And now for a word on the environment.

Appropriate for this trip I have been reading Jared Dimond´s second book Collapse. His basic argument is that societies collapse because of a dangerous cocktail of environmental degradation and population overgrowth. The question that pops up in each area he covers is the question ¨why, if there societies resources were dwindling did the society keep operating in the same way?¨ He gives numerous examples of how very smart intelligent people make obvious dumb decisions. While I believe that many people in the US and around the world are working to alleviate the massive environmental destruction that industrialization, population growth, improved quality of life and the desire to drive big cars has had on our natural resources, I also think we need to reinforce why we need to downsize.

I think it is hard to become accustom to a standard of living, recognize that it is destructive and then take active measures to change that life style. If it was easy, everyone (including the guy sitting next to me) would stop smoking, watch less TV, eat less wheat, sugar, coffee, grow their own food, give more hugs, stop paying pharmaceutical companies egregious amounts of money, build cities that were entirely walkable and made of all local resources and hold politicians and businesses accountable when they are being wack posers. But I drive too much and the guy sitting next to me likes to smoke, so we all have something to work on.

What has been instructive to me in Ecuador is becoming acutely aware of the increasingly complicated tangled relationships between the Global North and Global South ( First World/Third World, Developed and Developing Countries). I wake up in the morning, walk out-side and drive my car to work. I do not see any oil pipe lines threading through my homeland rainforest, nor do I feel fear that I will have to decide between selling my land to oil prospectors or feed my kids. I am sufficiently removed from the process. That is the first problem, my everyday reality is completely reliant on thousands of invisible moving parts.
I push a button my computer turns on, I don´t sit and think or thank the guys in some far off country that mined the metals that ensure that the thing works. I do curse a lot when it doesn´t work.

Or lets take something more benign, because so many of my friends are hip to the oil issues. Let´s take shrimp, who doesn´t like a shrimp cocktail now and then. Shrimp are another major Ecuadorian export to the US; oil, shrimp, bananas and flowers are the biggies. Shrimp farms account for the massive destruction of the Mangroves on the cost. Mangroves are carefully woven ecosystems that are responsible for housing hundreds of species of marine life along with the bonus of being erosion control. Like many resource extraction ventures, unless there is a rapidly renewable resource or conditions of sustainability are imposed from the beginning, resources become exhausted and the business is no longer viable. This has already happened on Ecuador´s coast and instead of businesses saying, ¨ok, well our shrimp farm needs to close, we should probably replant the mangroves and restock the fish and marine life¨, they up and leave. That leaves people who formally lived off the marine life, who then became dependant on the shrimp farms for income, without either.

Banana Republics are infamous propagators of environmental and social destruction because they take fertile lands with knowledgeable farmers who have sustained many crops on their lands and turn the land fallow and the people into virtually indentured servants. I am not going to go into a lengthy explanation here but if you want more info I encourage you to read: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koppel.

OK, but lets keep this close to home. Say you have created a life style where everything you need is in biking distance, you never use plastic, you hate shrimp, you prefer native grasses to roses, detest bananas and besides your a nationalist and don´t care about other countries. Well, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil are responsible for care taking for the Amazon, which in turn is responsible for a third of all oxygen we breath. Its pretty cool that as we have started moving towards more of a globalized capitalism these countries haven´t started demanding compensation for our oxygen intake. Ecuador, is also a country hinging between developed and developing, which means that a lot of its people are still immigrating. And we all know how much people in the US love immigrants. When we (I use we because it is the consumers in tandem with the businesses and governments that create a problem, because we can demand better business practices and better government regulations), so when we tear apart the rain forests to construct roads for pipelines, or pull out mahogany trees hundreds of years old to build our desks, or eat shrimp from farms that are tearing out mangroves, we are destabilizing land that makes it possible for people to sustain themselves in their homeland.

When I read things like this, or worst, when I have first hand experience I usually feel sufficiently paralyzed, which is of course not the point. We are here to enjoy life and live well. I believe that we have the opportunity everyday to make small impacts:

• acknowledging our own beliefs, desires and attitudes that have adverse impacts on others (vague yes, but when we become part of a conversation when we own our imperfections)
  
• educating ourselves on where our food is coming from
  
• spending a little more money on consumables that are produced in sustainable ways (and this means getting familiar with the business and certification standards that are actually making a significant impact)
• recycling, not just in the blue bin outside but looking at what you are about to trash and try and imagine another use for it (i.e. cleaning your sandwich bags, re-purposing old carpet)
  
• getting comfortable on public transport, bikes and foot (my biggest problem)
• the way we vote
  

Then there are the moments where we have an opportunity to make a really big impact:

• The decision to have a small family of maybe just you and your partner or only having one child. Population growth in the First World is one of the biggest problems we are facing. If every person in the world had the standard of living as those in the US we would need the resources of 6 earths.
• Buying, building and furnishing a house.
• The place we work, and what kind of professional culture we push for
• If we are endowed with some money, how that money is invested or donated
• Minimize or stop traveling by jet plane
• When we start moving all of our energy into building a better world and stronger communities
  

I stand on no pedestal as I say these words, I am probably just as responsible for trees being felled on some endangered species last nesting spot as the next guy. I just would feel completely soulless to have come out of this beautiful country without acknowledging that both this trip and my life back home is far from the ¨leave no trace¨ philosophy no matter how many ecohotels I stay in. My public commitment coming out of this trip is that I need to drive less. I was profoundly impacted by the beauty of the jungle here, as you will shortly read and part of that was coming face to face with some ugly realities of oil extraction. I will also be making a donation to an organization that works to reforest areas and create alternative incomes for indigenous people impacted by oil production. You are welcome to join me in either of those commitments.

Lastly, I want to leave you more inspiring news from the political front. Ecuador´s President Correa fired his two top defense ministers signaling massive reforms on the defense front. He sited the military being too entrenched by the CIA as the primary reason. My last major trip involved first hand encounters with a country severely impacted by the CIA. This is a hugely exciting symbol of the kind of change many have been working on for decades.