Huh?

Transportation demand management is quite a mouthful, both to say and to tackle as a conceptual matter. Six weeks ago – before I started my internship with the Indiana University Office of Sustainability – I couldn’t have told you more about it than it probably had something to do with managing the demand for various forms of transportation.

Which isn’t actually far from the truth. Transportation demand management, as a discipline, is really the second generation (or, some would argue, third or fourth generation) of transportation management mechanisms, and, unlike earlier generations, approaches management from the demand-side. Transportation demand management, or TDM for short, centers on the question, What can we do as planners and managers of transportation systems to influence the demand for certain (generally, more socially beneficial) modes of transportation? TDM is the so-called second-generation approach because it succeeds a planning approach called transportation system management, which was largely supply-side focused, asking and answering questions such as How can we (transportation system managers) best increase highway capacity so as to alleviate congestion?; or, How can we supply more roads more quickly to keep up with the increasing number of automobiles on these roads? In contrast, TDM asks how we can better manage demand – namely, the manifestation of people’s transportation preferences in the form of their travel behavior – for these roads and highways (and buses, rail, and sidewalks, too).

As I have been researching TDM these past few weeks, I have been learning both about the basic principles of TDM itself, such as parking pricing, toll roads, marketing and advertising, and incentives (more on these later, perhaps in another blog post), but also about systems of thought that might inform how we think about a so-called “transportation demand management problem” and, thus, influence how a study in TDM might be conceptualized.

Pause. All this sounds confusing, right? Generations of transportation planning? Conceptualizing a study? Managing a transportation system? Manifestation of preferences in behavior? Let me explain what I mean.

How transportation works: Transportation essentially consists of four decisions to be made by a “consumer” of transportation. First, the decision must be made of where to go. Second, when to go there. Third, how to get there or what mode of transportation to use. And finally, what route to take. In aggregate, this amounts to a society of people that are in one place, need to get to a different place, need to get there at a certain time, and via a specific mode of transportation. This clearly presents quite the complicated problem for the researcher of transportation dynamics. Variation in the results of these four decisions made by the consumer vary in both time and space, with age and other demographic and economic traits of the individual, and the decisions made are specific to a given location and context, i.e. the transportation network of the place within which travel is to occur. More often than not these days, with over 50% of the world’s population living in urban areas for the first time in history, that place is a city.

Managing transportation: In order to manage the transportation occurring as a result of the aforementioned decisions of consumers, there are several actions a manager or planner can take. One can provide incentives that make one form of transportation relatively more desirable than another, such as providing free bus passes to employees of the municipal government, or providing a cash payout to students on a university campus who choose not to purchase a parking pass, both mechanisms aimed at decreasing demand for single-occupancy vehicles and thus reduce congestion. A public transit agency could also increase marketing and advertising for its services as a means of increasing demand for public transit. Of course, the very notion of managing and influencing the decisions individuals make with regards to their transportation behavior carries a heavy demand-side bias. Alternatively, altering the transportation system itself – through widening of roads in an attempt to decrease congestion, expanding public transit service to increase capacity and handle an increasing number of riders, or building additional parking structures to house the increasing number of cars driven to a central business district – is a supply-side approach to transportation management. Many transportation experts call this supply-side approach to dealing with congestion or parking problems an attempt to “build a way out” of the problem.

Fortunately – for proponents of pleasant city streetscapes, sustainability buffs, and sprawl-haters alike – this supply-side based transportation system management is being replaced, at least in research circles if not yet always in practice, with transportation demand management. As I’ve mentioned before, TDM is the focus of the study I will be designing this summer for the Indiana University Office of Sustainability, in an effort to begin gathering data to better understand what I’m calling ‘the transportation problem’ at IU.

Which brings me to the issue of conceptualizing a problem: As mentioned above, the four decisions made by individuals as well as the results of these decisions present a challenge for conceptualizing and formulating the problem for a city transportation management organization or planning agency. What types of issues are to be included in any analysis of the problem? Do we include the land use patterns of a city? Asking this question yields a less obvious answer than one might think. Land use defines the type of activities occurring within a particular plot of land, and thus, the particular types of people who might want to visit that area. However, while land use is clearly linked to transportation needs, researchers often have a difficult time modeling the affect of one on the other. This is largely because historically our land use evolved around our transportation system – namely, the US highway system – rather than the latter being designed to serve the former, as one would think perhaps makes more sense. Thus, this creates a problem when deciding whether or not to include land use as a variable in any sort of characterization of a transportation system. Land use is just one of several issues that pose challenges in transportation analysis. Activity patterns of individuals; the influence of preferences on behaviors (which in turn influence demand); the differences between preferences, behavior, and demand; the economic paradigm within which transportation supply and demand are viewed; the role chance, uncertainty, and risk are given in the problem; the boundaries drawn around the problem and any unintended consequences that may be overlooked as a result of those boundaries; the degree of flexibility and adaptability of the administrative system associated with and governing the transportation system, not to mention that of the infrastructure itself (which is generally, little); whether the problem is viewed as static or dynamic, and if dynamic, whether it is tending towards a single equilibrium or multiple possible equilibrium, and whether lock in to a particular equilibrium will impose additional constraints on the analysis – all these and more color the lens of the transportation researcher or manager.

There are many, many more issues I could list associated with creating a transportation demand management study. My job this summer is to investigate as many as possible and attempt to determine the best way to characterize, that is, to frame, our problem in transportation at IU and in the immediate Bloomington community; and, then, to design a study to gather the data needed to properly manage, if not rectify, this problem.

Or multiple problems. I’ll keep you posted.

Project for Public Spaces is a nonprofit organization dedicated to design of and education for creative and inviting public spaces that foster community and sustainability. The website has all sorts of resources to this end, including white papers, blog posts, and – my favorite part – pictures. They have pictures of both good examples and bad examples of public spaces. While the “bad” examples are most often filled with cars and blank-walled buildings and devoid of people, the good examples are filled with happy smiling people, enjoying the outdoors in all seasons, farmer’s markets, boulevards closed to all vehicles excepting public transit, colorfully-painted intersections closed off to traffic, and many more wonderful examples of people enjoying public spaces.

It’s inspiring, for me, to browse through their photographs, or just stare at the homepage for a few minutes as the pictures flip through automatically. Looking at these great spaces and people enjoying themselves makes me want to make all cities this way – makes me wonder why all our cities aren’t already this way. Wouldn’t we be a happier society if we had public spaces in which to be with one another – strangers and friends alike? Imagine streets in which we actually wanted to spend time in as pedestrians and travelers, instead of wall to wall traffic, dust, noise and pollution? Here is just one of the many examples of great public spaces (that happens to be one of my personal favorite public spaces): State Street in Madison, Wisconsin.

From: http://www.pps.org/graphics/gpp/state_st_wi_3_large

Check out the PPS website!

Upon my own reflection over these past few days, I have come to realize that this lack of negativity during the week of the Byron Fellowship extended far beyond just our comments to and about each other. The framing of the issues we discussed the entire week was what we called “aspirational” language – an aspirational dialogue of possibility, hope, creativity, and optimism. Of what we can create and inspire in this world, rather than what we need to eliminate or avoid. This simple use of positive framing and phrasing of issues was key to creating the mood for the week – the inspiring environment that all those who participated in the Byron Fellowship will carry with us throughout our lives.

Aspirational language, we learned at the Fellowship, is in opposition to the language of desperation. In the environmental movement in general, so often we resort to desperation, fear, pessimism, and anger in our plea for action and change. If we don’t stop using fossil fuels right now, the world will experience a drastic increase in catastrophic weather events related to global warming, sea levels will rise and Florida and Bangladesh and island nations will be under water! We have to stop the Big Oil companies from letting this happen! Or, If you don’t stop overfishing, soon there will be no ocean life left! Or, Can’t you see that our American consumerist lifestyle is creating waste, overwhelming the landfills, and putting too much pressure on the world’s resource supplies? You can’t buy that new flat screen TV! So often, those involved in the environmental movement phrase things in a desperate, negative way. We must stop polluting, stop emitting carbon dioxide, stop driving our gas-guzzling cars, stop buying so many useless consumer goods, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!

But just telling people they can’t do this, or to stop doing that is not an effective way to inspire change. In fact, for most people, the words I have written above are not inspiring at all. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, founders of the BreakThrough Institute, present a critique of the 1970s, 80s and 90s negative environmentalism in their book by the same name. This type of environmentalism, they argue, includes so much negativity that people genearally turn off when they hear it, rejecting even scientific claims because of they way they are presented, as things we have to avoid and get rid of. We have to ban these pesticides, these polluters should pay to remove these contaminants from this river, we have to stop littering, etc. This type of language does not spur people to action, because what action is implied by these statements is not really action but inaction: something to stop or avoid doing. Thus (and this is me expanding on Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s ideas, now), people never really think they are the problem, that there is any action required of them because they are not polluters. The problem is thereby externalized, while at the same time no alternative positive action is suggested.

Aspirational language, on the other hand, the type we were encouraged to use at the Byron Fellowship, phrases things in the language of possibility – this is the “Politics of Possibility,” according to the subtitle of Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s book. To me, aspirational language is associated directly with the principles of sustainability, while the language of desperation is associated with the old environmentalism described above. While environmentalism is about what we need to remove, to avoid, to stop, sustainability is about what we can create, encourage, and build. Sustainability involves a positive vision of what we want the future to look like. Where environmentalism involves stopping urban sprawl, removing contaminants, and limiting the effect of human activities on the environment, sustainability involves creating community, encouraging urban gardens and permaculture, designing walkable communities and livable public spaces, developing alternative energy sources, and creating products that benefit the environment, rather than just minimizing harm. Sustainability, then, is framed in a positive light, rather than a negative.

This week’s dialogues at the Byron Fellowship were all framed in aspirational language. We talked about creating communities among people deeply connected to a place so as to inspire care of that place and of one another. We talked of developing a measure of trust and faith in each other (and in God, if you wish), so that we desire to make the world a better place for all of our grandchildren. We talked about learning to understand, listen to, and have compassion for others, and, rather than trying to force them into a sustainable way of life, to be open to different ways of thinking and encourage them to do the same. I truly believe that this type of compassion and listening to others can really have an impact on the way we as humans treat the natural world and how we go about transitioning to sustainable communities.

The word ‘cathartic’ comes to mind. I went to the Fellowship with the hope that the week could be a relaxing experience that would help me transition from a semester in academia to summer internships with the City of Bloomington and the Indiana University Office of Sustainability. The week was far more than just a transition – though it was an incredibly relaxing week that did allow me to decompress from the academic semester. However, I learned so much about myself and those around me, and about creating sustainable community and place that I find it limiting to attempt to put the experience into words. I consider myself a verbose individual, but there was something about the Byron Fellowship that has made me feel I lack the language to describe it. I feel almost as if the words don’t exist to describe the feeling I have right now – at least not in English. But nonetheless, I will continue to try.

I have never felt such a deep sense of peace, calm and connection to the natural world and all the living and none-living things in it. I feel as if all my cares have not gone away, but been intensified by the hope that knowing the people at the Byron Fellowship has given me. Never have I felt so open, so completely free to bear my heart, mind and soul to a group of people, and so confident that they will trust in me as I will trust in them, that they will not judge me in any way, that they will listen and care with the most amazing grace and compassion people could possibly have. I have been blessed with being shared such wisdom this week – the wisdom of those possessing many more years than I, the wisdom of those younger than me, the wisdom of those with different interests and skills, the wisdom of those with incredible experiences and knowledge – I have been humbled by all that they have been willing to share.

Each of those I have known at the Byron Fellowship this week has inspired me in a different way. We have shared the things that inspire us, that give us hope, that make us strong, that we believe in, and that we love. The connections with the places at Turkey Run State Park – the past and present, the old and new – and with one another – I know I will carry these with me for a lifetime.

I hope that throughout my life I can continue to be as inspired and feel as trusting in the future that we all will create as I feel today. The Byron Fellowship has given me hope that we will create a sustainable world. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but maybe in our children’s lifetimes or our children’s children’s children’s lifetimes – we will be able to find those things which matter most, those things that sustain us as a people, and that sustain our natural world. We can make a real difference in individual and collective lives. The stories we tell, the way we listen and trust and hope, the compassion and love we show for one another, and the faith we have in what we believe will lead us to a better place – a more sustainable world for all.

Community sustainable development is

a community-directed process of development based on: (a) transcendent human values of love, trust, respect, wonder, humility, and compassion; (b) active learning, which is a balance between the intellect and intuition, between the abstract and the concrete, between action and reflection; (c) sharing that is generated through communication, cooperation, and coordination; (d) a capacity to understand and work with and within the flow of life as a fluid system, recognizing, understanding, and accepting the significance of relationships; (e) patience in seeking an understanding of a fundamental issue rather than applying band-aid-like quick fixes to problematic symptoms; (f) consciously integrating the learning space into the working space into a continual cycle of theory, experimentation, action, and reflection; and (g) a shared societal vision that is grounded in long-term sustainability, both culturally and environmentally.

(From p22 in: Devuyst, D., ed. 2001. How Green is the City? Sustainability Assessment and the Management of Urban Environments. New York: Columbia UP.)

I’ve printed it out and put a copy on the wall above my desk, I like it so much.

So it’s only natural that I should inherit from her the same love of children’s books. However, for the longest time, I laughed at her every time she brought home a new book, saying that we, her children, had grown too old for this. We were too old for her to read us stories, too old to look at the pictures, too old to listen to the rhymes of children’s poetry. And yet, a year ago, I fell in love with children’s books all over again.

It started in a college course I took from the education department. In this course, the professor read to us several familiar children’s books that spoke of nature and the environment. He read Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, of course, but he also read Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumpius, and showed an animated interpretation of the French children’s story, The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono. It was these titles that got me thinking about the books I remembered and loved from my childhood. I thought of Bill Peet’s The Wump World and Cristina Bjork’s Linnea in Monet’s Garden. This summer, while working at a local bookstore, I also discovered a wonderful new children’s book by Peter Brown, called The Curious Garden, and it is now one of my favorites. And I re-discovered Frances Hamerstrom’s touching Walk When the Moon is Full while visiting my parents’ cabin in northern Wisconsin.

These were my favorites as a child – or have since become my new favorites – but also, or perhaps because of this, they influenced the way I think about the world. These books, as do all good books, say something about the way we as humans interpret and interact with the world. The more obvious messages to be found in The Lorax and The Wump World speak to our human pattern of overconsumption and destruction of nature – but also about nature’s resilience and ability to come back after humans have gone. Nature will always be there, and will always able to rebound, these books say. The Man Who Planted Trees, Miss Rumpius and The Curious Garden illustrate the power of one person to shape and change the world, to find and create beauty, and the ability of nature to influence people. Linnea in Monet’s Garden and Walk When the Moon is Full laud the redemptive and educative power of curiosity, particularly of the natural world.

The messages in these books are not lost on even their youngest readers. Inspired by The Curious Garden, the children to whom I gifted that book last spring started a garden in their mother’s backyard. And I can recall discussions about the need to “save the rainforest” motivated by readings of The Lorax in elementary school.

These on-the-surface meanings are not at all difficult to integrate into discussions both in the classroom and in the living room, because the fit nicely within the tenets of our modern worldview. The value of creativity to progress, the primacy of human influence on nature, the emphasis on the individual to affect change – these are all principals of our society in which progress is always good; bigger and more are always applauded; and individual effort is always better than group work.

But there are deeper messages between the pages of these books that are much harder to cultivate in either children or adult readers because they go against the grain of the modern paradigm. The Man Who Planted Trees presents an intriguing statement about the effect the condition of the natural world has on the human psyche and on human society. In the story,* there is a man who plants and cares for trees on a barren, human-created desert, ultimately resulting in the repopulation of the area with a community of people who live gently and in harmony with the land. Clearly, this is a much deeper sort of message than the superficial “power of one person to change the world.” This book cultivates ideas of stewardship of the land and repair of the human and natural environment, similar to Aldo Leopold’s idea of a “land ethic.” The true story behind The Man Who Planted Trees, I believe, is one that promotes an ideal relationship between humans and the land we live on that is healthy for both society and the environment.

The Man Who Planted Trees has a second message in its pages. The people who had lived in the desert prior to the growth of the man’s forest had been poor, miserly unhappy. But when people come to live in the valley where the man has planted trees, they are a happier people. They work, live and laugh together. This sentiment of happiness nearer to nature and greenness has been well-documented in the literature of preventative medicine, and much echoed by popular writers, such as Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods, on the benefits of nature to personal health and well-being. The Man Who Planted Trees conveys this deeply rooted relationship beautifully and simply in story form.

The idea of living sustainably with the land is not a new concept, but it is far from becoming an ideal valued by mainstream society. It used to be, however. The Jeffersonian ideal of the agrarian man was part of the creation of our nation. Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of small farmers, where everyone cultivated the land sustainably. This agrarian ideal included principles of crop rotation, community collaboration, and living in balance with the land around you.

Somewhere in our society’s history, however, we lost our communitarian, agrarian ideal, and farming became the backward rustic’s job or the task of machine-wielding industrial farmers. People moved city-wards. We began working in factories and cubicles instead of fields. We lost our connection with the land and much of our knowledge of the workings of nature. We stopped being stewards of the land, and instead began to exploit it for profit, like the characters in The Lorax and The Wump World. We stopped being people who planted trees, and instead became makers of concrete and buildings, and consumers of “thneeds.”

Our modern worldview dictates that this was a change for the better. That no longer being directly dependent on the earth was a good thing. That going to the supermarket alone instead of the fields with each other for our food was progress. But there were always those who resisted. There have been counterculture movements since the beginning of industrialization that attempted to move society back towards nature. There were Utopian communities interwoven with the Populist movement of the 1890s. Intentional communities and co-ops sprung up in the 1960s and later, dedicated to self-sufficiency and a connection to nature and community. These movements questioned whether society’s movement away from nature was necessarily progress.

Children’s books and stories have always aimed to convey what society values in a simple, easily understood, often allegorical fashion for young readers. What our children’s books say about the way we as humans treat the natural world has an important affect on the way children grow up thinking about the world.
Nature, by instinct, I think, is intriguing to children. It is the world around us: the sky, the birds, the trees, the grass, the soil. The Lorax, The Curious Garden, The Man Who Planted Trees – these books have powerful messages, and can, perhaps, help endow our children with Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic,” or perhaps with Rachel Carson’s “sense of wonder” about the natural world. If we can use these books as a spring board for a discussion in living rooms and classrooms – to teach our children to be curious about the natural world, to teach them that a healthy environment means healthier and happier people, to teach them, ultimately, to be stewards of the land and the earth – then perhaps we can begin to shift in how society affects the environment. Perhaps we can stop wanting “thneeds” and instead be those who plant trees.

No one is too old for children’s books. As adults, we often have just as much to learn from them as children do. I reread The Wump World the other night. I had forgotten the ending of the story: after the “Pollutions” have finished turning the whole world to concrete and buildings, after they have used up all the green space, after they have dirtied the air and water, they leave. And through their cracked concrete streets, a small seedling emerges. Nature is still there, if we are willing to see it. Maybe we can plant a seed in our children, in hopes that someday, through a crack in the modern worldview, a land ethic will emerge.

*English translation, from Peter Doyle, available here. (This version lies in the public domain.)

When foods made with real sugar, a natural product, are advertised as innovative, is this not a sure sign of a food system in trouble? A backwards system where foods made with the chemical, the man-made are normal, and those foods made with “the real thing” are out of the ordinary? Has our world really come to a place where foods that are “natural” or “real” are mere novelties? If so, we have all but finally reached the world of Sci Fi, where food has been reduced to a tiny, man-made, chemical-based pill, and real foods, like vegetables, roast beef, seafood, or, gasp, sugar are considered quaint and outdated.

When did we start eating a diet composed largely of man-made, highly processed and refined “food products” instead of real, live food? I cannot help but read the Pepsi commercial as Exhibit A in the case for food system reform.

Maybe the commercial struck such a cord with me because I had just finished reading Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry‘s Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, which eloquently makes the case for a return to real, sustainable foods: to fresh, organic, locally-sourced produce, meats, and dairy products. Lappe and Terry outline the problems with our current food production system, and, although their complaints are not new – in fact, the organic, sustainable, local, hippie (whatever) community has been making the case for food reform for at least two decades – their book is a succinct and accurate assessment of the problems with modern industrial agriculture and of potential actions we can all make to take back control of our food.

In circles of environmentalists and sustainabilists (of which I count myself a member), it has nearly become common knowledge that modern means of food production – industrial-scale vegetable and grain farming using a plethora of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and other fossil-fuel based inputs, factory farming of animals for mass consumption of (too much) meat, high processing and use of additives and preservatives in conventional “food products,” and the transport of all of these food items thousands of miles to their destination on our supermarket shelves – are unhealthy for both humans and the environment. Writers such as Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Safran Foer, Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, and others have popularized the problems with the way we produce and consume food in this country. Even the new Obama White House has begun an attempt to spread a message about the importance of eating locally and sustainably through the creation of a new organic garden on the Lawn.

So, if the ailments of our food system have become such a widespread topic of conversation, why is nothing substantive being done to change things? Part of the problem is clearly the downturn of the economy and insurance and real estate market busts that have distracted our national attention from the real problems with our government and economy, such as the issues facing a society reliant on cheap fossil fuels, and lack of access to affordable health care, meaningful education, and healthy, sustainable food. Grub authors Lappe and Bryant argue that in order to spur change in our food system at the national level, we need to start “voting with our pocketbook,” or so the phrase goes. We can start changing what our food system looks like (and what our waistlines look like, too) by buying only sustainable food options – less fast food and processed junk food, and more organic produce and whole grains. Though most people immediately assume organic food is more expensive than conventionally farmed and produced options, Lappe and Bryant show that if you buy whole organic, local, sustainable ingredients and cook more from scratch instead of buying processed, quick-fix foods, a sustainable diet can actually save you money. You can also grow your own food, no matter where you live, from just a few seeds and soil, for not only huge savings but also the assurance that you know where your food comes from and where it’s been.

This last point is the reason I was looking at gardening books this weekend. While my boyfriend, Paul, and I live in a city apartment, we have a small, west-facing balcony on which I plan to grow as many of our own vegetables as possible this summer. I am in the process of planning a substantial container garden to grow tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, salad greens, peas, beans and kale this spring, summer and fall. Living in south-central Indiana, our growing season consists of more than 175 days of frost-free weather, which I can extend even further by planting frost-tolerant kale in the early spring and late fall. Though I am a novice gardener and this first season may not produce as much as I would like, I am hoping to produce at least some produce for Paul and I to enjoy through the summer and fall, to help us live healthier and more sustainably.

There are many things we can do individually to change the way we think about food; growing your own is only one of many things to do. You can purchase food directly from farmers at your local farmers market, ask your grocery store to carry more local, sustainable, organic or fair-trade products, eat less (factory-farmed) meat, start tracking the “food miles” traveled of certain items in your diet and try to cut back on fossil-fuel intensive products, and more. If more people adopt a sustainable diet, the entire food system will begin to be more sustainable. Maybe then we’ll stop seeing commercials advertising products made with the real thing – “real sugar” – as a novelty, and eating “real food” will once again become the norm.

But why should we necessarily wait until the end to reflect? With education in particular, waiting until the end to look back only leaves us dissatisfied with our experience. We think, I wish I had taken advantages of more opportunities in college., or I wish I had known about that in the beginning. It appears we could learn a lot more if we simply took time out to reflect on things during the process. I think the best education can come from constant reflection and thought during an experience. Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but nearsightedness is better than being blind. Looking while you are in the thick of it is better than not looking at all.

As this first semester of my graduate education concludes, I am taking the chance to reflect on my experiences thus far. As a dual-degree student in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, my chosen concentration is Sustainable Development, or Sustainability. “Sustainable development” has always been a favorite pet phrase of mine, since I first came across the term while writing a high school history paper on the current situation of the global environment in the context of American environmental history. “Providing for the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” is the World Commission on Environment and Development, or Brundtland Commission definition of “sustainable development” I read. While researching global climate change, resource depletion and environmental conflicts worldwide, the idea of sustainable development was a breath of fresh air amidst all the pollution. It seemed to be a solution with real potential to create a healthy, livable planet, an idea with the scope and interdisciplinary aspects needed to focus the ingenuity and creativity of the world on a sustainable future.

Sustainable development has proven thus far to be an interesting subject and context as a learning endeavor. For me, sustainability is a necessity for any future our planet and the human species is to have. This term, I have learned that ecological economists and sustainable developers might say that sustainability is about limits – limits to growth, limits to resource availability, limits to planetary capacity, limits to consumption. But I say, it is also about embracing the a profound challenge and tremendous opportunity that these limits bring. Sustainable development, I think, is about using our immense human capacity for creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurship to create a sustainable future in which all people can live. This is bigger than the “weak sustainabilist”* idea that all inputs to current economic systems of production can be substituted for with enough innovation and creativity. This is about thinking of a new way to live, about rethinking our individual, consumerist, unsustainable lifestyles, about rethinking the entire socio-economic system in which we operate. It can be done. People are starting to think. Activists, writers, thinkers like Will Allen, Paul Hawken, Anna and Frances Moore Lappe, Annie Leonard, Bob Doppelt, Hunter Lovins, Bill McKibben, even New York Times columnists Nick Kristof and Tom Friedman are thinking this way. Organizations and thinktanks, more than I can list, are thinking and doing this way. It is possible.

But sustainability is also personal. Not only have I begun to attempt to live my own life sustainably in my first semester on my own, but I have also come to realize that sustainability has a more personal meaning for me. If, in my life, I could contribute to creating a sustainable world in which there is abundance for all, I would have lived a life worthwhile. If I could live to see a world where people live in safe, sustainable, healthy and happy communities, where people have lots of meaningful, sustaining relationships, where people eat good tasting and nourishing food grown without harm to the environment, where people engage in worthwhile work that doesn’t degrade the environment or come at the expense of another person, where people live in harmony with nature – if I could live to see that kind of world, I would have lived a good life.

Sustainability for me is not just about overcoming the myopia of consumer culture, or about living on a farm and raising chickens, or about shopping only at thrift stores, or about buying organic vegetables from the coop. Sustainability is more than just living my own life sustainably. It’s about contributing to a sustainable whole. And teaching others about the merits of sustainability.

This is where my final point comes in: the educational opportunities presented by sustainability. Sustainable development and sustainable living provide immense opportunity for educators and people globally to teach creative thinking, community-mindedness, ecological connections – a potent antidote to the business-as-usual philosophy promoted by the corporate world and most conventional educational institutions. If we are to create a happy, livable world for all, we need to start thinking differently, and we need to do it now. Using the concepts of sustainable development and sustainable living as a teaching and learning module in classrooms, living rooms, and coffee shops, at workshops, faith gatherings, and fire circles, on front porches and street corners worldwide will help us begin to care for one another and for the earth. We need to think both globally and locally, to value relationships and social contact more than flat screen televisions and mansion-size homes, to learn to take time to enjoy nature and its awesome beauty and wealth. If we can begin to learn and teach these things, then perhaps we may all live to see a sustainable world.

*A note on “weak” versus “strong” sustainability: These terms are used by people in ecological economics and sustainable development to depict two different views on sustainability. “Weak sustainabilists” hold that the concept of sustainability can be worked into our current socio-politico-economic system via substituting newly discovered resources, capital, technology, and human innovation and labor for limited resources currently used in the capitalistic, production-based system. “Strong sustainabilists,” on the other hand, hold that true sustainability does not come from infinite capacity to substitute, and that there are some resources that are inherently limited on this planet and for which there are no substitutes (e.g. clean air or fresh water). “Strong sustainabilists” believe in a deeper, more inclusive and conclusive concept of sustainability that diverges significantly from the current economic paradigm described above.

The book begins with a brief but eloquent history and critique of the current worldview/paradigm merged into the context of American environmental history. The authors posit that our current worldview is individualistic and not community-centered, and that in order to create a sustainable world we must restructure our thinking to be more other-oriented, to focus more on community responsibility. Like other authors I have mentioned in my posts on community and sustainability, such as David Orr, Paul Theobald, and Wendell Berry, Bernard and Young are part of a growing sustainability movement that expresses the discontent and malaise that we feel with our current world, and works to engage people in their communities and their environment in an attempt to create a positive and sustainable future. This movement, instead of focusing on the negative effects human civilization and our consumer lifestyles are having on the environment and the great peril the earth is in due to anthropogenic climate change, encourages individual and collective action in our own lives to actively change our mindsets, our situation, and our world. In The Ecology of Hope, the authors cite examples of successful engagement and action, where people have worked to create sustainable communities – a holistic, economic, social and ecological version of sustainability.

The kind of collective action, cooperation and consensus these authors cite will be necessary as population grows, the climate warms, and human society exerts greater and greater pressure on our ecological life support systems, coming up against the limits of resource scarcity and pollution. Many authors have discussed the link between environmental scarcity and violent conflict (Homer-Dixon, et al.; a topic for another post), and as we face the limits mentioned above, we will be at an increased risk of war with one another. But building community through collaboration, cultivating a sense of responsibility towards one another, and encouraging communication and connection between human beings on a level that crosses both geopolitical bounds and psychological, perceived differences can allow us to transcend the risk of conflict and rise up like a phoenix from the flames into a just and sustainable world.

The Ecology of Hope is aptly titled. The word “ecology” in the natural sciences means the study of the interconnectedness of all things living in a given place, the study of relationships. In the study of climate change and world systems, this concept of “ecology” and interconnectivity can be extended to the entire biosphere, because we are all related to and interacting with one another and the earth somehow. In sociology and ecopsychology, the concept of ecology is sometimes applied to a community of human beings in a place – the intersection of humans and the natural world in that place. Where the concept of “ecology” is a scientific one, the word “hope” connotes spiritual and emotional ideas . “Hope” is a feeling of change, of progress, of better things to come, of optimism. The phrase “Ecology of Hope,” to me, means the interconnectedness of change, and optimistic phrase that makes me think of people and nature working in harmony to create a better world for all. This relationship component of change, this “Ecology of Hope” will be critical to a sustainable future.

And it will all start with action in our communities.

It’s surprising how little people know about the commodity we all use so much of – electricity. Despite pervasive discussion of the issue at my undergraduate institution, Lawrence University, for instance, I have come to the realization that few individuals at my graduate program in Environmental Science know about power “vampires.”

“Vampires” are devices that, when plugged in to the wall electricity outlet, draw power even when not “on” or in use. They are so called, because they suck power and run up electricity bills for households and businesses. It has been estimated that up to 5 or even 10% of consumer power usage is due to these “vampire” electronics. Examples of vampires include your cell phone charger, which draws up to 1 watt of power when plugged in and not charging your phone, and televisions, which draw an average of 7 watts when “off.” Other examples are microwaves, coffee makers, computers, printers, DVD players, stereos, fax machines… the list goes on and on. The website linked at the outset of this post, Standby Power, provides a more complete overview of the topic of standby power, as well as a list of vampires and their typical power draw.

How can you identify vampires in your home? Look for that little blue or red LED light that stays on, even when the device is off. Eliminate vampires by plugging devices into a power strip, which prevents electricity from being drawn needlessly from the wall into electronics. Just this small, easy action can help improve electricity use efficiency, as well as cut your electric bill.

Image credit: yesmagazine.org

The Yes! Magazine website describes the goal of the organization to provide “inspiring solution-oriented journalism” and “connections with like-minded people.” If I may be allowed to judge from reading their Fall 2009 issue cover-to-cover, they have clearly succeeded in meeting these goals. The articles published by Yes! cover topics ranging from the holistic alternative education efforts in the place-based education movement, the community revitalization efforts of programs such as Detroit Summer, and the innovative inner life and education ideas of Parker Palmer. This issue is chock-a-block full of inspiring articles filled with real-world solutions to the problems of our communities, our schools, and our environment today.

This issue of Yes! reminds me what is truly important and amazing about our world: the capacity for change in the status quo. Our current, individual-, consumption-based society struggles with creating healthy, mindful, strong individuals committed to their community and the betterment and sustainability of our world. In an educational system and corporate climate based on test scores and competition, we seek to groom individuals for obedience, prejudice, competition, and to remain just far enough removed from the natural world so that we can destroy it without it weighing too much on our conscience. We can change this status quo. We can educate with the aim of cultivating individuals who know how to sustain healthy relationships, are not afraid to voice their own opinions and beliefs or to challenge others’ opinions, are intelligent but also mindful and think before they speak or write. The place-based education movement, with its aim of providing students with relevant experiences so that they are learning for a purpose and not just memorizing facts for a test, uses the community as a classroom and laboratory to encourage individual exploration and also connection with and responsibility to those around us.

These are the values key to creating a society that will work together to transform this planet into a “just and sustainable world:” a belief in lifelong education that comes from within and is nurtured by a vital community, a healthy sense of responsibility to others and to the earth, and a desire to see and create the positive change needed in the world. Yes! magazine tells the stories of change we need to inspire sustainable action in our own lives.

*Post script: My mother has fessed up to sending me the “unsolicited subscription.” Thanks, Mom! Now I can look forward to the next issue of the magazine.

“The international scientific consensus is that a deep geologic repository is the best place to isolate plutonium and other long-lasting nuclear waste. If the DOE [US Department of Energy] can show that such a repository will be safe for ten thousand years, the ideas is that it will be the same for a hundred thousand. But, geologically, it’s hard to predict accurately beyond ten thousand years, which is why Congress mandated a few decades ago that the repository had to be able to isolate waste for that long. A federal appeals court judge ruled in 2003 that a high-level nuclear waste repository should be guaranteed for a hundred thousand years instead of ten thousand. In 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), responding to another court ruling that ordered it to consider the fact that a few radionuclides would outlast that time frame, recommended that accountability extend to a span of one million years.” (p. 268. Cravens, Gwyneth. 2007. Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. New York: Vintage Books.)

Now, this passage amazes and confuses me for a couple of reasons. First, how can we as a society be so concerned with the fate of generations millennia from now when it comes to them happening upon our nuclear waste, but when it comes to preserving a world with adequate resource stocks and a healthy environment for our progeny, we have a difficult time with it? Mainly, this comes down to discordance in discount rates.

Let me explain. Human beings are inherently myopic, or near-sighted and tending to care about the present more than the future. Of course, this makes sense. We are genetically wired to care more about ourselves than others and more about our current selves than our future selves. The existence of oneself is definite; you know your feelings, thoughts, beliefs, interests are real (at least to you) and they are exceedingly relevant because they are real. The interest of others is a less concrete fact, because we can’t really assess how anything will affect them – we can’t know absolutely what’s best for them. (And, from Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene perspective, who cares about anyone else? As long as we survive, that’s all that matters.) The future is even more indefinite: who knows whether or not I or any one else will be here tomorrow?

Now, most of the time, we generally presume our own existence will continue, at least for a duration of 70 or so years. And, if we have children, we assume their existence will be of similar length, and our grandchildren, and so on. And, honestly, we are not completely myopic, because we do care when it comes down to it about our children and grandchildren. But after grandchildren, or in some cases, great grandchildren, it gets a little more indefinite. This is where the discount rate and future discounting comes in. According to neoclassical environmental economics, the present value of anything – be it dollars, a factory, a forest, or the well-being of our great grandchildren – is less than it’s future value. How much less is summed up by the discount rate. The higher the discount rate, the greater we discount the future, and the less the present value.

For instance, you can think about inflation as taking into account the discount rate of future dollars; so, a dollar in ten years buys you less than a dollar would today. Thus, a rational person offered $100 dollars today or a $100 guaranteed in two years should always take the $100 today. One hundred dollars today could be invested, and at an interest rate of five percent per year, would be worth $105 dollars next year, and worth $110.25 the year after that. Compare this to the alternative of receiving $100 dollars guaranteed in two years, and you can see why people prefer the present over the future. The discount rate, in the above example, is equal to 5% per year. Alternatively, one can compute the present value of $100 received in two years and compare this to $100 received today. One hundred dollars received in two years discounted at a rate of 5% is worth only $90.70*, which once again illustrates why one would rather have the $100 now than in the future.

The number that we give the discount rate (between 0 and 1) determines to what degree we discount the future. A higher discount rate means that we value the future less. A discount rate of 1 means that individuals are perfectly myopic, and the future is entirely discounted and doesn’t matter at all; thus, things in the future are worth next to nothing in present-value terms. A discount rate of 0 means that the future is worth exactly the same as today is, or future value of something equals the present value.

The neoclassical environmental economic application of discount rates and future discounting is to problems of environmental degradation. According to discount rate theories, humans are currently using nonrenewable natural resources at an unsustainable rate because we discount the future highly, and therefore, see little value in preserving resources for future generations to use. We mine ore and minerals, degrade arable lands, and pollute the air and water largely because the discount rates we currently perceive are high. If we were to assign lower discount rates, we would find that the present value of resources used in the future would be higher, and thus worth preserving.

What on earth has this to do with nuclear power and the aforementioned book excerpt? Recall that in the passage, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires any long-term nuclear waste storage facility to be guaranteed safe, secure, and “accountable” for one million years. One million years. By saying this, they are saying that they value the safety of generations of humans living one millions of years from now to such a high degree (meaning, they assign a sufficiently low discount rate) that they believe it is worth a huge present effort to secure and guarantee such a waste storage facility that long.

One more fact: “The estimated cost to the United States of dealing with waste from decades of nuclear activities in ways that ensure the public would receive no more than a very low does for the next ten thousand years will probably total, in ballpark terms, in excess of $350 billion” (Cravens, 2007, p 268; italics mine). Three hundred and fifty billion dollars just to guarantee safety for the next ten thousand years. I don’t think I can even fathom the possible cost to guarantee a long-term nuclear waste repository for one million years.

Stop and digest those last few paragraphs for a moment: We do not value the future enough (the discount rate perceived is high) to preserve natural resources such as fossil fuels, minerals, even clean air and water, but we value generations a million of years in the future so highly (assign an exceedingly low discount rate) that we justify spending an exorbitant, nigh, unconscionable amount of money researching and developing a long-term nuclear storage site that will still be secure and impenetrable one million years from now.

I am not making any position statements about nuclear power here. I’ll save that for another post. I am merely making the point that there seems to be a discord here in the way we value the future. Our collective fear of nuclear power and radiation and its possible effects blinds us, precluding rational benefit-cost analysis. We demand our government make huge expenditures to secure a long-term nuclear repository, yet we do not demand that they make similar investments in strategies to prevent or at least curb climate change and its innumerable looming negative consequences. We damn nuclear power and proclaim the unacceptably (but largely unsubstantiated) high risks associated with nuclear reactor meltdown, terrorists obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material, and cancers due to radiation exposure, yet we barely bat an eye at the (empirically observable) smog generated from fossil-fuel dependent cars, or the smoke, carbon dioxide, and toxins belched from coal-fired power plants.

Human beings are largely myopic, yes. But we are also largely rational. We have been taught to properly weigh the pros and cons in rational decision-making, and choose the alternative where the pros outweigh the cons. However, sometimes in our policies, we can become blinded by our fears and special interests. With respect to the degradation of the environment, this is not only irrational, but also dangerous. With each passing year, we ignore the impending environmental crises, making token actions and statements, but never really facing up to the ecological limits of our planet. It is time to start looking at the costs and benefits again – this time, with the limits in mind -, reassess our priorities and our policies, and reexamine our discount rates. Only once we recognize the need to place greater value on the future – our own future – will we be able to craft policies for a sustainable world.

*For those of you interested in the math, the present value (PV) of anything is equal to the future value at time t (FVt) divided by the sum of the interest rate (r) plus one to the t power, where t is the number of years in the future:

PV = FVt/[(1+r)^t]

Conversely, the future value at time t of anything is equal to the present value times the sum of one plus the interest rate to the t power:

FVt = PV*[(1+r)^t]

For those of you exceedingly intrigued by the discount rate concept, the present value of an infinite future stream of benefits (PVi) is equal to the present value divided by the discount rate:

PVi = PV/r

For more information, the following is an excellent discussion on the concept of discounting:

Harris, J. M. 2006. Resource Allocation over Time. In Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: A Contemporary Approach, 2nd ed. (pp.90-105). Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company.

What I find the most surprising, however, is how anyone could ever want to cut down a tree that is that old, or even a tree that is a hundred years old. As a naturalist (and mortal human being whose predicted lifespan is only seventy or eighty odd years), I can have nothing but tremendous respect for any organism that can live that long. Sea turtles, trees, some boreal and tundra wildflowers, the larvae or eggs of the occasional insect – these things often live far longer than we humans can even begin to contemplate. But something as visible and seemingly common place as a tree living longer than a single human, even longer than some human civilizations, makes even me speechless.

Part-memoir, part philosophy, Logan writes of a communion between humans and the earth. Many of the vignettes in The Land Remembers state outright that the relationship most farmers in the first half of the 20th century had with the land was much more sustainable than the current interaction between modern industrialized agriculture and the land it exploits. The old way of farming relied on an understanding of the land that goes beyond just what it can give to humans. Logan’s farm family had a deep respect for the land and what it needs to stay healthy. Logan also acknowledges, however, that European farmers were not always on the land; long before Europeans or even Native Americans came to the hilltops of the driftless area, the land was there, and long after humans leave the area, the land will be there. There is a recognition of something larger than ourselves in Logan’s writing, similar to that found in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

For me, the book embodies the strong sense of community that I hope I can someday cultivate in my own life and work. Logan’s story emphasizes elements of a strong community – I think intentionally so – and doesn’t hesitate to conclude that strong community and family ties are key to a healthy life and a healthy earth. Logan has strong ties with his parents and his three brothers growing up, and continued to maintain these ties throughout his life. There is also in the book a clear sense of connection between oneself and family and neighbors and other members of the community. Logan speaks often of the mailman, how this individual is more than just someone to deliver the bills but also a source of local news, gossip and entertainment. The mailman’s daily coming is a way to mark both the time of day and the passage of the seasons. Sociologists of education would call this extended role relations, or interacting on more than one plane with individuals in your community, a healthy way of learning new knowledge and about ones role in the community. In contrast, modern interactions between individuals within a community tend to be more limited (e.g. your see your teacher only within the classroom where she has the ultimate authority and encountering her outside the classroom is a rare and awkward experience; or, the mailman is just the mailman, without a name, personality or presence outside of his job). Logan’s experience is of a world that has a slower pace, more meaningful interactions between people, and greater ultimate purpose.

It is rare when one encounters a book so beautifully written and rich with narrative detail that you can actually see the place written of. But to have a book both beautiful and rich and that captures the ideals I wish to promote in my own life and career is a rare and wonderful thing indeed. I recommend Ben Logan’s The Land Remembers for both young and old, the modern and traditional, for those looking for something to entertain and those looking for something with deeper meaning.

(Photo credit: Barnes & Nobel.)

Actually, we got here two weeks ago, but between organizing the apartment and grad school orientation, I haven’t had time to update. Paul and I have been busy converting our little two bedroom apartment up the road from Indiana University into a place we can call home. Figuring out finances, how to shop for and cook meals every night, getting ready for school (and trying to find a job), filling the hours of new found free time, and just generally learning how to live together.

There’s something special about your first apartment, I think. For me, it’s the first time that I’ve been responsible for paying my own rent, buying groceries and cooking for myself, getting myself to school and work, even making my own coffee. Some of these things I feel more confident about than others. Paul and I have been cooking some pretty killer food, thanks to inspiration from Food Network, but I still can’t figure out how to make coffee that tastes as good as the stuff my dad makes. (Actually, the brews I’ve crafted aren’t even drinkable, to be honest.) I think I’m getting pretty good at budgeting and keeping track of expenses, thanks to the application of a brand new grad school Excel technique I’ve learned called Pivot Tables. (Yes, I’m excited. And a huge nerd, it’s okay.) I’ve figured out how to take the bus to and from SPEA, which is 1.6 miles away from my apartment. (Though knowing how to take the bus still can’t save me from waiting an hour when the bus only vaguely sticks to what appears to be an attempt at that which most of us would call a “schedule.”) Paul and I have even mastered knowing the best place to park at the local Farmer’s Market (and we also know which vegetables are cheaper at the market, and which are better bought at Kroger’s).

I love Bloomington. Classes start at SPEA on Monday, and I can’t wait to see if my reason for coming to this wonderful little town is all that I’ve anticipated. Orientation this past week was informative and necessary, but what I’m really looking forward to is grad school classes that focus on my beloved field of environmental studies. I have crafted a partial curriculum at SPEA that I hope will prepare me for work in communities, encouraging sustainable economic, social and environmental aspects of community development. This term, I’ll be taking Sustainable Development, Public Management Economics, Environmental Chemistry, and Statistical Analysis for Effective Decision Making. I’m most looking forward to the first class. “Sustainable development” has been my personal buzz word and phrase of interest and inspiration since I came across the term in a high school history class. It has long fascinated me that two words so seemingly opposite – “development,” meaning economic progress, change for the better, increased quality of lifestyle, and “sustainable,” meaning perpetuating, lasting, capable of maintaining itself – could be juxtaposed in so much environmental, political, and economic literature. Development, as improving the quality of life, could surely not continue in perpetuity, could not be sustainable. Could it? As an environmentalist, I have to wish it can be true. But the economist in me is less sure. I’m hoping this term at SPEA will help me begin to clarify and define just what “sustainable development” is, and help me understand whether it can be a part of environmentally-friendly, sustainable communities.

Oh, and help me begin to figure out how I fit in to all this.

Because I’ve lived in Appleton my entire remembered life, I take the knowledge of where the grocery store is in my home town for granted. So a small task, like running to the corner store to get milk when we run out, is no big deal. Just a quick trip, in and out. The location and layout of the store are familiar to me, the cashiers are my neighbors and friendly, the milk nearly the exact same price as always.

As I contemplate moving to a new place soon, I find myself wondering casually how long it will take me to gather the same knowledge of my new town as I have of Appleton. For instance, how long will it take before running to the store for milk in Bloomington is second nature?

~

Still, I likely needn’t worry too much. While the Walgreens in Bloomington will be in a different location, its layout will be probably be the same as the Walgreens in Appleton. Perhaps this predictability is part of the reason national chain stores such as Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart, and others have such success and universal appeal. Apart from their considerable purchasing power, these national chains have nearly the same layout in every town across America, and so they look familiar and appealing no matter where you are. In a fast-paced world, where people commonly move many times in a single lifetime, knowing where the milk is in every single Wal-Mart across the country contributes to the easing of displacement.

In a way, this is a way of bridging towns and cities together by the similarities they possess (though many would argue that having a Wal-Mart in common is hardly a cause for uniting in celebration). However, a supermarket with a common layout and appearance also means less uniqueness is preserved in the smaller stores in the area. Smaller stores serving local neighborhoods, where we meet our neighbors working at the counter, share a conversation with our elementary teacher while reaching for apples, and greet the old widow from the local Rotary Club over at the deli, offer greater opportunity for engagement between individuals than do giant Wal-Mart Supercenters with entire aisles of only bread, that serve sometimes multiple communities, where people rush through the over-sized store in order to get their shopping done quickly.

Should we trade familiarity in space (knowing where the milk is) for familiarity in people (knowing the person behind the deli counter)? Knowing people in your neighborhood, I think (and many experts would agree), leads to healthier, happier people. The more connected we are to one another, the more chances of having extended relationships,* of becoming friends, of knowing we can rely on one another when needed. And the more we recognize others we may need, the more we see the possibility of them needing us, too, making us feel purposeful, included, needed, wanted. The more communal we are with those around us, the more of a community we will have.

~

Because I believe it is extremely important to know the place we live in, I will likely start gathering bits of local knowledge the moment I move to Bloomington. Indeed, I have already started logging away on a miniature map in my head knowledge from my two visits to the city: where the farmer’s market is, where the university and my apartment are, that there are in fact two branches of the Bloomington Bagel Company. Paul and I will be taking a local paper when we arrive, both for the purposes of learning about our new town and to get the coupon deals in the Sunday edition. The day after we move in, we’ll go knock on our neighbors’ doors and introduce ourselves. I plan to ask people familiar with Bloomington in my master’s program for recommendations for doctors, the best place to get shoes or books, and where’s the best cup of coffee in town. I want to start building connections with those around me, and indeed, as I’ll be so far away from my family, I’ll inevitably need these connections.

I am excited to move to a new place, to have a new city to explore. My mind is like a sponge when it comes local knowledge. We’ll just have to see how long it takes me to navigate the nearest grocery store to find the milk.

[*This term is used in holistic education literature to refer to the encounters occurring between teachers and students in places outside the classroom (for instance, the grocery store). I use it here to refer to outside encounters between individuals of all types (for instance, seeing your coworker at your son's Little League game, seeing your music lessons teacher walking her dog, seeing the woman who works the deli counter at the gas pump next to you, etc.).]

Conkey's Bookstore, in Downtown Appleton, Wisconsin. Taken during the first snow of the winter of 2006.

An article in the Appleton Post Crescent last week gave the details of the store’s reasons for closing, so I will not go into those here. For me, and for many, the closing of Conkey’s Bookstore is much more than a news item.

The closing of Conkey’s is more than the loss of another independent bookstore in a community. It’s the loss of a way to make a livelihood for the store’s many full-time employees. It’s the loss of a neighborhood bookstore alternative to heading out to the mall for the residents of downtown Appleton. It’s the loss of a place to get cards, books and gifts for its thousands of loyal customers. It’s the loss of an anchor store for the many local businesses located on downtown College Avenue.

The closing of Conkey’s Bookstore is also a symbol of the direction this world is going in. The McDonaldization of America is often used by sociologists as a metaphor for the takeover of the so-called standardized, predictable, mass marketable, and “economically efficient” in modern American society. McDonaldization as a concept could have just as easily been termed WalMartization. The Big Box stores and chain fast food dives are beating out the small local businesses and ma and pop restaurants. Add this to the recession that is taking its toll on all businesses, large or small, local or chain, and the closing of another independent bookstore doesn’t seem so unlikely or surprising to today’s reader.

But the loss of independent businesses of all types means the loss of the individuality and character that comes with the businesses. Conkey’s has been in Appleton for over one hundred years. It has that charm of an old business, and it used to thrive on the services it provides, such as out-of-print book ordering, and the knowledgeable employees who can recommend a book for anyone. There is an one of those old rolling ladders inside, the kind that nowadays is only seen in movies or in pictures of old libraries. It has the charm of a bookstore that has been there forever. Conkey’s has been in downtown Appleton for longer than living memory.

Countless articles and blog posts have been written about the benefits of independent businesses to communities. One of the more often sited facts I’ve come across is that for every dollar spent at a locally owned business, approximately 60 cents returns to the local economy through wages, investments, and more. Compare this to every dollar spent in a Big Box or nationally owned chain, only 40 cents of which returns to the local community, and it’s clear that locally-owned, independent businesses support community much more than chain stores. Local businesses are also more likely to give donations to charitable causes than chain stores, because there is less corporate mumbo-jumbo to hurdle to get the donation to go through. Local businesses also collaborate frequently with each other, creating a social network of individuals and businesses that can support and cross-publicize one another.

Customers have come into Conkey’s over the past weeks, since the news of our closing was published, and all have lamented the fact that we will be closing our doors after so many years. It really is a tragedy. The oldest independent bookstore in the state of Wisconsin is closing after over a century of business. I think deep down we’re all sort of hoping for a miracle, that some one will be interested in buying the place and keeping it in business. Or that by some sort of divine intervention, business will take a drastic upward turn and we’ll be able to stay open. Or someone will come up with a brilliant business plan to turn Conkey’s into a co-op, like a bookstore in Shorewood, Wisconsin will hopefully soon become.

For me personally, it still hasn’t quite sunk in. It can’t be really happening. The community will find a way to keep Conkey’s open. It’s been such a downtown icon for so long. I’ve had two dreams since I found out Conkey’s was closing. In the first, I’m walking down College Avenue in Appleton and nearly every store is closed and boarded up. In the second dream, I’m talking to customers in the store and I finally start crying, letting out all the welled up grief and tears I have for the fate of the bookstore. I woke up sobbing.

It’s especially disheartening to find the store to be closing as I embark on schooling for a career in sustainable communities. Integral to the health of a community is the health and sustainability of its local businesses. Without places like Conkey’s to provide valuable services like book selling in downtown districts close to where people live and work, residents of communities are forced to get into their cars and travel to large shopping malls for their everyday needs. Local grocery stores, hardware stores, clothing shops, schools – in a sustainable community, these every day places should be within walking or biking distance of every resident. But as more and more local businesses and shops close and are out-competed by the malls and the Big Box stores, community citizens become more and more dependent on their fossil fuel powered vehicles. How can we be otherwise, when stores are farther and farther from our homes, and public transportation in most smaller cities and towns is awful?

It’s easy to sit and lament all the things that will be lost as Conkey’s closes. To berate the Big Box stores and the economy and the internet for forcing the little guys out of business. However, when I become angry at the whole situation, I have to remind myself of what one of Conkey’s loyal customers said the other day. We should have a big party here, she told us. It’s sad that we’re closing, but Conkey’s has had a great run of it for 113 years. We should have a big party, with all of the community invited, to celebrate a century of life. When a 113 year old dies, she said, you don’t have a funeral, you have a party, celebrating a good, long life!

I will miss Conkey’s. I had been planning on coming home to visit the place when I come home for Christmas during the next few years for my yearly walk down memory lane. With the store closing, residents of Appleton and graduates of Lawrence will all have to rely less on the store as a place to conjure nostalgia for our childhoods, and more on the fond memories inside our heads.

As I am writing this, it is a gray Thursday. I sit looking out over the Fox River, watching the seagulls swoop low over the moving water among the rocks. The white smoke from the paper plants melt into the gray-white sky that is rimmed with trees and smokestacks and radio towers. Though this view I have is far from natural, it carries a rich history that lends a sort of industrial beauty to the landscape.

As my time at Lawrence University comes to a close and I reflect, I regret that I have not learned more about this landscape that surrounds us. Though I am an Appleton native, I have not spent much time at all thinking about the Fox River—its ecology, industry, history—or the greater Fox Valley community during my time at Lawrence. Until this, my last, term at Lawrence, when I have been involved in a project on the history of the Fox River for Professor Monica Rico’s American Environmental History class, hardly a single class I’ve had at Lawrence has integrated this place Lawrentians call home into the academic subjects we learn here.

Lawrentians could easily spend four years here and never truly get to know the community’s history, ecology, politics, socioeconomic demographics, or current issues. Lawrentians joke about the “Lawrence Bubble,” and possibly lament the fact that they rarely get off campus into the surrounding community. We hear how the “townies” dislike the students for having loud parties on the weekends and riding their bicycles down College Avenue on the sidewalks, or stereotype us as being a bunch of snobby rich kids at private school.

Many on campus would make this out to merely be a PR problem—it is only because the surrounding community doesn’t know all the good things Lawrence students do: they don’t get to campus enough to see the “real Lawrence,” and only the bad things that get into the local papers. But is this really true? I argue that the issue of the “Lawrence Bubble” is more than just bad PR; it is also the lack of involvement and positive interaction between Lawrentians and community members.

True, programs like LARY Buddy and Habitat for Humanity do attempt to reach out to members of the non-Lawrence community and create a positive face for the University. Students are regularly encouraged to vote in local elections (though they may know little about the local issues on which they are voting). In the education program, student teachers are required to observe and teach at a local school. The Campus Center will purportedly be available to the community at large as a limited convenience store and for community events when requested. And some faculty, like Professor Mark Jenike through his research on nutrition in area schools, and the aforementioned Fox River project in Professor Rico’s class, are attempting to break out of the Bubble and use the surrounding community for translational research and experiential learning.

But for the large part, these are isolated examples that only reach a small portion of students and the community. There has been no comprehensive, University-wide effort to engage students in the Fox Valley community. If Lawrence is to truly prepare students that are prepared to be both world citizens and also contributing members of a community, it must start with encouraging students to be members of this community. We need to attempt to burst the “Lawrence Bubble” by engaging ourselves in meaningful ways in the greater community.

The Green Roots mission statement reads, “Responsible citizenship…requires…that we act in a manner that cares for the places in which we, and others, live and work. [T]he hallmark of an educated person…must be knowledge of the places we call home, an awareness of their interconnectedness, and an acceptance of our civic duty to act in ways that protect their wellbeing.” In order for Lawrence to truly create graduates that go out into the world with an understanding of “the places we call home,” it is necessary that our curriculum and civic outreach reflect these goals.

We must encourage faculty to use the Fox Valley as a “text” for academic study. We must educate students on the current local issues, so that they can become engaged citizens working toward a better community. We must teach students about the importance of local businesses in sewing together the economic and social fabric of the town. We must bring in more community members to share their knowledge about local and global issues with Lawrentians.

If we can develop students that truly know this place, perhaps they will go out into the world knowing the importance of place and how to live well in a that place, and contributing to strong vibrant communities. Only if we can take care of our own communities will we be able to extend that care into the larger world in the search for a global sustainable society.

(Many thanks to Stewart Purkey for exposing me to many of the ideas present in this article in his class Environment, Community and Education, and for suggestions on a draft of this article.)

In today’s modern, high-powered society, it’s edicts like these that make us over-worked – chained to our jobs to earn money to support our consumer lifestyles (the so-called “paradox of affluence”). How, when your company all but requires you to take your Blackberry with you and check voicemail twice a day, can Americans really enjoy the vacations they spend all that time working to afford? We’re stressed and unhappy as a society because we don’t have enough time to relax. But as the ZD Net story indicates, even when we do have the opportunity to “relax,” we still wind up being bugged by work items: the last minute email or phone conference ties us to our desks even when we’re hundreds of miles away from the office. But, in the cut-throat competition of the modern corporate world, measures such as these are often necessary if you don’t want to lose your job or get passed up for that promotion.

What’s the solution for today’s over-stressed, over-worked slave to the corporate office?

Writer and Professor of Environmental Studies, David Orr, in his book entitled Earth in Mind, originally published in 1994, writes of the concept of a “calling” as compared to the modern idea of a “career” (2004, p. 22). A career, writes Orr, is often nothing more than a means to an end – and often that end is money that is then used to “support a ‘lifestyle’” of consumption of material goods (Orr, 2004, p. 22). Most modern jobs are along the lines of a career. A calling, on the other hand, involves an inner sense of “purpose” (Orr, 2004, p. 22). With a calling, there is an integration between “work” and play that means work never really seems like work because you enjoy what you’re doing. In a world where people act on their calling and not their career, there is no need to fill the void caused by a lack of purpose with needless, mindless consumption of stuff.

If we all could have a calling instead of a career, then perhaps we’d never feel that we need to “get away” from our jobs through vacations. We’d never need to “de-stress” or engage in activities designed to relax us. If we enjoyed work, perhaps we’d feel less chained to our jobs, with the sole purpose of our work being to make money. And if we value the work we do in and of itself and not just because it can be exchanged for money, work will become less arduous and more enjoyable.

But, how, then, is this an anecdote to those employers requiring workers to bring every work-linking device on vacation with them? Well, I could easily argue that if you enjoy your job, remaining connected with it on vacation should be a joy not a chore. One would be anxious to know what is going on in the workplace and to stay in the loop with any new developments at work. In all likelihood, any job that reflects a calling and a deeper sense of purpose, that integrates work and play in such a way that you enjoy what you do every day, and are not over-worked would result in a people that have time to relax on a day to day basis, instead of saving up all our alloted vacation time into long weekends and weeks away.

However, no matter how much you love your job, we all need to truly get away once in a while. And jobs that require you to remain connected while on vacation do not allow you to fully escape. But with a calling instead of a career, this need for connection will hopefully at least be slightly less onerous (and maybe you’ll only need to take one instead of five work-connecting devices with you on vacation).

Sources:
Orr, David. 2004. Earth in Mind. Washington, DC: Island Press.
ZDNet.com