If it's any consolation, Mr. McKibben, I wouldn't have heard of (and bought and read) your book if I hadn't seen you and it mentioned in connection with Step It Up.

A couple of last questions:

Do you have a link to that Gallup poll about banning cars that get less than 30mpg? (I have a bet with myself about the wording.)

Secondly, what resources would you recommend for further information on the topics you've touched on here? I'm going to back through "Deep Economy" and look into things referenced there, but for other people here, a short list of books and organizations might be helpful.

Thanks!

Still, I can't help thinking that all his replies stress the difficulties of achieving his ideals, whereas most of the comments question the desirability, not the idealism.

"Most of the comments question the desirability" of "achieving his ideals"? For one thing, I didn't get the impression that was the content of most of the comments. For another thing, some of those that did seem to question "his ideals" seemed to me more questioning their own assumptions about his ideals and -- even more so -- questioning their own assumptions about how he'd achieve those ideals.

To be fair, my own understanding of what Mr. McKibben is talking about is probably colored by having read "Deep Economy" and some other of his writings. Possibly his short bloggings here don't do his ideas justice, if they're read on their own.

I guess I've saved the most interesting findings I've come across for last. Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan (1993) found the goal of financial success to lower self-esteem, vitality, self-actualization, and global functioning, while simultaneously increasing depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders.

A second study, by Carol Nickerson, Norbert Schwarz, Ed Diener, and Daniel Kahneman (2003), some of the most interesting happiness researchers, looked at individuals who identified the goal of financial success as “Not Important,” “Somewhat Important,” “Very Important,” and “Essential,” during their freshman year of college. Nineteen years later, across all incomes except the very top bracket, those who identified financial success as unimportant ranked their average life satisfaction more highly than those who identified financial success as essential and earned $20,000 to $50,000 a year more than them.

So the question, jhaber, is not whether people are made satisfied by their incomes - most studies found that people are just as satisfied with lower-income lifestyles than higher income lifestyles (not past the poverty line, of course). It's about ambition, desire, and "keeping up with the Joneses" - constant comparisons to what others have - that keep us unhappy with our lifestyles. What is difficult is not making people happy with a less consumer-driven economy, it is shifting to that economy. I am confident we can do it.

(Kasser, T., and Ryan, R.M. (1993). A dark side of the American Dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65, 410-422.

Nickerson, C., Schwarz, N., Diener, E., and Kahneman, D. (2003). Zeroing in on the Dark Side of the American Dream: A Closer Look at the Negative Consequences of the Goal for Financial Success. Psychological Science 14(6), 531-536.)

Bearpaw, I can send you the pertinent references from the literature review I did if you would like.

Well, considering that I am not an economist or a psychologist, I'd be wiling to bet that if I could understand the material, you can understand the material.

Aron, I never questioned that money doesn't buy happiness. It's a platitude, as I said in my first post. I surely haven't had a driven lifestyle, especially given the alleged earnings potential of my education. I basically walked away from it.  (Now, I wish I could claim that this, too, has translated into a fulfilled career, but that's neither here nor there.) My question is how that translates into anything meaningful in terms of actual human desires and supposed small-town life. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Re: Incidentally, if it is true that small towns don't adequately address human desires, then 99% of humanity has been supremely frustrated for about 99,800 of the last 100,000 years.

Well, there is the fact that throughout most of history, and across many different civilizations, people tended to flock into cities from the rural areas. So the rustic life does seem to have produced a fair number of malcontents.
I also find it rather curious that anyone would be promoting rusticity in the name of a "green" lifestyle when it's generally accepted that high-population density living in cities has a smaller environmental footprint than low population density life.

Thanks very much for visiting with us here.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who would like to see you drop by again soon.  Thanks, too for the efforts in organizing those demonstrations.  While I'm impressed with the 40 Congresspersons who showed up, I'm wondering where the other 425 who should have been there were...ditto the other Presidential candidates.  With activities in all 50 states, it shouldn't have been too difficult for them to find a convenient spot to lend a little moral support.  I've bookmarked step it up.  I'll return later to see if I can find a list of the politicos who supported your cause.

aMike

If you guys give a damn about global warming, why do you fight against those of us attempting to do something much more meaningful than just reducing carbon emissions?

Before you lose your cool and contribute more to global warming personally, consider methane.

Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases of them all. Cow manure loses ~90% of its methane content after about 24 hours. That methane can be captured, processed and sold as natural gas quite efficiently but not by small farmers letting their cows roam freely over pasture in a Norman Rockwell setting.

Anaerobic digesters are a centuries-old technology that was first utilized to improve manure as fertilizer. The methane that was produced by horizontal boxes buried in the ground was little more than a novelty. My doctor told me that the village in India where he grew up got all its electricity from digesters. The technology has been vastly improved but thinking hasn't.

Those of us who want to do something about such things must fight the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and other anti-environmentalists on many fronts as well as Exxon and other black hats at the other end of the spectrum.

I know you guys mean to do right but you don't always do right.

Best, Terry

Sorry - I meant to post this above.

I saw Bill speak here in little Hamilton Mt and then saw him on the Newshour and now here he is in the cafe. Very impressive in terms of exposure. I come from the school of macro-change (of course we can work on many fronts) but appreciate everyones efforts.

A farm can be located away from surface water, but not away from "water." Manure from massive feedlots (we're talking thousands to tens of thousands of cattle or pigs in one facility) is pumped into lagoons that then contaminate ground water. All water is connected - ground water flows into rivers and streams and is the source of drinking water for most rural areas. Another human-scale problem with these feedlots is air emissions. Methane aside, the animal waste creates an awful smell of ammonia and feces that neighbors have no control over. It quite literally sickens the people who live around it. Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" for more details.

Well in my case I work from my home using an internet connection as I have an internet business. The commute to work is from my bedroom to my living room = no driving at all. I don't work at McDonalds. There is one in my town as it is a resort town with a lot of tourism. If I worked at Starbucks, I'd walk or ride a bike as like I say, it is a only a 4 minute drive from my house.

My house is not isolate, it sits amongst a modest neighborhood of homes, which sits amongst a mostly modest town of neighborhoods, although being a resort town there are some weekender / vacation home million dollar plus log home style lodges here that are resource intensive. The locals have modest homes because of having modest incomes.

My business income has fallen over the years slowly but surely, so I have not been able to afford to buy solar panels. But I would have by now if I had the cash. That is something I plan to do as soon as I can afford it. And then replace my natural gas furnace with an electric one = no concern over heating bills.

I would like to promote grey water systems to the City as we get our water from underground and due to drought and overdevelopment here the supplies are in question.

It is by no means lilly white here, there are plenty of hispanics, many of whom their children are learning english as a second language in public school - I don't think the immigrants in my town are getting a bad deal, and the small cabins they live in are affordable to buy compared to residences in los angeles.

Service economy to me doesn't mean fast food jobs. Although tourism driven economies do include many restaurant jobs it is true.

I don't see what is so sordid about racism and inequality in America if we are about to elect an african american president. After suffering from several corporate layoffs in the late 80's when I was out of college, I decided to change careers and work with at risk youth - which I did for a few years working with low income hispanic boys east of los angeles working in a boys and girls club. I wouldn't move to that location and raise my children there. If you'd like to move there and raise yours that is your choice. But if it weren't for the executive director turning out to be a pedophile I probably wouldn't have quit that job and might still be there today. Just because I wouldn't want my children to be raised in that town being about the only white children there and being picked on for being a "white boy," this doesn't mean I am racist as I was willing to earn a very modest paycheck with modest job status in that job making a difference for children of a different race.

When I started my internet business on zero capital in a modest apartment I was living in in North Hollywood, I had one neighbor move out because of the bullet hole he discovered in his kitchen wall one morning. So when I speak of residents who might be isolated within an urban environment as well, and afraid to walk their street, at least I'm speaking from experience. I wouldn't want to raise my children in that apartment I used to live in either.

How about you? Have you worked for any organizations that make a difference for the lower class or minorities, or are you all talk and no action?

I think we can have people living in simplicity in both big cities and in rural areas. The only criterion in my view is how much pollution the person is causing.

As a sidenote, the areas of southern california that are sprawling with new developments in now are the high deserts - the only place left. Which are filling up now with more minorities than whites, and yes with mostly hispanics, but also blacks. Many of whom are buying McMansions. Mostly middle class, the new suburbia around here. Some drive an hour or more to work. If they are raising children, I can't say I blame them. If we put solar panels on all the rooftops, and if we resurrect the electric car, the only issues left are water consumption and habitat. Although the high desert isn't exactly brimming with fauna and flora by any means - it's mostly dirt. So it isn't like they are paving over rainforest. The main reason for such sprawl is housing affordability (most of the houses are not mcmansions, but they all try to get the most square footage inside and out that they can afford.)

I know these new sprawling suburbs have more minorities as in my field experience in getting a teaching credential I've seen the percentages in the classrooms. Some kids told me where they used to live and they were all in areas that are inner city gang infested areas. I am guessing their parents moved to raise their children in a better area to raise children.

Would you like to tell their parents they should move back?

"Well in my case I work from my home using an internet connection as I have an internet business." The point is that a lot of people cannot.

"I don't see what is so sordid about racism and inequality in America if we are about to elect an African American president." I'd love to think that Obama's popularity translated into equal funding for school districts, an end to segregation, and even a tiny reversal of the decades of growing inequality, but it ain't necessarily so, and the small-town idyll that never existed does not encourage me to expect it would help now.

"Are you all talk and no action?" I'd prefer not to personalize this. So let's just say for the sake of argument I'm all talk, with hope that speaking out right now against what I see as a very bad prescription indeed is not pointless.

"I think we can have people living in simplicity in both big cities and in rural areas. The only criterion in my view is how much pollution the person is causing." Yes, but is that McKibben's criterion? I think not.

"I know these new sprawling suburbs have more minorities." Yes, but they're sprawl, and that's neither McKibben's hope nor environmentally promising.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

There's a different notion of community in other nations. Europe has poured money into infrastructure, national train systems, and the safety net. It has signed onto Kyoto, and it accepts regulation and high gasoline prices. It does not have the same concentration of wealth. It understands community as able to encompass a nation. This has dangers, as when not everyone conforms to that national ideal, but it has promise to evolve in a way that accepts these differences and a cosmpolitan ideal of nationhood.

America began with multiple ideals, as the debates at the time of the Constitution attest. Still, it has always been haunted by the ideal of the individual, untrammeled, rooted in an agrarian (but slave holding) economy and able to lead other nations by the example of the shining city on the hill. No wonder that, when Bill and others here reach for community, they can envision it only as an extension of the individual, in that it requires reforming one's soul, in that it suggests a town small enough so that everyone is familiar, and in that it requires nothing more.

Hungry? Grow your own damn vegetables. Stuck in a city, looking for a job or an education, wondering if they'll ever finish the Second Avenue subway? Sell all you have and follow me.

It's pretty, although I still have no idea how it's supposed to export the ghettos or indeed improve human nature. (LA seems at best a partial model, given its sprawl.) It's not going to be my lifestyle, although I promise I shall continue to use less energy than my rural compatriots.

We've been lucky. America has benefitted from its great achievements, as Europe consumed itself first in crumbling empires and then in war. America still can't acknowledge how much it's mistakenly taken on those mistakes. But I think the game is over, and real reform in our national life, our educational and economic opportunities, and our regulations (environmental and other) is in order. Hope to cure the nation by curing souls is mere denial.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

"Well in my case I work from my home using an internet connection as I have an internet business." The point is that a lot of people cannot.

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then they should live near their job, we agree on something here I think. most people in my small town work in the small town. it takes them like I have mentioned, 4 or 5 minutes to drive to work. my bet is that inner city dwellers consume more gasoline than small town dwellers. going carless can be done in either big or little city, yet I think it is more realistic to do it in a place you aren't afraid to walk the streets.

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"I don't see what is so sordid about racism and inequality in America if we are about to elect an African American president." I'd love to think that Obama's popularity translated into equal funding for school districts, an end to segregation, and even a tiny reversal of the decades of growing inequality, but it ain't necessarily so, and the small-town idyll that never existed does not encourage me to expect it would help now.

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it helps alright when the minorities in question move out the idyll, away from the inner city, like the hispanic families who live in my small town. there are no gangs here for starters. and there certainly is no segregation here. as i've already mentioned, there are special classes just for english language learners here funded by yuppie tax payers in part.

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"I think we can have people living in simplicity in both big cities and in rural areas. The only criterion in my view is how much pollution the person is causing." Yes, but is that McKibben's criterion? I think not.

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Mr. McKibben has done an excellent job with stepitup07.org . Step it up has only this criterion of I'm not mistaken. Or were you implying on stepitup07.org that there is a disclaimer stating that small towns need not apply? Regarding the other criterion of a localized economy -- this can be done in a small town just as it can be done in a big city. Indeed your chances of living closer to the farmers who sell their produce at the farmers market are greater if you live in a rural area -- the farmers dodn't have too drive 90 miles in their pickups to truck their goods, consuming a lot of energy in the process. I don't recall Bill criticizing small towns. Furthermore, in a rural area and with a yard, you can do even better and grow your own food, which requires no gasoline consumption at all.

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"I know these new sprawling suburbs have more minorities." Yes, but they're sprawl, and that's neither McKibben's hope nor environmentally promising.

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Correct. But I am guessing you are against immigration control, right? As that would be racist? Even though immigration control would prevent such sprawl?

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"[L]ocally owned stores who were put out of business were gouging their customers (either intentionally or not). You see it here in New York all the time. Apples from the local fruit stand cost more than the same apples at a chain grocery store."

This is the kind of reasoning that human-scale communities and economies are designed to overcome. If you know your grocer or the farmer who grew your apples, it's a lot harder to argue that he or she does not deserve the same lifestyle you have just because you could get it cheaper from Wal-Mart. It's expensive, but an ethical economy (i.e. not a straight-up supply and demand curve) is worth it.

Love it, aMike. Science to the rescue. :-)

Best, Terry

Well I don't see why we can't launch the spent rods out into space my self.

But if it is true geothermal is realistic, sure i'd be all for that. I am skeptical about the ability to drill that deep in areas that are not caldras (i think that is the right word) but since I'm clueless on the issue I give you the benefit of the doubt and it sounds great to me.

I know of a ski resort town in California, Mammoth Lakes, where I spent 6 summers working in summer camps, where the entire town is powered by geothermal. But their ski mountain is a retired volcano so they are close to the magma.

I think if we move towards employee ownership of companies, we'll be on the right path. Along with un-shackling ourselves from our cars. Choosing to live as close as possible to our jobs. Or using public transport or buying clean cars. Installing solar panels. And choosing to pay more to buy local, the tradeoff being to have less quanitity. Throw in some cutting edge carless developments. Farmers markets are great but only if the farmers live in the local economy as if they drive many miles it's no different from produce from a big rig, and probably worse. Governments need to protect wildlands and zone farmland only as farmland.

Dare I mention people should contribute to others and look out for number two with community service?

It really isn't too complicated. The hard part is getting the critical mass. Stepitup07.org is surely part of the solution.

I suppose one could argue that it is easier and more practical to obtain critical mass within a big city.

For me, I know that underneath the "you got my Irish up" with any arguments between environmentalists as to how to be a proper environmentalist really is just masking a fire in the belly that realizes we could do more to be a part of the solutions. I am guessing this is the same for Haber. I know it is true for me.

good question - but if they blew up in the upper atmosphere...

A parting shot of my own with apologies in advance to Mr. McKibben:

Professor John Thompson would like to cure cancer. Dr. Thompson not only thinks he can but has cured lung cancer in a mouse. He has also cured mice of septicemia, an overwhelming blood infection, and of glaucoma with his Death Switch. He has only to optimize delivery which is a bit of puzzlement but hey who said science is easy?

Now who would want to be harming Dr. Thompson's efforts to cure all cancers, not just to let the victims linger on a bit longer, besides those fine hedge funds that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton think are such benefactors to mankind?

Environmentalists is who.

You see the initial project was to grow plants that resisted drought, heat, cold, salt, parasites, infections, poor nutrition and yet flourished with fast growth and abundant yields on marginal land with minimum attention such as fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides utilizing genes ubiquitous in nature.

(Try to believe this is not just a pipe dream but was backed by the Forbes family at inception. The Forbes are not known for selfless promotion of environmental flights of fancy.)

Obviously there are some enormous scientific obstacles but that should not include the mindlessness of regulators and density of those proclaiming themselves environmentalists in my view.

Efforts to introduce superior plants have been greatly delayed by efforts at "natural breeding" as compared to gene splicing. There is no cross-species introduction of genes though the superstition regarding frankenstein monsters persists unabated without the artificial breeding known as natural. Those who fear they will grow another head eating frankenfoods could use one that works IMO.

The more recent discovery that the same genes are ubiquitous in animals - that includes man, folks, and women too, ladies - has led to exciting research and and extreme financial burdens for a commercial enterprise.

I am plumb against cancer and other diseases. I am for bounteous crops that require less land, labor, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides.

Others are opposed.

They call themselves environmentalists.

DISCLAIMER: I have a small investment in the enterprise that is unprofitable and a large psychological investment in the idea.

Best, Terry

True in many cases but not all. Also, I suppose living in a ski/lake resort town is idyllic because we have a lot of amenities here due to the tourists who either visit or have 2nd homes they use occasionally or every weekend.

Which means us locals get to enjoy the amentities all to ourselves during the work week. And things get more crowded on weekends, but often depending on the time of year, still still no where near as crowded as a big city.

So I suppose such a town isn't a great example. Although I think it is a great place for an environmentalist to live myself. There are 2 starbucks -- one could choose to be a coffee maker but on $15 per hour plus health benefits be able to go carless, all the while enjoying their life, in a ski / lake resort town. One nice thing about living in a vacation spot is you don't have to commute to your vacation - you are already there. To me this is a form of deep ecology. I havn't read the book Deep Ecology either though I will admit. I am a 4 minute drive from Kmart, CVS drug store/pharmacy, a hospital, a medical clinic, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, (the chiropractors are 7 minutes away,) two full size grocery stores, a radio shack, a subway, a sizzler, three strip malls with miscellaneous other stores such as blockbuster video, donuts, postal services, restaurants, etc. Most of the restaurants are more like 7 or 8 minutes away along with the tourist oriented shopping village. And I don't need to drive a car to get to a trail head, I can ride my bike or actually in my case walk down the street to get to a nature trail. We also have a farmers market, although the contributors probably do not live the the most part in our town, which means they are driving at the very least 60 minutes to get here and most likely double that. So one could make a case for more gasoline being consumed / more carbon emmitted than if the farmers market was not here.

If you work part time at the ski resort during the winter, you get free season lift tickets. Which is good as you could not afford to ski if you didn't do this most likely, since the $15 per hour starbucks job with health benefits would not be enough. Since you are not making a lot of money, you don't consume much, because you can't consume much. Nor can you afford to consume extravagant vacations such as cruises which guzzle all sorts of energy.

And if I really wanted to do it right I would go carless and rely on my mountain bike or walking. If I got a few more siberian huskies, they could indeed pull me on my mountain bike which would be a low emissions transportation technology. (I've done this with two huskies but more for sport than transportation.)

I would guess there are many small towns that have these types of stores - not boonies rural but small cities. Certainly suburbs have these stores and if one were to work local and shop local in a suburb they have done nothing wrong.

Bill McKibben criticizes sprawling suburbs and McMansions. As do most other environmentalists. But I would like to call for deep thought, not deep whining, as environmentalists and the environmental movement and organizations are discredited every time someone does that. Of course suburbs make for more driving. But perhaps that isn't something we can change realistically in part since the suburbs already exist. Government can prevent additional suburbs if it wanted to. Perhaps the technology of the vehicle, or the mode of transportation is what we can realistically change. Electric cars powered by solar panels on the McMansion's (or regular size home) roof.

The other thing we can realistically change, as I also just mentioned above, assuming we do not switch to communism, is the protection of wild space and zoning of farmlands as farmlands so they don't convert to housing.

If the owners of the mansions were to tear down their mansion, split their property into four pieces, or more still, build an apartment complex on their property, what is the end result? Right: more people = more consumption. So now you have four families living where there was once one. Or 12 if an apartment complex. Which means 4 or 12 cars instead of one (or 8 and 24 instead of 2,) that much more gasoline consumed, that much more toothpaste, that much more water, the same amount of natural gas for heating - although if put up solar panels that doesn't matter as you switch to electric heaters. And in the example of the apartment complex - less landscape plants resulting in less oxygen production and carbon absorption. You have more people because you have increased the supply of real estate, which lowers the price of real estate, which allows more immigrants to move in as they can afford to move in. Or it allows more babies to be born as most people will not have babies unless they have a decent enough nest. Either way, you have increased the population and thus consumption.

Technology got us into the problem - so too can it get us out of the problem. And I consider bicycles to be technology, so yes lifestyle and ethics plays into it as well. Along with governmental limits on the limited resource consumption such as land consumption. And ethics plays into it when you make the decision to pay more to buy local, considering the "high cost of walmart." And yes we do need books and rallies and environmental organizations and grass roots to drum up the case for a change in ethics and values.

Let's use the serenity prayer perhaps to focus on what we *can* change. That's really all I ask of environmental authors. Otherwise I think they'd be more realistic emmigrating to North Korea where everything is centrally planned.

I think McKibben is on to something with the think global, buy local though. And certainly he is on to something with the stepitup groups.

I pretty much agree with you. Guess I'm not arguing whether or not cities or small towns are more environmentally friendly, though. The way I see it, as we have the environmental argument, we should try to preserve the various options we have for living. I happen to like New York. Some of my friends happen to like LA. One of my friends lives in virtual seclusion on a mountain. If me and my mountain friend traded lives tomorrow, we'd both experience a big drop off in satisfaction.

Honestly, I think McKibben was a bit evasive in his posts. I think he might view a lot of my concerns as simply an example of the hyperindividualism that he thinks is part of the problem, and so he doesn't answer those concerns directly. In the Salon interview he basically said he wasn't that interested in objections along the lines of "But I want a second car!"

But, you know, those are objections that matter. So long as he's not willing to talk about what people do want, as well as what they should want, then he's going to remain a minor influence on the debate.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Re: Did Einstein mention breeder reactors?

Breder reactors do not create radiocativity. They simply change one unstable (radioactive) isotope (one that is not good for chain reactions) into another (one that is). The total energy balance is the same coming out as going in.