Urban/Suburban EcoliteracyRemember…nature bats last.

Working in and around Los Angeles continues to bring us into contact with those who affiliate with the “green” moniker, whatever it might mean to them. Make no mistake – as socially diverse as Los Angeles is, it is still a segregated city, though nothing as blatant as Israeli walls around Palestinian villages or the wall barricading part of the southern border of the United States have been erected (yet). The borders are reified through socioeconomic stratification. Those who appear to be out of bounds are dealt with swiftly, and often brutally, by law enforcement.

The gaps between the haves and the have-nots in the United States have widened over the past 30 years, reinforced by yet another massive transfer of wealth (http://solari NULL.com/archive/missing_money/). Greenwash on the asphalt outlines socioeconomic apartheid as if to drive home the point that working class communities of color just don’t have their crap together enough to be eco-friendly hip (as though that was something to aspire to).

In case we haven’t made it abundantly clear, technological fixes won’t save humanity or save other species from extinction. Desalination won’t solve freshwater shortage problems in Southern California. We have to learn to recognize abundance in what we already have on hand and to make use of locally available materials.

A meeting with the founder and CEO of an Echo Park green nonprofit illustrated the eco-hip point well. Relieved to find herself in the company of what she believed was a sympathetic audience, she bemoaned that poor and working class communities of color don’t understand the value of value greening their lives. I countered that communities of color do indeed have environmental concerns on their radars, but the verbiage is different. The concerns and priorities differ. If “nice” white environmentally concerned liberals and social progressives humbly paid attention and listened for once instead dictating the terms of conversation by insisting that everyone use language in the same way in order to be recognized and heard, they might learn that equally valid perspectives exist in tandem with their own. This is the narcissistic vanity of many within the green movement – a sanctimonious condescension towards those who aren’t consuming their way into a “green” future.

But this is the crux of the problem: to solve the interconnected problems of overconsumption, a global economic system based on debt and cancerous expansion, and environmental destruction entails thinking differently to get different results.  The problem is not merely the manufacture of material goods, it’s HOW we’re making them and WHAT we’re making them from. It entails that having stuff be disconnected from doing in order to create a desired state of being.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it (http://www NULL.addthis NULL.com/bookmark NULL.php), about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed (http://www NULL.urban-suburban-ecoliteracy NULL.com/feed/).

Have you ever watched someone play the entitlement card to get what they want? Do you ever play the entitlement card when you think you can get away with it? How about consciously squeezing someone to try to get something for nothing? C’mon, be honest about it. How far did you push? Did you see how far you could take things? Did you get frustrated and angry when you encountered resistance? Did you even go so far as to retaliate when you didn’t get what you wanted? What’s worse, did you feel justified in applying your own selective “justice” for the slight?

What made you believe that you were entitled to getting what you wanted at someone else’s expense? What is behind your anger and outrage? Now that the economy is at the worst most people can remember in living history and the whole world is feeling the crushing consequences of a dysfunctional, catabolic economic system, do think that squeezing others is the way to go, now more than ever?

Ever wonder what’s the current fascination popular culture has with vampires? That may seem like a non sequitur question out of the blue, but hang in there with me for a minute. Vampires have a prominent place in our consciousness as charming, sexy, seductive creatures of the night. Think about the symbolism, though. Vampires have no reflections, i.e. they can’t see themselves. Their parasitic existence cannot withstand exposure to light. They need to drain life in order to sustain themselves (and if you willingly consent to being “food”, all the better). Worst of all, the act of feeding upon others makes more vampires in the process. Popular culture and media have latched on the attractively sexy aspects of vampirism without examining either the substance of the symbolism or the meaning of the prevalence of the imagery.

Everyday encounters with real life vampires aren’t as sexy. You can identify them by how you feel after being around them – drained. (And if you’ve noticed that you’re driving others away, perhaps you’re one of these bloodsuckers.) Hang around a vampire long enough and maybe you’ll even feel sick to your stomach, depending on how heavily the vampire has “fed” on you. Vampires take and don’t give back much in return. When they give, they give just enough to make you perceive reciprocity without the actuality of its existence. Rather, they take as much as you permit them to and leave you feeling worse for the encounter. Vampires can only feed on you with your consent.

My view may be skewed because I currently live in Los Angeles, but a new acquaintance who was a project manager in the construction industry chimed in that this megalop0lis has throngs of people who are out to get something for nothing. In other words, this place is overrun with vampires, or at least people who act like them. Yeeech!

What kind of hole in the soul, what deep unmet need, drives this kind of entitlement? From what I’ve observed, the most virulently dangerous vampires are deeply unfulfilled individuals missing something fundamental. Some lack meaning and purpose in their lives. Others are missing a connection to something bigger than themselves and pieces of their own humanity, like conscience or even chunks of their souls.

Some individuals are sh*ts for the sake of being sh*ts, being rotten to others just because they can. This facile kind of vampire uses people up and discards them afterward. Other vampires, such as child molesters and abusive spouses, groom their targets and use their victims over a period of time. Other vampires have psychological and relational disorders that warp their personal relationships to the individuals they’re closest to. Still other people are not vampires to the core, but they exhibit behaviors that are draining to others around them. An attitude of entitlement is but one symptom – a clue about the nature of the vampire in question.

What else do vampires do? They complain. They don’t want solutions to the problems that lead to their complaints, but rather sympathy and attention. Speaking of attention, they want it – all of it. It’s all about them. Vampires want to be lavished with your life energy, time, money, love, expertise, etc., and they feel entitled to what they need from you. Whatever it is that you have of value that a vampire wants, he or she wants it in spades and will raise hell if they don’t get it. Forget reciprocity or equality because neither fundamentally exists from a vampire’s perspective. You’re fodder. What you need and want as a sovereign person don’t figure into the picture because you exist to feed the need.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it (http://www NULL.addthis NULL.com/bookmark NULL.php), about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed (http://www NULL.urban-suburban-ecoliteracy NULL.com/feed/).

Did you know that the top foot of soil has more 7 to 50 times more life than the next 3 1/2 feet? (Source: Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik, Metamorphic Press 1986). When soil is tilled or plowed, too much air is introduced all at once.

Life thrives in a zone of ‘enoughness’. Now I realize this is a foreign concept to most people, who as a rule want more, more, more of everything and then some. (This proclivity has led to such pop culture aphorisms like, “Too much of a good thing is just about right.”) Think about it though: more consumerism leads to more waste and more waste leads to more plastic waste as a proportion of that overall waste stream. More plastic waste leads to larger oceanic garbage patch gyres, of which there are currently five. But, I digress. More oxygen in the soil introduced like a shot of steroids does not lead to more life but to less. You may think you’re taking care of one problem – say for instance a pest outbreak – but you’re unintentionally creating a lot of new problems for yourself. You’re also destroying the soil’s structure, especially if you are tilling over and over from year to year. (There are techniques to aerate the soil less violently, but those may be introduced in later posts.)

Imagine taking a whole block of any given urban development – New York, Paris, London, Scottdale, Tokyo, Los Angeles – and upending that entire block, buildings, streets, and all. What used to be the tops of buildings are now underground and beneath everything else that used to be above them. Don’t you think that would be quite disruptive, to say the least?

Turning the soil is no less deadly. Soil flora and fauna tend to live in specific strata in the soil and tillage disrupts this order. For instance, there are some native California earthworms (yes, they exist! – check out this paper (http://www NULL.treesearch NULL.fs NULL.fed NULL.us/pubs/24154)) that tend to tunnel deeply and other species that live closer to the surface. If you’re smart and letting nature do the heavy lifting for you, the only creatures that are turning the soil the vast majority of the time are earthworms and other ground dwelling animals that tend to tunnel. You may not like the affect these creatures have on the visual appearance of your landscape or your plants, but the truth of the matter is that tunneling mammals have their roles to play in nature. They introduce all-important organic matter, for one thing.

For those of you who grow edibles, especially produce that commonly graces our tables, you have a sense of humus. This is organic matter that has been consumed and altered by soil fungi and bacteria into large amorphous molecules that tend to resist further decomposition. Humus does break down but it does so very slowly. The introduction of too much oxygen through tillage burns up organic matter quickly and most of the nutrient value is lost. If you’re a gardener, why would you want to engage in a practice that is counterproductive and against your own interests?

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it (http://www NULL.addthis NULL.com/bookmark NULL.php), about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed (http://www NULL.urban-suburban-ecoliteracy NULL.com/feed/).