Individual vs. Community Solutions

I recently gave an interview on The Jefferson Exchange public radio program where a listener called in to ask what a typical person could do to reduce their ecological footprint without moving off the grid. It was a good question. Most people can’t or don’t want to live the kind of life I had in Taos. Yet plenty of people want to lessen their impact on the earth and achieve a similar reduction in expenses. What can they do?

The list is long, the choices many. Every individual is different and must decide what makes sense for him/herself. Can you drive less somehow? Can you make improvements to the energy efficiency of your home? Can you switch to locally-grown, organic food? Any choice you can make that will save you money will usually reduce your usage of the earth’s resources as well.

But what if you are already spending as little as possible? Or what if the usual suggestions don’t apply to you? For instance, adequate public transportation doesn’t exist where you live, so you are forced to drive to work every day. Or you rent your home and your landlord refuses to install better insulation or energy-efficient appliances. Or there is no farmer’s market/community garden/natural foods store nearby, and a mainstream grocery store is your only option.

If you have exhausted all individual solutions, then you need a good community solution. You and everybody else. This is the real answer.

I brainstormed the following list of ideas to get us started. (If you can think of some more, I would love to see them.)

• Public utilities that provide electricity and heat from renewable resources
• Tighter energy efficiency requirements for any appliance that consumes energy
• Regulation of public water supplies to ensure adequate quantity and quality for the future, plus enforcement of the regulation
• More community garden spaces
• More parks and trees in urban/suburban centers to help clean up air pollution and keep temperatures cooler
• Recycling bins next to every garbage can in all public spaces
• Home recycling at no greater cost than garbage pickup
• Requirements for manufacturers to use less packaging in all their products
• Convenient, affordable public transportation, ideally powered by renewable energy
• Safe, convenient pedestrian and bike paths

And how do we put these ideas into practice? By asking for them. For example, ask your city council for more community garden spaces, parks, and trees. Lobby your state representative for higher renewable energy requirements for public utilities. Pressure your federal representative for changes in manufacturing laws to tighten energy efficiency standards for appliances or to use less packaging material for all products. When all else fails, call a local newspaper or television reporter and ask them to investigate the quality of the water supply in your area, or the level of air pollution and how it affects public health, or why the bus system isn’t used by more people.

Part of the beauty of living in America is that an individual can effect change simply by agitating for it. And that doesn’t have to involve angry picket signs: it can simply be a letter to your congressperson. If enough of us demand it, change will come.

Go Outside and Play

When my sisters and I were growing up in a small Colorado mountain town, every day after school we would change into our play clothes, eat EXACTLY TWO cookies, then go outside and play. These were my mother’s rules, no exceptions. We became adept at sneaking extra cookies, but we never snuck back indoors once we were kicked out.

We didn’t want to, even in winter. There was much more to do outside before the sun set than inside, so we bundled up and headed out. We dug tunnels in the snow, made “ski runs” on the piles the plows left next to our driveway, built snow forts, had snowball fights, made snow angels, went sledding on a nearby slope, and generally ran around expending energy.

In warmer weather we climbed on rocks, rode our bikes through the woods with our teddy bears in the baskets, waded in streams, picked strawberries, pretended to be explorers, played hide-and-seek or kick-the-can, and generally ran around expending energy.

As a bonus, which I didn’t recognize until decades later, we became very comfortable in the outdoors. We absorbed the nuances of our natural surroundings and the changes in the seasons without really noticing it. That fundamental knowledge has persisted into adulthood for me. I can sense a drop of a few degrees in temperature or a subtle shift in the wind. I can tell if it’s going to snow by looking at the clouds, even if common sense says the conditions are not right. I know how to cross a stream without getting wet, and when it’s too dangerous to try. My eyes are always subconsciously on the lookout for wildlife, and, consequently, I spot plenty of animals wherever I go.

Why does this matter? Two reasons. First, when you are in tune with your natural surroundings, you are capable of noticing unusual changes. For instance, late arrivals or early departures of migratory animals. Summers that are hotter, dryer, or longer than usual. Snow that is wetter than normal, or which melts faster. Autumn leaves that change colors later than usual or not at all. (Sometimes the aspen leaves here in Colorado turn black and drop off all at once, with none of the typical fiery gold display.) Rivers and lakes whose water levels are subtly or drastically different from what you expect. Atypical wind patterns or predictable weather (such as afternoon thundershowers) that becomes unpredictable.

When you notice these types of changes, you may start to wonder why they are occurring, whether they will last, what their impact is, and whether you have played a role in creating them. If you conclude that you have (for example, contributing to air pollution by driving too much, or speeding the depletion of your water supply by over-generously watering your lawn), then you may be more inclined to make a change. Change is easier when you intrinsically understand the benefits, rather than having them pointed out to you by “experts.” And voluntary change is always easier than change imposed upon you by authorities.

Second, one of the worst errors in modern thinking is that we exist apart from Nature. If you spend your days indoors, isolated from the weather and other aspects of your natural surroundings, you may fall prey to this belief. But humans are a part of Nature as much as other animals are. Spending more time outside will reconnect you to your role as a resident of your local habitat. Instead of fighting the weather (for example, staying indoors when it is cold/rainy/windy outside), you can embrace it. Rather than fearing the wilder elements of the outdoors (such as getting lost in the woods or encountering a bear), you can learn how to prevent misfortune. Instead of relying on expensive technology to improve your life (e.g., installing air conditioning in your house), you will be able to come up with cheaper, more natural solutions (e.g., planting trees on the south and west sides of your house).

Besides, surrounding yourself by greenery, inhaling the fresh air, and letting the sun warm your back are all documented ways to de-stress your psyche. And like all good things in life, you can do them for free.

So go outside and play.

The Opposite of Materialism Is Freedom

What happens when you own too much stuff? It owns you. You find yourself needing money so your stuff can occupy more space, be maintained and insured, and eventually be packed and moved. All the stuff you have invested your time, money, energy, and the planet’s resources to acquire winds up running your life.

Sometimes it creeps up on you, the way wrinkles and other signs of age do. For example, my friend Jill spent several seasons as a rafting guide in Alaska. The guides camped in tents all summer, walking into town to fetch food because none of them had a car. Jill had left her car back home in Las Vegas. When she tired of her Alaska experience, she went home to load it up and drive to her next adventure working for a casino in Reno. Two decades later, as she packed the contents of her three-thousand-square-foot house into box after box to be loaded into a moving truck, she lamented no longer being twenty years old and able to stash all her possessions into a hatchback and hit the road, the ultimate freedom.

It’s true that most of us don’t want to turn forty and still be living in a tent; there is something to be said for planning for a comfortable future. But comfortable doesn’t need to be extravagant, and extravagance is what our current consumer culture is all about. Spending to impress people (including yourself) is a bad idea. So is frivolously wasting the earth’s resources.

Luckily, there are other ways to live your life, even in modern America. My friend Ann spent her adult years living with an enviable zest. She managed to arrange her work schedule to take off extended periods of time so she could travel the globe, her favorite pastime. This included riding her bicycle to Mexico with her brother, spending eighteen months traveling solo through South America, and taking her elderly mother to Greece. For Ann, travel and experiences were vastly more important than material possessions, of which she had few. A coworker advised her early in her career to set aside 10 percent of her income in savings, which she did faithfully, managing to survive, thrive, and travel frequently on the rest. She is now retired, living comfortably in a $175,000 house for which she paid cash, despite never having netted more than $25,000 per year in her life. If she had spent her money on material goods instead, she would not have been able to pursue her hobby, and she very likely would have had to work more years to secure her future.

You are probably surrounded by people quietly bucking the mainstream, living well on less and being kinder to the planet in the process. If enough of us join them, we can secure a comfortable future for ourselves and many more generations going forward.