Life is grand

Nothing was likely to change until we healed the “split between what we think and what we do.

Wendell Berry, 30 years ago talking about environmental problems and peoples attitudes towards them. Fascinating that a man spoke before I was born on today’s issues that people think of as only being recent.

Michael Pollan has an interesting article on why we should even attempt to “go green” when in the face of it our actions may be little better than betting on a horse.

I am an optimist who would like a better, sustainable world. I want to be more independent from the energy grid and the food production and transport system. But as Wendell points out there is a gulf between what we think and what we do. A lot of the push-back seems to come from social norms and desires. The nice house, the nice car, the nice TV and, as I am about to become a father, the completely irrational guilt of not doing buying everything your child needs wants. I have a pregnant girlfriend that I want to keep comfortable and safe.

Saving the planet is going to involve a lot of arguing with the people around me.

And with myself. I’d love a Playstation 3 about now, nearly bought one on the weekend. Yet I want to cut my carbon footprint. One or the other has to give.

Another thing is that my family lives back in South Africa. That is a long, expensive flight. How do I tell my mom I’m not going to see her every year or two because it is bad for the planet? How do I say she may not see her first grandchild for years because the world is falling apart and I have to do my bit?

Then you get onto energy independence; solar and wind. I’ll take the initial hit but what happens in 5 years time when they need to be replaced? Turbines wear out, storms and accidents break solar panels. There is a lot of glass, plastic and silicon in solar and wind generators. Glass takes heat to shape which comes from coal power plants. Plastic comes from petroleum (oil.) God knows what is involved in getting silicon into solar panels.

Plus the various parts of a wind turbine aren’t something I know how to maintain never-mind build. They have to come from somewhere, probably China.

Some of the solution to that involves talking to the people around me. A few co-workers are pretty handy with hardware. But I’ll have to break some social norms to get their help.

Local communities are going to have to come back in a strong way for us to build a sustainable world. I can’t rely on cheap labour and manufacturing in India anymore.

As for food, I’m getting there. Meat is going to be hard to cut but I’ll cut it down, if not out. Vegetables I am working on growing myself with some help from composting all that kitchen waste. Fruit will be harder in Ireland but some recycled packaging for a greenhouse might do the trick. Other things I’ll just have to wean out completely. How the heck do I get local brown sugar for instance? The sugar industry in Ireland went bang awhile back.

None of this takes into account some other important parts of life that we’d do well to be independently capable of; water, waste disposal, medicine, education, communication.

It is a bet. But I’d be happier to go out on the bet than having done nothing.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.