26 September 2007
This morning I walked to the YWCA for spinning class. It’s about an 8-block walk. On the way, I thought about Sue (not her real name!), a woman who helped me with child care and housework when my third son was born. Sue was a middle-aged, free-spirited woman with professional accreditations who was working for a doula agency during a shift in careers. A passionate gardener who grew loads of vegetables on her property in the country, Sue was also dedicated to reducing her waste. In fact, she had attained a state of no-waste grace: Sue had no garbage removal service because she produced no garbage. She lived alone, simply, and she composted or recycled everything possible. Whenever she needed to dispose of something that couldn’t be composted or recycled, Sue would leave it in the trash at a gas station, but only after she had retrieved a can or bottle to recycle in exchange.
This was ten years ago, and though I was impressed at the time, I was a long way from thinking about our own garbage as much as I do now. One thing I’m going to do (soon!) is contact Minneapolis Solid Waste & Recycling to ask to exchange our large (standard size) garbage dumpster for the smaller size. Happily, we seldom generate enough garbage to fill our present dumpster. We’ll see if we can fit it all into the much-smaller size bin.
Tonight, my boys and I will attend a training session for a volunteer effort in a nearby neighborhood. We’ll participate next month in a door-knocking campaign both to encourage households to participate in the Minnesota Energy Challenge and to apprise residents of a pilot project, to begin next spring, in which the city will furnish them with bins for “wet garbage” (food scraps, yard waste, pet feces, disposable diapers and non-recyclable paper) and collect the contents weekly. Some U.S. cities are already collecting “Solid Source Organics,” as this type of garbage is called, San Francisco being a laudable example.
On the way home from the Y, I stopped at the grocery store for a few items. Grocery shopping has become a moral endeavor. Among the dimensions with which I now struggle in buying food are: expense, nutrition (what my kids will eat that’s good for them), organic vs. non-organic and now, local vs. not. Too much of the time I cave to the lure of cheaper prices and forgo organic, but I’m trying. And buying local is a huge challenge. So, mea culpa, here’s how I did this morning:
Non-organic Honeycrisp apples from a local orchard, Pepin Heights, that I believe uses IPM (Integrated Pest Management) in lieu of insecticides;
Organic bananas from Ecuador;
A small jar of Marmite from ??;
Stonyfield Farms yogurt from Londonderry, NH, and
Philadelphia cream cheese produced by Kraft Foods Global, Inc. (scary) in Northfield, Illinois
***
I just finished reading a book I highly recommend for parents of kids in elementary school, as well as elementary school teachers: The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming by Laurie David (producer of An Inconvenient Truth) and Cambria Gordon (Scholastic, 2007). I bumped into it in Barnes & Noble. I’m going to read it with my 10-year-old and then leave it sitting around conspicuously for my other boys to pick up.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Green Sea Change
23 September 2007
Today is the first day of Fall. I gravitate to markers in the calendar, whether lunar, religious or artificial, because they offer chances to begin. For the past year, I’ve used the first day of every season to switch my contact lenses (I wear the type that's meant to last 2-3 months). This morning I put in a fresh pair of lenses. It’s a good time to write and post my first entry on my first blog.
The blog is called green sea change. Sea change means a profound change or a transformation. I’ve always liked the term. Last week, finally watching An Inconvenient Truth, I heard Gore apply "sea change" to our present crisis, global warming. A sea change is what has to happen if we are to rescue the earth. The task looms before us. Our charge strikes me as monumental and nigh impossible, as if we were somehow supposed to reverse the rotation of the globe on its axis.
I was born in 1957, which means I turned 50 last April. Being 50 has precipitated a distinct shift in perspective. If I am to accomplish anything significant, there’s no time to lose. My passion is the health of the earth. I’ve joined the fight against global warming.
With this blog I intend to chronicle my thoughts, ideas and actions as I struggle to do something to avert the crisis. The blog will be a place to pull together the various tips, information, website links and contacts that I accrue on a daily basis. This is a forum for speaking publicly, which will compel me to keep thinking and doing. The blog will hold me accountable for doing the things I say I’ll do.
Last night, my husband replayed for me over the web a story he’d heard recently on public radio. An expert on the polar ice caps reported that the amount of ice lost this past year from the Arctic ice cap far exceeded any predictions, including those predictions made after taking global climate change into account. There’s a process called albedo feedback transpiring: the faster the ice melts and we lose surface area capable of reflecting sunlight, the faster we gain water surface area to absorb sunlight, the faster the world heats up. I can visualize the graph presented by Gore where the rate of global warming jets into the stratosphere. The scientist interviewed in this story said, “We’re on a death spiral.”
After listening, I felt as trapped and panicked as in those nightmares where I know I’m about to die. This is worse. It isn’t a question of my own human mortality, but the mortality of the entire planet. And hackneyed as this may sound, it isn’t a dream.
How are we going to stop global warming?
Today is the first day of Fall. I gravitate to markers in the calendar, whether lunar, religious or artificial, because they offer chances to begin. For the past year, I’ve used the first day of every season to switch my contact lenses (I wear the type that's meant to last 2-3 months). This morning I put in a fresh pair of lenses. It’s a good time to write and post my first entry on my first blog.
The blog is called green sea change. Sea change means a profound change or a transformation. I’ve always liked the term. Last week, finally watching An Inconvenient Truth, I heard Gore apply "sea change" to our present crisis, global warming. A sea change is what has to happen if we are to rescue the earth. The task looms before us. Our charge strikes me as monumental and nigh impossible, as if we were somehow supposed to reverse the rotation of the globe on its axis.
I was born in 1957, which means I turned 50 last April. Being 50 has precipitated a distinct shift in perspective. If I am to accomplish anything significant, there’s no time to lose. My passion is the health of the earth. I’ve joined the fight against global warming.
With this blog I intend to chronicle my thoughts, ideas and actions as I struggle to do something to avert the crisis. The blog will be a place to pull together the various tips, information, website links and contacts that I accrue on a daily basis. This is a forum for speaking publicly, which will compel me to keep thinking and doing. The blog will hold me accountable for doing the things I say I’ll do.
Last night, my husband replayed for me over the web a story he’d heard recently on public radio. An expert on the polar ice caps reported that the amount of ice lost this past year from the Arctic ice cap far exceeded any predictions, including those predictions made after taking global climate change into account. There’s a process called albedo feedback transpiring: the faster the ice melts and we lose surface area capable of reflecting sunlight, the faster we gain water surface area to absorb sunlight, the faster the world heats up. I can visualize the graph presented by Gore where the rate of global warming jets into the stratosphere. The scientist interviewed in this story said, “We’re on a death spiral.”
After listening, I felt as trapped and panicked as in those nightmares where I know I’m about to die. This is worse. It isn’t a question of my own human mortality, but the mortality of the entire planet. And hackneyed as this may sound, it isn’t a dream.
How are we going to stop global warming?
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