An Invisible Chain of our Time
Page 29
twenty years. You already have got for free a ticket for the spectacle. This is only one feature more that comes from cities, aver all from the bigger cities.
Cities are receiving a 70% of the population, and have offered at least a point in the time, a job offer and prosperity, which dissipate today despite the image that is provided to them. We always think of our town, but cities with over one million people in the world do not follow the rules you will ever meet. They behave as centers of economic relations, and largely for working, but also misery for many of the dwellers: we must also take into account the slums. They have four major consumer lines: energy, food, water and mineral resources, and very few of them are assuming its environmental costs due its behavior, as it does a termite mound on the contrary, that we could use as a metaphor by analogy. Not all cities are like Singapore, not all have the muscled business centers that have this one.
The organic debris, the waste materials, is an invisible actor of this chain we have created. All this mix of things that do not belong to anyone, from which nobody is responsible, are reducing the chance that you have to get fish in your city, you can eat clean foods, or that the price of water will not double in a few years, or that left money to build canals for farming or drinking networks. If the dumps had to pick up only a 20% of the rubbish from cities, would be save a lot of money. Someone will say: but this also is work! Yes, but you could make other works better than this one, not just this work! Does not let anyone could train you not to think, keeping always sleepy, I beg you.
The numbers leave no place now to turn the head and look away: on one hand, we take enormous amounts of water, which in some cases is only properly drinkable, with its inherent high cost; on the other hand, a mixture of fluids returns to the environment, also rarely treated, and even when it is unavoidable to let substances extend within our environment deteriorating it slowly but surely: and we do so in quantities proportional to the number of inhabitants we are living.
The pollution was a problem initially, and after letting people get used to, now it is accepted and adopted as a counterpart of the good life. It is another stupidity more. High levels of pollution are discussed as spectacular news referring to some cities like Shanghai. The reality is different: in every big city meets a select group of highly toxic substances from those already considered as common and normal (nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide or carbon dioxide) to the whole large group of volatile substances coming from the industrial centers that surround or are nearby. This will never be completely restricted, and pricing it can continue to control the cost that each company must pay. But in any case, the company is seeing more profitable to pay the tax to pollute. Who pays the cost directly but does not protests is the citizen, who must assume it on a statistical mode: for every 100 people, it is sure that a percentage has a disease associated with this pollution (among others), but the remaining may be or will be pardoned.
Living in the city has costs: like it or not, you will be required to pay transportation (private or collective); the safety that require large crowds that always include crime; or each of these resources you are using without having to be aware how they are obtained -water, light, heat, food, appliances-, and a place where live; all that we want and enjoy with by day to day, has an added price just for the sake of being essential makes it costly. And so, urges the rest of the chain, and becomes more profitable this business of provide a wellness life. Who accepts this are you, you never taken the time to think how many other possibilities have been deleted explicitly, and still exist.
Between the habits that have the city dwellers, some of them could represent a lowering on the consumption of energy, goods and resources of an average 30%. The only advice about it comes from cities where folks who are aware can achieve very strong reductions on consumption, and it becomes today a worry for the power companies: the companies prefer to go ahead and offer ways to reduce consumption, which do not reduce as much, and give them benefits. That is, looking to educate not spend much, the 100%, and you reduce as much 5%: more for them could be a disaster. No one company in the world will show you nor teach how you could reduce your consumption, it will not.
This book never had the aim to be a place to offer all solutions, although in fact there are a lot of performed ideas already running, but only cause you to explore and think a little. Thus, I will show a little example, so usual. Do you like try a little experiment, yes, do you like? Let's go.
Every washing machine has programs, smart programs, and all programs go accompanied always with also "smart soaps" (at least nobody pretends selling us intelligent water): and every machine has a connection through a water pipe, because of course, the first and widely present dissolvent in the Nature is water. But the idea has never been let make that soap and water can work in the proper order, but has been the opposite: make soap essential above all, and thus more water. Only after half hour keeping the clothes into water, completely wet, allowing the water to a significant degree dissolve the dirt, you will see how is possible save the half of water that the program uses, save two out of three parts of soap that the program recommends; and with all this, reduce the power consumption to half, and save money and the dignity, your dignity.
Yes, I know, of course you are now thinking that with all these advances that we have, everything I have invested, everything I have, I must get rid of it, change it, throwing it away, and also try harder? This is the dictatorship you are carrying into, an opportunity cost. You are afraid to change all the done and purchased. You do not like seeing yourself like a silly. I said you this would be an experiment; I ask you no more.
Everyone knows how to do calculations, or not?
You are used to spend, not to save. This is an important difference between the habits and attitudes that exist in the country and the city, a real cliff, and shows a gap in the costs that they incur.
When you are saving money for your retirement, you are setting aside a money that someone said you will rent to you (in fact is renting whom you give it), and you will live comfortably, or continue consuming in the same way in that future more expensive than the present. Thus, money exists two times, you have the money saved, and others have the money working, and perhaps they do the same again, and save the money in other hands, the Venture Capital hands (the money has then three or more lives). One day, as sometimes happened, people will awaken together, and will see this joke as is: common ignorance. I advise you deal nothing with some investment companies, the Big Cats, with more than seven lives (in its money).
This is not a mockery against the environment, also against you. The day you like, you will reduce your consumption by your own decision, and it will take place between rates from 30% till 60%. I have not the time for joking. That is a matter of save money, living better, and feel you owns your habits. Just ask yourself: how is possible that in one hand of the world some people can be able to live (survive, survive) with $2 daily, and in the other we cannot live with less than $150 daily? Easy reply: in some places things never are paid on its fair value, and in other places things never are sold on its fair price.
After this, everyone asks the same question: “I am… (a few seconds to think) one of those who pay, or maybe one of those who sell? I will reply you: statistically, you belong to 98% of those who are paying.
I am not the first saying this: the next years some small and medium enterprises will be able to dislodge or break the dependence of the people of the cities from the bigger companies, and generate local labor and business. It will affect to goods produced locally, locally consumed, locally distributed, and also the produced locally. It will not be an issue of ecology, only common sense and saving money. Already are being born a new kind of local banks, that saves money locally, with local partners, for local needs and business, for local younger generations, and do not allow the meddling of bigger banks.
Crowds, easy to see: the more are people, the more are rubbing.
This tree above is a simplification of the pictu
re shot by the photographer Arthus-Bertrand (National Park of Tsavo, Kenya) that shows how something can attracts everybody: it is a law, you will go wherever you can find that you need, or wherever you think to find whatever you think to need.
That is what has happened with the countryside and towns. According a better life became more accessible target and available, no one hesitated to go where this dream has been offered. The towns grew, growing also new kind of works: the services. Among these services, some are far from those former lands and dirty hands, are high-value services. A high value? So high so the value of this services is held upon a resource (lands, undergrounds and seas) that not worth even the thousandth part proportionally. How could be it possible? This contradicts the trophic pyramid, any balanced energy pyramid. Now let's go see what is thinking doing the world, the 9,000 billions in the future.
The next forty years we will see to be increasing the population of cities, as long as the lands will be expropriated or purchased. A recent reason to go to cities is to have been ejected out your home, your little piece of earth, leaving all back, hauling with your animals