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The worst kind of planarchists are NATO nations
by Germain Dufour
Spiritual Leader of the Global Community
President
Global Parliament
December 20, 2009

Table of contents

a)     Introduction
b)     USA wars
c)     US invaders vs freedom fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq
d)     The economic and military invasion of nations for energy and power
e)     Global Financial System and the Global Social-Economic Model (GSEM)
f)     Conclusion and recommendations

In this paper a far deeper understanding of who are the worst kind of planarchists on the planet and what the Global Community should do to remediate their destructive activities.

Our world is facing crises of freshwater, food, deforestation, ocean health, and destruction of the global life-support systems. We need leadership in the protection of all our natural resources, in peril because of what we do and what that does to our planet. We are facing a fresh water crisis. We are facing a food crisis. We are facing a crisis over deforestation. And we are facing crises in our oceans. While carbon emissions from fossil fuels pollute the air, land and our oceans, we are facing the climate change crisis. Now is the time to press for leadership.

We are facing social crises all over the world and a surge of violent protests from economic upheaval. The global economic crash has already caused plant closings, foreclosures, bank failures, bankruptcies, and caused many tens of millions to be unemployed across the planet. There is an increased civil unrest and ethnic strife everywhere.

Fighting poverty goes hand in hand with fighting climate change; you can't expect people to starve today to save tomorrow's planet.

We have shown in this paper that several events have contributed to the planetary state of emergency declared by the Global Community:

A)     widespread poverty and hunger in more than half the world population

B)     The global warming of the planet due to human activities

C)     Climate change

D)     Economic and military invasion of nations by the United States and NATO

E)     Absence of fair and democratic global governance at the United Nations and European Union

F)     Our global environment and global life-support systems are threatened by:
 

• any of the above mentioned events
• pollution worldwide
• the U.S.A. military exploded war heads over the bottom of the Indian ocean, and that scenario created a tsunami wave in 2004.  Just a test, said the captain of the submarine that did it.
• the U.S.A. military exploded war heads to melt the Polar Cap and glaciers. All nations capable of such an extreme action against humanity and all life on Earth must be disarmed and pay for the independent global investigation. The United States is the only nation that would profit from the melting of the North Pole and is capable of such an extreme action against humanity and all life. Blood resources. 

But all these crises are due to human activities, our ways of doing business and trade, and to our ways of consuming resources.

Planarchists are the 21st Century anarchists.

Planarchist means this large body of international organizations and groups of people engaged in the large scale destruction of the global life-support systems and of the ecosystems of the planet. They are strongly opposed to the establishment of Global Parliament.

Planarchists are the worst kind people as they hold power and use it without care for life. If there were political parties on the global level, those of the 'left', those of the 'right' and those in between, planarchists would be of the far 'right', professional thieves (economists, bankers, financiers, Wall Street workers, Christians of the political right, IMF organization, World Bank organization, White House and Congress officials, NATO, WTO, NAFTA, FTAA, war industry), professional pirates (not the 'teenager kind' we see today: Somali pirate appears in Kenyan Court). The kind of 'professional piracy' we see happening today is to do with the IMF, the World Bank, the USA White House, and the G8 nations.

Planarchists have no true religion, they dont believe in anything but money and the wealth of the planet for themselves, they have no care for the people they represent except those who work direcly or indirectly for the war industry and the corporate elite, they refuse to acknowledge the trends of the global crisis and its chaotic end and doing something humane to prevent it, and they refuse to accept the global concepts researched and developed by the Global Community for the protection of life on our planet. Because of their wrong way of doing things, our planet is in great danger of losing its most precious asset: life. They are true anarchists, the destructive kind, and they want humanity to follow on their destructive path.

And that is threatening the security of all life on our planet. And that makes the planarchists also terrorists of the worst kind. Terrorists to all life on our planet.

In this paper the most dangerous planarchists on the planet were identified as NATO nations. And as recommendations to the Global Community, more efficient and practical 21st Century institutions were researched and developed to allow survival of our species for the generations to come and take along with us as many as possible other life forms on the planet.

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Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now -- and that number is quickly rising.

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone -- that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.

Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”

A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”

The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:

In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.

The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.

As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.

We face losing everything from 50,000 species a year to the world's best wines. How to put it all in perspective?

If we don't work quickly to curb the effects of climate change we may lose the bird-eating fanged frog. Most of us may not miss that one, but there is an enormous list of species and places we may never see again unless we reverse this crazy climate change ride we've put the earth on. The Natural Resources Defense Council reported that, "The first comprehensive assessment of the extinction risk from global warming found that more than 1 million species could be obliterated by 2050 if the current trajectory continues."

The numbers are virtually impossible to comprehend, especially when you consider that not just individual species, but entire habitats, cities, and cultures may be lost. How to put it all in perspective? Below are eight major features of our planet and our lives whose potential disappearance may inspire action.

1. World's Best Wines

So far the polar bear has become the poster child for climate change, but we may have more luck galvanizing people into action if they know the future of some of world's best wine is at stake. A report from Greenpeace showed that the climatically sensitive process of wine production in France is being disrupted by changing temperatures. "The average annual temperature has significantly increased, leading to major shifts in the wine production calendar," the group reports. "The harvesting season is occurring much earlier than normal and higher temperatures are proving detrimental to the vines. Wines end up having higher sugar levels and alcohol content while retaining less acids -- which means they are unbalanced with an overripe flavor and heavier texture."

Great wines are the result of a combination of climate and terroir, and both are at risk. Apparently this news is spurring food and wine groups in France to demand action in Copenhagen. Greenpeace reported that a coalition of renowned chefs and sommeliers have said that if French wines are to survive, they need "an ambitious deal by developed nations to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2020."

And it's not just French wine. The National Academy of Sciences predicted that climate change could mean the end for California's tasty vinos, too. Hey, if the threat of millions of climate refugees and mass extinction doesn't get people going, maybe alcohol will.

2. 50,000 Rainforest Species a Year

Scientists estimate that we lose 50,000 species a year to deforestation in the world's rainforests. And to make matters worse, the already horrendous environmental effects of deforestation are being amplified by climate change. This is playing out most notably in the Amazon.

"The fear is that there will be a kind of a feedback where trees are cut down, and it gets warmer and drier" in the forest and harder for the trees and other vegetation to grow back, Bob Henson, author of The Rough Guide to Climate Change, told CNN.

Without the Amazon, we lose what scientists call the "lungs" of our planet -- the area where 20 percent of the world's oxygen is produced. Not to mention the thousands of fruits, plants, herbs, medicines and other edibles that come from the region.

Now scientists are saying that one third of the Amazon's trees could be wiped out by modest temperatures rises. "The research, by some of Britain's leading experts on climate change, shows that even severe cuts in deforestation and carbon emissions will fail to save the emblematic South American jungle, the destruction of which has become a powerful symbol of human impact on the planet," the Guardian reported. "Up to 85% of the forest could be lost if spiraling greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control, the experts said. But even under the most optimistic climate change scenarios, the destruction of large parts of the forest is 'irreversible.'"

3. New Orleans

There's a long list of cities in danger of being swamped by rising sea levels, including major population centers like London, New York, Calcutta and Shanghai. But New Orleans, which already sits below sea level, is especially vulnerable. And we all know how good our nation's record is of helping New Orleans deal with catastrophe and its aftermath.

"Scientists say New Orleans and the barrier islands to the south will be severely affected by climate change by the end of this century, with sea level rise and growing intensity of hurricanes. Much of the land mass of the barrier island chain sheltering New Orleans was lost in the 2005 storm," the Guardian reported. "But the extent of the land that will be lost is far greater than earlier forecasts suggest," said Dr. Michael Blum and Professor Harry Roberts.

The two performed a study which found that huge amounts of soil need to be dumped into the Mississippi River Delta, otherwise 5,212 square miles of land in the area could be lost to the ocean and tidal marsh by 2100. "All that remains of New Orleans would probably be the French Quarter and the airport," the Christian Science Monitor reported about the study. "Lake Pontchartrain would lie beneath a vast bay. Along its southernmost reaches, the Mississippi River would remain a river only by virtue of the levees raised to contain it."

4. Pacific Salmon

Salmon on the Pacific coast have had a rough time, thanks to dams, pollution, introduction of nonnative species and other bad decisions by us humans. Now, climate change is causing rising temperatures, which are affecting this cold-water loving species, and decreased precipitation is causing reduced river flows, further threatening salmon. Throw in some ocean acidification and it's a recipe for disaster for salmon populations and those who depend on them. And there are lots who do.

Salmon are a crucial part of the food chain for 150 species, including humans. The fish is a staple in many Native American communities and an economic mainstay for tens of thousand of fishermen in coastal towns.

"Global warming is expected to hit the already warm and dry western U.S. very hard," said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, most of whose members depend on salmon harvests for a large part of their livelihoods. "The science shows that these changes have already begun, and are already affecting our region's valuable salmon runs. Averting this looming disaster should be one of our nation's highest priorities."

5. The Maldives and Tuvalu

While rising seas may threaten one of the United States' most beautiful and culturally rich cities, it's also getting dangerously close to wiping out entire countries, including the island nations of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the Pacific. The Maldives are composed of over 1,000 coral islands and support a huge diversity of marine life, including commercial tuna fisheries. The gorgeous Polynesian country of Tuvalu is one of the smallest in the world and is already looking for other nations to take in its citizens as climate refugees.

The Maldives' first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, spoke at COP15 earlier this week, calling for immediate action to restrain CO2 levels and return them to 350 parts per million, as scientists have recommended:

We are here to save our planet from the silent, patient and invisible enemy that is climate change ... There are those who tell us that solving climate change is impossible. There are those who tell us taking radical action is too difficult. There are those who tell us to give up hope.

Well, I am here to tell you that we refuse to give up hope. We refuse to be quiet. We refuse to believe that a better world isn't possible.

I have three words to say to the doubters and deniers. Three words with which to win this battle. Just three words are all I need. You may already have heard them. Three - Five - Oh. Three - Five - Oh.

6. Glaciers

Glacier National Park is going to have the same draw without the glaciers. When the park was created in 1910 it had 150 glaciers. Today it has only 30, and they're getting smaller.

And it's not the only iconic spot on the verge of losing its icy coat -- both Mount Everest and Mount Kilimanjaro are threatened, too. "It is clear that global warming is emerging as one, if not the, biggest threat to mountain areas," says Roger Payne of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation.

As for Kilimanjaro, National Geographic reports, "The ice fields Ernest Hemingway once described as 'wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun' have lost 82 percent of their ice since 1912--the year their full extent was first measured. If current climatic conditions persist, the legendary glaciers, icing the peaks of Africa's highest summit for nearly 12,000 years, could be gone entirely by 2020."

This is bad news for animals that have adapted to live in these ecosystems and for the businesses that are supported by tourism and climbers. But melting glaciers also mean immediate flooding, following by drought. This is bad news for billions.

Agence France Presse reported this week that melting glaciers in the Himalayas will affect 1.3 billion Asians living downstream in Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan. "Temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years, dramatically accelerating the rate at which glaciers are shrinking," the news outlet reported. "'Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change,' said Prashant Singh, leader of environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign."

7. Coral Reefs

Carbon dioxide emissions are causing the world's oceans to become more acidic, which is a threat to creatures that have "chalky" skeletons (including corals). In order to form their skeletons, they need the water to be saturated with calcium carbonate, but as acidification goes up, saturation goes down. According to Science Daily this poses a risk to one-third of ocean life and the basis of the ocean food chain.

If temperatures rise by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, we are likely to lose 97 percent of our coral reefs. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) recently filed a petition to have 83 species of coral listed under the Endangered Species Act.

SolveClimate reports that, "Since acidification happens at a rate parallel to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide -- oceans absorb about one-third of CO2 -- it's picking up pace. According to CBD oceans director Miyoko Sakashita, coral reefs are likely to be the first major ecosystems widely damaged by the effects of more acidic oceans."

Some of the world's most famous coral reefs include Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which is the world's largest; the Belize Barrier Reef; the New Caledonia Barrier Reef in the South Pacific; the Red Sea Coral Reef; and the Andros, Bahamas Barrier Reef. The reefs are home to an incredible array of biological diversity, next only to rainforests, and also provide vast economic boosts. "Globally, the welfare of 500 million people is closely linked to the goods and services provided by coral reef biodiversity," Science Daily reports.

They are also home to some of the most beautiful sights on Earth.

8. Really Big Bears

Most environmentalists know that "charismatic megafauna" are the ones that capture the hearts of the public and the media. This has catapulted the polar bear to the forefront of our attention, making it the first mammal to be listed as threatened because of climate change. The loss of summer ice in the Arctic has meant shrinking hunting grounds for the bear. They've had to travel farther to find food, decreasing their fat storage, increasing their stress, and causing some to drown as they swim to reach distant ice floes. By 2050, two-thirds of polar bear sub-populations will be gone.

But polar bears aren't the only bears at risk. Changing temperatures are now causing grizzlies to den later in the fall. As a result they're overlapping with hunting season, which is bad news for the bear. But that's not all. Climate change is also affecting their food sources. "Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) seeds are a food resource for grizzly bears in some areas, including Yellowstone. Global warming has led to an increase in whitebark pine blister rust as well as an increase in competing species such as Douglas fir in higher elevations," the Endangered Species Coalition reports. "As whitebark pine and other natural grizzly food resources decline due to global warming, grizzlies may shift from remote high elevation areas to lower elevation human-populated areas, looking for alternative foods. Here, they often encounter humans and our garbage, food and livestock. This causes bears to become conditioned to humans; these human-conditioned bears are often removed or killed by wildlife managers due to safety concerns."

And the List Goes On

There are thousands of other species teetering on the brink of collapse and as many incredible places that will lost, if we don't take action to curb our greenhouse gas emissions and begin mitigation strategies. Later today, we will be able to see what the world's political leaders have agreed to and if it will be enough. As we try to untangle the outcome of the COP15 climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, let's try to keep this list in mind, even though it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what's at stake. When we're talking about preserving ecological diversity, amazing creatures, human lives, and some of the most beautiful places on Earth we need solutions that transcend politics and economics as usual.

The way to lower the quantity of energy required to make and distribute short-lived consumer goods is to make them durable, repairable and upgradable.

As the middle-class daughter of a refugee mother and a Depression-era father, I grew up straddling two worlds. My parents could afford much more than they were willing to buy. Most things that broke could be and were repaired. My German grandmother’s aphorisms lingered in the air: “Waste not, want not,” “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “A stitch in time saves nine.”

By the time my own children were born, America was flooded with cheap and cheaply made goods. So while my parents continued working at the sturdy antique desks they inherited from my grandparents and sleeping beneath a hand-crocheted bedspread, my children and their friends became the first and last owners of a seemingly endless supply of plastic toys and particle-board furniture.

I was part of the transitional generation. Building blocks were still made of wood. Comforters were still filled with down. I recall the meticulously machined pencil sharpeners with “made in West Germany” stamped on their sides that lasted until I lost them. Even the cheap items—the ones “made in Japan”—tended to hold up pretty well.

Now nearly everything is produced in China and made to be discarded. According to a 2008 report by the Economic Policy Institute, the United States imported $320 billion in Chinese goods in 2007. In that year alone, this country imported $26.3 billion in apparel and accessories, $108.5 billion in computers and electronic products, and $15.3 billion in furniture and fixtures from China.

The manufacture, distribution and disposal of an ever-growing mountain of short-lived consumer goods has taken an enormous environmental toll. Annie Leonard’s website “The Story of Stuff,” which has garnered more than 7 million views in less than two years, has helped spread awareness of that cost far beyond the usual environmentalist circles.

We can’t, however, only blame the quantity and quality of Chinese goods for the environmental and other consequences of this transoceanic factory-to-waste stream. For that we can blame the two horsemen of the modern consumer apocalypse: functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

Functional, or planned obsolescence is the purposeful decision by designers and manufacturers to ensure things don’t last, so that consumers must buy new ones. Fashion obsolescence is the related decision to offer new features and aesthetic changes to entice consumers to discard their old items in favor of updated and supposedly better ones.

Ironically, product obsolescence was once seen as the remedy for what ailed our country. Lizabeth Cohen, chair of the History Department at Harvard University and author of A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Vintage, 2003), traces the origins of mass consumption to the period immediately before and after World War II, when a demand-driven economy was seen as the key to our nation’s recovery and prosperity.

“In the 1940s and ’50s, there was a much closer connection between consumer demand and factories and jobs,” Cohen says. “That was a completed circle more than it is today. When people were buying things, they were buying things that were made by American workers.”

The only way to guarantee continued demand was to ensure that people would keep replacing the things they owned. The literature on planned obsolescence makes frequent reference to statements by industry analysts and strategists of that era. “Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption,” retailing analyst Victor Lebow said in 1948. “We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”

This applied to male as well as female consumers, and to styling lines on cars as well as hemlines on skirts. Allied Stores Corporation’s Chairman B. Earl Puckett, speaking to fashion industry leaders in 1950, said, “Basic utility cannot be the foundation of a prosperous apparel industry. We must accelerate obsolescence.” And General Motors’ design chief Harley Earl said in 1955, “The creation of a desire on the part of millions of car buyers each year to trade in last year’s car on a new one is highly important to the automobile industry.”

Business people and politicians weren’t the only ones pushing this idea, Cohen says. “Labor really bought into this package. Purchasing power was the answer to how people would be employed and have a better life. Consumers would fuel the powers of factories that would provide jobs that would put money in peoples’ pockets.”

Since then, Cohen argues, we’ve conflated our concepts of ourselves as good consumers and as good citizens. The idea of consumption as our country’s economic engine continues to this day. Indeed, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush implored Americans to go shopping. And frugal as I am and as green as I try to be, during the recent economic downturn I’ve found myself feeling that every major purchase I make is a perverse kind of civic duty. The notion of the citizen-as-consumer clearly runs deep.

But things have changed since the 1940s and ’50s. “When people were making goods that lasted [back then], they were benefiting from the explosion of global capitalism and the expanding of markets,” Cohen says. “Now that we have this global recession, it’s problematic. Where do these companies go if they are going to build goods that last? How do they profit if they don’t sell new goods? I don’t know the answer to this, but it’s a problem that policy makers, economic planners, labor unions—everybody has to think about.”

A Radically Obvious Idea

Although the greening of the American consumer has fostered some deceptive greenwashing campaigns seeking to capitalize on our good intentions, it has also made it possible for us to make better ecological and economic choices.

A host of clever websites now enables consumers to calculate their own ecological footprints and offer advice on how to reduce the toll. These include:

•MyFootprint.org, where you can find out how many Earths would be necessary if everybody on the planet shared your lifestyle;

•H20Conserve.org, where you can tally your water footprint;

•Wattzon.com, where you can calculate the energy required to sustain your lifestyle.

Some of these calculations become conceptually complex as they try to measure the energy required for the extraction and transportation of raw materials, and the manufacturing, distribution and ultimate disposal of products. It can all get abstract quite quickly, but there’s a far simpler message embedded in all that complexity: Buy stuff that lasts.

Saul Griffith, a 2007 MacArthur Fellow, serial inventor and co-founder of WattzOn, refers to this as “heirloom design”—a term he introduced during a talk at the February 2009 Greener Gadgets conference in New York. The best way to lower the quantity of energy required to manufacture and distribute consumer goods, he argues, is to make those products not only durable, but repairable and upgradable.

Griffith shares this radically obvious idea with Tim Cooper, head of the Centre for Sustainable Consumption at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England, and editor of the forthcoming book, Longer Lasting Solutions (Gower, June 2010). The Centre, which Cooper founded in 1996, conducts research into consumers’ behavior as well as the environmental effects of the choices they make.

Cooper argues for “product life extension”—making things more durable, using them properly, and ensuring they are maintained, repaired, upgraded, and reused. A key obstacle, he says, is the perception (supported by public policies) that higher levels of consumption yield greater happiness. After all, an increase in the GNP is considered healthy for the economy and can only be achieved if consumers increase their spending.

Cooper calls for “slow consumption,” the consumer purchasing equivalent of the Slow Food movement (which seeks to build consumer awareness and appreciation of food and its connection to community and the environment). “The issue to address is what kind of economy is going to be sustainable in its wider sense — economically, environmentally and socially,” he says. “The current economy is not sustainable. The sheer throughput of energy and materials cannot be continued.”

If products were more durable, Cooper argues, some jobs lost due to the decrease in consumption would be offset by the addition of more highly skilled maintenance and repair jobs. And whereas the lost jobs might be overseas, the repair jobs would be local. “We need to look at new business models that move away from manufacturing and selling more and more products,” he says. Such models might include “products that last longer but have associated services attached to them, so that the supplier guarantees to maintain, repair and upgrade the products for a certain period.”

This might be a hard sell for consumers, however. Cooper cites the results of a survey in which British homeowners were asked what they considered the disadvantages of longer-lasting appliances. Twenty-three percent stated concerns about price, while 30 percent said they feared these products would become “out of date.” He found that consumers were often disinclined to have products repaired because of the high cost of labor compared with the low cost of replacement, thanks to the quantity of consumer goods manufactured in countries with low wages and lax environmental regulations.

When I mentioned this conundrum to one of my ecologically conscious friends, she sheepishly admitted she had just discarded her old DVD player because the repair estimate was higher than the cost of a new one. “The present economic system does give an advantage to the current economy,” Cooper says, “and for the consumer, replacement is often the cheaper option.” That would have to change.

Close Encounters of the Durable Kind

Most of us have had an heirloom design or product life extension epiphany at one point or another.
Years ago, along with an untold number of other caffeine addicts, I succumbed to the then-ubiquitous ads for Gevalia coffee. Buy a couple pounds of beans and get a free drip coffeemaker. That became the first of a steady stream of plastic automatic drip coffee machines of various makes that took up residence on our countertop, none of which lived to see their second birthdays. Each time one broke, my husband and I found that the features available to us had multiplied. We could buy coffeemakers with built-in bean grinders, brew strength controls and programmable timers. We had been cornered by a combination of functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

Then we discovered what any self-respecting Italian coffee drinker knew all along: A $30 cast aluminum stovetop espresso maker lasts forever. Replace the rubber gasket every couple of years, and you’ll stay happily caffeinated for life. We bought a used ’70s model on eBay several years ago and have been using it every day ever since.

Not everything older is better, of course. Visit your local thrift store, and you’ll be confronted by an exhibit of the unnecessary and the obsolete. Did anybody ever need a bread machine, an ice cream maker or an Atari game console?

And yet, thrift stores are also the repositories of time-tested items. The garments sold there are Darwinian success stories. They’ve survived the wrath of washers and dryers and still have significant life left in them. The dishes may be mismatched, but they are dishwasher and hand-washer safe. And I’m convinced that this is where the world’s missing teaspoons come to rest. If heirloom design has a line of boutiques, this is it.

Heirloom design has its adherents in the design and manufacturing worlds, too.

Patagonia, based in Ventura, Calif., was founded by avid mountain climbers who began selling clothing to support their barely profitable climbing-hardware business. From the start, the company was grounded in concern for the environment, and was an early adopter of several socially and environmentally responsible corporate policies, from donating a percentage of profits to environmental groups to offering employees on-site daycare.

Patagonia products are designed to last, and when they don’t hold up, the company stands behind them. Its “ironclad guarantee” states: “If one of our products does not perform to your satisfaction, return it to the store you bought it from or to Patagonia for a repair, replacement or refund.”

Sixteen years ago, my older brother gave me a Patagonia fleece jacket his children had outgrown. He purchased it around 1987 for his oldest daughter, who wore it until she outgrew it and handed it down to her younger sister. When she outgrew it, my daughter wore it, and then my son. At some point, the zipper broke, so I sent it to Patagonia, which repaired it at no cost. The jacket never wore out. That’s heirloom design.

The alternative to durability and repair is remanufacturing. After more than two decades in the modular carpet business, Ray Anderson, founder and chair of Interface Inc. of Lagrange, Ga., heard a talk by environmentalist Paul Hawken and was inspired to green up his company. In addition to other ecological efforts on the materials and production sides, in 1995 the company introduced an “evergreen lease” arrangement, essentially turning carpet into a service instead of a product. By taking responsibility for retrieving and remanufacturing carpet no longer wanted by its customers, Interface was able to keep used carpet out of the waste stream and reduce the need for new materials.

Unfortunately, the leasing concept proved complicated and expensive. The company eventually gave up on it but continued to aggressively pursue discarded carpet—both its own and that of other companies—so that the materials could be reclaimed and remanufactured. Andrew King, a visiting fellow in mechanical engineering at the University of Bristol and consultant with the Centre for Remanufacturing and Reuse, notes that remanufacturing is preferable to recycling because it preserves most of a product’s embodied energy while bringing it back to its original quality. And it creates jobs.

Here’s the kicker: By emphasizing product durability, service and remanufacturing, both of these companies have earned extra dividends in the form of corporate image and customer loyalty.

In Search of Solutions

The question, then, is what would it take to overcome our dependence on cheap goods? Even though obsolescence is no longer a boon for this country’s manufacturers, cheap products are essential for consumers who can barely afford to put food on the table. If a durable coffeemaker costs twice as much as a breakable one but lasts four times as long, it’s still less attractive to someone who doesn’t have the additional cash up front.

Policy would have to play a key role in reversing this unfortunate check-out counter calculation. Legislation on extended producer responsibility (EPR), requiring manufacturers to account for the full life-cycle of their products from extraction to disposal, could affect consumer culture by making disposable items more expensive and reviving an interest in repair.

Such legislation is complicated, however, by the ongoing pressure to protect industrial production. “Legislation tends to get watered and watered until it gets to be almost a hindrance to these breakthrough changes because in order for Big Business to buy into it, it has to become easy for them,” King says. EPR legislation would only be effective if it created a financial incentive for industry to produce more durable goods and for consumers to favor them.

Consumers are certainly influenced by price, but Cooper holds out hope that they also can be persuaded by having more of a connection to the objects they purchase—something referred to as “emotionally durable design.” If that sounds too touchy-feely for a coffee machine, consider the difference between a pair of shoes custom-made for you by your local cobbler and an off-the-rack pair from the shoe store. Which would you be more likely to clean, resole and repair?

Part of the solution might also be having more products available without the burden of ownership. Tool rentals, car-sharing and even laundromats diminish the number of products that need to be manufactured and place a premium on durability and longevity. (This can even be done informally. We’ve shared a lawnmower with one of our neighbors for years.) “We should have much more attachment to certain products but for others we should see that they are services,” King says.

Cooper warns, however, that rental can backfire in some areas, such as electronics. “The danger of the rental model with technology is that as advances are made, people who rent them might upgrade even more quickly than they would at the moment,” he says. But even electronics could have a smaller ecological footprint if they could be updated through the use of modular design instead of being casually discarded. “The trick will be to understand what does and what doesn’t change,” King says.

King sees consumers playing a large role in putting pressure on industry to make the necessary changes. “The real issue is creating the demand,” he says. “I work with a large number of large multinationals. When they assign their designers to the challenge—design this for two lives—they rise to the challenge. They just start to think in a different way.”

Ultimately, environmental and economic sustainability won’t be possible until we become less dependent on consumer spending, which currently comprises 70 percent of the U.S. economy. We can’t just keep churning out, buying and disposing of stuff.

“We can diversify the range of goods that are underpinning our economy and providing us with jobs and some prosperity,” Cohen says. “It doesn’t just have to be commodities for the individual consumer. That would be the best hope.”

The protestors say that the environmental advocacy group has aligned itself with corporate interests whose goals for reducing emissions are far too limited.

November 30, 2009 - A phalanx of NYPD officers on foot and aboard several police vans surrounded the marchers as they walked up Sixth Avenue in the cold rain on Monday, at times pushing people off of the street and back on to the sidewalk. A group of roughly 30 climate activists, joined by award-winning NASA scientist and outspoken climate change expert, James Hansen, chanted as they went: "The earth, the earth, the earth is on fire. We don't need no cap and trade, the market is a liar."

Was it a satellite Goldman Sachs trading office that brought the greens out to the barricades? The Manhattan offices of a large and influential oil or gas company? The downtown penthouse of a Big Coal mogul? Nope. The soggy climate activists were camped out in front of the headquarters of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the largest environmental advocacy groups in the country.

The activists accuse the NRDC of collaborating with polluters through its involvement with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, or U.S. CAP, which is billed on its website as "an alliance of major businesses and leading climate and environmental groups that have come together to call on the federal government to enact legislation requiring significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions." Members of the group include such corporate heavyweights as The Dow Chemical Company, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, General Electric, Shell, Alcoa, BP America and Caterpillar. Other environmental groups involved in the group include Environmental Defense, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and World Resources Institute.

U.S. CAP played a pivotal lobbying role in drafting the massive Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House which, while calling for modest emission reductions, will also create an exponentially lucrative carbon trading market. And many of the largest financial institutions that have been deemed "too big to fail" (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America) are expected to cash in on what some activists have begun to call a new system of "climate profiteering."

Outside of the nondescript office building on 20th Street where the crowd eventually assembled, the NYPD set up a row of metal barricades around the entrance in an effort to keep the protesters away from the front entrance. For every three members of the crowd, there was roughly one police officer, with a total of three police vans and three small interceptor vehicles parked in a line out front.

"You have to be a little flattered by that," said Monica Hunken, a protest organizer who spoke to the crowd on a soapbox on the sidewalk. "They even brought out their pen, it's pretty heavy-handed." That contrasted with the police activity at the launch point for the march -- the Bank of America branch on 17th St and 5th Avenue -- where the group spoke out about the bank's investments in mountaintop removal and oil and gas prospecting. No such safety precautions were in evidence at that site.

The demonstration in Manhattan was one of over a dozen organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice and organizers of BeyondTalk.net, a website that rallies individuals to commit civil disobedience in the name of climate change action. At least one member of the New York contingent did just that, when he attempted to lock himself to the front doors of the building.

"Stopping coal starts with the NRDC," yelled out Robert Jereski, co-founder of New York Climate Action Group, as he was handcuffed and hustled in to a paddy wagon parked up the street. Jereski was eventually charged with "obstruction of governmental administration" and disorderly conduct.

"I stand here at the NRDC building with a heavy heart. I never thought that in 2009 I'd be standing here decrying their stance on climate," said Charles Komanoff, co-director of the Carbon Tax Center. "What NRDC is championing as a big step forward is actually a baby step forward. NRDC is on the wrong side, cutting deals with their pals in business and finance."

"Come back NRDC," yelled out a voice in the crowd. Overall the lament was in line with much of the sentiment of the demonstration, as many participants described their action as an expression of tough love rather than outright opposition. They say that the NRDC has aligned itself with a broader coalition of corporate interests whose goals and benchmarks for reducing carbon emissions are drastically below what is necessary according to prevailing climate science.

"We appreciate the work that the protesters are doing," said Jenny Powers, National Media Director for NRDC, in response. "Overall I think we're very supportive of any opportunity to bring more attention to this issue. We definitely view it as all of us as being united in the same goal. We're on the same track, we just deploy different strategies."

Although nobody from NRDC stepped outside to discuss the issues with those at the barricades, Powers did say that Dr. Hansen and Mr. Komanoff were invited via email to a meeting with NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner.

After the demonstration petered out, I spoke with NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen about the meager turnout and the prospects for major policy change going forward.

Hansen, when not publishing and speaking at academic Fora, is no stranger to disobedient protests. This June he was arrested with 30 others during a protest against mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.

"It's an indication of where we are, it's a really screwy situation," said Hansen, wearing a white Gilligan-style hat to ward off the rain. "But despite the small numbers, it's becoming more widely recognized that cap and trade just won't work. Country by country doesn't work. The president should ask the national academy of Scientists to give him a report. Instead he's getting a 2000 page bill written largely by polluters. We have governments acknowledge that we have a planet in peril, but they're not doing anything."

As for the unusual tableau of a group of environmental activists demonstrating outside the offices of an organization peopled by environmental activists, Rocco Ferrer, had an interesting take on the dynamic. "It's like NRDC used to be Lou Reed," said Ferrer, a young environmental activist and fashion consultant who participated in the demonstration. "But now they're more like the Jonas Brothers."