I read way, way too many eco-blogs, enviro-blogs, politico-blogs and globalwarmingo-blogs. With several exceptions (e.g. IdealBite and An Inconvenient Truth, to name several) there’s way too much polarity in the conversation — it’s all or nothing, when often the best choice is both, either or just some.
Locally grown vs. Organic food, for instance: both would be great, either is good, some is good. (more…)
Tonight, we ate chard.
At our local Whole Foods Market this weekend, I looked for locally grown food. Not a single fruit “of the season” was locally grown (well, ok there were some hydroponic tomatoes from Holliston, but are they really fruit?). In desperation, I sought out Whole Foods’ pale green indicator of locally grown items and found one to try: chard.
Chard has a special meaning for me, just as do beets, and to a lesser degree rhubarb: when I was a kid, we had a real vegetable garden in our summer house in Maine. There were various veggies like carrots (oh my god, they were good) and lettuces (very good once the slugs were removed), beans, and squashes: zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers (these, actually from the other garden my uncle’s house next door). But I always remembered the chard. Partly because it wasn’t one of those vegetables Birds-Eye had — it was the 60′s, everything green came in a square box, frozen. But partly because, secretly, in my not-yet-10 way, I actually didn’t mind it that much. I like beets too, still and can tolerate a rhubarb pie.
So as I despaired at the lack of locally grown produce, much less anything else, I impulsively picked up the chard. And it was a good thing. (more…)
Halloween: it’s up there with Christmas as the most egregious of consumption/greed oriented holidays here in the US of A. Ok, I’m being a buzz-kill again, but look, while the kids had a great time dressing up and walking around getting candy, there was a distinct moment in the process in which I became aware of an ulterior motive: to get candy. And to sell candy.
The aftermath is now staring us, and the rest of the overweight, over-fed, over-eating world in the face. We’re teaching our kids that candy is a regular part of life. We have bowls and bowls of the stuff. Is “just one a day” a good message? For me, “perhaps once a week if you’re willing to give up ice cream night”. 3 out of 4 kids with fathers would not choose me.
No, the kids sure didn’t want to part with their hard earned booty. A radical candectomy was the prescription. (more…)
I have spent some words on energy, in particular how we can use less of it. Our program has been successful by all measure, I think. For those reading and practicing some of the same simple tactics or others, well done. For the other 200M people in the USA, c’mon, give it a try. It’s fun!
I have been reading a lot, and learning a lot as I write. My wife recently finished The Omnivore’s Dilemma (next on my list) and I finished 1,000 Barrels a Second, and am in the middle of Outgrowing the Earth. I saw Brokaw’s Global Warming special (and am going to an Inconvenient Truth any day now). Earlier this year, I read Cradle to Cradle. And I watch the news every night on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show (some of the blanks filled in by The New York Times). This is all delightful, nice, light, summer entertainment which will warm the cockles of your heart. Not to mention the cockles of the earth.
What is striking is that there’s a common thread amongst these disparate subjects. (more…)
I did some calculating today. I found that some simple changes to lawn care routine can save you money, time, and effort. And by doing that you can stop having a negative impact on the environment. In fact, the impact might even be positive!
Conservation is an important measure for us to take, for sure. But a more important question might be how can we accomplish our goals in a way that does not expend, but sustains.
Today I considered the costs we have incurred from moving to a sustainable lawn. Does $500/year seem trivial to you?
This is a real example of how important it is to think, and dismiss your preconceived notions. I’ll prove that it’s not trivial. (more…)
My wife and I have been doing a lot of reading lately. Nothing we read is making us feel comfortable or secure. We’re feeling the kind of urgency that caused us to make personal changes, and then which caused me to start writing about them here. Yeah, we’re nuts, of course, but we seem to not have the capability to turn off the alarm bells.
Several years ago, after reading “End of Oil”, I felt as though we had the opportunity to solve the problems with energy that I have been writing about. The idea of the blog was to make incremental changes that would buy us time for real solutions to be developed. I am now less sanguine about what this means: words like “opportunity”, “evolution” and “transition” simply don’t seem realistic. The word “crisis” seems to be popping up a lot more. No one wants to be a downer, and ceaselessly beat the same drum. People stop listening and brand you as a nut case. I had hoped that being an example would cause changes to occur.
Yet we’re looking around our neighborhood and town and state and country and simply not seeing a lot of evidence that actual (positive) change is occurring. (more…)
All crops need fertilizers to grow. And what “fertilizer” really means is nitrogen that plants can use. Hell, air is 80% nitrogen, but it’s not in a form plants can use. But plants need nitrates (chemically NO3) which is oxygen bound to nitrogen in a particular way. This occurs in nature in two ways: lightening creates NO3, and bacteria eating organic materials (a.k.a. “compost”) make NO3. All good. What if you need more NO3? Well, in 1903, two German guys got the Nobel prize for figuring out how: the Haber-Bosch process creates ammonia, which is the basis for synthetic nitrates, and fertilizers.
And guess what you need to make ammonia? Natural gas accounts for about 3/4 the cost (more…)
Sierra Club’s magazine, Sierra published a startling article called “Miles to Go Before You Eat” which measures the cost in fuel for transporting food.
I think the science behind their methodology is a little flawed, but the point is right on. (more…)
A brief check-in on our progress with perhaps the single most important change we have made, or should I say “we are making” as we proceed to adopt an energy-efficient, yet pain-free lifestyle. Not, not changing light bulbs, or even our Prii (we have 2, count ‘em, Prius’es). Vegetables! (more…)
In several posts, I have talked about the massive energy cost of food, and food related waste. So I have started trying to address this problem by making changes, specifically by trying to buy organic or locally grown food, and by considering ways to reduce how much needs to get hauled off to be recycled. It’s only been a couple weeks so far, but I have to report that neither endeavor is proving to be easy. But I still think there are incremental changes I can make that will have value.
Eating organic food is harder than I had imagined. (more…)
