No Impact Man

Christmas with no presents

Here's the beginning of an article of mine that's in this month's Yes! Magazine:

If Christmas is about presents, then in 2007, my little family and I had no Christmas. I mean, we had the caroling and the uncle playing the piano and the cousins running around with my three-year-old, Isabella, and the grandfather coaxing her to sit on his lap and the good food.

We had, in other words, an amazingly good time.

What we didn’t have, though, was the average American’s $800 hole in our bank accounts, gouged out by Christmas-present spending. Nor did we have the credit card debt still unpaid by June. Nor the forcing of smiles for gifts we didn’t really want. Nor the buying of extra luggage to bring home those unwanted gifts. Nor the stressful rush of last-minute crowds at the mall.

Without presents, you see, we didn’t have the sensation that I, at least, normally associated with Christmas—the stress. And without stress or presents, it’s not Christmas, right? But of course it was. It was the best of Christmas, the part that, research shows, makes people happiest. It was all the upside without the downside...

To read the rest, click here, then come back and leave your comments!

We've got something wonderful going on here

In case you haven't seen, these come via Tuco Rides:

Photographer Norbert Rosing planned to take some sunset photos of a group of sled dogs near Churchill, Manitoba, in northern Canada on the Hudson Bay, when from stage left comes a 1200 pound polar bear.

The dogs' owner thinks he's just about to lose his pack. The dogs, though, don't growl, but crouch down and bark and wag their tails as though they want to play.

The polar bear thinks, yeah, I want to play, too!

And it turns out that you don't have to weigh less than a  thousand pounds to be gentle.

So the dogs say "You should come back and play some more."

The polar bear does. He comes back several times during the course of the next week to roughhouse with his little friends.

It's pretty wonderful, this planet we've been given to live on. Need I say more?

 

About just doing our best to make a change

Jen from Brooklyn once left, as a comment, the story of Nachshon, who was the first of the Jews to enter the Red Sea when fleeing from Egypt.

Nachshon, she wrote, was just this guy, not a leader or anything like that. Nachshon didn’t have the slightest idea how he was going to get across the Red Sea, but he marched on in just the same.

All he had was courage and determination and maybe faith and so he just did the only thing he could which was to take each step as it came. He didn’t know what would happen.

The good news is, and maybe it will be the good news for all of us who try to make a change in our culture, that just as he got to the point where the water came up to his nose, the Red Sea parted.

We don't have time to wait around to see what might help change the world. We simply have to begin stumbling forward and beginning to try to make a difference, rather than sitting around wondering if we can make a difference or not.

Another reader, Uma, once left behind a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, an epic Hindu poem:

“To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.”

In other words, just do it!

Because our backs aren't against the wall

Sorry for the swearing, but I was at an exhibition of activist art from the 1960s and I saw this poster. I believe the boy in the picture is burning his draft card.

What struck me is the fact that this boy doesn't look like a hippie or an activist or anyone at all who would get involved in politics or cultural change (what does such a person look like?).

He just look like a normal guy, but a normal guy who has decided he doesn't like what's going on.

We often wonder what it was about the 1960s that produced so much successful and widespread activism. We want to figure it out so that we can engender the same thing today.

So I was thinking: What would get such a normal looking boy involved in the anti-war movement? Probably the fact that the only other alternative was that he would have to go to war and get his ass shot off.

Back then, I'm not so sure people worried themselves with questions about whether they could make a difference or whether their protests amounted to anything.

Boys like this had no such luxury. Maybe the reason the 60s activism was so alive and well was because people felt their lives were at stake. Their backs were against the wall.

I don't get the sense that most people feel that about the crisis in the habitat that we depend upon for our health, happiness and security. People don't feel as though their backs are against the wall.

What would it take to get them to feel as thought their backs were against the wall?

By the way, in case you're interested, you can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter here.

More on living the green life out loud

Yesterday, I posted on making a spectacle of living green as a way of bringing attention to our environmental emergency. It turns out I'm not the only one who uses the strategy. Lots of readers left behind comments on their lifestyle strategies for getting attention (see the end of the post). Among those readers is Beth Terry, who writes Fake Plastic Fish. This is a guest post by her.

These days, I find myself looking at life as a potential blog post, not unlike the Truman Show.  Whether I am publicly picking up loose plastic bags or bottle caps off the street, carrying my own reusable bags, utensils, containers, napkins, and even glass drinking straws, each interaction I have with a sales clerk or waiter or butcher (asking that the chicken for our cats be ground into our own stainless steel pot) is both an opportunity to educate those in front of me as well as the readers of my blog.

One of my funniest Truman Show days was when I strapped a huge box of Styrofoam peanuts (a gift from my dad) to the back of my bike and pedaled it through the streets of Oakland, returning it to the warehouse to ask that it be reused.  While the experience was wonderful in itself, I found myself rehearsing how I’d later write about it on Fake Plastic Fish.

Being so public can look like showing off.  Resentment or guilt may arise in others when I bring my own dishes to work or ask the host of a party (someone I know pretty well) for a glass instead of a plastic cup.  We’re all human.  And guilt is a human emotion.  I don’t take it personally.  As one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Byron Katie likes to say, “There are only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God's.”  Other people’s guilt is none of mine.

But I do realize my no-plastic rules are extreme.   And I don’t expect anyone else to obsess about plastic the way I do.  By making my life and decisions public, I hope to simply show others what is possible.    And by sharing my failures as well as successes, by giving myself a break every now and then, I hope others will realize that perfection is not necessary or possible.  Simply trying every day is all that’s required.

And here is what some other readers had to say about living greenly out loud:

"I started giving extreme low-key kids' parties, and I have heard parents comment on how much fun they are having and what a relief to be at a relaxed event. This means - picnic in the park, maybe next to a public pool or lake; simple food; home-made cake (maybe from a box mix even - 2 boxes go in my 11x17 pan and feed a large crowd, with home-made icing). Few or no planned activities beyond - be at the park/swim/run around." --Leila Abu-Saba

"I keep a Rubbermaid collapsible container in my purse for restaurant leftovers which consistently draws comments. It folds flat to insert into my purse, and you pop it open to receive the leftovers. Great for the earth, and it serves as a good way to prevent me from eating too much without making me feel guilty that I'm using." --Peggy Brennan

"I have asked the sushi guy to stop putting that little green strip of plastic fake grass on my plate. It's a little thing, but I'm hoping eventually he gives up plastic grass for all his customers." --Darx

"I get into conversations all the time about not having a car (it's a very unusual choice in this area unless you are a student). Also about my knitting on the bus (conversations about why I make my own clothes)." --Deb G

"No one is more shocked at any idea we've put in place than life without a fridge - during the winter, natural refrigeration is provided by, well, winter, and the rest of the year, we rotate our little ice packs and do just fine. The sheer shock of someone not having a ubiquitous fridge really moves a lot of people." --Sharon

"Last earth day I decided to go to the woods beside the local high school to pick up trash and recycling. As I was working away a jogger stopped to ask about what I was doing. Turns out he was the civics instructor at the school and told me on the spot that he'd get the class out on Monday to work on the rest (it is a huge area, my afternoon's work barely made a dent). I went walking a few days later and couldn't believe my eyes.. the woods were trash-free. I was really, really happy about that."  --julie

"I can't even count the number of people who have either reduced their meat consumption or gone veg themselves after following my example of veganism. Even those who at first ridiculed me ("Wouldn't you like to eat a hamburger once in a while?") - can be counted among my 'converts.'" --Sara

"I use cloth diapers on my son (except when he's at day care, because my daycare provider insists on disposables, at least I do Seventh Generation ones) and that seems to make an impression in my moms groups." --Jessica

In praise of making a spectacle of living green

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to decide to go against the cultural flow in the way that one lives and even more if you decide to advertise the fact.

But I'm thinking that, of the many ways to assess which environmental lifestyle measures make the biggest difference, one way is to decide which adaptations are the most noticeable by other people. Because the more noticeable, the greater chance for changing other people's minds.

I'm talking here about lifestyle redesign as a kind of political performance art.

What makes me think of this is my jar, my cloth, and my rickshaw. As you know, I call a mason jar I retrieved from the trash my ultra-cool reusable coffee cup, and I use it instead of disposable cups when I buy coffee. I also call it my ultra-cool reusable water bottle because I use it to carry tap water.

At the time when I introduced the concept on the blog, there were a lot of comments about the practicality of the glass jar. And actually I find it very practical: it doesn't leak and it's free. But when we talk about the practicality we miss the point of its importance as a spectacle.

"Thanks for using that," baristas say to me all the time. Often the coffee ends up being on the house.

"How come you use a jar?" fellow customers ask me all the time.

"I just have a thing about making trash," I say.

"Geez, you got me thinking," they say.

A metal cup from Starbucks wouldn't do the trick.

Similarly, I introduced the fact that I carry a cloth everywhere in a post titled "Oh no, here come the weirdos with the cloths." When I go to restaurants, I'll very politely ask the server to return the paper napkin to whence it came.

I make my explanation very politely. I never proselytize. A Zen Master friend once called my explanations "Colin's little darma talks."

Well, the thing is, one server at a restaurant round the corner told me that he was talking about me to another customer.

"What on earth for?" I asked.

"Because I'm proud of you," he said.

Similarly, the rickshaw I carry Isabella around in--my No Impact SUV--brings smiles to lots of people's faces and I end up in conversation about it all the time.

Now, I'm not trying to blow my own horn. I'm simply saying that making sustainable lifestyle changes that publicly breach social norms in ways people appreciate may have much more value than the resources that they're saving.

What experience to you have with this? Do you live green and loud in ways that people notice and think about? Do you have some experience of just living your new way that helps a stranger become more conscious?

America's love affair with the car more of a forced marriage?

From a post by Harvey Wasserman on CommonDreams.org:

In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses.

Just one American family in 10 then owned an automobile.  Instead, we loved our 44,000 miles of passenger rail routes managed by 1,200 companies employing 300,000 Americans who ran 15 billion annual trips generating an income of $1 billion.  According to Snell, "virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system."

But GM lost $65 million in 1921.  So Sloan enlisted Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, glass and rubber companies and an army of financiers and politicians to kill mass transit.

The campaigns varied, as did the economic and technical health of many of the systems themselves.  Some now argue that buses would have transcended many of the rail lines anyway.  More likely, they would have hybridized and complemented each other.

But with a varied arsenal of political and financial subterfuges, GM helped gut the core of America's train and trolley systems. It was the murder of our rail systems that made our "love affair" with the car a tragedy of necessity.

In 1949 a complex federal prosecution for related crimes resulted in an anti-trust fine against GM of a whopping $5000.  For years thereafter GM continued to bury electric rail systems by "bustituting" gas-fired vehicles.

Then came the interstates.  After driving his Allied forces into Berlin on Hitler's Autobahn, Dwight Eisenhower brought home a passion for America's biggest public works project.  Some 40,000 miles of vital eco-systems were eventually paved under.

In habitat destruction, oil addiction, global warming, outright traffic deaths (some 40,000/year and more), ancillary ailments and wars for oil, the automobile embodies the worst ecological catastrophe in human history...

...So let's convert the company's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.

FDR forced Detroit to manufacture the tanks, planes and guns that won World War 2 (try buying a 1944 Chevrolet!).  Now let a reinvented GM make the "weapons" to win the climate war and energy independence.

It demands re-tooling and re-training.  But GM's special role in history must now evolve into using its infrastructure to restore the mass transit system---and ecological balance---it has helped destroy.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has a great op-ed by Robert Goodman on how the big three auto companies should become "transportmakers" which make all manner of public transport in exchange for our bailing them out.

The cultural barriers to environmental change

Here's an alternative title for this post: nasty neighbors and mean people you meet in the street. But that would just be bile and silliness and bitterness and not addressing myself to the real obstacles to social and environmental change which are at play, which are important to understand.

Because what's happened is that a neighbor has threatened to have the police remove one of our rickshaws from the sidewalk where we park it. She says it makes the street look untidy, and the implication is that it brings the neighborhood downmarket.

And the thing is, the way that bikes are parked in New York City is kind of untidy. There is little dedicated space to park them so we New Yorkers lock bikes to lampposts and street signs and parking meters and scaffolds and railings and anything else we can find.

That's cultural barrier number one: that the infrastructure does not exist to support change.

One of the biggest barriers to people turning to biking in NYC is the fear that their bikes will get stolen--nowhere safe to leave them. The good news is that new planning regulations will soon require every new building to provide indoor bike parking.

But cultural barrier number two is attitudinal. That is to say, it is true that, at the moment, bike parking in New York uglies up the pretty blocks. Look at the picture above. Dedicated bike parking would improve that in a second.

But here's the thing, what people don't see is the possibility of a hundred  bikes replacing a hundred much more untidy cars. Look at the picture below. If the cars are do not ugly up the city, I don't know what does.

People don't think of how much space and tidiness we'd get if we just replace the cars with bikes. Not to mention all the pollutants and carbon gas we'd save, too.

How do we get people past the limitations of the old ideas to see the possibility of the new?

Day off for me

See you Monday!

Whales versus submarines--which do you prefer?

Photo of melon-headed whales stranded off Kauai

Does this tear the hear out of anybody's chest but mine?

[Environmental] groups say that sonar can be as loud as 2,000 jet engines, causing marine mammals to suffer lasting physical trauma, strandings and changes in breeding and migration patterns. They contend that courts are perfectly capable of weighing the competing security and environmental concerns.

Chief Justice Roberts took a different view. Courts, he said, quoting a 1986 decision of the justices, must “give great deference to the professional judgment of military authorities” in making decisions about personnel, training and priorities...

... Whatever the correct answer to how many animals could be harmed, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, those injuries are “outweighed by the public interest and the Navy’s interest in effective, realistic training of its sailors.”

In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the US Navy can fire off its sonar with impunity, regardless of the effect it has on the world's dwindling whale population.

Read more here.