Ecotopia

Our guest was Eric Nilssen (along with co-host Susan Tchudi), who discussed “smart growth” in ourtown from their perspectives as members of Smart Growth Advocates (sgachico.net). Susan reviewed the history of SGA and Eric described his experiences as a member of Chico’s ad hoc committee on Growth and Development. They gave their views of how changing patterns of development in Chico could result in well-planned infill, new affordable homes and apartments, and neighborhoods designed for a range of people, closely linked, with shopping, parks, and gardens nearby.

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In this program we be talked about biomass and biochar with Thor Bailey, a Chico resident who has 42 years of experience working with green technologies and biomass energy. Thor discussed a number of issues swirling around biomass technology: what it provides, how the systems work, and some of the history of biomass projects in California.

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Our guests were Susan Schrader and Emily McCabe. Emily is a Durham native. Emily grew up in Durham, studied Society and Environment at UC Berkeley, interned for environmental nonprofits in college, and is now a California Climate Action Corps fellow at the Butte Environmental Council. 

Susan is a local domestic well user and environmentalist who is monitoring activities in our region due to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (including the newly formed Tuscan Water District). She has become engaged because she realizes that everything in our community relies on groundwater. 

They spoke with us about the nature of aquifers and the size of the Tuscan aquifer which serves our area. They they explained the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which California has created to do what its title implies: protecting groundwater from overuse. Next, they explained the specifics of the Vina Sub-Basin GSE and advocated for greater input and power from small farmers and domestic well user. Click on the link below to listen to this excellent interview.

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April 9, 2013

Tonight we are talking with the editor of a book that is an eye-opener, both visually and editorially. ENERGY: OVERDEVELOPMENT AND THE DELUSION OF ENDLESS GROWTH is published by the Post-Carbon Institute and Watershed Media; it’s coffee-table sized, with full color, wall-to-wall photographs, but also containing rich text by internationally renowned specialists.

With us now on the phone is Tom Butler, who is coeditor of this book with George Wuethner. Tom is editorial projects Director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology in Sausalito and president of the Northeast Wilderness Trust in Bristol, Vermont. Thanks for being with us tonight, Tom.

Listen to the Interview

–The cover of your book shows the Deepwater Horizon, source of the Gulf Oil spill, sinking in flames. Why did you choose that photo to illustrate your narrative of “overdevelopment and the delusion of endless growth”? (You obviously had hundreds of other powerful photographs to choose from—deserts, oil-covered birds, devastated marshland.)

–We think that most of our listeners know well that we are in the midst of an energy and growth crisis—neither is sustainable. So we’re ready to hear about what you discuss in Part I of the book, “taking a deeper look at the energy crisis,” [underline added] examining the “less visible . . . range of ideas and assumptions—the worldview—behind our energy choices.” (our underline, 7)

…Please tell us more about some of the “less visible” aspects of our cultural choices.

…How does world and especially western culture hide the delusion of endless growth?

…You cite California (35) as an example of a state that has done a pretty good job of conservation and per capita consumption. Yet our electricity use (and related fossil fuel consumption) has risen overall. How does this illustrate the conundrum (or dead end) of endless growth?

–You write of and advocate “energy literacy.” What is that? How do people become truly energy literate? Can this literacy change the world’s view of itself and its energy use?

–Getting back to the book, we were especially interested in your section, Part IV, called “False Solutions.” We don’t have time to talk about each of these, but perhaps you could tell us a little about (your choice of) false solutions:

…Drilling

…Nuclear power

…”Clean” coal

…Fracking

…Megadams

…Bioenergy

…Oil shale

and especially, if you’d like to discuss it

…Geoengineering. [Note: We recently interviewed a Northern California resident who is particularly alarmed about alleged “chem trails” and dispersion of aluminum and other metal products by commercial and military aircraft. We—Steve and Susan—are skeptical of some of the claims that are made about secret agencies poisoning the atmosphere. But in your book, the ETC essay on “Retooling the Planet” talks about the threat of more widespread geoengineering projects. <http:www.etcgroup.com.> Anything you can say to raise our geoengineering literacy would be appreciated.

–In Part VII you describe “What We Are For.”  Who is the “we” in “what we’re for.” How can you/we “reframe the discourse” in positive terms?

–We’ve already briefly discussed the idea of “ecological literacy.” How might that play out in terms of nonconfrontational or positivist strategies?

–As our time permits, let’s review (your choice of) other positive directions that people can take:

…Conservation

…Resilience

…Eco-Localism

…Beauty

…Biodiversity

…Family planning

–A huge question we regularly ask on this program: What will it take to bring about change on the scale that you are calling for? Do we have to go to the brink? over the brink? Will our politicians save us? Are people literate enough and smart enough to do the right thing voluntarily?

Are you an optimist?

—-We’ve been talking with Tom Butler, co-editor of ENERGY: OVERDEVELOPMENT AND THE DELUSION OF ENDLESS GROWTH. Before we go, we hope you will tell us a little more about yourself and the organizations that you work with.

…You are editorial director of the Foundation for Deep Ecology. What is the Foundation and what does it do? (What is “deep” ecology?) <http://www.deepecology.org/>

…You are also president of the Northeast Wilderness Trust. What are some of its projects? <http://www.newildernesstrust.org/>

…We’d also like to learn more about the Post-Carbon Institute and Watershed Media, publishers of this book. [We have previously raved about and given away our copy of CAFO: Confined Animal Feeding Operations, another book that seems an unlikely candidate for a “coffee table” treatment.]

Thank you, Tom Butler. The book is ENERGY: OVERDEVELOPMENT AND THE DELUSION OF ENDLESS GROWTH, published by Watershed Media and the Post-Carbon Institute. Thanks very much for being with us on Ecotopia.

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Date: 15 January 2013

This week on Ecotopia we’ll be returning to a topic that is of deep concern to environmentalists and activists everywhere, but we’ll be focusing on it from the perspective of U.S. history. Our guest will be Derek Hoff, professor of history at Kansas State University, who has written THE STATE AND THE STORK, which looks at population debates and public policy from colonial times to the present.

Listen to the Program

Our Conversation with Derek Hoff

You are listening to Ecotopia on KZFR, exploring ecosystems: environmental, social, technological. Tonight our topic is the intriguing one of “The State and the Stork,” taken from the title of our guest’s new book that explores “the population debate and policy making in US history.” On the phone with is Derek Hoff, who is a political and economic historian at Kansas State University.

–In the introduction to your book, you say that “a surprisingly large and varied number of Americans have perceived population trends as snakes in the garden.” Please explain that statement and how it lead to the focus of your book. which garden? which snakes? [Let’s emphasize in the discussion that you are focusing on American history, though we’ll no doubt talk about global issues along the way.]

–You also note early in the book that attitudes toward population—social, economic, and political—have fluctuated over the times. What are some of the major theories of population that you’ve discovered? [limiting growth, quality of life, people as a cash crop]

–In this first part of the interview, we thought we’d focus on more distant U.S. history. What, for example, were the attitudes of the founders toward population? How did views evolve in early Republic, especially after Thomas Malthus’s essay on population came out?

–How did population issues intersect with the slavery debate? [the demographics of slavery, the question of slavery, westward expansion, Reconstruction, voting rights].

–You write about agrarian America and the effects on the U.S. of Europe’s industrial revolution. With population growth and the development of the U.S. came cities, in some ways validating the Malthusian thesis … hotbeds of disease and poverty and crime. How did the growth of the cities fit affect population policy? How did immigration and cheap labor fit in?

–You trace “the birth of the modern population debate” to the late 19th century and the pre-WW II period. How did it come to be framed in the popular mind during those times? How about in the minds of economists? [Keynesian economic theory and influence.]

–Before we turn to the post-WWII era, we’d like to approach a subject that we could spend hours on: 20th century exclusion, racism, eugenics. We’d like to ask about just one element that particularly interests us: eugenics. Where did this movement come from and how did it affect public policy?

–In the first part of the program, you spoke with us about population and policy through the first half of the 20th century. Now we hit the baby boomers, a good many of them among our listeners (with their hearing aids turned up). The boom was linked to postwar prosperity and new views of the relationship between population and the economy. Please tell us about that.

–You write that the U.S. and global baby booms also raised fears of overpopulation here and abroad. This seems to have been a period of increased governmental efforts to control population via international organizations as well as such programs such as LBJ’s Great Society. What was happening, and how successful were governmental agencies in getting involved in family planning?

–In your chapter on “Diffusing the Population Bomb,” you discuss the Zero Population Growth movement as well as conservative and liberal views of population. Please tell us a little about the right and the left and their conflicting yet evolving views of fertility rates.

–Your closing chapter focuses on “Population Aged,” they greying of the baby boomers. What do you see as interconnections among population and aging issues, including such topics as Social Security and taxation policies?

–Near the end of the book, you note that “…emphasis on the aging of the population, however justified by spiraling deficits, has encouraged policy makers to think of babies as future taxpayers rather than as potential environmental or social externalities.” Our impossibly broad closing question for you: What do you think the next generation will say and do about population and public policy?

The State and the Stork is published by the University of Chicago Press. You can learn more about the book at <www.press.uchicago.edu> and you can learn more about Derek and his work at the Kansas State history department website <http://www.k-state.edu/history/faculty-staff/hoff.html.>

 

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