My Fair Share

I received the following email from a member of our local Crop Circle.

I found your AWOL bantam hen and surprise surprise she was sitting on 6 eggs under the bottom of the slippery slide. She is a proud mother of 3 babies so far but is still sitting and your silky has started hatching but I am letting her go till she decides to hop off and let us have a peek. Feel free to pop around if your children would like a look.  Thank you for the loan of your girls.

Well, while we went away to help a friend who lives on a remote station cum conservation area recover from an operation, we had our chickens looked after and now the 4 have become more.  We cared for someone.  Someone cared for us.  In doing so, everyone benefited.

I think that counts as a fine example of community in action.

I stuck my arm in the compost pile that I made yesterday to see if it was going to do what it is meant to do, and it burned my fingers.

So, I turned it, watered it, and walked away smiling.

Compost is meant to get hot – I understand that. Being in the sun is probably a good thing then for a compost heap.

But, today I built one under the biggest tree that we have. Just unloaded the manure from the trailer and mixed it with a year’s worth of leaves from under the tree.

I would have run it all through the shredder but we are out of fuel – so maybe some other day.

Anyway, I was piling it all up and marvelling at how the heat was building while I was putting it together when I realised something: I don’t actually like making compost heaps in the sun.

It’s summer here, and about 40 degrees from 8am to 6pm (I guess that’s maybe 105 F?), so I reckon the air temperature is enough for the heap without the sun beating down and eating at my skin as well.

I cannot believe that it has been more than 2 years since I got some horse manure.

And so it was that yesterday I took my trailer to the place of a friend who is caring for someone else’s three horses.

There we were, two blokes collecting poo, just yabbering in the summer sun.  At one stage, there was a grandfather and a couple of kids in on it as well.  Afterwards, we stayed for dinner and fine company (a few wines and then maybe a few rums…).  What a great way,  I thought, to connect with community and tread lightly.

Now, sitting in the driveway, replete with slight steam for effect, is a trailer full of horse poo. Golden nuggets, just waiting to do the dance with our worms on the compost heaps that our vege patches turn into during these silly summer months.

I read something yesterday about the outside of the poo having some water repellant layer, which is why they hold their shape so long. The bloke who wrote that reckons the best thing to do is soak them in water, and then just pour the slurry on.

I might give it a go.

My Footprint Results

Now, if we look at the breakdown of the bar graph, we can see that my carbon consumption is significantly lower than Australia’s average almost 30 global hectares.  Actually, my household’s carbon consumption (4.3)  is less than the global average of almost 7 global hectares.

Now, I could be happy about that and think “wow, how good am I.  Clearly, I am a great global citizen, and I can hold my head high because I offset my household emissions and use green power and sometimes I walk to the supermarket.”

Or, I can view it in terms of total consumption.

Global averages for Food, Housing and Goods & Services are, respectively, about 7, 2 and 6.8 global hectares.

My own averages, while consistently below my country’s averages, are 22, 6 and 6.5.

So, what does that tell us?

It means that food-wise and housing-wise, I use triple the global average, which is still 150% of what the earth can sustain.

It also means that in terms of goods & services, I use less than average, but that is still more than what the earth can sustain.

So, where does this rambling train of thought take us?

It doesn’t matter how much carbon I reduce, there is other consumption that more than offsets any reductions that I make.  If I continue as I am, then I am destined to reduce the amount of stuff available to others, and to reduce the quality of that stuff since pressure on limited resources can invariably reduce their capacity to regenerate.

In short, and in waffle, I think the answer to my friend’s question is that “going carbon neutral” is a beneficial thing, but it is not the only thing.  In terms of middle class luxury, I think the answer is that one of the adjuncts to this luxury is the luxury of taking a blinkered approach to things, by isolating individual components and focusing on them to compensate for our unwillingness to focus on our real impact on natural systems that affect others.

And that is why this post comes under the categories of Tread Lightly and Reject Greed.

Post script:  I am aware that I am typing this on an electricity hungry, highly polluting personal computer instead of doing good work to save the world from the tyranny of my own hyprocrisy.

I have never really had the patience for composting. Turning, building, watering, etc all seems a bit too planned for the way I tend to be … which is to say that I am probably just a bit disorganised, dithery and downright scatterbrained.

But, I did try earlier this year. I built the thing almost as high as me. I tended it and did the right things, and then got distracted and forgot about it. I must have known that I would, because I built it straight on one of the vegetable garden beds.

Well, today, I thought I would see if I could resurrect that spot where the sticks and leaves and poo and all the other stuff was put all those months ago.

I cleared away the surface of compacted lawn clippings, and beneath them I did find arguably the richest soil on our block.

And I remembered why I prefer to focus on building soil instead of making compost: I’m lazy, and nature takes care of the rest.

“If we put the skin back then the worms can eat them and the dirt will stay damp for the plant”
“And, we ate the fruit and put the skin back on the garden, and the core we gave to the chookies [chickens]”
“And then we got the eggs from the chookies..”
“And we put their shells back in the garden too…”

I’m pretty happy with the responsibilities that come with a parent. But I try to temper that with an understanding that it could be a fine line between appreciating values and indoctrination – my values are my own, and so I do think that they should be given an opportunity to choose their own way.

So it was quite a (pleasant) surprise during the recent week where young Charlotte (5) and Tom (3) included aspects of my own values in their thinking.

The above conversation is just one example of their banter as they played imaginatively both in the garden and beyond.

Okay, okay.  I know that it has been way over a year since I started Kyle’s Carbon Accounting Method.

The idea of counting up everything for the second 6 months just Was Not At All Appealing, so it has taken until now to do it.

Right, so on with the detail.

Family 12 monthly income: 4 800 carbons

Total 6 monthly spending: 19 600 carbons  (July – Dec)

Total 6 monthly spending: 5 200 carbons (Jan – Jun)

Balance: -20 000 carbons

Per person balance: -5 000 carbons

Well, that’s pretty ordinary.

So, what does that mean in terms of Western averages.  According to Kyle’s figures, the Western average per month is -900 carbons, which would mean that our figure of -5000 carbons for 12  months is a fair whack better than  the western average of -10800 carbons.  Of course, since the global average for 12 months is about 2400 carbons, then we are significantly “worse”.

Now, those figures are interesting psychologically – we are double the global average, and the western average is double us.

So, if we want to Really Feel Good about how Wonderful We Are, then all we have to do is say:  Hey, we consumed half the carbon of next family.  Of course, if we wanted to be realistic, then we would say something like:  Hey, we consumed twice as much as the average global citizen, which really means that we consumed about 4 times the amount that there is for us.

If we took out the renovations to the house (which I always feel compelled to do, since it doesn’t happen every year – although it is into its 3rd year now…as my wife keeps reminding me!), then the figures would be:

Family annual income: 4 800 carbons

Total annual monthly spending: 9 500 carbons

Balance: -4 700 carbons

Per person balance: -1 175 carbons

This comes down to -98 carbons per person per month, which is slightly “better” than the world average of -212 carbons month.

So, what does that all mean?

It was about 2 months ago that I woke up with a Eureka moment. Since then, me and a mate have been beavering away trialling the idea and getting it workable.
Well, that moment is nigh.
It works.
It is happening.
And I am so excited.

Community Connections is the name that we will give it, and I will tell you more about it soon.

Peter's Book

A while ago I wrote about Peter Singer’s new book, where he talks about a fair share being an irrelevant notion.

I agree with Peter, as long as a fair share is seen a benchmark within a community.

Take my own community.  According to a recent study by some clever people at Queensland University of Technology, the average donation of people who share my postcode is the princely sum of 0.12%.

Crikey!

That seems fairly paultry to me.

Now, if we accept that Peter Singer was onto something when he said that the more you get the more you ought to give, then we can use the little gizmo to work out what the average amount ideally is for this town of mine.

Doing some maths on the QUT results, we can work out that the average taxable income for this postcode is about $500.

According to the gizmo, that means that each taxpayer ought give $5.

Now, that is a might less than the average $180 given by each person who does give.

So, what does that mean?

I think it means that if all 4000 taxpayers gave their “fair share” of $5, then it would be about $200 000 in donations.  As it is, the 1200 taxpayers gave a total of $240 000 in donations.

What does that mean for the fair share?

For me, it means that Peter is right – focusing on a fair share is pointless because it doesn’t account for those who do not give their fair share.  Focusing instead of what we are able to give as a benchmark – instead of some mathematical notion of what we each should give – then we may well have fewer people giving more.

Suddenly, 0.12%  doesn’t seem so bad – especially not in comparison to what it could be.

By the way, this is not at all what I had planned to write about today.