If you’re like me following U.S. President George Washington’s footstep to experiment with the process of close study and imitation of the teachers of your choice, if you feel encouraged as much as I do by a famous Chinese saying that goes: “With three men walking together, there is always a teacher among them. (三人行，必有我师焉。),” you might be able to turn your tedious work day into a delicious one like a feast for your brain. I don’t need to agree with everything and anything professed by my teachers. As Bruce Lee once said, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.”
Encounter 1
A total coincident allows me to come across a senior official’s name in my news reading. His remark sticks in my head like a piece of gum on the sole of my shoe. I’m upset by the message but not the speaker. He said the U.S. federal government spends more on diabetes treatment each year—$160 billion—than the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual budget.
As a forward-thinking foodie, I begin to think if human health is a biologically and chemically self-regulated equilibrium, what we take in from foods and drinks should play a fundamental role in determining what sort of body waste discharged from our body. For a normal person, if we are on meds in a third of our lifespan, given the fact that we live longer now, we’re literally putting an external force to maintain this equilibrium of human health, disrupting the self-regulated mechanism. There’re always exceptions. For example, some medications are necessary to save lives due to natural causes such as birth defects and hereditary health issues. But healthy diets are the best medicines to humans, I don’t think medical professionals will disagree with me. And where does our food come from? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a map to answer this question. And the World Resources Institute presents a colorful menu of solutions for global citizens like you and me.
So, the senior U.S. official who made that sticky remark is Tom Vilsack, current Secretary of Agriculture under the Biden Administration. He understands profoundly the rural problems. To my surprise, he’s an empathic Yinzer, a nickname for someone from Pittsburgh. (Speaking of cultural identity, because of postgraduate education I identify myself as an educated Yinzer, too. So was Rachel Carson, our famous Chatham U. alumna. Aha, the world suddenly becomes smaller virtually.)
Encounter 2
“What you’re measuring is what you should not be measuring because you got the wrong model. So evidence-based policies are all very good. But evidences are built on wrong models, and that is really misleading.”
—Sir Partha Dasgupta, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge
I remember the first chapter in Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, “Walden (1854),” was dedicated to economy. When I read it the first time, I didn’t quite understand why the author would structure his book this way. Why does economy play an important role in our life? Last year I re-read the book with sustainable development and climate crisis in mind, I had a clearer understanding. I was a witness to scarcity, one of the keywords in the definition of economics. Just as described in many online resources for dummies, economics is the study of how humans make decisions in the face of scarcity. Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce. Scarcity is a concept created by humans, and of course, the measurement of scarcity is based on human wants. In Thoreau’s simplistic world with Mother Nature, the author outlined “the necessaries of life for man” including food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. He wrote: “. . . for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.”
But how do we secure these “necessaries of life for man”? Economists understood a long time ago that we are living in a finite world. According to Sir Partha Dasgupta, a distinguished British economist, the things we want to know have not been measured. When our goods and services are measurable, they become manageable. Sadly, Sir Dasgupta said humans have neglected the whole class of goods and services in our diverse ecosystems. Our time is short, both in the sense of human lifespan and of meeting greenhouse gas emissions goal set in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Can we simultaneously reduce consumption and minimize waste? There is great potential of reducing food waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides good tips on its website how motivated individual can do-it-yourself to practice a trendy lifestyle of reduce-reuse-recycle. And below the video is about a thought-provoking dialogue between that eminent economist and a religious leader. Sir Partha Dasgupta from the University of Cambridge and Dr. Rowan Williams share their perspectives on poverty, natural capital and the climate crisis. This is where I’m introduced to a growing economic theory called ecological economics.
Personally, if I want to develop self-reliance, understanding how our society works economically is of importance. Sustainability has three main pillars—economic, social and environmental. No better time than now that we need to study, formally and informally, ecological economics to troubleshoot unsustainable practices, including changing consumer behavior, in these three interconnected domains.
Globally, the public has misunderstood that economics mainly involves money and financial instruments. But I can tell you based on my limited reading, when politics, philosophy and economics come together, they’re like three resourceful teachers who can inform and guide us to develop self-reliance. I may be biased but I think the increased focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is too narrow to define what science truly is. Do you know political science is a science, so is economics? Both of them are social science dealing with different, but oftentimes overlapping, systems and relationships between individuals and societies. My earlier posting about “Reimaging A Crisis” explains why it’s important to apply systems thinking to understand the wicked problem such as climate change.
Encounter 3
The internet has made my virtual learning possible. I wish more underprivileged children and adults around the world would have the luxury of the same learning opportunity. Both in China and the U.S. I’ve met people who I regard as teachers, and who received little formal education. Several teachers of mine who don’t have advanced degrees fare even better than those with a PhD. To my knowledge, there is a longstanding stigma around vocational and non-traditional education in these two big countries. If tenure is the ultimate career goal for academic professionals with advanced degrees, how competitive it would be for many to-be and post doctorate degree candidates? While the human capital in America’s higher education is so expensive, how can domestic youths afford higher education without the need to pay off loans after graduation? How can fund-chasing universities not suffer financially during the Covid pandemic due to the significant reduction of the number of rich foreign students on their campuses? Isn’t this an economic phenomenon of scarcity?
According to Article 26 in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, education is a human right. Education should not become a financial burden for everyone and a privilege marker for those who can afford it. As the internet is transforming the fields of medicine and education, the universal call for free access to wireless internet will increase. An inclusive labor market in white-collar industries should welcome both Book Smarts and Street Smarts from all walks of life. I respect Book Smarts but also admire self-taught Street Smarts, starting from our founding father President George Washington.
Since I’ve introduced solutions journalism to shed light on the innovative industry of turning waste into treasure, I can’t finish this article without mentioning these three success stories from different parts of the world.
Kuwait — the country has one of the world’s largest landfill for old vehicle tires. It recently hired a recycling contractor to clean up the dump site by turning the used tires into consumer products such as flooring tiles. Scrap tires are a major environmental problem worldwide due to the chemicals they can release.
Mexico — in this video we’ll see how Styrofoam, which is made from polystyrene (聚苯乙烯) plastic, is being recycled economically. Styrofoam is approximate 95 percent air. This makes the substance ideal for use as a packing material.
Hong Kong — This video hit home. I miss my Cantonese food culture. We’ll see a local recycling startup to collect used Styrofoam boxes in a seafood market. An on-site machine in a truck can melt the Styrofoam instantly by removing the air from the boxes. By reducing the size of the bulky white stuff, the truck can collect more used boxes in a single trip. The resulting liquids will be shipped to a recycling facility, distilled, and made into picture frames and computer mouses. Nothing is more exciting than seeing a green hope for the future.