by the numbers

My marketing degree always finds a way to sneak into posts, but prior to my days of business school suits and professionalism I was an art major. And did you know that art and sustainability can complement each other? (By the way, check out Andy Goldsworthy‘s natural works if you haven’t already.) Sometimes the power of visuals can help bring statistics, which can be difficult to really grasp, to life. For some personality types numbers and words just don’t do it, and this is one reason I think photographer Chris Jordan is doing some cool stuff.

Perhaps you’ve seen Plastic Bottles, a 60″ x 120″ (that’s 5 x 10 feet!!) art piece depicting the amount of plastic bottles the U.S. plows through every five minutes, which is 2,000,000. As a visual learner I find this image absolutely mind-boggling even though as I typed that sentence the number just sort of seemed abstract to me. “Ok, sure, 2,000,000 bottles” I thought, which didn’t hold near as much power as viewing the image. And this image only portrays a mere five minutes, or 1/288th of a day, which means it would take 288 of these gargantuan-sized photographs to represent a typical day’s worth of plastic bottle usage.

Usually when you throw out a plastic bottle it’s out of sight, out of mind, but in Plastic Bottles Chris Jordan silently and wordlessly depicts the impact of what you thought was just one innocent plastic bottle. And if you think that’s bad check out Plastic Bags, Toothpicks, or any of the other astonishing statistics-turned-visuals in his “Running the Numbers” collections (the first collection looking solely at U.S. numbers, the second on a global scale). It’s nuts.

Americans are constantly fed numbers from news sources. Numbers work great for some folks, but the same info really hits a large population of visual learners like me in the face when it’s depicted in visual form as Chris Jordan has done. And at 10 feet long (that’s taller than my walls!) it’s hard not to notice the amount of plastic bottles we crank through every five minutes.

Perhaps environmental groups should mix up there messaging and try out some other vehicles besides numbers to educate society on their impacts. After all, they say a picture’s worth a thousand words.

scattered energy

I was excited to find this book on order at the library (with only 3 holds ahead of me!). However, hearing more about the problems/issues I will get more info on in the book led me to wonder why I want to learn more about problems when I got to the author’s remark that claimed it’s another book that talks about what we are doing wrong but doesn’t offer any solutions.

And all the sudden I wasn’t so excited to read the book.

A friend once pointed this issue out on a car trip– his qualm with a lot of, certainly not all, environmentalists is that they say what we need to do or what needs to change, but who is putting these ideas into motion or making sure they get into motion? He claims we should stop pointing out the problems and do something about it already. This got me thinking about how a lot of people do start clubs and organizations, or write books calling attention to the problems– but how successful are they in the grand scheme of things? The problem with having myriad groups is that the energy and drive of millions of people becomes scattered. Instead of having tons of small groups, could we team up as one giant group and together be able to lobby the government and have a greater presence for real change? Couldn’t authors and activists team up on a book that offers a comprehensive solutions section with a step-by-step feasible guide?

I got out of the car that day feeling more pumped up to make a difference, but frustrated and almost depressed that I wasn’t sure where or how to start. I can start with myself, being a positive role model for others by reducing my waste, but like Annie Leonard said, we need to act collectively and not individually. Do I join a group or start my own? What’s the next step successful groups are taking after the first step which is raise awareness in citizens? I’m already doing things individually, but how can my passion and talents help the overall cause?

Why do I only have questions but no answers?

post-Copenhagen

On lunch yesterday I got invited to a webinar that was entitled something like “Copenhagen Follow-Up: So Now What?” I felt guilty for not following CoP-15 (“Conference of the Parties”– never would have guessed) apparently no one else had heard it called this before, either) so I was interested in attending…and then I heard Dr. Hansen was one of the speakers, which sealed the deal (he’s a prominent figure in the movement). So I went, and Hansen flew threw some slides and talked fast and basically his spiel was cap and trade= bad, “fee & dividend approach” = good. Funny, because I was just thinking about carbon tax the other day, after I heard this NPR piece.

I don’t know enough about cap and trade and the things Hansen (and Alan AtKission, the other speaker) went over, and it’s on my “to research” list. I left the webinar not really feeling any better off about my initial thoughts on the conference (what really got accomplished that will help solve the issues?) But in the meantime I wanted to say something about my webinar lunch experience, so I might as well give you a visualization of the thoughts in my head:

virtual farming

Of course it’s easier to play an interactive farm game on the computer than to actually go outside and interact with a farm, but I was shocked to learn from an NPR piece that there are 60-some million virtual farmers on Facebook.

And here I thought farming was a slowly dying out occupation (although the bumper sticker is true: “no farms no food”). 

I am not too familar with “Farmville” but the gist of it mimics real farming (to the most basic degree): you plant seeds, farm items, and then can sell them. In the process, you can “buy” supplies you need to make farming faster and more efficient.

At first when I saw my friends’ Facebook pages popping up with Farmville things I was confused– most games seem to be either mind puzzles, those shooting/killing/racing games, or those games that are so far out there and funny. So where does farming fit in? Before this was even mentioned, I was thinking something along these lines:

Mr. TAKAHASHI: Yeah, it’s a fantasy. Its something [players] wish they could do but they can no longer do in a big crowded city. People just want to get back to something simpler. It almost reminds me of the organic movement – you know, they’re very interested in where their foods come from these days. And in the same way, here you get to grow your own foods.

 

It seems funny to me that if people really want to get back to something simpler they would turn on some fancy piece of technology, launch their favorite internet browser, and navigate to a social network website, but so it often goes in 2009. I don’t necessarily think it’s a fantasy thing– I would much rather grow some of my real food in a garden in my backyard than all of my fake food on my laptop. And Portlanders and other city dwellers have proved it can be done in small spaces, such as  window gardens, or in front yard raised beds.

Perhaps Farmville could be a good way for Facebookers to become more interested in old-fashioned farming and motivate them to visit their local farmers markets…

350 followup

This past weekend (Saturday) was the official Day of Climate Action brought to us by 350.org. It was also the day that a ton of people dressed like zombies ended their parade around downtown in Pioneer Square while doing the Thriller Dance, but that has nothing to do with climate change (or does it?).

Here are a few follow-up articles I found. I’m slightly embarassed my hometown newspapers didn’t make any mention of 350.org or the day.

New York Times
KATU- local PDX station reporting on the rally in Pioneer Square
350.org’s flickr account
River of Action kayaking event in PDX (cool video)
naked bike riding in Australia (warning: it’s a video…)