Our Orientation (1)

Can we understand sustainability as the OPPOSITE of consumption?

One key implication of that question is this.   Any purchase you make – any purchase – is counter to sustainability.  Can this be true?

What’s your opinion about this.  Here’s mine: it’s absolutely true.  For now.  It does not have to be true in the future, but today we’re there.

I think this might be the test for the proposition: name something you can buy that, in making AND using the item, you use the same or less resources than it took to make, distribute, and maintain the item in question for its useful life.

Possible exception: purchase of a tract of land for the purpose of preserving it in its natural state in perpetuity.  Can you think of any others?

Of course, I wish I could say I get my food, clothing, transportation, medicine, and baseball bats– crucial for a truly good life – through systems that lived up to the Natural Step’s system conditions for sustainability (see details on the SL website), but I cannot.

How did things get this way? We ignored two key facts of life: 1) earth’s resources have always been, are, and will always be finite, and 2) long-term system considerations always win, no matter how shiny that new car looks in the show room.

Ralph

Earth Day yada yada

I want to commend everybody who did something special for Earth Day.

Two examples.  Rider University’s campus-wide displays, booths, etc. featuring both administration- and student-focused examples.  Very, very cool.  That’s one.  The other is the regular 3rd-Wednesday-of-the-month meeting of the Township’s Open Space Committee.  Virtually nailed down after months of thankless work by volunteers (significantly including a certain wife to whom I belong) is the Lawrence Township Trail Guide.

Miles of trails.  In your town.  For enjoying local Earth-ly manifestations any frikkin day!

Off the Guide will soon go the printer (ETS’ gratis service) and then to your mailbox.  Watch for it later this spring.  Then get walking, okay, because every day is Earth’s Day.  Which is the big thing you should remember on Earth Day, after all, right?

Get it?

Ralph

Lawn Sagacity

Mike McGrath was here as our guest a couple of weeks ago.  He treated us to another wonderful day of presentations about how to be smart lawn and garden stewards.

Here, a few excerpts from my notes of his sessions…

• “There are no native lawn grasses that are native to America.”
• Kentucky bluegrass — which comes from Korea…
• Here, probably your most sensible choice is the newer versions of Kentucky bluegrass.
• …So many ratty lawns in America, because we plant them at the wrong time of the year.  Many of us have been sold some useless four-point program or other by a commercial lawn company that calls for spring seeding.
• Best time for planting here: 8/15-9/15.  Best because the soil 4-5 inches down is warm enough.  Even October or November are okay.  Grass will continue to root and grow into the winter, whenever the ground is not frozen.
• Blades of grass are little solar collectors… they need to be three inches high (or 3 1/2 inches in shade) to grow strong below the surface.
• No way a weed can get established if your lawn is managed well and cut at the right height (no lower than three inches).  Start out with thick turf in the spring, you’ve got a good “barrier to entry” against weeds.
• “When you cut a lawn below three inches, it goes into shock.”
• All our lawns are what are known as “cool season lawns”.  Never cut a cool season lawn during a heat wave.

For more info, see Mike’s website (first one on this blog’s list of links) or go to his page on the SL site: http://www.sustainablelawrence.org/lawn.html.

Happy spring!

Ralph

Our Home Energy Audit

The guys came today. My expectations for this experience, as posted earlier…

1.  We will find that the house is reasonably tight, though hardly perfect.

2.  He’ll recommend more insulation.

3.  Other suggestions will involve expensive items.

4.  The inspector will see things we can do that we never imagined, some easy, some not so.

5.  We will wind up being caught between opportunities for long-term savings, which could be considerable, and short-term expense, also noteworthy for size.  Welcome to the club.  Who said sustainability was going to be easy?

The actual experience: a few observations, now that we have spent 4+ hours with two auditors.  We’ll call them Jack and Joe.

They work for a commercial heating and air conditioning contractor in the area.  They are knowledgeable, articulate and very easy to be around.  Jack, the leader of the duo, and the more experienced, started selling almost the minute he walked in the door.  Lesson number one: with a commercial operator, you get commercials.

The New Jersey program, of which this whole shtick is a part, aims to save a homeowner at least 25% of its heat energy usage.    Less than that, and you don’t qualify for any of the rebates.  Lesson 2: the State has built in a good, strong incentive for the auditors to find real savings opportunities, and 3: this audit is not a true, complete energy audit, it only covers heat energy.  There’s nothing here about your electric bill (unless you heat electrically).

It’s all about air leaks, holes in your walls for vents, pipes, etc.,and possibilities for insulation.  Jack and Joe mentioned nothing about conservation.  Lesson 4: it’s rarely about your windows: there are SO MANY others kinds of drafty places to check out.  (BTW, Jack and Joe said that little infrared device that shows you those dreaded icy cold black areas on its screen costs thousands.)

Jack kept telling us he’d come back with a proposal covering their “top ten” items.  He said in our case, the big one might be replacing our furnaces (we have two, for different parts of the house, of different ages) and our water heater with one system that does it all.  That’s gonna get us all the way to the full rebate threshold.  (Not to mention bunker-bomb the family piggy bank.  So we’ll see.)

They’ll be back, said Jack, in 2-3 weeks with their formal proposal and the real sales pitch.  He actually said that.  Clearly he thought he was being disarmingly candid, funny, and charming.  And it was sort of okay, because he sort of was.  Lesson 5: join in the fun, but don’t swallow the hook.

I’ll take up this topic again after they come back.

Ralph

Still Out There

Lunch today brought old news.  Again.

An environmental consultant I know has been working with a municipality and included in a report to her client (a municipal government in a nearby state) information about the effects of global warming.

A key member of the government body to which she delivered the report wanted that part removed from the report.  Uh-oh.

Because he doesn’t believe in global warming.

Do I need to comment on this?

It does not matter if we’re certain (we are) global warming is occurring (it is) or that human are primarily responsible (we are).  Let’s just go crazy a minute and say all that is wrong (it’s not).

Let’s then also say it’s okay to cross a busy street without looking, because someone says no traffic is coming.  Unless you’re a fool, you look anyway.  This is called the precautionary principle.

When it comes to greenhouse gas (GHG)-generated climate change, it’s a very, very good idea.  Use it.  Look both ways.

So much for the municipal troglodyte.  This is up to me and you.  Take precautions.  Slash your energy use.  If I turn out to be wrong about this, well, shrug your shoulders.  And, oh, the money you save?   Keep it.  You can thank me later.  For now, get to work.

Ralph

Change o’ Plans…

For those of you holding your breath, our auditor called to say he needs to deal with a personal emergency, so our home energy audit has been postponed for a few days.  We will return you now to our regularly irregular programming.

Ralph

P.S.  Noltice that I’ve started adding links over there in the right-hand column of this blog-site.  I’ve got a long list I’ll gradually upload, and I’m also interested in your suggestions.  Thanks.  What sustainability sites do you like?

Our Home Energy Audit: Expectations

Today’s the date of our home energy audit. The guy will be here any minute.

Here are my expectations…

1.  We will find that the house is reasonably tight, though hardly perfect.

2.  He’ll recommend more insulation.

3.  Other suggestions will involve expensive items.

4.  The inspector will see things we can do that we never imagined, some easy, some not so.

5.  We will wind up being caught between opportunities for long-term savings, which could be considerable, and short-term expense, also noteworthy for size.  Welcome to the club.  Who said sustainability was going to be easy?

Details in my next post.

Ralph

Wish I’d written this…

Last night I pulled out Thomas Berry’s book, The Dream of the Earth, and began re-reading it.  Published in 1988 by The Sierra Club, I first read it in 1999.

I pulled it out because my friend and mentor Miriam MacGillis told me last week she’s read it “probably 35 times”.

Berry wrote it, she keeps going back to it…  My brain was receiving a message, “Hint, hint…”

Here is the poetic opening paragraph to Chapter One…

“We are returning to our native place after a long absence, meeting once again with our kin in the earth community.  For too long we have been away somewhere, entracnced with our industrial world of wires and wheels, concrete and steel, and our unending highways, where we race back and forth in continual frenzy.”

Okay, before you hit your internal “guilt button”, easy does it.  Berry himself uses a car, owns a computer, does e-mail, the whole thing.  Nobody’s perfect.  Sustainability is a journey, not a destination, no?

Just take some moments.  Today.  To consider a different way of being, as Berry implies in this beautifully-framed list from his second paragraph.

“The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and glittering stars in the dark night heaves, the world of wind and rain, of meadow flowers and flowing streams, of hickory and oak and maple and spruce and pineland forests, the world of desert sand and prairie grasses, and within all this the eagle and the hawk, the mockingbird and the chickadee, the deer and the wolf and the bear, the coyote, the raccoon, the whale and the seal, and the salmon returning upstream to spawn — all this, the wilderness world recently rediscovered with heightened emotional sensitivity…”

To all Earth’s creatures and communities, happy springtime.

Ralph

Take That!

Them durn weeds don’t stand a chance at Society Hill in Lawrenceville.

Most condo complexes pay little attention to the true quality of their grounds and plantings.  Folks think the conventional, toxic weed killers and “volcano” mulch piles were exactly what the realtor ordered to keep real estate values high.

Never mind the serious deterioration in surface water quality (read: streams), and never mind that residents don’t dare let their kids play on the lawns.

Society Hill has a very different attitude.  They have a found a different, healthier, money-saving-er way.  Here’s a link to pictures and description of the application of corn gluten by a local landscape service.  Note particularly the patience the homeowners’ association is showing in asking folks to bear with the gradual change-over.

Corn gluten on your lawn (of any size): suppresses weeds, greens up the grass, eliminates toxic run-off, and oh yeah, saves money.  All you can ask for, no? Take a look.  Click the link.

http://shltoday.org/about/noticepopup.htm

Ralph

Sappy or Serious?

You decide.

Here, from research results involving people all over the world, come ten things that will make you happy.  May sound a little sappy, but it’s science, so it’s serious.

Happiness being a crucial aspect of sustainability, please read carefully.  And, well, happily.  Published in YES! Magazine.  Original article by Jen Angel in the Winter ‘09 issue. (Whaddya mean you’ve never heard of YES! ?)

1. Savor everyday moments - Stave off depression watching kids play.  Sniffing roses, tried and true, also always works.  Or bury your nose in your lover’s neck.

2. Avoid comparisons – How well you do in life may best be measured by comparing where you are to where you wish to be – not where, who or what someone else is.

3.  Put money low on the list - I like money.  Spirit on the material plane, as a friend once put it.  That’s just it.  If we think the answer is in accumulated cash and goods, we’re mistaken.  Big time.

4. Have meanigful goals - Ones that mean something to you (see no. 2 above), ones that are both significant and enjoyable.  Who says happiness can’t be fun!

5. Take initiatives at work – We spend more time working and thinking about work than we do anything else, those of us with jobs.  Make your work your work to the extent possible.  Start something.  Be creative.  Job-slaves are not happy folks.

6. Make friends, treasure family - Obvious?  Platitudinous?  Maybe.  Unless you’re not doing it proactively.  And often.  We need closeness, people who know and accept us.  Pursue intimacy.  By all means.

7. Smile even when you don’t feel like it - Edging toward the sappy here?  I don’t think so: we’re talking attitude.  Research demonstrates that people with a positive attitude actually feel better.  Sounds like happiness to me.

8. Say “thank you” like you mean it - Gratitude is a definite upper.  Try expressing yourself with specific sincerity next time you write a thank-you note.  Five’ll get you ten you’ll feel better.

9. Get out and exercise - Let your endorphins flow!

10. Give it way, give it away now - Call it altruism if you like, but I find when I let go of something I don’t really need, I fulfill an opportunity to make someone else feel gifted, rewarded, thanked, and downright better.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a ride, a ten-spot or a hug.  It’s a shared connection, a touch of community-building.  Give for it.

Research.  No fooling.  I just wanna celebrate!

Ralph