Mark Gregory Turansky

Lester Brown has an interesting take on the unsustainable economy we live and work within.

http://www.grist.org/article/our-global-ponzi-economy/

He argues, for example, that “expensive” $3/gallon gas does not reflect the true cost of the fuel in our cars.  Mr. Brown believes the cost of gas isn’t just pumping, refining, and shipping gasoline.  It also includes the military cost of protecting oil in a politically unstable region, the costs incurred by climate change, subsidies to energy producers, and the health care costs of we the people breathing polluted air.

We’re overfishing our oceans, overgrazing our pastures, overpumping aquifers, and overpolluting the atmosphere to levels where the earth cannot regenerate.  We are borrowing from the future in ways that an unsustainable in the long term.

This is the very same point made by Thomas Friedman  in “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”   The planet is able to sustain a single American-sized consumption-based economy, which is profligate, wasteful, and dirty.  The problem is that India and China have each created 1 America-sized economy in terms of consumption and pollution and have several more incubating.  All our environment problems are going to get much worse.

A green revolution is just that:  a revolution.  It can’t happen piecemeal.  We need to shift from a consumption-based economy to one that develops sustainable trends.  This is the first time our industrial economy has faced this challenge and it flies in the face of 200 years of history.

If healthcare is hard to fix, I can’t wait to watch this fight develop in Congress and parliaments around the world.

“When I have a dollar to blow on a bottle of water, I buy Perrier!” quipped Robin Williams in his late ’70s stand-up days.

It killed. The audience howled at Williams’ derision of paying a lot of money for something we get nearly for free from the tap, especially when the EPA does a very good job enforcing water quality standards in the country.

Today, bottled water is a $50 billion business globally. We consume copious amounts of energy and fossil fuels to produce, fill, and ship plastic bottles of water while 1/6 of the world’s population (over a billion people) do not have access to reliable potable water.

The math from a recent Fast Company article is particularly illuminating:

If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

Enjoy: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has advocated painting roofs white as a cost saving measure that also reduces the impact of climate change.  The theory is that more heat would be reflected, thereby lowering a building’s cooling costs, which in turn reduces greenhouse gas emissions because we’re using less power to cool the building.

An article (blog entry) on Time magazine’s website says studies have concluded that whitening a roof actually works and can make it 20% more cost effective to cool your house on hot days.  I’d love to see links to the studies, but the physics makes enough sense that I believe it.

You can read the article here:  http://cheapskate.blogs.time.com/2009/07/30/why-isnt-your-roof-white-already/

Here in sunny South Carolina, I spend more on air conditioning in summer than I do on heating in winter.  When my roof is due for an overhaul (and those shingles are getting pretty old), I will be looking into a light colored rooftop.

And I thought writing about composting in a Victory Garden was a good thing to do, but I’ve been easily bested by people in Fiji who created composting toilets because they found their sewage was seeping into the sea and affecting their coral reefs.

The toilets separate liquids and solids, with the liquids becoming a fertilizer after some filtration (it’s sterile, afterall).  The solids are mixed with dry stuff like sawdust and then packed away for several months.  The solids compost over time and become fertilizer, too.

I’ve read before that nitrogen-rich urine makes good fertilizer and also helps a compost pile break down faster, but this is the first I’ve read about people using good ol’ #2 for their garden.

Did you know Americans drive 3 trillion miles annually?  We drove 250 billion miles just in April ‘09.  Pretty amazing.

The article Drive Like Gandhi shows how much we could save nearly 700 million barrels of oil and $34 billion by applying a few simple, conservative, and thrifty tips.

To any parents using this brand of outlet cover:  They suck.  Safety 1st apparently does not test their products with real babies, because my nine month old bested their plug protector with ease.  Turns out, she’s not gifted or special.  There is another video on YouTube of a baby crawling across the floor and easily pulling this plug from the outlet.

Do not buy plug protector / outlet covers from Safety 1st.  Needless to say, we are replacing ours. Now here is the entertaining video:

And here is the other baby I mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OXe-uQZA-E&NR=1

Sesame Street is 40 years old and struggling (ratings-wise) against Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants.  What little bit of Spanish Dora teaches my little daughter is not the same as the impact Sesame Street has had on the world.

Newsweek has a retrospective new article that talks about the importance of Sesame Street.  I can corroborate the facts stated in the article:

“Before Sesame Street, kindergartens taught very little,” says [Joan Ganz Cooney, Sesame Street co-founder and TV producer], “and suddenly masses of children were coming in knowing letters and numbers.” Independent research found that children who regularly watch Sesame Street gained more than nonviewers on tests of letter and number recognition, vocabulary and early math skills.

My daughter isn’t 4 yet, but she’s reading her bedtime books to us now. She turns 4 next month, and for this past month she’s taken over all nighttime reading. I simply help with the hard words and encourage her to sound out the rest.

We’re doing math now, too.  We incorporate fun little games into daily activities that demonstrate addition and subtraction.  For example, we’ll ask her how many strawberries she’ll have left in her bowl if she eats 3 of them.  She gets it.  She understands addition and subtraction.  It’s time to start with multiplication and division.  Maybe I’ll show her how to separate her blocks into groups of 3 and ask her how many groups she has.  It doesn’t matter how I introduce the concepts, so long as it’s fun.

Maria Montessori was right in her approach to learning and her new pedagogical style, but researchers today find there is almost no age requirement to early education.  Maria Montessori originally developed her curriculum for young children aged 3-6, but there are now programs for younger children, too.

My daughter learned sign language as a baby.  The benefits are amazing.  Toddlers can communicate with us long before they can speak.  Knowing their needs are being heard gives them confidence and makes for an easier child.  My daughter once signed “cold” to me in a gas station parking lot during a road trip.  She was only old enough to say a couple of words (”dada”, “mama”, “dog”, and “duck” come to mind), but she knew dozens of signs and this was the first time she used “cold” on her own.  I was stoked! She very clearly communicated her need to me. She wanted to be back in the car!

I read that 18 month old toddlers can only speak 8-10 words but can know up to 75 signs.  We counted my daughter’s vocabulary and the math was spot on.  She knew 8 words and 65 signs, many of which were genuinely useful (others were just fun):  up/down, hot/cold, hungry, sleepy, more, milk, apple, diaper, dog, cat, and many more.

Kids are natural sponges.  They want to learn.  They just need the right environment and encouragement.

I just read a very interesting article in The Atlantic about a seven decade study that followed 268 Harvard undergrads throughout their life with the single question: “What makes us happy?”  (The official study is called the “Harvard Study of Adult Development”).

You can read the full article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness/1

The study found 7 major criteria for a happy life:

• Employing mature adaptations ^*
• Education
• Stable marriage
• Not smoking
• Not abusing alcohol
• Moderate exercise
• Healthy weight

^*Psychoanalytic metaphor of “adaptations,” or unconscious responses to pain, conflict, or uncertainty

I found this passage notable:

Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what [the author] called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.

The purpose of the study was to determine who ages well and is happy and well adjusted.  Being unhappy may lead to drinking or drugs.  Drinking may cause a spouse to leave.  Depression can lead to more unhealthy living or unfulfilled aspirations.  On the other hand, having a good education may offer more opportunities in life to perform good works or be actively engaged.  Maintaining a healthy family life may boost self-esteem and cause people to stay healthy or productive.

It is easy to weave these factors together and understand how they interact and compound each other.

So says the author of the study after decades of research: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

I don’t need a bailout.

I have two credit cards that I use frequently, almost daily, but I do not have any debt.  I agree with Dave Ramsey when he says debt is the most aggressively marketed product in our culture today.  I receive all kinds of solicitations in the mail and I’m encouraged to buy everything “With No Payments for 12 months!”  Still, I have no debt.

The problem isn’t with credit card companies, lenders, marketers or anyone else.  The problem is with you.

I’ve written before in amazement that the average credit card balance is $8,000.   Today, I read a Time.com article that confirms what I’ve long felt:  The Real Problems with Credit Cards is You.

Here are Turansky’s Tips for being debt free:

1. Pay your credit card bill on time every month
2. If you don’t have the cash in the bank right now, don’t buy it.  Don’t assume you’ll get paid before the bill comes due.
3. Live below your means

I can’t say I’ve always followed the rules.  I, too, once had a large credit card balance, but it bothered me.   I had balances on mutiple cards and moved the balances to low teaser rate cards.  The problem finally gnawed at me enough that I simply stopped buying stuff I didn’t need, started eating rice & beans, and began paying major chunks towards the balances every month.

What did I do when my credit balances were $0?  Did I start buying stuff again?  No, I took a look at my car loan:  $5,000 balance.  I started applying my credit card payments to my car loan.  And what did I do when the car loan was $0?  I took a look at my student loans:  $28,000 and a history of minimum payments.  So, I took the credit card payments and the car loan payments and applied them towards the student loan payments.

Rolling your payments into your next debt is Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball.   It’s good stuff.  I learned of Dave Ramsey only recently, long after I figured out the debt snowball, but it’s been fun to listen to him because he’s a breath of fresh air.  There aren’t many forces in the world today that tell you to consume less and get out of debt.

What’s next for me?  The only debt I have today is my mortgage.  I’m attacking it with a vengeance.

It’s easy to get used to a frugal lifestyle after you’ve rejected conspicuous consumption.  No big plastic pieces of junk for us, thanks, but I do love taking my daughter to Jack’s for lunch.  It’s fun and I’ve got money to spend because I’m not in debt.

Maybe!