Zizek on ecological ideology

Wow, this is fun.

Thoughts?

The untapped ‘market’

The average consumer cares about ’sustainability’ more than we might assume:

A recent study on consumer behavior from Deloitte indicates that there is an unrealized, latent consumer demand for sustainable products; almost half of consumers consider sustainability in purchasing decisions.

The study, which was released in July, was commissioned by the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA). It surveyed over 6,000 shoppers in 11 major retail markets. It found that, in contrast to the standard view on “greenies,” consumers considering sustainable products are not minimalist, nor easily categorized.

They are spread diversely along age range, education level, household size and income. On average, they did tend to be a little older, wealthier, and educated, but with a wide distribution across demographics.

The overall findings of the study indicate that this market is still heating up and there is much room for improvement by business:

• More than half of shoppers consider sustainability when purchasing.
• While sustainable product attributes are not the dominant purchasing driver for the majority of consumers, they tend to be a tie-breaker when price and performance are in parity
• Consumers who tend to purchase green buy more products per trip and shop more often
• Many find in-store communication on sustainable products lacking, at the same time they say it has a large impact on their purchasing decisions.

The study concludes that there is an accumulated latent demand for products with significant sustainable attributes which carry similar performance and price to standard products.

While almost all shoppers surveyed are aware of, or looking for, sustainable product attributes in their purchases, only 22% walked out of the store with sustainable products. With sustainable attributes being a tie breaker in purchasing decisions, in-store communication having heavy influence on purchasing behavior and green consumers being more brand loyal, a very large, attractive target market is being created.

From Globe-Net

So it Begins: European Union banning energy-inefficient goods

European Union to Ban Goods that aren’t Energy Efficient : TreeHugger.

Hate to sound cocky, but… well… i called it. I should have made a bet with someone, but i take little to no credit–the writing was on the wall…

This is the beginning of a crucially important–but inevitably rife–shift to eco-protectionism…

…its going to tick off foreign manufacturers (especially in the developing world), and rightly so. But it’s going to happen regardless, so let’s hope they can leapfrog.

…the next rational step will be banning ‘unsustainable’ goods and even unsustainable produce… the question is who will define sustainable, why, and how…

…this is why i think a global life-cycle assessment initiative tied to something like the (floundering) WTO would be a rather good idea.

Here’s to hoping!

correlation

Japan: Agriculture the latest trend among celebrities

Global Voices Online » Japan: Agriculture the latest trend among celebrities.

The Japanese economy, as confirmed by the head of the Bank of Japan’s research and statistics department Kazuo Monma (門間一夫), is facing one of the worse slowdowns in its modern history, with a GDP that has declined at a rate of 12,7%. Nonetheless, TV programs and lifestyle magazines are doing their best to inspire hope among their viewers and readers that not everything is lost.

Recently, in fact, a new trend has been spreading among Japanese V.I.P.: farm work. More of a few of these V.I.P. are celebrities who have decided to follow the example [jp] of pop-star Shiho Fujita (藤田志穂). Fujita announced the launch onto the market of rice produced by her company, with a view to redeeming the image of the gyaru [girls following a particular fashion style], who are often perceived in Japan as addicted to junk food.

おばあちゃんの畑, Granny’s vegetable garden. By nozawa.takeshi

The reaction of many bloggers about this “agriculture boom”, so heavily discussed on TV and in newspapers, has however been skeptical. In response to this trendy return to Mother Nature, in fact, some of them criticized what they see as people making light of farm labour.

If you thought of having a chimp as a pet, think again

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frans-de-waal/another-chimp-bites-the-d_b_167768.html

… in fact, don’t even think of taking on an exotic pet as a pet unless you have adequate facilities for its entire life and you know that no parent animal was killed so that you can have something “cute”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/its-not-just-chimps-ameri_b_168094.html

People are so friggin’ stupid.

Stalking birds with little tiny backpacks

Check this out.

NYT: Science / Environment
Tracking the Flight of Birds, With Tiny Backpacks
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: February 13, 2009
By fitting songbirds with tiny backpacks that contain sophisticated sensors, scientists have been able to follow the birds on their annual migration…

The Idea of a Local Economy | Wendell Berry

Not sure if you’ve read this one before, but Sarah passed this on to our 502 group:

… I am assuming that there is a valid line of thought leading from the idea of the total economy to the idea of a local economy. I assume that the first thought may be a recognition of one’s ignorance and vulnerability as a consumer in the total economy. As such a consumer, one does not know the history of the products that one uses. Where, exactly, did they come from? Who produced them? What toxins were used in their production? What were the human and ecological costs of producing them and then of disposing of them? One sees that such questions cannot be answered easily, and perhaps not at all. Though one is shopping amid an astonishing variety of products, one is denied certain significant choices. In such a state of economic ignorance it is not possible to choose products that were produced locally or with reasonable kindness toward people and toward nature. Nor is it possible for such consumers to influence production for the better. Consumers who feel a prompting toward land stewardship find that in this economy they can have no stewardly practice. To be a consumer in the total economy, one must agree to be totally ignorant, totally passive, and totally dependent on distant supplies and self-interested suppliers …

You can read the rest here.

Thoughts?

Worth a look

Some interesting blogs some or all of us may find helpful:

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference and Social Science

Dot Earth of the NYT

Environmental Valuation and Cost-Benefit News

And especially:

Resilience Science

Darwin’s unfinished revolution

Via Halewistan

Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway-Morris has interesting ideas about the tendency of evolution to follow certain overarching pathways. In a recent talk while visiting here on campus, he went on to make some oblique, but fascinating, conjectures about the immanence of phenomena such as complexity and intelligence. The Economist discusses him here:

… Simon Conway-Morris, a palaeontologist at Cambridge University, in England, is the champion of a new interpretation of evolution—one that challenges the view that it is largely governed by the accident of circumstances. Unlike Gould, he thinks that if evolution were replayed from the beginning, a lot of things would turn out the same.

Dr Conway-Morris has arrived at this view from a detailed study of what is known as convergent evolution. Darwin himself was intrigued by this phenomenon, in which different groups of organisms independently evolve similar solutions to similar problems, whether these solutions are teeth, eyes, brains, ecosystems or societies. Where other biologists have noted such convergences as “remarkable”, Dr Conway-Morris believes they actually tell a broader story.

His argument is that, given the nature of physics and chemistry, there may be only a limited number of ways in which things can work. Evolution will be channelled into these successful paths, and thus does have trends. Two of these, he thinks, are towards complexity and intelligence. He adds that things “don’t just happen in chemistry”. They happen because of pre-existing causes. Whether it is the molecules of crystallin that are used to build an eye or the haemoglobin that makes blood carry oxygen, the nature of molecules themselves means that evolution is more likely to follow a path determined by their basic structure. Evolution is a mechanism, and it works within rules.

Dr Conway-Morris’s view of the world may or may not turn out to be correct. If it is, it may prove more palatable to some people than the current interpretation of the biological world as ultimately materialist and purposeless.

Darwin himself was deeply troubled by his materialist thoughts and what they meant. He considered how thoughts and emotions were simply secretions of the brain. From his correspondence it seems his religious beliefs never reached a fixed position, but he was sensitive to the extent to which his ideas could upset others. He even devised a diplomatic answer that avoided challenging the existence of God. When asked about the origins of emotions, instincts and degrees of talent, he noted, “say only they are so because brain of child resembles parent’s stock”.

via Charles Darwin’s revolution is unfinished | Unfinished business | The Economist.

And in audio, here.