This tends to work against the most disadvantaged of our population. Every product I use has a water footprint; 900litres of water for 1kg of corn, 140 litres of water for 1 cup of coffee,16000 litres of water for 1kg of beef. (waterfootprint.org 200 If that product was produced where people and ecosystems are water stressed then my consumption is creating a demand responsible for depriving that ecosystem and it’s inhabitants of the water needed to survive or at least have a decent quality of life. This can even be a community near you. Bottled water, aside from being more expensive than gasoline, of no better quality than tap water and producing a huge and totally unnecessary waste stream, is pumped from aquifers. Aquifers all over the world are in decline. Many in the US are in terminal decline. Declining aquifers are susceptible to collapse, a state whereby they will never safely recharge, this threatens food production and public health.

“….. former aquifer strata can be physically or chemically damaged by over-exploitation, with ……. consequences including widespread land subsidence, ph changes and the mobilization of toxic oxidation byproducts such as arsenic compounds.” (WWF Freshwater Program 2006)

As we examine our water usage it is important to consider the embodied water in the products we use. For instance; is the grain I buy or barter for raised in a sustainable manner? Where did the water come from to grow it? Was it pumped from an aquifer, an unsustainable process, or was it brought from surface flow to the field, or even better was it grown using strictly rainfall? This type of information is readily available.

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home
http://www.unwater.org/flashindex.html

Let’s consider corn again. Extremely thirsty as a crop to grow it was until recently grown using primarily rainfall. Climate change and the increased demand created by the higher demand for corn as a food and the ethanol industry has meant that more and more of this corporate crop is irrigated. Corn has dire consequences for the environment, reason enough to consider ways of reducing our personal consumption. Corn has a large impact on water supply in agricultural areas. Corn based ethanol is exacerbating the situation. Is the corn I eat encouraging long term damage to aquifers that cities rely on for clean water supply? Can I justify burning corn, a food crop, in my automobile when the impact on water supply is so damaging? For anyone attempting to live a more sustainable lifestyle that next bag of genetically modified corporately farmed corn chips or tankful of E85 should give pause for thought.

This is a tough one for me. I could live on corn chips! Not really but it sometimes seems that way. When available I purchase organic chips, Bearitos blue corn are my favorite. Unfortunately I have yet to find an outlet near me, within a 3 mile walking radius, that carries organic corn chips, though I have to admit not having focused enough on this specific issue. Still, this hasn’t resulted in my giving up corn chips. This requires some introspection. This failure to act is very interesting. hmmmmm……
Keep up the good work.

We can’t consume our way out of overconsumption!

We must all simply find ways to consume less, much less of everything.
I have been lucky for the last 2 years. I have no commute and don’t drive. My wife walks to work and I walk everywhere unless we are going on one of our trips around the UK. For that we take our 10 year old diesel van powered by recycled vegetable oil based biodiesel. Buying a new vehicle to save carbon emissions is like giving an alcoholic a smaller shot glass. He’ll just pour more self destruction. You need to take away the liquor. The emissions involved in mining the metals, creating the plastics and other materials involved in making a new more efficient car, not to mention shipping all that stuff and the final product will take years to offset by the use of that vehicle. People with long commutes need to look at ways to change their lives to accomodate shorter or even better no commute. Do it now before peak oil forces it later and you will be happier. Folks here are complaining as gas reaches £5/gallon, close to $10 a gallon, but always with the caveat, “What are you gonna do, you have to have it” What will it take to convince them that they can change? How do they become Enviro-mental? Research indicates that gloom and doom and scarcity language won’t work. It must be approached as a positive life enhancing option.

“It may very well be true that our future existence will be much more materially constrained than it is now, the way to ’soft land’ there is to give it a positive spin.” (De Young 2001)

My character tends the opposite direction. I have recently found it revelatory to consider recycling as a failure. Americans, myself among them, have thought for years that recycling would do the trick, among other things. Recycling is an indication of a design flaw.

“technological devices and products we use are in themselves potent sources of behavioural control…… Discrete physical properties of technologies and consumer products influence the ways in which they are used.” (Crabb 1992)

These properties have been named affordances.(Norman 198 For instance, items that should be recycled are actually designed to be thrown away, increasing recycling opportunities does not address the inherent design flaw. Recycling is a failure to reuse which is a failure to reduce. Shouldn’t we encourage consumers to reduce first? Shouldn’t we direct our efforts toward the cessation of the manufacturing of

“countless gadgets and products that have no defensible place in a rational energy efficient society”? (Crabb 1992)

This would address not only the use of resources involved in the personal use of products but in the creation of the products themselves. It is easy to suggest this but how to put it in to practice?

My policy when I need a consumer good is to first try to do without it, borrow it, or make it myself, if that fails then to source it on freecycle, if that fails to buy it used. For instance, when we need a lampshade in the house I make it out of old plastic protein powder containers. They are durable and come with the product contained.

Change, big change, is thundering down the glacier aimed right at our lifestyles. We can begin the process in advance and thus lessen the crushing consequences of high speed impact or simply stare into the headlights.

I hope that you will continue thinking about the environment and do more to reduce your carbon footprint. One of the quickest and most effective ways to reduce your contribution to climate change is to stop eating meat and dairy products. Animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gases, that’s more than all the world’s transport systems!

There are other advantages of a plant based diet too. You can improve your health, save grain and crops to feed to starving people instead of animals and, of course, there are huge benefits to animals.

Give it a go!

http://www.ethicaleating.org.uk