What Exactly is Austere?

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary tagged austerity as its Word Of The Year for 2010 in response to the number of web searches it generated. 

              ->   harshness…strictness...severe self-discipline  

An austere time is one of reduced goods and services, especially when brought about by government policy; cut-backs on accustomed living standards. It was applied during WWII, limiting non-essentials in a wartime economy. (Is a non-essential a luxury?)

Here we go with definitions, but the media hype about austerity and irrational projections from the 1% about national growth makes me pause to consider what austerity really means. 


In 2009, 2010 and 2011 workers and students in Greece and other European countries demonstrated against cuts to pensions, public services and education spending as a result of government austerity measures due to debt liabilities. But does Ireland or Italy or Spain really suffer unduly at these times? How austere is austerity relative to the rest of the world?

Thousands of places around the globe live in what we consider austere conditions. But today's austere is an outsider term. It doesn't necessarily define other cultural situations. People have lived with less stuff than us for eons. They actually call this "living within their means and that of their environment." So, austerity becomes a relative term of the developed world feeling sorry for itself. (Is this an ethnocentric backlash??)
  

Regardless, this buzz-word could actually be a helpful precursor for the time when fossil fueled economies finally shrivel. Europe now and the United States soon? Could our coming version of austerity be a dress rehearsal; a practice run for the time of more serious resiliency and transition? With a modicum of justice included, this contemporary austerity gig of the materialistic world could be a positive exercise in scaling back; living with less; making things simpler; preserving resources and, ultimately, attempting to keep society cohesive enough to reorganize itself for a transition.  Our children’s transition…

Why 100 Global Locations Are Highlighted In Photos

While browsing the magazine section at Borders I found a Newsweek Special Edition issue with nature photos. Thinking it was one of those end of the year Favorite Places photo spreads, I picked it up to see where people had traveled last year. One hundred places worldwide, to be exact.


But then the rest of the title rose up on the cover photo of a blue-green volcanic atoll in the Pacific:  “100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear".   

Now, that’s a bold title!  Though I knew pretty quickly that this was related to climate change, my next thought was that mainstream media had actually taken up this scenario. 

Newsweek International had, indeed, published this beautiful magazine from a book and the photo exhibition of the same title. All the photo locations have some probable upcoming fate due to climate change mechanisms. The original photo collection was based on sites noted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data before the Copenhagen Conference last fall.  

The array of formats that have shown these 100 Places include the traveling photo exhibition, the hardcover book, the website and the newspaper stand magazine.  Check the project for the complete background, as well as the 100 gorgeous photos. The interactive world map is especially insightful.

Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek International Editor, points out that the world sites represented by the photos all take on their own peculiar set of climate change challenges.  Each occupies a “narrow ecological niche.”   Population distributions inherit a variety of climate patterns related to sunlight and rain and winds and temperature.  

The places photographed are not about policy or science.  They are about the people and habitations as we know them and appreciate them now.  They are a reminder that there is a world out there beyond our own daily lives.  Climate change becomes a story about beautiful places to preserve.

As usual, it is up to the “developed” world to make itself aware of cultures and the lands beyond its own.  Ethically, we owe the rest of the world in terms of climate change. 

I am awed that this project has taken off worldwide.  I applaud the courage to reveal places of challenge and the issue of the climate change charge.    

“UNLESS,” said the Lorax.

It Can't Be "Us And Them" With Climate Change

Consider the common terminology used for countries at the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference.  There was, of course, a huge variety of regional cultures, packed into political units called nations.  Nations negotiated last week.  They traded.  They agreed.  They pointed fingers.  They got left out.  They sometimes got results.  

But, ultimately, there was a we and there was a them.  Some kind of dichotomy existed, as it has for decades and decades.  Us and them.  

This status in the language we impose on geographic regions and peoples around the planet is troubling.   Over and over, media and leaders referred to nations that were either developed or developing.  Are these terms helpful at a global conference?  Are they helpful in any discussion of world events?  What is at the core of these tags?

I live in a developed country.  What does this mean?  Does it mean we’re well-done?  Baked?  Climaxed?  Ready for the Promised Land?  Are we at the height of any known civilization?   Ready to plant a suburb on Mars?  Have we as a nation successfully surpassed puberty?  Are all my fellow citizens developed, like me?  What is the range of developedness? If I fall below a certain level can I get dropped from developed to developing?  Can I, then, re-apply to be developed again?  (Just checked my passport.  Doesn’t say developed...) What is developed about my particular society? Is it all good?

So, OK, my friends in developing countries: What is it they evidently haven’t yet developed?  Language?  Polyester clothing?  Cricket?  Math? Private schools?  Is everyone a serf?  Do citizens of developing countries need lessons in manners?  Are they evil? Are they aspiring developers?  What do they lack? Why are they not quite there? 

Don’t even start me on third world designations. (I'm done with snarkiness now…)

These tags are embedded in our language and everyone seems to know which country belongs under which classification. The two terms are loaded with comparative biases and tones of superiority or of derision.  How can this terminology be acceptable for Country A or Country B?

Of course, it’s mostly a case for the dynamics of global history and geography.  Of cultures moving from their lands onto others’.  Of wars: conquerers and conquered. Of sailing ships to far shores in the guise of the White Man’s Burden.  Of new countries eventually shedding colonial powers.  

In more recent history, there appeared something called industrialization.  Coal and then oil began powering the engines to do our work in the early 19th century, creating the Industrial Revolution.  Some nations had the opportunities to reap the advantages of fossil fuels, and some did not.  

So, an irony exists.  The global climate change discussions by nations at Copenhagen Conference centered on levels of industrialization. Industrialization is at the root of a nation’s production; hence its Gross Domestic Product; hence its wealth; hence its higher contribution to emissions that are warming our atmosphere; hence its developed nation status. 

Huh?

Why are the developed countries balking at cutting their own anthropogenic CO2 concentrations?  Why are they so concerned that they may need to foot some of the bill to assist developing countries who are now just ramping up emissions but will be most affected by a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius?  


At a time when we need to see Earth as one ailing organism, little is accomplished by the spirit of us and them:  
Developed vs. developing.