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Nanabozho was fishing

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I’m half-way through reading a wonderful book by Robin Wall Kimmerer called Braiding Sweetgrass, and I fell in love with this story about Nanabozho. It’s the perfect story for use10percentless.com as it warns against taking and using too much. I hope Robin doesn’t mind me copying her story here and I hope you enjoy it.

Nanabozho was fishing - fish in the lake
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Nanabozho was Fishing

Nanabozho was fishing in the lake for supper, as he often did, with hook and line. Heron came striding along through the reeds on his long, bent legs, his beak like a spear. Heron is a good fisherman and a sharing friend, so he told Nanabozho about a new way to fish that would make his life much easier. Heron cautioned him to be careful not to take too many fish, but Nanabozho was already thinking of a feast. He went out early the next day and soon had a whole basketful of fish, so heavy he could barely carry it and far more than he could eat. So he cleaned all those fish and set them out to dry on the racks outside his lodge. The next day, with his belly still full, he went back to the lake and again did what the Heron had showed him. “Ahh,” he thought as he carried home the fish, “I will have plenty to eat this winter”.

Day after day he stuffed himself and, as the lake grew empty, his drying racks grew full, sending out a delicious smell into the forest where fox was licking his lips. Again he went to the lake, so proud of himself. But that day his nets came up empty and Heron looked down on him as he flew over the lake with a critical eye. When Nanabozho got home to his lodge, he learned a key rule – never take more than you need. The racks of fish were toppled in the dirt and every bite was gone.

Cautionary stories of the consequences of taking too much are ubiquitous in Native cultures, but it’s hard to recall a single one in English. Perhaps this helps to explain why we seem to be caught in a trap of overconsumption, which is as destructive to ourselves as to those we consume.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 2020, Penguin Books (first published in 2013, Milkweed Editions)

I love Robin’s comment that we’re “caught in a trap of overconsumption” and that hurts us as much as “those we consume”. It’s true – everything we do consumes some other form of life, which is fine but we should do it with respect and gratitude, and not take more than we need.

Robin’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, is such a joy to read with so many examples of indigenous wisdom (makes it obvious that we don’t have a lot of wisdom in our current culture). When I’ve finished the book, I’ll write a full review on my other blog – lifeintherightdirection.com – but I can already tell that this is a book that I’ll be highly recommending.

The front cover of the book Braiding Sweetgrass

References and Links

Climate Change – what can we do?

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I often get asked be people if climate change is real. Wow, that surprises me and it highlights how much poor information is being spread around. When I explain why climate change and global warming are real and it’s very clear that human activity is definitely the reason for the rapid change, then they ask me “What can we do?”. That’s a really good question because in general, our world’s political leaders are not doing what’s needed. That’s really sad (more on that later). Anyway, for each and every individual in the world, the solution is very simple and very clear. I’ll bet you’ll be surprised what the single, simple, most impactful thing you can do to arrest climate change is…

climate change what can we do?
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Spend less money!

Yes, the single, simple thing all us can do to have an immediate, positive impact can be summed up as “Spend less money!”. Now you probably think I’m crazy, but give me a minute to explain.

A quick apology…

I know that many people are absolutely struggling to find enough money to live, and the concept of “spending less money” might come as an inconsiderate insult. I certainly don’t mean that and am full of compassion for people in this predicament. If that’s you, rest assured that you are not the problem when it comes to global warming and climate change.

It’s pretty much 100% true (not quite, but almost) that every time your spend money, you’re creating carbon emissions. Let’s think through a few examples.

  1. Fuel for your car
    • This is an easy one. Everything you spend on fuel ends up directly creating more carbon emissions. Buy less fuel and you’d create less emissions.
  2. A holiday flight
    • Another easy one. When you spend money on a holiday flight, you’re creating a lot of additional carbon emissions, even if it’s a cheap flight. Plus you have to spend money on clothes, luggage and getting to the airport, all things that create more emissions.
  3. Food from the supermarket
    • For this one, let’s even ignore the carbon emissions that were created in the growing and production of the food. Every single thing in the supermarket had to be shipped there which creates carbon emissions. Then the supermarket needs electricity for lighting, and cooling. Then there’s driving to the supermarket to get the stuff. The list could go on and on.
  4. A coffee from a coffee shop
    • Really? Even a coffee? Yes, of course. The coffee beans probably came from somewhere else in the world, needing to be shipped. The beans have to be roasted and even the coffee machine in the shop uses significant energy and creates emissions. The shop needs lighting and heating or cooling. The disposable cup needed to be manufactured, creating more emissions. And more.
  5. New clothing
    • Most clothing is made in another country and needs to be shipped. The material used to make the clothes probably didn’t even come from that country. Sometimes the material is synthetic (made from hydrocarbons even) and had to be manufactured in a factory. Even the process to colour the material generated carbon emissions. Then it had to make its way to you through a shop or home delivery, even more emissions. When you hear people talk about a “supply chain”, think “carbon emissions” instead.
  6. A Netflix subscription
    • Surely a Netflix (or equivalent) subscription doesn’t create emissions? Sorry, it does. All of those movies and TV shows have to be stored on large arrays of computers all over the world. These computers use up a large amount of energy to run, creating emissions, and they have to be running 24/7/365. You could then get into the emissions needed to build the computers, or the emissions created in making a movie or TV show, and things get even worse.
  7. A mobile phone
    • To make a mobile phone requires a whole lot of minerals from mines in various parts of the world. Big earth moving machinery is required. Then minerals need to be processed and shipped to factories to make the phones. Then run a production line inside the factory, ship the products all over the world and sell them in shops to you. Carbon emissions all along the way. A simple mobile phone is the result of a huge carbon intensive industry (like almost all industries!). This article “iPhone 13 release date: How much energy will you save by not buying the new model?” says each iPhone 13 releases 64 kg of additional CO2 to the atmosphere and that the worst thing you can do is trade in your functioning old phone for the new model. Want to help the environment? Don’t buy that new phone.
  8. A mobile phone contract
    • And yes, even the mobile phone contract creates carbon emissions. There’s a network of communication towers and computer systems covering the whole world. It’s a big deal, sucking up energy and emitting carbon and making our atmosphere warmer. It’s not a free ride.
  9. Your internet subscription
    • Same thing goes for your internet subscription (the one you’re probably using to read this article). Just by using the internet you’re creating carbon emissions. The internet is really a vast array of computers connected to each other, covering the whole world. The big thing is that all of these computers have to be powered on all of the time. Carbon, carbon, carbon!

These examples show why it’s almost always true that, when you spend money, you’re almost certainly creating carbon emissions. But the amount of carbon is not linked to the amount of money that you spend. Sometimes, you can spend a little and create a lot of carbon (like a cheap holiday flight on a low-cost airline) and sometimes you can spend money and not emit much carbon at all (like buying a veggie box from a local farmer).

climate change - what can we do?
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When spending money, make the best choices

In today’s world, we can’t just stop spending money, so we know that we’re going to causing more carbon emissions and hence climate change – what can we do? Not every dollar spent creates the same amount of carbon, so we can make smart choices. We can avoid spending the money altogether (the best plan where possible!) and we can deliberately choose the option that emits the least carbon when we need to spend.

Here are just a few examples of positive choices we can make.

  1. Buy less processed foods
    • The more processing that is done to a food, the more carbon that is emitted from the factories that are doing the processing. Go for the least processed, least preserved, least packaged options and you will be reducing your carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the rise of convenient supermarkets has also heralded the rise in processed food where the cheapest ingredients are processed until they’re unrecognisable, preserved so they’ll last a long, long time and intricately packaged to attract you to buy them – adding more emissions every step of the way.
  2. Choose a renewable electricity supplier if you can
    • Contrary to popular belief, renewable electricity doesn’t mean zero emissions. Just imagine all the energy and materials needed to build and deploy solar panels and wind turbines. Nothing is a free ride. Even nuclear electricity creates enormous amounts of emissions to build a nuclear power plant. However, over a long period of time, renewable electricity creates vastly less emissions than other forms like coal, gas and biomass. Best to spend your money on renewable electricity and then use a little of it as you can.
  3. Drive a little slower and less aggressively
    • Simply driving a little slower and less aggressively uses significantly less fuel. This saves you money and reduces the carbon emissions into the atmosphere. It’s a winner all round and easy to do (just takes you a bit longer to get places). I wrote a full post on this some time ago – Use Less Fuel – easy and guaranteed
  4. Take longer holidays less frequently
    • Let’s say you regularly take one-week holidays and use low-cost airlines. You could simply halve your airline emissions by taking two-week holidays at half the frequency. This is a simple way to cut emissions quickly and still do what you like doing.
  5. Eat less meat
    • The meat industry ends up emitting lots of carbon pollution. Land has to be cleared for the animals to graze. More land has to be cleared to grow grain to feed to the animals (sounds crazy, but true). Farm machinery is needed to handle all of this. The animals emit methane (a powerful greenhouse gas). Meat processing centres are needed. Packaging, refrigerating, selling though stores – it all adds up. Buy less meat and you’ll be reducing the overall carbon emissions.
  6. Buy things designed to last a long time
    • buying things that have to be replaced regularly creates a lot of carbon emissions. At the time, they may be cheap, but over time you’ll spend a lot on replacements. Imagine an item that costs £200 but you have to replace it every two years, compared to an item that costs £1000 but last ten years. Over the ten years, the same money has been spent, but the carbon emissions are much lower if you only needed one item. A while ago, I wrote a post about a mobile phone designed to last a long time – Fairphone – a better phone option?

Our economy is a carbon polluting economy!

If it’s pretty much 100% true that everytime we spend money we cause carbon emissions, then we have to conclude that the economy that we have constructed is a carbon polluting economy. Also, look at many of the ultra-rich people in the world and consider how much pollution their companies have created. It seems that the people who have polluted the world the most have become the richest. This is because abusing the natural resources of the Earth is maybe the most common way to make a large amount of money. Our economy rewards the abuse of the Earth’s natural resources and the people who have made a fortune doing so are now in the positions or the most power.

What can we do? The only answer to change the economy. The current economy is a big part of the problem. But the people in power will not want any change to a system that has rewarded them so handsomely.

This is our biggest problem.

A radical way forward

Here’s a radical way to change the economy to support the reduction in carbon pollution. How about we remove all income taxes, company taxes and VAT? Let’s remove all current taxes and introduce a single new tax which makes everyone pay purely for the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the money they spend. Such a new tax scheme would mean that everyone would be implicitly worried about how many emissions they were causing, because they’d be worried about the amount of tax they’d have to pay.

Doing this would completely align our economy with what’s needed to slow and halt global warming and climate change. I feel it’s the only way to make quick, rapid progress in a fair way. Of course, governments and the powerful, rich people (is there really a difference between these two?) will not want to do this, so it’s unlikely to happen. Very sad indeed.

To answer the question “what can we do?” regarding climate change and global warming, the simple answers are first, to spend less money (consume less) and second, to make smarter, less polluting choices when we do spend money and third, send the message to our politicians that the only real solution is to reform our economy by making a tax system that penalises carbon emissions. Politicians need to realise that this is the only way to a long-term future for life on Earth.

Related Links – Climate Change – what can we do?

Drink water to reduce CO2 emissions?

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Sometimes it is extremely easy to reduce CO2 emissions and one way to do that is to simply drink water, or tap water to be more specific. Surely there will be some of you asking how can drinking water help reduce CO2 emissions? Well that’s easy to explain and I’ll do that in a moment. Others will be thinking that drinking water isn’t very interesting and they’d rather drink something else. It’s in these circumstances that I wonder if the world is ready to reduce pollution and slow the effects of climate change. Until someone has invented a better solution, all we can do right now is reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to buy us some extra time. It’s going to be a bit inconvenient for a while. Following on from COP26, it’s clear we have to do everything we can to reduce emissions and that includes the personal choices of all of us. Everything helps and collectively we need to get emissions of greenhouse gases down very quickly.

Drink water to reduce CO2 emissions?
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How does drinking water reduce CO2 emissions?

Obviously, the direct action of drinking water does not reduce CO2 emissions, it’s the indirect consequence of us not drinking something else that gives the reduction of emissions. By drinking anything else that had to be grown, harvested, modified in a factory, packaged, shipped and purchased, we’re generally creating CO2 emissions and other forms of pollution at every step of the way. If we simply fill a glass with water from the tap and drink that, we’re mostly eliminating these emissions and pollution.

How would this affect us?

Since a lot of the things we drink (other than water) contain sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, artificial colourants, alcohol and other chemicals, drinking water from the tap would actually be better for us. Water is all our body needs when it comes to fluids. Anything else we drink is just to satisfy certain urges, to fit in with expected social norms or as a response to effective advertising. Are any of those things really a good reason to reinforce the climate negative effects of our societies pollution habits?

Drinking tap water would also save us, collectively, an enormous amount of money. Some might say this would be bad for the economy. That can’t really be true can it? Let’s examine this a little.

What would happen is the whole world started drinking only water from “now”?

Let’s imagine a crazy world where every single person in the world suddenly started to drink only tap water from now on (I acknowledge that some places don’t have access to clean water – this is terrible, and should be of concern to the whole global human community). Nothing else was consumed. What would happen?

One thing for sure, some very large companies would go broke. For example, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Red Bull. Coca-Cola’s revenue in 2019 was 37 billion US dollars. The global alcohol market is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 trillion US dollars depending on how it’s measured. So, if the world all began to drink only water, these businesses and industries would fail. In the short term, many people would be out of work and the GDP of some countries would be significantly affected.

That appears to be a bad situation, but can drinking water really be bad for the economy? A successful economy is just one where money flows round and round continuously and creates the possibility for people or businesses to attract more customers when superior products and services are offered. If everyone started drinking water, the average consumer would now have more money in their pockets and would start spending this on other things. After a period of adjustment, which might be rough for a while, everything would stabilise.

The bottom line is that a successful economy cannot hinge directly on people drinking any particular beverage.

Other surprising outcomes

If the whole world starting drinking simple water exclusively, then nobody would need to boil a kettle for a cup of tea or coffee. What would that mean? Let’s consider the United Kingdom and do a little math. An average kettle uses about 2000 Watts of power and lets say it is used for only one minute to boil water for one cup.

An article from Wales Online suggests that 56 million Brits drink on average 1.78 cups of tea per day before lockdown. The articles says it’s almost double that during lockdown, but I’ll be conservative here and use the pre-lockdown numbers. I’ll also assume it’s the same average consumption for coffee. So, we have 56 million people drinking on average 3.56 cups of tea or coffee per day.

Assuming one minute of boiling time per cup, that’s the equivalent of having 138,000 kettles running continuously all day long. If a reasonably powerful LED light bulb uses 10 Watts, that’s the equivalent of having 27 million LED bulbs burning continuously. Based on the UK average CO2 emissions from electricity (which is dropping every year), that’s the equivalent of 85 tonnes of CO2 per hour (let me know if I’ve got the math wrong!), or about 750,000 tonnes per year. This is less than a quarter of 1% of the UK’s total CO2 emissions, but it’s only from heating the water to drink tea and coffee, not including the production, packaging and shipping (and milk!) involved as well.

COP26 and Irn Bru

Based on everything I’ve said above, I was shocked to see the representatives at COP26 drinking Irn Bru. Apparently the company behind Irn Bru was allowed to sponsor the soft drinks and water at COP26 because Irn Bru is a “national champion” of Scotland. Is there a disconnect from reality here? The most important meeting in the world to tackle the emergency in front of us and the delegates at the meeting were given Irn Bru as a common drinking option, and the organisers were proud of it! Fact is that such drinks aren’t necessary and they create additional CO2 emissions. Could the organisers of COP26 have considered that?

This would have been a great forum for showcasing how simple personal choices can have an immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions, but it was missed. If tap water was the only thing available at COP26 and there was a news article on that, could that have had an impact?

Where to from here?

In the spirit of Use 10 Percent Less, this is not an all or nothing issue. We all don’t have to switch to water only right now. The real point of this article is to give you reason to consider choosing simple water more often and avoiding the options that contribute to the climate emergency we’re battling. Can you drink 10 percent less manufactured beverages? That can’t be too hard can it? Then, could you drink 10 percent less again?

If we can do this, we’ll save money, be a bit healthier and reduce greenhouse gas emissions all at the same time.

Related Links

The Power of Less – from Good Energy

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The Power or Less – a video from Good Energy

I’ve been a customer of Good Energy for about 5 years now and I have to say they appear to be a good, responsible, renewable energy company. I don’t have any affiliation with them at all, and I’m receiving nothing from them for writing this article (they have no idea I’m writing it). When I saw that they had recently released this short, one-minute video, “The Power of Less”, and that its message was so closely aligned with the sentiment of “Use 10 Percent Less“, I just had to post the video here. It’s only one minute long – please take a look. [Read more…] about The Power of Less – from Good Energy

Fairphone – a better phone option?

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A couple of years ago, I read an article about Fairphone in an edition of “The Big Issue” and I was fascinated. The first thing that caught my notice was that when Fairphone’s founder, Bas van Abel, first wanted to create a fair mobile phone, one of the first things he needed to do was pay a bribe in Africa to access a mine. I’d heard that the mines in Africa can be run in terrible ways for the local people (who are basically desperate for any money they can get) and this was, and still is, a major concern for me. Just because it’s in Africa and out of my sight, doesn’t mean I can just put this out of my mind and accept it.

Eventually Bas van Abel sourced ethical materials and the Fairphone dream was underway. This dream wasn’t just the sourcing of ethical materials, the bigger part of the dream was to create a phone that was modular and could be easily repaired by the owner using inexpensive spare parts. This is why the Fairphone is of interest here at use10percentless.com, it’s a phone that you’re intended to keep for much longer than the standard smart phones, hence less waste.

Obviously, I decided to buy a Fairphone. I wanted my usage of a phone to have less impact on the world. It wasn’t an easy choice because it also meant I’d be switching from an Apple iPhone to an Android based phone. I’d never used Android before. However, on the positive side, it worked out that I spent roughly half as much money on my new Fairphone compared to the iPhone I would have bought if I’d stayed with Apple. [Read more…] about Fairphone – a better phone option?

Extinction of convenience

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The human race today, even in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, is addicted to convenience. It’s this addiction that is bringing us down and, with all likelihood, be the main cause of our extinction. Due to our desire for extreme convenience, we use the resources of the world with gay abandon and create enormous amounts of pollution everywhere. In response to this, the world’s environment has been changing rapidly in recent decades, as if the world is preparing for the extinction of convenience, which includes us. Our only hope is to create an “extinction of convenience” of our own, and eliminate our insatiable desire for endless convenience.

During the current coronavirus pandemic, I see a persistent desire to get back to the ways things were even though there are plenty of fantastic examples of how things could be better. The skies are clearer because there are not many planes flying, pollution from our cities has dropped dramatically, nature in many parts of the world is springing back into action and local communities are becoming stronger all over the world, just to name a few. Do we really want to go back to the way things were? People are worried about the “economy” but we really need to build a new economy rather than simply return to the old one. [Read more…] about Extinction of convenience

They need us more than we need them

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I was surprised a few days ago to find a quote that was advocating one of the Use 10 Percent Less themes, namely “all things must change when the consumer does“. When I found the following quote in the April/May 2020 edition of the “Resurgence & Ecologist” magazine and saw “they need us more than we need them“, I was very interested.

“The corporate world will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

– Arundhati Roy, War Talk

[Read more…] about They need us more than we need them

Just don’t waste – Sir David Attenborough

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The amazing Sir David Attenborough gave us the very simple message of “Just don’t waste!” a couple of months ago at the BBC launch of the series “Seven Worlds, One Planet”. Here is what he said.

…the best motto to think about is not waste things. Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste paper, don’t waste food. Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste. Look after the natural world, and the animals in it, and the plants in it too. This is their planet as well as ours. Don’t waste them.

It’s such a beautiful summary of the sentiment behind the Use 10 Percent Less initiative. Modern life is very wasteful and we have been getting more and more wasteful, and more disposable, over recent decades. It’s really good to see that the disposable culture is being challenged very strongly now and that we might actually be able to start reducing our waste. [Read more…] about Just don’t waste – Sir David Attenborough

Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

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Did you know that the apparently simple choices that we make every day can be leading to increased CO2 emissions? In simple terms, our choices can release CO2. It’s not all about the “big bad fossil fuel companies” as really the whole system relies on our choices, and it’s easy to see this is true.

A new smartphone

When we desire that new smartphone, especially when our current phone is still working, we’re actually releasing CO2. It takes a lot of energy (not to mention raw, natural ingredients) to create a smartphone and over half of the world’s energy is currently coming from oil and gas. So we release CO2 when we get that new smartphone. And don’t forget that using a mobile requires a network of cellular towers and banks of computers running 24-hours a day in the background to deliver those cloud services, run those games, stream that music, and monitor just about everything you do. It’s a big deal for the world.

New clothes

In the same way, when we want new clothes even though our old clothes are still good, we release CO2. Desiring that new fashion item, made by our favourite designer label who have the clothes made in bulk in a far part of the world (somewhat out of sight) and then shipped all over the world, we forget the amount energy and natural resources this system is using. Again, we’re releasing CO2. [Read more…] about Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely