Bright side of my carbon footprint, part 3

As warm autumn days are coming to an end I am being reminded that I should finish my “carbon footprint’s bright side” series. So here is the last part, following part 1 and part 2.

In mid July 2018 the sweet aftertaste of the GEN conference from Tallinn still lingered as I hitchhiked with my new friend Lars from a small bay at SE of Gotland towards Visby. I also carried in me an empty feeling due to everything that is implicit in most green movements. There are so many assumptions, and they are so difficult to change, no matter how “enlightened” we think we are. The roots of global change are cultural, not technological.

Two days of sailing helped me imagine what life used to be like 100 and more years ago. First of all: everything was slower. Today we might not agree, but I think 10-12 km/h is a decent speed; within two days we made it across the Baltic sea! And we could rest on the way as the wind did the work for us. Why are we compelled to go faster?

Our civilisation is so obsessed with speed and efficiency that it doesn’t allow you to sit back and rest. If you’re not productive, you should feel ashamed or guilty! I think you should be resting most of the time and getting active only when necessary.

Well-designed ship does most of the work for you. Maybe that’s also a sign of a well-designed society. The system should do most of the work and in the meantime, we should be able to rest and devote out time to creativity, art, beauty, joy.

 

Sweden: Everybody loves Russians!

Ecovillage with a view on an army base just across busy road seemed to me such a contradiction. Well, Suderbyn is exactly such an ecovillage. Gotland island is an amazing eco-system, but it just happens to lie in the middle of the Baltic sea, therefore it has extreme strategic importance.

NATO is compelled to expand military forces on the edge of its territories, particularly near Mother Russia. NATO base on Gotland has therefore been growing in the recent years and spreading as far as the territory of Suderbyn ecovillage. Thus two radically contrasting dynamics are meeting like David and Goliath.

Suderbyninans are not giving in easily. They are resilient and innovative. I was impressed by pioneering spirit, eco-innovation and experimentation, charming community vibration and more. Their openness is such a contrast to radically closed military zone with high fences and scary signs.

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Kako naj ti povem …

Ob surovi resnici
se ne znam obrniti
v nebo,
moj pogled je uprt
v ekran,
da ne rečem
v tla.

Tam je vse svetleče,
tam ni kriz,
neviht in žleda,
tam so le slike.
Kako naj ti skozi ekran
povem, da Svet trpi?
Kako naj ti povem,
da ni vseeno?

Pred ali po požaru — kdaj raje čistite?

Še en teden je do akcije Očistimo svet v enem dnevu!

Kako bolje preživeti dan, ko sprehoditi se po okolici in pregledati primerna odlagališča za čiščenje? Če se nas izmed 600 duš nabere 60, nas je že 10%. Držimo pesti!

Ko človek pregleduje že označena divja odlagališča in odkriva nova, je težko ne biti depresiven. V ogromno primerih je na podeželju prizor takšen:

Niti ne upam si pomisliti, kaj vse je pod kupom gradbenih odpadkov. Na strani je vidnih nekaj kant od barve, gotovo je še marsikakšna pod velikim kupom. Med drugim sem zasledil tudi sveže odvržen krompir:

Upam, da kmalu pridejo divji prašiči in to pospravijo, preden začne gniti.

Zmagovalec je vsekakor odlagališče, po katerem nosi ta blog naslov:

Odlagališče je bilo označeno z rdečo zastavico, torej vsebuje nevarne odpadke. Ko sem se skozi borovce prebijal do njega, sem opazoval požgana drevesa, na sami lokaciji pa šok!

Ne vem, ali naj bom depresiven ali naj bom depresiven.

In tudi ne vem, ali bi tole raje čistil preden je zgorelo (nevarni odpadki!), ali zdaj, ko so ostanke vsebine iz vseh teh pločevink že požrli plameni. Ah! 😦

 

Raje skorš kot jabolko

“Kaj pa če je sadež skušnjave, ki ljudem zastruplja um, kar sama Biblija?” sem pomislil, ko sem skoraj gol čepel pod krošnjo skorša in nabiral delikatesne sadeže tega posebnega drevesa.

“Kaj pa, če se kristjani v bistvu držijo nareka kače, ne Boga?” so se nadaljevala vprašanja.

Ob meni ni bilo nobene ženske, da bi mi podala sadež, kaj šele kače, da bi mi spridila um. Le moje misli so tekle naprej, medtem ko sem pod skoršem stopal po veličastnih kamnitih zidakih, iz katerih je bil sezidan prejšnji cerkveni zvonik.

Misijonarji so na mnogih koncih sveta našli dobesedno raj na zemlji. Marsikje so domorodna plemena živela povsem brez sramu in krivde: goli, bosi, prvinski. Bili so kot Adam in Eva pred izvirnim grehom. Potem so tem ljudem z mečem in križem vcepili sram in krivdo. Misijonarji se niso vzradostili, da je raj na zemlji živ, niso se slekli in se pridružili rajskim prebivalcem. Kakšen bi bil svet, če bi se? sem se spraševal.

Generacijo za generacijo se je nadaljevalo kačje zastrupljanje uma in uničevanje raja povsod na planetu. Kajti raj mora biti prihranjen za onostranstvo; na Zemlji naj bo puščava, da bi imeli po čem hrepeneti. Živeti rajsko na Zemlji brez krivde in sramu je nedopustno.

Bright side of my carbon footprint, part 2

Bright side of my carbon footprint, part 1

How does it feel to change 12 time-zones over night? That’s flying from Burlington (VT) to Shanghai, China — the other side of the globe! It was great to chat with stage director of Cirque du Soleil and spend the rest of the flight sound asleep. I guess I am getting used to this: I had zero jet-lag!

Immigration on Pudong airport was very smooth. Nobody asked anything about my bare feet. I had a flesh-back to my youth in socialist Yugoslavia, but only in terms of the spirit of the culture, while technology was shockingly advanced and faces, well, strikingly Chinese.

China: the Earth is (almost) flat!

Practically all scooters I’ve seen in Shanghai are electric. I can imagine the day when all cars are electric too. What I can’t imagine is where we’ll get all the necessary resources in our one-way economy (grab from the nature, consume, burn and dump) within the exponential growth equation.

I was asking myself: How many batteries does the Earth need to run life? How many batteries does it take to end all life? Or can we make ingeniously smart systems for storing and using energy that don’t rely on extracting precious minerals from the Earth’s crust?

Bright side of my carbon footprint, part 1

Bright side of my carbon footprint, part 2

“How can you sleep peacefully, given your carbon footprint?!” was the first question when I arrived home from the journey around the world. I sleep well! Yes, my carbon footprint just from flying was 2.5 tons of CO2. But I travelled for my life’s calling and my love. I didn’t fly away whimsically to get some sleep from all the stress in my office and my home, as so many people do.

I could decide to travel less and offset my carbon footprint. I don’t think my individual action of tuning down my personal environmental mischiefs would change the world. I don’t think the mess in the world is the doing of a any number of wicked individuals. It is the result (mostly) of collective stupidity.

The only antidote is more of collective wisdom, not more of individual ingenuity. I am learning on my travels about harnessing individual ingenuity and weaving it into collective wisdom. I am lucky! I do what I do well, and I get to learn and grow by meeting amazing people in many countries of the world. What to do with all this learning? It is almost my duty to record it and share it!

So, here is the first flower in the bouquet of learnings from my recent journey around the globe …

 

Panama: I love free market!

Put delicious fruits on the ground in the park, and nobody will take them, even when they are free. Put these same fruits on a shelf in the supermarket, nicely packaged, and people will totally buy them. Not only the fruits! They will buy the entire system: their job to earn the money to pay taxes to have the supermarket to spend the money to buy the fruits. More than fruits: they will pay for the feeling that the fruits are safe to eat.

Kitajska za pokušino

Ni mi bilo treba na vse konce Kitajske, da bi spoznal različne značaje te ogromne države. Vsi so že tu, kajti akademije za vodje akcije Očistimo svet 2018 v Šanghaju se je udeležilo 60 predstavnikov iz vseh regij.

Na otvoritveni večerji, sem (itak) končal v krogu temperamentnih prijateljev iz severnih provinc, ki so me ob vedno polnem kozarcu piva naučili zelo pomembno besedo: „jemer“ (ded’c). Večkrat so jo pospremili z dodatkom „do dna!“ Saj se razume, kaj je moralo slediti temu pozivu, kajne? Prvič, drugič, tretjič, četrtič … Nasmejijo se, ko rečem: „Mene je težko napit, sem z Balkana.“ Itak, da so takoj zavpili: Jemer! in „Do dna!“ in sem moral stisniti do dna še enega. Balkanski ponos, pa to.

Ko rečem Balkan, nihče pojma nima, kaj je to. Prav nič jim ne zamerim, saj tudi jaz pojma nimam, kaj so province Chongqing in Changchun. Moj novi prijatelj (ne znam izgovoriti njegovega imena, kaj šele zapomniti si ga) me prepričuje, da je njegova provinca najlepša na Kitajskem. Raje mu ne pustim govoriti predolgo, da ne preide spet v „jemer!“ in „do dna!“, ker sem dosegel svojo mejo uživanja v pivu, vsako naslednje bi bilo resno pretiravanje. Jutri se začne naša akademija, ki je raje ne bi moderiral z mačkom, kaj šele s krokodilom.