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Here is a picture of a cat in a deckchair, probably relaxing as cats are wont to do from time to time. The cat could be anywhere but I can bet you anything that the cat didn’t travel thousands of miles to wherever it is relaxing in the deckchair especially in order to relax in a deckchair; that cat is just chilled, in the deckchair, being a cat.
I know why many people take vacations (holidays, vacances…), and it’s for a reason that would be absurd if it weren’t so tragically true: it’s to get away from the place where they live. Not to go somewhere else – although that is often cited as the reason – but, to put it another way, to be in a place other than that where they spend most of their lives so as not to be reminded of what they do for the rest of the year. Oh, there are plenty of people I know – myself included – who go on vacations solely to see other places and/or meet other people, but they are in the minority.
You see, the vast majority of people living in the civilized world are stuck (so it seems) with a life that only releases them from its industrialised grip for a very short time once every year; or maybe twice if you can arrange things that way. Weekends, for most people, are spent doing the things that couldn’t be managed during the rest of the week because there wasn’t the time or energy to do them. Stuck in the spin-cycle of sleep-work-eat-watch-sleep-work-eat-watch…sleep-shop-clean-eat-watch-sleep… then the vacation becomes that slowly brightening light at the far end of a long, long shift that the industrialised and their families pinpoint as one of their few realisable aspirations.
What a bloody hopeless existence!
A few years ago I authored an essay called “The Problem With…Tourism” that set out the basic environmental and humanitarian issues of this pernicious industry. Here’s an extract:
As with many large-scale commercial ventures, the users of tourism are being promised a dream. That dream comes with few strings attached. That dream can be expensive, but the potential returns are good memories for life. And we are addicted to that dream; the one fantastic holiday that we want to repeat over and over again; the sense of “getting away from it all”, enjoying better weather, great entertainment, a chance to meet different people, and the cachet that goes with having done all this; all essentially selfish things, but none of them harmful as such.
As we continue to be enchanted by the riches that tourism has to offer, we fail to see the stream of people coming with us that grows ever wider, feeding on the same dream, taking advantage of the richly polluting cheap flights that deposit the hoards of people who engulf delicate habitats with concrete and suck dry the natural riches that so attracted them in the first place.
Does it have to be this way?
Do we ever stop and think of the reasons we go where we do? Do we actually consider the impact that our travelling, accommodation and entertainment are having on planet Earth?
The impact of tourism on the natural environment is huge, and growing at an enormous rate. With a current annual growth rate of about 5% in the western world, the emissions from flying are expected to triple in less than 25 years – far more if you consider the potentially enormous growth expected from China and other rapidly developing nations.
And on the surface, it is the act of tourism that seems to be the real problem – the pollution of travelling and the seasonal populations of travellers, along with the concentration camp-like existance of tourists, shut off from the outside world, economically unreachable by the people who are supposedly set to “benefit” from this tide of humanity. But as becomes clear when you analyse the way the civilized world is run – for the benefit of the corporate elites and their toadying political makeweights – tourism is even more sinister than this: it is a way of screwing every last drop of humanity from civilization’s willing slaves in return for a few weeks in the sun and, if you’re really unlucky, more opportunities to hand your money over to the corporate world.
And they call this a holiday?
Do you know the simplest way to short-circuit this horrible facade? Simply refuse to do what you are told.
I don’t have a detailed list of Undermining tasks of varying risks to offer you this month: just a simple set of ideas. Only you can make your mind up how risky they are, and whether you want to do them. But if you do take them, you may find yourself escaping far more than just the Tourist Trap…
If you are being sold something, don’t buy it.
If you are encouraged to go somewhere, don’t go there.
If you are offered incentives to make journeys or experience thrills you wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise, throw them back in the faceless faces of those that offer them.
If there is a way, any way, to get out of the spin cycle, slow down and take control of your life then take it!
Sorry for all the reposts recently, but it’s been a very busy time at Unsuitablog HQ, and I also can’t top this bit of news from The Guardian covering an excellent example of Undermining. Emissions Trading, like all forms of offsetting, is a method of ensuring that the industrial system can keep operating.
Anti-carbon trading activists shut down the website of the European Climate Exchange (ECX), over the weekend, replacing the site with a spoof page lampooning the industry.
The website of the London-based carbon credit trading platform was hacked at close to midnight on Friday and showed the spoof homepage for around 22 hours. It then took technical staff another day to restore the official homepage.
Instead of its normal rolling ticker data listing bids for carbon credit futures, the ECX website blared: “Super promo – climate on sale: Guaranteed profit!”
Explaining the “carbon trade scam”, the spoof site decried how the EU’s flagship environmental policy is “susceptible to corporate lobbying,” offers industry “licences to pollute so they can continue business-as-usual,” and “generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects [and] opportunist traders.”
On Saturday, shortly after the ECX website went down, activists announced their handiwork on a number of environmental discussion groups, saying: “In a public act of digital direct action, the ECX website was taken offline and replaced with our message in an effort to try to raise awareness about carbon trading as a dangerous false solution to the climate crisis.”
One of the activists responsible, from the online activist group, Decocidio, told the Guardian: “We feel the EU Emissions Trading Scheme is not well understood by the general public or even within the environmental movement. It is a major fraud touted by the mainstream media, politics, industry and lobbyists as the main solution.” The group is part of Earth First, a radical environmental protest organisation.
“Attempting to cause as much inconvenience, economical loss and image damage as possible, we deliberately tried to maximise the virtual damage,” said the hacker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A spokeswoman for the European Climate Exchange, Kelly Loeffler, said: “We have no comment relating to the incident as there is nothing to report publicly.”
The exchange was also targeted by activists from Climate Camp last summer. They dubbed it a “climate change casino”.
Damien Morris, of Sandbag, a self-described “critical friend” of the EU ETS said: “It’s very unfortunate that this sort of infighting over emissions trading has developed within the environmental movement, especially on the radical end,” he said. “There seems to be a large grassroots following and public presence of these sorts of ideas, but not at the more technical and realistic, solutions-focussed part of the movement.”
“There is certainly a place for criticism of the ETS, but the problem with those who disagree with carbon trading is that they oppose it in principle, not in practice. It’s a good idea when done properly. There are many problems with the ETS, but there is a clear pathway as to how it can be made more effective and robust.”
The weasel words of Sandbag reflect their mainstream credentials; clearly Earth First! and Decocidio are so far outside their awareness bubble that anyone who opposes emissions trading must have some kind of theoretical issue, rather than the far more obvious fact that it’s all part of the ecocidal global economy…
Another winning post by David at The Good Human, exposing a magnificent example of Astroturfing. I suspect one reason these things keep turning up is because of “Fluorescent Tabard Syndrome”: the psychological oddity that allows anyone wearing an extremely bright item of work clothing to go virtually unnoticed by the general public. Essentially, if the lie is big enough, or the company greenwashing is so obviously trying to cover up their ecocide, then people will accept this as OK.
Thankfully, some of us aren’t falling for it…
I have written about some whoppers on this site and in the Greenwash of the Week series (Sustainable Brands was one of my favorites), and this is right up there with some of the best. The Sustainability Consortium, an “independent organization of diverse global participants who work collaboratively to build a scientific foundation that drives innovation to improve consumer product sustainability through all stages of a product’s life“, would seemingly be a place you would see companies truly dedicated to the environment and sustainability, right? However, you would be wrong…as you can see from this small sample of members, along with some examples of how much they care about sustainability:
* Walmart – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $27.6 million to settle claims of improperly handling and dumping hazardous waste at stores across California.
* Monsanto – Monsanto’s RoundUp “May Have Dire Consequences for Agriculture” and “Monsanto Fined $2.5 Million for Misleading Farmers About GM Cotton Seed”
* Cargill – Cargill leaves a palm oil mess in Papua New Guinea and all 83,000 hectares of Cargill’s five directly owned oil palm plantations have been carved out of lowland rainforests, causing massive deforestation. As of 2009, Cargill is actively clearing forest in Borneo at their PT Harapan Sawit Lestari plantation without an environmental impact assessment.
* Clorox – Chlorine bleach releases dioxin, furans and other organochlorines into the air, can cause sore throats, coughs, wheezing, shortness of breath, fluid in the lungs and studies have shown a relationship between dioxin exposure and cancer, birth defects, and developmental/reproductive disorders.
* Colgate – Makers of “plastic, one-time use toothbrushes (called WISP’s) so that you can freshen up multiple times throughout the day. Which is why I find Colgate’s supposed environmental stewardship to be such an insult. It’s called “Respect for our Planet.” Um, yeah. If respect for our planet means throwing up a web page and then manufacturing utterly useless products that will sit in our landfills until the Sun burns out, you guys have it nailed.”
* Disney – Too much to even list here, but my friends over at EcoChildsPlay have a ton of good stuff about their “concern”.
* Kimberly-Clark – Kimberly-Clark’s new policy is to ensure that 40 percent of its North American fiber is either recycled or certified by FSC, but in order for Kimberly Clark products to be environmentally preferable, the company needs to announce meaningful targets for increasing recycled and post-consumer recycled fiber in their products. The current policy does not guarantee that Kimberly-Clark will in fact increase recycled content in any of its at-home products, most of which do not currently contain any recycled content at all. Their at-home tissue products are not guaranteed to improve. Also, check out their Pure & Natural diapers which are anything but.
* SC Johnson – Makers of Pledge, Ziploc, Off!, Glade, Raid, Windex, Scrubbing Bubbles, and Drano. What a collection of sustainable products they have! I have featured them as a Greenwash of the Week before, Treehugger has added them to their Greenwash Watch series, and Seventh Generation wonders when Drano became “non-toxic and environmentally friendly”.
* Unilever – Although not directly related to the environment, it is a human-rights issue: “Unilever Builds a Facebook App To Help Indians Whiten Their Skin”
* Tyson – Tyson Foods on trial for polluting Illinois watershed and Tyson Fined $2M For Mucking Up Missouri River
* Waste Management – Federal authorities have given a toxic waste dump (owned by Waste Management) near a Central California farming community plagued by birth defects 60 days to clean up soil contaminated with carcinogenic PCBs.
Are there some members of the Consortium who actually do care to be sustainable and are not only interested in a little “purchased greenwash”? Yep. But many of them are well-known polluters, human rights abusers, and purveyors of genetically-modified foods and goods.
So much for “Sustainability”…
Full background information with links available at David’s fine site.
It’s always good to refresh your skills, and that opportunity came to me a couple of days ago when a reader sent me a nice example of subtle but very detailed greenwashing in the shape of Redleaf Bottled Water. Straight away the shields are up because we are talking about an entirely commercial product, as opposed to something that in very many parts of the world is either provided as a perfectly drinkable service with relatively low charges, or available naturally for free.
I’m sure almost everyone reading this does, from time to time, find themselves in the situation where they are forced to buy a bottle of water, there not being any other source available (in my case it’s basically when the bottle is in too bad a state to be refilled with tap water). I’m also sure that most people reading this would balk at describing commercial bottled water as “environmentally friendly”, yet go to the Environment page of the Redleaf web site and we hit this interesting statement:
At redleaf, we believe in making the world a better place, one sip at a time. We take our responsibility to the earth and our community very seriously and we’ve developed business practices and a production process that minimizes the impact we have on both. Not only do we source our water from a naturally renewable artesian aquifer but we also bottle at a ratio of 1:1 so that not a drop of water is wasted. These are just two of the reasons we think redleaf is the world’s most environmentally friendly water.
The opening sentence makes me a bit sick in my mouth, to be quite honest – replace the word “redleaf” with “BP” and “sip” with “slick” and you can see my point: now I’m not saying that Redleaf are necessarily as bad as BP, but bottling, transporting and selling water is not a good thing. It can’t be, so why suggest so?
Then we get into the main blurb and the greenwash words stack up: “naturally”, “artisan”, “renewable”, topped off with “not a drop is wasted”. Are you quite sure about that? What about the water used in the manufacture of the aquifer tapping equipment, or the production of the bottles, or the extraction of the oil to power the transportation of the end product? The company may claim to reduce the impact of all these aspects, but to make the claim that “not a drop is wasted” is just plain lying.
What we get at the end is the classic “comparative statement”, analagous to the car manufacturer that claims model x is more economical than model y, or the energy company that claim their coal-fired power stations are more efficient than all the other (coal) energy companies. Redleaf, again, may well produce the world’s most environmentally friendly water, but…hang on, that’s a complete load of bollocks!
Go back to the statement I made at the start: we are talking about an entirely commercial product, as opposed to something that in very many parts of the world is either provided as a perfectly drinkable service with relatively low charges, or available naturally for free. I am pretty lucky to have a river close to my house but, regardless of this good fortune, I can unequivocally say that filling my hands with river water then transferring it to my mouth is a damn site more environmentally friendly than any bottled water.
Interestingly, when you look at the Environment page, the claims do – at first glance – seem to be subtle, modest even; but take a closer look with open eyes and the greenwash really does pour off the pages. For instance, I’m not sure how it is possible that “no chemicals are used in [the] bottling process” given that absolutely everything is made from chemicals, but such mealy-mouthed statements are so easy to drop into the mix to convince the reader that so-called Ultra-Premium Water really is something special.
It would be good to open this up to you all: take a look at this page and tell readers of The Unsuitablog what greenwash you can see, in the comments section below. When I have a few comments then I’ll send the link off to the company…or maybe they would like to comment themselves, after all, they are the ones doing the greenwashing.
I don’t know about you, but if I lived in Rwanda then the genocide of 1994 that took the lives of a million people in some of the most brutal ways imaginable would certainly be at the top (or is that bottom) of my list. Then again, anyone who follows the Jewish faith or, indeed, lived through World War II, would have no hesitation in selecting the Holocaust as their least favourite genocide. Then there is the “lost” genocide of Armenia, which modern day Turkey still refuses to acknowledge – certainly not popular in the Caucasus.
I think it’s probably time to stop, don’t you?
Way back in the prime of my naiveté I played a significant part in the Stop Esso campaign in my part of Britain. Also known in the USA as “Stop ExxonMobil”, the Greenpeace-led campaign was inspired by the fact that the then-President of ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, refused to acknowledge the human element in global warming. Thus, it was reasoned that ExxonMobil / Esso was the “bad boy” of the oil industry and must be suitably chastised.
For about 5 years I, and thousands of fellow campaigners, were tied up in the myth that somehow boycotting and protesting against a single huge oil company would actually make a difference. This was wrong on three counts:
1) Not a single non-political boycott has ever been shown to have a significant impact on the activities of a large corporation. Aside from political trade sanctions or embargoes, the profit margins and sheer scale of these companies are large enough to absorb the impact of such activities. Campaigns that call for boycotts are even less likely to achieve any satisfactory outcome, simply because only a small minority of people ever heed such calls.
2) The aims of the boycotts are, almost without exception, about getting an existing corporation to change its ways. Now in the case of an oil company, what exactly is it that the company is expected to do? Stop selling oil? I’m no financial expert, but this sounds to me like requesting the company effectively ceases trading, which is certainly not what the vast majority of campaigns aim to do. The campaign line ends with accepting a moral compromise which, as anyone who has studied ethics will attest to, is a morally unstable position at best.
3) Single company boycotts are, in effect, condoning the activities of other companies in the same business. I’ll give you an example: when I organised a serial protest of 45 Esso service stations in one day, those taking part in the protests encountered lots of resistance even to such minor demands as getting an oil company to admit to anthropogenic global warming; but more than that, we also encountered a number of very well informed people, one of whom had experienced at first hand the brutal treatment of Nigerians in the Niger Delta by Shell sponsored thugs, and the appalling conditions suffered by people due to the constant flaring of gas and pollution of watercourses. We were asked why we weren’t protesting against Shell, to which the best we could muster was: “That’s not the focus of today’s campaign.” That may have been the case, but by making a single oil company (Esso) out to be the bad boy, as far as the public were concerned, any other oil company was ok.
You may take part in your single company protest, confident that in your heart of hearts you also despise any other company that operates in a similar manner; but unless you make that explicit, or widen your target to include the entire operational gamut, then you are also publicly giving the other companies the green light, in more senses than one.
“I dreamed early on in the BP crime-event that The Gulf Gusher could NOT be stopped. I woke up shaking, sweating, my heart pounding. I knew this was information more than merely a dream…I think we have a hole in our heads when we talk about effective action, and we’ve got to think more seriously about what effective action is to stop the destruction of the only planet we have and need…”
(Roxanne Amico)
Yesterday, myself and probably thousands of other bloggers and activists received a press release from New York PIRG, explaining what they would be doing about the horrors of the Gulf, the ravenous appetite of the industrial world for oil, and the continued scorched-Earth policy that all governments pursue in the search for wealth and continued economic growth.
HUNDREDS TO DEMAND AN END TO OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING AND AN IMMEDIATE TRANSITION TO CLEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY WILL HOLD “HANDS ACROSS THE SAND” AT BRIGHTON BEACH
On Saturday, June 26th, hundreds of students, volunteers and members of NYPIRG’s 1Sky New York Campaign will gather on the shore at Brighton Beach to demand an end to offshore drilling and an immediate transition to clean, renewable energy sources. The activists, standing in silence, will clasp hands along the shoreline, in a stunning visual display of solidarity. The Brighton Beach Hands Across the Sand event is part of a national campaign with hundreds of events taking place in almost every state in the country. For more information about the nation event, please visit: http://www.handsacrossthesand.com.
Who: Hundreds of volunteers and activists from the NYPIRG/1Sky NY Campaign
What: Hands Across the Sand at Brighton Beach
When: Saturday, June 26th at 12pm
Where: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY
Visuals: Hundreds of volunteers clasping hands along the shore
Photos: Photos of the event will be made available for those who are unable to attend
This is part of a national (i.e. USA) event, currently being held in 26 states, which no doubt will be attended by hundreds of thousands of people who for some reason feel that forming chains of people across beaches will do the job, will make things all better again.
> What is the point of this, Lauren?
Keith
Hi,
Thanks for your question. The event is taking place in almost every state
in the country at the exact same time and we are standing together to show
solidarity with the Gulf Coast. We will send the message that we want an
end to offshore oil drilling and we want clean renewable, energy now. I
think that sums it up. If you have any other questions or would like more
information, please feel free to call or email. Thanks!
Warmest Wishes,
Lauren Schuster, Esq.
Staff Attorney
NYPIRG | The New York Public Interest Research Group
9 Murray Street | 3rd Floor | New York, N.Y. 10007
LSchuster@nypirg.org
p. 212.349.6460 | f. 212.349.1366
http://www.nypirg.org/enviro/1sky/
Thanks for replying, Lauren. I still don’t understand how this will actually change anything – who will get the “message” and what do you honestly except them to do with it?
Keith
Hi Keith,
That’s a fair question. So, we hope to and already have started attracting a fair amount of media attention, which is the first step. We are also collecting petition signatures at the event which demand comprehensive climate and clean energy solutions. We will deliver these petition signatures along with pictures of the event and a letter urging out leaders at every level of government to support climate and clean energy legislation next week. Hopefully, the force of hundreds of people from hundreds of organizations across the country doing this at the same time will demonstrate that we’re serious. Finally, bringing people together at an events like this makes everyone feel energized and engaged in the issue. We are going to need a lot of passionate people who are ready to help us move mountains to get climate and energy done. At the end of the day, it’s really about about bringing people together.
With that said, you should come out, see what it’s all about and then you can be involved with the follow up so you can see how a little hand holding can have a big difference.
Warmest Wishes,
Lauren Schuster, Esq.
I think the key word here is “hopefully” – which suggests that even the organisers give little chance of it actually achieving anything. Do you have any examples where such actions have created the kind of change you are asking for? I personally, cannot think of one. All successful actions I am aware of have involved some element of direct action, including sabotage and/or mass disobedience.
Best
Keith
(Cartoon courtesy of Code Green by Stephanie McMillan)
Someone sent me an email containing an article which, on first glance, appeared to be neatly undermining Walmart’s corporate line that the world’s biggest retailer is becoming “green”. It turns out that I read too much into the article, and they were actually praising Walmart and suggesting they were changing the way the global economy operates. Yeah, right!
Guess all the Far Eastern workers they screw, and the millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases they emit are starting to get a bit too public. Time to slap on the greenwash a bit more.
So, rather than republish the article, I will simply reproduce the graphic that was originally going to sit at the top. Use and enjoy to your heart’s content…
LOCKHEED MARTIN ANNOUNCES NEW GREEN INITIATIVES FOR 140,000 EMPLOYEES, THEIR FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES
BETHESDA, Md. – Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) today announced new green initiatives to reach its 140,000 employees, their families and communities. The orchestrated effort is rolling out in conjunction with National Environmental Education Week (EE Week), the largest organized environmental education event in the United States.
Held each year during the week before Earth Day, EE Week coordinates environmental education outreach nationwide to increase Earth Day’s impact. Lockheed Martin will celebrate EE Week and Earth Day by introducing several new company-wide employee initiatives to encourage environmentally-friendly behavior at work, at home and in local communities.
“At Lockheed Martin, it is our goal to raise awareness of natural resource conservation and to help our employees take an active role in their communities,” said Dr. David J.C. Constable, vice president, Lockheed Martin Energy, Environment, Safety & Health. “With the reach of our organization’s network, we have the opportunity to inspire hundreds of thousands of individuals – starting with our employees, their families and communities – so that as a corporation, we can make a big impact one small action at a time.”
A program of the National Environmental Education Foundation, EE Week reaches millions of students with environmentally-themed lessons and activities. In further support of EE Week, Lockheed Martin donated $5,000 to create the EE Week Nature Center Map, which includes contact information for more than 2,000 nature and environmental education centers nationwide, and is a perfect way for educators to find local natural areas for field trips and outdoor study.
“We’re grateful to Lockheed Martin for making National Environmental Education Week’s nature center map possible,” said Diane Wood, president, National Environmental Education Foundation. “Giving children unstructured time to explore nature benefits both their physical and mental health. This nature center finder enables families to find nearby outdoor space easily so they can explore nature and have fun learning about local plants and animals.”
Lockheed Martin’s employee-based initiative surrounding EE Week is just a portion of the corporation’s overall Go Green business strategy. Lockheed Martin is committed to reducing its overall energy usage by building and operating greener, more-efficient buildings, embarking on Green IT activities, constructing on-site renewable energy projects and purchasing renewable energy credits. The Corporation also ranks among the top 50 organizations in the country in green power purchases based on kilowatt hours of power used, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency Green Power Partnership. The Corporation’s long-term absolute goals through 2012 are to reduce carbon emissions, waste to landfill and water usage – each by 25 percent.
In addition to reducing its own environmental impact, Lockheed Martin is working with its customers in the areas of energy efficiency, management, next-generation alternative energy generation, and climate monitoring, Lockheed Martin provides a full range of energy solutions to the government and regulated industry, including the Department of Energy, state and regional energy organizations, utilities and businesses.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The Corporation reported 2009 sales of $45.2 billion.
###
For additional information, please visit: http://www.lockheedmartin.com
When I received the above press release I realised it was beyond parody – I could have just posted it and left it at that; but then we moved house and the email was lost. Yesterday I discovered it again, and realised what needed to be done. The result of this you see below:
This is nothing more that the promotional video for Lockheed Martin’s “Going Green” initiative, interspersed with a range of Lockheed Martin’s own product videos, along with the Wikileaks Collateral Murder scene in which two children are severely injured in an Apache Helicopter attack in Iraq.
According to LM’s own website: “Arrowhead is the advanced electro-optical fire control system that Apache helicopter pilots use for safe flight in day, night, or bad weather missions.”
“The only ‘honest’ living available to the homeless in general is scavenging – and in general they’re quite content to make that living. It’s work they can do without having an address, submitting to supervision, punching a clock, or maintaining a wardrobe of socially approved clothing – and it’s flex-time all the way.”
– Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization
I have to let you into a little secret – and I’m sure no-one will really mind, although in the short term at least there is understandably going to be a certain amount of resistance – about a dream I have. You might know that in April 2010 we moved to a village in southern Scotland to get some distance away from the hyper-consuming culture that dominates the area we had lived in as a family for many years. Two things transpired that we didn’t quite expect: first, that it was very easy to slip into a “village” mindset, whereby your entire life slows down and you need to change your opinion as to what you consider “essential” to life; second, that neither of us have found paid work, despite having long careers in our respective professions.
To most people reading this, the second thing would seem like a real problem, but it is counterbalanced – overriden in many ways – by two more things. The first of these is the result of the changed expectations that have manifested themselves so quickly: we haven’t been to the cinema or had a meal out as a family yet, nor have we suffered just because we can’t get precisely what we are looking for in the shops – we have, even more than we would have done in the “always available” culture, gone down all sorts of different avenues, or simply decided to forego what we might have previously had. The second counterbalance, is longer-term, but centres around the focus of this article: we are entering the Freeconomy.
This dream I have is evolving all the time, but the advert below should explain things quite well:
The key is not the computer work, but the words “Payment by barter or kind can be negotiated if you are a freeconomist.” In essence, I can repair your computer, and you can pay me money; alternatively, you can give me a bag of tomatoes, lettuce and radishes that you have grown yourself, for the amount of time and effort I would have had to invest in growing these things is probably the amount of time and effort you would have to invest in working out how to fix your own computer. I can do this easily, as you may be able to grow things more easily than me – I am growing things, but could always do with more local, fresh food – or you may be able to quickly fix the door in my house that is bowing very badly; or you might play the fiddle, and be able to give my daughter a lesson.
The variations on this are almost endless, as exemplified by this list from the Freeconomy web site, Just For The Love Of It:
The holder of these skills lives just over 7 miles from us, according to the map – but I wonder what a directory of all the useful skills the people who live only 100 metres from us would look like…
An interesting side-effect of using the word “Freeconomist” on this advert, which I have put in the window of the local Post Office and hairdressers, and am also putting in the village newsletter, is the seed of an idea that might be planted in the minds of the people reading it: “That’s interesting, someone is prepared to accept something other than cash for work – I wonder if…” Already, there is is some Undermining going on here: the economic system we have been taught to believe is the only way that anyone can do business – in the loosest sense of the word – is being threatened, both physically and culturally, by the idea that there are other ways to do things that don’t involve money, and by extension, don’t involve the exploitation of humans and the wider environment.
Mark Boyle, author of “The Moneyless Man” puts it like this:
I feel the environmental movement has got it’s head in the sand over the money issue…I believe that as long as the degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed stay so wide, symptoms such as environmental destruction, sweatshop labour and factory farming will always exist, as people will remain as oblivious to the repercussions and consequences of what they consume as ever. Without money, you know the embodied energy and suffering that goes into all that you use. Until we face up to this fact, the symptoms will remain, because why would they change?
So what is this “Freeconomy” thing?
Essentially, it is a way of trading physical artefacts, skills and knowledge that doesn’t involve a symbolic intermediate stage, such as exchanging symbolic IOUs (cash), accruing interest (loans) or hoarding any type of representative currency.
Don’t be confused by writers who say Freeconomy is just “giving stuff away”: the big element missing from such a description is that Freeconomy does not fit into any conventional system of macro-economic behaviour – nothing is being accrued, there is no profit being made, there are no meaningful “economies of scale” beyond a few as opposed to one person making a job easier to manage. In actual fact, the label “Freeconomy” is a bit of a misnomer, for such a way of operating does have enormous intrinsic value, which is why we will probably have to think of a different name for it soon, or even more powerfully, just say, “This is how we live.”
There are many other labels for similar things operating at a variety of different scales or aspects of life: “localism”, “freeganism”, “slow food”, “self-sufficiency”, “resilient communities” and so on, and not all of them have the same value in achieving long-term, sustainable living; but all of them have some elements that, in one way or another, are undermining the destructive global economy, either directly, or by offering people a different way of thinking that doesn’t involve exploitation.
Whatever you call it, we can all do it to a certain extent – probably a greater extent than we realise. I offer below a short list of activities that can kick-start a Freeconomy wherever you happen to be, and perhaps deal a blow to the forces that claim, “If it don’t make a profit, it ain’t worth a bean.”
No Risk
The first stage on the path to Freeconomy is doing it yourself, rather than paying someone to do it for you. I explored this in an Earth Blog article some time ago:
Yesterday I took the children up to our neighbour’s house, and we filled up two wheelbarrows with logs – offcuts from their tree-surgery work. My brother-in-law also delivered some floorboards he had been asked to remove as part of his bathroom fitting work – they will make fantastic kindling. This year we may not have to use the gas-fired central heating at all: a little bit of pain for the gas company and the industrial machine, and a lot less pollution because the burning of logs in an efficient burner is a lot less polluting than my central heating.
Leaving my well-paid job to do full time environmental work was a step; learning to cook with just local, seasonal and dried produce was a step; starting to grow my own food was a step; switching off my central heating, after progressively turning it down further and further was a step; switching off the television and deciding to talk, play cards, read and just enjoy each other’s company was a step. But here’s an interesting thing: almost none of these steps will be featured in the countless lists you read in newspapers and magazines for “turning green” – they are all too big for the mainstream media, and even the mainstream environmental groups to propose to an “unwilling” public.
Aside from leaving my job, all of the other things I mention can be done by very many people with no pain. To someone indoctrinated in the necessity of money, these actions are selfish – you are apparently benefitting no-one but yourself and your immediate dependents; but to that I would ask the question: “What is the point of paying someone to do something for you, when you can do it yourself?” More pertinently, at what point was it deemed unacceptable for people to grow their own food, repair things, cook and bake from scratch, provide your own energy, and not rely on a network to provide your entertainment?
And then it gets even more subversive: you can start working with other people to share any excess; utilise each others’ skills and knowledge; provide support and company where it is needed…gradually the hooks the economic machine has dug into your flesh are eased out and thrown back. Not sure what other people need or what other people have that they can offer? Start talking; build communities within the place you live; share…
I came across a wonderful project recently: Aaron Newton had plotted his immediate neighbourhood, not by house price, crime rate or voting intention, but by the potential for community food growing:
I started by going across the street and asking my elderly neighbor if I could garden in her backyard. Then I recruited Eric who grows food in his backyard and is transitioning into a career as a farmer. Next I was able to start a garden in the backyard of the rental house next door to my property. It was part of a bartering arrangement whereby the landlord agreed to take down a few dying trees and in return I now grow food on her property. All of these active gardens are shown in dark green.
For many people, simply talking to neighbours is an alien concept – we have become ever more isolated as state and media-induced paranoia encroaches upon our psyches; everyone “out there” is a potential threat rather than a potential partner. Talking to your neighbours undermines this. And, of course, you don’t need to plot everything on a digital map – although that might be useful if you want to make the food sharing more organised; just keep a mental map of who is who and what you each have, then make sure you keep talking.
Referring back to my advert, someone noticed that I had an undue emphasis on Windows which, of course, is a commercial product. Windows is what I am best at (for shame!), but what Graham wrote below has encouraged me to suggest free alternatives to people:
It’s been said that future archaeologists will be able to identify a ‘Vista Upgrade Layer’ when they go through our landfill sites as thousands of tonnes of monitors, video cards and whole computers that are unable to run Microsoft’s latest operating system are being dumped as ‘obsolete’. So what better time to break out of the Windows’ ‘upgrade cycle’ by switching to Open Source alternatives such as Linux and taking back control of your computer? Ubuntu Linux for example is a completely free operating system in all senses of the word – that is, you can download and install it at no cost, and you are also at liberty to develop, modify and redistribute the source-code as you see fit. As well as being able to run on older computers, Ubuntu comes with pre-installed with many Open Source applications such web browsers, word processors, spreadsheets, graphics and photo editing programs, etc, the proprietary equivalents of which such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop could cost hundreds of extra pounds to buy.
I made the change to Ubuntu about 2 years ago, after being introduced to it at a skills sharing and permaculture workshop event, and despite being in no way a ‘techie’, found it incredibly user-friendly and easy to get along with, and a refreshing change from my old Windows desktop that was constantly trying to get me to buy something or ‘upgrade’ this or that. However, there are many other ‘flavours’ of Linux including Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux that will even run on ancient 386 machines. Linux development tends to be community rather than corporate driven, thus is designed to meet the needs of users instead of big business. So as well as keeping otherwise obsolete computers out of the waste stream, the ethos of the Open Source software movement strikes me as being far more in accord with permaculture’s ethics and principles. Most Linux distributions can be run from ‘live’ CD’s, which means that you can try them out to see if they meet your needs before making any actual changes to your computer, so there’s nothing to lose in giving it a go!
And if that doesn’t make you want to consider Open Source software, perhaps this article will.
Low Risk
That last, small selection of ideas consisted of things that I would consider to be “No Risk”, and this is where it starts to get interesting – because I really want to categorise this next section in the same way; yet because we are all, to a certain extent, still dependent on money, the really positive things that come out of taking financial “risks” (in effect, creating negative risk) will undoubtedly cause some short-term pain.
Here’s one example: suppose you have a decently-paid job, but work long hours and genuinely haven’t the time to get involved in a community sharing scheme, or even growing some food so that you might swap things with your next-door neighbour. In order to gain that time back you have to work fewer hours, and thus take a wage cut. You could ask to work from home, thus cutting out travelling time, but few companies offer this option (though wouldn’t it be a real boon for so many workbound people to get back a part of their lives?) So, a time and wage cut it is. The immediate effect is relative financial hardship, regardless of your attitude to money.
Bridging the gap will be hard if you consider everything in your life to be essential; but think of it like this – how much of what you spend money on is the result of being urged to spend that money? When you have worked this out, then everything else is what is actually essential to you at the moment. If you don’t spend money on the “non-essentials” then I reckon your gap will disappear pretty quickly.
So now you have some time to use constructively, you can start being part of or even creating a community that shares things Just For The Love Of It. That could easily take up all of your time – the time you have left after perhaps spending more time with yourself, your family and your friends: your immediate community. If you feel comfortable working towards a moneyless community, without rocking the boat too much, then you have my wholehearted support: never think what you are doing is not entirely worthwhile, because what you are doing is far more human than living a life dependent on the industrial economy.
But you might want to do a bit of boat-rocking; perhaps bending the law, or kicking the money economy where it hurts. Some of the lower risk options were covered in a previous Monthly Undermining Task called “Throwing Off The Shackles of Debt“, and if you do have any debt, or would like to take the debt burden off others, then I recommend you start there.
Scattered around both urban and rural spaces are all sorts of food sources, in the form of fruit and nut-bearing trees, as well as other plant sources heaving with nutrition. There is a USA-only directly called Neighborhood Fruit which specialises in pointing out completely legal options; but going beyond this, there are often huge opportunities for scrumping in public parks and pseudo-private land where you just have to be a bit careful how much you take, and when you take it. The haul of apples below was from a local park, gathered in just over an hour:
Most of us have heard of “dumpster diving” and the Freegan movement – the simple act of taking disposed food from company skips is a grey area, hence why it is “Low Risk” – but how much other stuff is just left lying around, ready to be used in a constructive way? (N.B. This set of links, from the UK Freegans site is a wonderful source of Freeconomy related sites). Here is a list of things I have taken for subsequent use from public and not-so-public areas (avoid private homes, please, it’s just not fair) after a period of watching to make sure it wasn’t actively being used:
- Bark chippings from a country park
- Wooden pallets from a disused shop front
- Apricots from a pub car park tree
- Cast-off timbers from a construction site
- A wooden filing cabinet from a business skip
In effect, this is theft, so if you don’t want to do this yourself you could start a directory – as local or global as you like – of things that are simply waiting to be taken. It would need to be kept bang up to date, but could be a very useful addition to the money-free economy. I haven’t come across anything like this on my travels, but if you do know of an existing setup then please let me know.
Medium/High Risk
There is sometimes a fine line between recommending things that are borderline illegal, but which you could probably get away with, and things that you are almost certainly going to be arrested and charged for if you get caught. The following may not necessarily be illegal where you are but have to be approached with care, however positive the outcomes may be.
The single largest outgoing for most people is the cost of their home, whether in terms of mortgage or rental, or just the cost of running it and the various bills and taxes that enburden anyone who occupies a property – even one they have built themselves. Squatting is one option which, which not strictly an Undermining activity, can often be a vital way for people to get the financial freedom necessary to start a new kind of life. Opening up a squat for a number of people can be a very powerful statement, and trigger the creation of moneyless communities, but can also be risky both in terms of the law and personal safety. The Squatters Handbook is a vital resource and, while only covering English law, can undoubtedly be adapted to suit local conditions.
There is nothing new about squatting, and it is always worth reflecting on the story of The Diggers; a group of people in 17th century England who took it upon themselves to reclaim land they rightly believed had been stolen from the people. All they wanted to do was live, without having to be subservient to the systems of power and abuse. Take ten minutes to watch this film, and then another ten to think about what it means to you:
There is an increasing number of groups who have set up Intentional Communities, often under constant threat of eviction and other legal action being taken by those who purport to own the land upon which they are trying to live in a far more sustainable manner than the majority of people who live legally. The community web site known as “Diggers and Dreamers” takes its name from Gerrard Whinstanley’s brave band; and that is just one example, for there are all sorts of communities that are both highly sustainable (whether intentionally or not) and also removed from the industrial economic system to a great extent. The IC Wiki is the place to start if you want to take things to the next level.
Finally, something that is simple but a bit risky – again in a legal sense – but which could be wonderful if pulled off effectively. Retail companies exist to sell stuff for money – and the bigger the company, the more money they have made, and the more they have exploited people and the wider environment to make that money. So it makes you wonder what would happen if that model could be undermined, even for a short period: the company certainly wouldn’t change, but the people using the store or mall (think big!) might think again about what they are doing, spending wads of cash on things they don’t need, or often don’t need to pay for. What would happen, for instance, if under cover of darkness, someone were to affix a few signs proclaiming that everything was free? Not 10% or 20% off, but entirely free!
It would be bedlam, especially if someone had arranged at the same time to place an advert in a newspaper saying the very same thing. Can you imagine the impact of an advert in your local paper, saying that for one day only everything in one particular Walmart, Tesco or Carrefour was being given away for free.
Sometimes it’s worth spending a bit of money, just sometimes…
