Robbie MacKay

I think about the work non profits do a lot, for some obvious reasons: I used to work for one, Greenpeace NZ, and I helped start another one, Engineers Without Borders NZ. Even for causes and purposes that aren’t particularly interesting to me, non profits are still close to my heart.

I appreciate the special something it takes for someone to decide they want to dedicate a massive amount of effort to something for a reason greater than just money.

But that’s not really what I want to write about.

What I’ve noticed recently is that the link between environmental issues and development issues is often over looked.

To be more specific – since no one knows what the hell ‘environmental issues’ or ‘development issues’ actually are! – I’m talking about the link between environment damage, destruction of habitats, pollution, climate change, etc.. and poverty, disease, hiv, political persecution, repression, etc.

So how are these linked?
It’s seems likely that all these issues are the result of the same mindset. But I’d suggest its actually a more direct link then that.
First just take a look at where a large amount of environmental damage is done, by whom its done, and who bears the brunt of the cost.
It often occurs in developing countries, funded by governments or large corporations in developed countries. And poor and underpriveleged communities often bear the worst cost: destruction of their home and the environments they need to survive.

People in poverty have little power (in our current world model anyway), and have little ability to protect their environment. They’re also sometimes desperate enough that they will take a short term deal to make it through… even if it makes things worse for them later.

If these people had more power – it would be much harder for us to live the way we do, exploiting them and their resources. We do terrible damage to our own countries environments. but not on the scale (and without being noticed) that it is in developing countries.

I used to think these problems were separate. And weigh up supporting environmental charities against development charities. Usually deciding to support those fighting climate change. Reasoning that there wasn’t much point helping developing countries, if our eco system just stopped functioning.
But really, you can’t have one without the other.
We need to have both.

I just saw someone using a leaf blower to move grass cuttings out of the gutter… simply blowing them onto the road…

What the…?

So you used some energy to cut the grass – sure.. you want short grass, that I can understand…

But then you used more energy (petrol in this case) to blow the grass cuttings onto the street?

The wind is just going to blow them back again…

What a waste!

Its a mundane example, but it illustrates my point:
We’ve stopped thinking about what we’re doing

We use energy like it has no impact…

Well start thinking again because your actions have an impact

Find the things you do that waste energy
Then stop doing them

I noticed that now I have a car, I drive to my girlfriends place regularly
A ten minute drive where I used to take the bus or train..

So I’ve decided that I’m going to try running or biking there instead
Its a simple change (and for me not a huge inconvenience) which should reduce my carbon footprint

I don’t expect everyone to stop driving all the time
Find ways to save energy which work for you.. then share them

Find new ways to do things
Stop doing things which just waste energy
Keep thinking about what you’re doing

Ok – warning: this is a bit of a mind dump… hopefully its useful

I watched the movie Energy Crossroads a week ago – part of the Reel Earth Film Festival.

It covers similar subject matter to The Inconvenient Truth but with more depth, much less of a laymans view on it and more history. I could talk about it more but I’ll just say go see it if you can… it’s worth your time and money.

I’m not going to give you a big write up. I’ll just list my ideas and  do with them what you will (and let me know what you think!)

Ideas (starting with the obvious) on actions to take:

• Reducing rubbish
• Growing my own food
• Use public transport
• Sustainability meetup? Sustainable entrepreneurs meetup? Save the world meetup?
  Anyone keen? 
• Write books and start to research alternative solutions for energy
  Including: Transmission solutions, Low wind speed generation
• What do I need to study/get trained in to make the biggest difference?
• What big industry is there, that produces lots of waste, that has yet to reduce it?
  Start an example company that produces less waste and leads the industry. (like New Belgium)
• We continue to relate like seperate countries and it doesnt work – there are no REAL seperate countries – just 1 planet. We’re all the same people, now its time to start acting like it and stop blaming everyone else.
• Be the change I want to see in the world
• Look at my life time, the likely milstones environmentally (and otherwise), and what I can do to change the world . Then start doing it. Include studies and getting experience, changing my own lifestyle, and developing technologies.
• Blade servers – heatsinks that ‘plug in’ with the board. and connect to central cooling system which radiates heat out of the room. Eliminates energy wasted to circulate air and cool rest of the space etc. Use the heat to generate power?
• Also mentioned in the movie: http://www.newbelgium.com/ – a brewery that does some really cool sustainable stuffs!
• The only statement in the movie that bothered me was a comment at the end about not giving up our current lifestyle – houses, transport etc. I don’t think we need to lose it all but we need to change our lifestyle somewhat.