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jgarlough
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Posts by jgarlough
What’s Mine is Yours
Dec 14th
The authors of this book feel we are slowly coming out of a “consumer trance” as a growing number of people (and businesses, and governments) begin to realize that infinite growth based on finite resources is not a viable combination.
Many of us are also begining to realize that working more (or longer) so you can buy a boat is less appealing than working less (or shorter hours) and sharing a boat with your neighbours.
The great error of our nature is not to know where to stop; not to be satisfied with any reasonable requirement … but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit of more.
- Edward Burke, Irish statesman 1757
The book introduced me to the IfWeRanTheWorld platform which is sort of interesting for organizing ideas, though I like the ability to rank ideas by popularity… Get Satisfaction seems to do this well.
There’s a great example on pages 81 & 82 on how messaging can affect behaviour. Arizona State students researchers measured how often hotel guests would re-use towels based on the messaging on the cards which were left in each washroom. They tested common pleas like “Do it for the environment”, “Help save resources for future generations”, “Partner with us to help save the environment”, etc… With a 16% participation rate, “Help the hotel save energy” was the least effective. The most effective message had close to a 75% participation rate: “Join fellow guests in helping save the environment”. Looks like peer-influenced messaging is sometimes the best way to go!
The final message from the book that I hope will stick with me is this:
We think nothing of paying a good amount of money for a hotel room where we sleep in a bed that hundreds (if not thousands) of others have slept, using towels that hundreds (if not thousands) of others have used. However, sharing a vacuum cleaner with a single neighbour is not even close to being common practice.
The Value of Nothing
Nov 12th
Just read The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel, and wanted to record some quotes before I forget them.
In the words of Herman Daily, one of the pioneers of ecological economics, “Current economic growth has uncoupled itself from the world and has become a blind guide”. In short, the economy takes a great deal for granted, for free, and is constitutionally unable to pay for it. (page 20)
The book talks about British economist John Maynard Keynes and some of his comments/findings:
Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgement, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. (page 71)
Also interesting:
Defense spending is increasing among a range of more and less democratically elected governments around the world (though none at the scale of the United States, which spends almost half the planet’s total)… When the biggest crisis facing the planet require education, training, health care and investment in sustainable energy and agriculture, governments are piling record sums into guns, not butter. (page 79)
Finally,
In .. Fight Club, the first and second rules are that you don’t talk about Fight Club. The cardinal rule of genuine democracy is that you have to talk about it. It needs meetings at which people can shape the terms on which value is set. Participating in these meetings isn’t something you learn in school. (page 187)
Grazing Days – Grass Fed Beef in Ottawa!
Sep 8th
Meet Farmer Paul. This man is a machine and he’s a true farmer in every sense of the word.
I’ve just heard that there are a few spots left in his Ottawa area Grass Fed Angus Beef to-your-door delivery service (following a CSA model) — a rare opportunity for any of you looking for local, grass-fed beef CSAs this season.
Get in on the action while you can:
www.grazingdays.com
NCC survey of Ottawa’s Urban Lands
Aug 31st
Hey everybody, The National Capital Commission (NCC) is currently looking for comments to “improve the directions of the master plan and better reflect the interests of the public”
Survey ends September 20, 2010.
Until then you can add your input here: http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins/ncc_web_content_page.asp?cid=16300-20447-22709-116728&lang=1
Greening Lansdowne Park by Paving Greenbelt Forest.
Aug 26th
Greening Lansdowne Park by Paving Greenbelt Forests.
Next Wednesday, September 1st 2010 the City’s Committee of Adjustment will be considering an application for a “Minor Variance” that would allow more than 28 acres of existing forest in the Greenbelt to be destroyed and replaced with a 2,000 car parking lot and Exhibition Hall.
Our city has already accepted a proposal from the Shenkman Corporation to build a 220,000 square foot exhibition hall and massive parking along Uplands Drive near the airport (Link to the June 1st report here). From the report:
“The construction of a new Exposition Hall Facility, as proposed by Shenkman, will not only solve the problem of lack of contiguous exposition hall space that has significantly limited the ability of the trade and consumer show industry to grow in Ottawa, but will also allow the City to pursue its ‘greening” objectives for Lansdowne Park”
Lansdowne Park currently has a total of 96,400 square feet of exhibition space and since most of it will be replace with shopping, hotels and condos this Exhibition Hall project seems to be packaged in with Lansdowne’s Partnership Plan.
While I understand that the NCC has marked the proposed area for development, after touring the proposed building site you can’t help but wonder why the Exhibition Hall needs to be built in an existing forest when there is acre upon acre of manicured green lawn just across the road.
Construction is due to be completed by December 2011. So while our attempts to Green Lansdowne may be just, it is somewhat ironic that constructing a 2,000 car parking lot in the existing forests of our greenbelt.
p.s. Other Contacts:
City of Ottawa’s Lead Planner for the Exposition Hall Facility Project:
Simon M. Deiaco, MCIP RPP
City of Ottawa
Planner II
Infrastructure Services and Community Sustainability
Planning and Growth Management Branch
t: (613) 580-2424 Ext. 15641
f: (613) 560-6006
e-mail: Simon.Deiaco@ottawa.ca
UPDATE #1: It looks like Spacing Ottawa has picked up on the story and is getting some good comments!
UPDATE #2: Metro Ottawa has picked up the story as well. (Thank you Tim!)
Loblaws at COG’s 2010 Feast of Fields
Aug 26th
Some commentary on an article in Ottawa Magazine that has to do with Loblaw’s sponsorship of this years Feast of the Fields event in Ottawa, Ontario:
It is always difficult to see a brand you hold near and dear go mainstream and that seems to be what’s happening with the Feast of Fields.
Participants like the Red Apron and the farms they have paired with have invested FAR MORE than “(a measly) $5,000″ to build up the Feast of Fields brand. Over the past few years the participants HAVE INVESTED HEAVILY in money and in kind by volunteering staff, energy, advertisements and food in order to make the Feast such a popular event.
After investing so heavily in the brand, it is no surprise that many feel COG have misstepped by involving Canada’s largest food distributor (and a leading provider of drugstore and financial products) to be the “Presenting Sponsor” by doing NO work and contributing 0.00076% of their annual profits.
Math: $5,000 divided by $656 Million (Loblaws Corp. net profit in 2009)
Reference: http://www.just-food.com/market-research/loblaw-companies-limited-swot-analysis_id92120.aspx
While the argument is focused a bit around ‘costs’ I think it also has something to do with ‘fairness’. I mean, I have to spend $50 to attend the event. That’s about 0.1 % of an average annual $50k income for a single guy in my neighbourhood. If Loblaws corp had to pay the same to attend the event, they’d be giving the Canadian Organic Growers $656,000 !
… Ron Eade has some more of COG’s side of the story on his Omnivore’s Ottawa blog.
UPDATE: There is some great commentary on Simply Fresh Ottawa [here] and [here] !
Timber Table
May 24th
Shared via here.
Shared by jg
It’s pretty cool what a chisel can do.
Timber Table by Julian Kyhl. The Timber doesn’t need any tools for assembly(watch the video).
Woody Wood Rug
May 18th
Shared via here.
Shared by jg
Interesting… Should do a show with pieces that mimic nature with other types of nature.
Bring a warm little slice of nature into your decor without going floral, with the Woody Wood Rug. Designed by YLdesign, this rustic rug looks like a cross section of a tree, with textured rings and a burnt bark edge that adds depth to its realistic and natural look. Organic yet sophisticated, the Woody Wood [...]
Shifting boundaries
May 18th
Via the Ottawa Citizen: Shifting boundaries.
There was an interesting letter in the Citizen this morning. It made me wonder if this “sacred ideology of growth” which Madeline Weld writes about could be successfully shifted to focus on (or include) plants and animals.
The Letter:
Shifting boundaries
By Madeline Weld, The Ottawa Citizen May 18, 2010
Re: Councillor muses about Terry Fox land swap, May 16.This Citizen article illustrates the fact that unrestricted growth destroys the environment, while smart growth destroys the environment more slowly. As our expanding human population requires ever more space, we will just take it, wherever it may be and, however, it may be zoned.
Boundaries established to protect the habitat of endangered plant and animals will simply be shifted to accommodate relentless growth, as is occurring in the case of the planned expansion of Terry Fox Drive.
Developers know that the Ontario Municipal Board will almost always rule in their favour if recalcitrant residents or environmentalists give them any trouble.
What is playing out in Kanata is repeated countless times in Canada and around the world, as the global population soars from its current 6.8 million to a projected 9 billion-plus during the next 40 years and Canada’s population soars from 33 million to 44 million, an increase of 33 per cent driven primarily by the government’s own policies.
Environmentalists may win the occasional battle, but as long as they refuse to recognize growth as the enemy, as most steadfastly refuse to do, they will lose the war to preserve the habitat that biodiversity depends on. When push comes to shove in an increasingly crowded world, human needs for space to live, grow food, and meet their energy needs will always trump the needs of other organisms.
The developer may seem like the obvious villain in this case. But the real villains are the sacred ideology of growth, our governments who embrace this ideology, our environmentalists who refuse to challenge it, and the rest of us with our silence. The developers are merely implementing this sacred ideology at whose altar we all worship.
Madeline Weld,
President,
Population Institute of Canada
Cumberland
Come In Go Away
May 14th
Shared via here.
We've been looking for a door mat for quite some time now &mdash and we haven't found the perfect one. We have some narrowed down that are scattered among a few of our favorite stores but we've having a hard time deciding on what statement we want to project with our welcome mat. We're not sure if we want to come across at serious, chic, playful, whimsical or do we dare consider funny?
