ecoyear

One of the books I've found the most useful - and that's because I respond to numbers, I guess - is the Union of Concerned Scientists' "Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices". I like the book because it is concise, dispassionate, clearly reasoned, and hopeful.

One of the first points authors Michael Brower and Warren Leon make, is that even though it would be a nice goal to cut emissions across the board by 10% in say, 5 years, it would not in fact be the most effective way to reduce environmental damage. That is because certain practices are clearly more damaging than others. Brower and Leon define environmental damage as: "air pollution, global warming, habitat alteration, and water pollution".

I think it is crucial to take a wide view of things. A narrow focus leads us to technological solutions which then result in additional, even more complicated problems. A wider focus motivates us to make more changes: one for air quality, one for the climate, one for species diversity, one to protect us against toxins...

The book is extremely useful, in that even if you did want to focus on a single issue, you would find discussions broken down by topic. For example, while discussing the most harmful consumer activities, each one's contribution to each of the 4 topics above is teased out. The most harmful activities are: cars/light trucks, meat/poultry (as presently raised), produce and grains (as presently cultivated, processed, packaged and transported), home heating/cooling, appliances, home construction, household water and sewage.

Take the first, and overall most damaging category: cars/light trucks. They contribute 32% of greenhouse gases, 51% of toxic air pollution, 23% of water pollution, and 15% of land use. But where do we start to give up a car? I would have to take the bus with my three kids, with one transfer to their school (chosen by me via "open enrollment" for its "arts integration curriculum"). Then I would somehow bus it to my 3 year old's preschool, take two more buses to my workplace, and do it all again to pick them up. My choices are to carpool, change schools, or stop working. Note that fully 25% of the carbon emissions generated over the life of a car is in fact due to the manufacturing process itself, so clearly, getting rid of the damn thing puts you way ahead. Not to mention what a liability it will be as Peak Oil pushes gas prices skyward. You won't be able to sell it then. As I am in fact quitting paid work, for a variety of reasons, my solution is to cut my driving down by half by parking the car at school and biking home, then biking back to pick up the kids. I'll get some exercise that way, and I bet I will not spend much additional time. It is only 3 miles to school, a 12 minute drive on a good day. The only glitch here is snow.

The second category is food: meat, poultry, produce and grains. They may only account for 12% of carbon emissions, but lo and behold, 73% of water use, 38% of common water pollution and 45% of land use. These unfortunately tie in to climate change, as land use can lead to deforestation, and global warming will likely bring on drought (and we will wish we had not squandered water). Buying local organic produce is the first step here (and buying enough in season to freeze or can). If you value meat so much that you will go to the trouble and expense of getting grass-finished, pastured, local meat, think about this: 40% of land in the US is already used for grazing livestock, which I guess is how you have to raise them early on, before they are moved to feedlots. Pasturing animals throughout their lives takes 6 times more land than keeping them in feedlots. There simply is not that much space! and livestock is already responsible for 25% of the threat to natural ecosystems.

According to Chris Goodall's calculation, switching to a local organic vegan diet would cut carbon emissions by roughly 85% in this category. Now I don't personally have that much trouble going veggie 6 days out of 7. However, I love my milk, cheese and eggs, and going local in winter means I am relying more on these. May to October, however...we could go vegan 5 days out of 7. That's still a 60% reduction for this family. I have to admit here that the menu planning and food sourcing takes me a fair amount of time and energy (though this website is designed to save you that), as does food preparation and kitchen cleanup. The payback is simply that food is sacred, that because work goes into growing food, and preparing it, food is in fact "love made visible", and that "reheat, eat and run" robs us of a deep sense of connection to the world around us.

The third category is "household operations". Accounting for 35% of greenhouse gas emissions, it falls behind food only in that it does not affect water and land use so severely. The strategies here are smaller ,well-insulated homes, efficient appliances, frugal energy use habits, and then using less polluting energy sources: wind electricity, solar water heater. In another great book, "Simple Prosperity", Golden, CO writer David Wann remarks that efficiency is the linchpin that allows to take a house off the grid. A large poorly insulated house with wasteful appliances and residents who want to live at 72 degrees year round will be impossible to maintain on solar energy. On the other hand, a small, well-sited house with state of the art windows and thick straw bale walls, and residents who cheerfully adapt between 60 and 90 degrees can affordably move into self-sufficiency. Here's another place where change seems daunting. What would you change first? However, think of it this way: how likely is it that heating oil prices will increase in three years? You just bet on it, didn't you? So get that energy audit, make some automatic changes like a programmable thermostat and wind-derived electricity. Then daydream about your future home - dreams have a way of working their way into our reality.

One more thing that is brought up by this analysis - land use and mass extinction. We are presently losing 200 species a day to permanent extinction. Your yard is already most likely not wilderness. So use it for food! If you have any sunny space at all - grow something you can eat. If deer pore over those seed catalogs with you (as in my yard), then grow onions, chives, thyme, maybe sunchokes (I am told those are invasive, watch out). If you have a deck, you can grow lots of vegies in containers. By all means, don't use pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Use compost. Make compost.