Every little bit helps, right?

If we did a digital recording (and I almost typed "tape recording") of a conversation now of days and sent it back in time to ourselves, we would surely understand almost nothing that was being said. I can only imagine the bewilderment 30 years ago that would have greeted any snatch of current conversation: "I was on the cell telling my FIL that he should Google the hybrids on his WiFi before thinking about paying for carbon offsets..." All gibberish until just a few years ago.

It's not just in the technical areas that the language is again on the move. Recently I ran across the term lamer which is perhaps only of interest to anti-consumerists and minimalists. It refers to someone who disparages small token efforts at conservation as being meaningless, "lame" efforts, if you will.

Perhaps we need to coin a word for the opposite of a lamer. Tokener perhaps. That's too long, three syllables to the lamer's two. Maybe we should shorten it to toker. At any rate their hue and cry is any effort toward the goal does some good, after all, every little bit helps, right?

No. As much as intuitive logic might demand that conclusion, even a tiny bit of energy saved is that much energy saved, there's another side to the question.

Everyone knows that if you put a compact florescent bulb in the socket beside the basement door, that's not going to make much of a change in the world. So the game is played that if everyone replaced one bulb in their house, calculating from the average use of all light bulbs and not some seldom used out of the way bulb, we would save some very impressive amount of electricity in a year, enough to supply all the electricity needs of some impressive number of homes.

Does that not remind you a bit of all the curious facts such as if you put all the disposable soda bottles used in one year in the US end to end, they would reach around the world three and a half times. That would be something to see, would it not? I always wondered how they would get those soda bottles to stay in line as they crossed the oceans? Wait, you say, that's just a statistic, no one is actually going to put all the bottles end to end around the world!

Right. And no one is going make sure that everyone is replacing one bulb and then divert all that energy to particular houses. Those are just numbers and not anything that is really happening or is likely to happen. Since replacing one bulb produces an imaginary effect on the world's energy use, we might as well say that we agree that we positively will not buy a new Hummer. That will save enough gasoline to provide millions of people with motor fuel. It's really the same thing.

But beyond the imaginary nature of such propositions, what if they were really affected? Let me take an example I lifted from another blogger: If everyone (and I mean everyone!) bought their next package of 20 tall kitchen bags as 65% recycled plastic bags rather than those made of virgin plastic, it would save 45,000 barrels of oil in a year, enough to heat and cool 2,500 homes!! In the scheme of things, how much oil is that? The US uses for all purposes about ten billion barrels of oil a year. That (imaginary) 45,000 barrels of oil we'd save is less than on half of one thousandth of one percent of the oil we use. It would be like making an effort to save 1/16 teaspoon of flour when you bake a loaf of bread. That is, it wouldn't make any difference at all. More flour than that is lost sifting it or dusting the pans or cleaning the spoon. A scheme to save 1/16th teaspoon of flour out of six cups in a batch of bread is meaningless.

But here's the real rub. Go to the mart and try to find any plastic trash bags that aren't already made out of recycled material. There aren't any. So the proposition becomes more imaginary all along.

A good measure as to whether a resource saving or energy saving idea would have a significant or measurable effect on the overall economy if everyone did it is to see whether it has such an effect on your own economy. Does buying one box of a different type of trash bag make a difference to your very household? Does putting one compact florescent bulb in the attic make a measurable or significant difference in your electrical consumption? No? Then it wouldn't if everyone did it either. It is relatively meaningless.

The danger, of course, in token efforts is that they lull the toker into a false sense of having done something and removes the urgency to actually do anything of substance. The moniker is fitting better all the time.

Along these same lines, some of the token conservationist ideas can have just the opposite effect. The photo at the beginning of this post was made over the 3 gallon stock pot that is kept full of water on the cookstove during the winter so nearly boiling water is available for various kitchen tasks. The three drops of water you see going into the pot, that's helping to fill the pot, right? Sure, it's a tiny amount of water, but every little bit helps, right? No. More water is lost as steam when the lid is lifted than is added by the three drops. The best example of this is the 'eat local' fad. The idea is that food is hauled, using fossil fuels, far too great distances. To conserve fuel people are encouraged to eat locally. On the surface it sounds good. But having read many blogs describing the attempt at local meals, it is apparent to me that more fuel is being consumed by the locavores than Mart shoppers. The reason is that the criteria are all wrong. Most of the parameters proffered stipulate that the food must be from within a certain distance of the eater, say 100 miles. And so when the locavore travels 20 miles for some local organic potatoes and another 15 miles for some local parsley with which to garnish it, the meal is considered to be local and the toker can then say, "But I'm at least doing something, aren't I?"

That would be a 'no'. Food obtained within a certain radius is meaningless in terms of fuel used to get it to the table unless the formula includes how much food was transported per mile. For example, all our wheat on this farmstead comes from Montana, over 2000 miles away. Several local co-ops and health food stores place an order and a truck brings more than ten tons of wheat at a time. We buy anywhere up to quarter ton of it (10 50# sacks) once every year or so. So 20,000 lbs of wheat travels 2000 miles to reach the bulk food store. That's one tenth a mile per pound. We then bring 500 lbs of wheat 20 more miles to the farmstead adding another four hundredths of a mile/pound. So each pound of wheat has traveled .14 mile/pounds. If the locavore drives ten miles to get a 5 lb sack of local wheat or flour, the wheat will have traveled 2 mile/pounds, almost fifteen times the impact of my wheat from Montana.

It isn't that 'eat local' isn't a good idea, it is. But with the single criterion that it be with a certain distance of the eater leads to more overall fuel use than buying the food all at once at the Mart.

The world is facing some really interesting times due to Peak Oil, financial crisis, and a number of other things with which the readers are likely familiar. If the face of these, does every little bit help? Imagine you are on a boat that is sinking, taking on water at the rate of five gallons a minute. If you placidly bail out the boat with a soup spoon, will every little bit help? No, the boat will sink anyway. If the ticket costs $7 and you want to go to the movies and you have $3.41, does finding that nickel and three pennies in your other pocket mean that every little bit helps? No, you still don't get in to the movies. There is also another phenomenon at play that has to do with human nature. We would think that if we find a cheaper and more efficient way of doing something it would lead us to consume less, but history tells us just the opposite. Every innovation that has made our use of some resource more efficient has resulted in more consumption, not less. To illustrate, take the following quiz:

1. The gas mileage of cars has more than doubled since the early 70's. This has meant:
a) People have driven the same amount and used a lot less gas
b) People drive a lot more and use even more gas than before

2. Televisions were once hand wired from discrete parts but now are mechanically assembled from large-scale-integration parts making the production of TV's cheaper and more efficient. This has resulted in:
a) People save a lot of money by having just the one TV in their homes as in the past
b) People now have six TV's in their house.

3. When meat came from small farms, meat consumption was modest because it was costly. Now that meat comes from agribusiness factory farms:
a) People save a lot of money and resources on their meat
b) People eat so much meat they spend even more and deplete resources even faster

4. When houses were hand made from basic materials, houses were small. With the advent of plywood, particle board, vinyl siding, drywall, etc. building houses became cheaper. As a result:
a) People spent less on housing costs
b) People built much larger houses

The correct answer in every case is 'b'. And, of course, I didn't come up with this myself. It is the well known Jeavons Paradox which shows that conservation of a resource through technology and more efficient use results in more consumption of that resource and faster depletion. So the small token bits of conservation of this and that, even if the plan were successful, historically leads to more consumption, not less. Sort of like this: if everyone used one box of recycled trash bags, it would save enough energy to heat 2,500 homes, which, now that energy is that much more available, we will build 30% larger and use even more energy than before.

The reason so many of the cute ideas offered by the tokers lead nowhere is that they do not involve a shift in the paradigm or mindset. It reminds me of the marketing efforts of the tobacco companies in the 60's and 70's. Back then the incidence of adult smoking was well over 90%, non-smokers were in the definite minority. As smoking came to be accepted for the health risk that it is, the companies began marketing cigarettes that were low tar and low nicotine. The methods of quantifying "low" were dubious at best and the actual reduction of substances in the smoke was token. The result? People smoked all the more. After all, it was a reduced and safer cigarette so why not have a few more? As to one type of cigarette having a few micrograms of tar or nicotine less than another, hey, every little bit helps, right?

Some time after this smoking itself fell out of fashion. The question of whether it was better to smoke this or that brand became moot. Smoking itself was bad and foolish. Now of days by some estimates the incidence of smoking among US adults is as little as 15%. The paradigm has shifted.

Facing the realities of our immediate future calls for a shift in the paradigm, a shift in thinking, a shift in the mindset. On one of the blogs where lamers were being upbraided, the blogger described putting up a clothesline in the basement and foregoing the use of the clothes dryer. It was greeted with the usual kudos of how much energy was being saved and if everyone did the same so many barrels of oil would be conserved. I fear the blogger missed the point. The clothesline was a marvelous step in the right direction, not because of the energy it saved which is negligible in the scheme of things if not outright delusional, but rather because it represents a shift in the paradigm. Hanging clothes on a line to dry has seeped into our minds as drudgery, a throw back, admission of failure that we would be reduced to it. But shutting off the clothes dryer and hanging the clothes in on the line quickly dispels that unsubstantiated mental conditioning. It's quite easy, pleasant even, and the results are as good if not superior to the energy intense way.

We are mentally conditioned to think that we would be happier, more comfortable, in a larger over heated and over cooled house. We think prepackaged food is vastly easier to prepare. We think a food processor is a hundred times easier than a knife. Of course this farmstead is on the lunatic fringe. We have experimented with cutting all the firewood we need for heating and cooling with hand tools. It's some more work, to be sure, but not much. Yet in the imagination of the uninitiated, a chainsaw is many hundreds of times less work.

On this farmstead 85% of our food involves zero food-miles and almost all the rest is bought bulk, we use very little electricity and no commercial gas or other fuels. We wear used clothing. We drive bottom feeder vehicles and those only very rarely. Yet how much do we impact global energy and resource use? None, negligible at any rate. The random motion of molecules accounts for more fuel savings that we do in the scheme of things. What we represent is not some quantified amount of energy and resources saved, but rather a complete paradigm shift from the consumerist world.

When we can affect a shift in paradigm, we will generate so much less trash that which type of trash bags we choose is moot. We will reduce the number of rooms and therefore the number of light bulbs to the extent that switching to LED's or florescent is only a small difference. We will choose a place to live and design our living away from personal automobiles to the extent that saving 20% more on transportation fuel is moot.

What the toker often confuses as disparaging remarks from the lamers in reality is a call for a shift in the paradigm rather than just some token and meaningless reduction. The lamer is urging the toker to quit smoking, while the toker is taking out yet another slightly lower tar and nicotine cigarette and protesting, "But every little bit helps, right??"