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Living Responsibly on Our Island

Written on January 13, 2012 by Roland Van der Meer in stewardship, sustainability

As we all know, each of us lives on this massive island called “Earth” and for the most part, we use it as we see fit.

Progress in the developing world is accelerating at an amazing clip of 7-9% annually; advancement in the so-called “developed world” is mostly flat. The developing world wants what the developed world has: namely, food, cars, and comfortable housing. Herein lies the fundamental environmental issue: The world cannot sustain us as it is, nor can it support us all having the same conveniences and lifestyle.

When you really understand this little island with 9 billion people on it, you realize that it is critical that we recycle and reuse everything. We should strive for a zero waste society. As long as there is waste, it will continue to accumulate over time and important parts of nature will continue to be destroyed. Every natural resource we have — water, energy, food, and minerals – can and should be reused. If not, we will eventually run out of these resources and there are will be no more substitutes. For sustainability of species’ the planet, we must adopt the full recycle mentality to keep our island healthy. Here is an example of one person’s efforts to live “zero-waste.” Couldn’t we all do our part to move in this direction?

Also, we must keep our natural systems functioning in order for us to prosper as humans. The very systems that supported life for millions of years are being thrown off balance and are becoming unpredictable as we alter the landscapes, oceans, and atmosphere. The balance of climates is shifting so fast and significantly that we are seeing the extinction of massive species. Our arrogance lets us believe that we are not affected. But we are. Many societies in the past 20,000 years have perished as they altered their environments to the point of their own undoing (for example: Mayan, Angkor wat, Babylonian, etc.)

Similar to societies before us, today we believe that our technology is superior and can empower us to alter everything to suite our needs. This is not the case. For example, we are using up carbon-based fuel. “So what?” many people say as we continue to find renewable replacements. Solar, wind, hydro, etc. all appear to be adequate alternatives, but we are putting them into the atmosphere as well as the ocean and land pollutants. These all amount to big changes in chemistry to our little island.

Every day, we are carving up huge tracks of land in pursuit of minerals and fossil fuels, leveling mountains, stripping landscapes bare and leaving nothing behind. We are taking out the last dense tropical forests at an alarming rate. We have created land dumps and land fills the size of the State of New Jersey (not to pick on them). We are dumping so much garbage into oceans that an island of trash the size of Texas is floating in the Pacific, killing the ecosystem, indigenous species and making navigability a big challenge.

As we farm more than one-third of the Earth’s surface, we are stripping soil of all its biology and injecting chemicals and fertilizers, which contaminate the air, earth and water.

We have to rethink and redo our fundamental premise of what we can and cannot do here on our little island. We need to apply true costs — environmental and social — to our actions and decisions and understand there is no free ride. It is a zero sum game and potentially a negative growth game to enable us to keep our world safe for future generations. We have to address our need to “grow our way out of our economic problems” philosophy, as the world might not tolerate much more growth.

If you really want to experience what we have and why this matters try this lovely view of Earth.

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A Whole New Look at Green Building

Written on November 7, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Energy Efficiency, Uncategorized, agriculture, sustainability, waste water

Urbanization is reaching new levels around the world. In developing countries the continuing influx of people from the country side and small villages is accelerating. These people are searching for better paying jobs and a way to support their families. There is also a trend towards greening the cities; becoming more energy efficient, recycling water, creating local (roof top) power generation, etc. Cities are wonderfully efficient if designed right. In these urban settings, the power and water consumption are lowest per capita, and the walkability makes living easier and healthier.

One of the biggest trends is the greening of roofs and walls in buildings. The popularity of “green walls,” “vertical gardens” or “living walls,” is hitting a new benchmark. Many new firms are developing the technology and services to support these efforts, such as Gsky plant systems. Establishing plant material on rooftops provides numerous ecological and economic benefits, including stormwater management, energy conservation, mitigation of the urban heat island effect, and increased longevity of roofing membranes, as well as providing a more aesthetically pleasing environment in which to work and live. It is truly remarkable what we will begin to see in the next decade.

Just when you thought sustainability and Platinum LEEDS was as good as it gets, leave it to the Italians to redefine the green building. The Vertical Forest Buildings of Milan are reaching for exactly that: living in a vertical forest. They are amazingly efficient with water (gray water) heat and light shading. These could be one of the most beautiful buildings to live in. Your personal yard and forest on the 20th floor. Very clever.

I believe the innovation we will begin to see in new developments around the world will redefine what good standard of living is in cities. The resource and living benefits of mid to high density living, coupled with as much nature as possible, will reset the way we look at urbanization.

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Rethinking Existing Infrastructure Systems

Written on October 12, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Economics, agriculture, sustainability

On October 13th, I will be giving a talk to The Wharton Program for Social Impact and the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL).

The essence of what I will be speaking about is how the world needs to rethink or redo how we live. This is more than a question of sustainability, instead it addresses what will be needed to allow us to thrive again on this planet. While it might sound lofty, it is all about how to invest into and profit from the redesign of our core services. I will speak in depth on how Bio-Logical Capital, a land development and conservation company, is looking at large landscapes to restore, redevelop, and conserve the land so the human settlement can thrive within the natural environment. We are creating a living model that will not only function well, but be a great place to live and profit so that many can follow.

Our basic services and systems of water, energy, agriculture, transportation and housing are all in major need of not only an upgrade, but a fundamental philosophy and design change. It is not that these services and systems were ever bad, they are now just outdated in function, design and technology. Just because something worked 100 years ago does not mean that it is right for today. These systems were never designed to carry the loads they are experiencing today. More importantly they never really looked at natural systems as an alley, but rather viewed them as an impediment and obstruction that needed to be altered to suit man’s needs. We keep patching a framework that is now a flawed design.

Let’s look at water and wastewater for starters. Water naturally flows down hill. It rains up top and runs in rivers to the ocean, then is evaporated into the atmosphere and back again. Our water systems do the same: We take water from a source use it, filter it and dump it back to the ocean. We take rainwater and wisk it away to big pipes and dump it in the ocean. Good right? Not really. Nature stores water everywhere. Good rich soils, forests, and aquifers store water and hold onto it for dry times.

Natural systems have cycles that the animals and plants learn to work with.

Our water system interrupts all that evolutionary work and short-circuits it. So how do we redesign this? First, we must think decentralized solutions. We need to recycle water on a local basis, using gray water (which is practically potable) where ever possible. We need to use natural water stores for rain in the land, soil, and aquifers. We need to use more decentralized natural filtration techniques (biomimicry). We should use that big brown pipe full of wastewater and harness the energy from the waste, which will either be additional revenue or an offset of cost. We can also resell the nutrients from the wastewater as well as sell the gray water itself as a product. This shift is so fundamental that the costs of such a system are dramatically less and the profits much more.

To touch on agriculture as I have written before, if we use the natural systems we can grow food more sustainably, growing healthy soils and healthy food in a post industry agriculture system that is robust, resilient and abundant. Food and agriculture are central to the health of a community. Knowing where your food comes from is not only necessary for good health but wonderful in that it brings people together. A large part of the failures of our healthcare system can be attributed to our food system. Natural agriculture solutions work in cooperation with nature and leverage its resourcefulness.

I use these two examples to show what is possible in all the basic services. Bio-Logical Capital is in process of rebuilding communities based on the principles of natural systems, as pioneers of stewardship development. How can mankind fit into this landscape and build a living environment that we all would like to see and be part of?

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Building the Economy with Recycling

Written on October 3, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Economics, Energy Efficiency, stewardship, sustainability

When we talk about the green economy, it does not mean we are speaking of something that is good vs. something bad. Instead, we speak about an economy where we use and reuse all resources as if they were our last ones. A green economy is about caring for the health of our very vulnerable ecosystems and natural resources: Letting nature do what is does best, and working with these processes, not derailing, blocking or altering them.

So how do you build the new Eco Economy? Is it possible? Yes it is, and it is beginning to flourish. A great example is the Appliance Recycling Centers of America joint venture with GE. These plants are the beginning of what we can expect a lot of in the coming decades. They recycle and reuse 98% of the materials in old appliances. But what is fantastic is the whole system and how it deconstructs the appliance and then optimizes each piece and part to its best application. The website for Planet911 is very interesting as they are tracking each piece that is recycled and the businesses that are being created and pushing this agenda with great success.

This is a complete rethinking of a process and system. A careful evaluation of the economy and the resources needed bring to light many of the opportunities in the Eco Economy. Most economic theory suggests that there are no finite resources in the long term and scarcity is temporary, as every component has a replacement one. The substitution principal guides most economic models. Now it is becoming clear that it is not so. We cannot replace fisheries, nor key minerals, nor even ore itself, or our tropical forests. Even worse, we cannot undo the massive amount of destruction and contamination of water, soil and air from shale oil and gas or coal mountain top removal or industrial agriculture. These resources are truly irreplaceable. These are natural systems that have prospered, thrived and adapted for the ages and we have the ability to destroy them in a mater of years. Nature is dynamic and adapts to all sorts of shocks and events but not at the speed we are moving.

To keep the Earth’s natural systems we cannot extract a resource, produce something, use it and then throw it out. We need to repurpose and reuse everything. We must make sure nothing is wasted. A byproduct or waste stream from one process becomes the input for another. Systems are intertwined and working with nature in a way that is robust resilient and fault tolerant. Why don’t we do this today? It’s simple: The cost of recycling is higher than extracting, building, producing from scratch or new.

We do not have a true costing of the externalities that exposes the hidden cost to people or to the environment. So lets create a system of cost accounting that includes that of natural systems and resources. This will help us appreciate what we have around us and live harmoniously within our environment.

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Urban Farming Is Catching On Fast

Written on September 18, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Economics, agriculture, marketing, sustainability

San Francisco is getting smart and ahead of the urban farming game. The city recently passed a law allowing people to sell the produce they grow in their own yard. Urban farming has been accelerating and under the radar for a while now. Approving this practice makes sense, especially in these difficult economic times. The San Francisco Urban Agricultural Alliance can help people get started with advice on how to farm and even how to find land.

This is in sharp contrast to the issues that I discussed in a prior entry about Novella Carpenter, and the challenges she faced in the city of Oakland that was trying to shut her down.

A great piece to read, “Farming the Concrete Jungle,” goes deep into the movement that is sweeping the economy not only for financial reasons, but health and even environmental. The article points out how it’s better to have a pretty garden then a overgrown, littered and abandoned lot next door, and a little extra cash and good food makes life a whole lot better.

Creating a product to sell (and in this case growing a product) is the first step of any business, but then you have to know how to sell it. Most urban farming is not your average lemonade stand, unless you have the property in a major walkway. You need to think about the whole business. Growing the product is one skill set you need, but knowing what to grow and finding buyers for your product is actually more important. Farming is a business like any other and it is a tremendously entrepreneurial.

For most people, you start out by growing only for your family and friends. Then as you succeed, you can expand your ambitions and hopefully your wallet.

I do think there is an opportunity to band together a set of growers for products then identify the customers and the produce they would like and sign a deal. But then you have to deliver the goods. Customers need consistency, so they know they can count on your product. If you think urban farming is for you, think carefully and do your homework, talk to a lot of people and customers to get the lay of the land before you venture too far.

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Are We Running Out of Natural Capital?

Written on September 13, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Economics, investing, stewardship, sustainability

This is not a trick question but an honest ask. We are dependent upon nature. We can not live if the earth that hosts us is being expended, used up, exhausted.

This weekend in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes “We’re Rich! (In Nature). The US has fantastic natural resources that we seem to be indifferent towards. He says that we need to get out there to enjoy and walk in nature: It is why we are all here and what we need to center ourselves. Even the US Forest Service has gotten into the act with a fund website and this great video. Yes, we work hard so we can go to the beach, swim, snorkel with fish, watch dolphins, whales, or we go to the mountains and hike in nature, see the wildlife, or go ski and enjoy the beauty and excitement. Or, for some of us we go out to eat fabulous food (food that has to come from a healthy environment.) Nature is what supports us and lets us thrive. If we take it for granted, waste it, pollute it, or destroy it, we will not be here any more.

At the Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown saw this issue coming decades ago. He describes it best in the Eco-Economy when he discusses that we are now at the point that the Ecological Capital is being depleted and used faster than it can be restored. This is because our economic capital does not value this in its equation, in fact micro economics accerlate the destruction of a limited natural resource.

When a natural resource is starting to be scarce, its value goes up and this drives the push to extract the resource faster until the resource is exhausted. We have to watch out for any natural resource that is being harnessed past its sustainable level or we will all suffer the loss.

For example, the fisheries of the world are in serious decline. Every time we can stop the over fishing we should. In Greece, there are many islands where the fish do not exist as they were all dynamited until their eco systems collapsed. In Scotland, there is a well s tudied fishery, where in the 1890′s the community banned trawling within 3 miles of shore because of over fishing. This worked and the fish returned. Then in the 1980′s, the economic interests put political pressure to reverse this law, and within two decades the fishery was exhausted and not recoverable; and with that, the local industry died. This has played out time and time again all over the world.

In Kristof’s article, he writes about how our national forests are again under pressure where certain industries are pushing for legislation to open up 50 million acres to logging and unsustainable grazing. We have seen this motion before and this is not a good direction.

Lester Brown is urging us to head toward an eco-economy, which is an environmentally sustainable economy that requires that the principles of ecology establish the framework for the formulation of economic policy. Having the two studies integrated is imperative as the differences are fundamental. Ecologists worry about nature’s limits, while economists tend not to recognize any such constraints. Economists have a great faith in the market, while ecologists often fail to appreciate the market adequately. Ecologists see the world as interlinked network of natural systems that cannot exist without one another. Economists see the world as a set of micro economies that can substituted for each other.

There is much to do and so little time, but we do have some very good ideas about how to evolve our economy with the environment. It will just need a lot of political will to get there.

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Good Food Is The Answer To Many Issues

Written on August 30, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Economics, Organic, agriculture, stewardship, sustainability

What is good food? First and foremost, Good Food is food that tastes great!

But it is also real food, grown right, prepared right. It is healthy for your body and healthy for the environment. If we grow real food the right way we heal our environment. We create great soil that nourishes the food that nourishes us. This same soil rich with biology will be rich with minerals and store gases and hold water. It is fundamental to a healthy environment.

Good soil does not run off in the rain. Good soil is rich in its biology that for every 1% increase in biological mater in soil will hold water like a sponge, 20,000 gallons per acre.

A friend of mine recently, cited that we need to appeal to people’s greed. Greed for sugar. A carrot grown in a rich healthy soil can have a Brix count(amount of sugars present) of 30, while a industrial grown carrot, 5 to 10. Ask yourself or anyone, “Do you want to eat this sweet delicious carrot or this cardboard rendition?” One costs 25 cents the other 10 cents, but which would you eat?

In a wonderful interview of Alice Waters in a United Airlines Magazine, She said,” We need to pay for it. We need to pay for the food and pay the people who produce it. That’s profound and terribly important. We still think we can get it for free. And you know, it’s that idea that we have been indoctrinated to believe that food should be fast, cheap and easy. And it’s really that kind of thinking that is destroying the world.”

She is talking about the environment and our health. The environmental damage from our industrial agriculture damage is undisputed. The damage to our health is dramatic. Our processed food industry is not about real food or health. It is about tricking our bodies to eat more of a bad thing. Our bodies also have to eat more to get anywhere near the nutrients that we require. The rest we store as fat and then comes Diabetes.

The chart above that summarizes what has happen to us as we journeyed down the industrial agriculture road. Our costs of food fell from 17% of our household budget to 6%. Inversely our healthcare budget has gone form 7% to 17% of our budget. There is almost a direct correlation. This is not entirely due to food, but a very direct correlation to the food industry and diabetes with all its co-morbidities is the major driver of cost in our health system.

Industrial agriculture is also the major driver of our environmental issues, from the methane released by our industrial livestock systems to our releasing of fertilizers and pesticides into our ground, water and air. This culprit needs to be fixed.

Amazingly this is in our control. This is the one area we can tackle if we focus. We need to understand cheap food is not good for anyone nor is it really cheap. The true costs to us as people and our environment is huge. We just lost track of what is really important.

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Keeping What We Have Maybe Harder Then We Thought

Written on August 18, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Economics, Uncategorized, sustainability

Any real estate agent will tell you, “If you can’t invest and maintain your own property then it degrades, and so does the neighborhood.”

For the past few years, I have been flying small planes over parts of the country. It is amazing to see the how we have built out our country. It is piece meal and an unplanned hodge podge of suburbs, malls, industry and farms and roads that go all around them. No real thought or care for the land or nature and how we can best use them.

Compare this to flying over Europe and you see mid density towns separated by open space and farms with rail and road network connecting the towns. It is beautifully laid out and planned. European towns have worked for a couple of millennium and will continue to work thousands of years more.

What’s distressing is that the USA’s suburban sprawl is so costly to build out and support, as compared to most of Europe which is cost effective and has lots of resilience in its design.

Now add the problem of the U.S. government’s continual under investment into infrastructure (even with the Stimulus package) compared to other parts of the world. Europe is currently investing a robust 5% of its GDP in infrastructure — more than double the paltry 2% spent by the U.S. And this is not a new trend. Infrastructure investment in the U.S. hasn’t risen above 2% of GDP for more than 30 years.

How can we maintain our standard of living and keep a viable economic engine, if we let our basic infrastructure crumble? Given the financial crisis we have, how are we going to find more to invest into the basic needs of our physical plant? We are going to have to dig deep to figure out what we really want as citizens of this nation in need. I hope we have it in us.

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Rethinking How We Govern and Invest

Written on August 9, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Economics, Uncategorized, sustainability

Tom Friedman wrote a great piece in the Sunday Times this past weekend, “Win Together or Lose Together.” In it, he states we as a nation must invest in the 5 elements that are critical to long term success: Education, infrastructure, immigration of the bright and motivated, policies and laws that encourage the creating of new business, and fundamental science and technology. This is the only way we can keep being in the top performing countries.

The belief that we are the top and we will stay there is long expired. There are hungry nations and people that will compete. The paralysis we have as a nation of politicians and lawyers regulating and arguing is reducing our ability to execute on a model of success we have had for a century or more. Maybe, as many have said, it is analogous to the fall of the Roman empire, maybe this is all inevitable and our time has come; but this does not mean that we need to lay down and give up.

We have the tools and knowledge to rebuild what we know works. We also have the intelligence to adapt and adjust as needed. We need the best of our capitalist systems with the best policies that enable its success without its abuse. If we take a cue from nature, we know no system that is stable survives; systems must be dynamic and adapt. Capitalism self adjusts and adapts as fast as needed, it is like nature always striving to live and competing to survive. Laws and policies almost by definition do not adapt quick enough; but we have to try and create a more fluid method to adjust our policies. We will never prevent the cycles of commerce just like the cycles of nature. We need to learn that this is part of life. We need to define a government that does provide the laws to live by, the basic services, and a safety net for those who need it. And we need to establish a government that is accountable to itself and to the people it serves.

Living within its own means seems like a basic tenet. The new wrinkle is that government can not afford to expand in a non expansive economy. Balancing the budget based on realistic assumptions seems like a very rational thing to do. If our elected officials can not get this done then the system is broken and needs adjustments(for another time).

Let’s step up and reinvest it what matters most, ourselves.

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The Right to Grow Food and Then Some

Written on June 9, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Organic, agriculture, sustainability

Last summer my family started our own garden in our yard. We thought we’d picked a reasonable size of five, 6’x4’ beds. We planted the usual things, lettuces and tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, and zucchini, with a few herbs like basil, dill, thyme and rosemary. We planted and waited. And boy did it produce! It produced so much, and so often, that we had to give it away to family, friends and neighbors. Everyone who crossed our threshold was sent home with a large brown bag of vegetables. We even had one friend who stopped by daily to hand pick her dinner salad. Realizing we couldn’t give it away fast enough, my youngest daughter wanted to sell the excess lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers in a makeshift farm stand converted from her old lemon-aide stand – how fun, how harmless and how entrepreneurial.

So a couple months ago, I read in the San Francisco Chronicle about Novella Carpenter and her Ghost Town Farm being shut down by the city of Oakland, ““. You can check out updates to her plight on her blog Ghost Town Farm

Thinking that she was doing the right thing, improving her town while at the same time providing fresh, wholesome, locally grown produce, Novella did the same thing as my daughter, although on a much larger scale. From all appearances, it seems like a win-win. But the city doesn’t see it that way. They step in and say she isn’t allowed to grow and sell without a zoning change and permits to sell. Ostensibly, Christine is breaking the law.

I think the laws need to change. We should be encouraging, not discouraging, this type of neighborly endeavor. This was not a commercial operation designed for making a living and commercial profit. It was undertaken to make the neighborhood better. It engaged the community, and more importantly, the kids within that community, and showed them what could be done with a plighted piece of land all the while showing them how food is grown. Pretty powerful.

So back to the law prohibiting her from selling her produce. You have to realize what it was trying to achieve. It was designed to protect neighborhoods so no one person creates a business that then changes the character of that particular neighborhood. No one wants lots of people and cars and parking and all the issues that come from a commercial downtown setting to come to their neighborhood. But a little local corner farm stand wouldn’t have that same affect. It encourages people to walk, to socialize with their neighbor’s, to eat and shop local, and to have pride in their neighborhood. We have to rethink our laws and policies in these difficult economic times. We have to have to be flexible and adapt and design rules of governance the match the needs of society.

Community gardens create neighborhoods and put people in touch with nature and the food they eat. Allow people to dig in and help and learn and grow to be food smart. Isn’t this what it is all about?

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