The Gnamma Hole

If this does not convince you of how amazing the human race is, not much else will. A testament to the creative talents that are embedded within every soul on this planet if only we would take time to develop and expose it. Instead of holding tightly to racism and bigotry, open your hearts to your neighbours near and far and be enriched by what they can offer you.

Parts of eastern Australia are suffering their worst drought in living memory as a lack of rainfall in winter hits farms badly.

Reuters photographer David Gray captured the view of the dried earth from the air, finding an often surprising collage of colours 

What do a pharmacist, a nursery school teacher and an architect all have in common? They all became unlikely activists in the historic case of the first pesticide-free town.

Mals, Italy, has long been known as the breadbasket of the Tyrol. But recently the tiny town became known for something else entirely.

A PRECAUTIONARY TALE (http://www.chelseagreen.com/a-precaut...) 

Mals, Italy, has long been known as the breadbasket of the Tyrol. But recently the tiny town became known for something else entirely. A Precautionary Tale tells us why, introducing readers to an unlikely group of activists and a forward-thinking mayor who came together to ban pesticides in Mals by a referendum vote—making it the first place on Earth to accomplish such a feat, and a model for other towns and regions to follow.

For hundreds of years, the people of Mals had cherished their traditional foodways and kept their local agriculture organic. Their town had become a mecca for tourists drawn by the alpine landscape, the rural and historic character of the villages, and the fine breads, wines, cheeses, herbs, vegetables, and the other traditional foods they produced. Yet Mals is located high up in the eastern Alps, and the valley below was being steadily overtaken by big apple producers, heavily dependent on pesticides. As Big Apple crept further and further up the region’s mountainsides, their toxic spray drifted with the valley’s ever-present winds and began to fall on the farms and fields of Mals—threatening their organic certifications, as well as their health and that of their livestock. 

The advancing threats gradually motivated a diverse cast of characters to take action—each in their own unique way, and then in concert in an iconic display of direct democracy in action. As Ackerman-Leist recounts their uprising, we meet an organic dairy farmer who decides to speak up when his hay is poisoned by drift; a pediatrician who engaged other medical professionals to protect the soil, water, and air that the health of her patients depends upon; a hairdresser whose salon conversations mobilized the town’s women in an extraordinarily conceived campaign; and others who together orchestrated one of the rare revolutionary successes of our time and inspired a movement now snaking its way through Europe and the United States.

This amazing footage of Mals was provided by the mayor's office

In 2014, Mals, a German-speaking town of 5,300 inhabitants in the north of Italy, became the first community in the world to hold a referendum on pesticide use. The result was a landslide: 75% voted for a ban. But how did this small town triumph over the powerful pesticide industry?

In this series we are exploring the value of regulation in protecting people and planet. We have travelled across Europe to meet real people fighting to protect the things they cherish, using – or calling for – regulation to help their struggle. In this episode, we see how the people of Mals used the precautionary principle planned for by EU law to go beyond basic pesticide safety standards and introduced a law banning pesticides. 

The people of Mals used EU laws to justify a ban on pesticide use. 

“I think it is on us to preserve and to regulate our world”

– Margit Gasser, member of Hollawint

The treaty underpinning the EU aims to ensure the highest level of environmental protection by taking the ‘prevention is better than cure’ approach. This precautionary principle allows laws to be passed on the basis of potential, but unknown, risks.

This extends to the EU law covering pesticide use. So the people of Mals made use of these laws. It paid off in 2016, when Mayor Uli Veith introduced a de facto ban on pesticides. 

However, the story is not yet over. Fast-forward to 2018, and the town is facing significant backlash from big industrial farming trade unions and the pesticide industry. The decision has been legally challenged multiple times and four years after the referendum, the people’s decision to ban pesticides hasn’t been implemented because of court delays.

Partners:

Pesticide Action Network

PAN-Italia

The Lexicon

Learn more:

The market worth of the pesticide industry is $50billion [The Guardian]

Read the book of the Mals story, ‘A Precautionary Tale’ by Philip Ackerman-Leist

Watch the documentary ‘Wunder von Mals’ by Alexander Schiebel's -

1 in 7 apples grown in Europe are produced in South Tyrol

Keep up to date with Hollawint!

Johannes Hans developed a weekly newsletter (that is mostly in German). If you would like to receive it please email [email protected] 

Keep up to date with the growing movement for pesticide-free towns by following PAN Europe’s campaign

No story says ‘people versus power’ like the struggle to save Bialowieza forest in Poland. In 2016, concerned citizens from all walks of life mobilised in this ancient forest to stop extreme logging by the Polish state forestry, which was a clear breach of EU nature protection laws. In this series we are exploring the value of regulation in protecting people and planet. We have travelled across Europe to meet real people fighting to protect the things they cherish, using – or calling for – regulation to help their struggle. When it comes to nature, regulation allows things to flourish and grow. The EU’s nature laws protect endangered nature from commercial interests across Europe. In this case, nature laws worked hand in hand with citizens to protect the Bialoweiza forest; regulation was the backbone of the activists’ demands. Beyond Bialoweiza, there are many forests that aren’t protected by regulation and remain at risk.

In 2016 the Polish state forestry began extreme logging in the unique Bialoweiza forest under instructions from the environment minister. Concerned citizens believed this was breaking EU nature protection laws. This means the logging was illegal. A group of citizens-turned-activists organised themselves to occupy the forest to stop the logging. Activists chained themselves to the logging machines and patrolled the forest every day. They collected data that they sent to the European Commission, which then took Poland to the European Court of Justice – the EU’s highest court. The resistance was successful – the European Court of Justice ruled that the Polish government was breaking EU laws. In November 2017 it was given two weeks to stop the illegal logging, or face fines of €100,000 a day. In April 2018, a final judgement ruled that logging was illegal under nature protection laws, and that the logging had to stop. The forest is now safe, but the people who saved it remain under threat. The activists are facing over 300 court cases for defending nature. You can support them by signing a petition calling on the Polish government to drop the charges.

Obóz dla Puszczy [Save Bialoweiza!] - https://www.facebook.com/dlapuszczy/

Learn more: Sign the petition to support the citizens who protected the forest from court cases https://act.wemove.eu/campaigns/749/

Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

- Prologue

By Nathaniel Rich Photographs and Videos by George Steinmetz AUG. 1, 2018 in the New York Times Magazine

New York Times Magazine - Editor’s Note      This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it. Jake Silverstein

Prologue

The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.

Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?

Because in the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce carbon emissions — far closer than we’ve come since. During those years, the conditions for success could not have been more favorable. The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way — nothing except ourselves.

Nearly everything we understand about global warming was understood in 1979. By that year, data collected since 1957 confirmed what had been known since before the turn of the 20th century: Human beings have altered Earth’s atmosphere through the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels. The main scientific questions were settled beyond debate, and as the 1980s began, attention turned from diagnosis of the problem to refinement of the predicted consequences. Compared with string theory and genetic engineering, the “greenhouse effect” — a metaphor dating to the early 1900s — was ancient history, described in any Introduction to Biology textbook. Nor was the basic science especially complicated. It could be reduced to a simple axiom: The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the warmer the planet. And every year, by burning coal, oil and gas, humankind belched increasingly obscene quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Why didn’t we act? A common boogeyman today is the fossil-fuel industry, which in recent decades has committed to playing the role of villain with comic-book bravado. An entire subfield of climate literature has chronicled the machinations of industry lobbyists, the corruption of scientists and the propaganda campaigns that even now continue to debase the political debate, long after the largest oil-and-gas companies have abandoned the dumb show of denialism. But the coordinated efforts to bewilder the public did not begin in earnest until the end of 1989. During the preceding decade, some of the largest oil companies, including Exxon and Shell, made good-faith efforts to understand the scope of the crisis and grapple with possible solutions.

Nor can the Republican Party be blamed. Today, only 42 percent of Republicans know that “most scientists believe global warming is occurring,” and that percentage is falling. But during the 1980s, many prominent Republicans joined Democrats in judging the climate problem to be a rare political winner: nonpartisan and of the highest possible stakes. Among those who called for urgent, immediate and far-reaching climate policy were Senators John Chafee, Robert Stafford and David Durenberger; the E.P.A. administrator, William K. Reilly; and, during his campaign for president, George H.W. Bush. As Malcolm Forbes Baldwin, the acting chairman of the president’s Council for Environmental Quality, told industry executives in 1981, “There can be no more important or conservative concern than the protection of the globe itself.” The issue was unimpeachable, like support for veterans or small business. Except the climate had an even broader constituency, composed of every human being on Earth.

It was understood that action would have to come immediately. At the start of the 1980s, scientists within the federal government predicted that conclusive evidence of warming would appear on the global temperature record by the end of the decade, at which point it would be too late to avoid disaster. More than 30 percent of the human population lacked access to electricity. Billions of people would not need to attain the “American way of life” in order to drastically increase global carbon emissions; a light bulb in every village would do it. A report prepared at the request of the White House by the National Academy of Sciences advised that “the carbon-dioxide issue should appear on the international agenda in a context that will maximize cooperation and consensus-building and minimize political manipulation, controversy and division.” If the world had adopted the proposal widely endorsed at the end of the ’80s — a freezing of carbon emissions, with a reduction of 20 percent by 2005 — warming could have been held to less than 1.5 degrees.

A broad international consensus had settled on a solution: a global treaty to curb carbon emissions. The idea began to coalesce as early as February 1979, at the first World Climate Conference in Geneva, when scientists from 50 nations agreed unanimously that it was “urgently necessary” to act. Four months later, at the Group of 7 meeting in Tokyo, the leaders of the world’s seven wealthiest nations signed a statement resolving to reduce carbon emissions. Ten years later, the first major diplomatic meeting to approve the framework for a binding treaty was called in the Netherlands. Delegates from more than 60 nations attended, with the goal of establishing a global summit meeting to be held about a year later. Among scientists and world leaders, the sentiment was unanimous: Action had to be taken, and the United States would need to lead. It didn’t.

The inaugural chapter of the climate-change saga is over. In that chapter — call it Apprehension — we identified the threat and its consequences. We spoke, with increasing urgency and self-delusion, of the prospect of triumphing against long odds. But we did not seriously consider the prospect of failure. We understood what failure would mean for global temperatures, coastlines, agricultural yield, immigration patterns, the world economy. But we have not allowed ourselves to comprehend what failure might mean for us. How will it change the way we see ourselves, how we remember the past, how we imagine the future? Why did we do this to ourselves? These questions will be the subject of climate change’s second chapter — call it The Reckoning. There can be no understanding of our current and future predicament without understanding why we failed to solve this problem when we had the chance.

That we came so close, as a civilization, to breaking our suicide pact with fossil fuels can be credited to the efforts of a handful of people, among them a hyperkinetic lobbyist and a guileless atmospheric physicist who, at great personal cost, tried to warn humanity of what was coming. They risked their careers in a painful, escalating campaign to solve the problem, first in scientific reports, later through conventional avenues of political persuasion and finally with a strategy of public shaming. Their efforts were shrewd, passionate, robust. And they failed. What follows is their story, and ours.

Want to read the full story?  Click the link below to access the graphically rich complete article at the New York Time Magazine.

Click here to continue reading the entire story at the New York Times Site 

What is Conservation Agriculture (CA)

CA is a set of soil management practices that minimize the disruption of the soil's structure, composition and natural biodiversity. Despite high variability in the types of crops grown and specific management regimes, all forms of conservation agriculture share three core principles. These include:

maintenance of permanent or semi-permanent soil cover (using either a previous crop residue or specifically growing a cover crop for this purpose);

minimum soil disturbance through tillage (just enough to get the seed into the ground) ;

regular crop rotations to help combat the various biotic constraints;

CA also uses or promotes where possible or needed various management practices listed below:

utilization of green manures/cover crops (GMCC's) to produce the residue cover;

no burning of crop residues;

integrated disease and pest management;

controlled/limited human and mechanical traffic over agricultural soils.

When these CA practices are used by farmers one of the major environmental benefits is reduction in fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But they also reduce the power/energy needs of farmers who use manual or animal powered systems.

Other Important Definitions

Conservation agriculture is largely the product of the collective efforts of a number of previous agricultural movements, including no-till agriculture, agroforestry, green manures/cover crops, direct planting/seeding, integrated pest management, and conservation tillage among many others. Yet CA is distinct from each of these so-called agricultural packages, even as it draws upon many of their core principles. This is because CA uses many of the available technologies in unison, resulting in something many believe to be much greater than the "sum of its parts."

The following terms are often confused with conservation agriculture:

No-till (NT)/ Zero till (ZT)

NT and ZT are technical components used in conservation agriculture that simply involve the absence of tillage/plowing operations on the soil. Crops are planted directly into a seedbed not tilled after harvesting the previous crop. Not everyone utilizing no-till technologies adopts other important components of CA. One major difference is that NT or ZT do not necessarily leave residue mulch. Some recent research data suggests this is vital, since without the residue mulch many of the benefits of CA are lost or decreased in value.

Conservation tillage/ Minimum tillage/ Reduced tillage

These are tillage operations that leave at least 30% of the soil surface covered by plant residues in order to increase water infiltration and cut down on soil erosion and runoff. Conservation tillage is an intermediate form of CA since it keeps some soil cover as residue from the previous crop. But some tillage is usually done. It developed as a management system after the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930’s in the Mid-West areas of the USA. It was found to reduce erosion by protecting the soil surface from wind and rain.

Direct planting, direct drilling, plantio direto and siembra directa These are terms used for ZT in other countries like Australia and South America. They use special equipment (e.g. NT drill) to plant seeds directly into crop residues left on the soil surface without preparing a seedbed beforehand.

Direct seeding

This term is usually associated with growing a rice crop like any other cereal crop without producing seedlings that are then transplanted into the main field. However, it can also be called NT or ZT if the seed are drilled without tillage.  

Organic farming

Organic agriculture does not permit the use of synthetic chemicals to produce plant and animal products, relying instead on the management of soil organic matter (SOM) and biological processes. In some parts of the world, farms must be inspected and certified before their food products can be sold as organic, indicating that no synthetic chemicals were used in producing them. But organic farming uses the principles of CA to some extent and one objective similar to CA is to maintain and improve soil health. Unlike organic farming, CA does allow farmers to apply synthetic chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides. Many farmers rely on using these to control weed and pest problems, particularly during the early transition years. As soil physical, chemical and biological health improves over time; the use of agrichemicals can be significantly reduced or, in some cases, phased out entirely. 

CA is often used synonymously with ZT that is also believed to require heavy implements and large tractors. However, CA can be used by farmers with large or small holdings as follows:

Manual systems can include practices that build hills (eg. The traditional Iroquois Indian “Three Sisters” system) or basins (W.African Zai system) or use hand held planters (jabbar planters or matracas) or planting sticks to get seed into the ground without tilling the soil.

Animal traction systems can be as simple as making a furrow for placement of seed and micro-placement of nutrients to planters that can place seed and fertilizer even when residues are present.

Tractor power systems range from low horsepower, two wheel tractor systems to large, high horsepower 4-wheel or more models. They can be low cost no-till seeders manufactured by local artisans building on existing seed drills or expensive machinery developed by large tractor implement companies.

Farmers who do not own tractors can also avail of the tractor powered systems through use of hiring or service providers, a common system for plowing in many developing countries. 

A heritage craft from the women of the Miao minority group in Guizhou Province, PR China.. Miao women of Jianhe County weave cloth on wooden looms in their homes using cotton threads. They the idigo plant to dye the woven white cloth to creating dark hues that will showcase their tin embroidery patterns. Indigo, black and red are the traditional colours used at a backdrop to showcase their intricate tin embroidery.

Singing while weaving and stitching is an important part of the artistic process. “If you only embroider and don’t sing, you won’t know the stories of your patterns. Someone who doesn’t sing well, doesn’t embroider very well" says Long Nu San Jiu, the tin embroidery artisan featured on numerous state sponsored  and travel promotional videos.

Tin is cheaper than silver and easier to work with.  Strips of tin measuring approximately 1 millimeter wide is sheared off the tin sheet using sissors.  The strand is then woven into the aready created embrodeiered pattern – each stitch wrapped in tin and folded back on itself and pressed down.  A meticulous process that needing patience and endurance. 

The repetitive patterns are handed down from generation to generation along the maternal heritage lines.  They are expressions of the creator’s interactions and experiences past and present within their own cultural environment.  So, using needle and thread like pen and ink, they tell a story through their stitches using traditional symbols as visual orations of themselves. 

Information about the meaning of the designs in the miao tin embroidery is sparse and difficult to verify..  There are some well researched and reliable journal articles on Miao embroidery generally 

Weaving and stitching using metal threads is not unique to the Miao people group.  Indian/Persian culture also use metal threads to embroider delicate patterns on more refined fabrics such as silks and crêpe Georgette.  I will be exploring these crafts in future posts.

Please note that this video is 50+ minutes in length

Original story from BBC Futures 

Here’s the truth about the ‘planned obsolescence’ of tech

It’s widely held that certain gadgets, cars and other tech have deliberately short lifespans, to make you shell out to replace them. What’s the reality?

By Adam Hadhazy

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” as the idiom goes. So it would seem for the Centennial Light. An astonishing, record-setting 115 years after someone first flipped it on, this light bulb is still faintly shining in a fire station in Livermore, California. (You can see it for yourself on a webcam that refreshes every 30 seconds) 

For the multiple generations of us who have since swapped out more burned-out light bulbs than we can remember, the Centennial Bulb’s longevity must seem like a slap in the face. Surely, if an incandescent bulb made with 19th Century technology can last so long, why not new-fangled, 20th and even 21st Century bulbs?

The Centennial Light is often pointed to as evidence for the supposedly sinister business strategy known as planned obsolescence. Lightbulbs and various other technologies could easily last for decades, many believe, but it’s more profitable to introduce artificial lifespans so that companies get repeat sales. “That’s sort of the conspiracy theory of planned obsolescence,” says Mohanbir Sawhney, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University.

So is this conspiracy theory true? Does planned obsolescence really exist?

The Centennial Light has shone for 115 years (Credit: Bill Nale/Panoramio/Wikipedia)

The answer: yes, but with caveats. Beyond the crude caricature of greedy companies wantonly fleecing their customers, the practice does have silver linings. To an extent, planned obsolescence is an inevitable consequence of sustainable businesses giving people goods they desire. In this way, planned obsolescence serves as a reflection of a ravenous, consumer culture which industries did create for their benefit, yet were hardly alone in doing so. 

“Fundamentally, firms are reacting to the tastes of the consumers,” says Judith Chevalier, a professor of finance and economics at Yale University. “I think there are some avenues where [businesses] are kind of tricking the consumer, but I think there are also situations where I might put the fault on the consumer.”

An illuminating example

Sticking with light bulbs as a product, they provide amongst the most emblematic case studies of planned obsolescence.

Thomas Edison invented commercially viable light bulbs circa 1880. These early, incandescent bulbs – the Centennial Light included – relied on carbon filaments rather than the tungsten that came into widespread use almost 30 years later. (Part of the reason the Centennial Light has persevered so long, scientists speculate, is because its carbon filament is eight times thicker and thus more durable than the thin, metal wires in later incandescent bulbs.)

Initially, companies installed and maintained whole electrical systems to support bulb-based lighting in the dwellings of the new technology’s rich, early adopters. Seeing as consumers were not on the hook to pay for replacement units, lighting companies therefore sought to produce light bulbs which lasted as long as possible, according to Collector’s Weekly.  

As the light bulb customer base grew more mass-market, the business model that supported long-life bulbs disappeared (Credit: iStock)

Greater sums of money could be reaped, companies figured, by making bulbs disposable  

The business model changed, however, as the light bulb customer base grew more mass-market. Greater sums of money could be reaped, companies figured, by making bulbs disposable and putting replacement costs onto customers. Thus was born the infamous “Phoebus cartel” in the 1920s, wherein representatives from top light bulb manufacturers worldwide, such as Germany’s Osram, the United Kingdom’s Associated Electrical Industries, and General Electric (GE) in the United States (via a British subsidiary), colluded to artificially reduce bulbs’ lifetimes to 1,000 hours. The details of the scam emerged decades later in governmental and journalistic investigations.

“This cartel is the most obvious example” of planned obsolescence’s origins “because those papers have been found,” says Giles Slade, author of the book Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, a history of the strategy and its consequences.

The practice cropped up in all sorts of other industries, too. For instance, competition between General Motors and Ford in the fledging 1920s auto market led the former to introduce the now-familiar model year changes in its vehicles. GM had pioneered a way to entice customers to splurge on the latest, greatest car, to satisfy themselves and impress those in their social circles. “It was a model for all industry,” says Slade.

Although the term “planned obsolescence” didn’t enter common usage until the 1950s, the strategy had by then permeated consumerist societies.

Alive and well

In various forms, from subtle to unsubtle, planned obsolescence still very much exists nowadays. From so-called contrived durability, where brittle parts give out, to having repairs cost more than replacement products, to aesthetic upgrades that frame older product versions as less stylish – goods makers have no shortage of ruses to keep opening customers’ wallets.

Smartphones need replacing every couple of years, as battery life fades and software updates change (Credit: iStock)

For a fully modern example, consider smartphones. These handsets often get discarded after a mere couple years’ use. Screens or buttons break, batteries die, or their operating systems, apps, and so on can suddenly no longer be upgraded. Yet a solution is always near at hand: brand new handset models, pumped out every year or so, and touted as “the best ever”.

As another example of seemingly blatant planned obsolescence, Slade mentions printer cartridges. Microchips, light sensors or batteries can disable a cartridge well before all its ink is actually used up, forcing owners to go buy entirely new, not-at-all-cheap units. “There’s no real reason for that,” Slade says. “I don’t know why you can’t just go get a bottle of cyan or black [ink] and, you know, squirt it into a reservoir.”

Taken this way, planned obsolescence looks wasteful. According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer cartridges and offers cheaper replacements, in North America alone, 350 million (not even empty) cartridges end up in landfills annually. Beyond waste, all that extra manufacturing can degrade the environment too.

A nuanced view

Though some of these examples of planned obsolescence are egregious, it’s overly simplistic to condemn the practice as wrong. On a macroeconomic scale, the rapid turnover of goods powers growth and creates reams of jobs – just think of the money people earn by manufacturing and selling, for instance, millions of smartphone cases. Furthermore, the continuous introduction of new widgets to earn (or re-earn) new and old customers’ dough alike will tend to promote innovation and improve the quality of products.

As a result of this vicious, yet virtuous cycle, industry has made countless goods cheap and thus available to nearly anyone in wealthy Western countries, the Far East, and increasingly so in the developed world. Many of us indulge in creature comforts unimaginable a century ago.

Cars now have a longer lifespan than they did decades ago (Credit: iStock)

“There’s no doubt about it,” says Slade, “more people have had a better quality of life as a result of our consumer model than at any other time in history. Unfortunately, it’s also responsible for global warming and toxic waste.”

Planned obsolescence isn’t nakedly exploitative, as it benefits both the consumer and the manufacturer  

Oftentimes, planned obsolescence isn’t nakedly exploitative, as it benefits both the consumer and the manufacturer. Chevalier points out that companies tailor the durability of their goods per customer’s needs and expectations. For instance: children’s clothing. “Who buys super durable clothes for their kids?” Chevalier asks. Depending on their age, children might grow out of their clothes sometimes in mere months. It’s not so bad, then, that the clothes might relatively easily stain, tear, or go out of style, so long as they’re inexpensive.  

The same argument can apply to consumer electronics. Relentless innovation and competition for market share means that the underlying technologies in smartphones, for instance, keep surging ahead, with faster processors, better cameras, and so on.

“If ever there was true obsolescence, it’s in technology,” says Howard Tullman, a serial entrepreneur and chief executive officer of 1871, a digital startup incubator. “It’s almost as if the technology takes care of itself – this will obsolete itself whether you like it or not.”

Many owners might therefore appreciate paying less for a smartphone upfront whose, say, batteries can no longer hold a useful charge in three years. “Because the technology is evolving so rapidly, many people are not going to value the extra lifespan of a more durable battery,” says Chevalier.

A revealing counter-perspective to this nexus of customer desire and affordability mediated by planned obsolescence is the luxury goods market. Customers will opt to pay a substantial premium for products that often have finer craftsmanship, greater durability, and resale value – heck, many luxury goods consumers expect their investment to increase in value over time, instead of falling apart and being eventually rubbished. “If you buy a Rolex, you know it’s going to last you and you expect to be able to drive a truck over it,” says Slade.

Of course, people don’t just binge on a Rolex so it’ll be the last watch they or their grandchildren ever need to buy. To varying degrees, high-end brands serve to stroke clients’ egos as symbols of elevated social status. “Luxury goods are socially coded,” says Slade.

Planned obsolescence still very much exists nowadays, but in different forms (Credit: Getty Images)

As the years go by, though, hallmarks of a luxury version of an item can work their way into the mass market as their production grows cheaper and customers come to expect the perks. Few would argue that the increased availability of safety devices, like air bags in cars, once only found in pricier models, has not been a net positive. So in its admittedly self-interested, halting way, the competition at the heart of planned obsolescence-influenced capitalism can work in looking out for consumer’s interests as well.

The future of obsolescence

Accordingly, though examples clearly exist to the contrary, some business academics feel that it’s a bit over the top to assume many companies sit around plotting how to precisely engineer a product to self-destruct.

“If you have a market that’s kind of competitive, then the expected lifespan of the product is certainly something the firms compete over,” says Chevalier. “For a lot of products it’s not like consumers aren’t savvy enough to try to choose products that won’t [soon] be obsolete.”

Indeed, there are forces that could encourage manufacturers to lengthen lifespans.

In the auto market, Chevalier says “everybody thinks about and looks up how quickly does this car depreciate relative to others”. Indeed, in this arena, cars now stay on the road longer than they once did.  

There are forces that could encourage manufacturers to lengthen lifespans

“The auto industry for years has been sort of a fashion-driven business, where your car had fins and five years later, fins were out of style,” says Tullman. Yet that’s changing: he cites United States Department of Transportation figures showing that the average age of a passenger vehicle on the road in that country now stands at 11.4 years; in 1969, the figure was 5.1 years.

With internet reviews, it’s easier than ever to find out if your intended purchase has a short lifespan – and that goes for lightbulbs as well as cars.

And as environmental consciousness of the terrible amounts of waste generated by a throwaway culture has risen, consumer goods might become less disposable. Google’s Project Ara, for instance, is developing a smartphone-like device with six slots for swapping out technologically outdated components, versus traditionally binning the entirety of an aging smartphone.  

A business-minded approach to smarter recycling, reuse and repurposing has arguably made a big dent and will so in future, says Sawhney. For instance, Tesla, the electric automobile manufacturer, has plans to take back the spent batteries in its clients’ cars and repurpose them for home energy storage. The company also auto-downloads and upgrades the software in its clients’ cars as the vehicles charge overnight. Sawhney, who is a Tesla owner, says the company planned ahead for these sorts of upgrades by including “basically future-proof” sensors and hardware in the vehicle. 

“Instead of selling model after model of the car to me, [Tesla] just changed the software,” Sawhney says. “So that’s an antidote to planned obsolescence in a way – it makes obsolescence obsolete.”

Notes from 'thegnammahole.com: The following links are embedded within the text of this article and well worth a visit.

http://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm

http://www.reportsfromearth.com/155/designed-to-fail-planned-obsolescence-in-printers-tricks-to-fix-them/

A River Runs Through Us is a personal and hopeful introduction to one of the biggest threats facing our world's lifelines, as told by the people at the forefront of the global movement. This documentary touches on issues such as how climate change will affect rivers and dams; what happens to communities displaced by or living downstream of large dams; and what kinds of solutions exist that both preserve our life-giving waterways while meeting our needs for energy and water. The documentary was filmed at Rivers for Life 3 – a gathering of 350 river activists from 50 countries organised in rural Mexico by International Rivers. 

Download the DVD version (zipped ISO file courtesy of the Internet Archive)

Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild International Sculpture Park celebrates the rich environmental, industrial and cultural heritage of the Blackfoot Valley. Sculptors have been invited to create significant site-specific works of art using the materials - natural and industrial - that are associated with the community's economic and cultural traditions.

The 2014 sculpture symposium brought together internationally respected symposium artists Steven Siegel (USA), Jorn Ronnau (Denmark), Alan Counihan (Ireland), Jaakko Pernu (Finland) and Kevin O'Dwyer (Ireland) on site to engage with it's landscape, exploring it's historical, environmental and industrial history through contemporary art practice.

This is the first is a series of stories on 'Ancient Spiritual Trails'

Camino de Santiago means Way of St. James and refers to different routes leading to the cathedral Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain.  Just as in life, there are many possible pathways, some shorter than others, but all lead to the ultimate goal of reaching the cathedral also known as St. James of the Field of Stars. 

Camino de Santiago routes start in France, Portugal and Spain. Traditionally pilgrims start the Camino from their own homes. The most famous of the routes is the French Way starting in the Pyrenees in France.  It is here where we begin this pilgrimage. The 800 or so kilometers of walking takes between 4-6 weeks to complete.

The Camino or 'The Way' is an ancient Catholic pilgrimage route traversed by over 200,000 people of all Christian denominations annually.  Pilgrims tell stories of how following the path of the Ancients transformed their hearts, minds and souls. They say that by journey’s end, their hearts are united with the heart of their Creator – ‘The God of Angel Armies'. When they see their purpose in life clearly for that fleeting moment, they begin to love selflessly and appreciate the lives that touch them and they continue onward to their destiny.  They are forever changed! So much so, many of them repeat the arduous trek several times in their lives, seeking  once again to restore and renew their hearts, minds and souls!

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Martin Sheen plays the main character in the movie ‘The Way’, released in 2010. In his story, he embarks on the Camino on behalf of his deceased son - retracing the steps of the Ancients as he unlocks his inner spirituality.  The movie is a visual feast, with a rich story of the changes in a man's heart as he travels along the Camino de Santiago.  He discovers spiritual truths about God and begins to see people in the glory they were created for and meant to have in this life. The movie is brilliantly produced and written by  Sheen's son, Emilio Estevez, with a noteworthy performance by the entire cast. It masterfully captures the inner battle of the soul that plays out in reality for every pilgrim, past and present, who has chosen to travel along 'The Way.'

A belief that nature is good for you may sound like common sense, but in Japan researchers have taken the idea to the laboratory and produced evidence that a walk in the woods can help prevent cancer, fight obesity and reduce stress and depression. The Japanese have coined the term “shinrin-yoku”, or forest bathing, to codify the practice of exposing yourself to nature (particularly trees). The government has invested millions in both research and “forest therapy trails” - there are now 60 of them in Japan- where the forests have the sufficient density and trails are of sufficient length to provide the benefits of foresting bathing. The concept is to take a “bath” in the forest by letting nature enter all five sense. Qing Li, associate professor at the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and president of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine, argues that the sense of smell is most important. “The effect of forest bathing is the total effect, but the biggest effect is from the olfactory, smell, we call them phytoncides. Also people call them essential oil, aroma.” Li’s research has shown that trees’ aromas, known as phytoncides, boost our body’s NK (natural killer) cells which help fight tumors and virus-infected cells. Phytoncides are the medical equivalent of essential oils; the most effective aroma is Japanese Cypress.

Original story from Kirsten Dirksen: https://faircompanies.com/videos/science-of-forest-bathing-less-sickness-more-well-being/

A highly unusual blue cheese, made in a 700-year-old chalet in the French Alps

The place: an Alpine cheese parlour, high above the Maurienne Valley in the Vanoise National Park. The time, July, 2016. Inside, the eerie, whimsical tinkle of cow bells sounds the end of milking, and the start—or rather, resumption—of making cheese. Catherine Richard doesn’t falter. A milkmaid at the age of six and a cheesemaker by 15, one imagines her veins are as blue as the unique mould that suffuses the bleu de Termignon, so easily does its making run through them. Now almost 60 years old, she is one of a mere handful of producers left making this “totally fascinating, totally awesome” cheese.

“It’s really unusual,” Max at Mons Cheesemongers continues. “She is working in a 700-year-old chalet—just in the summer months, when there’s no snow, because when the snow comes, you can’t reach it.” As soon as the snow melts, she and her small herd of 15 or 16 cows make the journey up Maurienne to the alpage—rich in luscious grasses and wild herbs: chives, white clover, daisies and other flora which, when the first, sweet wheels of the season are cut open, you can quite literally taste.

The cheese is made in stages, the morning milk strained and added to the previous evening’s yield before being renneted, heated and kept warm with a reflective mountain rescue blanket—yes, really—to create curds that, once drained, can be added to curds which have been acidifying in whey since they were made two days before.

Tart, acidic taste “This gives the finished cheese a distinctively tart, acidic taste,” says Max. The whey in which the curds were sitting is topped up, and the curds replenished with fresh ones. Remarkably, in an age of blind, sweeping sterility, the whey in this bucket is never entirely replaced. What’s more, the equipment is all wooden at this stage in the process, helping to harbour the bright, indigenous mould which pervades this cheese in a mysterious, delicious way.

“Bleu de Termignon is a natural blue: the cheese is not pierced, or seeded with penicillin in the way most blues are.” Silently, stealthily, the mould creeps from the outside rind through. By pressing the curds by hand into the cloth-lined wooden cylinders, the mould can wend its way easily through their loose, rubbery texture as the cheese matures, left in the cellar, sometimes over winter, to age and fester under a thick layer of snow and ice while the cows return to the valley, to eat the hay and dried flowers Caroline spent the hours she wasn’t milking or making cheese assidiously preparing.

Only the cows are allowed the flora that grow in the Vanoise National Park; mere mortals can’t touch it. By the time the bleu de Termignon arrives at the Mons Cheesemongers maturing rooms in Bermondsey, its uniqueness has been set in a thick, grey, red dusted-rind, if not in actual stone.

Mountainous crags   “You can still see the red mould on the rind when we receive the cheese,” Max marvels. It’s the same mould which blankets the stone walls of Caroline’s chalet, and the mountainous crags overlooking it. Quite often, they as cheesemongers like to “age it up” by cutting the wheel in half and keeping it at 15 degrees for a few months, to allow the blue mould inside the cheese to diffuse a bit further through. 

The taste is unlike any other: Max reaches for mushrooms and woody herbs, but it varies: “Last year they were more aniseedy—more fennel-y, really.” His colleague likens the texture to that of a Lancashire, but again insists on its uniqueness. “It’s the sort of cheese that serious cheese lovers seek out when they want something surprising and new.”

It’s a cheese for cheesemongers, she continues: “The people who spend all day tasting and smelling cheese? This is the one that’s sufficiently amazing and interesting and fascinating for them to happily go home at the end of the day and to sit and eat more cheese.” Recommendations don’t come much higher than that.