There's more to living than being alive!

Continuing on with the one life to live theme, are you really living your life right now or are you just drifting through it with a few little moments of interest popping up every now and then, appreciated and enjoyed, but unbidden and unplanned?

We all know that trees and grass are alive, and very intricate and amazing things they are too. All things that are alive are complex and incredible and awe-inspiring, and should be treated with the greatest of respect for no other reason than they are living things, right?

But would you say they are ‘living’ in the sense that I mean it here. Living as in actually consciously going out and taking a deep breath, looking around and deciding to really truly live their life? Forge ahead, make mistakes, pick themselves up and keep going towards some personal purpose that is has a meaning to them as individual and unique as yours should to you and mine does to me? Well, when you think of it like that, the answer is a resounding no!

Living in that sense of the word requires a conscious effort, a sustained awareness that every moment you do something wasteful or pointless is a moment you will never get back. Living consciously like that is scary, and it requires great inner strength, because we are conditioned from birth to have our lives mapped out for us by a cultural system of how we should live our lives here in the good old Western world. Our system of ‘living’ (or culture I guess?) has been taken over to a large extent by things that are totally external to what has been proven time and again to make your rather short and insignificant time on this rock pleasant, if not enjoyable.

Living consciously requires not only inner strength but great courage. Courage to actually think about what you are doing and why.  Let’s not mess about – it’s a hard thing to do! But when you do, and you really live with the courage of your convictions (integrity in other words), that is when the people who are too timid to get off the merry go round for a minute look on in awe and say ‘Wow, that person is really living their own life. I wish I could do that…”.

So, are you going to think about what is really important to you, or are you going to keep going with the herd? Everyone else is going a particular direction, so it must be the right way to go, right? Hmmm, innately I suspect you are smarter than that….but be warned, once you take the blinkers off, you will never be able to put them back on, which may end up being a problem for you, because the world will seem like a different place.

That guy in the expensive car at the traffic lights will not impress you anymore, because you will realise that it is all based on the idea that you will be impressed because that is just the way it is. And it isn’t. It isn’t because there will always be a more expensive car, or a fancier suit, or a more expensive whiz bang watch.

So who really cares? Surely you know that o
nce you play that game, you will never ever win, because that system is designed just to keep you playing.

So here's a little experiment for you. 

After you have read this, make a conscious decision to mentally get off the merry go round. Just for today. Take those carousel pony blinkers off and then pose this question to yourself “I know that I am alive…but have I been living?”. And good luck!

I hate to state the obvious, but...

We have one life to live and one planet to live it on

It would be nice to be a really religious person, or a Buddhist, and truly believe that we get another shot at it all, but unfortunately that just isn’t the case.

We all get dealt the same deal; we have one life to live and only one planet to live it on.

All of us.

Me, you and the richest and the poorest of us all.

Zoom! What was that? That was your life, mate, and you don’t get another.

So what are you going to do with it? Sit around thinking about what you might do one day? Making plans that you know won’t ever happen? Worrying about things that you absolutely positively can’t do anything about and cannot ever influence?

Every time the sun goes down on another day, that is one more day you will never get back.

Ever.

What did you do yesterday before the sun set that made you proud to be you living your one short life? Anything? Nothing?

And what about the planet that we all share? And when I say all, I mean in a totally global living thing kind of way. Hello trees and flowers, and all that.

What have you done for the planet today?

It gives us everything that we eat, wear, read, see, smell, everything. Have you stopped to think about it at all or are you too busy wasting the one life you have doing stupid, pointless things to give it a second thought? Every bit of food you ate yesterday or are going to eat today came from this planet of ours. Billions of years in the evolutionary making to get to this point of being able to grow and harvest and eat.

Did you think about that or did you just shove some really unhealthy garbage in your face without a second thought?

You can do things that will help you live a bit longer and be healthier, or you can do things that will make you tired and sick and live a short pointless life. But you know that don’t you? Nothing new here is there?

So, you have one life to lead, and one planet to live it on.

Get on with it.

A farm is not a factory, and a factory is never a farm

We sing a song about eggs in my house, usually on a Sunday morning when we are cooking what we call a nosh-up – a big family cooked brekky with all the trimmings. The catchy little number is from a kids show called Play School, and the words that ring around the kitchen go something like:

They’re round all around and they’re bigger at the bottom. They’re smaller at the top, and we’re glad we’ve got’em, and they’re egg shaped, ‘cause they’re eggs! Things with wings, and fins and legs, they lay eggs…

except the eggs that we are dealing with are only from the things with wings, and it is getting harder and harder to feel glad about it.

The humble egg. Pariah of the 1970’s, back in vogue in a big way today - especially the free range organic feel good variety in the environmentally friendly packaging.

You know the ones, happy healthy chicken sitting atop a red tractor or standing in a field of green, blue sky, sun shining, glossy feathers, and pointy beak. The brands that euphemistically pop words into their name like ‘farm’ and ‘happy’ and ‘family’….if you have read this blog before, you’ll know where this is going….but let us first take a look at what this is all about.

In Australia, the following classifications are supposed to attach to commercially sold eggs so you, in theory at least, know what you are spending your hard earned on:

CAGE

These birds are continuously housed in cages in a shed, with a minimum ‘floor’ space of 550 sq cm per bird - ‘floor’ meaning the bottom of a wire cage. The space is about a sheet of A4 paper. Beak-trimming is permitted because the birds are so jammed they can peck each other, leading to outbreaks of cannibalism. Beak trimming is done when the chickens are newly hatched and without the use of an anesthetic.

They don’t mess about on the packaging and accept that you understand they are the cheapest eggs for a reason.

BARN

The birds are continuously housed indoors but free to ‘roam’ within the shed, which may have several levels. Stocking capacity not to exceed 14 birds a square metre, or 715 sq cm per bird – what an improvement on the cage ones. Again, beak-trimming is permitted.

Mind you, I have an image in my head of what a barn looks like, and it is a big red timber thing in the American mid-west. Not a huge steel shed with 20,000 birds jammed in, huge fans at either end and electric lighting to keep’em laying.

FREE RANGE (Egg Corporation and Primary Industries standing committee - Australia)

These ones are housed in sheds with access to an outdoor range. The stocking capacity in the shed is the same as in a barn - not to exceed 14 birds a square metre - with no more that 1500 birds a hectare, and yep, you guessed it, beak-trimming permitted.

Access in this case means that the chickens could go outside if they understood what that meant, but by the time the access is granted, they are pretty well used to getting food and water from the machines that pump it out, and, well, why would you go outside? Through a hole in the wall?

FREE RANGE (Free Range Egg and Poultry Association of Australia - FREPAA)

These lucky birds have unrestricted access to free-range run during daylight hours, and the stocking capacity within the housing shed is not to exceed seven birds a sq m. (about three sheets of A4) with a maximum of 750 birds a hectare (although the Egg Corporation would like this to be increased to 20,000 birds a hectare! Nice one, Egg Corp). Beak-trimming is prohibited, as deemed unnecessary if above housing conditions are adhered to, that is, the birds aren’t so jammed that they get aggressive.

OK, they are the definitions of what you might buy, but it seems that it is still a case of caveat emptor when it comes to the conscious consumption of free-range eggs.

The main reason for this wonderful state of affairs is that there is no legally enforceable definition of the term ‘free range’ in Australia. The FREPAA code of practice outlined above is just that, an unenforceable code of practice. In fact, it has been suggested that the increase in demand for free range eggs, and the subsequent increase in their availability on our supermarket shelves simply can’t be matched with any increases in free range producers, free range chickens, or indeed, and logically free range eggs! Great isn’t it? You can call your eggs free range to tap the market, and to hell with the consumer. Let the market decide indeed!

So, over the Christmas break, this little conscious consumer and his little conscious consumer elves will be turning the abandoned cubby in the corner of the backyard into (can you guess?!) our own little free range egg facility. We will feed them our scraps, let them out to clean up the bugs in the garden, use their poo and old straw on the veggie patch, and wake up to inquisitive happy clucks of a couple of Isa Browns.

All on our little block, all five kilometers from the CBD and all organic free-range and all because we choose to.

Then when we sing and dance around the kitchen in our pj’s on a nosh-up Sunday morning, we can be as glad as we like that we’ve got’em, because the round all around little numbers in the pan will be as free range as you can get. Conscious consumption at its most basic!

Now…..I wonder what would our local Council guys would say about us getting a pig….

This issue has been recently discussed in the mainstream Australian media at http://www.theage.com.au/national/free-to-roam--on-a4-sheet-20111205-1ofl0.html. The result of the Federal Court case can be seen here http://www.theage.com.au/environment/animals/100k-fine-over-freetoroam-claim-20120123-1qd6y.html with the ACCC winning the case against the misleading term 'free to roam'. Go the ACCC! 

To quote a global game changer - "Just Do It"

Major shifts in consumption that have been successful include the removal of lead from petrol, the banning of CFCs in aerosols, the regulation of the use of DDT and other super toxic pesticides, labelling of foods to show use by dates, added chemicals, flavours and preservatives and reducing rates of smoking while raising the acceptance that smoking greatly increases the risk of certain cancers.

What do all of these have in common?

Well for starters, they all had the backing of the scientific community as being very important for the long term health of people and the environment in which we have to live. Links were made, the science developed, was peer reviewed and accepted as more likely than not and acted on.

Next, none of these changes really impacted on big oil, coal mining or the notion that economic growth should be the driving imperative of every single person on the planet.

The problem now is that the latest scientifically backed peer-reviewed actions that need to happen to improve the lot of us all into the future are aimed squarely at the really big players in the world markets – big oil and mining – and they don’t like it. It is also the case that many people are finally starting to question the economic growth model that is fucking up every little nook and cranny on the planet and the high priests of endless growth really don’t like that!

In the same way that the makers of the carcinogenic pesticides that were destroying the farmland they were applied to for decades to come fought the science with everything they could muster (look at some of the outrageous claims made against Rachel Carson after her book Silent Spring suggested the need for urgent investigation into the dangers of certain pesticides), and big tobacco questioned the links between tobacco smoking and cancer right up to the bitter end, the big mining interests here and abroad will fund the pseudo-science of denial in relation to anthropogenic climate change and will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo for as long as they can.

You see, the difference now is that the fight is not about taking the lead out of petrol, or listing additives in food so as to increase consumer choices, or taking a cautious approach to pesticide use. These things, and the other successful campaigns above, did not attempt to shut an industry down. They simply put further restrictions or requirements into play that let the industry keep on keeping on while accepting that the science was highlighting health concerns and regulators were adjusting the playing field accordingly.

Petrol producers could keep producing petrol, just not leaded petrol. Big oil keeps going, everyone is happy.  Chemical producers could keep operating as successfully as ever, but not in regards to wanton manufacture and use of DDT and food manufacturers could keep adding whatever they want within reason to their product, just list it so consumers can decide if they want to purchase it or not.

The same could be said of the current explosion in free-range and organic as consumer choices. No one is shutting anything down, chickens and cows, pigs and grains and fruit and vegetables all keep on keeping on, the mining industry (including big oil) keeps providing the raw material for the power, the transport, the fertilizers and the feed, the storage and the physical infrastructure and everyone is happy. All hail the false economy.

But this time it is different. This time it is about taking the blow torch to mining and oil, as the two biggest producers of carbon, and hence the two of the biggest producers of inputs into anthropogenic climate change. Like with DDT and tobacco, the industry denies and questions way past the acceptance of the science by the vast majority of actual real life dyed in the wool experts on the subject, and funds campaigns and lobbies and creates doubt where there doesn’t really seem to be any anymore.

But it isn’t just oil and coal and mining. The big issue, the real elephant in the room is the current economic model that puts growth way ahead of everything else. It drives the mining and resources booms across the globe. It drives the manufacture of totally pointless crap from non-renewable resources, it drives the production of bigger and bigger houses and stuff to fill them and power to heat and cool them, it drives environmental degradation, it drives ever increasing rates of ‘western’ diseases (like cancer, mental illness, heart disease, hypertension and obesity) it drives consumption generally and it is driving our little rock and everything that clings to its very thin and vulnerable surface into a ditch.

Meanwhile, governments across the globe will avoid the elephant in the room of economic growth equals J-curve suicide, and carry on with business as usual until Paul Gilding’s Great Disruption has the people on the streets belatedly demanding that ‘someone’ do ‘something’. But here’s the rub, we are the ‘someone’, and until there is a critical mass large enough to force a change, the ‘something’ that we all know has to happen will, like the elephant in the room, continue to hide until it is way too late.

So, maybe ‘someone’ (like you) needs to do ‘something’ (like right now) like write a letter to your local member, local newspaper or relevant federal minister. Give it a go, because if enough someones actually do something, it adds up to the change that is so undeniably necessary.

The science of building a rocket is rocket science - this is not...

OK. This is pretty basic stuff. Follow the logic and reap the rewards!

1. Take your lunch to work. The average city lunch in Australia will set you back $10, even if you didn’t mean to spend that.  $50 a week! Yikes. Better to make a sandwich or bring some leftovers and drink good old fashioned water from the tap.

2. On that note – drink water from the tap! Buying water is the stupidest thing in the world to do if you live in a western country. Bad for the environment and your hip pocket. May as well pay for the air you breathe. Don’t gasp, won’t be long before some brainiac starts selling air and some knuckleheads will buy it.

3. And don’t buy take away coffee. Make it yourself. How hard is it? $3 a cup minimum to buy, and some jokers out there are having three bought cups a day. $10 on coffee? Spare me! I’ll take a mug of instant that I bring in myself thanks. Even one coffee a day is $3. $15 a week. Add it to the $50 - $65 already!

4. Right, now get off the booze. New research has shown that alcohol is a class one carcinogen – that is, it gives you cancer as well as a hang-over. Yay. It is also a great source of empty calories, and increases your appetite as well so you eat snacks that you wouldn’t eat otherwise. Double weight gain. What great stuff….a bottle of wine a day will set you back $10 - $20, and many couples will share a bottle between every night easily. But if your favourite drink is beer or mixed drinks, work it out, I reckon you’ll be surprised if you are a drinker, just how much you actually spend. Let’s be conservative and say $10 a day averaged out to take into account the weekends and the ones at a pub/club/bar/lunch out with the girls, so, $70 a week. Add it to the total - $65 plus $70 = $135.

There you go. Four really easy things to do to save around $135 a week of your net salary (that is, after you have paid your taxes!). How much is that a year? About seven grand!! In cash!!

What could you do with seven thousand dollars extra in your pocket every year? Pay it off your mortgage? Go on a holiday? Get rid of a credit card debt?

This very simple exercise shows how a lot of people who cry poor, and class themselves as good old Aussie battlers are just whining consumptives with poor spending habits who could do with a good dose of financial introspection.

Add quitting smoking, not buying takeaway (it’s crap anyway), catching the bus to work, having one car not two if that is relevant, cancelling an unused gym membership (come on, be honest…) and the savings are significantly increased.

The next step is to put that otherwise wasted cash somewhere you can actually see it grow. Every week you don’t buy a coffee put $15 in that account. Don’t buy lunch, put $50 in there. You see how it goes, and you’ll soon see some serious saving results. It is just getting into the new habit, and out of the old ones.

For one, I will not be suckered anymore by the rubbish “lifestyle” that is chasing my money every minute of every day. They are my hard earned dollars, and I will consciously decide where they go, and reap the financial rewards of my conscious consumption!

Here endeth the lesson.

Just keep digging...

Thank goodness that Australia is still baulking at the obvious and digging up our coal and iron ore at a faster and faster rate! It really is such a relief to know that our wide brown land is being scraped and picked at and sold off to the highest bidder, and that it seems those highest bidders are China and India. Phew! Now I can sleep at night, restful and at peace in the knowledge that our future is certain, spaceship earth is in good hands, and my grandchildren won’t dance on my grave singing “You bloody idiot, your generation were a pack of complete wankers!”.

It doesn’t matter pound of carbon that the coal and iron ore will eventually run out. Nor does it matter a pinch of topsoil that there will be a moment when it looks like things are going horribly wrong. It is all good news, and all part of an obvious plan on the part of our mining industry to ensure our future survival. Thank you big mining companies, keep digging and digging (some would say raping and pillaging, but shame on them!) and supplying the entropic finite goodies to those big hungry economies so they can keep developing and developing and developing. Let’s face it, as these big multinational do gooders obviously know, without us selling China and India billions of tonnes of Australia we would all be in very big trouble.

And once the goodies run out, and there is nothing left, and the wonderfully forward thinking magnates have done their job, we can only hope that the hole that is left in the middle of our insignificant pile of dirt is so deep that it actually reaches all the way to China, just like in the old jokes. Then we can poke our heads out of the sand, and buy back some of our boring old iron ore in new and improved sustainable products! Photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, electric cars with really fast charge batteries, even intellectual know how on how to run a sustainable and renewable economy that would not have been possible to develop if not for the generosity of the folks turning the top gears of our incredible two speed economy.

In the interim, before we deliver the punch line to the big global joke we are playing on these developing nations (wink, wink) we don’t even need to bother with investing in all that renewable energy sustainable economy green forward thinking rubbish. Boring in the extreme, and complicated, too, apparently - not that we need to concern ourselves with such rot. They will do all the hard yards, and we will just ride on their sustainability wave and Hang 10 on the empty barrel that was crude oil.  

What a ride! The future is bright! Just keep digging…

Mea Culpa

I am sorry. Apparently climate change and all the associated problems we have in the world today are my fault! Mea culpa.

I did think for a moment that perhaps it was the big business interests that are doing the damage, but no, it is all me. So, sorry about that, but at least the big polluters are off the hook.

I shouldn’t have gotten ahead of myself, and viewed things so simplistically. I was trying to convince myself of the folly of pursuing endless growth and profits over the long term survival. More stupidly, I was under the misapprehension that a dirty great coal fired power generator might not be such a good idea, and that perhaps the big polluters could get really serious about shutting that sort of stuff down and just head in the right direction of sustainability. Meanwhile, there I was, just making the situation worse! If only I had known this earlier!

How do I know this? Well, I saw it on the TV. I see it on the TV all the time. What I should do to save the planet. I can make a difference, you see. Little old me, one person, not the big companies, or the massive polluters, or the huge carbon intensive industries, but me.

I have now seen the light, though, and will do my best to change my ways. I’ll put in power saving light bulbs (to help save money AND the planet!! Yippee!), run my aircon at 24 degrees Celsius (to help save money AND the planet!), keep my tires at a good inflation (to use a fraction less petrol and save money AND the planet!), etc, etc. Of course, the electricity I am using will still come from a dirty unsustainable producer, but is that their fault? I am the one buying it in the first place, right? I can choose not to use electricity at all, not use petrol at all, only associate with ‘green’ organisations! And because if I don’t, it is completely and utterly and undeniably my fault that there are even organisations out there that continue to do things the bad old way. And when I do this stuff, and make the little changes that can save me money AND the planet, well, I feel for the big guys, because my actions are going to have such a massive impact that they will have to change their ways!