Tag: simple solutions

Utopia/Dystopia

URBAN DENSITY – ITS NOT THAT WE DON’T LEARN, ITS THAT THE RICH DON’T CARE

A 42 story tower where you can “trade a car for a condo” does not sound like affordable housing, which Vancouver desperately needs. It sounds like more wealthy people getting wealthier.  If someone can afford a car to trade, then they do not require “affordable housing”.  And yet metro VC homelessness has spiked sharply, including individuals who work full time jobs.  Rather than do something sensible about it, developers seem to be given preference towards making matters worse.  Note that while the top of the articles say “homeowners”, subsequent articles uses the term “rental properties”.  It is NOT affordable to rent for one’s entire life.

Simple solution to all the media headlining problems (affordable housing, food shortages, climate change) – small town zoning only.  Suburbs.  Local businesses.  1/2 acre minimum per house green space law.  People grow their own food in their own gardens, drive 10 minutes to work every day, and car pool with their neighbor.  Oh my gosh, that sounds like the 80’s!

Western society reached what may have been the most humane society in the history of history in 1980’s.  The Hippies grew up, but kept the dream of an Age of Aquarius in their hearts.  This is the time when I grew up, and those are the values I hold.  People were self-reliant but community oriented.  You knew your neighbors, and for the most part you liked the majority of them.  You knew everybody in town but had space for your own peace and privacy, even within your own home.   People had more freedom to do what they liked, because there was that space to do so.  Nobody thought twice about owning a car and owning a home, even the people on welfare had equity.

And that’s the simple solution – reduce urban density.  Keep the cap on the number of rentals. Tie how much a landlord can charge to square footage, not location.  If the tenant has to live in 450 sq ft, then the most rent can ever be is $450.  If someone wants to make $2500/month, they have to design apartments with 2,500 sq ft.  Simple math.  Not very profitable for the investors, but that’s what Affordable Housing would require.  When existing buildings become places to live rather than conglomerate investments, prices will shrink and housing will become affordable.

RECOMMENDED READING:

 

Animal rights

COWS CAN BE POTTY TRAINED – SERIOUSLY

A really great article popped up on my feed by David Grimm in Science magazine.  He stated that research has been done which shows cows can be potty trained, just like many other animals.  My first thought was, of course, “Cool, now I can have a house cow!” but there is a deeper moral implication to this.  Industrial farming locks animals up in tiny cages because its easier on the humans to sluice down a waste trough than to clean up after free ranging animals.  The dairies that tried to give their cows more freedom had cow droppings every where – inside the barns as well as out in the barn yards.  So utilitarian ethics reduced cows to bio-machines that produced milk and dairies became giant warehouses for cows.

The experiment cited said 16 calves were led down a corridor to a specific area technically called the cow commode.  Grimm said the use name was the Moo Loo.  The calves were given a diuretic so the team could control the visits.  As soon as a calf peed, it was given a treat by the researcher.  The team reported that 10 of the calves very quickly learned the desired behavior, and looked to the researcher immediately after they peed, some of them mid-stream.  This also has the moral implication that cows are aware of their behavior.  According to Grimm, the research team said cows have the cognitive ability of at least a human two year old.  It took only 10 visits or less for each calf to use the Moo Loo properly.

The environmental impact could be staggering.  Cow urine creates ammonia, which can transform into the highly toxic nitrous oxide.  Jan Langbein, co-author of the study, said that given that there are hundreds of millions of dairy cows in the world, “studies have shown that capturing 80% of cow urine would lead to a 56% reduction in ammonia emissions.”

So rather than fear mongering about green house emissions and how toxic cows are, maybe we should just use the simple solution and teach them how to use a Moo Loo.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Low Tech Solutions

LOW TECH SOLUTIONS – GOATS FOR FIRE BREAKS AND INVASIVE PLANT CONTROL

Technology is not always the answer.

Rather than use heavy machinery to cut huge swaths of land down to the bare earth, a couple in Alberta, Canada have spent two decades renting out their herd of goats.  Heavy machinery is almost as disruptive and dangerous to the animals that live on land as a fire itself, destroying nests and burrows and frequently grinding up animals unable to escape in time.  Goats, on the other hand, just eat around the critters and leave burrows and nests in place.

Pesticides to kill off invasive species of plants do the same deadly damage to the native fauna as well as invasive flora. Grazing animals eat poisoned plants. predators eat poisoned grazers. Both types of animals get coated with the poisons as they wander through their home territories and then injest the herbicides when they groom themselves.  Goats…well goats may annoy the natural fauna but they aren’t deadly, and goats can be directed to eat only the invasive plants while leaving the natural plants alone.

Goats also have the advantage of producing milk as a by product of all this munching, so it seems like an obvious win-win situation.  Fire reduction, natural flora protection, happy and healthy critters who live in the area, and Chevre cheese. Why are we not using goats as the standard go-to more often?

RECOMMENDED READING:

Alberta couple spent decades using their goats for fire mitigation, invasive species in B.C.

Low Tech Solutions

HOMES AND HAVENS

We can change the world.  If we make one person’s life better, we have made the world a better place.  Its the star fish principle.  The media doesn’t spotlight simple, practical solutions because the media wants hype and drama.  This is a drama-free solution, but what an amazing difference it would make to someone struggling to find meaning and value in their life.

Homes and Havens

Having a safe and restful sanctuary is critical to good mental and physical health.  Its a simple idea – go in and decorate a living space  for a person recovering from trauma so they feel like they have a home.  Homes and Haves describe the work they do as: “We partner with local ministries that are helping women overcome abuse, addiction, homelessness, sex trafficking, and incarceration by helping furnish and decorate their new living spaces after graduating local programs. We design each space to be therapeutic and healing.”  

A volunteer’s story of her experience  said she was expecting the usual dismal, bland furnishings that people usually give away for free.  Something so worn out it couldn’t be sold on e-bay.  Something with no value left so its given to charity.  But instead she found Homes and Haven were providing lightly used furnishings, and using quality, cheerful paint to fix them up. 

She found Homes and Haven operate on a principle all of us know: “The message: this furniture was to show women that they were worth something really nice.  Surroundings could boost their self-esteem. As a volunteer, I did not merely take something substandard and make it satisfactory. No, I actually helped to create something beautiful which these women so heartily deserve.”

I would love to see this happening in every community.

Read original story here.
Low Tech Solutions

DESSERT0 – ALTERNATIVE LEATHER MADE FROM CACTUS

Chemicals are not always the answer.  Working with nature to find alternatives can work.  A lot of us love the look and feel of leather but do not like the cruelty to animals aspect.  Vegan leather made of plastic has been a viable option for years, but now plastic has become an environmental concern.

Desserto

Two entrepreneurs, Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez, have come up with a new solution. They use cactus to make a plant-based leather alternative.  They claim the cactus is tough and water proof like leather, but because it its plant-based it is bio-degradable and less harmful to the environment.  And cactus uses significantly less water to grow to maturity than cattle do.

The fabric in the video looks like leather.  They have made shoes, purses, and even clothing from Desserto.  They have made car seats from it, so it must pass the durability test.  Cactus may just be the Pleather we’ve been looking for.

See original story here.

 

Death and Dying

TITHONUS AND THE FALLACY OF ETERNAL LIFE

Two years ago, a man in Indonesia celebrated his 146th birthday.[1]   The human life span has expanded by decades.  For centuries the average life span was about 40.  Age 50 made you an honored elder.  Now humans  who celebrate their 100th birthday rarely make the news.  Advances in medicine, nutrition, and basic sanitation have made this possible. But University of Illinois at Chicago epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky has the radical idea that living longer should not be the focus if we fail to also live better as well. [2][3]

Tithonus

According to the Greek myth, the goddess Eros persuaded Zeus to grant her lover Tithonus eternal life.  However, she failed to ask for eternal youth as well.  So Thinonus grew older and older, and yet never died.  His body became frail and weak. As he got smaller and more frail, he begged Eros to return him to his mortal state and let him die.  But the goddess did not have the power to grant his wish.  He lived on, and continued to waste away until he became so small and shriveled that he became the first grasshopper.[4]  Rather than being a joyous extension of life, immortality became a curse and he begged for death.

Today

Increased longevity has brought on an increase in health and economic issues that our current social systems have not caught up to.  Susan Golden of Stanford University said that longer lives require a wellness-based approach that needs to start in childhood.  She claims that in Denmark, the primary care physicians are paid more than specialists, reducing the economic incentive to manage illness and focus on preventative lifestyles instead.[2]  Her article covered provided interesting insight into some of the pluses and problems of the search for longevity and presented some possible solutions to the Tithonus fallacy.

It is simply common sense that what we seek is an extension of the quality of life, not merely the quantity.

Additional Reading and Footnotes:

  1. ‘World’s oldest man’ celebrates 146th birthday and says patience is key for long life
  2. Human Lives Might Be Long Enough Already
  3. Shifting focus from life extension to ‘healthspan’ extension
  4. Some translations say Tithonus became a cicada, others say a cricket.
Small Scale Solutions

LOCAL HEROES: SCHOOL DOES TAKE HOME MEALS

This is a brilliant example of Small Scale Solutions that we don’t see enough of.  Cultivate is a small, grass-roots non-profit organization that collects the unused food from the local school districts and local caterers and packages it into frozen food meals.

Frozen food for kids
Group takes left over food and makes frozen take home for kids

Some members of the community were concerned that while students got breakfast and lunch at school during the week, they often went hungry during the weekends.  So they did a simple thing – they solved the problem.  At their local level, at a size they could handle.  Its a small program – 20 students get a back pack with 8 frozen meals every Friday to take home.  No, it doesn’t solve world hunger.  But is solves the hunger of 20 local kids and their families.

Original story: School district turns unused cafeteria food into take-home meals for kids

Why aren’t we seeing more of these simple solutions?  Because programs that recycle perfectly prepared, healthy food is a conflict of interest to food manufacturers who get them shut down.

By keeping people focused on a global level, the process of solving world hunger is slow and ponderous and food distribution stays in the hands of manufacturers and politicians.

We need more local heroes.