bummers | Beyond Suburbia | Making Sustainable Real!

Pathogens in our Wheaties- Restoring the Balance of Human Over Population Thru Science!

By Brian Skeele, on April 9th, 2011

The list of Impending Bummers is long. At some point the Impending part converts, and the Bummer is now happening. Genetically Modified Crops have made it to the Now Happening list!

gmo-sheep-cauliflower-300x251-8824058

What’s the Problem?? I like Cauliflower with my Lamb!

Monsanto Is Poisoning Us All: 117 Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Expose Hazards of Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide & “Roundup Ready” GMOs

In a previous issue of Organic Bytes, we reported that Don M. Huber, Ph.D., emeritus soil scientist of Purdue University, wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack about a newly discovered virulent pathogen that proliferates in soil treated with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

The Monsanto pathogen is taken up by plants, transmitted to animals via their feed, and is passed on to human beings by the plants and meat they consume. The pathogen has yet to be described or named, though that work is almost complete. … READ MORE >>

Impending Bummers-Is Your Favorite on the List?

By Brian Skeele, on April 8th, 2011

We might as well have some fun while we deal with the Paradigm Shift. I’ve been kind of anxious as long as I can remember, biting my fingernails, a perfectionist, worried if I’m enough, if I’m doing it right.  Things usually turn out really well, and yet before that, I can find myself worrying, apprehensive about how the future event is going to turn out.  I call this low level anxiety my “fear of the Impending Bummer”.  poison-ivy-10

Poison Ivy, Global Warming, Nuke Meltdowns and other Impending Bummers

Scientists and other observant citizens have been drawing our attention to accumulating social, economic, and ecological “unintended” consequences and I call these our Impending Bummers. In a world of sticks and carrots, the Impending Bummers are the sticks.

Beyond Suburbia is about making better choices; choices which have way more carrots and way fewer sticks;  A world without major bummers of our own making. I call it the emerging sustainable economy.

As we go forward, learning how to make these better choices, we need to keep our eyes open for Bummers. Join in, add yours to the list! Together we can make sustainable real!… READ MORE >>

Share the Vision of Your Thriving, Sustainable Future

By Brian Skeele, on April 1st, 2011

If the current state of affairs is the best we can do, we are in trouble! With all the Impending Bummers, we got problems Houston.  What the world needs now, is a vision of where to go! We got the hell part down, now, where is heaven??? Share your vision of daily life in your future thriving, sustainable neighborhood !

A Sustainable Neighborhood Streetscape

Just in case you want some ideas to jog your vision, here are some of the Goals and Guiding Principles… READ MORE >>

Impending Bummers, Arabs, and Popcorn..OH MY!

By Brian Skeele, on March 27th, 2011

The beauty of free speech!  I get these emails that blow my mind. So hate-filled. Outright fabrications and half truths taken out of context. I go to snopes.com and find out the truth. Today’s was about Islam considering everyone infidels, titled “What’s an Infidel?”  I included it at the end of this blog….

As you can see from snopes, http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/allah.asp , whoever created this email twisted the truth to use it to show why we should feel totally threatened by Islam…. What is the value in this??? What good comes from using hate filled fabrications and passing them off as truths???  Maybe they own an armament company and want to sell tanks!!??

Maybe people who forward these emails find the world threatening.  I too find the world threatening.  In my world view,  the evil doer is our lifestyle; the car dependant, over consumptive, polluting the air, water and soils, destroying the balance ecologically, based on an economy that often uses externalities as a way to “offshore” responsibilities, side effects, and collateral damage all in the name of progress and economic development.

We Americans makeup 4% of the world’s population and “consume” 25% of the earth’s resources.   So “we Americans” are not the problem; We’re only doing 1/4 of the “consumption”.  Much of the world’s population aspire to the Western lifestyle. When I say “Houston we have a problem.”, I am saying there is no longer a we vs them.  It is us.

The piece of this world view, as I understand it, that pisses me off the most,  is the idea of “them”; We are the good guys and they are the bad guys.

It reminds me of two kids arguing about who’s eating more than their share of the popcorn, while the theater is burning.

(what the heck, let me give the fear mongering a shot!)

Send this letter to your network. You will have good luck!

Otherwise, all manners of catastrophe will rain down!… READ MORE >>

If it ain’t FUN, it ain’t sustainable!

By Brian Skeele, on March 20th, 2011

I think that says it all!  “If it ain’t Fun, it ain’t sustainable!”

I can get overwhelmed by the immensity of it all; the Impending Bummers, the complexity of all these systems within  systems, trying to figure out how we are gonna learn to collaborate on such large scales, when we’re so busy it’s hard to get three people together at any one time.

As a visionary wannabe facilitator of sustainable neighborhoods, who’s  been going for “What else can we do beside suburbia?” for 30 + years, I’ve learned some useful tools along the way. A major learning is working with the inspiration within. At times I call it “Letting go, and letting God”.  Now I know we have deep convictions about separating church and state, and I don’t want to use language that might create separation between us, so please just consider this concept, and substitute the words that work for you…. READ MORE >>

350 ppm-A number we can live with

By Brian Skeele, on March 20th, 2011

350 is a pretty dang  good batting average. It’s also the amount of carbon in parts per million that scientists have agreed upon that makes for a sustainable planet. In other words, if we want to avoid a lot of the impending bummers that come with Global Warming, we need to figure out how to get the amount of carbon in the atmosphere back to 350 ppm (carbon sequestration). And we need to then stablize the amount of carbon we release each year to 350 ppm.

I think we are currently at 387 ppm.  not so good for ocean levels rising from melting ice…etc.

I’ve listed 350 ppm as an Indicator.  We need good indicators so we can tell how we’re doing. As we redesign our neighborhoods sustainable, we need a “killer” modeling tool (s) to give us feedback.  “Are we there yet??”

Every decision comes with a bunch of consequences…If we can keep our carbon spew down to 350, we have a good idea we are getting close to one aspect of ecological sustainability.  I’m so amazed at how complicated our lives have become.

It seemed so easy to just crank out suburbia, go to work, manufacture stuff, go shopping, retire and play golf into the Golden Years.  Alas, those days are gone. With great modeling tools and sound indicators, we can figure out how to live on the planet with billons of our fellow citizens.

We can do this, we can make sustainable real!… READ MORE >>

Meltdowns and Other Impending Bummers

By Brian Skeele, on March 17th, 2011

“Oh so many, ways to be wicked”

I woke this morning to the song playing in my head, Maria McKee and Lone Justice belting it out, my personal soundtrack….the Japanese Meltdown is in Day 6.

I call em Impending Bummers. When I think about doing something unknown, I can have a lot of apprehension, I can feel downright scared. I bite my finger nails, tear at my cuticles.

Maybe it’s the thousands of years of our collective worrying about getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger.  Or if Genghis Khan is going to show up in the spring this year…That may explain where the dread, this background anxiety, comes from. It certainly pushes me on a spiritual path in an attempt to find relief, but face it, as stewards of our amazing beautiful spinning green and blue planet, we suck…. READ MORE >>

Sustainable neighborhoods as popular as cell phones!

By Brian Skeele, on March 3rd, 2011

Over the years of studying what works, and looking at all the impending bummers coming from our sprawl, car dependent lifestyle, I continue to conclude that the cure, the silver bullet, is “Mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods, with lifelong learning and open space……everywhere”.  Even though I’m so sure these sustainable neighborhoods are the antidote to the vast majority of what ails us, a quick response time is everything.

The rate of carbon building up in the atmosphere, and the forecast outcomes,  require the developed nations to get to sustainable lifestyles pronto.

Talk about jousting at windmills….. I’ve set the intention that sustainable neighborhoods become as popular as cell phones, and get implemented around the planet. I take heart  from Margaret Mead’s “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does”.

The times call for a paradigm shift, transforming our car-dominated economy to a knowledge-based economy; from fossil fueled, polluting, wasteful overconsumption to renewable, non toxic, more efficient, lowered consumptive living.

As we get good at clearly defining the benefits, the popularity will soar.  Mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods with lifelong learning and open space are the way we are gonna make sustainable real!… READ MORE >>

Hard Times, Impending Bummers, and Resilient Communities

By Brian Skeele, on March 2nd, 2011

As I was leaving Trader Joe’s parking lot today, I glanced at the homeless guy as he raised his cardboard sign.  I only caught the first word on his sign “hardtimes….”. For several blocks I mulled over going back and giving him some money.  I was also thinking of my friend, a metal worker, who was angry about a couple of recent bills for emergency doctor’s office visits; “Ten minutes, $250 and $325! And I have medical insurance!” he exclaimed several times, outraged. Turns out February is a slow month, and the go-go days of the construction industry seem long gone. He has a wife and two kids and pays $780 a month in health insurance ( up $45 as “he had a birthday” said the insurance company recently).

The recent unprecedented cold weather froze lots of pipes around town, and as a general contractor,  I got a month of good work putting a couple of condos back together.

All of these thoughts came together, precipitated by the homeless guy’s” hardtimes”, and reminded me of all the possible bummers we face;  Peak oil and rising gasoline demand worldwide, honey bee’s dying off en mass, fracking water contamination,… READ MORE >>