Re-Gain

Food, water, agriculture and energy are interconnected. Each of these factors needs to be addressed if this planet is going sustain a world population expected to surpass 10 billion in years to come. For years I have studied food waste and food conservation, as well as having worked with numerous organizations attempting to start composting enterprises.  Conserving food requires lessening waste and better management in every link of this nutrient chain.  From the farm, factory, store and home; the US wastes enough food to feed Canada. Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons). The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans waste 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of their overall food supply.  In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions...

Americans drive over a trillion miles each year. Today the Washington D.C. area has the worst traffic jams - commuters spend 82 hours each year stuck in gridlock.  We have also another form of carbon gridlock.  Our Congress is not addressing our international climate crisis. Tragically many Americans today deny there is any present danger despite the alarming and increasing scientific evidence.  Worldwide we emit ten billion metric tons of CO2 while we were discharging in the early 1990's six billion metric tons of carbon. For ten centuries up to the industrial revolution climate scientists observed carbon dioxide around 280 parts per million (ppm).  By 1992, CO2 levels reached 350 ppm.  Because of these increases our global temperatures have risen almost 1 degree resulting loss of half the Arctic ice cap, and tens of thousands of cubic miles of Antarctica ice, and hundreds of millions of acres' of our oxygen producing trees. President Obama has made a...

For almost a quarter of a century I have lived in the middle of the woods for most of my week. Over the years if I am not in the forest after a few days I feel exposed.  Also being in such a stress free environment enhances my very well being.  With today's increasing challenges finding how to best how to best cope with our ecological crisis is vital.  Maybe this is why at times I feel anxious, unsettled, despairing, and depressed. In the course of my life I have observed much disconnection, distraction and denial of what we are doing to our planet. However, I have shifted my focus from the macro to the micro. My inside game or mind-set allows me new freedom and possibility. Glenn Albrecht has a name for psychological condition. In a 2004 essay, he coined a term to describe it: “solastalgia,” a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root –algia (pain), which he defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one ...

There is various silent civil wars happening around the globe. Numerous battles are happening on many fronts: between the North and South  hemispheres; with the haves versus those without; and other human battle fields.  Most of the affluence and wealth resides in the North.  Now we have the one percent rich and those who have each day try to keep their heads above the waters of debt.  Forty years ago I wrote a graduate paper at George Washington University on the this gap and economic growth. In the last four decades income disparity has accelerated, and this planet keeps getting warmer.  As each of our rich and poor nations make it through each day, the melting at the poles increases. Now industrial North does not want to fully shell up the cash to help the South lessen their emerging carbon impact. Those third world Southerners have HIV, malaria, malnutrition, and sanitary threats distracting them to best act.   Just keeping our population in chec...

This time every year in Washington D.C. federal agencies throw away hundreds of millions of good products in the trash.   Our nation’s government discards a bountiful amount of materials to benefit in their next year budget cycle.  This is called "use it or lose it.”   This form of waste is not uncommon with many organizations.  There is nothing efficient about this practice to discard so to stimulate your next year budget.  35 years ago I was the D.C. first recycling coordinator. I observed huge amount of perfectly good materials such as furniture and chairs trashed because of a new budget cycle.   If only the Feds could reward saving things and instead of discarding them.  It is ironic that we invest hundreds of billions of dollars in defense programs or homeland security while investing a tiny fraction in our very earth’s survival.  Our industrial facilities generate yearly 7.6 billion tons of non-hazardous industrial waste.   ...

Almost every week there are new scientific findings proving  humans are impacting our climate. Compound this with the increasingly polarization of American politics and it safe to assume things are heating up on many fronts. People’s passions, fears, despairs and frustrations are running high. Fittingly change is needed to temper our climate situation. These weather changes are highly correlated with temperature rises.  All these factors are connected.  Global warming is leading to increased biomass factors that adds to more melting of ice changing surface of ocean impacting major circulation patterns. 8,000 years ago-humans’ first impacted this planet with great deforestation. European heat wave used to be 1 in every 500 year event, now there is the potential for this to happen every other year. The rapid rate of climate change threatens not just our energy and food but our very quality of life. We need local, state, national and world-wide action to ...

Time to act is quickly ticking away.  If we are going to secure our future it is going to be the rich to champion it.   No longer can we wait since the fate of our prosperity is in the balance. Today we have nearly 800 billionaires and some are trail blazers for conservation.  One example, Bill Gates, is funding fossil free energy sources shifting from vaccines to greater global environmental issues. Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, George Soros, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and others see the wisdom in green philanthropy. These leaders are investing into alternative energy technologies, biodiversity, green buildings, and numerous other ventures to promote our future prosperity. Branson, Dell, Turner and others are running their corporate operations by minimizing their footprint with everything from planting trees to green fuels. Bloomberg wishes on making building 80 percent more energy efficient.  Brin and Page are promoting smart cars ...

God has given us this planet as a gift, to provide for our needs.  And the correct response to receiving such a magnificent gift is surely one of gratitude, love and respect. Pope Francis encyclical on the environment showed profound courage.  His warning of the impacts of climate change has amazing implications.  As a former chemist, Pope Francis acknowledges that humans are a major contributor to greenhouse emissions and global warming.  The  International Energy Agency's recently cited that the fossil fuel industry last year got subsidies totaling $510 billion dollars.  Leaders and experts of all walks have advocated a carbon tax to price greenhouse emissions or some sort of emissions trading system. The $8 billion Vatican Bank is divesting in fossil fuels and shrinking its carbon footprint.  The Pope urges us to seriously address the whole "technological paradigm" of climate change impacting those less fortunate and the economic impacts. ...

Housework in America reflects interesting patterns.  Liana Sayer at the University of Maryland documents that in 1965 the average American woman spent four hours a day on housework while the men just 30 minutes.  In 2012 this changed where the woman spent less than  two and half hours a day while the men and hour and half.  Woman in the U.S, still do about 1.7 times a much as men in 2012 but they also now are more into the workforce.  Thus men need to up their output by 70 percent to be as productive as the average woman at housework.  When there is a birth of a child then woman increase their work by three hours a day not including being with the child while men increase their total work by an hour and a half according to a 2015 Ohio State study by Dush and Schoppe-Sulllivan. Bottom-line is that there is inequalities in household labor. Before parenthood the average man's workweek was three hours longer than his partner's before birth (paid work and un...

  We must conceive of stewardship not simply as one individual's practice, but rather as the mutual and intimate relationship extending across generations, between the human community and its place on earth - John Elder, Inheriting Mount Tom, 1997 Just recently I was attending a memorial of a dear old friend in Woodstock, Vermont driving from another Woodstock in Virginia close to home.  We all return to our beloved earth in many ways. Both were I live in the Shenandoah valley and were I grew up in home Washington D.C. share the story of saving the land. For example, most American's did not know that George Washington was a revolutionary farmer as one of this country's first composter and who also did the land survey for my valley.  Low and behold, Woostock, Vermont is the birthplace of some major conservation champions planting seeds for the benefit of many generations. First this is where our nation's foremost environmental pioneer, George Perkins Marsh...

The recent Western and California drought forces us to explore new innovations because of the lack and need for water.  Water reuse is becoming more attractive mimicking just how water is recycled on this blue planet.  Also it reduces the disposal of wastewater and if properly managed improves our water’s quality.  Especially since how in the West improved water efficiency has many obstacles counter intuitively increasing both water consumption and its best allocation. The “use it or lose it,” allocation system is counterproductive. No better example of water conservation driven by economic growth than Las Vegas. 93% of water used indoors is treated and then used again either in irrigation or back to Lake Mead in Las Vegas   (Where the River Runs Dry, David Cohen, New Yorker, 5/29/15, pg 58) . Florida has been a state leader in recycling their water. The Sunshine State has nearly tripled this reuse in the last 20 years.   (*Getting Past the "Yuck" ...

Today's U.S. economic inequality threatens American's very freedom. More alarming our future economic growth is being undermined.  It is not just that a CEO may make 300 times more than what his workers make-there is a fundamental misbalance of haves with the have-nothings.   Edward Wolff at the New York University cites the following; the richest 1 percent Americans have 35 precent of the U.S. net worth.   The next 4 percent of our population have 28 percent of the wealth while the next 5 percent of us have 14 percent net worth. The next 12 percent of Americans have the next 10 percent net worth and after that the next 9 percent have the next 20 percent of the wealth. Finally, the last 3 percent of the U.S. citizens have the net worth of 20 percent of our population. The bottom 40 percent of U.S. citizens have nothing or even a negative net worth.  They owe more money than they own.  Recently the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developm...

Why is conserving so needed? Simply with billions more people now on this earth requires us to be more efficient with our resources for the future. Conservation matters because investing in the best use of our land, air and water is in our best interest. There are millions of ingenious ways we can better this place. We can bike or walk instead of drive. We can shut off lights, computers and tvs not in use reducing our electricity requirements. Water from our roofs can be captured in rain barrels for watering our plants. Promoting sustainable economic growth by transforming waste is an investment in our happiness. What we do affects our planet, and also impacts our very spirit. It is all about ecology and economy. "Eco" comes from the Greek meaning house and it is time to do some serious cleaning both inside and out. A new prosperous frontier helping this blue/green planet  if we become thrifty.  I have been fortunate to be a participant in several conservation tipping p...

I recently heard a friend describe her life as being consumed by her gardening for a farmer's market.  The next day I heard this term as a book title. William T. Cavanaugh’s book, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Eerdmans, 2008), explores our free market economy.  He critically examines world hunger, globalization, economic abundance, and consumerism as being flawed.  Cavanaugh’s  suggests that our “free-market” results in just the opposite; it imprisons us. He believes the concept of the “autonomous individual” as being controlled by a dominant few lacking in any good purposeful end.  He sees our “free-market” economy creating endless wants and desires.  Consumerism creates a never ending downward cycle, lacking any good social ends, short changing our very humanity. Cavanaugh contends that the so-called “free-market” fosters economic enslavement by corporations and Madison Avenue. This powerful and select group stimulates consumer add...

When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may  begin to use it with love and respect. —Aldo Leopold Earth Day is celebrating its 45th birthday this Wednesday. Since  1970, there has been enormous environmental changes due to the first Earth Day's sweeping green awakening.  In 1980, I was a national and D.C. Earth Day organizer. Today our world is in delicate balance. This Earth Day we need to be engage in our planet's life support systems - planting seeds of future prosperity. Earth Day now has to happen everyday with clean-ups, educational activities, tree plantings, and other green acts.   Each one of us can better our lives by honoring our Earth, seas, and skies.   Everyday we can deepen our connection with the natural world, the cycles of life, and the rhythms of nature. This is greatest step toward higher self care.  Each day we can show our thanksgiving for our home, this planet.  Increasing our gratitude gives us a richer...

Each year on this planet we lose forests the size of Germany. This earth needs more trees to give us new oxygen, water and share. 82 years ago Franklin Roosevelt kick off one of his first New Deal program called the Civilian Conservation Corps and its first camp was in my home town, Edinburg, Virginia.  Two million men were employed and planted almost three billion trees.     Conservation industries generate over 8.5 million jobs and nearly $1 trillion in annual revenue in the United States, and represent some of the fastest growing sectors in our economy. However, the many other forms of conservation that is not accounted for. Did you know that George Washington being our nation’s first composter (http://www.robarner.com/washington.html) and surveyed the valley were I live.  In his name a century ago the George Washington Forest was created for our benefit.   The GW forest acts as a huge water treatment system purifying our drinking water. For example, ...

George Shultz's Washington Post 3/15/15 opinion article, A Reagan Approach to Climate Change (A 19) , urges Republican action by citing what his former boss would do.  As Reagan's Secretary of State, Mr. Shultz wisely opts for responding to recent evidence by taking an insurance policy out in the form of a carbon tax.  Both Conservatives and Liberal economists have widely supported such a market based approach.  Factoring national security and scientific facts. Mr. Shultz urges to stimulate private capital in case of worse case scenarios causing serious harm.   Both solar and wind power have proven their effectiveness. A recent Department of Energy report thinks wind power could fill one-third of the U.S. needs by 2050.  However favorable tax breaks are needed to support these turbines.  DOE cites that a shift to wind would result in a net price increase of about 1 percent for consumers in the next fifteen years and would provide an overall savin...

There is a tremendous opportunity to identify and better manage our hidden resources. Awakening to new uses for our by-products directly recharges our valuable earth. Improved inventories of what we discard will stimulate a greater understanding of new ingenious ways to grow.   Such renewal creates new prosperity since such resource management taps into new energy and materials. Better tracking of resource and material use can provide us with a more holistic approach to “best use” and new enterprises. Preserving our world is a gold mine of new commerce and industry. Over seven billion people now live on this earth.   In the next decades, an additional several billion people are estimated to increase our ranks.   It is imperative we measure, manage and sustain resources for the future uses. Each year Americans use, discard and recycle more than 17.3 billion tons of waste including non-sewage wastewater.   The total volume of non-waste water is 4.9 b...