For the next month we will be in Sumatra Indonesia touring coffee plantations, exporter warehouses and various other locals to trace the developed world consumption of coffee back to the producers. Here we will explore the similarities of our challenges and hopes, the diversity of values and expectations. This project is an extension of the concept of Reproduction over Production. How does this idea fare in the face of some tight economic and social realities?
For the full story as it unfolds check out our blog:
Sumatra or Bust
Showing posts with label Sumatra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sumatra. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Coffee, Cinnamon, Paper and Orangutans, what do they all have in common?
Reproduction over Production...is it only a dream?
What does this mean?
This is where a society produces only as much product, uses only as many resources as can be reproduced or renewed readily.
Our current capitalist economic system has been borrowing from the future for centuries. We've cut down our old growth forests, sterilized our soil, polluted our oceans and air, all in the name of profit. Money.
Nothing wrong with that as long as these resources last. They are our natural capital and need to be accessible on some level for profit. This has always worked because our world population was relatively small and the level of our resource usage has never been greater than the ability of the Earth to renew itself.
Not anymore.
The current economic model will lead to our destruction unless the paradigm shifts.
This is an interesting time to be alive. It is on par with the shift during the 15 century that occurred in the scientific world with the help of Francis Bacon. He created a methodology, the scientific method, that pioneered a inductive way of thinking. It changed the way people thought, the fundamental way they looked at things. it ushered in the scientific era.
Our wealth in the developed world insulates most of us from the hard edges of this type of change.
We don't see first hand the dwindling limits of the world's resources.
We don't experience first hand the consequences.
We can't really relate to the reality of this process because our societal systems support and protect most of us.
I'm on my way to Sumatra, Indonesia to visit coffee cooperative, Orangutan infested rain forest, illegal Palm Oil plantations, and cinnamon orchards popping up inside preserve boundaries.
I want to look at the edges of this change and see first hand the issues, complexity and the people. How are the people coping? What are their needs and how might I, as a great consumer, help them? Can we in the developed world shift our habits enough to include these people in our greater vision of a sustainable, reproductively rich world?
http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/orangutan.html
What does this mean?
This is where a society produces only as much product, uses only as many resources as can be reproduced or renewed readily.
Our current capitalist economic system has been borrowing from the future for centuries. We've cut down our old growth forests, sterilized our soil, polluted our oceans and air, all in the name of profit. Money.
Nothing wrong with that as long as these resources last. They are our natural capital and need to be accessible on some level for profit. This has always worked because our world population was relatively small and the level of our resource usage has never been greater than the ability of the Earth to renew itself.
Not anymore.
The current economic model will lead to our destruction unless the paradigm shifts.
This is an interesting time to be alive. It is on par with the shift during the 15 century that occurred in the scientific world with the help of Francis Bacon. He created a methodology, the scientific method, that pioneered a inductive way of thinking. It changed the way people thought, the fundamental way they looked at things. it ushered in the scientific era.
Our wealth in the developed world insulates most of us from the hard edges of this type of change.
We don't see first hand the dwindling limits of the world's resources.
We don't experience first hand the consequences.
We can't really relate to the reality of this process because our societal systems support and protect most of us.
I'm on my way to Sumatra, Indonesia to visit coffee cooperative, Orangutan infested rain forest, illegal Palm Oil plantations, and cinnamon orchards popping up inside preserve boundaries.
I want to look at the edges of this change and see first hand the issues, complexity and the people. How are the people coping? What are their needs and how might I, as a great consumer, help them? Can we in the developed world shift our habits enough to include these people in our greater vision of a sustainable, reproductively rich world?
http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/orangutan.html
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