ecoyear

supporting household ecological transformation

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Well, we are now coming up on three "ecoyears". "eco" has become a way of life - thinking about the impact of everything - and my hope for the future lies in building community, local economies, reviving old-fashioned low-energy skills, and loving nature!

We now live in Larkspur, CA. We are at sea level, and we are all but frost-free. Food gardening here will be a new experience for me.

I embarked upon this adventure in November 2007. It has been an eye-opener!! I am most excited about the incredible possibilities that become available for a much richer sense of community, and re-connection with the most basic, meaningful aspects of life. So far I have found here much more than compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

My overriding goal is to condense what I am learning into a clear, step-by-step, simple blueprint that can be adopted by anyone. Local food is still the backbone, as it is so clearly linked to health, and to self-sufficiency. But chemicals in everyday life, the working conditions we create for people in other countries, our impact on nature, everything is connected...

Your comments are more than welcome.

I am a 48 year old mother of three little boys and a family physician. I am staying home at the moment focusing on raising kids, having just moved us all to California (from Colorado).

I have dabbled in environmentalism all my life and was a vegetarian for 18 years (before that first pregnancy!) for reasons of saving planetary resources. Though I try to use recycled paper, lower our thermostat, buy energy-efficient appliances, and generally be conscious of our carbon footprint, I have mostly been busy raising my kids and working in community health centers.

After viewing Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2007, global warming came into sharp focus for me as a pressing issue. I started this blog, and explored, in turn, local food, climate change, peak oil and the financial crisis of 2008.

One thought led to another as it became clear that so many issues are deeply interrelated. Local food not only serves a carbon footprint purpose, but helps our community, which is one response to the financial fiasco of recent years, and also puts us in touch with those who grow our food. This inevitably brings us back to issues of healthy food, personal health, social justice and environmental health.

2008 was our first "ecoyear". 2009 found us comfortable within a network of Northern Colorado suppliers of local, organic, sustainably grown, healthy food, studying permaculture, and growing a bumper crop of tomatoes. 2010 brought more issues related to health care, and concern over how we would deal with "powerdown" - some kind of society of the future, hopefully focused on growing community along with local food.

And here's 2011. I'm considering going back to work, transformed by healthy food into a different kind of doctor, feeling excited and lucky to have found a brand new "home" in Functional Medicine. I'm also creating a network of local food suppliers in Northern California, focusing more on building a foundation of personal health, and on building community.

At the moment, what is coming into sharper focus is the topic of environmental toxins - while the effect of carbon emissions looms over us like death and taxes, our polluted world has already been making itself felt in the steep rise of diseases like diabetes, allergies, and probably also autism, infertility, Alzheimer's disease and many cancers. Once again we work for change against difficult odds, while celebrating the beauty and the miracle of our existence on Earth.