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We Have 12 Years

“We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC”

“‘It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now,’ said Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the working group on impacts. ‘This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.'”

“At the current level of commitments, the world is on course for a disastrous 3C of warming.” Reducing the warming to 2C would help some, and pulling together to achieve a further reduction to 1.5C of warming would make a surprisingly huge difference in extreme weather events, heat-related deaths, wildlife, crop yields, and more, according to scientific findings presented in the article.

— October 8, 2018, article in The Guardian

This article offers a link to another Guardian article, Overwhelmed By Climate Change? Here’s What You Can Do. To their solid list that includes both personal and collective actions (from reducing meat & dairy intake and insulating your home, to voting and protesting), I would add what I’m trying to do here, with this book and my blog: Create a widespread, permanent craze for ultra-low-footprint living.

Deep-green troops, mobilize! What green practices can you help normalize and popularize today?

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It’s Down To Us

“The possibility of swift change lies in people coming together in movements large enough to shift the Zeitgeist.”
— Bill McKibben, writing in this week’s issue of The New Yorker magazine (November 26 issue).

Says McKibben:

We are on a path to self-destruction, and yet there is nothing inevitable about our fate. Solar panels and wind turbines are now among the least expensive ways to produce energy. Storage batteries are cheaper and more efficient than ever. We could move quickly if we chose to, but we’d need to opt for solidarity and coördination on a global scale. The chances of that look slim. In Russia, the second-largest petrostate after the U.S., Vladimir Putin believes that “climate change could be tied to some global cycles on Earth or even of planetary significance.” Saudi Arabia, the third-largest petrostate, tried to water down the recent I.P.C.C. report. Jair Bolsonaro, the newly elected President of Brazil, has vowed to institute policies that would dramatically accelerate the deforestation of the Amazon, the world’s largest rain forest. Meanwhile, Exxon recently announced a plan to spend a million dollars—about a hundredth of what the company spends each month in search of new oil and gas—to back the fight for a carbon tax of forty dollars a ton. …
The possibility of swift change lies in people coming together in movements large enough to shift the Zeitgeist.

It’s down to us, folks. We make the Zeitgeist; we can shift it with our daily choices. We, in our millions, choosing to radically reduce our footprint, consciously adopting ultra-low-footprint lifestyles, are the best hope of saving life as we know it on this planet.

Further Reading:

• The New Yorker magazine offers thoughtful, nuanced coverage of social issues, politics, and culture.
• Author, educator, environmentalist Bill McKibben is author of numerous books including Deep Economy, Eaarth, The End of Nature, Fight Global Warming Now, and Radio Free Vermont. billmckibben.com

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Footprint and Handprint

One question I hear from a lot of people is: What if I just can’t reduce my footprint any more, or if I can’t reduce it at all in some category? (For example, say you live far from where you work, and there’s no way to reduce your transportation footprint right now because no one lives near you to carpool?)

The fact is, it’s impossible to have a zero footprint. We are always going to have some impact on other creatures. Even carefully walking through my yard this morning, I was surely stepping on bugs or other creatures without even knowing it.

We may not be able to eliminate our negative impact (footprint), but we can always increase our positive impact (handprint).

When an environmental activist decides to forgo flying halfway around the world for a climate protest because she feels that the footprint of her plane travel will exceed the benefit of her physical presence at the protest, she’s reducing her footprint. When 10 or 20 or 100 environmentalists get together and pool the money they would have spent on airline tickets and use it to purchase a compelling call-to-action ad in a high-profile magazine, they increase their handprint. (I haven’t actually heard of something like this happening, but wouldn’t it be a great idea with a lot of potential?)

When you decide to stop driving your child two hours to a play date, that’s reducing your footprint. When you go with your kids for walks around the neighborhood and show them by your example how to make friends right in their own backyard, that’s increasing your handprint.

When you stop purchasing plastic-wrapped produce from 3,000 miles away, and say no to plastic bags at the supermarket checkout, you’re reducing your footprint. When other people see your pretty cloth shopping bags and your smiling face as you walk to the farmer’s market to buy local, you’re increasing your handprint.

When I use my solar oven instead of my electric oven, I’m reducing my footprint. (By the way, I’ve been using a solar oven as my main oven since 2006!) When passers-by see my solar oven out in the yard, or when I tell people about the many benefits of solar cooking, I’m increasing my handprint.

An action to increase your handprint can be something eco-oriented, but need not be. For example, teaching self-defense to kids; volunteering at a shelter; setting up a Little Free Library in your neighborhood; organizing a community potluck to build social cohesion and increase the safety of your neighborhood, are all examples of increasing your handprint. So are organizing a poetry open mic; forming a citizens’ art brigade to paint inspirational murals on blighted buildings; writing songs to highlight the plight of the homeless. Speaking up at city council meetings; writing letters to the editor. Even just smiling at someone in passing, rather than walking by quickly without making eye contact, is increasing your handprint. Every action, however infinitesimal, adds up and has a ripple effect.

Everything you do to reduce your footprint frees up money, time, and headspace to be able to increase your handprint. So, reducing your footprint is a double win. You conserve resources, and you free yourself to maximize your beneficial impact on the world.

How many examples of handprint can you think of from your own life?

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Gratitude, and the Upside of “Not Having”

This old family photo, taken one Thanksgiving about 70 years ago, is one of my favorites. Those were simple times when people didn’t have much, but I can feel everyone’s joy and gratitude spilling right out of the picture.

This past Sunday as I was riding my bicycle home from church, where the sermon was about gratitude, I came upon my favorite pine tree, a really pretty, towering specimen with long soft needles. Not only is it a beautiful tree; it also sheds regularly, providing me with great mulch for my yard. As is my habit, I grabbed handfuls of the pine needles that had collected in the gutter, and stuffed into my bicycle panniers as many as would fit.

Many Sundays as I’m riding to or from church along that long road, I see curbside treasure such as huge piles of leaves; furniture; plants; lumber; piles and piles of bamboo poles. Many times I have regretted not having a bicycle trailer. Then again, when I look back over the months and years that I have NOT been able to pick up stuff because I didn’t have a way to carry it home, it comes to me that if I had picked up all the stuff I thought I wanted, my house would be crammed with junk.

And when I look back, I can’t really remember all the stuff that was so great I just thought I absolutely needed it. One of my favorite quotes, by ultralight hiker Ray Jardine (of Ray-Way Tarp fame), comes to mind: “If you need it, but don’t have it … you don’t need it.” There are advantages to NOT being able to carry home everything.

Along with my haul of precious mulch, I also carried home plenty of gratitude. Our pastor had spoken about the “market gods” and how they fuel our desire for more, more, more — and how it never ends up being enough. My favorite antidote to that insatiable feeling is to deliberately feel gratitude in the moment. Gratitude turns whatever I have into more than enough.

Back when I lived in an RV, every little inch of space was a gift. Sometimes I’d free up a couple centimeters of space, and it would really feel like miles and miles of Texas! (I was living in Texas at the time, and would often break out into a joyous chorus of “Miles and Miles of Texas” when I’d discover some unused inch of space here or there in the RV.) This joy at a small thing is a huge feeling.

One time on a solo bicycle trip from Austin to New Mexico, I found myself at a roadside rest stop with leftover french fries from a diner lunch, and half a bottle of Gatorade from my afternoon snack stop. Plus a couple of Little Debbie snack cakes. Tasted like a five-star supper to me! Later as I crawled into my sleeping bag, with only a tarp underneath — no cushion from the concrete ground — I felt like a queen sinking into the finest featherbed.

By no means do I always feel this way. Oftentimes it’s the total opposite, in fact! I can be in luxurious circumstances, eating fancy food, having other people do everything for me, and still feel restless and unsatisfied. In fact, many times it actually ends up being easier for me to feel gratitude over simple things than over something luxurious and amazing. Maybe some sort of spoiled-brat reflex kicks in beyond a certain level of richness.

Gratitude is something I have to put conscious effort into at times, but it’s an investment that pays off in cascading dividends. I would really like for gratitude and appreciation to become more prevalent in USAmerican culture. I’d like to see us, as a people, have the ability to be more content with less. And that would be good for the planet also.

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle …

Most of us are familiar with these 3 R’s of minimizing waste. Just now on the Sustainable Living & Alternative Health radio show on WMNF (Tampa FL), I heard two more R’s: REFUSE; and RETHINK. (As in Refuse disposable plastic bags at the supermarket checkout. And, further upstream, Rethink the whole design of things including the flow from production to disposal, so we “close the loop” and stop producing “waste”.) Ideally we humans will come around to eliminating entirely the concept of “waste,” since in nature everything is a resource.

One trick I’ve been doing lately with the recycling is to not put the bin out for collection every week unless it gets full (which it rarely does that quickly unless I have a party). By keeping it around for a couple or three weeks, I give myself a “reuse buffer” — an opportunity to retrieve containers that I end up thinking of a use for. One housemate’s microwave food containers ended up getting upcycled into caddies for art supplies and toiletries. Sometimes I’ve ended up using takeout dishes to mix paint.

The Sustainable Living & Alternative Health radio show airs every Monday from 10:00-11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. It’s actually two different shows, on alternating Mondays. Today is a Sustainable Living day. The show is superb and I recommend it to greenminded people everywhere who really want to push the envelope of what it means to be sustainable. You can listen to a recording of today’s show and other past shows; I believe they leave them up on the website for about a month. Several of my permaculture colleagues were on today, and they did an outstanding job conveying the essence of permaculture design and the permaculture movement.

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Whatever It Takes

Whatever it takes to motivate me to stick with beneficial habits and minimize harmful ones, I’ll try it.

When I was younger and a lot more vain than I am now, “staying skinny” was a huge factor in motivating me to minimize my “junk food” intake (even though I have loved those sweet, salty, densely calorific “junk foods” from a young age).

As I’ve gotten older and not so obsessed with being thin, I’ve needed other motivators to sustain me. Even reducing my Riot food footprint wasn’t quite enough to keep me motivated to eschew those bad-for-me, bad-for-the-planet snacks.

A big motivator that’s emerged for me recently is DIGESTION. Yes, I’m giving away my age now! When I was young, I never understood why older folks were so preoccupied with their digestion. Now I get it. Healthy digestion is something you take for granted until/unless you don’t have it.

Oh, but those potato chips and cheeze nips do continue to call out my name. Then recently, I found a really strong motivation to quit eating mass-produced processed snacks: A key ingredient is plantation-produced palm oil, a commodity that’s chewing up rainforests and destroying animal habitat. Now finally I feel the call of the chip and the cheeze nip grow very faint, and ignore-able. (Though if I find a locally/sustainably produced equivalent, I’ll still bite!)

“There’s a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom”: In a mere ninety seconds, this animated film starting a homeless orangutan tells the story of how unsustainably-produced palm oil is destroying rainforests and wildlife habitat. This Greenpeace Canada film, narrated by Emma Thompson, is intended to spark a grassroots backlash against unsustainable plantation palm oil. Outstanding example of the power of story. I first saw this video via Facebook where people were sharing it to help it go viral.

Description and background of the “Rang-Tan in My Bedroom” film (which was created for Greenpeace by a creative firm called Mother).

I found the blurb about Mother and the “Rang-Tan” film on The Drum, a site “highlighting the best new creative work around the globe.”

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Help Save the Bees

Bumblebees have been declared endangered, but we can all help save them.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggests that people could plant a garden or add a flowering tree or bush to yards and avoid using pesticide, to help increase the rusty-patched bumblebee population. Leaving some sections of the yard unmowed in summer and unraked in fall can also help since bumblebees need a good place to make their nests and spend the winter. People could also leave standing plant stems in gardens and flower beds in winter.”

Everyone can help! Even a potted plant on a balcony can help.