Clay and Wattles

If we return to a human scale of building, there’s a good chance that our new urban quarters will be more humane, which is to say beautiful. The automobile era proved that people easily tolerated ugly, utilitarian buildings and horrible streetscapes as long as they were compensated by being able to quickly escape the vicinity in cars luxuriously appointed with the finest digital stereo sound, air conditioning, and cup holders for iced beverages.

-James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

Last summer I walked for 350 kms through Wood Buffalo National Park (Canada’s largest and one of the least visited). I wrote about the trip here.

At an Earth Week event on Tuesday, I gave a sneak preview of the documentary I’ve made about the trip, Wet Boots and Bison Plops: my one-armed, solar-powered, zero-impact solo ramble through Wood Buffalo National Park – without insect repellent.

The audience seemed to appreciate the film and I’m looking forward to finishing up post-production. I’ll put up more info about screenings (and maybe web access) in the future, but here are a few stills to whet your appetite:

Lately, I’ve been thinking about housing. We live in a great house as houses go in Yellowknife. It isn’t too new and it’s fairly efficient and it isn’t enormous. Still, it isn’t the house I’d build if I were starting from scratch.

I’ve always been interested in the old Thoreauvian idea that you should be able to build your own shelter: housing ought not to be something that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and requires a prohibitively large mortgage. I thrill when I hear people talk about straw bale or rammed earth construction. I covet tiny eco-houses when I read about them. I drool thinking about all the cool eco-options you could customize your house with.

The big problem for me is that even if I wanted to build my own shelter, I wouldn’t know where to begin. That’s why I really enjoyed this article from greenhomebuilding.com. It suggests that you start with thinking about what you plan to do in the building and plan from there. That way, you will have an idea of layout and other qualities that are important and can match them against the pros and cons of various building techniques. Sounds obvious, but it made the idea of constructing a building much less frightening for me.

We won’t be needing another house for a long time, but if we ever do I already have a few ideas.

Earth Week is here again. Yellowknifers are lucky to have an amazing week featuring more than 20 different events to celebrate and educate us about the environment. Details on the Ecology North website. Earth Week organizer France Benoit has done a great job as usual.

As always, I’ll be involved in a few of the events. You’ll be able to see my worm composter, which will be featured at the composting workshop at the Multiplex on Saturday, April 21st.

I will be presenting video footage of my Wood Buffalo trip on Tuesday, April 24th at Northern United Place as part of an evening called “A low carbon alternative: holidaying in the NWT!”

On behalf of the City of Yellowknife, I’ll be presenting the Solid Waste Management Public Forum on Thursday, April 26th at NUP.

I won’t be performing, but my wife Roberta will be telling stories at the Earth Week Coffeehouse on Saturday, April 28th in the Mildred Hall School Gym. This is a can’t-miss event and one of the highlights of my year: come and join us!

The climate change deniers in our federal government have once again shown their hand. They disappeared after the huge public backlash against the Clean Air Act, but here they are again.

Maybe this is good news: Canadians know we need to substantially reduce our emissions. They will now be reminded that oil industry shills will never take action on climate change.

City dwellers and suburbanites can continue to drive everywhere, hoping that the ever-progressing society will deliver hydrogen cars or solar cars or whatever other kinds of cars soon enough to save the atmosphere. Or they can begin to use existing technology – the bicycle, for instance. It’s every bit as technological as an electric car, and as a significant minority of people have discovered, it’s endlessly more elegant. On a bicycle you see the world around you – you notice hills that a car obliterates; you see neighborhoods at a pace that makes them real, not a blur. You save gas, of course, but you also hear your body again.

-Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information

The long-awaited spring has finally begun to arrive in Yellowknife: daytime temperatures have been above zero all week and the snow is starting to melt. The main roads are covered in gravel and dust, but no more ice. Yesterday, I got out my bike, filled up the tires, oiled the chain, and started riding. I never did ride this winter as I’d hoped, but maybe next year!

Next on the agenda: the garden!

The bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world.

- Susan B. Anthony, 1896
(quoted on the History Timeline of the Bicycle page)

As I write this, a year of recession – that is, a year of an already vast economy growing no larger – has created mild havoc. How do we step out of this trap? This is a debate we must have, I think – a debate about sustainability, about turning our efforts toward making sure that poor peoople have enough so that they don’t need to destroy the environment, and that we don’t have so much that we do it inadvertently. There have to be ways to accomplish this – a society that can develop the one-handed squeeze tube must have the brainpower to scale down while sustaining dignified and decent ways of life.

-Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information

I noticed the other day that a whole year has passed since my first post on this blog. I’m pretty happy with the way it has turned out. I’ve had emails and comments from many people, and the stats show that people check in regularly to see how I’m doing. More importantly, this blog has really helped me to systematically focus on my environmental footprint and make major reductions.

My values are the same, but my behaviour has changed drastically. I was environmentally-conscious before, but the path of least resistance led me to many choices that were more wasteful and polluting than they should have been. True, I didn’t drive much, ate vegetarian food, rode my bike, recycled, avoided over-packaging, etc, etc. I did all the easy things, but I still owned a car, burned oil in the furnace, used large amounts of water and hydro, ate unsustainable foods, travelled by air, etc. I was an activist, too, but never felt very effective. I’m not sure I’ve achieved a sustainable life since then, but I feel a lot closer to it. I’m certainly leading an examined life, rather than going with the flow. I’ve also become a more committed activist and even risked running for City Council.

As a family, we have really benefitted from making a project out of reducing our impact. There were so many easy improvements to make (many of which had side-benefits like saving money and making us healthier), but it took a concerted effort to make them. Once we invested some time in getting started, it was easy to get used to the changes and make them permanent. Buying only organic food wasn’t difficult to get used to, but it took a bit of consideration to decide we should commit to it. Selling the van was a leap of faith, but now I know we’ll never need another one.

This website has mostly been for me and my family, but I’m happy that others have read it and been inspired. It isn’t that what we’ve done is unique (I know lots of people working on the same things), but documenting it helps provide models for other people: we get most of our ideas from the changes our friends and neighbours are making.

Whenever I’m reminded of the unsustainable way my fellow Canadians live, I try not to get frustrated or blame people. Everything I’ve done to reduce our footprint is something someone else did first. I learned and changed and so can others.