Clay and Wattles

Human beings – any one of us, and our species as a whole – are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky.

-Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information

Why has happiness in America been declining? Fifty years ago, most people saw their neighbours, friends, and co-workers as peers. On that basis, most people had income levels close to that of their reference group.
In recent decades, Americans have shifted to a wannabe reference group, made up of the people they wish were their peers. About one-third of Americans now consider the richest 6 percent of the population as their reference group. Increasingly, the people Americans see as their peers are televison characters rather than real people.

-Bruce O’Hara, Enough Already! Breaking Free in the Second Half of Life

Welcome to the 61st Carnival of the Green, which travels from blog to blog each week (click the image to visit the Carnival head office). Thanks are due to last week’s host – One/Change.

For starters, we have some practical tips and inspiring projects:

• Miss Malaprop creatively transforms a government tarp into a chic ensemble.
• Aaron of Groovy Green instructs how to make a garden cold frame from old windows. (I can’t wait for gardening season – only five more months away!)
• Phil for Humanity advises us to recycle old aluminum foil.
• Gloria at americaninventorspot.com explains how you can get rich quick…er, at least make money while recycling.
• Wise Bread has tips for energy-efficient driving. (if you must have a car, drive it efficiently, I suppose…)
• Cocolico presents a cool lamp.

This week also brings several warnings and calls to action:

• Jake of Real Green Tips warns that carbon offsets are not a green panacea. Likewise, Enviroblog links to a report about the nasty effects of an offsetting project in Africa.
• The Alternative Consumer alerts us to a dire human threat to Idaho wolves
• Greener Magazine’s Harlan Weikle is worried about a mega-project in Iceland. (reminds me of the Mackenzie Gas Project in my region)
• And, last but by no means least, Sally of Veggie Revolution discusses the connection between child brides and overpopulation in the developing world.

Thank you all for your submissions! Next week, check out the carnival at the intriguingly-named Jetson Green.

Before hosting the Carnival of the Green, I thought I should put up a few links to some of my previous posts which might be of interest to new visitors.

This blog is the workspace where I attempt to chronicle and spur my personal sustainable living project. My interests and activism fall into a few overlapping categories, but they all stem from my keen interest in living a happy, healthy, sustainable life and sharing these ideas with other people.

Some of my favourite posts are about:

• My personal values and goals
• Climate change
• Home energy efficiency
• Car-freedom and cycling
• Vegetarianism and growing my own food
• Computing, Creative Commons, and Free Software
• Escaping the consumer lifestyle
• Local political action
• Waste and water conservation
• The horrifying Mackenzie Gas Project

If I had to pick just one post that other environmental activists should read, it would probably be this one.

I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

One challenge that arises from car freedom is that we sometimes end up accepting rides from other people, and cannot help feeling a little guilty about it.

The Tyee has an interesting article about carless parenting. The author points out that ride exchanges are the social currency of inter-family relationships. Without a car, you have nothing to exchange. Ideally, you can find other ways of living up to your end of the informal bargain rather than withdrawing altogether.

When our kids were young, we didn’t have a car. It was, in fact, our guilty feelings about accepting rides all the time without reciprocating that drove us (pun intended) to get our first vehicle many years ago. This is less of a problem for us now because our kids are more independent, but it still comes up from time to time. My sons are away at university, so they solve their own transportation problems. Luckily, my teenage daughter is old enough to walk most places and can take a taxi on her own (with precautions), so we don’t have to rely on others very often.

This gift economy business applies to adults, too. We were visiting friends in Old Town last week. Before we left home, we carefully decided to walk to their house (about 20 minutes) and take a cab home. That was a perfectly logical and acceptable compromise for us, especially considering the money we save by not owning a car.

When the time came to leave, our friends offered to drive us home (using the logic that the taxi would be expensive and they didn’t mind – plus they had a car sitting right there unused). We reluctantly accepted, in part because these particular friends understand the dilemma completely and we know them well enough not to feel bad about imposing a little bit. It would have seemed rude or even willfully obstinate to refuse. Even so, I felt a certain psychological pang over it. Why?

I can think of several reasons:

• Social Stigma – We associate taxis and buses with indigence and poverty. Having to rely on public transportation implies a lack of economic clout and social status (as in the shameless automobile ad on the right). Taxis also have a “welfare day” stigma as the transportation of choice among people who are not successful enough to own cars, but splurge on taxi rides to the liquor store when they get their social assistance cheques. This is a ridiculous stereotype, of course, but it still lurks in our collective subconscious. Accepting a ride feels like accepting this undesirable identity.
• Self-reliance – North Americans, in particular, are afflicted with a strong desire for independence. Did this create our car culture or vice versa? We don’t want to feel dependent on other people because that creates obligations which much eventually be paid back. If we never owe anybody we have to look in the eye, we don’t have to let anyone tell us what to do. Banks and credit card companies, of course, are an entirely different matter: we don’t mind being in debt to banks because, at the bank, we feel anonymous. Accepting a ride makes me feel like I’m in debt.
• Friendly persuasion – Car-owners do not accept the logic that car-free people use to justify walking and taking taxis. If I don’t compromise my principles in the face of well-intentioned kindness, I am at risk of sounding like a humourless crank (or at least more like one than usual). I don’t like compromising my principles.
• Convenience – This is another situation where doing the wrong thing, accepting an unwanted ride, is easier and cheaper than doing the right thing, calling a cab. Of course, I know this and feel bad about it.
• Ego – I hate to admit this one, but it is true. I don’t enjoy being a passenger. When I’m in a car, I want to drive! I don’t want to be condescended to as the problem family who always needs special arrangements (we get that enough already as vegetarians). Cars are powerful, potent, manly, forceful! Accepting rides reminds me of all this and, irrationally, makes me feel like a wimp.

I’ll have more on this topic in part II.

We’ve been completely carless for some time now and are coping just fine. Our grocery shopping pattern has changed a little (more small purchases downtown; fewer trips to the Co-op, but for longer lists of items). Otherwise, we haven’t done much that is different. We still walk downtown and take the odd taxi ride to more distant destinations.

In fact, we borrowed a vehicle for a week over the holidays (some friends were out of town and preferred to leave their truck with us; I wanted to run a few errands requiring a truck), and didn’t use it very much. When I did drive it, I couldn’t believe what a hassle it was compared to walking and cabbing. Scraping the ice and snow off the windshield and defrosting the interior of the truck was a huge, frustrating waste of time every time I wanted to go somewhere. I also touched a lot more cold metal than I like to!

Without idling the vehicle to warm up the interior by 40 or 50 degrees, it actually feels colder to drive than to walk; this is due to a combination of having to remove gloves to fiddle with keys, sitting still in frigid seats, and the tendency to “hop in the truck” without buttoning, zipping or toquing properly. By contrast, walking is very comfortable because you are more likely to dress warmly (as you can see in the photo of my wife Roberta on the left), and you’re staying warm by moving. Taxis are toasty warm inside when they arrive and there’s no windshield scraping required. Both methods are also a lot cheaper than driving.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Ain’t she a beauty? She’s a Quadrafire 3100 and I’m in love all over again.

We’ve had our new stove since late November, but we didn’t have any wood until just before Christmas. So far, we’re very happy with it. This particular model is highly efficient and just the right size to heat the main floor of our house. We’ve rearranged the way we use our space, so we don’t need to keep the basement very warm. Natural air circulation keeps the basement warm enough for our purposes (no danger of pipes freezing — 10-15 degrees C). We haven’t used our furnace in several weeks and I don’t expect to use it again this winter.

The wood we have is mostly green (unseasoned) jackpine. We had two cords delivered (for $300/cord) and I’m expecting another two cords of better wood soon. That should be enough to get us through the winter. In the past, we spent $2500/year on furnace oil. We reduced that to under $2000 last year by using a programmable thermostat and other measures. Even if we use five cords per year at $300 per cord, we’ll be saving at least $500 per winter. If I cut some wood myself or buy in the spring, I expect we can increase the savings.

I’m confident that the woodstove will save money in the long run once we pay back the initial investment (about $4000). The most important benefit, of course, is that wood fuel creates no net greenhouse gas emissions. Our stove brings us one step closer to independence from fossil fuels.

Other benefits include warmer temperatures in the living areas of our house (we kept the thermostat pretty low last winter to reduce our fuel consumption), local sources of wood requiring much less transportation than furnace oil, and the pleasure of watching the fire. I also like knowing that we can stay warm if the power goes out.

The only disadvantages so far are the extra effort required to fill the woodbox every day or two (no problem), and the space needed to store all that wood (in our case, we have a perfect place – our now-car-free driveway). We don’t have to do much splitting because we only have small trees around here!

I know there are people out there wondering where I’ve been lately. Even I’ve wondered what’s stopping me (besides my usual dose of procrastination). After a certain amount of introspection, I’ve discovered there are three reasons I’ve neglected this site lately:

• No time – being a City Councillor is pretty time-consuming
• Trepidation – Until I figure out what I’m doing on Council, I’m a bit scared of committing myself on issues on the interweb (one of the school board candidates in this fall’s election made news over comments in her blog). I feel like a coward, but I already seem to have critics on the editorial board of our local newspaper.
• Progress – in truth, I always imagined that the process of making our household more sustainable might take about a year. We have achieved most of what I set out to do with this site (which was intended, after all, to keep us honest and track progress).

To clarify that last point, here is some of the progress we have made:

• With the recent installation of a woodstove, we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions to very nearly zero (with offsets, our net GHG production is well below zero). Selling our vehicle was a big part of this reduction.
• We’ve cut our hydro use by over one-third.
• We’ve cut our water usage by 30%.
• We are producing only one bag of garbage every two weeks.

As I pointed out a while ago, we certainly aren’t finished – but I feel like we’ve made most of the really easy changes with the most impact. And, amazingly, we haven’t suffered much. We aren’t deprived – if anything, we’ve saved enough money that we are now better off financially than before. I am very proud to say that we’ve paid off our line of credit and have no debt besides our mortgage. That’s the first time in my adult life that I’ve been able to say that: all thanks to following the path of sustainable living.