Eco Brooklyn » sustainable

The Last Farm

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 02:59:46 +0000

Here is a poignant 17 minute film about an old man on an isolated farm in Iceland. His wife dies and he buries himself with her instead of going to an old people’s home in the city. He cannot bear to live without his two loves: his wife and the nature around him. It is a story of love and nature.

define: sustainable

sus·tain·a·ble/səˈstānəbəl/

Adjective:

Able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
(esp. of development, exploitation, or agriculture) Conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.

There is an irony in the current craze to be sustainable. In the end nothing is sustainable. If something is alive then by definition it must eventually die.

What is it that we really want with all this green hoopla? Honestly. We want to stay alive as humans. All of a sudden we have realized that we’ve been pissing in our own food pot and if we don’t change things we will die.

It is unfair for me to say “we” since I can’t speak for everyone. In fact I am not even speaking for myself. I have a deep love for nature, not the romantic appreciation scenic beauty, but the love of stepping in swamp mud, the feeling of unknown creatures squirming between my toes, and then later the crackly sound of dry mud on my skin.

The love of life and death and everything in between we call existence. I love the mucus of life because it is from it’s primordial fluid that I drink. And I am not the only one.

So when I say “we” I mean as a society, as policy makers, as corporations, as a collective human agenda. We have realized that we need to “conserve ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.”

Because without natural resources society as we know it would come to a grinding halt. Remember those pictures of communist stores, empty shelves with maybe an old cabbage? That is what happens when there are no more resources to plunder.

You can’t have Walmart without them.

As a society we must be sustainable. Unsustainable societies, well, die.

There is this premise in the sustainability movement that humans have a place in the world, that if we just acted more….sustainably…..then we would find that place and things would be nicely balanced. Dolphins, spotted owls and humans would all live harmoniously together forever.

Is there a harmonious place on this planet for the killer monkey?

The sustainability movement will guide governments and corporations away from the cliff. We will not plunder ourselves into extinction because if there is one thing humans do well, it is survival. And society will pat itself on the back.

But the world as a whole that is made up of many parts, humans being one of those parts, is over. Nature, if it exists at all, will be man made or man controlled, for the benefit of man’s survival.

Like the American Indian whose life was spared by the white man, nature will live in penned estates called parks and sanctuaries, watered down versions of their past that are often overrun by tourists.

Outside of those areas nature will be designed to meet our needs: fabricated recreation parks like Central Park, farms for food and fuel etc.

Here and there nature will act like dandelions in sidewalk cracks, eking out an existence until they are eradicated, but certainly not in their own territory.

Like the only known wolf in California, OR7 , nature will be (is) a stranger in it’s own home.

Pessimistic? Maybe as a vision for the whole world. But as an observation of many parts of the current world it is simple fact. I’ve seen over 40 countries in the planet and this is what I see on an increasing level without much sign of it changing direction.

Note:

@NYFarmer tweeted this comment:

Read ur blog on last farmer. Here is my farm area wild and pretty:

Bringing Passivhaus to Harlem

Dan Hunter — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:41:41 +0000

Check out this great article about our Eco Brooklyn’s Passive House in Harlem. GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a great online source for building, designing, and remolding green homes, sent Richard Defendorf to our Harlem site to check out our work. Read his write-up of all the techniques we used to seal our passive house!

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-news/bringing-passivhaus-harlem

College Sustainability Initiatives

Debbie Pierce — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:37:12 +0000

As a New York Green Contractor, here at EcoBrooklyn we focus mainly on one aspect of reaching sustainability, and that is by green building. But of course, this is just one way to approach sustainability. Colleges for instance, are trending towards setting up sustainability initiatives. They generally include some specific measures that will make them more “green”, such as pledging to use biodiesel in all campus buses, or promising to spit out 30 research papers that are related to sustainability.

We looked at local Brooklyn College and the University of Michigan. These two schools were chosen based on their differing sizes, settings, and regions. Michigan is a very large school in a small city in the Midwest. Michigan recently started the Graham Institute, which pays students and professors to work on sustainability projects. They also have Planet Blue, which is more of a University wide program that includes promises like reducing carbon emissions 25% by 2025 (25 is a nice number).

Brooklyn College does not have the huge programs and institutions that Michigan does, but they do have a 10-year plan, which includes a pledge to reduce carbon emissions 30% by 2017. Brooklyn College is collaborating with PlaNYC as well as many other organizations across the city. BC also has a sustainability roundtable for students and faculty to engage in.

Although these approaches are very different, there is not an obvious winner. If you would like more information on either school, here are some links: http://www.graham.umich.edu/, http://sustainability.umich.edu/, http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/spotlite/sustainability/index.html. Or if you would like to start a debate, go ahead!

Eco Brooklyn is a member of Co-op America

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:09:59 +0000

Eco Brooklyn is a member of Co-op America. They are a great ordanization full of resources. Their tag line is: Economic Action for a Just Planet.

From their web site:

Co-op America is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1982.

Our mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.

Our Vision

We work for a world where all people have enough, where all communities are healthy and safe, and where the bounty of the Earth is preserved for all the generations to come.

What Makes Co-op America Unique

* We focus on economic strategies—economic action to solve social and environmental problems.
* We mobilize people in their economic roles—as consumers, investors, workers, business leaders.
* We empower people to take personal and collective action
* We work on issues of social justice and environmental responsibility. We see these issues as completely linked in the quest for a sustainable world. It’s what we mean when we say “green.”
* We work to stop abusive practices and to create healthy, just and sustainable practices.

Eco Brooklyn is a member of Northeast Sustainable Energy Association

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:52:13 +0000

The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association
really tries to see the connection between energy and people. I think they do great work and am happy to support them as a business.

Life is all about energy. In our daily lives we try to live a sustainable life, i.e. we try to stay alive on an ongoing basis. That is what sustainable means. To be able to do it on an ongoing basis.

So sustainable energy means that you can use the energy on an ongoing basis. Oil is running out. It is thus not sustainable. NESEA is doing good work in supporting sustainable energy.