What it Really Means to be Green

I was wondering, and as such sought the wisdom of the Internets. Surprisingly, searching for this post's title yielded no help, though there was an independently published paperback book available for sale which promised to reveal the truth. This was a bit confounding, and it is difficult to imagine that the book opens by saying "you already screwed up, in order for this book to get to your doorstep unknowable energy and resources had to be consumed."

So, what does it mean to be genuinely "green," now that it has become a largely vacuous buzzword that has been so casually thrown around and a boon to marketing departments everywhere?

We all know that green is supposed to mean environmentally friendly, but this idea of a green product is perhaps the modern paragon of irony, as the greenest purchase possible is the one not made. Thus we have the first principle of environmental conscientiousness:

1: Green is the antithesis of consumption.

Of course, a product can (and should) be made in a low impact way, but by the very laws of physics no new product will ever be more green in terms of production energy expenditure than one that has already been made. I hope not to offend, but yes, this means switching from essentially any car to a fancy new hybrid for the sake of the environment is a move made in delusion. In fact, the incredible amount of energy required to gather and transform raw materials into a marginally fuel efficient hybrid vehicle will most likely not be recouped in energy saving over the entire life of the vehicle. Likewise, the amount of time required for savings at the pump to make up for the cost of a new car will in all likelihood also extend beyond the lifetime of said new vehicle. As far as vehicles go, the greenest thing you can do is simply drive less, instead walking or riding a bicycle--not only do you decrease your environmental impact, the air will be cleaner, you will be healthier, and as research on exercise has shown, happier. There is much to be said about vehicles and environmental impact, but that is for another post. For now, I must emphasize that this principle applies not just to vehicles but to everything; even the most inconsequential commercial products have an absolutely tremendous energy cost from raw material to point of sale. This concept is one recognized from the specific manifestation of it as the Food Mile, from which we are taught that any food item, from field to table, might well have traveled thousands of miles. I reiterate, this is a concept that applies to everything else as well, yet the numbers are far more stupendous when they concern, say, a plastic duck manufactured in China to be sold in the US market; such a duck may have traveled (as raw material and beyond) well over ten thousand miles from petroleum to bathtub. This idea, you might guess, is one of the principle few behind the growing movement of buying local (another most obviously being local economic support).

This leads right into the next fundamental aspect of being environmentally friendly. In most respects I'm a fairly typical middle class American, and just like every other member of that very broad stratification (you too?), I like to get fancy new things. How can I buy with minimal impact? The approach is one just like that of responsible home finance, indeed the two are closely related--by following the first principle, you will already see your wallet swell from savings. When the necessity arises or the urge overwhelms, the best purchase is one of something used. This again saves substantially (and has been presented as the most common and effective way of growing personal wealth, see the book "The Millionaire Next Door"), but also saves substantial energy; purchasing an item that has already been produced will obviously not increase the energy expenditure of production. Were the stigma of "used" to vanish, demand for new goods would drop and energy consumption with it. Similarly, we should approach each and every purchase as if it were a major purchase, with all the associated research and contemplation. As a rule, the more you think about a purchase the less likely you are to purchase at all, but notwithstanding, the less likely you are to purchase foolishly. So we have principle two.

2: So you must buy? Then buy smart, buy used, buy local.

As the rather inspired video of Amory Lovins in my previous post shows, environmentally sound business practice is (surprisingly) financially sound. I hope to have demonstrated that the same applies to personal finance too. Presuming personal financial security is not one of your priorities (nor environmental stability, national security, etc), the question then naturally arises, "Why should I care about the environment?"

And you might expect me to say "Global Warming, of course." But no. As I again alluded to previously, global warming is as an issue, albeit serious, a thin veil, a red herring for another issue of cataclysmic potential on the scale of years versus the decades or centuries for global warming, and so near if not here that I shudder to consider it--I will, but not now. It will go with my promised elucidation on vehicles.

The push for environmental conscientiousness is one that can only succeed if everybody helps. Though there are really only two succinct principles outline here, they are nonetheless of profound implication, and will require the reconstruction of each of our foundational perspectives and behaviors. Earth, we now know, is a fragile and miraculous phenomenon that we, with our special isolated gift of sentience, have both the responsibility and capability to maintain and preserve. The alternatives are unquestionably tragic: collapse of society, extinction of life on earth, and an increase of surface temperature to the point that even rocks slowly melt (as on Venus, from which we discovered the effect of greenhouse gases and global warming).

But we can do it, we can, we are capable now more than any time before to change the future of the entire planet--there have actually even been precedents for such a broad and powerful movement... or at least the start of some. Two in particular are the push for fuel efficiency in the seventies, which for the first time since the second industrial revolution led to a decrease in fuel consumption in the United States, and the push for everyone to simply turn off the lights when they left a room, which had a substantial impact on idle energy consumption.

Here are a few simple things I've worked to implement in my own life, besides those mentioned above, to reduce my environmental impact, and a few more complicated things I've dreamt of/stumbled across to do the same on a wider scale:

Use a drying rack instead of a clothes dryer.

Turn off the air-conditioner and open some windows, turn on a fan.

Shop at the local farmer's market.

Eat less.

Eschew print in favor of digital versions.

Wash dishes by hand right after using them.

Install a low flow shower head, wash self more thoroughly.

Wash clothes less often (especially jeans).

Transform something old into something new.

Use a toaster oven instead of the full sized oven.

Compost, prefer products packaged with compost-friendly materials.

Unplug "wall-warts" (these draw power whether in use or not).

Be happy with what I have, be happy with who I am--Never confuse the two.

etc.

Ideally:

Motion sensing street lights

LED light bulbs

Solar water heating

12 volt line power (goodbye wall-warts)

"Neighborhood nuclear reactor" for electricity generation

Compressed air powered last mile vehicles

Computer controlled vehicle networks

Waterless and grey water toilets

Neighborhood gardens

Massively deployed for-hire large item transportation

Distributed vehicle rental services

Car-less cities, verdant grass boulevards instead of asphalt

etc.

A shift

There has come apparent recently a certain and dire necessity for immediate action in moving towards energy efficiency and environmental awareness. For those who know, considering the prospect of a peak oil induced cataclysm most undoubtedly evokes urgency that refuses to be quashed. Most unfortunately, if not unsurprising, is that the entire issue has been sugarcoated by the unknown fundamental forces of information dissemination. And such a description is apt, as the instead phrased issue as one of global warming is a consequence maybe not lacking in capacity to devastate, but certainly unequivocally void of the sense of extreme urgency of its counterpart. Personally I don't find this sugarcoating in any way surprising given the utterly failed state of that media delivered in technicolor to masses of unwitting bystanders that passes as modern journalism. It surprises me every time I see Wolf Blitzer or Larry King, just the same with Bill O'Reily, that they aren't wearing big red noses that squeak. How can anyone expect to be informed when the news is irrelevant and somehow massively uninformed? And it is depressing on a spiritual level to know that the popular misinformed have been largely corralled into falling for cheap gimmicks, behaving antagonistically to our own cause by being tricked into thinking it is our cause (oh, it's so green, it's all natural, a hybrid), a cut and dry case of being bamboozled by that force that wants to take our money. This gives rise to, in particular for today, the idea that our news is interpreted as sugar coated because it lacks any and all science, instead giving the impression that they know what they're talking about by using jargon-turned-buzzwords. Strange, this lack of science, given that it is such a particularly scientific problem. I can tell you, as a preview, that the energy situation is pretty rough. But at the same time, every so often there comes somebody who really seems to know what they're talking about, who has some remarkably keen insight and a lot of pretty good things to say, things good to hear. Even better, his name is Amory Lovins! Notice that this was filmed in 2005, it seems to me that if Big Auto were listening to this guy whole heartedly back then their situation might be at least a little bit better now.





PS, the new Prius's solar panel will maybe, after a full sunny day, run your headlights for an hour, maybe. After watching that video you may realize this as self evident, but putting two engines in a car is a stupendously poor step forward. While I don't like the continuation of fossil fuel nor the suggestion of bio-fuel or wind turbines, none of that really matters, because he's run the numbers and it is at least a viable solution, one that we might be able to imagine easier than other of the more radical shifts proposed.

Update: I took a quick glance at the Prius article on wikipedia and it turns out that the new solar panel can't even run the headlights. All the extra weight and expense of the large panel is done so that a small fan can circulate air while the car is off, which is the ONLY thing it can do. I implore anyone who reads this: please, don't purchase/sell an image of environmental friendliness, work for the real thing. It's really not that difficult.

visual expressions of the inexpressible

These paintings (roughly in reverse chronology) are conceived as a part of an ongoing project, the root problem, from which this place's ideas and name arise. They are done in effort to communicate the essence alternatively, perhaps more effectively as if by some smaller infinity, than those attempts prior. Regrettably these photographs entirely fail to capture the fullness of these paintings, particularly in terms of color accuracy, texture, and accordingly the overall movement of each piece. This is a notable deficiency because most have layers of pigmentation obfuscated entirely by progressive layers, but which remain on the edge of perception as a texture incongruous with the foremost. Likewise, the capture renders the colors a perceptible degree more demur and indistinct, though such is hard to believe for a few, and this deficiency is one of particular detriment as there is often a vastness of variably distinct vibrancy.

I must make a note on method, essential for the link between the thoughts prior and these that follow: these are not abstractions. I do not know what is contained upon or expressed by each, nor have I ever thought that any less than innumerable interpretations were satisfactory. Indeed, this is exactly the effect I am for, that is to visualize the enigma, the root problem, in a way that the previous explication can be seen as a poor attempt to approximate. As procedure, I expend all mental effort on not painting anything particular, to divorce myself as much as possible from the motions that produce the final product. As a consequence then, I often feel unjustified in claiming them as my own; instead, I think of them as products of reality expressed through my temporal vehicle. With that perspective, even if one were to consider the product as one produced by my subconscious, this one must then acknowledge that the subconscious is a product of this existence; one not possibly produced, ultimately, by anything other than the cosmos/existence/reality/strange timespace gyre in which we obliviously perne. The whole breadth of my rumination concerning these far exceeds the capability of a single post, and on the whole I hate to constrain the magnitude of conceptualization of these by others with my own. So:












The rest, as follows, are photographs which I think lend themselves to the exposition of the root problem, though it is of course in any and every photograph that could or couldn't be taken, just the same as those above.











I am now, more able than ever before to understand this place; this specific understanding, no less essential, far more than essential, that which fundamentally opposes the likewise essential anti-understanding understanding of it, it being it of course. Most days maybe a butterfly's wing wind flapped, but this May be instead the air which winged the butterfly to wind. My sincere thanks, Mr. Bynum.

It is it

I wish to explicate as much as you wish to know it, perhaps even more, but there is a problem; the root problem, by definition, is that which cannot be defined. Its definition is the eternal absence of words...

...but so too the eternal effort of description.

And as long as effort has existed it has been applied to answering or avoiding this question, the question, such that at this point there is a remarkable body of information concerning it.

And for the person who has read and understood it all there will be a complete absence of understanding.

The root problem, by deduction from that title, is the essence, the most essential, fundamental, principle, basic, foundational. It is the singular, the completeness, space, time, everything and nothing aside.



The root problem is The Question whose answer is all answers,
And it is The Answer which answers all questions.

The root problem is Enlightenment,
And it is Anti-enlightenment.

The root problem is Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, Order and Chaos;
The root problem is Zero and Infinity.



The root problem is paradox, not as in those we can conceptualize, but as in those vastly more numerous, those that we can't. Seeing how paradoxes are already really quite confusing, it is not so surprising to find that the root problem is the paragon of paradox,

and well fit to explain why the root problem is so hard to explain.



The root problem is holy peace arising from bitter conflict;
Thought and Reaction,
Sense amidst the Senseless.



It is difficult to say anything more apt, more fitting than nothing at all. The words, they can be read but entirely misunderstood; even a studious glance may yield the interpretation that I'm merely listing contradictions, and that there is no profundity in an exercise as simply listing contradictions. But I can hardly do anything else. The root problem is fundamentally contradictory, but the conflict of it is almost irrelevant compared to the inexplicable subtext.



The root problem is the area where opposites collide, but the same as the whole area where opposites reside.

The root problem is The Meaning Of Life, It is The Purpose;
It is Mortal and Immortal, Man and God as They are the same.

The root problem is nature, reality, existence;
It is evolution and creation,
temporal and spiritual.



And oh, how like the root problem to be the The Final Irrefutable Answer to the meaning of life, yet also the most unfulfilling, empty, fully incomplete Answer. Yes it is! It is the womb and the coffin, the origin and destination! I know I said that the conflict was practically irrelevant, but that is only partially true, part of the time; the root problem is as much about the oscillation aside start and end as it is those points.



It is the indefinite defined and the indefiniteness of definition; the answer as it is a question.



It is it.



Do you understand now?




If you think so, please reconsider. If you think you understand, you do not understand.













But if you think not... well, then you have begun to understand.





















And if you not think but be

Atop the wild wave he rode, adrift upon the tumult of the unknown

Ever before, Ever here, Ever after. All is change changing, yet the looked looks the same. "It is impossible," the indescript void of knowledge those before passed, "to cross the same river twice."

All sayable said, all thinkable thought, and all doable done, left to drift as an orphaned leaf, tumbling amidst the cooperative competition of forces greater than itself.

In all things beauty, life, the tempest of energies birthing at no end a magnificent aesthetic wandering wonder. Destruction as a form of creation, the most epic battle of paradox as the unwitnessed witness witnesses the unwitnessed witness witnessing. So man does as man has done, the unknown deed of the system that has unknowingly done him. A problem, an answer. No problem, no answer. But if it's isn't, is it or isn't it? To say it is can not be true, because it's isn't. But to say it isn't is also false, because it is isn't. So then what? Then develop mathmatical models. Then resign in unknowing. Before then. Then. After then. What is it anyway? Is it possible to not be? Suppose I were to describe something that did not exist, for instance, a unicorn. If a unicorn does not exist, how is it possible to describe it? Perhaps it does not exist in the same manner as horses, however it exists as a thought. Thus it does exist. What then could one describe that didn't exist? It is impossible to describe something that does not exist, as the very description of it brings it into existence. But this question suddenly becomes much more complex in one specific situation, the same confusion wrought before when wondering if it is isn't: if it is impossible to describe something that does not exist, does nonexistence exist? Nonexistence by it's very nature can not exist, otherwise it would be existence. But nonexistence can not not exist because we are able to describe nonexistence.

How often does this seemingly irresolvable paradox even present itself in the daily course of life? All the time. Beginning to learn algebra the students are taught that apples cannot be added to oranges, becuase they're different. Unfortunately, neither can apples be added to apples, as even the most superficial observation of the individual fruit would yield the fact that they are completely different themselves. And yet everything works anyway...

The root problem?

The root problem isn't something keen to fit in the guise of normal words. It's something that one could spend a very long time explaining without ever getting much across the void between two minds. It can be clearly defined and remain ambiguous. The root problem, to begin, is the question. The question as it is a whole concept, not a mere iteration of said concept. It is very important, however, to emphasize that the root problem is also the answer, particularly in the manner that it, the answer, becomes a question itself. Thus, the root problem is the question and the answer.

You can't take my gold.

The other day I visited a strangers house, and, for a time, it was uneventful. Two of the few people in the room, friends, men, were talking about guns and how fun they were. One of the men brought up the practical aspects of gun ownership: "When you have a gun, nobody can take your gold."

"Yes," the friend confirmed.

"And not only that, when you have a gun, you can take other people's gold."
It was at this point that my friend, whom I admire for his wisdom, spoke up joining the conversation.

"You can't take my gold."

"If I had a gun, I could take your gold. You couldn't stop me. Even if you had a gun, you wouldn't be expecting me."

"You can't take my gold." My friend repeated, simply, with a grin.

I am not one who enjoys conflict. I was very uncomfortable and couldn't understand why my friend persisted so.

"Dude. I've had a gun pulled on me and let me tell you, when you see a gun, you know at any moment you could die. When you see a gun, you empty your pockets."

"I've had guns pulled on me. But you can't take my gold."

I could stand it no longer; I went outside to escape the pressure.

For a few days I pondered this scenario as it repeatedly surfaced in my conscious thought dialog. It did seem that someone with a gun could surely take someone else's gold quite easily, yet my friend had never wavered in his confidence. This friend, great as he is, I knew, has an ego. I had thought all along that he was being egotistical, sparring with words exhibiting strength and fearlessness; primal superiority, I thought, rode the undertone of his words... until it struck me.

Ryan's gold isn't made of metal.