The Lorax, selling SUV's!!!

Ok so the Lorax was, is, and always will be absolutely hands down my favorite book. You can imagine my excitement when I first heard it was going to be a new movie. The excitement didn't last long, however, when I found out that Danny Devito was playing my favorite character, and Tayler Swift and Zac Efron were costars. The movie cost 70,000,000 (yes that's millions) dollars to make. From what I hear that is a modest price for Hollywood today, but come on, put that money where it will matter.

The Lorax originally came out in 1971, and in '72 an animated TV special came out. I grew up singing along to the musical and still remember the words. It follows the book really well and I love it.

So after you read the book and watch the '72 version how can you not be appalled at the next clip.

Other than the Truffula Tree Certified Mazda CX-5 SUV that gets at best 32 mpg, good, but it's still gas. The Lorax movie has over 70 different product tie ins! 70!! Considering Seuss wrote the book when he was upset with over consumption in his area I think this movie effort is a disrespect to his name.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

 Catch! calls the Once-ler.
He lets something fall.
It's a Truffula Seed.
It's the last one of all!
You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds.
And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax
and all of his friends
may come back.

Earthlings

"Ignorance is the speciesist first line of defense, yet is easily breached by anyone with the time and determination to find out the truth."-Joaquin Phoenix "Earthlings"

Earthlings is a look at the mistreatment of animals. It is a horrific documentary filled with graphic content. I warn you, it is very graphic and will change you. It takes a look at the progression of hate, starting with racism, going to sexism and, finally the point of the film speciesism. The documentary uses the word Earthlings to describe any thing that lives on earth, we are all earthlings as are everything else that lives and breathes on this earth. So why do we discriminate against other species? Do other species have rights? Filmed largely on hidden cameras, Earthlings takes on the fur and leather market, the food industry, and pet trade.

Michael Pollan has said "It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal." I challenge you to at least watch the preview. And if that doesn't have an effect on you, watch the whole movie. End the hate.

Make the Connection. EARTHLINGS.com

Prince Charles On The Future of Food

With the best of intentions

Have you ever been working on something so hard that you forget why your doing it in the first place? I have. You focus on the means so much that you forget the ends, or your goal changes, or you find out your pursuing the wrong goal. I believe this happens to us all the time.

I heard a story about a guy who traveled to Tibet with the goal to climb the largest peaks in the world. Upon the journey he met cultures that had very high rates of blindness. He realized he needed to help these people and changed his goal. now he brings the gift of sight.

This is an example of how goals can change after we realize we are pursuing the wrong goal. Sometimes we do not realize we are pursuing the wrong goal. Take wealth for instance, if you are chasing wealth your whole life and leave no time for love, on your deathbed will you be able to say you chased the right goal? A great example of this scenario is the movie "The Bucket List" starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

Michael Pollan on ted.com

Bounded Rationality

Bounded rationality- The logic that leads to decisions or actions that make sense within one part of a system but are not reasonable within a broader context or when seen as part of a larger system.

In layman's terms bounded rationality is doing the best with what you got. It becomes very difficult to take into account all the externalities that comprise a system and be able to predict the waves that your decision will make. I especially like an example Donella Meadows used in her book. She referred to a fisherman overfishing his fishery and basically ruining his livelihood. Although it is ridiculous to think it was the one fisherman who caused the downfall of the fishery, it is externalities such as other fisherman's bounty that helped lead to the downfall. The fisherman did not have access to the information and thus was doing the best he knew how. Donella states "The bounded rationality of each actor in a system may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of a system as a a whole."

Backyard Chickens

On Saturday I had the privilege to attend a backyard chicken seminar on some beautiful property up Main Elk Creek. One of the aims of this seminar was to raise awareness for a City Hall meeting coming up on March 1 addressing the current Glenwood Springs ban on owning chickens in the city limits. From my research I have gathered that every other town in Garfield County allows residents to keep chickens. Even cities such as Denver and New York City allow backyard chickens.

So before getting into the reasons why we should allow backyard chickens, lets look at possible reasons they were banned in the first place. A large argument about keeping fowl in a city setting is that they are likely to attract predators to the area. A legitimate argument, except by those standards we should also ban cats being outside, or small dogs, and while we are at it lets ban dumpsters and fruit trees as these attract predators to our area as well. I can also see noise being a concern. Chickens do love to 'talk' and I can see how it might be annoying to a neighbor, however you can melt your neighbors heart with a dozen fresh eggs a week. Roosters are no doubt loud and with backyard chickens being raised for egg production there is no reason for having roosters and many cities don't allow roosters. 

The merits of having chickens are far more numerous than the pitfalls. First off eggs are a great source of protein, and anyone whom has a fresh egg with its deep yellow yolk can tell you it is far superior than your average supermarket variety. Chickens are a great disposal unit. With landfills filling up with food scraps it only makes sense to utilize biological methods for food disposal such as chickens and composting. Lastly, lets work on our local food production by encouraging locals to raise chickens. I believe Backyard Chickens will be a great step in the long term sustainability of Glenwood Springs. Come show your support on March 1 at City Hall!

School lunch stocks and flows

So here is my attempt to graph stocks and flows including feedback loops in a computer application. Once you start graphing and thinking about a system you can almost continue indefinitely. The parameters I used in this representation were starting with the food imported to a school until the kid has grown into an adult. Simplified, but enjoy.

For most humans to understand a concept we must be able to use many different approaches to reach the final "aha" moment that is understanding. The brain works as an interconnected system that links visual cues to auditory, taste, smell, and touch. For a long time scientists thought that the brain worked in  a "top down" fashion, much like a business. Information would go to a central unit and the unit would process and send out orders, much like a boss, or board, if you will. Through advanced technology scientists have now found that connections are everywhere. The connections don't act like a line of information going from one point to another, but a loop. The info may circle around the whole brain making connections that would seem wholly unlikely. In this instance the brain operates much more like the internet than a business.

Imagine trying to explain the internet or the connections in a brain to someone whom has never heard of them. An explanation would not suffice. In the image above we see a large array of connections. For the sake of simplicity and my own knowledge base lets use this graph to represent the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" project. The project basically states that anyone knows someone how knows someone and so on and so forth until six people down the line someone knows Kevin Bacon. It can really be changed to anyone, but you get the point. Enough words, though all the connections in the representation someone knows someone who knows you.  In probing the endless array of connections and loops on the internet I have found some great graphics that have shed light on otherwise hard to visualize concepts.

Here is the internet activity and connections throughout the world.

Web connectivity density

United States internet connections between cities.

The Windowsill Tomato

Back in October I read about a project taking place at the hope mine in Aspen. A restorative initiative that has brought life to an otherwise defunct pile of heavy metals. Biochar Solutions, out of Carbondale, seeded the area and spread a mixture of organic compost and biochar, the result was amazing, a lush carpet of greenery. Biochar is any carbonaceous material cooked down by the process of pyrolysis (high heat low oxygen). Essentially biochar is charcoal, not the bricks that have "surefire" grooves and are more glue and lighter fluid than anything else, but real charcoal. Digging deeper I found out that in parts of the rainforest anthropologists have found patches of very dark, rich earth in the otherwise nutrient lacking soil. They called this Terra Preta, or black earth. Terra Preta was the result of  indigenous tribes burning refuse and burying it while still smouldering.

With this new knowledge, and always eager to increase the productivity of my soil, I went to work on an experiment. I filled pots with soil from my yard. The first was my control group containing only soil. In the second I mixed in my own compost, and in the third I added compost and biochar (hardwood lump charcoal) and sowed a tomato seed in each pot and waited. the first and only one to sprout was the biochar/soil/compost pot. It grew at a steady rate and continued to look healthy. After toughing out the dog days of winter I got a flower, and on January 26, a small tomato!

I believe biochar helped me grow a tomato in the dead of winter because of its structure. Looking at a lump under a microscope will reveal thousands of nooks and crannies that act as apartment homes to beneficial bacteria and other microorganisms. I don't believe the biochar itself is adding the nutrients into the soil, but acting as a host for natural occurrences to enrich the soil. I also believe the biochar helped create porosity and break up the hard clay soil I have, much like vermiculite. I recommend trying some for yourself. For more info on biochar check out Biochar Solutions in Carbondale or ask Patrick Selby, who included its use in his foundations presentation.

Sustainability, A way for cultures and communities to live happy, fulfilled lives without
inhibiting future generations ability to do the same. This is a somewhat paraphrased interpretation of the Brundtland Commissions definition of sustainability. To myself sustainability is a philosophy that teaches how to live and prosper, not only for yourself, but for the world as a whole. My feeling toward sustainability is always changing, ever evolving, as I learn more. It seems sustainability was always on my mind, even before I had a word for it. I always wanted to preserve and protect.

"A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something"- Donella Meadows.

Systems are everywhere, and everything is a system. No matter how much you attempt to break it down.  The first time I really remember thinking about something as a system was when I was watching a gripping documentary about ants. I realized that it is not at all about the individual ant; the mandibles, the strength, the force of a sting, is nothing compared to the colony. An individual ant is as insignificant as a blood cell in our own body. Warrior ants are the immune system, fighting off attacks, worker ants are the digestive system, providing nutrients, and the queen is the brain. I realized something profound, something new that I had never even considered. Ants are a person too.

Systems thinking is a lens used to view the world in a non-linear fashion. All to often we have to analyze things in A+B=C form. In other words we have to follow a set pattern that will produce pretty, well manicured results. The problem is the natural world does not always produce well rounded results. Consider the Butterfly Effect, a butterfly flaps it wings in a Phoenix suburb, unbeknownst to the butterfly she produces a ripple that sets events into motion that causes a tsunami in Japan. System thinking is holistic approach to problems. A look at connections between parts, and goals of an organized, or seemingly unorganized mixture of data.

How then do we become sustainable? Is it possible for our society to analyze linear data sets and provide us with an answer or solution?  It is possible for the results to show us what the problems are? For example, the global climate is warming because of excess CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, is a very linear statement.  Not that linear problem solving is bad, here we were able to see the root of the problem, CO2. Now we must change to a systems perspective. The global climate is warming unless... The rest of the statement is not important, what is is that no longer are we stuck in the A+B=C model. Now we must explore options, generate solutions, think holistically and work toward a sustainable future.

UPDATE 2/6
I have, like most people had  natural aversion to holistic or systems thinking. My example is going out to eat. Whether it be a fast food joint or a reputable restaurant. I will intentionally block out all I know about the system. This is of course out of guilt. I know its bad for everything I care about including my health and the health of the world.
I am very aware of the system of water in the mountains. It is how I based my livelihood for years being a river rat and ski bum. I was in tune with the forecast days out and with what that meant for the snow-pack and sequentially the runoff.