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The Clean and Green Club, February 2020

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, February 2020
This Month’s Tip: An Environmentalist’s Observations from South India
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Full of contradictions and mixed messaging, India is a confusing place for an environmentalist. I spent 24 days in the four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry (a/k/a Pudicherry), Kerala, and Karnataka last month. Here’s some of what I noticed:

Ambience

Despite numerous signs about controlling litter, reducing plastic waste, and conserving water, litter is an enormous problem. We’ve visited more than 50 countries including many parts of Latin America, and we’ve never seen littering so ingrained in the culture. Garbage is a constant, some of it quite gross and long-term. The piles are kept half-manageable by scavenging goats, cows, and crows. And by a cultural norm about squeezing the most use out of any item, so things like plastic bottles and bags often get reused (and trucks get wildly overloaded, and the roads are way over capacity). Many stores give out cheap polyester totes that can be reused, though I didn’t see many people bringing their bag into a store. I did see constant trash fires, including burning plastic bottles (extremely toxic!).

Driving, Walking, and Exercise

The most challenging part of India for us, and the most different, was the constant terror on the roads. We are New York City natives and have traveled extensively in developing countries—but nothing prepared us for India. It is the only place I can remember where we abandoned a planned destination because we reached a street that we simply couldn’t cross.

  • Lane markings in urban areas are not even suggestions; they are nothing more than wishes.
  • The culture is to honk whenever you round a blind curve or pass another vehicle.
  • Sidewalks typically exist, but too often, they may as well not—either blocked by huge piles of debris or cratered with deep holes (or both).
  • Walking isn’t valued. In most of the national parks and scenic landscapes we visited, walking is tightly restricted to small areas, with very few public trails. There is a trekking (hiking) culture for tourists, but mostly the excursions are half a day or longer—and may include armed guards to keep participants safe from wild animals. Cities often have parks and botanical gardens, some with a lake and surrounding walking trail. Otherwise, casual 1- or 2-hour hikes are rare. We occasionally found a low-traffic road to walk along in rural areas.
  • Most people will get around on a bicycle (usually a very ancient one), a motorcycle, car, tuk-tuk (3-wheeled motorcycle taxi), or the super-crowded public bus. The number of people using a vehicle will often be far more than rated. Three people on a motorcycle, a dozen in a tuk-tuk or small pickup truck bed, maybe a hundred on or hanging from a 40-seat bus. The three largest cities we visited, Chennai, Bangalore, and Kochi, all had metro systems that appeared clean, modern, and popular (we didn’t actually get to try one out). About a third of the motorcycle drivers wore helmets, but a much smaller percentage of their passengers.

Energy and Pollution

In other environmental issues, India uses a lot of mass-scale hydro, which is good on lowering petroleum use and carbon footprint but floods large areas behind a dam and disrupts local culture and ecosystems. Most of these seem to be several decades old. India is also known to use a lot of coal (although we didn’t happen to pass any coal plants).

Despite numerous emission testing stations, many vehicles belch smoke. Diesel is the preferred fuel for both cars and trucks, and the older engines were for the most part not well maintained. Our driver kept his ventilation system on recirculate almost the entire time, except occasionally on quiet country roads. Air pollution is extreme in the cities and disturbingly high even in many smaller villages.

We saw a few solar PV installations; solar is more popular for heating water. We passed one very large wind farm.

Food

Any medium sized city has dozens of pure-vegetarian restaurants, and small villages will have one or two at least. The food was savory and rich, using lots of super-fresh cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, chilis, curry leaves, coconut, turmeric, and other ingredients. The “veg meal” lunch was often an incredible bargain, including between 7 and 20 or so different foods in small portions surrounding a big heap of white rice, with refills available. In the local-oriented restaurants in South India, the meal is served on a banana leaf and eaten with your fingers, using bread or rice to pick up the food if it’s saucy, or eating it directly if it’s more solid. It’s a good idea to wipe down the leaf first with a few drops from your water bottle (bring your own or buy one with your meal). Many restaurants will bring a fork or spoon if you ask, or if they anticipate your desire.

We assumed that almost all of this bounty was not organic. We did see organic items in some stores, and also found a few stores that focused on organic—but few restaurants.

We avoided raw unpeeled fruits and vegetables and unboiled tap water as much as possible, bringing our own water bottles and refusing ice in any drinks. Some dishes contained raw cilantro or onion, or even shaved carrots; we did our best to eat around them. I once sent back a fresh pomegranate juice that was obviously diluted. We also took vitamin C and activated charcoal daily, and for the first week, an immune booster daily as well. And pretty much every day, we had at least one probiotic, usually a no-ice lassi/lessi (yogurt drink). We used an herbal, alcohol-free hand sanitizer frequently. And we never ate street food. Even so, we both experienced some very minor gastrointestinal issues.

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Another Recommended Book: All Hell Breaking Loose
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All Hell Breaking Loose, by Dr. Michael T. Klare (Metropolitian Books (Henry Holt), 2019)

 
While it may go against intuition, senior US military leaders may be among our strongest allies in dealing with climate change. 

In his 12th book on the intersection of resource and security issues, war and peace expert Klare makes a compelling case for why climate issues remain central in military planning even during the climate-scoffing Trump era. The military deals in reality, not 
political grandstanding—and the reality of the past few decades has been fraught with high-intensity natural disasters (hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, desertification, etc.), disease pandemics spreading rapidly around the world (pp. 107-111, and as the Chinese coronavirus is doing even as I write this), global migrations of people who find themselves without survival resources at home, and climate-related global unrest. All of this results in damage to infrastructure from food and water delivery systems to military bases themselves.

The military is not standing by idly. It has produced plenty of planning reports and taken action steps focused on a three-pronged strategy (p. 234), has made major progress on lowering its own enormous carbon footprint (pp. 219-220) and flooding risk that many of its facilities face (1 meter sea level rise could incapacitate 56 of the US’s domestic bases and many more in other lands, p. 181), and is preparing to deal with climate consequences on many fronts simultaneously while still focusing on its core mission of combat readiness.

Any time the military responds to a disaster, it takes away resources from something else. When faced with a series of disasters at the same time or before the relief mission of the previous one is complete, such as the 2017 quadruple whammy of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria and the burning of California (p. 59), the military’s ability to respond is stretched thin. What happens if there’s a political, resource, or immigration crisis at the same time (pp. 117-119)?

Klare lives one town over from me and I attended a talk he gave at a local bookstore. While he skirts this in the book, in his talk (November 18, 2019, Broadside Books, Northampton, MA), Klare was quite emphatic that the military’s willingness to roll up their sleeves and deal with the problem rather than be bound by the president’s skepticism provided powerful leverage for climate activists: when we discuss climate change as a national security issue, we can build common cause with conservative climate deniers who care very deeply about military readiness and security but don’t care about things like endangered species. As someone who has worked in coalition with people I deeply disagree with on various issues, I can tell you this is very powerful. Once we find the points of agreement, we can amplify and expand them, but let’s start in the areas where we already agree.
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Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good–creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
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