the earth and physically travel to any point on the globe within 24 hours.  We may take these marvels for granted today; but, this is only a recent phenomenon in human history.  Toffler’s future is our present.  How will we change or adapt to handle these changes?  Euro Yank offers the theory that Eastern and Western cultures are fundamentally different in that the West focuses on the independence of man while the East is more concerned with the interdependence of man.  Will one culture surpass the other in it’s ability to adapt?  Or, will the cultures of the world become more homogenous and grow so much alike as to become indistinguishable from one another?

   What price will technology extract from the social, cultural, and emotional qualities of human nature?

   What is all the fuss about?  What is there to know about the Lisbon Treaty referendum?  The answer to this Euro-riddle is as plain as Irish stew!  And for all the eejits out there having a great auld chinwagging session on the pros and cons of our future economy, neutrality, or our small voice in the greater European scheme of things answer me this one question will ya?

   Why, if voting yes for this treaty will make the EU 27 a more democratic union, are they not allowing all citizens to vote in a democratic electoral process throughout the member States?  If this passes in June do you think they will ever allow us to vote on anything again?  Why should they?  For Heaven’s Sake people wake the feck up will ya?

   Only a flock of bloody sheep would vote yes for this shite.  Off ya go!

   View this video, posted by Jazz Biscuit, before you vote!

   The Stock Markets around the world are taking a hammering due to a lack of confidence in financial institutions.  ISEQ, the Irish stock exchange, was closed today for the holiday; but, the plummeting share prices in world markets have sent the traders back to their desks.  At 12:00pm, about the time the Dublin parade started, the ISEQ was down 500 points, just over 6% of it’s total value.

   Fear and greed are the motivating factors behind major movements on market prices and fear was instilled in investors after the Bear,  Stearns & Co. (NYSE: BSC) failure in the U.S. over the past few days.  Many who viewed the Northern Rock failure as an indicator are hinting that this second bank collapse is the forerunner of a domino effect.  The only confidence gained from President Bush’s speech over the weekend was that those who thought he was an economic eejit have full confidence that they were right.  Full of platitudes and empty of substance Bush’s speech, to the Economic Club of New York, and the prospect of bewildered leadership did nothing to drive these investment professionals back to the New York Stock Exchange to start buying again.

   Confusing the issue even further was the sudden cut in the discount rate announced on Sunday.  The private individuals and small investors who have had easy access to stock offerings, which has driven the average share prices unusually high in the past two decades, will be the worst hit as they are not as flexible as the shakers and movers of large portfolios.  Few are immune to the current financial panic and the largest group of victims will, of course, be the average Joe and Jane Soap’s who are depending on pension funds. 

   While stocks, housing prices, and pensions are losing their value, food, energy, and gold prices are skyrocketing.  Worldwide interest rates are out of balance and consumer spending is down.  Will it take a world recession/depression for us to figure out, "Where does the real, the true wealth, exist?"  

   The ongoing discussions concerning global warming, peak oil, and sustainability come to us in a variety of mediums and by a plethora of experts, many of whom cannot agree and some hold completely opposing views to one another.  They talk about carbon footprints, carbon credits, conservation, and the adverse effects of globalisation.  Food miles is a calculation of how much petroleum it takes to get Brazilian bananas or Spanish strawberries to your breakfast table.  We are inundated with information, opinions, and predictions, is there any way to make any sense of all this?  Who do we believe, who can we trust? 

   It is a good policy to try to get to the core, the essence, of a situation in order to find the truth.  With so much data available where can we begin?  Why not begin with yourself?  You are a bright and intelligent person.  If you were to avail yourself of a logical, systematic, and irrefutable method of divining the truth out of a myriad of conjecture and hyberbole you would have the power of discerning the data into useable material by which you could draw your own informed conclusions.  You do not need to be told by others if you think for yourself, believe in your decision making, and trust your instincts.

   Our energy usage, and our natural resources, and the concepts to conserve or sustain their availability is a hot political topic.  It is discussed daily in every country.  It was also important enough for the UN Secretary General to highlight the problems, that shortages can cause, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month.  He asserted that "conflicts over scarce supplies" were triggered in areas of the Middle East and Africa, and that it was his hope that water shortages in these regions could be eliminated by 2015.  Surprisingly enough he also touched on a subject of much controversy which is the fact that population growth is becoming a recognised detriment to sustainability.  Most criticism is directed at developing nations; but, in fact the un-checked population explosions in the developed countries are where the greatest problems lie.

   Professor Chris Ripley raised the debate in this article by Charles Glover in the Telegraph last summer.  He says that the most disturbing aspect of the debate on overpopulation, as a inhibiting factor on environmental issues, is the fact that no one is willing to talk about it.

   James, over at The Good Life, has 40 posts concerning overpopulation and the effects it has and will have on society.  Politicians are duplicitous in their discussions and uninformed in their opinions of the real nature of population growth.  The "zero population growth" concepts of the 70’s fell on deaf ears, and China’s "one-child" per family proclamation was condemned from every political pulpit in the world.  You will not see a politician tackling this issue with any conviction.  If you would like a pragmatic explanation of the fundamental issue at the heart of our resource requirements go to this site.  It is a series of videos in which Dr. Albert A. Bartlett explains the dilemma of population and energy.  Arm yourself with the innate, core facts of the situation and draw your own conclusions.

   Broadband has just arrived in the bog!  And I want to thank my good friend Maireid for sending me the link to Dr. Bartlett’s video, and although she sent it some time ago, I was only able to view it today. 

   It is estimated that 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by the year 2020, another prediction has the population of the planet approaching 10 billion, a 150% increase over today’s numbers, by the year 2050.  Today, we can all see that the unsustainable use of critical resources, ie. water, food, and energy, can no longer be taken for granted and that we will need changes in our behaviour, thinking, and practices to enable future generations some chance of survival. 

   Change will also be needed in the way we build and inhabit the cities of the future.  Food, clothing and shelter (the big three), employment, services and entertainment must be readily available and within easy reach of the future city citizen.  The success of these futuristic cities will be measured by the voluntary abandonment of the automobile, the efficient use of resources, waste management, and co-operation between the crowded individual and the needs of the masses.

   William McDonough designed the first solar powered house in Ireland in 1977 and was named Time magazines "Hero of the Planet" in 1999 for his ecological design concepts.  With three decades of imaginative thinking, creative architecture, and re-inventing the box (never mind thinking outside of it) behind him, McDonough’s team has recently come up with a "living" structure that will, according to them, do everything but replicate itself.  A mixed use building, the "Tower of Tomorrow" uses bio-mimicry, in that it will create oxygen, distill water, produce energy, change with the seasons and provide shelter for housing, work and entertainment! 

   Norman Foster, another architect, and his company Foster & Partners, are the creative geniuses behind the 6 million square metre walled city of Masdar, to be built in Abu Dhabi, that is a carbon neutral, zero waste, and an automobile free community.   Foster and McDonough will both unveil their projects next week at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.  This monumental event is being shunned by the Irish government.  Why is that?

   Dickson Despommier a microbiologist from Columbia University is ploughing ahead with his ideas of vertical farming.  In these cities of the future there will need to exist an easily accessible supply of food.  The Vertical Farm Project plans to do just that by building high rise gardens of Eden for the city dwellers to "grow locally" all their dietary needs.  A firm in the Netherlands, MVRDV, has envisioned a Pig City in the sky; but, if raising chickens for food in confined factories is causing a lot of drama at the moment I can’t imagine that pigs using elevators is going to catch on.  Maybe there is less meat in our future?  Things are looking up!

   Three things can happen when you do research into a subject for background material and substantiating information: one, you can discover that your thesis was way off track to start with and you learn something new, or two, you find the relevant data and go on to write a brilliant article, or three, you happen across something else in your investigations that is even more interesting than your original idea.  

   Initially, I had intended doing a piece on the causes and effects of binge drinking, considering the day that’s in it, and the possible relationship it has to substance abuse, boy racers, eating disorders, and other forms of addiction, risk-taking, and anti-social behaviour.  As binge drinking, binge borrowing, and binge whinging seem to be only a part of our new lust for over-the-top activities and thrill seeking, I wondered if there was an easy explanation, or something that linked these activities under one hypothesis.  There isn’t.

   Although Ireland is head of the class when it comes to binge drinking, and Sarah has a great post about the ladies getting into the action, this bingeing and all ’round impulsiveness, is a world-wide phenomenon.  From Boston to Bangkok to Balbriggan and back again this over-indulgent, spontaneous, novelty seeking behaviour is a cause for concern with health and social workers, educators, and law enforcement agencies.

   In my search for studies that may have been done to satisfy my curiousity, I found this article entitled "Impulsive behavior may be relic of hunter-gatherer past", in which the authors state, "Animals, I think, come with a hardwired rule that says, ‘Don’t look too far in the future’".  That made sense to me.  Impulsive behaviour inherited from our ancestors, and re-awakened by the "Live for Today" philosophy since the invention of the Atomic Bomb, can lead us to a "grab for the gusto" type personality.  Sure it could!

   When I looked at other research into Impulsive Control Disorders and Personality Disorders I read about some substance in the environment that I never heard of before: Bisphenol-A, or (BPA).  Damn!  This is the stuff they make plastic out of!  Apparently even low levels of this environmental estrogen has potentially harmful effects as it has endocrine disruptive compounds, EDC’s which can cause these problems.  These BPA’s have been in all our plastic products for the past 50 years!

   You can not avoid plastic in our world today, it is everywhere, our food is packaged in it, our water bottles are made from it, and the State of California published a list of manufacturers who use these BPA’s in the production of baby bottles!  Where are the Green’s when you need them?  There are substitute materials today that can be used instead of this poison; but, are there any label warnings, laws, bans or restrictions on the use of Bisphenol-A in plastics that come into contact with food?  I couldn’t find any! 

 Baby toys are a particular worry!

   If there hasn’t been a conspiracy going on in the house building industry these past few years then at least some evidence of collusion is becoming apparent.  There are too many faces looking at the plans and architectural drawings, too many architects, engineers, and tradesmen with their fingers in the pot, too many solicitors, auctioneers, and of course the developers, with a lot to gain, or lose, for the sorry excuse of the so-called "quality home" in Ireland today, and to have the finished product go unnoticed and unchallenged?  Remarkable!

   The developer hires an architect that will put as many dwellings on a piece of land as is feasible and still get planning permission.  The Planning Crowd cannot be scrutinizing the individual house drawings very carefully!  The developer next gets the cheapest builder he can find, who then subcontracts the work, where possible, to save himself even more money.  When it comes right down to it nobody knows what the lads with the tools are doing and as long as "progress" is being made, no one cares.  Progress is defined as speed and profit in the building industry, otherwise known as best practice.  Every shortcut, whether safe or not, is used to speed up the works, and put more money in the pockets of those involved, and there are no inspectors monitoring the workmanship along the way to check for potential hazards or structural integrity.

   The concept of square, level, and plumb is unheard of on the jobsite.  Each tradesman has to contend with the previous dodgey craftsman and has little or no time to correct those mistakes to leave his own work looking right.  "Leave it to the painter", they all say!  There are Building Regulations on the books, if any homeowner cares to check them out, and if you follow this link you can read for yourself that, "Building Regulations are set out by the government to ensure that each house built in Ireland is to a minimum standard…", and minimum is exactly what you get, not even mediocre, minimum!  But then again what else would you expect?

   More than 95% of what is in the Regulations gets covered up during the actual construction.  If you think the rigid insulation was put in between the cavity blocks with care think again.  Roof rafters and collar ties, floor joists (often too far apart which is unsafe), door and window frames, and all other woodwork is installed with a very high moisture content (wet), and will warp, bend, and twist.  You can see the effects in your own residence: ceiling and wall cracks, doors don’t shut properly or open fully, gaps between the skirting and walls are all evidence of the haste in which these structures are put up.  Not to mention exposed water pipes and electrical wiring, gaps at the wall on stair landings, mis-shapen architraves, and what kind of wood butchers put in the kitchen and bedroom presses? 

   Thomas and Deidre paid a lot of money for a house that will have to undergo major renovations, not because they want to, but because they have to.  From the faulty plumbing to the dodgey wiring, bring on the kangoes!  They can hear their neighbours bounding up the stairs and even the flushing of the toilet next door, when they are home that is, Thomas and Deidre have to work all the hours God sends in order to pay for the pleasure of this high maintainence nightmare.  They had hired an "engineer" to snag the property before they took possession, €600 worth, and he inspected absolutely no engineering of the structure, he couldn’t, it is all hidden in the walls and ceilings!  He spotted a few wall scratches and rough untreated wood under the windows boards and ran away to cash the cheque!  The builder claims best practice and won’t return their calls, he has no one competent enough to sort the mess, and besides the bank owns it now, Thomas and Deidre are just paying for it.  Thomas claims his name is an acronym for the plight of many: The Home Owner Must Always Suffer, Deidre of the Sorrows needs no further explanation.

   Most of the sloppy workmanship doesn’t lend itself to pictures very well; however two scary representations of dangerous wiring are included here.  Electric wiring and the proper installation thereof is critical considering it is potentially lethal, have a look see at the two pics and ask yourself  "Is this best practice?"

   The one on the left was an undercounter appliance installed before the house was purchased, on the right is the handywork of a RECI electrician who replaced a one year old faulty boiler, 3 years ago, and won’t come back to sort it out!