Prosperity for Rhode Island

Something has gone wrong with the blog, so i am trying to find out why the deprecated stuff is in the header. maybe I will find out soon.

Recently I have written several grants seeking to support my work connecting the various types of ecological restorations going on, and making the case that together they constitute an important part of the way forward for the RI economy. I have been trying to make the case around compost, but also seeking to connect the various types of restorations going on.

Where i seem to be having the hardest upstream paddle is that the low tax no public investment craze is not helping the situation. it takes public investment to create public goods, the goods that set the foundation to go forward from.

My observation is that the RI economy is stuck, and that the plans the development community keeps talking about do not really work. They need a new approach, one based ion the health of the planet and how that actually effects the economy. We shall see where that discussion goes, but also know it will never be over.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153553/goodbye_%27shop_til_you_drop%27_mentality%3A_renegade_band_of_economists_call_for_%27degrowth%27_economy?akid=8051.302607.0Kqcc_&rd=1&t=6

Very cool

To the Editor,  The smell from the landfill is primarily the result of the decay of organic matter buried in it.  If we stopped burying food scrap and other organics, and instead composted them, the smell from the landfill would be greatly diminished over time, and we would be producing compost that can be used to revitalize agricultural soils in Rhode Island, improve the economy in our communities,  and increase our community resilience in the face of climate change.  More and more communities all over the world are composting every day.

Unfortunately in Rhode Island it is so cheap to just pick up everything and dump it on the hill at the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation’s Central Landfill in Johnston.  Taking proper care of the materials we have, including those that are critical to growing food, costs a little more than just tossing trash on the hill and burying it.  But if we take proper care, we dramatically over time reduce the smells and the high emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane that are 21 times as effective at reflecting heat waves back to earth as carbon dioxide.  Yes, in these hard times no one can afford to pay more to dispose of things, but we can not afford to keep throwing valuable resources away and polluting at the same time.

Landfills are the largest source of methane emissions in the United States and the simple solution is the one that creates the most value for the community.  Compost all food scrap instead of burying it.

For many years I lived near paper mills, and when the wind and clouds were right, it was enough to make you gag, so I have some idea what the folks near the landfill are experiencing.  In fact the releases are mostly the same sulfur containing compounds.  We need some short term solutions to reduce the smell today, but we also need the long term solution of collecting and composting food scrap.  I am asking all of our policy leaders to join in the discussion of how best to remove the structural impediments that prevent us from taking advantage of a valuable resource and fully develop our compost industry.  We will all breathe and eat better.

Greg Gerritt
Coordinator  RI Compost Initiative   A project of the Environment Council of RI and the Greater Providence Urban Agriculture Task Force
37 6th St  Providence RI 02906
331-0529

I have in the past referred to the work of Immanuel Wallerstein. He describes the conditions for rapid economic growth as access to an urbanizing population and access to forests.

China proves the point again. Read the other day that China is using half the globally traded wood, and running into all sorts of snags because of how much of it is cut and imported illegally. Chinese consumption (and re-export of finished products) is driving deforestation all across the tropics and in Siberia.

Australia is serving the iron craving of China, and seems to do it willingly, but the people feeding the forest craving are most definitely not willing sacrifices. People who are trying to save the forest are being killed by corporate thugs and being sent to jail by governments around the world while deforestation becomes more devastating.

It is going to be critical to rein in China’s wood consumption and require that wood feeding it be harvested sustainably and in a fair trade mode if we are to not wipe out the forest people of the planet. Unfortunately nearly every government is filled with people ready to sell out the forest and its people for a little bit of money.

I had a friend from Cambodia who tried to get me to go there to help him stop the corrupt generals selling off the forest to China.

Reminds me of the Rhode Island merchants of the 19th century damming the rivers both for water power to run the mills, but also because they knew if they cut off the fish runs the farmers would no longer be able to practice subsistence farming in the hills and would come to town to work in the mill.

Being Thanksgiving day in the US I will remind everyone of the native people of eastern Massachusetts showing the Pilgrims how to put fish in each corn hill. European transplants retained the practice when they drove the natives off the land, and it persisted until the mill owners put in dams to end the runs and drive the white folks off the land too.

So the patterns, economies industrialize and grow when they can drive rural folk off the land resulting in land to take, forests to cut and proletariats to work in the factory. And when it all runs out, which is happening in more places faster than ever, the oligarchy thrashes about ever faster to suck in more and more resources, eventually turning the economy into a casino as the only way to feed them fast enough. Then we occupy the public squares and throw the bums out or they mow down enough of us to hold on a little longer.

I am guessing the Communist Party of China is praying very hard they can hold on to the mandate of heaven when the real estate bubble bursts and the floods destroy another crop.

We are into fall.  The leaves have barely started to turn, but nights are cool and the fall rains last all day.  When last reported upon the gray tree frogs had fled for the trees and the bullfrogs have developed legs and lost their gills, completing the transformation.  The bullfrog pond had at least 100 frogs lining the pond, but many disappeared very quickly.  I wonder how many of them fell victim to the green herons that hung around for several weeks.  Green herons show up most years, but this year one or two have been in near permanent residence.  What were scarce were the great blue herons.

The large pond slid towards hibernation with daily counts of about 20 frogs around the inlet, outlet, and peninsula, down from the hundred soon after emergence.   The tree frog pond became covered in pickerel weed, and never dried up.  In fact most of the summer it was pretty full, and the fall rains have really raised it up.

This fall for the first time I noticed fall frogs in the pond.  I had never seen frogs at this pond after the tree frogs dispersed for the year, so it really caught my attention.  I never got a good look at them, they were very skittish.  I took inventory in the usual way, counting how many frogs jump as I walk around the pond.  About 20 frogs would jump.  The alarm call was that of a bullfrog.  So it appears a population from the other pond dispersed after leaving behind their tadpole life.  Having not witnessed this before, it will be interesting to see if they can persist in the pond, and if they effect the breeding of the tree frogs.  I look forward to next spring.

Final note, the big frog does have a new crop of tadpoles.  I am not sure how big a population it is, visibility has been very poor in the water this year, But I look forward to the jumpers when the next round starts in March or April.

I am absolutely sure that my vision of NMS does not completely coincide with yours.  No two visions are identical.  But I am sure we can all benefit from reading a spicy variety of visions.  I offer mine.

The context for me is that what will create a vibrant prosperous NMS is  not business as usual.  Not business as usual for the last 40 years, not business as usual in the current phase of urban redevelopment in 2011.  Maybe this is why I am a consultant, researcher, and advocate running NGOs and think tanks rather than a retail establishment.

Where I differ most from the mainstream is that I am not at all sure that the American economy is capable of growth in the 21st Century.  The world has changed.  Resource extraction becomes ever more difficult, and with that change all the real growth in the American economy for the last 30 years has been sucked up by the rich, the medical industrial complex, the fossil fuel industries, and the war machine.

In other words the numbers are clear that for all but the favored few the American economy is already smaller, they have less money.   If you can not actually increase through put (essentially infrastructure and ecosystem rebuilding) then all growth is in funny money. With the collapse of global forests and fisheries, soil degradation, the continued diminishment of mineral resources, and climate change, prosperity in the future will be determined by how well we provision ourselves and build resilience to climate change.

What that means for NMS is that it might work much better as an agricultural corridor than a raggedy business district.  If we could farm the vacant strip (by deed) along NMS in the North Burial Ground, AND farm all the run down properties along NMS, with the exception of those we turn into high density housing along the new super bus line/trolley serving all those people and those who start leaving cars at home.  Agriculture would bring retail.  Community gardens and small farms selling produce will bring people saving money and improving their nutrition and health.  With more of their diminishing money to spend on other things.   Maybe we partner with Camp St Community Ministries and Mt Hope NA on the food and nutrition components.

We would of course increase recycling and composting massively, providing new resources for farming and industry.

Walking would be enhanced by better NMS crossings for pedestrians, trolley stops could become true nodes with a little jazzing up and communications infrastructure.  With pushcart vendors?

More trees, but if we have to take out the median strip for a trolley line, so be it.  Maybe trees that produce something for the community like walnuts.

Somehow predictably what happens by the NBG and its facing street scape seems to be the key for me.

Greg Gerritt
6th St
ProsperityForRI.org
Friends of the Moshassuck

Greg Gerritt • The article referenced above is why I try to remind public officials dealing with economic planning in my community that it is important to contemplate creating more jobs with fewer dollars circulating. The economy in the west is actually shrinking. it is very hard for them to get their hands around the idea, but it is slowly seeping in.

Everything i read says the way forward back to prosperity is to heal ecosystems and become more self reliant. Political forces, and the forces of empire are all aligned against the idea that the way forward is a smaller more healthful economy, but it is not only the way of ecology, it is the way of justice. The smart shrinkage we should be engineering is exactly the building of resilience that is the whole premise of this forum.

Friends,  It is after Labor Day and with the fall rains I began to think of The Buy Nothing Day Winter Coat Exchange, and then started to think about rain gear and how to get more into the hands of people living outside in this community.  For anyone who walks to get their life’s work done, like me, it is essential.  And when I lived outside, it was essential too.  So I begin the 2011 cycle with an email. I love to organize this event with y’all.  Those of you who actually see me in the community, and those of you in remote locations, and increasingly across the country.

I have copied last years flyer, with just an update of the date, but not the connections/events/ contact people.  Those of you who are connected directly to the various events, please get back to me and let me know if you are signed on again and if anything needs to change.    Thanks.  Those of you who think you might want to catalyze the bringing of an event to your community, we can help you get started, please get in touch.  Any of you who can translate, get materials into the media, or produce beautiful flyers, feel free and we can share it.  I am not a social media person, though I have a blog where these materials get posted.  If you use the various media and would like to devote a bit of your bandwidth to this event, feel free, and if there is anything special I can send you to help your efforts, happy to oblige.   I can use this network occasionally to publicize these links.

This project has a special place in my heart.  It is one of the ways I connect with my community,  connected me to many folks I would never have met any other way.  And as much as anything I work on it ties the strands of the universe together.  I have a little couplet I use sort of as the tag line for my consulting work.  “You can not end poverty without healing ecosystems, you can not heal ecosystems without ending poverty”.  The BND Coat Exchange seems to fit.

When we did the first one on a whim 15 years ago, 1997, none of us knew what to expect.  That my friends have spread it around the state and the country, and that now it is popping up in new places organized by people with only viral connections to me is a true source of amusement.  I truly enjoy this event, and I hope all of you get to bring a sense of joy to this work despite the conditions in our communities which makes the event a greater necessity each year.

In any case keep me informed about how this work goes in your neighborhood and I will share it.  Send edits for the flyer, but feel free to circulate.

Thanks.

Greg Gerritt  401-331-0529  Providence RI

15th Annual BUY NOTHING  DAY
WINTER COAT EXCHANGE
If you have a coat to give, please drop it off.
If you need a coat, please pick one up.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25 10-2PM
State House lawn (directly across from Providence Place mall)
rain location St Johns Cathedral 271 N Main St Providence
Pawtucket Visitors Center, 175 Main St. Pawtucket
On November 26th 2010 – the busiest day in the American retail calendar and the unofficial start of the international Christmas-shopping season – thousands of activists and concerned citizens in 65 countries will take a 24-hour consumer detox as part of the  annual Buy Nothing Day, a global phenomenon that originated in Vancouver, Canada. Some see it as an escape from the marketing mind games and the frantic consumer binge that has come to characterize the holiday season, and our culture in general. Others use it to expose the environmental and ethical consequences of over-consumption.  In Providence as part of International Buy Nothing Day, we hold a winter coat exchange on the lawn of the State House directly across from Providence Place mall. In Pawtucket the transfer of coats takes place at the Blackstone Valley Visitors Center. Events are also held at 4 other locations in Rhode Island. There are many partners for this event: community organizations, places of worship, civic, and environmental groups. Volunteers are needed to help with this life-affirming event.
Contact information: Providence Greg Gerritt: 331-0529; gerritt@mindspring.com;
Phil Edmonds: 461-3683; philwhistle@gmail.com
Pawtucket - Arthur Pitt 724-8915; kingarthur02940@yahoo.com
Other participating locations
Newport – St Paul’s Church 12 West Marlborough St. 10 AM to Noon Maggie Bulmer
849-3537.
Woonsocket St Ann’s Arts and Cultural Center  84 Cumberland Street Wally Rathbun Stannartsctr@aol.com
Wakefield –St. Francis Church, 114 High Street, 10AM to noon Tom Abbott 364-0778
Barrington Bayside Family YMCA  70 West St   Connie Ganley mcganley@comcast.net

I am reading the World Economic and Social Survey 2011 a UN publication.  I get notices of lots of these and they are free to download. Fit the budget well.

This one is talking about my favorite topic, how do we get to a sustainable future.  The answer is with great difficulty.

I am just beginning it but something really caught my attention, the statement that the frequency of natural disasters has quintupled in the last 40 years.  quintupled.  They are putting most of the blame on climate, and a good deal of blame belongs there, but they are neglecting a factor.

Natural disasters in places with no people hardly rate.  A hurricane hitting a healthy beach and dune system with no development sustains much less damage than  a beach and dune system with condos or a boardwalk and hotels.  in other words, one of the characteristics of our system is that for the last 40 years people have been putting more and more infrastructure in more and more vulnerable places so that we are not only seeing climate exacerbated damages, but those associated with people moving into more and more fragile places.

No one in their right mind builds a house  on sand dunes and sand spits along the gulf coast or anywhere along the atlantic south of Delaware Bay.  Hurricanes are just too likely even without global weirding.  But we have more and more houses, and when we call for fewer houses along the beach the developers go crazy.  When people try to protect mangroves the economic interests are screaming louder and louder to let commerce run amok (well they do not call it run amok, but that is what it is)

So we are are seeing climate change cause more and more problems, but we exacerbate the problem by pushing into ever more fragile and vulnerable places.  part of it is there is no where else to go, all the rest is taken, and part of it is the these are  places of great beauty (after we have destroyed it elsewhere)

We are going to need a new term for these types of “natural disasters” so that we can be reminded of how much of the damage is due to human greed and and unwillingness to do proper planning.