Day 30 of Daily Footprint Project. A good time to conclude the project. And to reflect on the lessons learned during these thirty days spent under the close scrutiny of the green lens:
How to evaluate one’s personal environmental impact, is still up for discussion:
Starting with today. I drove a lot today. Some of the trips I could have done on ‘Pervenche‘, no question. That would have meant one extra hour spent on the bike. One less hour to work on two green projects I am involved with. What’s more important, to try to contribute to the global warming solution on a global scale, through my professional endeavors, or on a personal level through my daily actions? This is a question that keeps coming up, and I have heard two school of thoughts on the matter. One says, you’ve got to be pure and try to align your personal actions with your talk, as best as you can. According to these folks, I should have biked, and then maybe spent an extra hour working. The other school says, you’ve got to look at the net effect of your actions. If, through your work, you are going to mitigate more than your personal part of carbon emissions, then you have the license to sin a bit, as long as it is in the service of the green cause. When it was found that Al Gore was not as green as he could be, the two sides went at it. I say, they are probably both right. My own line of conduct is be as conscious as you possibly can of your actions, and if you are going to sin, do it full knowingly, and try to make up some other way. And I don’t mean carbon offsets here . . . Although, here again, if I am going to fly, I will purchase carbon offsets.
Green consciousness eventually leads to more responsible behavior:
Second, I have noticed my green conscience has become a lot more acute as a result of this daily process of systematic observation. I would like to pause and talk about the difference between observing, and judging. It is important to not censor and let the inner critic have a field day with one’s observations. That would be missing the point. No, the most important thing is to become more conscious. Without willing it, the conscience becomes strengthened, and it is only a matter of time, before one starts acting more responsibility. This morning at the pool, was a perfect example. As I was about to step into the hot tub, I noticed the jets had not been turned on. There are two buttons, one for the jets on the right side, the other for the jets on the left side. I thought why turn both on? I am the only one, and I will only be using one jet. Then comes this old lady, who gets annoyed. Why aren’t both sides turned on? It did not even occur to her why both jets would not be on. This is what I mean by being unconscious.
Green Wannabes need external help to go green all the way:
A well developed green conscience can only go so far however. There has been plenty of instances, many documented in this blog, when I didn’t have any excuses for not behaving green, and I still went ahead and behaved badly, out of sheer laziness, or because I had other things on my mind, or I fell back into old habits. I am just a Green Girl Wannabe, not UberGreenie. And I need help. Many of my comments on the Huffington Post deal with that reality, and the fact that I, and I would venture to say, most Americans, no matter how well intentioned, need some external help to go green all the way. In my public letter to the future President of the United States, I listed fifteen things I would need from our next leader. These mostly have to do with incentive, policies, taxes, laws and regulations, standards, public infrastructures, and technologies. You’ve got to make it easy for folks to green their lives. Cheap, convenient, efficient, appealing, fun, and impossible to not follow.
Daily Footprint Project Daily Log Day #30 Water personal: flush toilet 3 wash face 2 brush teeth 2 wash hands 5 shower at pool 2 mom: wash salad communal: rinse dishes Electricity/gas personal: electric toothbrush 4’ microwave tea 2’ microwave milk 2’ laptop on all day microwave oatmeal 4’ microwave soup 3’ mom: boil pasta communal: lights Food personal: tea organic milk organic apples 2 organic chocolate oatmeal takeout chicken soup from Whole Foods whole wheat bread mom: cheese pasta salad communal: Waste personal: toilet paper soup carton mom: communal: 3 newspaper plastic wrappers Recycling personal: mom: communal: 2 papers junk mail Transportation personal: mom: communal: drive friend to airport 45 miles drive to pool 6 miles drive to night meeting 2 miles drive to grocery store 5 miles Non food shopping personal: mom: communal:
La Marguerite 
Forget about the carbon offsets. Carbon emissions can be reduced, they can increased, or they can be absorbed, but they cannot be offset.
What matters to the global climate is how much carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases are emitted. So if I drive my car, I emit CO2 – let’s say 100 units. If someone else gets their electricity from a wind turbine, they don’t emit CO2 (actually they do in the building and maintenance, but we’ll ignore that for now). Thus, 0 units of CO2.
100 + 0 = 100.
So if I pay for the other guy’s wind energy, that in no way reduces the amount of carbon dioxide I’m emitting. For more discussion of carbon offsets, see my post here. In essence, the only ones worth anything are tree-planting. And even those are somewhat dodgy because often they’re plantations which will be cut down and burned or pulped, thus net carbon absorbtion is zero.
The way to reduce your personal emissions is to reduce your personal emissions. Ride that bike.
In general I support the argument of maing emissions so you can help others reduce. However, there are two things to bear in mind.
Firstly, let’s not forget the power of personal example. That can be stronger than any argument or facts. Is it better to drive to two community meetings to lecture them on reducing their emissions, or bicycle to one? Which will make more impact?
What would the impact have been on the Bali climate change meeting if even one world leader had taken a sailboat to the city from their home country, and rode on their pushbike every day to the meetings?
Secondly, realistically-speaking, how many helpers and leaders do we need? How many Al Gores or Sharon Astyks?
Lastly, I would say that while I always support writing to our elected representatives and candidates – writing to secific individuals, rather than just tossing an unaddressed blog post out there – I don’t expect it to have much effect. Looking to our leaders to save us misunderstands how democracy works.
Our elected representatives are not in fact leaders. They’re followers. They follow public opinion so they can get re-elected. Even if you’re not in a democracy, they still follow public opinion to avoid revolution.
Two examples. Cuba’s often spoken of as a country which switched to organic food production, adjusting to having less oil. What’s rarely appreciated is that this change came from the people. There was less food in the shops, so people just started moving into disused lots and parks and nature strips and growing food. At the first the government opposed them, tried to keep everyone working on the collective land. But people were starving, and these private and community lots were very productive. If you want to rule a country without democracy, you need to do two things – feed them, and pay the army. Castro and his mates realised they couldn’t feed them, but the people could feed themselves, so if he tried to stop them – revolution. So once the people had demonstrated their approach worked, then the Cuban government stepped in and helped out with scientific advice, seeds and so on.
Over in Bolivia a private (US) company took control of the capital’s water, and massively raised prices, even trying to charge people for rainwater they collected. The people marched on the parliament, and the troops refused to fire on the crowd. Given the choice between revolution and tearing up the company’s contract, the government took the wise choice.
In both cases, the government was dragged kicking and screaming towards the right and popular course of action. Examples of this in history are legion. Suffice to say, our elected representatives are not leaders, they’re followers. Once the general population wants something, they reluctantly give it to them.
Note that Al Gore’s conversion to these ideas came only when he was out of office. The guy was VP for eight years and did nothing, and does not seek office now. Why? Because in office he was a follower, and because of the checks and balances of government could do little more, now he wants to be a leader.
So don’t focus too much on some elected guy giving us the right laws or subsidies or whatever. If we wait for them, we end up with things like the fall of France to the Nazis. Just do what you feel is right. They’ll follow along eventually.
Both the Cuba and Bolivia examples are wonderful. Very inspiring.
I hear you, and like you, like Gore, I say let’s not wait and let’s do whatever we can, right now. Including trying to get the right guy elected. I believe we cannot ignore anything at this point, and the solution’s got to include both bottom up and top down approaches.
This project has been an awesome example – it’s in the corners of my awareness as I live my daily life and it prompts “I wonder “projects in my own mind. One of which will come to life in the new year. I have shared my fears about riding a bike here at least where I live now. Yet I am definitely walking more – even at 19 degrees out I walked a mile to my daughters concert last night. I never would have done that before.
Mother Earth aka Karen Hanrahan
http://www.bestwellnessconsultant.com
Thanks for gifting me with such a heartfelt feedback. I am delighted I was able to help you a bit along your green journey. Please know that you have helped me as well with all your comments and ongoing support.
I agree that both top-down and bottom-up approaches are needed. But I don’t think there’s much sense in worrying about who gets elected. Again, I think you put too much importance on one person in charge, forgetting that your President can do nothing without the 24 or so members of their Cabinet, and the 500 or so Congresspeople and Senators.
Old LBJ said, “when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” The public always has their elected representatives by the balls – always. We just have to get moving. They’ll follow.
An example here is that with the demise of the Liberal government, his old party now supports Kyoto. Its members were against it for a decade, but once they were out of office they supported it within days. They were a bit thick and slow, I agree – but they’re following us now.
I just hope you are right!
Hi Marguerite. What a great project. I wonder why I hadn’t encountered your blog before today. Actually, that’s not quite right. I think I actually may have at some point last year but was overwhelmed with all the green blogs and couldn’t discriminate back then.
I look forward to meeting you in Dolores Park soon.
Beth