The Tree Mugger

thesustainable:

Forget Shorter Showers | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
Also loving this essay: highlighting the challenge of oppositional thinking and default consumer ‘solutions’ to sustainability awareness.
Even here, I think it’s more a problem of different strategies being applied in ways that conflict, rather than complement each other for overall goals. A variety of strategies is necessary, because sustainability is too contextual on living systems - human societies and physical environments - to be either/or about methods.
In my city for example, my generation DO need to take shorter showers. We have recurring drought conflicting with the level of urban water usage; due to mismanagement over generations meeting rapid urban population growth. Neither individual behavior or agricultural and business practices are changing fast enough to avoid empty water tanks and algae infested, running low, city damns atm.
What Jensens’ points will determine though, is whether the NEXT generation can return to showering however they want, or face the consequences of severely increased desertification. That does depend on whether the interconnected systems of agriculture, business, individuals in communities and water cycles in catchement areas have all transitioned from the patterns of consumer cultures to sustainable ones.
My INTP brain is pendantic about the relationship of convergent methods over time, cos being green is all about the inter-generational impact Y/Y?

Forget Shorter Showers | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

Also loving this essay: highlighting the challenge of oppositional thinking and default consumer ‘solutions’ to sustainability awareness.

Even here, I think it’s more a problem of different strategies being applied in ways that conflict, rather than complement each other for overall goals. A variety of strategies is necessary, because sustainability is too contextual on living systems - human societies and physical environments - to be either/or about methods.

In my city for example, my generation DO need to take shorter showers. We have recurring drought conflicting with the level of urban water usage; due to mismanagement over generations meeting rapid urban population growth. Neither individual behavior or agricultural and business practices are changing fast enough to avoid empty water tanks and algae infested, running low, city damns atm.

What Jensens’ points will determine though, is whether the NEXT generation can return to showering however they want, or face the consequences of severely increased desertification. That does depend on whether the interconnected systems of agriculture, business, individuals in communities and water cycles in catchement areas have all transitioned from the patterns of consumer cultures to sustainable ones.

My INTP brain is pendantic about the relationship of convergent methods over time, cos being green is all about the inter-generational impact Y/Y?

via / 1 year ago / 4 notes / eros/thanatos, life, derrick jensen, water, thinky,