Did you watch The Colbert Show last night? I’ve been a fan of Colbert’s since he first spun off Jon Stewart’s nurturing wing. I like Colbert so much that I got up early to brave the crowds and mud to see a taping of his 2010 Vancouverage last month. Check out my pics from that Vancouverage event, if you like.

Anyways, I got off topic there… last night Colbert had Annie Leonard on as his guest. The interview struck a chord with me and I immediately went off to youtube to watch her very well made, and well thought out short  film (20 minutes), The Story of Stuff. Released in 2007, the film has had millions of views, and has incited many conversations across the web. I’ll admit, I’m a little late to the game here, but it’s still awesome, and worth spreading the word about!

The film has a beautifully simple style with Leonard exploring the material economy (how stuff follows through the system of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal) while hand drawn illustrations support her points as she talks. Delving into each of the 5 pieces of the story, Leonard uses effective statistics to illuminate the real costs of our stuff consuming system.

Wasteful linear system

Calling this a system in crisis, Leonard explains how stuff gets from the natural resources of the Earth to our homes, and then off to the landfills. The crisis is that we have a  linear system with finite inputs cannot last forever, though we continue to to consume as though it will. There are many limits to this system, as well as many hidden costs that do not factor in the the price tags of that shiny new thing at the mall.

Lenoard’s description of our system of stuff is not shocking. We are all aware that we only have one planet, and we are using it’s resources at an alarming rate to fulfill our insatiable desire for more and more stuff. We do stick our heads in the sand, and some folks are more entrenched in the system than others, but the truth of what we are doing to our home, society and ourselves cannot be ignored all of the time, at least not by me.

What I find shocking is the fact that this system was designed and completely premeditated. After WWII that US government, and corporations wanted to jump start the American economy. Politicians, economists and businessmen came up with this hyper-consumptive model, that has wastefulness built into it as every step as a means to make more money. Leonard quotes Victor Lebow, who is often credited with the invention of consumer capitalism to drive the point home:

Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, replaced disguarded, and at an ever-accelerating rate. – Victor Lebow

I am shocked! My life-long love-hate relationship with stuff and consumption was pre-meditated by some old white men in the 1940s!  I, and pretty much everyone I have known are on what Leonard call the “Work-spend-watch treadmill”, where we work hard to earn money to buy stuff, which tires us out so we watch TV, take in messages about how lame our lives are because we don’t have a bunch of stuff, so we go out to buy more to feel better, which means we have to go work harder to afford the stuff we bought. Yikes!

But there is hope!  Leonard is hopeful in the knowledge that there are people at every stage of the linear system working to improve how stuff moves between people. People who are trying to convert this wasteful linear system into a productive cyclical system. Really, if we want our species to continue so that our children’s children may have fruitful and enjoyable lives, there is no other choice. We each have to do our part to clean up the system that is no longer serving us well (did it ever?). The best place to start is to inform ourselves, and act accordingly. So, watch The Story of Stuff, and pass the message along!

Happy cyclical system

You can watch the movie via you tube below, or watch it on the dedicated The Story of Stuff website where they have chapter navigations control built right in to the videos!

Eve Ensler is best known for writing the play The Vagina Monologues and has for being a long time anti-violence activist. In November of 2009 she gave this talk about embracing our inner girl at TED India. Be sure to watch to the end to see powerful piece from her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, as it is well worth watching.

Eve Ensler states that within each of us, men and women alike, is an inner girl. This inner girl essence is where our compassion, empathy, vulnerability, openness, and  intuition reside. She reminds us that:

Compassion informs wisdom and that
Vulnerability is our greatest strength and that
Emotions have inherent logic that lead to radical appropriate saving action.

But, our patriarchal society has systematically annihilated this inner girl, perhaps more harshly in men than in women, denying each of us the willingness to embrace our compassion and empathy. While we’ve been busy embracing our inner men, our competitive, empire building natures, we have allowed great cruelties to happen. Horrific atrocities against girls, against people, in the form of wars, genocides, rapes, beatings and female mutilations continue to happen each and day, despite the fact that there is a little voice in each of us, trying to yell at the top of her lungs, that this pain must stop. If we embrace our inner girls, and listen to their empathetic cries, would these atrocities continue?

I’ll be honest here, I have long been an anti-feminist. It is not that I don’t believe in equality for women. I most certainly do believe in equality. I believe that each person has inherent value that should never be denied, irrespective of sex, race or any other defining characteristic. I have a distaste for the way the feminist movement was executed, and the results that came out of it. Mainly the doubling of the work force, that essentially cut the value of labour in half, and made it so I will most likely not be able to afford to stay home to raise my children.

Ensler’s sort of feminism is quite different from the variety that I find myself resenting. Watching this moving talk made me realize that I have been throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. I have been a very lucky person, my parents supported me, and encouraged my endeavours as ferociously as they would if I had been their son. I never felt the effects of sexism growing up. For this I am grateful. Ensler reminded me that not all girls are as lucky as me. Girls across the globe still need to be stood up for, as do our inner girls! Our compassion and empathy must be valued in order to put a stop to violence against against girls, against people.

Comment Zen*

I would love to hear about your views of feminism, both of feminism of the 1960s whose consequences we live with today, and of modern feminism. How does today’s women, and men, best embrace our inner girls to allow the inner girls of tomorrow to thrive?

* The term “Comment Zen” is lovingly stolen from Havi Brooks.

Well, I believe I am due a rather large piece of humble pie. I made a huge oversight in the last verion of the Kiva Wordpress Widget. It was actually a bit of an oversight, mixed with a mistake, and a little bit of forgetfulness. That’s neither here nor there though, so lets get to the point.

Version 2.8 doesn’t delete its own cache files. This causes the cache directory to grown indefinately, which is really quite a problem! Not to worry though, the new version not only deletes the last cache file as 2.8 should have in the first place, upgrading the plugin will delete all the unessesary files the plugin has created. This is so important that I decided it should get the version number 3.0!

I’m quite sorry if this mistake caused anyone any trouble on their servers! I strongly encourage every one to upgrade as soon as possible. Either upgrade via the handy Wordpress plugins center on your blog, or manually upgrade.

If  you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

It’s Blog Action Day! The day when bloggers all over the world join their voices to speak on one particular topic. This year we’re talking about climate change. Personally, I think climate change is a rather nebulous term that fails to incite emotion and does nothing to call people to action. Rather than rant on about that, I’ve decided to focus my efforts on Blog Action Day in a positive direction! Lets explore the concept of carbon credits to determine if they may help stabilize our climate.

Green House Gases

We have all heard of green house gases. They are the fumes given off by both human and environmental processes that go up into our atmosphere and get caught up there, trapping the suns energy in our atmosphere; causing the overall temperature of the planet to rise, quite like a greenhouse. The following graph from Environment Canada describes the sources of these harmful gases:

Environment Canada (2004)

The largest culprit is clearly Industry, being responsible for over half of the gaseous emissions on the planet. Regular folks, like you and me, are responsible for our fair share as well within the categories of Transportation, Products, and Heating. I expect that we also have a part in that Industry piece, as Industry is busy making stuff for us to consume.

Everyone knows there is a major problem here. We have to cut back on these gases to reduce our negative influence on our planet, if we wish to continue to call it home sweet home. Turning this big ship around is not an easy task. It involves breaking well-ingrained habits of individuals and business, as well as counteracting the incentives that exist to continue to pollute our air. Lets face it: there is money to be made by emitting greenhouse gases, otherwise people wouldn’t be doing it. Historically there has been no money behind protecting the air, and there was no money to be made in making the right choices for the planet. Enter:  carbon credits.

Carbon credits are a concept that came out of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the legally binding agreement to reduce the collective greenhouse emissions of the industrialized nations to 5.2% below 1990 levels, which 184 industrialized countries have ratified (the US is not one of them). Carbon Credits bring money into the saving the environment equation with a cap and trade system. Each country is allowed to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases that they can allot to the gas emitting businesses within their borders. Carbon credits can be bought and sold between both companies and countries. If a company has left over carbon credits, it can sell them to another company that wants to pollute more than its original allotment of carbon credits allow.

Carbon credits can also be created as carbon offsets.  Companies can create carbon offsets by doing environment friendly activities such as reforestation, and creating clean forms of energy such as wind and solar power. These offsets can then be sold to companies who want to pollute more than they have the credits for, or to individuals who can voluntarily purchase offsets to compensate for their personal carbon footprint.

A whole new industry is popping up around this concept of selling carbon offsets. Plant some trees, sell the carbon offsets. The David Suzuki Foundation states that purchasing carbon offsets can help in the battle against climate change, but warns the consumer that not all carbon offsets are create equal. While carbon credits is far from a a perfect system, it does introduce money into the equation, and puts the power of the free market behind doing what is right for the environment. As sad as it might be, it has come down to harnessing our dark inclinations, such as greed and selfishness, to enforce business to do their part for the environment.

What do you think about carbon credits? Will they have the intending effect of stabilizing climate change, or might the system be perverted by greed? Are you considering voluntarily purchasing carbon offsets to compensate for you and your family’s carbon footprint?

Kiva

I happened across Kiva.org quite some time ago, and immediately fell in love with the concept of micro-lending. Kiva has partnered up with many financing partners through the developing world. Through this network, regular folk, like you and I, can lend money to struggling entrepreneurs in third world countries, to help them get a leg up in their pursuits.

As an entrepreneur myself, I really value what Kiva is doing. Starting and running a business isn’t easy,  it takes a lot of guts to stand up and give it a go. After spending a month in Peru, it became clear that for many, scraping up a little bit of cash to start up a small sales business on the side of the road is one of the very few options available to many citizens in the developing world.

Times are tight for me right now, there is not much money in the chauffeurs, but there’s enough to lend a little to people who need it so much more. That’s the great thing about micro-lending, as a lender, you don’t have to invest a lot to make a difference. My humble loan of $25 combines with the loans of others to sum up to the relatively small amount the entrepreneur has requested.

Carmen Gabriela - Peruvian Clothing Saleswoman

Make no mistake about it, these are loans, not donations. The receiving entrepreneurs are expected to pay back the money they borrow on a pre-specified schedule. I lent $25 to Carmen Gabriela of Ayacucho, Peru who borrowed a total of $250 for her clothing sales business.  She has repaid half of that amount. Thus, half of the $25 I lent to her has been return to me. The money is waiting for me in my Kiva account. I can withdraw it, or lend it out to someone else. My plan is to lend it out again, and every time I get notification that $25 has been paid back to me, I will lend it out again, and lend out another $25. In this way I can help struggling entrepreneurs in the developing world in a growing perpetual cycle, which is pretty darn neat if you ask me!

On Febraury 3rd 2009, the  Kiva Developer API was released.  I was immediately informed through my various social networks, likely Twitter was the quickest, and a chord was struck within me… that wonderful feeling of inspiration took over. I knew had to write a Wordpress Plugin to help promote Kiva.org. I am a programmer, but I had never written a Wordpress Plugin before, and in the past had thought the idea of doing so was rather daunting. The funny thing about pure inspiration is that all of the nasty bits of a task, the hardness, the difficulties, the insecurities, all seem to fall away. The process of building the Kiva Loans Wordpress Widget was seamless, I was blessed with the zen of being in the zone, and I had a plugin I was happy to submit to Wordpress and Kiva within 2 days!

The widget I built goes on the sidebar of the blog. You can see it in action here on Urpi’s Dream, over there –> The widget is configurable via the ‘Widgets’ section in the Wordpress administration interface. The blogger can specify his/her Kiva username as well as the number of loans to show and the sizing of the images. The widget takes that information, asks the Kiva API for the user’s public loans, and randomly selects which loans to display on the sidebar. I am quite pleased with myself for successfully implementing random selection without replacement, which gives the widget a little pizazz by switching up the loans to display, and not show the same loan twice on the same page.

More recently, a representative from Kiva contacted me to inform me that my widget is doing well, and is hitting the Kiva API from many different blogs. This is great, but its also clear that the widget needs to be more efficient to help relieve some of the strain on the Kiva servers. Thus, version 2, available now, includes a cache in order to limit the amount of hits to the Kiva server to once per hour per blog using the widget. I was quite happy to accommodate Kiva’s request for help in making the widget more efficient, and am grateful for the opportunity to to help spread the word about Kiva.org.

If you are interested in using the Kiva.or Wordpress widget, you can download it from the Kiva.org Loans Widget page in the Wordpress Plugin space. You can sign up to be a micro-lender at Kiva.org.

I have written another, more technical, post about the Kiva.org Loans Widget that includes instructions, and other more detailed information about the widget. That post is here.