arduous blog

This is The End My Friend

2011-07-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

Hello all. I just wanted to check in here and let you know that I've decided to close up shop here.

It's been an amazing ride for me. Because of this blog, I've done so many things I never thought I'd do. I've met some amazing people through this blog, and made some great friendships. I even ended up getting a job because of this blog!

But as you all could probably tell, I kind of burnt out talking about environmental matters all the time. I didn't have much more to say about it, and I felt like when I did write something, it was often haphazard and not very well thought out.

So I decided to stop blogging here though the archives will be available indefinitely (at least until Blogger decides to purge them all.)

But! I'm not entirely gone from the interwebs! I may not blog about environmental matters, but I will be blogging about ... stuff? I haven't really figured out what ... on my new fancy schmancy personal blog.

Basically, it will be a space for me to talk about whatever is going on in my life or anything I'm currently thinking about. I can't promise that it won't be a lot of wedding talk, but the good news is that I'm getting married in November, so it won't be about wedding talk for too long.

So, if you're interested, come check me out there. And if not, well, we'll always have the memories (and archives.)

Y'alls...

2011-04-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to clarify my last two posts.

I intended them tongue firmly planted in cheek, but sometimes that kind of thing doesn't transmit across the internets.

A#1, I think suburbs can be green. I just personally prefer to live in cities. Which can be (in some cases) not so green. So.

A#2, I don't think yards are bad or un-green. Nor Yosemite, nor pot smokers. Ritual suicide on the other hand? Not a huge fan. I'm agnostic on Oprah.

So where do I think you should live?

I think you should live where you are happy. Really, truly happy.

Because the truth is, I think there are some decisions we have to make about ourselves and our lives and we can't make them from a martyr-for-the-Earth point of view. We make them because they are the right decisions for us.

The problem becomes when we fail to recognize that. When we fail to recognize how our own internal preferences shape how we think. Then we become smug and say things like how cities are so sustainable and how awful suburbs are. And we believe we are superior because we live in cities.

And that's just b.s.

I can guarantee you, no one writing an article about how cities are more sustainable than suburbs is someone who REALLY wants to live in a suburb but is living in a city against their will because they think it's better for the Earth.

Mostly, when we make sweeping generalizations like suburbs are better than cities or that cities are better than rural areas, we're just validating our own personal preferences. Because the truth is that there is no way for me to say what is better for you, Joe Schmoe.

Live where you are happy, and do your best, okay? Or do as good as you can considering we are all messy, imperfect beings. (Let's not talk about the sheer volume of plastic in my trash can now.)

Hope that clarifies things.

Ruchi

What does Green Mean?

2011-04-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

Ever since my last post on sustainable cities, I've been thinking ... what does sustainable mean anyway? What does it mean to be green? What is the point of Earth Day?

Heavy stuff?

Perhaps.

A lot of people associate being green with nature. One person on Jenn's original post about the suburbs versus cities argued that cities might be less green because they lacked yards to grow food or for children to play in.

Which made me wonder: is having a yard a green attribute?

The reality is that greens have a fairly incoherent relationship with well ... greens. By which I mean, ya know, trees, and shrubs, and grass, and dear little woodland creatures.

Let's take yards. Yards are considered wonderful because they allow us to grow food and allow our children to play in nature. Enviros will take pictures of their gardens, their fruit trees, their flower bushes to show the world the beauties of nature. Yay yards! Let's build more yards!!

But wait! Before we rush out to build yards! We must remember that yards are terrible because they require so much water. Lawns are a waste of such a precious commodity. Also, gardens hardly constitute "nature" because they are human constructed. Rows of heirloom tomatoes aren't "natural." Nor are those peas growing on that human-built trellis. Yards are not nature!

No, to find nature, we must go to Yosemite. Or Yellowstone. Or some other national park. That's where NATURE is.

Except, that's not nature either! Look at all those stupid campers sitting there. They are destroying the nature with their ENJOYMENT of it. Look at them smugly sitting on that log. They are SITTING on NATURE.

Nature is somewhere else. Somewhere where humans have never been. The real nature, the nature we need to save, is actually the nature we've never seen. Because if we see it, WE RUIN IT! Do you hear me?!!! We must save it from us!! STAY AWAY FROM THE NATURE!!!

Actually, maybe those lawns aren't so bad. But maybe instead of lawns, we could just let our yards run wild. Except that, hmmm, then it might become "nature" and our kids couldn't play there. Alternately, it might become filled with tumbleweeds and the local high school kid might smoke pot back there.

Hmmm.

Is pot nature?

Ultimately, this gets carried forward to the inevitable conclusion, which generally results in ritual suicide because, let's face it, there'd be a lot more "nature" around if humans were all dead.

Kidding. About the ritual suicide.

But the truth is, there are greens who do think there'd be a lot more "nature" if the human race went extinct.

Personally, I think there would be a lot more of somethings ... certainly there are some species that would multiply without humans and there are others that would probably die off without us.

But as for nature?

Well, I'd argue that "nature" is a human construct. Without humans, there is no nature.

The truth is that from the moment humans first roamed the Earth, we have had an impact on the non-human world. We shouldn't aim to separate ourselves from our world for a multiplicity of reasons, and honestly, we CAN'T separate ourselves from the world.

We are humans. We are nature. And, as Oprah would say, if we want to love and protect nature, we are going to have to learn to love ourselves as part of nature first.

In Defense of the City

2011-04-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, Jenn wrote a post asking whether cities were so much more sustainable than suburbs?

And of course it got me thinking.

The first thing I thought was, well, it depends.

Which is pretty much the obvious answer and also my knee jerk response to just about everything. (I must be so annoying to read with my, oh well, it's complicated, and my, oh, what we really need is institutional change. Blah dee f**king blah, can't I say anything definitive?)

The truth is, that sure, some suburbs can be sustainable. And if you want to live in a suburb, you should do it, and do your best in your situation.

But eff it. I don't feel like writing the, "Cities are great, but suburbs are fine too," post. So instead, I want to write a post about why cities are awesome. Because I live in a city and I think everyone should be like me. Validate me, internets!!

I've lived in cities for most of my adult life. I adore cities. I think everyone should want to live in cities because cities are where the cool people (meaning me) live. Truthfully, though, none of the four cities I've lived in has been perfect, sustainability wise, nor has my behavior been perfect in any of said cities.

In Los Angeles, the weather is great meaning that you rarely turn on the heat or the a/c. But of course the public transit sucks so you drive everywhere,

In London, the weather is pretty wet and miserable so the heat is on more often. On the other hand, the public transit is great.

New York is both cold AND hot meaning a/c in the summer and heat at night. Plus, I'm sorry, but New York is TERRIBLE about waste. Forget about composting, no one seems to even recycle.

San Francisco is a green mecca with temperate weather and industrial city-wide composting. But the public transit still isn't great. And also, sorry, but San Francisco just isn't that awesome a city compared to LA, London, or New York.

But there are many ways in which almost all cities excel. Most cities, though not all, have good public transit. Cities pack lots of people in dense areas. And contrary to what some people have argued, cities also have places to garden (our neighborhood has two community gardens within walking distance), places for kids to play (they are called parks and playgrounds and they are better than backyards, fer reals). In some cities, you even have space, or rather "space." You are rarely going to get a five bedroom house in the city (unless you are a gajillionaire) but in some cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, you can buy actual houses. You will have to sell your right kidney on the black market to pay the down payment, and your master bedroom will be the size of a medium-sized walk in closet in suburbia, but you will get your house, maybe even with a garden and a deck for your dog to lay on.

My point is that cities (where I live) is awesome (I am also awesome.) Plus, according to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis, people's happiness is greatly affected by short commute times. But overall happiness is actually relatively unaffected by having more space. So if living in a city reduces your commute, but living in a suburb gives you more space, you might want to think about the city over the suburb.

But if you recoil at living in a city and love the suburbs? Then, find a suburb where you can be happy (ideally one with SOME public transit and one that is not TOO far from your work) and don't worry about it. Because in the end, when people claim that cities are more sustainable or suburbs are more sustainable or farms are more sustainable?

We're often just trying to validate the preferences we already hold.

The Risks of Parenting

2011-04-03T23:02:00.000-07:00

I've been mulling over a post that Erin wrote a while ago about cherry picking science. In it, she admitted that though she sometimes can't believe that people don't trust the science behind climate change, she doesn't always trust science herself.

Even among those of us who love science, our relationship with it can be quite fraught.

Consider this article from the LA Times which notes that children using a rear-facing car seat until age 2 are 75% less likely to die or suffer serious injuries in a car crash. In spite of this seemingly overwhelming evidence, the article notes that many parents have chosen to ignore the recommendations and are placing the car seats in a forward facing position.

Why?

I can't speak for all those parents, but there are several possible explanations.

One is that they are either scientifically illiterate or don't understand the risk as my friend Abbie suggested when we recently debated this on Facebook.

The other is that they do understand the risk, and have decided that it's minimal enough that they choose ... to risk it.

Now the latter might seem like a pretty absurd position to take given that the research shows that your child is 75% less likely to die in a crash if they are facing forward. 75%! That's huge, right?

Well ... sort of.

The reality is, your child would be 100% less likely to die in a vehicular car crash if you never put them in a car. But most people wouldn't consider that. It's too difficult, too inconvenient, too absurd.

Life involves risk. Everything we do involves risk. Driving to work. Drinking a beer. Eating a hamburger (you could get mad cow, dontcha know?) Having sex. Flying on a plane. No matter how you try, you will never live a life that is 100% risk free. And frankly, sometimes it's better not to try. Because to try to live a life with as little risk as possible ... well you could do it, but would you be really living at all?

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic fatalities in 2010 dropped to their lowest point since 1949, when there were a LOT, LOT fewer cars on the road. Now according to the American Association of Pediatrics, there are roughly 5,000 deaths in the U.S. among children and teenagers due to traffic fatalities each year.

The AAP doesn't break down those deaths, but according to some 2003 data by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 1,500 children under fifteen died in 2003 due to traffic accidents. And among one to three year olds, the number of children dying annually from traffic accidents has declined from 1993 when about 600 children 1-3 year olds was killed to roughly 400 in 2003.

Are 400 deaths a year 400 too many? Yes. Are those 400 deaths utterly horrible for the parents involved? Yes.

But considering how much we Americans drive, it seems that dying in a car accident is a relatively uncommon event for 1-3 year olds.

Now, as Abbie argued, keeping a child rear facing an extra year is pretty painless. So, in some senses, why not keep your kid rear facing an extra year? Even if the likelihood that your kid is going to die in an accident is small, why take the risk?

And I'll be honest. Knowing all the numbers, if I were a parent, I think I would probably opt to keep my kid rear facing until they were two.

BUT.

The problem with parenting is that it seems to be a world filled with little (and gradually diminishing) risks. Yet it always seems like even those little risks are too big to take chances.

Yes, it's true that your child is unlikely to be kidnapped. But why take the risk and let them play outside on their own?

Yes, it's true that you are EXTREMELY unlikely to get listeria. But why take the risk and eat unpasteurized cheese when pregnant?

Yes, it's true that some germs are probably okay for your kid. But why take the risk when you can Purell, Purell, Purell?

Ultimately, life comes with risk. It just does. And the sooner we can accept that, the better. So if some parents think that keeping their kid in a rear facing car seat for another year is too onerous, I understand.

And Ode to Bloggers Gone By

2011-03-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

Most long time bloggers are used to the unfortunate consequences of blogging. The reality is, blogging day in and day out is hard, time consuming work, and the majority of us do not get millions of dollars, book deals, or cars out of the bargain. In fact, most of us don't earn a single penny from blogging.

Nor do we try to. I think, actually the majority of us mostly do this for the love of writing and for the community we grow. And I think that for most of us bloggers, love is enough reason to write.

Except.

Except that eventually you burn out. Life takes over. Transitions happen. And it can be hard to continue blogging. And once you get out of the groove, it can be really really hard to find it again. (This blog being primary evidence of that truth.)

And so, most long time bloggers know that gradually a large number of their blog friends will vanish from blog land. Maybe they will start gradually, dropping down to two-three posts a week. Then it becomes two-three posts per month. And then they go a whole month without blogging until visiting their blog is no longer a comfortable part of your routine.

Others simply decide to go at a designated time. These blog euthanizers if you will shock at first. What?!! No more blog?!! But perhaps in the end their blogs die a more merciful death than they would have.

It can be hard to be a blogger. One's blog roll turns into a veritable blog obituary. Blogs defunct. Blogs ignored. Even worse, blogs attacked by viruses! Occasionally you will reread the archives, familiar things, and you will feel like you are being wrapped in a warm comforting blanket. But the feeling is fleeting.

And once in a great while, a miracle! On of your favorite blogs is resurrected!! "Hooray," you cry!

Of course, at this point, you have reconciled yourself to its death. And you know just how hard it is to get back into blogging. You have been trying for months with only limited success. Still, you can't help but hope and remain happy for every last post you get....

... In totally unrelated news, Green Bean wrote about The Enemy Within. I think you should read it.

On Communication, Science, and Vaccines

2011-02-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

Andrew Revkin has a fascinating post on scientific communication where he admits to being a "recovering denialist."

No, not of climate change. Instead, Revkin was in denial about the influence of scientific communication. He writes:

"My denial, I said, lay in my longstanding presumption, like that of many scientists and journalists, that better communication of information will tend to change people’s perceptions, priorities and behavior. This attitude, in my view, crested for climate scientists in the wake of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

This kind of denialism is pretty popular among many scientists (including us social scientists). We assume that people do not agree with us because they are misinformed. But if only someone took the time to teach them, they would, of course, immediately concede our point.

This all reminded me of an excellent blog post I had read recently on Occam's Typewriter about treating people who refuse to vaccinate their children with respect.

This is an issue that never fails to generate controversy, in part because, frankly, all parenting decisions are controversial, and in part because individual decisions not to vaccinate affect the collective group.

I myself will admit to being virulently pro-vaccination. And as much as I try hard to eschew judginess, I will admit that when I hear that a parent hasn't vaccinated, my inner Judgey McJudgeypants gets very huffy. "Oh, good to know," I think. "I'll make sure that my hypothetical babies are never anywhere close to your unvaccinated children."

The truth is, I do think (and here I may get flamed) that the collective benefit to immunization overrides any individual right to choice in this arena. I would mandate immunizations by fiat if I felt that such a law would be effective.

But that's not the current law, and I honestly suspect mandatory vaccines might trigger a greater backlash. So instead, people in the vaccine movement (did you know it was a movement?) write books like Paul Offit's, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All and speak in really aggressive terms about those who don't vaccinate.

Those who are pro-vaccine often denigrate the anti-vacciners as stupid or anti-science. As Richard points out in his post, that charge is pretty unfair. He notes that when his first child was born, he refused the MMR. Later, when he learnt that the connection between autism and vaccines was specious, he changed his mind.

But not all anti-vaccinaters are simply confused or uneducated. A number have done vast amounts of research on vaccination and have concluded, for whatever reason, not to vaccinate.

The reality is better communication will change some people's minds, but it won't change everyone's. As an eco-blogger, I know too well that scientific evidence of lack thereof isn't the ultimate arbiter of what people will do. There may not be concrete scientific proof for a number of things- Alzheimers caused by commercial anti-perspirant for example, but that doesn't necessarily convince people. Is there a definitive causation between say BPA and cancer? No. Are there studies that suggest BPA might cause cancer? Yes. Are there studies that suggest that BPA is harmless? Yes. Are there a number of people who will avoid BPA because we just don't know? Yes.

And therein lies the rub. As a social scientist, I have learned how uncertain a lot of science really is. I know now just how tough it is to determine causation. Simply put, there's just a lot out there we really don't know. As a result, the public often hears, "Science finds eggs are bad for you," followed a few years later by, "Science finds eggs contain key essential nutrients." Given how often the "science" we hear seems to get twisted and turned, is it any wonder that people don't necessarily always trust in science?

Now, you might argue, the vaccine thing is different. The link between vaccines and autism has been completely and totally debunked. The key study was fabricated! There's no scientific uncertainty here (except for a few cranks and weirdos)!

To which I would say, one, not everyone in the world thinks that the cranks and weirdos are cranks and weirdos, but two, and more importantly, there is still some major uncertainty here. We still by and large know very little about why and how autism develops. Until we get some major and much more certain answers, people will be wary about any possible connection no matter how spurious scientists claim them to be. Sure, scientists say that there's no connection between autism and vaccines. But they don't seem to be offering any other very plausible explanation, so why believe them?! (I will add that for many parents, a link between autism and vaccines may be comforting. Vaccines are so easily avoided compared to things like phthalates which are much more ubiquitous.)

Secondly, I think it's fair to point out that vaccines haven't always been safe. And the government hasn't always ensured that vaccines were safe. Again, as an eco-blogger, I understand not trusting the government, because well, I don't entirely. I may understand that the government has approved a panoply of items including non-stick pans and paraben filled shampoo, but I don't necessarily believe that the government always has my best interests at heart.

This all brings me back to a This American Life I listened to ages ago where a reporter actually listened to those in the anti-vaccine movement and concluded that those parents who were anti-vaccines simply didn't trust the government or the mainstream medical community.

That's a scary place to be. But, frankly, it's also understandable.

Science claims to be different from religion because it's evidence based. But in a world filled with contradictory evidence, what is a person to believe? Science is contemptuous of faith and yet implicitly relies on a public "faith" of science. Faith in science, faith in scientists, faith in the scientific process. And while faith in science might seem more rational than faith in God, science can be and has been wrong, science can be and has been skewed, and science can be and has been uncertain.

Science is like the Godfather whispering to the public to trust no one. And then, when the public, having imbibed this wisdom, turns on science and starts questioning it, science is shocked. But it shouldn't be. We're just following its advice.

Eating Right With Ruchi

2011-02-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

In the comments to my last post, Alex asked me if I could write a diet and nutrition book and called it "Eating Right With Ruchi." Initially I demurred. How could I wade into such contested territory? But then I realized that I'm arduous ... how could I not wade into contested territory? So I give you Ruchi's manifesto in ... however many words this blog post ends up being.

1) Eat according to your values whatever they are. If you think it's unethical to eat meat, don't eat it. If you think there ain't nothing wrong with a little bacon and cheese, eat it up. You do not need to defend these values to anyone. (Except maybe your family, and by family I mean people you share a household with.) When people try to argue with you, stick to your guns (politely.) Really. Your food choices and your health are your business, and presumably you are an adult and are perfectly capable of finding protein in legumes if you are a vegetarian, eating some asparagus occasionally if you are a carnivore, or getting your calcium and Vitamin D elsewhere if you hate milk.

2) Do not judge other people's eating habits/do not proselytize to those who have no desire to be converted. Your food choices are your business and your friend's choices are hers. Yes, you might constantly see her eating Doritos, but again, not your business. This does not mean that you can't talk about your own experiences ... you can note that eating vegetables has given you more energy than ever. You can talk about vegetarianism to people who seem interested. But you should not condescend and you definitely should not tell people that the way they are eating is morally wrong. Remember, each of us has our own moral compass. What you may consider immoral, another may not. And that's okay.

3) Be flexible. Part of eating according to your values is deeply and genuinely processing those values. And they may change over time. Your values as an 18-year old college student will no doubt be different than those you hold as a 32- year old mom. I've been a vegetarian in and out, I've vacillated between being extremely budget focused and (later) being more focused on more expensive organic and local food. Values can and should evolve over time. Allow yourself to change.

4) Allow yourself occasional indulgences that may stray from your regular eating habits, but let the indulgences stay occasional. Let's face it: we all need a treat now and again. The trick is to make sure that the treats don't become a habit. By keeping your indulgences rare, you also learn to really savor that small morsel of chocolate. Remember Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and how he saved on bar of chocolate, savoring it for months? Do that.

5) Eat plants. And by plants I mean vegetables. Preferably a diverse group of them. Yeah, I think most everyone would agree with Michael Pollan on this one and the truth is most of us are not getting enough vegetables which is rather a shame because there really are so many delicious ones out there. Find the ones you like, find a recipe that works for you, do whatever it takes, but eat your veggies. (I had a nutritionist who recommended that you aim to make half of your plate vegetables each dinner. I find that advice works for me but YMMV.)

And those are my rules for eating right with Ruchi. So you know, follow them. Or not. I'm not judging. ;)

Food as Religion

2011-02-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

My article on veganism definitely got a few people riled up. My fiance for one, who I have decided that I am going to call Seamus for the purposes of this blog (no, he is not Irish, but I don't have a better name and I'm sick of not calling him anything.) Seamus has always said that veganism was too much of a life-style change for him and that it was a deal breaker. So there was some eye-rolling at my house over that post.

In addition, I had several friends tell me that if I became vegan they could never hang out with me.

Now before anyone rushes to condemn my friends/fiance who are all fine people for their supposed close-mindedness, I'd like to say that food has a way of getting all of us, even those of us who are most open-minded, riled up.

Food, it seems, is like politics or religion. Everyone thinks their worldview is the best one. And, I'm guilty of this too, no doubt about it. Hell, just look at the post on veganism.

Even when we don't moralize (as I try not to do, but sometimes fail) even when we try not to teach, we still secretly in our hearts of hearts think our eating style or our idealized eating style is the best. And we joyously pounce on any news or study that backs up this claim.

Which is easy because there is PLENTY of evidence to back up just about any eating claim.

We absorb pithy aphorisms and then repeat them to ourselves until they become like the laws of gravity. Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. And then when someone questions this, we react as though they are heretics. What do you mean WHY? Don't you KNOW THAT UNPROCESSED FOOD IS BETTER?!!

Several months ago, when I was learning to deal with my cholesterol, I went to the McDougall website to see what I could learn. I still remember reading a forum where someone asked stupidly why he couldn't drink non-fat milk. All the other posters ganged up on him. "Why are you asking such a stupid question?!! This is something Dr. McDougall has explained OVER AND OVER again! Ignore the troll, guys, he obviously isn't interested in Dr. McDougall's eating plan." I felt bad for the guy, and I wanted to know what was wrong with non-fat milk too, but questioning McDougall is apparently NOT OKAY.

So I googled "soy milk" versus "fat free milk" and half of the websites I went to told me that soy milk was terrible and produced by evil people and was likely to kill me and the other half told me that cow milk was terrible and produced by immoral people and also, of course, likely to kill me.

I was genuinely trying to learn everything I could about food and nutritional science so that I could lower my cholesterol, but instead I learned something else. I learned that food is political, it defines us and our values. I learned that, in fact, there is a lot of uncertainty even among doctors about what is best for us and what is not. And I learned that no matter what your food lifestyle is, you can probably find a movement, some prominent people, and/or some scientific studies to back you up.

And then once you have made your lifestyle choice, you will probably be capable of filtering out all the other noise that tells you that your choice might not be correct. Or at least not correct for everyone.

Take this recent article by Mark Bittman where he opines that eating real, unprocessed food is the best food lifestyle to live. Bittman dismisses veganism pretty quickly, or at least veganism that involves processed food. The goal for Bittman is "health and sustainability" and he casually dismisses anyone who thinks that one could have other goals for going vegan or that one could be healthy and still eat veggie burgers or fake bacon. Of baked potato chips versus regular potato chips, Bittman argues:

And whether baked, low-salt chips are “better” than fried ones, is not only arguable — the baked ones are more likely to be chemical-laden — but misses the point which, again, is that real foods are superior in every way.

Of course it is arguable whether baked low-salt chips are "better" than fried potato chips, although baked potato chips have lower saturated fat contents and saturated fat at least has some linkage to higher cholesterol whereas the links to the chemicals Bittman cites are a lot less clear. (See, here I am clearly displaying my food lifestyle values.) But I agree that that's a side point. Bittman's real point is that "real food" is superior in every way.

But what is real food?

Most people don't eat potato chips thinking that they are better for them than some baby carrots. I certainly don't. I eat chips (usually the frou frou pita chips I buy at Whole Foods which don't have many ingredients in them so obviously they are BETTER for me, rolls eyes) because I want a salty, easy snack. Is that okay? I would say, yes, it's okay to have a small snack, but it's not something I want to eat too much of. And it doesn't matter whether I eat pita chips or Lays ... I still shouldn't eat very much of it.

The problem with exhortations like "eat real food" is that we can easily manipulate it to fulfill our whims and agendas. We make chocolate chip cookies and figure we can eat three since they are made from organic dark chocolate and whole wheat. We load up on the cheese and butter in our home cooked pasta. I can't tell you how many foodie "slow food" restaurants I've been to that seemed to serve all their food drenched in butter and cheese and then call their food pure health food. Now again, I'm going to try not to push my personal foodie moralism on everyone else, but I will say, eating butter and cheese is not healthy for me personally.

Now, I'm not trying to argue entirely against Bittman or Michael Pollan the real-food evangelist. I think Pollan is largely right with his motto: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

The problem is ... most of us find eating piles of vegetables BOOOOORING, including one suspects Michael Pollan, whose 36-hour dinner party included an ENTIRE goat. B.R. Myers notes in his recent article in The Atlantic "The Moral Crusade Against Foodies:"

The same goes for restaurant owners like Alice Waters. A celebrated slow-food advocate and the founder of an exclusive eatery in Berkeley, she is one of the chefs profiled in Spoon Fed. “Her streamlined philosophy,” Severson tells us, is “that the most political act we can commit is to eat delicious food that is produced in a way that is sustainable, that doesn’t exploit workers and is eaten slowly and with reverence.” A vegetarian diet, in other words? Please. The reference is to Chez Panisse’s standard fare—Severson cites “grilled rack and loin of Magruder Ranch veal” as a typical offering—which is environmentally sustainable only because so few people can afford it.

Now, I love Chez Panisse but Myers makes a valid point about that free range veal (isn't all veal considered 'bad'?) People in the environmental movement, myself included, often say that free range meat is expensive, but that's how it should be, and people should point blank eat meat less often. But that's pretty easy to say when you can actually afford free range meat as I can. And none of this explains why eating delicious food slowly and with reverence is a political act, let alone the MOST political act. Gandhi committed political acts all the time by NOT eating. Would Waters have argued that instead Gandhi should have eaten some slow roasted lamb?

I say all of this as someone who truly loves Chez Panisse-style "foodie food." I have read book after book by Michael Pollan. And I love Bittman's "The Minimalist" and own a cookbook of his. But the truth is, the foodie religion of Pollan and Waters is simply another religion. Another lifestyle choice. And another way for people to express their own personal values. Do I think there's some value to Michael Pollan's foodie lifestyle? Yes. But I also think there's value to be found in the vegan lifestyle, the vegetarian lifestyle, the McDougall lifestyle, and I think there may even be room in my own lifestyle for the occasional bag of baked Lays.

Because chemicals or no, those things are salty goodness. And I'm not convinced that those are any worse for me than some "real food" foodie potato chip that I am absolutely SURE is being made somewhere in San Francisco and being sold for $9 a bag. And if that makes me a heretic? Well, Pollan, forgive me for I have sinned.

The Happiest Day of Your Life

2011-02-09T21:57:00.001-08:00

Today, I was talking to a very good friend of mine who is about to give birth any day now. She told me that she had gotten a super cute hair cut today and she joked that she was now well prepared for the baby to arrive. The baby should try and be born tonight because her hair would look hot.

"That's important," I remarked. "Got to look good for the post-birth pics."

We continued in this vein until I suggested that she might want to get a Brazilian bikini wax for the big day.

Shockingly, she did not think that was a good idea.

"Come on!" I insisted. "Where's your commitment to looking good on THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF YOUR LIFE?"

And that's when I realized why the day your first child is born isn't the most important day of your life. It can't be. Because come on. There's a whole industry around looking good for this MOST IMPORTANT DAY, and even as masochistic as we women can be, most of us aren't going to agree to some waxing at 39 weeks.

I've always idly wondered why people say in the same breath that "You don't know love until you know what it is to love your child," (something that has always bugged the crap out of me, btw) and that your wedding is the most important day of your life. Wouldn't the day your love escalated to this whole higher plane of being, wouldn't that be the most important day of your life? I'm not saying weddings can't be transformational; I believe they can be. But I also know for some people their wedding was not a transformational experience. On the other hand, I have never heard anyone say that having a child didn't completely change their lives.

But my joking conversation with my friend reminded me why there's this cognitive dissonance, why there must be this cognitive dissonance if we want to get all sinister about it. Of course your wedding has to be the most important, the happiest, the best day of your life. Because it's just SO much easier to sell beauty treatments to a bride than a lady who's nine months pregnant.

Up until this conversation with my friend, I hadn't given much thought to the wedding being the happiest day of my life. Maybe it's weird, maybe it's normal, but most of my focus since I'd gotten engaged has been on two things:

1) My marriage and my family and my future life

2) The practical planning of a wedding

And I've found that the wedding day itself has sort of fallen into one or the other or both of those categories. For example, the ceremony, which is a combined intercultural ceremony, is in some ways a practical planning issue AND it's a reflection of what we want our marriage and future life to look like. It's a ceremony that combines a whole slew of traditions from our two cultures because that's what I want from my life. On the other hand, picking a photographer was more about the practical planning of a wedding. For those things I just wear my theatre producer hat. I want to do research, think about it, make a decision, and move on to the next task at hand.

So, honestly, I haven't been thinking too much about the wedding as this ethereal, transformative experience. I have never contemplated it's importance as a day, nor have I thought about how to make it the "happiest day of my life." I haven't pondered the significance of the day really. I guess I figure that the day will arrive and I'll ... wing it?

But the conversation with my friend had me thinking about it. Thinking about the happiest days of my life and whether my wedding would be one of them.

And I realized something.

First of all, up until now, I wouldn't say that any major "milestone event" days have been among the happiest days in my life. My high school graduation? A vague memory of sitting through some boring speeches. Ditto for college graduation. And it's not that I don't appreciate the weight of those accomplishments, but the days themselves? Meh.

Birthdays? I've had a couple really, really good ones. My friends and I still talk about my 21st birthday, four of us at a fancy restaurant in Chicago, my friend Honda stealing sips of wine out of Miss V's glass because she was still underage. By and large, my birthdays have been been happy days, but not especially so. Not memorably so.

I will definitely say that one of the best days of my life was a night in New York when an enormous group of us crowded into a Chinese restaurant where we were given a private room with a Karaoke machine. I know I can't convey the full magic of "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep Night" but you know it was magical because everyone there that night will say it was.

And that's when I start to realize the utter hopelessness of the project. How can I compare something like a graduation to a night at a Chinese restaurant? And how could I compare either to the many happy days I've had traveling? How would it compare to the happiness I felt on the day the last Harry Potter book came out? Or those first few dates with my fiance where everything seemed possible but nothing certain?

Now, you might be thinking, this is ridiculous. Surely your WEDDING DAY is a happier day than the day you read a children's book, albeit a best-selling children's book. And I will respond:

Is it?

I mean I don't know. My wedding is in the future, so I don't know. Maybe it will feel like a higher plane of happiness, one that I previously couldn't even conceptualize, that I didn't even realize existed.

But I suspect not.

I think my wedding day will be fucking awesome. I will be marrying the person I love and I will be doing it in front of my community of friends and family and also there will be cake and booze. I am pretty sure it will be a happy day.

But will it be my happiest day? Meh.

I'd like to think that there are different kinds of happiness, just as there are different kinds of love. Lots of things make me happy: reading a book, traveling, gossiping with close friends, sleeping, doing a really good job at work, etc, etc, etc. But I don't get the same KIND of happiness reading a book as I do drinking wine with friends. One isn't better than the other; they're just different.

I submit to you that this need we people have to quantify and organize our lives ... it's just crap. Do I love my fiance better than anyone else? No, probably not. But I do love him differently than anyone else, and I think that's what matters.

I can't tell you my favorite book, nor my favorite color, nor what I like to eat most of all. I can't say that I would prefer drinking wine with friends to reading a good book, nor can I say the reverse.

And I can't tell you what the happiest day of my life is. I can't even tell you the top ten.

I submit to you that we should stop thinking of our wedding as the happiest day of our lives. But we also shouldn't feel pressed to find another day that was happier. We just shouldn't worry about quantifying our days in such a manner. Instead of quantifying our past and future, maybe we just need to enjoy the present.

And that is my fortune cookie way of saying that I don't give a shit if my wedding isn't the happiest day of my life. As long as I actually end up MARRIED to my fiance it'll be happy enough for me.

My Fiance Is Going to Kill Me For Writing This

2011-02-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

... but more and more, I'm starting to feel like veganism is the healthiest, most ethical option.

No, I'm not becoming a vegan. I don't think.

But about a year ago, I dramatically changed my diet to reduce my cholesterol. I've almost completely cut out cheese and butter from my diet. I only consume fat-free milk. I started eating fish twice a week, poultry a little less than that, and red meat on rare occasion.

As a result, I dropped my cholesterol by 100 points.

My diet now is fairly healthy. I think I could probably drop my cholesterol further if I cut out meat products completely, but for now I'm okay with the results. Health-wise I'm doing okay, but....

There's that small little nagging problem with the fish. You know, no big deal, we're just severely depleting the world's fisheries and driving some fish to extinction.

So, you know, while I think eating fish is a HEALTHY option, I'm not sure it's super ethical.

The truth is, aside from the fat-free milk and yogurt which I eat with my cereal, my diet leans towards veganism anyway. Most of my cooking is vegan, most of my lunches are vegan. My meat consumption is pretty much limited to eating out. I eat limited amounts of dairy and meat. And while it's not the healthiest choice nor what I would argue is the MOST ethical choice, for now, I'm okay with the choice.

My fiance feels (probably correctly) that my going vegan would seriously impact both of our lifestyles. I think it's a fair point, and given that he is perfectly happy eating mostly vegetarian food at home, I'm loathe to press him on this. Plus, there's that little niggling truth: I don't want to become a vegan either. As little as I eat meat, I'd miss it if I didn't get to eat it at all.

But for now, I'm redoubling my efforts to eat sustainably caught fish and organic meats. I'm not a vegan, or even a vegetarian. But for me, being a mostly-vegetarian is the sustainable path. For now.

Want People to Stop Driving? Cut Down on Parking Spaces.

2011-01-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

A new study confirms something I've believed for quite a while: the more difficult parking becomes, the less people will drive.

The study mostly focused on European cities because ... well, here in America not having parking is considered heretical.

I've written before about how when I lived in LA, I used to consistently drive places an easy walking distance from my apartment simply because I could. There was always ample parking. It was faster to drive and more convenient, so why walk to the sandwich shop a couple blocks away or the pizza place or the laundromat? Why walk to the grocery store, even if I am only picking up a couple things? I have a car and it has a huge parking lot.

On the other hand if parking had been scarce or expensive? You bet I would have walked.

Cheap and easy parking changes the calculus we make when we are deciding whether to drive or to walk or to take public transportation. For example, right now I take public transit to work every day. Public transit is almost as fast and it's relaxing. I'd much prefer to read a book on the subway than fight traffic.

Public transit is also cheaper. But it's ONLY cheaper when I factor in the cost of parking all day in a garage. Without that cost, even with the sky-high price of gas, it would probably be cheaper for me to drive. (Factoring in the cost of wear and tear on my car might change the calculation, but let's face it: most people don't factor wear and tear in when they're making these back-of-the-envelope calculations.)

When you make parking scarce and expensive, you start to then build your city for walkers and bikers and public transit. Without massive parking lots everywhere, your city may have more room for parks and gardens and playgrounds.

We don't have to make parking cheap and easy. No one really wants to pave paradise to put up a parking lot.

So let's not.

Mattresses and More

2011-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

via XKCD

You know, I totally meant to spend some time on this blog writing about my search for a new eco-mattress, a search that I undertook in ... September. But then I got engaged in October, and then the holidays came up not long thereafter, and then I went to India, and pretty soon, it's January and I haven't started that set of posts.

But in a way it's a good thing because we've had ample time to break in our mattress so I can give a really full review on that. First things first, though, so I'm going to tell you a little bit more about our search. I'm not going to go into the specifics in terms of comfort (because that's so personal) but mostly focus on the eco-aspects of the different mattresses.

We are lucky living in the Bay Area, so we had a LOT of options for eco-mattress stores. No need to wander Mattress Discounters in search of their ONE eco-mattress. If you don't live in the Bay Area, finding a mattress might be slightly harder, but luckily, almost all of the places we looked at deliver, and they usually have a fairly decent return policy.

So.

One of the first places we ended up looking was Keetsa. Keetsa came at the recommendation of a friend and their store is located not too far away in San Francisco itself. Though they have one full latex mattress, they are mostly known for their wide range of memory foam mattresses. (You may know memory foam by the brand name Tempur-pedic. Tempur-pedic mattresses are probably the most well known memory foam mattresses, but they aren't the only kind out there.)

Here is the good about Keetsa: their mattresses are reasonably affordable as far as eco-mattresses go. And while most memory foam mattresses often off-gas toxic levels of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Keetsa ran a test that shows that their mattresses do not emit VOCs, and they put that test up on their website.

Most memory foam mattresses are made with 100% petroleum, but Keetsa substitute 20% of the petroleum in their mattresses with castor bean oil. And -this is kind of fun- they stick their mattresses in a box so that you can fit your mattress in the back of your car saving time, energy, money, etc.

BUT, their memory foam mattresses are still 80% petroleum. And while they say they don't emit VOCs (and put up a test to prove it) I wasn't entirely convinced. Ideally, I'd like to see a third party independently conduct a test and see what they say.

The other thing that was slightly hilarious was how all the other green mattress stores really, really dislike Keetsa. When we went to one store, the proprietor told us that he had a mattress that came in a box and I immediately exclaimed, "Oh! Like Keetsa!" and he went really quiet and it was really clear that he did NOT LIKE the comparison at all because his eco-mattress was NOTHING like Keetsa even if it did come in a box. In another instance, a saleswoman basically cautioned us against green-washing and then said, "I mean they're affordable, but they only substitute 20% of the petroleum in their mattresses."

Which is fair enough. Keetsa is not a perfect option, but we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. They produce reasonably affordable mattresses, I do believe they strive to be as Earth-friendly as possible, and their mattresses appear not to emit VOCs. And according to Yelp, a lot of people find their mattresses really comfortable. Plus, you do always have the option of buying their natural latex mattress which is 100% latex and thus has no petroleum nor VOCs.

Ultimately, though, we decided to keep looking. More mattresses coming up later this week....

My War with Plastic (and other stuff that makes me nervous)

2011-01-12T22:25:00.001-08:00

I gotta tell you, for years I was that environmentalist who didn't give a crap about all that toxic buildup worry. Was Teflon giving you cancer? What about BPA in cans? Don't ask me, I didn't care.

Oh sure, I tried occasionally. I made the obvious changes. Studies say dryer sheets are carcinogenic. I feel like I derive very little utility from dryer sheets. So I tossed 'em.

But I kept my non-stick. I kept my plastic. And I sure as hell didn't worry about BPA.

But lately, I dunno, something's changed. Maybe it's all the attention being paid to this kinda stuff by bloggers I respect. Maybe it's that diseases like cancer are suddenly more real for me now that I personally know a number of people who have or have had cancer. Maybe it's just turning thirty and being struck by the weight of my own mortality. Or maybe it's all my pregnant friends who are uber careful with what they eat and what kind of chemicals they expose themselves to.

And suddenly, I've started to worry a lot more about plastic, BPA, and everything else.

I'm torn between my desire to throw out a ton of potentially toxic crap out and my belief in consuming less. Sure my cutting boards are plastic, but is that so bad? Do I really want to get rid of them? What about the energy waste in making wood cutting boards?

Similarly I'm torn between my (maybe somewhat justified?) paranoia and my rational feeling that I need to think critically about risk. Do I prefer to eat organic vegetables? Yes. Do I think conventional vegetables are better than no vegetables. Yes. Do I think my plastic cutting board might give me cancer? Maybe. Do I know that people die in car accidents all the time? Yes. Do I still drive a car? Yes. Do I even think twice about that? No. Do I understand the cognitive dissonance here?

Look, I'm not saying here don't worry about BPA. I worry about it. I worry about a lot of things. But I'm also learning that excessive worry is not good for me ... in fact it might be just as bad for me as BPA. Seriously. There are lots of interesting articles out there on the effect of worry and stress on the body.

So I think there has to be a balance. Between caring about potential toxins, and not letting them run your life. Between dealing with stuff like BPA in a cautious fashion without keeping yourself up at night.

I mean, I haven't yet found that balance. But I'm workin on it. And if you know what it is, give me a shout.

On Food Waste (Again)

2011-01-11T19:07:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, we went to the Trader Joes.

I'm not sure what it is about Trader Joes, but going there always inspires in me this desire to buy, buy, buy. I can't tell you the number of times that I've gone in there to pick up one solitary item, and ended up with about two bags full of groceries. Something about Trader Joes simply awakens my consumeristic instinct, and because it's food, I let myself go crazy. Sure, why not buy some mango chutney and some Thai red curry sauce and some little cranberry bran muffins. It's food!

Except, of course, that when we buy too much food. Food that we probably cannot consume before it goes bad.

But I didn't care on Sunday. I was hungry (which is a bad time to shop) and I was at Trader Joes! I love Trader Joes! We only come here once a month or so! And so I bought, and bought, and bought as my fiance looked dubiously at our cart. "Put that back," he'd sometimes say. But I didn't.

As we waited to get rung up, he muttered under his throat about all the vegetables we'd have rotting in our fridge at the end of the week.

I felt indignant. I can eat all those vegetables! I will show him!

So, I made dahl. Used up some tomatoes and onion. Ended up with an enormous pot of food (seriously, how does one cup of lentils turn into a week's worth of food? People who say you cannot feed a family nutritiously on the cheap have clearly never seen the power of lentils.)

I ate carrots with hummus. Snow peas with nothing. A whole box of crackers (okay clearly that wasn't supposed to happen.) I emptied a bag of mushrooms into our pasta sauce last night.

And I am pleased to say, that I think I am winning. Ruchi: 1, Rotten Vegetables (and cynical fiance): 0. (The fiance actually forgot to eat his dinner last night and left his bowl of pasta on the table uneaten all night long, but that's not my fault.)

I am pleased that I have managed to succeed (so far) in my war against rotting food, but I also feel exhausted. The sheer weight of trying not to waste is tiring.

And yet, you know, I think this is important stuff.

A couple days ago, Andrew Revkin posted an interesting conversation on Dot Earth about the future of food. In it, he featured two thinkers, almost diametrically opposed to each other. One (Lester Brown) believes we will soon be unable to produce enough food for the world, the other (Vaclav Smil) patently disagrees. Yet, as Revkin points out, both "agree that today’s norms for food in developed countries won’t hold up in decades to come. These include a disregard for waste and a seeming inability in many countries to divert from overindulgence without seeing that as some kind of sacrifice."

What does that tell you? Doomers and non-doomers alike agree that we can't continue on the path of America. We must learn to waste less, to eat less meat, and to not stuff ourselves sick.

So while my constant scheming to keep our vegetables from rotting may seem over the top and require too much energy, I'm going to keep it up. It's important.

Weddings and Feminism

2011-01-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

We have a pretty equitable split in the household chores over here. All the cooking, the cleaning, etc, gets done in what I would imagine comes close to a 50/50 split (but I don't really know because we don't actually track every minute of household work to find out.) We don't both do the same work ... it's not you do the dishes this week and I'll do them next week. It's more like we split the work based on what we're good at and what we like doing. I'm better at the larger broad-based, organizational kind of thing, whereas my fiance is much, much more OCD than I am.

So, for example, I'm more likely to search online for recipes, come up with potential meals for the week and put needed ingredients on our shopping list. But we *have* a shopping list because my fiance is compulsive about keeping one. And in terms of the cooking, my fiance is much better at chopping and more attentive to detail than I am. (I'm more likely to throw things in with reckless abandon, figuring, whatever, it'll work out!)

It's similar with the wedding stuff. On the surface, most of our wedding vendors probably assume we're the stereotypical couple where the bride does all the planning for HER big day, because I'm the one in communication with all of them. I'm the one who does the research, sends the emails, and keeps on top of scheduling meetings.

But my fiance has opinions on EVERYTHING, and every decision we make is a very joint decision. He's the one who spent time to really sit down and format our receipt tracking system, our guest list system, and he'll be the one to deal with a lot of the website formatting. Again, with the small details, he's much more particular than I am.

And it made me wonder. I can't imagine we're alone. This is 2011 after all. How come, if there are so many couples out there with equitable arrangements, are most of the cooking blogs, wedding blogs, and personal sustainability blogs written by women and commented on by women? How come wedding websites always seem to be told from the woman's point of view?

It's weird. My fiance is JUST as invested in wedding planning as I am. Like, when I hear a bride talk about how she tries not to bore her fiance with wedding stuff he doesn't care about, I am always like, "Wow, there's wedding stuff her fiance doesn't care about? How refreshing" followed by wondering if her fiance is similarly considerate about details she doesn't care about. (Or are women just naturally interested in each and every aspect of their wedding?)

But, my fiance does not think it's fun to read wedding blogs or do wedding vendor research or anything of the kind. He will do it if and when he needs to because party ain't gonna plan itself. He's more than happy to discuss weddings we've been to and talk about what he liked and disliked, but he doesn't want to troll Martha Stewart Weddings to find the latest on wedding trends. (Although, I don't particularly want to do this either. I still don't really know what bunting or poms are and I really don't care.)

I think this is fine, mostly. I don't need him to read wedding blogs; I need him to be invested in our own wedding. But I really do wonder why I love reading about wedding stuff for fun even, whereas he doesn't really care. And I do wonder if we sort of do a dis-service to the world by falling into strict gender roles when it comes to the "public face" of our wedding.

On the other hand, it seems silly to make my husband-to-be act as the communications person and me act as the organizational person just to show the world at large that we're not the stereotypical gendered couple, we're not! when it's so clear that our strengths lie in the reverse.

Is Quick Cooking a Myth

2011-01-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as I was making my soup at 5:00 am (carrot and mushroom because that's what I had on hand, and it turned out delicious), I was meditating on the time that cooking takes.

There's a post that Sharon Astyk wrote at some point that has always stuck with me about how cooking takes time, and how those recipes that claim you can cook something in fifteen minutes are pretty much a myth.

It's a great post, and if anyone knows where it is on her myriads of different blogs, please let me know so I can link to it.

Sharon basically argues that meals made in fifteen minutes are called salads. I'd argue that you can also scramble an egg or make a very simple omelette in about fifteen minutes, but other than that, things take time.

Of course, Sharon makes food from scratch, from scratch. I don't do that. I don't can pasta sauce, or make my own butter or yogurt, or my own bread, or anything of that sort. I'm perfectly happy to buy ready-made hummus and sauces and jams and breads.

Still, I find that cooking (as opposed to say assembling a sandwich or what have you) inevitably takes me at least twenty minutes if not more.

On Wednesday night I made spaghetti. This is probably the simplest thing that I can claim that I "cook." I buy whole wheat pasta and canned tomato sauce. All I have to do is cook the pasta and chop some vegetables to add to the sauce, cook the vegetables, and heat the sauce.

I've made this meal a bajillion times over the years. It requires no spices, no looking up recipes on the internet, just chopping and cooking.

It took me 20 minutes.

Perhaps I am slower than most people. I would argue that that's very probable: if you cook every day you probably are a faster chopper than I am. But it's hard to be faster about things like getting your water to a roiling boil or cooking pasta until it's the right level of tenderness. While some people can probably make spaghetti in fewer than 20 minutes, I'd venture that it's hard to make it in much fewer minutes.

Of course, as Sharon points out, some things require forethought and not much more. The soup I made yesterday took me about half an hour all told, reading the recipe, chopping the vegetables, adding spices, blending the soup when it finished cooking. But it also simmered in my slow cooker for twelve hours. I didn't have to think about it while it was cooking, but I did have to have the presence of mind to start cooking early enough that the soup would be ready to eat for dinner.

Ultimately, I think the idea of "quick cooking" while super-appealing is pretty much a myth. Which isn't to say that you can't feed yourself quickly: make a sandwich, make a salad, make a scrambled egg. But if you're actually cooking food? I find I have to block off at least a half hour.

What's your experience cooking? Can you prepare a meal in under half an hour?

January Resolutions

2011-01-06T07:24:00.000-08:00

I'm still working on figuring out what my New Year's Resolutions are but 2011 is shaping up to be a pretty eventful year. I started a new job yesterday and, of course, this fall I'm getting married. Given that, it probably makes sense to keep the resolutions on the light side.

Looking back, I didn't really succeed in my resolutions from last year, but I don't really mind. My issues with cholesterol really sharpened my focus in March of last year, and I managed to develop a consistent exercise routine and really shape up my eating habits, all while losing about 10 pounds. It's not exactly what I aimed for in January, but physically healthier and stronger in nine months? I'll take it.

I do have a resolution for January, and you've heard this one before... it's to cook more.

Yes, AGAIN.

Some people are yo-yo dieters, I'm a yo-yo cooker. Every six months or so, I realize I've been eating out way too much and begin to go on a cooking binge. I scour internet cooking websites for new favorite dishes, and experiment with my own recipes. I assiduously meal plan and grocery shop regularly. And I get in a habit of cooking dinner for myself, a habit that lasts until I go out of town two weekends in a row or I get sick or there's a crisis at work, and all of a sudden I'm back where I started. Eating out several times a week.

So.

I'm not sure how to get out of yo-yo mode, but for now, I'm back to the kitchen. Last night it was pretty simple: spaghetti, sauce, added vegetables. Today, I took advantage of my jet-lag to make some soup at 5:00 in the morning. This weekend, I'll make some dahl maybe or another batch of soup.

And maybe, just maybe, this time my resolution will stick. But I'm not holding my breath.

Life List Accomplishments

2011-01-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot lately on the internets about life lists, and now that it is January (actually it's December, but I'm scheduling this post ... shhhh!) I figure there will be a lot of goal oriented posts out there. What do I want to accomplish this year, and the rest of my life?

I'm going to think it over and post about it ... maybe even make a life list or a 40 before 40. But, I also think we sometimes give short shrift to what we've already accomplished. January is all about new resolutions, and not enough about goals achieved.

So I thought, instead of a typical New Year resolution post (I'll still write that ... just not now), I'd do something a little different.

The last time I moved house, I found an old list buried away entitled "By 30." It's a list of things I wanted to accomplish by the time I was thirty that I wrote with my roommates one drunken night right around the time of our college graduation.

I initially approached the list with a little trepidation. I hadn't really read it ... probably since that drunken night almost ten years ago. Was this going to make me feel bad about myself? Was I going to feel like my 22-year old self would find my thirty-plus self sort of pathetic?

Turns out ... not so much. I was surprised to find how many of the things on the list I actually did achieve. And of the stuff that I have not, some of it no longer matters to me, and some of it ... well it's going on my by 40 list. I haven't done everything I wanted to do, but I'm definitely not pathetic.

Here's the list with my notes:

By 30, I want...

1) An exciting life - Yes. Well I think it's relatively exciting anyway, and I'm all who matters.

2) To have lived in Europe- Yes! Best decision ever.

3) To be an activist- Yes, I think what I do here (and elsewhere) counts.

4) To be a social worker- No? This is very weird ... I didn't know I ever wanted to be a social worker. But I do like to help people, and I think I have done that from time to time.

5) To work for Miramax- Sorta? I never worked for Miramax specifically, and I really don't care. I have worked for a number of other film and television companies in various capacities.

6) To be creative- Yes, I think I've been fairly creative, though perhaps not as much as I would like (2nd barely written novel looks forlorn in a corner)

7) To be well liked - Yes? I think I'm reasonably well liked, and at least by the people that matter to me, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that I love and feel loved

8) To be successful at work- Yeah, I think I've been reasonably successful, but I also feel like this is a constant goal to be successful and to continue to be successful.

9) To know how to play guitar- No. BOOOOO. This is something I've really wanted to learn for years now. Time to finally make time.

10) To be on the cover of a magazine- No. Don't care.

11) To be sexy- Heh. Well, my fiance finds my sexy, and that's kinda all that matters.

12) To be thin- Yup. Of course, I no longer eat cheese. Or butter. Or a whole host of other delicious foods. But I am think. And more importantly, my cholesterol is relatively in check.

13) To be married- Not quite. But this fall!

14) To be a mother- No. I'm okay that this didn't happen by 30, but it's on my life list.

15) To find my great love- Yup.

16) To be happy- Yup.

17) To be content- Hmm... I'm pretty happy often, but content? Content is something I need to work on.

18) To be able to speak Hindi- Well, it's pretty rusty ... This is another one that I want to work on.

19) Some answers- Sure, I guess I have some. Not all. But some? Yeah, I think so.

20) Money- Heh. Well, I'm not Scrooge McDuck, but I do have more money than I had at 22.

21) To be successful- Yeah. I feel generally successful, but again, I think this is an evolving goal.

22) A house- Not yet. Hopefully in the next ten years.

23) To have good friends- Yes. I am blessed with the most amazing friends that walked the planet. And for that, I am forever grateful.

24) To be an actor- Been there, done that.

25) To have been acting- Not sure what the distinction was supposed to be here... I'm chalking this up to my drunkenness.

26) To have seen the top 100 movies- No. Don't really care.

27) To be singing again- Well, not as of this moment. And it's something I really want to get back into more seriously.

28) To have helped- I'd like to think I have helped a little in some way. I hope to continue to help in the future.

29) To be settled- Yeah, I'd say so.

30) To be smart- Well, I guess I'm smart enough. I still have a lot to learn though.

31) To use tampons- Heh. This is funny because I always hated them but also hated maxi pads. Luckily, my life, in this aspect, is even awesomer than I could IMAGINE when I was 22, because I use a diva cup.

32) To not be afraid- Mmm. I think I still am often rooted in fear. But maybe fear is okay ... as long as you accept your fear and don't let it prevent you from acting. I don't know. I think I still have work to do on this one.

So ... out of 32 goals (really 31, since one was basically a repeat), I've accomplished or somewhat accomplished 20. Of the remaining 11, I hope to accomplish 8, and I don't care about 3.

Not bad for a drunken life list that was shoved in a box for the past nine years. And what I love about the list is that it also reminds me that, at my core, I'm much the same person who I was at 22. I may be wiser, saner (I hope), and more confident and at ease with myself, but ... I'm me. Even several career changes and dreams later. And there's something so comforting about that.

Freezing Yer Buns?

2010-12-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

It's cold out!

Okay, it's San Francisco, so it's not THAT cold out, but you know ... it's coldER than it is at other times of the year, and also I am a big, big pansy, so anything less than 60 degrees = cold in my book.

Now I would like to say that, being a pansy non-withstanding, I have been a Freeze Yer Buns star and have been diligently keeping the thermostat at some obscenely cold temperature.

But I have not.

Instead, my thermostat has been hovering between about 65-70 during the day, and sometimes a bit lower at night.

I have to admit, I haven't been putting as much thought and effort into it as I have in years past. When it gets cold, I turn the heat up a notch. At night, when I go to bed, I'll often turn it down a notch.

The truth is, now that I'm not trying to be SUPER HARD CORE about everything, it's a little hard for me to get up the motivation to freeze my buns off. While there are plenty of people who save tons of money by keeping the thermostat down, we don't save that much money. Living in San Francisco means that even heating the apartment to 70 degrees doesn't take THAT much energy if it's 50 degrees outside. And, oh yeah, I live in an apartment. Heating a smaller space just involves less energy.

As I make these justifications to myself for why I don't WANNA freeze (waaah!) I can't help but think back on this Washington Post article about the rebound effect. The article basically states that though our appliances have become much more energy efficient in the past forty years, Americans still use as much energy as we did in the early 1970s. The idea is this: when we purchase more energy efficient appliances that save us money and energy, we will often end up a) using them more, getting something bigger because it will now "cost the same," or turn around and buy yet another energy sucking device.

Energy efficiency can produce a number of these kinds of unintended consequences. A classic example is captured by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, who writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The biggest energy drain in a home is for heating and cooling. We opted to heat our home with a system that runs warm water through all of the floors. The system is energy efficient, I'm told, and wonderfully comfortable, but it's powered by gas. So while our photovoltaic system will someday help during the summer, it will never help much in the cold months when the sun is wimpy and we're burning gas to heat the floors. Worse yet, the heated floors are so pleasant that we probably overuse them compared with a forced air system. That's a classic unintended consequence.

When Adams opts for a more energy efficient system for his heating, he ends up using more heat than he would have if he had gone for a less energy efficient system.

Bringing it back to Freeze Yer Buns, I'm finding that I'm just like any other American. Given a situation where my heating needs are already fairly minimal I choose to keep my apartment heated to a level that I like it.

Which is fine for my buns, but sort of problematic if the goal is to combat climate change by limiting energy use....

What would you do? If you got a super-duper energy efficient heating system that would allow you to keep your thermostat at 70 without using any more energy would you continue to freeze yer buns? Or would you say "eff it" and get those buns nice and toasty?

Gift Giving: The Honeymoon Registry Edition

2010-12-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

So, one thing I have learned since getting engaged: there is a ginormous wedding blogosphere.

GINORMOUS.

I'm actually not sure why this surprised me; after all, this is the internets. There is every kind of blogosphere you could imagine. If there are bloggers out there writing about giving up toilet paper and refrigeration, why wouldn't there be bloggers out there writing about marriage and weddings?

So, because I like reading new blogs, I've been wading my feet in, reading blogs here and there, making new finds, and just generally soaking up the really great writing that you can now find all over the internet.

It's interesting. It's challenging. Because, frankly, sometimes, here in the eco-blogosphere, we're sort of caught in our own little bubble where pretty much everyone shares our own values. The marriage blogosphere? It's a little different. Not that there aren't plenty of men and women out there planning sustainable weddings ... but that's not everyone's goal, nor is every decision made with the ethos of the alt-consumerist eco-nut in mind.

For instance: a recent controversy that erupted on East Side Bride over whether or not it was tacky to register for a honeymoon.

Honestly, the alt-consumerist in me literally *could not fathom* how registering for a honeymoon could in any way be controversial. As someone who always prefers to gift experiences over material goods, I freaking LOVE honeymoon registries. LOVE.

But as I read the comments on this post, I started to see why people felt the way they felt. One commenter wrote:

"Your getting married means that I want to do something to contribute to your marriage over the long long term. Think of it like a barn raising. Do I want to buy you a butter dish that your grandkids will eat out of? Yes."

And see, I GET that. Material goods are tangible. You can hold a butter dish, you can feel its slight heft, and every time you use it, you can think, "Aunt Sue got me that."

On the other hand, experiences are ephemeral. They're held only in our memories, and even those dull over time. In fifty years, you may still have the butter dish (though possibly not- hello planned obsolescence) but your memory of that snorkeling trip you took or the museum you went to may have faded. So I completely get why giving something physical is so important to so many people.

Still, I stand by my support of honeymoon registries and other experiential gifts. As a giver, I still want to contribute to someone's marriage over the long term. But, for me, the way to do that is through experiences. Even if that honeymoon, or date night at a fancy restaurant, or those tickets to the theatre is a distant memory fifty years hence, I believe that those experiential gifts contribute to the sustenance of a marriage. After all, what is marriage, but an agreement to experience life together?

You can raise a barn in many ways: some people will do so by giving you nuts, bolts, and rafters, others will do so by playing the fiddle because barn ain't raised without a dance. It's the same thing with weddings. Some people want to give the nuts and bolts of your daily life: the butter dishes, the tea cups, the pots and pans. Others want to fill your life with music, travel, food, a night out from the daily grind. It's all good. It's all so valid. And all are contributing to a barn being raised, a life being lived.

So, not that anyone asked me, but if someone were to ask me about honeymoon registries? I'd say, go for it. But maybe include a small physical registry too. After all, we all want to give in different ways.

How Do You Feel About the Charity Gift?

2010-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

Beth of Fake Plastic Fish has a brilliant post up about charitable gift cards where she calculates exactly how much of your money is going to said charity versus to the intermediary company, because she's mathtastic like that. Go read it and then bookmark it for later.

But her post made me wonder ... how do you all feel about the charity contribution gift?

In some ways, I like it ... especially if it is a thoughtful one. For instance, if I know my friend is very involved in a particular non-profit organization, I think it's a very nice gift to support said non-profit in their honor.

I also love how many brides and grooms these days are registering for charity donations in lieu of yet another crystal vase.

That being said, I still very very rarely get people charitable contributions as gifts.

It's not that I don't love supporting charity. I do. And it's not that I feel the need to get people THINGS, because I totally don't. But I guess when I'm getting a gift, I want it to register longer than the millisecond it takes someone to read that I paid X dollars to a charity in honor of them and think, "Oh, that's nice."

Which is why I sort of think the charity gift card or a gift certificate to an organization like Donor's Choose is preferable ... at least in those situations the recipient gets to be an active participant in the charity process.

Still, there's something that sits wrong there for me. Maybe it's because in my mind a gift is a gift and charity is charity and I'm not sure there's a need to conflate the two. Give a gift to someone because you love them, give to charity because you support the organization, but a gift of charity feels ... I dunno, a little 'moralistic' maybe. As much as I believe that we as a society are over materialistic, it breaks my heart just a teeny tiny bit when I read about parents who request no gifts for kids birthday parties or ask for charitable donations instead. As a kid, I *loved* picking out gifts for my friends. I guess I still love picking out gifts, when I'm not super pressed for time and stressed out, that is.

But maybe I'm being a charity curmudgeon. Maybe so much of gift giving has turned out into an obligatory hassle that, frankly, a charity gift is just as good as the Starbucks gift card, and is probably more helpful to the world to boot.

What do you all think?

Amazing News

2010-12-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

Guys, guys, I have some amazing news that is so amazing that I forgot to blog about it for three weeks, and am finally getting on the ball now. But seriously, don't let my tardiness detract from the awesomeness that I will unveil in this post.

So, you know how you are always whining about how you wish that you could PAY for things that are FREE? Like air. I mean, I get air for free all the time, but wouldn't it be awesome if I could pay for it and get new, trendy air?

Yeah.

Well, I can't help you on the air front, but I can help you with something else:

Water.

That's right, a new company called Boxed Water is Better is now selling tap water. In a cardboard box.

See, now, there are lots of places where you can buy BOTTLED water, and that water is sometimes from the Alps or Fiji, but is also sometimes tap. But that water is BAD because you know, it's in plastic bottles and plastic is bad, and because sometimes it comes from Fiji and water from Fiji is bad.

But Boxed Water is Better is ... well, better. Because it comes in a BOX. I'm telling you, Fake Plastic Fish guzzles down thousands of these a day. And because their water is DEFINITELY tap which is better for the environment. Sure, it would be even better for the environment if you just drank your tap water from the, you know, tap (saving on energy costs, etc) but where's the fun in that?!

And also Boxed Water is Better has a beautiful minimalist website and they even talk a lot about the environment on it.

Really, how could you NOT love this product?

Now, some of you might say, "Ruchi, can't I just get tap water for free? Why should I pay someone to package tap water in a cardboard box?"

And to that I say, for shame. Is it really ALL about the money? Doesn't anyone care about STYLE? And by style I mean drinking out of boxes?

So, people who drink Boxed Water is Better, I salute you. You obviously Care About the Environment. Now, since you seem to enjoy just giving away your money for nothing, would you send me a twenty? Thank you.

A Sustainable Wedding?

2010-12-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

I've been reflecting a lot on weddings and eco-weddings, and what it means to throw a "sustainable wedding" or what the hell that phrase means in the first place.

Weddings are ... difficult. For me, the past month has meant realizing more fully than I had ever truly realized how a wedding really isn't about me. I know, Modern Bride might beg to differ, but it's not just MY special day. It's a lot of people's special day, including, of course, the groom. And those people also have opinions about what the wedding should look like. Especially the groom.

I had ideas about what I wanted my wedding to look like, and I had to pretty much toss them out the window immediately. A lot of my friends (who like me, tend to run pretty indie and eco) incorporated a bunch of Do It Yourself projects into their weddings. In my head, I liked the idea of setting up the wedding with friends and family. But I'm not very crafty, my family is not really a "DIY" family, and we're having a fairly large wedding. DIY ain't happening here.

So, fine, I thought. I have always said that you don't have to be a cowboy, you don't have to do things yourself. Living sustainably can also involve hiring others who share your values. Maybe I can hire a "green caterer" or a "green florist." We can do email save the dates, or maybe not do them at all.

And maybe we will do those things. Or maybe we won't. Maybe we will be constrained by our budget and won't be able to afford the "green caterer," or maybe our attempts to be eco will end up saving us money.

I just don't know, and to a certain extent, I have to let it go.

In a lot of ways, I think weddings are inherently unsustainable from an environmental perspective. They are big shindigs that typically involve a lot of traveling by a multitude of people. It's a lot of money, a lot of energy, a lot of hassle, a lot of stress, a lot of crying. For what generally amounts to ONE DAY.

On the other hand, weddings are sustaining. Not just for one couple, but for entire communities. Weddings are our way of saying together as a community, "Yes. We're here for you. We love you. We're with you."

Look. We're inviting people from four different continents to our wedding (pretty sure there's no one from Africa or Australia on our lists, though I could be wrong.) I don't know if all those far away people are going to travel, but it's probable that some will. And the uptight crazy eco-nut that still exists inside of me to remonstrate when I do things like use paper towels or sleep in and drive to work feels pretty bad about all the energy that will be consumed so people can come to my wedding.

But the rest of me can't get too worked up about it.

I read a post somewhere about someone's wedding (vague I know, if anyone has any idea where the following came from let me know) where they talked about the oft given advice to not invite anyone to the wedding who you weren't sure you would be friends with in three years. And they said that that advice ignored the fact that some people WOULD be your friends in three years BECAUSE you invited them to your wedding.

There are few events where all the people you love make a point to gather in one room, and weddings are one of those select few events. And at the end of the day, that's what it's about for us. It's not about the chairs or the music or the cake or the invitations (though we have opinions on all those things), it's about the people.

So.

I'd like to promise to myself right now, here on this blog, to keep that in mind for the next several months. That, at the end of the day, our wedding is about us, our friends, our family, and our joined community. And as long as I keep remembering that I know, that while our wedding might not the most environmentally sustainable thing in the world, it will be emotionally sustainable. And that's what matters most to me.

Zapped by Ann Louise Gittleman

2010-11-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

It seems lately like people are increasingly worried about cell phones, wireless routers, and other kinds of electronic pollution. In the week I agreed to review Zapped, I coincidentally heard an NPR piece on cell phones and cancer, had a co-worker mention her fears on the same, and witnessed a friend turn off her wireless router to protect against electronic pollution.

It seems Ann Louise Gittleman's latest book, Zapped, which discusses the problems of electronic pollution, is nothing if not timely. In the book Gittleman outlines the various problems with electronics (and according to Gittleman, it's not just the cell phones and the routers that are problematic, but ceiling fans, hair dryers, and microwaves to name a few.) She then offers some solutions for how to reduce one's exposure to dangerous electronic pollution, while not going Amish.

Gittleman's book is essentially based on the precautionary principle: if we don't entirely know what the danger is, we should act with caution. Although Gittleman cites numerous different studies in her book, the reality is that the science is still out. We don't really know what the effects are of electromagnetic exposure. We don't know what the relation is between cell phone use and brain cancer. We just. don't. know. And studies on these issues are difficult to design for a variety of reasons, which is also why any studies on the subject need to be viewed with a fairly critical eye.

In some senses, then, it seems rational to follow Gittleman's cautionary stance. Why take a chance? If we don't know whether electronics can harm you, shouldn't we air on the side of caution?

Well, maybe. The precautionary principle isn't a bad one, necessarily. But on the other hand, we, as a society, all need to appropriately assess risk. And as a recent article in the New York Times by Lisa Belkin indicates, we are often pretty crummy at doing just that. Belkin writes:

And while we certainly make constant (mis)calculations in our adult lives, we seem all the more determined yet befuddled when it comes to the safety of our children. For instance, the five things most likely to cause injury to children up to age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are: car accidents, homicide (usually at the hands of someone they know), child abuse, suicide or drowning. And what are the five things that parents are most worried about (according to surveys by the Mayo Clinic)? Kidnapping, school snipers, terrorists, dangerous strangers and drugs.

Right. Notice how those lists do not coincide at all?

Here's the point. If you are seriously worried about electronic pollution and want a few pointers for how to reduce your exposure, sure read Zapped. Get a head set for your cell phone. Turn off appliances when you are not using them (that's good for the environment and for your electricity bill anyway.)

But before you spend thousands of dollars and hours and hours of time with an electrician trying to protect yourself, I would ask yourself to think critically about the risk here. Before you campaign to get rid of the wireless internet at your child's school, I would contemplate the relative risk of wireless internet versus the risk your child assumes every time she gets in the car on the way to school.

We cannot live in a bubble, nor would we want to. Every action we take involves some level of risk. And at the end of the day, to be a functioning member of society is to, on some level, accept a level of risk.

So, you know, if you want to read more about electronic pollution, there are definitely some interesting things about Zapped. I was particularly interested in the chapter in which Gittleman touches on the dangers associated with too many medical tests. And I appreciated some of her nutritional advice (Gittleman is actually a trained nutritionist.) I believe only good can come from eating better and exercising.

But, if you do read Zapped, I would advise you to read it wearing an analytical, questioning hat. Don't succumb to paranoia. And remember to think critically about risk.

So This Happened....

2010-11-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

Yup. I am now an engaged woman. The whole engagement thing was totally perfect. My boyfriend, now fiance (except I hate that word ... can I call him my pre-husband?) surprised me totally and completely, which is hard to do, especially when we had been out ring shopping the week before. Suffice it to say, we are both pretty darn happy.

I've always had mixed feelings about the whole engagement thing. Back when I was single and the whole engagement thing was completely theoretical, I wrote this post about the ring dilemma. The post was one of my most popular posts ever, and the comments are still some of my favorite on this blog. Everyone seemed to do something different, and yet everything that people did, traditional or no, was so lovely and special.

Still, when it came time for me to get engaged, I had misgivings. After all, I spent a year as a non-consumer and an engagement ring seemed, in many ways, to be a wasteful extravagance. I love rings. I love jewelry. I adore other people's engagement rings. And yes, I'm going to be honest, I secretly DID want one myself. However, I also do like to live by my principles and sometimes that means saying no to yourself especially in our consumer-driven culture.

My pre-husband, on the other hand, felt pretty strongly about it. And what he felt was that he wanted to get me a ring. After some half-hearted negotiation (Are you sure you don't want to get me an engagement mattress? What about an engagement trip to Detroit for Thanksgiving?) I agreed to the ring. And so I set about finding a ring that I would love and that would also fit in with my principles.

There are an increasing number of options available in the "green engagement ring" category and it took a while for me to sort through my options and figure out what was right for me.

Conflict free diamonds (such as the Canadian diamonds offered at Brilliant Earth) are a nice option for those wanting to avoid blood diamonds (and come on, who really wants a blood diamond, no matter how beautiful it is?) But, even conflict-free diamonds do have to be mined, and any mining process is going to have some environmental impact.

I flirted with synthetic diamonds for a while too. But once again, synthetic diamonds have some impact, even if it's less than that of a mined diamond.

In the end, the choice I made for myself made the most sense given my history. I chose a used diamond ring ... or in fancy terms "vintage." The ring is estimated to be from the 1940s, and although I don't really know the history, I can make it up. Maybe my ring belonged to the bride of a World War II vet. Maybe they wrote impossibly beautiful letters to each other during the war. Maybe their letters were totally boring: "Dear Barbara: France is hot. Love Ralph." Maybe Barbara worked in the war factories. Maybe Ralph almost died. Maybe they had a long and beautiful fifty plus years of marriage. I don't really know, but I like the idea that my ring has a story to tell if only I could hear it speak. Point being, I love my ring. Also, it's super shiny! I'm getting a little distracted right now looking at it.

The past couple weeks have been total engagement bliss. We've been lucky enough to get to celebrate with many of our friends and family members over the past few weeks, and it's served as a reminder that we're not just marrying each other, we are marrying each other's communities. And I have to say, I think we both lucked out in that we are both marrying amazing communities of people. I feel completely confident that I am READY for marriage.

A wedding, on the other hand, is a total different ball game. But that's the subject of another post.

Waste Not, Want Not

2010-10-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help but be amused by Alison's post over at the Green Phone Booth the other day on her borderline pathological aversion to wasting food. Alison writes that her dislike of wasting food has led her to eat when she's not hungry, ignore sell by dates, and otherwise risk serving friends and family a delicious serving of pollo y coli.

Personally, I feel Alison's pain. I hate wasting food as well. AND I do think that, in many cases, those sell by dates ARE ridiculously short. Come on. Eggs last forever. And that guacamole isn't actually BAD, it's just oxidized. You can cut the mold off that piece of cheese and the rest of it should be fine. Ditto for that bread.

I think we are a little too paranoid about our food spoiling.

BUT, at a certain point, you have to let go and throw that rotten food out.

So what do you do?

Well, I, like Alison, have a compost bin. So at least I can take some comfort in knowing that my rotten food isn't going into the dumpster.

Composting is better than sending food to the landfill. But better still would be to reduce: reduce my food waste, reduce my food bought and produced.

Except ....

IT'S HARD!!

First of all, we are a two person household. Which means that, frankly, a small tub of hummus can last two weeks and that's if I eat a good amount of hummus every day. Sometimes, I don't want to eat the SAME THING every day. But, I do love hummus, and I like having it around to put on my sandwiches, and to snack on with carrots.

Second of all, my boyfriend receives free lunch at work. So any leftovers get eaten by me. Who is one small person. The other day, my boyfriend came home, and we made some quick pasta with veggies that had been sitting in the fridge for a week. All part and parcel of my continual efforts to not waste. He proceeded to not eat his dinner because apparently he had eaten a few brownies at work. Of course this irritated me, because what is he, six?! Does he not get that eating a few brownies will spoil his appetite for dinner?

Now obviously, I would prefer that he eat pasta with veggies instead of brownies. However, from a food waste perspective, I kind of feel like either way food would have been wasted. Either there would have been left over brownie, because I suspect that his office is awash with dessert on a regular basis, or left over spaghetti. As it was, I ate his spaghetti the next day for lunch.

My point is this: not wasting food is hard. We should all learn to meal plan, eat leftovers, and cook a few recipes that essentially allow you to dump all leftovers in one big pot, but at the end of the day, some food may still go to waste. At those times, all we can do is compost, and give thanks that we are so fortunate as to live in a land of plentiful food. And yell at our boyfriend for eating too many brownies.

Is Guilt Good For You?

2010-10-05T12:45:00.001-07:00

Recently, Crunchy Chicken posted about an article in the New York Times about guilty eco-nuts: those that were doing their best to go green, yet still felt guilty about their transgressions.

Crunchy argued that guilt was unproductive, and that when we feel guilty, we should examine our guilt. Are we committing "eco-sins" out of laziness? Are we just making excuses? Or are our reasons for committing said eco-sin really valid? If they are, Crunchy argues that we should let the guilt go.

When I first read this, it sounded like a very reasonable argument. What is the point of guilt anyway?

And then I started thinking about it ...

I remembered this article in The Washington Post (hat tip Charles) about how going green in one area often makes people feel that they have the moral license to go un-green in other areas. It's like eco-nut off-setting: if you're really diligent about composting, then it's okay to waste food. If you drive a hybrid, it's okay to drive instead of walk. Sometimes the off-setting isn't even that related: for instance, bringing your own plastic bags might be used to offset driving an SUV.

So it's not surprising that researchers are finding a rebound effect when it comes to energy efficient appliances. It goes something like this: Zev buys energy efficient appliances, Zev ends up saving money on his electricity bill, so Zev decides to use his savings to buy a new HDTV.

The end result is that our efforts to "go green" may be having next to no effect.

Which brings us back to guilt.

Maybe guilt isn't so bad after all. Maybe that constant nagging guilt I feel: when I use a paper cup (minor guilt) or when I fly in an airplane (major guilt) is actually more productive than I thought. Maybe that guilt is reminding me that there really are no eco-nut off-sets. That composting does not give me allowance to waste food. Nor does taking public transit to work give me allowance to fly.

I still might waste food. Or fly. But I feel guilty about it. I realize that every action matters. That one "good" action does not just balance out a "bad one." That I have no moral license.

So maybe guilt isn't so bad for you after all.

What do you think?

Random Friday

2010-10-01T09:27:00.001-07:00

Hi guys. Happy October!! I really can't believe that 2010 is nine months over. Where did the time go?

In any case, I'm happy to be back here blogging semi-regularly after taking much of the year off. And I hope to be blogging even more this month. (This is sort of a side note, but looking at my blog I realized that my inability to blog for much of this year may have had something to do with my initial reluctance to blog about my boyfriend. I'm not really one to blog too much about my personal life, but I realize that it's really frickin hard to write blog posts day after day without including him since you know, I live with him and he's in my life and is now part of the whole nutty adventure. Which isn't to say that I want this blog to be a big huge schmoop fest. In fact I really don't want that. But it's now much easier to blog when I feel comfortable talking about how we watched a movie and had a conversation. ANYWAY.)

Oh wait! One more side note! One of my favoritist bloggers in the whole world is blogging again! So go read Green Bean's post about channeling her inner Jamie Oliver and welcome her back to the blog world! No, but wait! First read the rest of my post, and THEN go to the Green Phone Booth.

I'm sorry. I would say I had too much caffeine, but so far this morning, it's only been 1.5 cups of tea.

Okay, anyway, I'll let you get to more exciting things on the internet in a minute, but I wanted to give you a taste of some of the things I'll be blogging about in October.

1) Mattress shopping. Yes, we finally bought a new mattress. And after the weeks of freaking research, I now consider myself a God damn eco-mattress expert so I figure I should share. So expect a post, or perhaps three on the topic. I probably have enough to say.

2) Thrift store comparisons. I visited three thrift stores in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. I'll let you know my thoughts.

3) Riot for Austerity! Well sort of. I decided that I'm a really competitive person (you think?). And as such, I accomplish more when I have goals I'm trying to hit. Right now I'm doing pretty good about trash, electricity use, car use, etc, but there are areas where I backslide simply because I'm not accountable to anyone. For instance, I've been using paper towels at work. And I've gotten lazy and am sort of throwing whatever in the bathroom trash instead of separating out the compostables (tissues) from the recyclables (toilet paper tubes) from the garbage. I bought a TV that can be set so that when it powers off, it doesn't suck any stand-by power from the outlet, but I haven't figured out the setting. Stuff like that. So I'm going to track my trash, electricity, car use, food consumption, and durable good consumption this month and see how I do.

4) Talking about how I'm an eco-hypocrite! Because I am one! See above: not sorting trash. But also I sin in many, many, many, MANY other ways. I would like you to know this. Because frankly, I don't know if it is just me, but I tend to assume that all eco-bloggers are perfect and never buy plastic, and never slip up and have to buy bottled water, and always buy bulk, organic, local food, etc, etc, etc. This may be true of other bloggers but it is NOT TRUE OF ME. I am a HUGE hypocrite. HUGE. Bigger than huge. I just think you should know.

All right. That's all for today, but hope you're looking forward to this month of posting. I know I am. Have a happy Friday, and, well, this is random, but if you need a good cry, watch this:

Adventures in Craigslisting

2010-09-27T21:43:00.001-07:00

So my boyfriend and I have been on the lookout for a little cart for our kitchen for a while. Now, we could have just gone to Ikea, and picked out any number of these kitchen carts, but as much as I'm now a normal little consumerist just like anyone else, I made a pledge to myself that this move was not going to involve a trip to the Ikea store. Every other time I've moved (except when I moved to London), I've worshiped at the Ikea altar. But that was all BEFORE. Now, I can't help but feel like Ikea represents some of the worst excesses of our throw-it-away culture. Because they make furniture SO cheap, everyone just buys it, and then dumps it a year or so later. As much as I am willing to shop and buy new, even venturing into the big box stores now and then, Ikea is my current line in the sand. The one I'm not yet willing to cross.

So, instead I hit Craigslist for kitchen carts. I quickly found that even if I were willing to go to Ikea, it would be completely foolish to do so: there are a plethora of Ikea kitchen carts on Craigslist for dirt cheap. Why pay $60, when you could pay $10? My opposition to Ikea doesn't extend to used Ikea furniture on Craigslist, but honestly, neither of the ubiquitous Ikea kitchen carts were quite what we wanted.

So, we kept looking. This one was too small, another too wide. Another too ugly, another too far away. Meanwhile, our microwave continued to sit on the floor. Finally, I was ready to call it a day, and just pick up one of the many used Ikea carts, when we found it. A nice, fairly solid cart with a couple of drawers and extra shelving.

Excited, I quickly made an appointment to view the cart. I gave my boyfriend the dimensions and asked him whether or not he thought the cart would fit in the back of our car.

"Yeah, it should," he said nonchalantly. And I, eager to pick up the cart, believed him.

I know. Big mistake.

So, we find the cart, and it looks as advertised, and is clean and in good shape. We pay the nice couple some cash, and wheel the cart into the warm San Francisco night to our car.

Where it turns out, that, in fact, no, the cart will NOT fit. We try the trunk. We try the back seat. We try multiple configurations, saying "Pivot" really loud, but nothing seems to work.

So now, we're stuck on some random street with our kitchen cart.

My boyfriend suggests we call a friend with a station wagon. I suggest we hire a taxi mini-van. He pulls out his cell phone to call his friend, while I stand on the street corner to hail down a cab. He's on the phone with his friend when a taxi mini-van pulls over. I grab my boyfriend and we explain our situation to the cab driver. The driver seems dubious about the whole endeavor, but agrees that we can bring the cart over and try to load it into the van. We run to the cart and grab it to bring to the taxi, and ... he's long gone.

So.

Round two. My boyfriend tries to call his friend again. I head back to the corner to try and find yet another cab. After a minute or two, I manage to hail another mini van. Again, the cab driver is dubious, but this one pulls over and puts the seats down in the back. We bring the cart over, and the cab driver shakes his head. "It's not going to fit, but you can try," he says.

We tip the cart gently into the back of the minivan and it fits!! Success!!

Relieved to no longer be stuck on the street, I get in the cab, and my boyfriend follows behind with the car.

We get home and quickly wheel the cart into place, satisfied that our Craigslisting adventures paid off.

I guess that's one more advantage to not going to Ikea. While going to Ikea means you're less likely to wind up stranded on the street with a kitchen cart, you also do have to get home and assemble said cart from ancient Scandinavian scrolls. Given my proclivity for immediate gratification, it was nice to have the cart look like this five minutes after entering:

Cute, huh? Thanks, Craigslist, my microwave appreciates having a real home.

Quick Note

2010-09-26T11:52:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to alert any interested readers of a contest running on the Nature Conservancy website right now.

Most of you are probably familiar with the Nature Conservancy which is one of the leading conservationist organizations in the country. They are also known, at least around my house, for their really gorgeous nature photos that are featured in their magazine.

Well, they are currently running their 5th annual photo contest, and are inviting everyone to submit their favorite nature pics online. The winner will be featured in the Nature Conservancy calendar for 2012.

If you're interested, visit this website for all the details. The deadline is October 4th.

Dude.

2010-09-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

Last night, I had one of the most fantastic meals I've had in a long, long time.

And the kicker?

It was all vegan.

Yup, last night, my boyfriend and I made it out to Millennium Restaurant, which is perhaps one of the most famous vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco. In fact, by the end of the second course, my meat-loving boyfriend was making multiple comments about how if all vegan food tasted this good, he'd be okay going vegan.

And of course I was happy because at a vegan restaurant I didn't have to worry about animal fats lurking in my food. No need to offer a laundry list of things I can't eat: cheese, butter, cream. No need to worry that we'd get three courses with bacon. Instead, we sat back, ordered the tasting menu, and let the deliciousness unfold.

Millennium's success (can we talk about how crowded this place is?) demonstrates that ultimately, we are all happy to eat good, healthy, sustainable food. If it tastes good, that is. Judging by the Yelp reviews (and my boyfriend) a number of meat eaters have been good and satisfied eating at Millennium.

So why are we all stuck in the meat paradigm? Why do so many of us feel that we need to eat meat with just about every meal?

Is it because that's what we know? What we grew up with? Is it just plain easier to cook with meat?

When we think of a vegetarian dish, are we stymied at pasta or a salad?

And how do we change the paradigm so that instead of focusing on meat, butter, and cheese, we focus on vegetables, lentils, and whole grains?

Going Car-Light

2010-09-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

When we first met, neither my boyfriend nor I had a working car, not that I knew that right away. My boyfriend picked a restaurant near the train station for our first date; I assumed he just liked Mexican food. I drove to the restaurant in my mom's car, and he walked from the train.

At the restaurant, I was ... well me, which means that my eco-nuttiness slipped out in some way. I mean, I don't go around being like, "Hello my name is Ruchi and I don't use toilet paper*," but I also don't tend to hide the fact that I like to be green. My boyfriend, perhaps emboldened by my environmentalist talk, mentioned that the last time he had driven to work had been, irony of ironies, Earth Day two years ago. Since then, his car had sat in the garage, unloved and unused. It no longer started, and probably needed a few repairs.

My boyfriend likes to joke that I am one of the few women on the planet who would have viewed this state of affairs as a plus. After all, this story is really a story of a guy who was too lazy to fix his car, so he decided to just keep it in the garage for two years and take the train. It's not like he was making a political statement.

But, of course, I, because I am an eco-romantic thought this was a great story. Plus, I am lazy too. And when you break it down, a lot of my habits such as not shopping and wearing my clothes multiple times before washing, are as much green as lazy. Yes it's greener to wear my glasses instead of disposable contacts, it's also lazy.

So, hell, if people are going to cut down on carbon emissions out of laziness, I'll take it!

But as we started dating, things got complicated. At the time I lived in a place with almost no access to public transit, so, I would have to borrow my mom's car to see my boyfriend, or get her to drop me off to the train. When we went skiing, it was now two people bumming rides, instead of just one. As Charles can no doubt attest, being car-free is difficult if you spend much time in the South Bay as we did.

So, finally, after a couple months of aggravation, my boyfriend got his car fixed. And now we use it to visit friends, my mom, drive to Tahoe, and generally make our lives a little easier. It's not ideal, but between two people, we probably have to get gas every two weeks, which is less gas than I was using in LA, even once I started taking public transport to work.

So, while we're no longer completely car free, we are fairly proud to be a one-car household, and hope to stay that way for a good, long time.

*I do use 100% recycled toilet paper now.

A Response to Jenn the Greenmom

2010-09-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

This morning I read Jenn's post over at the Green Phone Booth about "The Junk Food Dilemma." I guess it touched a nerve, because I started writing a comment to her and then kept writing, and writing, and writing, and writing. In fact, when I finally went to post the comment, I found out that I'd exceeded the comment limit. I'd never realized there was a comment limit in all my time blogging. And I've written some seriously long comments.

But, ya know, that's what I have my own blog for. So, read her post, and then read my response. If you want.

Jenn,

Sometimes I have serious concerns about the enviro/foodie movement. The vibe often seems to be that you can eat whatever you want as long as it's not processed junk food and it's local, organic, etc.

Couple reality checks here:

1) The problems with animal products aren't just with the meat. Raising animals is an energy-intense process, and that goes for both dairy cows and cows for slaughter. Most enviros, even non-vegetarians argue that we need to cut down on meat consumption. We eat too much meat, no question, but I would argue that we probably also eat too much animal product period. I'm not a vegan, hell, I'm not even a vegetarian, but I think it's important for us to recognize this point.

2) Even organic whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are bad for you. Yes, you can eat some in moderation. But, honestly, moderation does not mean you can eat three cookies a day. Or even two cookies a day.

I changed my diet because I felt I had to. I got the results of a cholesterol test back and they were alarmingly high. So I began to add a ton of fiber to my diet (I already ate a good amount of fiber, but now I eat double the daily requirement.) I only eat non-fat dairy. I also eat about three or four servings of fruit a day and try to eat three servings of vegetables a day. I eat a lot of hummus and guacamole. I eat a lot of lentils and beans. I rarely eat red meat (aside from bison which is super high in omega-3). I eat a lot of fish, and a little poultry. I probably average three vegetarian days per week, and then two days with fish.

I cut out cheese entirely. And butter. Occasionally I will eat a bite of cheese at a restaurant but it's rare. (When we go out to pizza, I ask for an individual pizza with no cheese.) Likewise, I'm sure there are times at a restaurant where I accidentally end up with something with butter, but it's not something I use to cook with at home. I eat chocolate sparingly: sometimes in dark chocolate form, and sometimes in the form of low-fat frozen yogurt. But it's not a daily treat by any means.

I do miss cheese and butter and ice cream and all the rest. Sometimes I long for some mac and cheese. BUT, by eliminating things, I think it actually makes it easier than if you try to figure out "moderation." Moderation is hard, because it's so easy to slip back into old ways. There's a reason alcoholics are told that they can never drink again.

And most of the time, I'm happy. I love fruit. I love hummus and avocado. I have found a ton of super tasty, healthy veg dishes. And yes, I allow myself the occasional slip up. I also allow myself (though I know I should not) a couple vices: since my problem is cholesterol which has to do with fat, I let myself have soda and juice which you know, are really just sugar. I also let myself have sugary candies occasionally like sour patch kids. I know, I know, I shouldn't do that, but sometimes I'm just dying for something bad! And, for me, (not a diabetic) this is not THAT bad.

In the process of this new diet, I've lost about ten pounds. I feel super energetic (although that's probably also due to my exercise regime).

And frankly, now that my body is acclimated to healthy non-fatty stuff, a little fat goes a long long way. The other day, a friend offered me a mini banana-nut muffin he had baked. It was all warm from the oven and looked delicious, so I couldn't resist. I had half of a mini-muffin and felt really satiated.

I've also noticed that I've become very sensitive to butter and cheese and stuff. A little bit starts to feel like a LOT to me. So I enjoy it, but only in very limited quantities.

Anyway, that's my very long-winded response to your post. My advice to you: don't do a cleanse. Instead, do exactly what Chile suggested. Choose only healthy foods for a month. Eat no unhealthy foods. Then gradually add the unhealthy stuff back in. HOWEVER, whenever you sit at the dinner table, take stock of your plate. It should be one half veggies. The other half can be composed of carbs/protein/meat/dairy. But fully one half of it should be veggies. This is a tip a nutritionist gave me, and I think it's pretty brilliant. That means the occasional Alfredo pasta is fine, but make sure you are also eating a ton of broccoli, etc, that day as well.

Hope this helps!

Ruchi

Moving is Hard

2010-09-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

We have internet!!

Finally. After several desperate days without, I am now free to procrastinate all the live long day online.

Actually, it's probably a good thing that we had no internet at the new place because it allowed me time to, you know, UNPACK, and that kind of crap.

So, I'm sure you're wondering how the move is going, or maybe you're not because who really cares about other people's moves? But I am not deterred by your lack of interest and I will happily tell you this that you already know, but forget when you decide to shift house.

Moving blows.

It is a lot of carrying things, and shlepping. There is a lot of frowning as you wonder where to hang that picture. No, not there. Not there either. Nope. Oh forget it. Your apartment is never going to look like those Apartment Therapy pads no matter how you try.

And of course there is a lot of buying.

Yesterday, I impulsively bought a super ugly blonde wood bookcase and file cabinet off of Craigslist. To be fair, they're not actually that ugly. They're perfectly respectable Ikea-esque specimens. And they're the exact right size for what I needed in the office. But the wood definitely doesn't match the rest of our furniture, not to mention the floors. So now, I've been racking my brain trying to come up with ways to make the furniture less attractive.

So far, I've thought about painting, wallpapering, or decoupaging.

Either way, it seems like an awful lot of work.

Did I mention that I am really not crafty?

So internets, if you had boring blond Ikea furniture that you wanted to jazz up what would you do? What would you do if you were extremely lazy as I am? And what would you do if you didn't want to spend too much money?

Balancing Out the Nuttiness

2010-09-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

‎"Oh my God. Is this going to be my life forever? It's like we go to the environmental store and what's there is still not good enough."

The following is a quote from my poor, beleaguered boyfriend. Who has to put up with me and my eco-insanity more than anyone else.

In most cases, my boyfriend approaches my eco-nuttiness with good humor. And honestly, we live in San Francisco, where many aspects of my eco-ness are par for the course. My boyfriend already used reusable bags when he went grocery shopping. Everyone in the city composts because it is mandated by law. Most people I know here buy organic.

So, in a lot of cases, he goes along with my crusade. Sometimes willingly, sometimes rolling his eyes. He doesn't bat an eyelash about buying organic milk. He religiously composts and knows all the rules. And he even calls me on my eco-sins. Like the time he reminded me that if I don't get out of bed in time, he has to drive me to the train station, and the car isn't meant for those walkable journeys.

But in other cases, my choices do definitely cause him some frustration. He misses the Pantene. He likes having an emergency stash of paper towels. He can't believe it when I tell him that only one mattress at the eco-mattress store is eco enough.

The other day we were watching the No Impact Man movie, and I couldn't help but watch the whole thing from his eyes. Of course, I knew a ton about their project, I had followed along on the blog, and I've read Colin's wife's writing about the subject. So, I knew how the whole project had been an evolution for her from a somewhat unwilling participant to an active, involved, collaborator. But a whole lot of the movie seemed to focus on the unwilling participant part, probably because it provided some drama. So it felt a lot like she was being dragged along through this torturous project and that she had very little say in the matter. As I watched my boyfriend cringe when Michelle's toilet paper was taken away from her, I wondered, "Where's the balance?"

I started my eco-nutty phase when I was living alone. This had its own struggles, but, by and large, it made things simpler. I did what I wanted. If I wanted to not use toilet paper or paper towels? It didn't affect anyone else. But now, every choice I make, whether it's to use vinegar as a cleaning solution or to turn off the air-dry on the dishwasher, affects someone else.<

And while I think some of the changes are fair and justified, like say eating all organic, sometimes they are perhaps a little overzealous and unnecessary. When my boyfriend convinced me to buy a roll of paper towels, we bought an unbleached, 100% recycled roll that lasted us three months. I guess I can agree to buy four rolls of recycled paper towels a year.

I guess like all things, this is about finding the happy medium. Because after all, there's no point "saving the world" if everyone gets so pissed off at you that you have no one to share your world with.

I'm a Believer

2010-08-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was at my mom's house going through all the crap I've stored in her garage for the past two years, and I found these pretty wood flowers I had bought at Ikea four years ago.

Yeah I know, wood flowers, but trust me, they are pretty! They are bright blue and red. And they liven up a place. And I'm bad with real flowers.

Anyway, here they were in the garage collecting dust. (I'm surprised they survived the purge two years ago when I moved out of LA ... I guess this tells you how attached I am to stupid $2 wood flowers.) But other than the dust, they still looked good, and I decided that I wanted them for the new apartment. I figured I'd rinse them in the kitchen sink, let them dry off, and I was sure they'd look as good as new.

I had almost finished washing the flowers when I noticed to my horror BRIGHT BLUE DOTS all over my mom's WOOD floor. The stupid Ikea flowers had leaked dye onto the floor. My MOM'S FLOOR.

Now, many of you are moms. And when your children do something, like say, ruin your wood floors, you probably sigh, and are sad, but mostly let it go. Because it was an accident, and they did apologize, and also, your child is four.

Let me tell you, that I am pretty sure this doesn't work when your child is 31.

When your child is 31, I am pretty sure you get REALLY REALLY MAD at said child because HOW DID THEY NOT NOTICE THE BLUE DOTS EARLIER?! And what were they doing washing the flowers in the kitchen sink? After all, said child has her own kitchen sink. Why didn't she go home and wash her flowers there?

(I would like to state for the record here that my mom is actually very, very nice. But she does think both of her daughters are prone to extreme carelessness which may or may not be fair. Also, I think she incorrectly assumed that once her kids hit ten they would stop destroying her kitchen floor.)

So, I freaked out for a few minutes, and then ran to the laundry room to find some cleaner. I got out the nasty, toxic, wood cleaner, dumped as much of it as I could on a rag and set to work.

Nothing.

BRIGHT BLUE DOTS.

Then I got some regular soap and water, and tried that.

Nothing.

Then I decided that the Internets must have a solution. So I got online and frantically searched for how to remove dye on wood.

One website advised me to create a paste with a tablespoon of baking soda with a table spoon of vinegar and then scrub the paste on to the wood with a tooth brush.

I honestly had pretty minimal hope for this. After all, the nasty toxic chemicals hadn't worked. Why would stupid baking soda and vinegar? I know people claim they are natural cleaners and work wonders, but I've never completely bought into it.

BUT, at this point I was frantic and desperate.

So, I grabbed a toothbrush, the vinegar, and baking soda and started scrubbing.

And, I am not kidding you, it worked like an eraser on pencil.

It was THAT easy and THAT instantaneous. The vinegar and baking soda picked up ALL that nasty blue dye RIGHT UP.

Ten minutes later, the kitchen floor was completely clean but smelled like fish and chips. Fifteen minutes later, the smell was gone. Twenty minutes later, my mom was home, and I was bragging to her about the miracle that is baking soda and vinegar.

Crisis averted.

And now I'm a believer. No more spending tons of money on expensive eco-cleaners. I'm going with the vinegar and baking soda. Cuz they're safe, cheap, effective, and while I'm cleaning, I can dream of fish and chips. What else can you ask from a cleaning solution?

What are your homemade cleaning recipes and do they work?

AUGH

2010-08-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

So I don't know if I mentioned this, but I'm moving. My boyfriend and I are moving out of the current place we share with a roommate to a place of our own.

We're very excited ... the new places is super cute, and two bedrooms which means we get an office/guest bedroom. It has a nice large kitchen and also a little outdoor space.

But it's also a little nerve-wracking. No, not because I'm worried about living by myself with my boyfriend or anything. But because, well ....

The other day I was talking to my friend about the move, and she said to me, "So you do know that you are going to have to BUY things, right?!!"

Gulp.

Yes, yes, I know I have to buy things. I know, I know.

And I know that I'll likely even have to buy NEW things. We'll still probably buy some used furniture, but since we are planning to stay in the Bay Area for a very long time (read: possibly forever) we also want to buy stuff with a sense of permanence.

So, you know, we need a bath mat. Hand towels. A doo-dad to hold soap so that the sink doesn't get gritty and soap-scummy. And since we're putting our old bed in the guest bedroom, we need a new mattress, sheets, and pillows.

These are things that we have to buy new. Because, frankly, used bath mats are kinda gross, and what with all the bed bug pandemics, I'm not taking my chances with a used mattress.

Plus, there are the kitchen appliances and accoutrements we will now have to buy. And some of these we can buy used, but some of them will prove difficult.

So my point is, I have to shop.

And guys? I am *not* good at that.

Like, the other day, I spent several hours researching a new electric kettle. I want one with as little plastic as possible, that has no plastic coming in contact with the water. After hours of reading and reviewing and debating, I finally just gave up. And made a cup of tea in my old, completely plastic-and-likely-leaking-toxic-chemicals, kettle.

Luckily my mother came to the rescue with a stainless steel electric kettle that is sitting around in her garage. I haven't looked at the reviews, but I don't care. After all it's used.

And that's the problem. Used stuff is so easy for me to buy. If it breaks after six months, I care a lot less. After all it was used. I probably spent $10. And while I'm obviously concerned about toxic chemicals leaching, I don't care as much about manufacturing impact when I'm buying used. After all, I'm not contributing to the manufacturer's profit, I'm delaying a product's trip to the dump.

With new, I feel like I need to do the research and MAKE IT PERFECT. You know, perfectly environmental, perfectly healthy, perfectly manufactured with fair wages paid to laborers, etc, etc, etc. But it's hard. There's a lot of information to dig through and while that's easy enough when you're buying one thing, it's a whole lot harder when you have to buy a dozen new kitchen things.

And that's the other thing. I am unsure of all the things I NEED and what I can at least put off buying. You don't know how much agonizing I had to do to convince myself that yes, a bath mat is NECESSARY. Because I don't want to live in a FRAT HOUSE.

What do I buy new and what do I buy used? Do I bite the bullet and buy a new trash can? (Those things are surprisingly expensive.) Or do I scour Craigslist and hold out for a used one? What about canisters for sugar, flour, and rice? What about wooden hangers and picture frames?

And, and, (I understand that this is turning into a long, babbling post, this is what the prospect of shopping does to me) WHERE do I buy all these things? I'm not shopping at Target (see previous post) and I am kind of philosophically opposed to Ikea, which I believe makes crappy, cheap furniture enabling too many college students to adopt a "buy new and dump it next year" approach to furniture when they could be buying stuff off Craigslist.

So what does that leave me? Is Bed, Bath, and Beyond okay? Do I want to know if it's not? Can I buy a bath mat at an independent store? Will it cost me $50?

The point is people, that THIS IS WHY I DON'T SHOP. Because it makes me a nut case. So if you see me at the store staring vacantly at the trash cans for an hour, do me a favor and give me a hug. And then tell me which trash can to buy.

Boycotting Shopping

2010-08-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

The recent boycott of Target has reminded me of how difficult and pointless I used to think shopping boycotts were.

Back before I became a non-consumer I considered information about corporate misdeeds overwhelming. It seemed like every company was doing something it shouldn't. I mean I couldn't just STOP SHOPPING, could I? So I might as well just keep shopping everywhere. They're all bad, but what can I do?

And then one day the lightbulb turned on and I realized that yes, in fact, I could just STOP shopping. So I did.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that you SHOULD boycott Target. That's your own business and you have to base that decision on your own political, moral, and ethical beliefs. I will say that, in my personal opinion as a bleeding heart liberal, I think Target may have cuter clothes than Walmart, but it ain't much better from a progressive politics point of view. Target's recent political donation was one instance in a larger stream of troubling actions.

As I said, my opinion on Target is based on my liberal bias, a position I certainly don't expect everyone reading this blog to share. However, if YOU want to boycott Target, but aren't sure if you can, well then keep reading.

Because I am here to tell you that you most certainly CAN boycott Target.

"How?" you may be wondering. "How can I boycott TARGET? They have everything. Especially cute purses. And they are so conveniently located in the urban/suburban environment where I live, unlike Wal-Mart which is easy to boycott because it's not located anywhere near me!"

It's true that Target has everything. It's very true that they have cute purses. Nonetheless, I promise you that if you want to, you can do it.

Here are my tips for avoiding Target:

1) Stop shopping. Okay, kidding. I know that it's not totally realistic to expect everyone to stop shopping. But seriously, it can be done. Just ask Megan. Or Colin. Or Katy. Or even me! Even if you don't stop shopping you can seriously limit your shopping. I typically don't buy something without several weeks (sometimes months) of consideration. You will be amazed by how much you don't actually NEED. Like that cute purse.

2) Shop Craigslist. And thrift stores. And eBay. And Amazon Marketplace. You will be amazed by how many awesome used things you can find for super cheap. Even cute purses!

3) Use (some) of the money you've saved from buying less and buying used to support local businesses. The sad truth is big box stores like Target can often afford to charge much less than your local mom and pop. But if you're saving money by consuming less, you can also afford to pay a little more on the few things you DO end up buying.

4) Do your homework. Are there big companies with good practices who you are willing to support? For example, Costco has been profiled as a company that is good to its employees. If so, shop there.

5) Don't go there. Or near there. Avoid temptation by not driving past Target every day. Out of sight, out of mind.

As for me, yeah, I probably won't shop at Target. Although I do love their purses.

More Thoughts on Budiansky

2010-08-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

Budiansky's article certainly generated a lot of criticism both here and over at Crunchy Chicken. Probably one of the most oft-repeated themes was "I don't trust statistics."

Which is fair, I suppose, but makes things difficult. I mean, I get that it's really damn easy to lie with statistics which is why I would want to know exactly which studies are being cited and then go and review the methodology before I accepted someone's statistics at face value.

The problem is though, if we want to answer these complex questions about carbon efficiency and energy use, and we want to do them fairly, we do have to sort of agree that we can study them with some sort of method. It's fair not to accept uncited and unverified statistics, but at the end of the day, social policy can't be determined on a wing and a hunch. It's fine for YOU to FEEL that local is the most carbon efficient, and for you to then make your decisions accordingly, but that doesn't NECESSARILY make it true.

Now the other criticism that came up was, "Budiansky is missing the point! This isn't about carbon miles it's about a food REVOLUTION!"

And it's fair, that the locavore movement is about many things, and about many things to many people. However, I also think it's fair for one article to address one facet of the locavore movement, which is most certainly about food miles. Now you may say that you're a locavore because you want to know the farmer who grew your food, and that's valid. But that doesn't mean that it's illegitimate for Budiansky to argue that locavorism isn't NECESSARILY more carbon efficient.

But back to Budiansky, who I think, sort of deserves a lot of criticism himself for issuing a stream of statistics without any mention of his sources (I know that this is totally kosher for an op-ed piece, but if he wanted to, he could have mentioned a study or two.) One of the things that struck me the most about the Budiansky piece is his findings that most of the energy consumption in agriculture comes from us, the consumers. From our fridges, stoves, dishwashers, and car trips to the grocery store.

And actually, given his findings, it's a little surprising that most personal environmentalists are railing against the article because in fact, the article, is, in many senses, a call to arms for personal environmentalism. What Budiansky is saying is, we're not going to reduce the energy consumption associated with food until WE the consumers start acting differently. What he's saying is that each of us, as individuals, can make a difference, by walking to the grocery, turning off the "heat dry" on our dishwashers, and yes, by turning off our fridges.

Of course, I suspect, that if there was a mass movement to turn off our fridges, some other op-ed writer would respond by calling us eco-nuts, and unveiling a heap of statistics that show that refrigeration constitutes a minor portion of America's energy use. But that's another story.

What's The Most Efficient Use of Energy?

2010-08-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking idly of getting a CSA box for some time for a variety of reasons. One, I think it would force me to eat more vegetables and to become more adventurous in my meal preparations. Two, I like the idea behind Community Supported Agriculture and would like to support it. Three, it's just so convenient. To have produce delivered to my door seems like such a luxury.

Plus, it's good for the environment right? Isn't that what everyone's saying?

Well, after reading this article, I'm not entirely sure anymore. According to Stephen Budiansky, food transportation, fertilizers, and chemicals only make up a small share of food's energy use. Instead, Budiansky says, "The real energy hog, it turns out, is not industrial agriculture at all, but you and me. Home preparation and storage account for 32 percent of all energy use in our food system, the largest component by far."

Now I have no idea where Budiansky got his statistics from. And frankly, I'm not really sure how meaningful they are ... are his statistics on industrial agriculture solely about crops? Is meat included? And, if so, can we conflate growing lettuce with producing hamburger patties in one statistic?

But Budiansky does have a point when he notes the energy costs required to drive five miles and back from the grocery store or farmer's market. (Note: I've never had to travel five miles to get to a grocery store. Farmer's market, maybe. Grocery store, definitely not. Does this mean I'm spoiled living in the city or is five miles a sort of weirdly large estimate?)

So I started thinking about it. Right now, we get our produce from Whole Foods which is blocks away from our house. Generally speaking, my boyfriend is able to pick up things we need on his walk home from work. We go through produce, especially fruit, very rapidly, so we shop several times a week, and don't use any transportation energy to do so. At Whole Foods, we buy primarily organic, and usually local/in state. The organic is a deliberate choice, the local partly choice, partly happenstance. Since California is the heartland for Industrial Organic, most of our produce just winds up being local. Earthbound Farms spinach? Local. Driscoll's berries? Local. We're lucky. I've been to Whole Foods in Florida and they carry the same Industrial Organic from California that we have in our Whole Foods. As for the produce taste itself? I have to say, I'm extremely happy with it.

Our other options would be farmers markets or CSA. Since we don't have a farmers' market in walking distance, either of these options would require us to expend some form of transportation energy. There are several farmers' markets within a half hour bus ride. But they are generally only once a week or in working hours, so we would either need to buy a lot and hope stuff didn't spoil, or supplement our farmers' market purchases with grocery store produce. Not ideal.

With a CSA, we'd have the convenience factor, but it would come at a cost. I don't know how much energy CSA trucks expend delivering grocery bags across the city, but I'm sure it's a decent amount.

All of this leads me to believe that actually Whole Foods may actually be the most efficient choice for us: efficient in terms of energy and also our time. It seems a tad heretical ... (but it's INDUSTRIAL ORGANIC!! WHAT ABOUT THE SMALL FARMERS?!!) And yeah, I know there are other things to consider. In an ideal world, I would support the small farmers. I would go visit exactly where my food was being produced. I would form a personal connection with the people growing my food. And I'd figure out a way to support small farmers in an energy efficient way.

But, I don't live in an ideal world, I live in a world with a lot of resource constraints. And when I'm thinking about the best use of my limited resources, Whole Foods just seems like the better option.

Plastic Covering the Planet

2010-08-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

So, the good news is, now that we compost, we generate very little trash.

The bad news is, most of the trash we do generate is plastic.

Plastic bread bags, plastic tags on bread bags. Plastic bags that come with our New York Times. Plastic shrink-wrapped around boxes of tea for God knows what reason.

Plastic around milk containers. Plastic rings encircling glass bottles of jam and peanut butter. Hello food producers!! We're buying glass for a reason.

Now I'm not a crusader against all plastic. I love Fake Plastic Fish, but we all have our battles to fight, and I'm not ready to add plastic to mine. We go shopping several times a week because I go through fruit literally that fast on my low cholesterol diet. Because of that, we shop at Whole Foods which has the advantage of being four blocks away from our apartment. The berries all come in plastic containers, and we buy plenty.

I buy the pre-packaged organic baby carrots because they're an easy, healthy snack. And the pre-washed organic spinach because, frankly, if the spinach isn't pre-washed it's a lot more likely that I just won't eat it. Plus, the plastic keeps the vegetables from spoiling prematurely.

But even with all that plastic that I'm not willing (yet) to do without, there still seems to be so much excess plastic ... plastic we could get rid of. Plastic that I'm flummoxed is there in the first place. Like the box of tea that is shrink-wrapped in plastic, and then when you open it, you find out that inside the box, each INDIVIDUAL TEA BAG is also wrapped in plastic.

Seriously, is there some pandemic of unsanitary tea that I don't know of? (I no longer buy this brand.)

Plastic is piling up ... in our apartment (literally, for whatever reason my boyfriend sees fit to keep all the New York Times bags like we're suddenly going to come up with a use for them), in our landfills, in my mind. The other day, one of my contacts fell off in the sink, and because I was getting rid of them anyway, I almost let it go down the drain. And then I realized ... "Oh wait. That's ... plastic." And with visions of endangered fish choking on my contact, I scooped it back up.

Saturday, at the grocery store, my boyfriend reported that he stared at the milk for several seconds, trying to figure out if he should buy the organic milk in the plastic container or the non-organic milk in the paper container. Unable to deal with this Sophie's Choice, he fled from the dairy aisle and found, to his relief, that I had already picked up the milk: organic in plastic.

One more plastic container to add to my heap of plasticized guilt.

Building Exercise Into Your Commute

2010-08-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

The past few days I've felt a little bit restless, sorta like a dog that needed to be walked.

I was wondering what was going on, when I realized that I am, in fact, like a dog that needs to be walked.

You see, I've had to drive to work the past couple days. And generally, I take the train to work, which involves about 5 miles of walking (.8 miles to the train station then 1.75 miles to work and then back again.) In fact, I walk to work, and then after work change into my running clothes and run the way back.

As a result, I'm in probably the best shape of my life.

When exercise is built into your commute, you can't procrastinate it, or avoid it. If I don't walk, I don't get home.

Now, it's not a pretty walk really. In fact, people who know the area are sometimes taken aback that I walk it. There are short parts of it where there is no sidewalk, and I'm forced to trespass through parking lots to avoid walking in the middle of the road. At these times, I channel my inner Beany getting annoyed at all the drivers and the wide swathes of the road we have allotted them, leaving none for little old pedestrian me.

And it makes for a long commute, especially in the evening where I have to wait a good while for a train.

But I can honestly say that I am so much happier with my commute than I would be stuck in a car in rush hour traffic. I love having time to read on the train. I love that I am getting good exercise. And I REALLY love that I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for a gym membership.

Once again: what's good for the planet is good for me. Funny how that works so much of the time, isn't it? ;)

Food, Inc

2010-08-08T22:26:00.001-07:00

Saturday night, I finally got around to seeing Food, Inc. For those of you who haven't seen the movie yet, Food, Inc is a documentary about, yes, food. Or rather, it's about the modern, American food industry, which is really a whole 'nother can of tomatoes.

Now, obviously, I agree with most of Food, Inc. And I think that it's certainly valuable and meritorious for the filmakers to continue our national conversation about food.

But, I also think that, frankly, so much has been written and filmed about this subject, and thus we can differentiate between This-Movie-Has-Educational-and-Important-Content-So-It-Must-Be-Good and This-Movie-Is-Actually-Good. And unfortunately, I think Food, Inc falls into the former category and not the latter.

Firstly, there was no narrative. The film sort of jumped around from subject to subject without any sort of cohesive thread that I could discern. And as The Boy (who really needs some sort of cute blog pseudonym ... any suggestions?) commented, "This movie really rests upon the backs of Crunchy Chickens."

By which he meant that the movie provided interesting visuals for people who had already read Omnivore's Dilemma or Fast Food Nation or Crunchy Chicken. But for those who had no prior information, the movie glossed over too much. As an example, The Boy noted that he had really enjoyed the section in The Omnivore's Dilemma in which Pollan explains Joe Salatin's farming technique and why it works. Without that background, the scenes on Polyface Farm just turn into Joe ... talking.

And speaking of things that were covered better in The Omnivore's Dilemma, let's talk about Food, Inc's rhapsodizing about organic food. Now I freely admit that I am, of recent, a slave to Whole Paycheck and Earthbound Farm. However, I really appreciated the way Pollan dealt with Industrial Organic, and the complexities and contradictions that lie therein.

I get that a movie may not be able to handle that complexity in quite that depth, but I figured some attempt would be made. And I certainly wasn't expecting the head of Stoneyfield to get to expound on how he was SAVING THE WORLD by getting his line of organic yogurt in Walmart ... I mean, again, I appreciate the lack of pesticides used, and I eat and enjoy Stoneyfield, but buying yogurt from a company owned by Groupe Danone isn't exactly a revolutionary act.

So overall, I think Food, Inc covers an interesting and important subject in a rather banal way. If you are interested in the American food industry, go read Omnivore's Dilemma or Fast Food Nation or watch King Corn instead.

Nutritional Rules 2

2010-08-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I mentioned that I was, on the recommendation of my doctor, taking a number of supplements. Calcium. Omega 3. Plant sterols. And Metamucil.

Yeah, that lasted about a week.

See, I had a physical in early April and found that my cholesterol was very high. So my doctor recommended a number of different supplements that are designed to lower my bad cholesterol (Metamucil and plant sterols) and raise my good cholesterol (fish oil.)

Plus, she recommended I take a calcium supplement on the grounds that almost everybody is calcium deficient.

Now I'm not very good at taking daily pills, but I figured that this was important. So I dutifully went out and bought all the different supplements ... fruit chewy calcium supplements, Metamucil pills, and plant sterols in Emergen-C packs.

I was determined to take them all.

Except that one night I gagged on the Metamucil pills and cried for half an hour because I could barely get them down. And then I checked how much fiber they had, and determined that I would just rather eat an extra serving or two of fruit and vegetables. And that was basically the end of that.

And I was still trying to drink three cups of plant sterol-infused Emergen-C a day, except that it tasted really gross and made my tea cup at work all gritty. And then I looked up plant sterols on Wikipedia and found out the potential risks associated with them. I talked to a few friends and decided that, you know what, I'm not going to take plant sterols anymore.

The calcium fruit chews were in annoying packaging that I never bothered to open.

And I couldn't figure out what Omega-3 pills were the least toxic, so I ended up just making sure I ate a lot of fish.

Meanwhile, a commenter on this blog, Daharja, had suggested that supplements were basically ... stupid. And that the best course of action would be to eat 90% vegan, and that actually "food, not too much, mostly plants," was actually a totally reasonable and healthy mantra.

So I did it.

Well, not exactly.

I cut out cheese, red meat, eggs, and butter. I ate fish religiously twice a week. I ate poultry once or twice a week. And I limited my dairy to non-fat or low-fat milk and yogurt.

But mostly, I ate plants. Carrots and broccoli. Berries galore. Hummus and guacamole. Lentils and tofu. And whole-wheat everything ... pasta, bread, buns.

And funny thing. I rarely felt deprived.

At the end of three months, I had my cholesterol checked. And, without the help of any pills, supplements, or cholesterol medications, I had been able to lower my cholesterol. By 100 points.

Yes, in three months.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, I was wrong to doubt you Pollan. You were right. And I was wrong.

In fact, I can eat food. Not too much. And mostly plants.

Dear Eco-Pals,

2010-08-04T12:46:00.001-07:00

The problem with not blogging regularly is that, as any blogger knows, writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised. The more you do it, the easier the words flow. The less you do it, the more you strain to eke out a few words.

I've been lurking the blogosphere lately, and I've realized that in my blogcation, I've missed a lot. ZOMG, Ecogeofemme got engaged! Chile moved! And it's sad because I realize that once upon a time I used to know intimate details of so many of you, and now I don't. I once had a strong online community, and now, not so much.

Meanwhile, I've been busy planning my own move to another apartment in San Francisco. After two years of sitting in storage, I will finally have a place for all my stuff. On the one hand, being apart from my stuff for two years, and doing FINE, is confirmation that actually, I don't need too many things to survive. On the other hand, in the past two years, I've never been able to shake my feeling of being a wandering nomad. I've never felt totally at home. I'm hopeful that with a new place, and my things finally around me, that I will feel that yes, I am HOME.

But of course, what you really want to know about is the boy. He is funny and sweet and has crazy hair. He is also mostly supportive of my eco-nuttiness ... we enjoy taking the train and composting, but he prefers my deodorant with aluminum and he is extremely thankful that I'm back on the (recycled) toilet paper.

Neither of us shop much.

Hope you all have been having a wonderful summer. Talk soon.

Ruchi

Not Dead Sire, Merely Wounded

2010-06-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

So.

I know I haven't posted for a majillion years.

It's funny actually. There have been times where I haven't felt like posting. Where I've gone weeks without posting, or where I have posted out of guilt, but where I felt like I didn't have much to say.

This hasn't been one of those times.

In fact, the posts have been building up in my brain. So many things I wanted to tell you all. So many questions I wanted to ask.

I made Melinda's pan-crack the other day (remember those?) I used one egg instead of two for cholesterol reasons, and stuffed tons of raspberries in each one. They were as delicious as ever.

I have continued to experiment with deodorants. Wasn't a fan of the Crystal. Liking the baking soda better.

I once again have a commute that involves a half hour walk to the train. And I love it.

And I now compost!! After years of being scared that worms were going to eat my face, I solved my composting problem by ... moving to a city that does industrial composting. Woohoo for living in San Francisco!

In fact, dear readers, I wanted to tell you all this and more. I've missed the online community here. I just ... and trust me, I know this is a lame excuse, but believe me dear readers, it's all I got.

I just haven't been able to find the time.

In brief, since I left London in September I have:

Spent a couple weeks in India

Moved to New York for two months for an internship with the UN

Moved back to California after internship ended

Met boy

Learned to ~~ski~~, ~~fall down~~, learned to not cry so hard when I fall down

Moved in with boy

Got a job

Got another job

Basically, for the past several months, life has taken over. In a good way, mind you, but it's been a struggle to keep my head above water.

So, I'm not sure what the future is for my blogging. I'd like to say, "I'm back!" but I'm not sure that's realistic.

I do know that my brain is full of blog posts itching to get out. I do know I miss writing on a daily basis. And I do know I want to come back to blogging.

So, you should see posts here now and then. They may be irregular and infrequent, but ... that's what Google Readers are for, right?

And now, dear readers, I am out to enjoy the (comparatively) rare San Francisco sunshine.

Nutritional Rules

2010-04-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about Michael Pollan lately.

That famous line.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Were it that easy!

I know, I know, some of you are thinking, "Oh but it IS that easy, Arduous, it IS!"

And I admit it SHOULD be that easy.

But.

I recently went to the doctor and was advised that I needed to lower my cholesterol. So I've embarked on a pretty serious diet in order to lower that number FAST.

What do I eat?

Well, plants mostly. Today I had an apple, three oranges, and a banana as snack. Most days I eat a nice big spinach salad or a vegetable stir-fry. Something with plenty of veggies and a little helping of nuts for taste, texture, and protein.

And a lot of whole grains. Cereal, whole grain bread, etc.

And for good measure, I take a fiber supplement.

Except that apparently if you eat a lot of fiber, some vitamins might go unabsorbed. So, since I eat all the fiber and the fiber supplement, I also need to take a multi-vitamin.

And the doctor also said I should take a calcium pill.

And then there are the supplements I take because well, I should be having fish daily, but I can't, because of the mercury. So instead I get my omega-3 in a fizzy drink.

So, I have fiber supplements. Multivitamins. Calcium. And fizzy drink with omega-3.

I tell you, it's pretty exhausting.

And I've realized, in the past few weeks, that really, we DON'T know how to eat any longer. Because, for the life of me, I'm not sure how I've ended up with all these supplements and why.

But I also want to follow my doctor's instructions.

So ... I guess I'm eating food. Not too much. Mostly plants. And a whole lotta supplements.

Is Not Shopping Sustainable?

2010-03-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

A lot of times when a person engages in a one-year challenge, it's assumed to be a stunt. A stunt that cannot be continued over the long term.

When I began my non-shopping challenge I wasn't sure how long I could keep it up, but I assumed that it would be hard to continue for more than a year.

However, two and a half years after I started this challenge, I'm beginning to believe not shopping is a fairly sustainable option.

Sort of.

Let me explain. I still rarely shop. When I do, I engage in throes of agony. Do I really, really, REALLY need this shirt? I know it's only $20, but do I really need it? Do I love it? Will I wear it a lot?

Most of the time I don't need or love the shirt enough to deal with the ensuing guilt. So I exit the store sad and empty-handed.

But I still need to, you know, wear clothes. And clothes wear out. Weight fluctuates. Put simply, one cannot just rely on one's wardrobe from 3+ years ago.

Enter my friends.

See, most of my friends still shop. They're not shoppers, per se. They don't go to the mall every weekend. They aren't competing with Carrie Bradshaw for number of shoes. But still. They do buy new clothes and then they have old clothes that they want to get rid of.

So they give them to me.

In the past year, I've revamped my wardrobe simply by going through my friends' Goodwill bags. The white and black cardigans I wear everyday? Came from my friends. The black ballet flats? My sister. Those nice work pants? Yup, that once belonged to a friend.

So, yeah, I can continue to update my wardrobe and not shop ... with a little help from my friends. It's not a sustainable life for everybody ... obviously if all my friends were like me and never shopped and wore their clothes until they were falling apart, I wouldn't be able to pick up new clothes from their Goodwill bags. And every so often, I do cave, and buy that $20 shirt from Banana.

But the truth is, I need fewer clothes than I ever thought before I started this challenge.

So, not shopping. Sorta sustainable. At least for me.

Building Up My Cooking Muscles

2010-03-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

As most of you know because I whine endlessly about it, I hate to cook.

But I like food.

And honestly there is nothing about the cooking process that I inherently dislike. It's just that I don't think I'm a great cook, it is time consuming, and it involves constant grocery shopping. It's just easier for me in many ways to say, "Screw it," and just go out to eat.

But eating out isn't sustainable in a number of ways. And frankly, I know that I don't want to always be the person who doesn't know how to cook. I don't want to be feeding my children (if and when I have them) microwave dinners because I don't know how to cook. I want to be able to cook. I recognize the value of the skill.

And that's why I'm making a concerted effort to cook at home more. Sometimes, dinner is pretty simple. Last night, we had grilled chicken and a salad. Sometimes, I'm up for something more complex. But I realize that ultimately, I just have to stop whining and DO it.

Cooking is like working out. At first it sucks, and you're terrible and you feel gross afterwards. But after a while, it gets easier and you actually enjoy it. (So I'm told. I'm also horrible at working out.)

So, we're starting small. Baby steps. Simple things. And hoping that one day, I'll have built up those cooking muscles and have a lovely repertoire of recipes I make well.

Eating Healthier for Me and the Planet

2010-03-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

As regular readers of this blog may be aware, I have high cholesterol issues. My father passed away at a relatively young age from a heart attack so there is a clear genetic component here. In fact, when I was in college and a vegetarian, I had my cholesterol tested and it was around 270. I still remember my doctor's disbelief to this day. "This is a vegetarian's cholesterol level?!!"

She quickly decided that, clearly, I needed to be on medication. Stat. And so, at the tender age of twenty, I was put on cholesterol drugs.

However, I was unsure myself whether or not this was really the right course of action. Starting cholesterol medication at twenty meant I could be taking these drugs for sixty plus years. Many of these drugs simply haven't been around that long. In addition, I knew I couldn't be on the drugs when I was pregnant or breast feeding. So, to me, it seemed like I should at least try to see if I could lower my cholesterol without drugs. (I should note at this time that I am talking about the right course of action for MYSELF. I would personally rather not take the drugs, but I'm not saying that others should not or that it may not be the right choice for someone else.)

And I found that by changing my diet, I was, in fact, able to lower my cholesterol levels. By eating healthier, I got my cholesterol down to a manageable level.

No drugs needed.

But while I was in graduate school, I really let go of many of my good eating habits. And though I've gotten better about my eating while un(der)employed, and though I've started running more regularly, I'm really nervous that my cholesterol has spiked and that my doctor is going to recommend the drugs again.

In fact, I have a physical scheduled in a couple weeks, and whenever I think about it, I get a little freaked out. What if, what if, what if, what if?

The thing is, I know better. I *really* know better. I know that if I followed our friend Michael Pollan's food rules I could not only reduce my environmental impact, but I could also keep my cholesterol under control.

I'm hoping desperately that my cholesterol levels are not out of control. But if they are on the high side, I hope I use that knowledge as a wake-up call. Hell, even if they are on the lower side, I could still use a wake-up call.

Because I know that it is not inevitable that I suffer from heart disease. And by eating healthier, I can both help the planet and myself.

Is Moderation More Difficult than Deprivation?

2010-02-26T15:44:00.000-08:00

The title of this post may at first seem ridiculous. How can moderation ever be more difficult than deprivation?

But I submit to you that we Americans as a society have a hard time with moderation.

We understand how to give things up entirely. We know how to diet. We know how to save money when we get laid off. We get that the best way to get over an addiction is to abstain entirely.

But when we've lost the weight or get a new high paying job, we become unsure of how to find balance.

I can have a box of chocolates next to me for a month and I will not eat a single chocolate. If I open the box to eat just one, suddenly the box disappears in two days. It's easier to give up chocolate because after a while, you forget how much you liked it. You adjust to a chocolate-free life. But eating just one chocolate a day? Requires a level of will-power that I'm not sure I have.

When I was an eco-nut, life was easier in a way. My life was defined by the environment and my environmental choices. I gave up heat. I gave up convenient frozen dinners. I gave up air conditioning. I gave up shopping.

And gradually, that just became my life. I forgot what life was like with air con. I forgot how convenient it was to just pick up a Trader Joe's salad.

Now I'm trying to find middle ground, and yet I often worry that I'm sliding too far back. I turn on the space heater, fully intending to turn it off in twenty minutes, and then ... I don't. Because it's so lovely and warm and I LOVE HEAT. I plan to cook, but then the conference call that was supposed to last twenty minutes lasts for an hour, and I've run out of cumin, and it's raining outside.

In a way it would be easier for me to say, you know what? Screw it? I can't find moderation, so I better just abstain. But I'm not sure that's the better answer. The healthier answer. The sustainable answer.

In the comments of the post on dieting that I linked to above, one woman talked about how she craves sugar. And how she was wondering if she could have cake to celebrate her PhD or if, knowing her cravings, she should forgo the cake. And another commenter pointed out that a life in which one cannot have cake to celebrate one's Ph effin D is a little sad.

And yet, somehow, cake in moderation is more difficult to achieve than it should be.

The Indecisive Grocery Shopper

2010-02-11T21:18:00.000-08:00

I always wonder whether the clerks at the checkout stand are judging my grocery selections and perhaps secretly wondering what my criteria are when buying groceries.

The truth is, I have no real criteria.

Okay, that's not true. Given the choice, I will almost always choose organic. Unless I decide to choose local. Or fair-trade. Or plastic-less. Or high fiber. Or delicious. Or low-fat. Or less expensive.

I think most people would agree, the grocery store is a daunting place for us eco-types. I can spend ten minutes easily staring at the cheeses trying to decide if I should go for the local California cheese that's non-organic but is low fat, or the decidedly non-local European cheese that is also organic but also expensive.

In a perfect world, I'd buy all organic, local, groceries and I'd only shop the perimeter of the grocery store or I wouldn't even be at a grocery store because I'd only shop at food co-ops and farmers' markets.

Sadly, the reality is that I spend a lot of time in Whole Paycheck instead. Which isn't the worst place to shop for groceries, but also isn't the best place, either.

So, I'm curious. Does everyone else decide on the fly what to buy organic versus local versus plastic-free versus choose your own adventure? Or do some of you have actual systems and priorities?

No Longer Over-Ambitious and Challengicious

2010-02-09T10:44:00.001-08:00

For a couple years now, the tag-line under the title of my blog has read "over-ambitious and challengicious." I like the tag. It's cute, it's funny, it's pithy, but it no longer describes this blog.

At the time that I started using the tag, I was in the early stages of my eco-journey. I constantly was challenging myself to do more, new things. To cut my carbon footprint lower, lower, lower! I was going without heat, not buying stuff, and even making my own butter.

But that level of eco-intensity was unsustainable, for me, anyway. The truth is, I can go nearly freegan for a month, but over the long term, things get much more difficult. Looking over my past several blog entries, a constant theme has emerged: balance. How do we balance our environmental concerns while still living the rest of our lives?

So from now on, that's what this blog is going to mainly focus on. There will still be other things here and there. I'm sure I'll get irritated about some policy proposal and write a long-winded post. There will still be book reviews and the occasional rant. But the thrust of the blog is going to focus on what it means to truly live the sustainable life.

I will continue to be honest with you about what's been working for me long-term and what hasn't. What's easy and what's not. Where I'm slipping and where I'm succeeding. And I'll count on you, dear readers, to ensure that I don't slide too far back. Balance is one thing, but it's no excuse to just get lazy.

So, join me on my continued ride as I try and figure out how to balance eco-awareness with my friends, family, work, and play. Cheer me on, commiserate with me, and call me on my s**t.

And thanks, as always, for reading.

What's The Appropriate Amount of Food Packaging?

2010-02-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Most of us in the eco-world probably agree that in an ideal world we'd all eat a mostly local, organic diet of food we bought at a farmers' market and cooked ourselves. We'd thriftily manage our food waste through careful meal planning, and would use leftover almost-bad veggies in a nice no-waste stew once a week. The little waste that was unusable or unavoidable would go in our compost piles or be fed to our pet chickens.

Unfortunately, the reality for many of us eco-bloggers and the majority of Americans is quite different. As someone who has struggled through Crunchy Chicken's No Waste Challenge (sign up now!) several times, I can attest that it is HARD not to waste food.

Which is what makes this article today in the Freakonomics blog so interesting. In it, James McWilliams points out that though many of us disparage food packaging, it does have the effect of increasing shelf life of food. As a result, food packaging might decrease food waste.

I know it's not super popular to be pro-food packaging in the eco-blogosphere, but I couldn't help nodding along when reading McWilliams' post. Last year, I subscribed to a CSA for a few months and I found that I wasted a LOT of food. It wasn't just that it was too much food for one person (which it was) or that I was too lazy to cook much (I was.) Sometimes, the food would arrive at my door almost spoiled. I also found that oftentimes, unless I processed the food right away, it would go bad.

I've come to realize that I personally need to take short cuts in order to cook more, eat more fruits and veggies, and waste less. For instance, I will often put off washing and peeling my farmers' market bought carrots. The carrots will go bad, and I'll have to dump them in the trash. On the other hand, if I buy organic baby carrots, I'll probably eat the whole bag in a few days. Similarly, the resealable bags of baby spinach are my friends.

Now, there still is an inordinate amount of food packaging waste out there. I still fail to see why bananas require plastic wrap. And though I have occasionally bought the Trader Joe's packaged cut apples, I recognize that the inability to cut your own apples is an extraordinary form of laziness.

But I think we all need to assess (as always) what the right balance is in our lives. If food packaging keeps us from wasting food, it might not be the evil bogeyman that many environmentalists believe it to be. I suspect Beth is going to kill me for suggesting this, but if the waste trade-off is either the plastic bag for a bag of pre-washed lettuce, or an entire head of lettuce that rotted before you got to eating it, I would probably say to go with the bag of lettuce. (To be clear, the obvious best solution is to buy a head of lettuce and then not waste it. I'm not denying that. I'm just arguing that that's not always what actually HAPPENS despite our best intentions.)

My point, aside from antagonizing everybody, is that the reality is that Americans waste a lot of food. Thus, rather than trying to achieve an idealized unpackaged world that may be unrealistic for the average consumer, we need to take a hard look and differentiate between frivolous packaging and packaging that might actually lead to less overall waste.

Adventures on SF Muni

2010-02-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that I really kinda totally hate the bus. I go to great lengths to avoid the bus. In New York, I would walk across town rather than take the crosstown bus. In London, which actually has awesome buses, I would transfer tubes three times rather than take the bus.

One time, I famously forced Honda to walk on the narrow shoulder of a highway amidst broken bottles and cigarette butts because I didn't want to take the bus. (Halfway down the road, we gave up and called a cab to come and rescue us.)

I really hate the bus. I hate waiting for the bus, I hate being on the bus, I hate the sudden stops on the bus that make me fall over. I will frequently walk two miles rather than take the bus.

But I also don't have a car, and sometimes the bus is the best possible option.

So, the other day, I was in San Francisco, and I had to get to a panel discussion, and I had to take the bus. And, of course, I was pressed for time, so the bus was late. First ten minutes late. Then twenty minutes late. Then a full half hour late.

And my irritation at the budget strapped SF Muni system and the bus as mode of transportation grew and grew.

Eventually, the bus arrived, I made it to the panel and all was well.

Until I had to go home.

It was dark, and there weren't a lot of people around, and I did not feel like waiting half an hour for a bus. So I decided to call Muni and find out when the next bus would be arriving. (By the way, I totally, totally love this feature of Muni. I love that you can CALL and get to a customer service rep who will tell you when the next bus will be arriving.) So, I dialed up, got through to my lovely Muni rep and asked her when my bus would be arriving.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, it looks like that bus is no longer operating for the night."

"Oh. Um. Okay. So ... how do I get back to [SF neighborhood]."

"Well, you could take the X bus. In fact, it should be pulling up any minute now. And then, from there, you can transfer to the Y."

"Any second now? Wait, where?"

And then, I had an, "Oh crap," moment where I saw said bus. That I was just about to miss.

So I ran over to the bus and literally FLAGGED it down.

Now, though I hate the bus, I have, in fact, ridden the bus in a number of different cities and countries. However, I have never flagged a bus down like it was a taxicab. Usually, flagging buses does not work. But in San Francisco, it apparently does.

"Where are you going?!" asked the flummoxed bus driver.

"Um, I'm going to [Neighborhood]."

"You need the W bus for that."

"I know, but it's stopped running for the night."

"Really? You sure?"

"Yes, I called Muni and asked."

"Aight then. Well, I tell you what. I thought you was crazy, I did! But you can take this bus and transfer to the V and then you can take the V. Okay?"

"Okay, thank you."

"Aight, that's fine. I thought you was crazy! Now go sit down and I'll tell you where to get off."

So I did. And he did.

And I still kinda hate the bus, but I think I might love SF Muni. Because after flagging the bus down like a crazy person, the driver was nice enough to not only direct me to exactly where I needed to go. Not only that, but when he saw me scrounging in my bag for the remaining twenty cents of fare (somehow I'm still carrying loads of British and European change in my purse that gets mixed in with the American coins), he just waved me away and let it go.

But that might be because he still thought I was crazy.

The Sustainable Life

2010-02-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

There has been quite the response to my post, "Is Living Sustainably Unsustainable?" If you haven't read the comments in that post yet, I'd encourage you to do so. The comments, as well as subsequent posts by Jess, Green Bean, Melinda, and Chile suggest that finding balance is something we all struggle with.

I have remarked on this before, but it's really easy to assume that everyone else in the eco-blogosphere is always perfect. That no one else slips up. That all the other bloggers are local food eating, recycling, never driving maniacs.

But having met and talked to several bloggers personally, I've realized that that's not the case.

None of us are perfect. All of us mess up. And all of us consciously decide, "You know what? Here's my limit. I'm just not going to attempt X."

********

The other day, I got to see Michael Pollan speak. (It's rather hilarious ... going to a Michael Pollan lecture in the Bay Area is kind of like going to a rock concert in atmosphere.)

One of the first things I noticed was that Michael Pollan of all people was drinking bottled water. "Et tu, Michael Pollan?" I thought, feeling incredibly smug and judgey. Here was Michael Pollan, the man who tells America how to eat, drinking some damn bottled water. Doesn't he know better?!!!!

And then I snapped out of it. Yes, he probably does know better. In fact, he probably avoids bottled water as much as possible just like the rest of us. But he probably also accepts that when he gives lectures, sometimes he'll be provided with a bottle of water instead of a glass of tap water. And when that happens, instead of eco-divaing out, he just drinks from the damn bottle.

Later that evening, he told a story about being accosted in the grocery store in Berkeley for having a box of Froot Loops or something of the like in his cart. (For the record, it was his son's weekend cereal.) The poor man literally cannot grocery shop without being judged.

And that's when it hit me. In order to find the Sweet Spot of Sustainable Living, we must put aside the judging. Judging of others. Judging of ourselves. Judging of our significant others.

Instead, we need to open ourselves up to experiment, to fail, to backtrack, to succeed, to grow, and to be human.

Pollan says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." To that I add, "Live sustainably. Do your best. And enjoy life."

Balance In The Form Of A Toothbrush Holder

2010-01-28T10:39:00.001-08:00

There are some incredibly thoughtful and insightful comments up about my previous post, so thank you everyone for taking the time to weigh in.

I agree with what many of you mentioned. Living sustainably is all about finding the right balance for you. Like eating right or exercising, you have to find what works for your life. And that is likely going to be different than what works for someone else.

Katy mentioned that she wished more eco-bloggers continued blogging seriously after their "eco-challenges," because in some ways, finding the balance is the more interesting and relevant story. And, I agree with that as well. It's inspiring to see that people can give up fridges or heat or shopping or what have you for a year, but it's in some ways even more inspiring to see how people handle the day to day of their lives year after year after year.

And I think that's one of the reasons why I've kept blogging. Why I don't gloss over my struggles.

I was talking to Honda a couple months ago about how everything I own is falling apart. This is what happens when you go from being a non-consumer to being a student to being unemployed. I haven't really bought much in 2.5 years, and well, it shows. My laptop is dead. My iPod is almost dead. I need all new shoes.

I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to handle all the new purchases I will inevitably have to make. The other day, I stood in the Bath aisle of Bed, Bath and Beyond for fifteen minutes trying to decide whether or not to buy a toothbrush holder. On the one hand, not having one had been bugging me and I was fairly certain a toothbrush holder was going to be hard to come by used. (And while I am generally very pro-used things, I also think the likelihood is high that if I found a used toothbrush holder it would be kinda grody.) On the other hand, a toothbrush holder is hardly a necessity.

If I had lacked a toothbrush holder during my year of non-consumerism, I would have sucked it up and gone without. I would have used a cup, or just left my toothbrush on the sink.

But I'm not a strict non-consumer anymore. I wanted a toothbrush holder and I could get a fairly inoffensive one fairly cheaply.

So I bought it. Because life is, above all, about finding balance. And while I don't plan to become a spendthrift, I also am ready to start buying a couple things here and there that might not be, strictly speaking, necessities.

Is Living Sustainably Unsustainable?

2010-01-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking to an old blogger friend, one who hasn't been posting much in a while. This is not unusual. In fact, of all my old blogger pals, only a handful still regularly post. The rest have mostly retired or post on rare occasion.

Blogging is tough, make no mistake. Writing day in and day out can be a chore, and at a certain point, you get to a place where you wonder if you have anything left to write. After all, how much can one write about not shopping?

But I think with eco-bloggers, there's more to it than that. Many of us started blogging at the beginning of our journey. Our first posts were about how proud we were for giving up plastic grocery bags. Gradually, we started increasing the eco-difficulty: giving up paper towels, going to the farmers' market, cooking more, making our own butter. Some of us line-dried our clothes. Others started gardens. Others gave up toilet paper. Others gave up their fridge.

And then ... time goes by. Life catches up to you. Work gets busier. You move house. You break up with your partner. Or maybe you get married. And you realize that living this so-called sustainable life is HARD.

So you start to back slide. You start throwing loads in the dryer again. Just once, one time, because you're on a tight schedule and your son needs his soccer uniform in a couple hours. And then because you're going out of town, or someone is visiting, or because it's Thursday, damnit and you're tired. And pretty soon you're back to using your dryer all the time. And you feel really guilty about it, but you also just don't have the energy to use the dryer.

Or if you're me, you go from cooking all the time to cooking almost never. And I do feel guilty about it, very guilty about it actually. And yet, somehow I rarely have it in me to prepare a full meal.

It's not just the cooking I've backslid in. I've gone back to using toilet paper (though I buy 100% recycled, and honestly I personally think the giving up toilet paper produces such minor eco-benefits that it's more of a bragging point than anything.) I use my space heater more often than I should. I take longer and hotter showers than I should. I drink more soda than I should. I use a face wash with bad chemicals. The list goes on and on. On rare occasion, I've even committed the ultimate sin of getting a plastic bag at the store.

I think the issue is that so much of eco-blogging was or has been about challenging oneself to do MORE, MORE, MORE. Meanwhile, we live in a world where everyone else is doing ... pretty much nothing really. Where it's more of the same from our elected officials. Where Copenhagen is a big ol' bust.

So it's very difficult to be busting your ass trying to live this eco-life. You start wondering what you're doing and why. And you question whether you can really maintain work, friends and family, and your eco-nutty life. AND blog about it every day.

So my question to you is this: Is living sustainably actually unsustainable? If you think not, how do you do it? How do you find the right balance? What is your right balance? And how long have you been keeping this balance going?

To Shave or Not to Shave, That Is The Question

2010-01-20T16:50:00.000-08:00

I was bouncing around the internets today when I caught an interesting discussion going on in the comments of Crunchy's post about natural waxing. One commenter suggested that we women need to get over ourselves and learn to live and love our hair. Another argued, "Just seems to me that waxing the pubes and 'natural lifestyle' may be somewhat mutually exclusive."

To a certain extent, I think both of these commenters make fair points. There's a great deal of societal pressure for women to remove body hair and it sucks. I sympathize with women who would prefer not to shave their legs, but feel pressured to either go hair-free or cover their legs. Especially in a workplace environment, women often have no choice but to comply with societal norms. And that's not cool.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that I do see a contradiction between wanting to remove body hair and wanting to live a more "natural lifestyle" whatever that means. We all groom ourselves. We cut our hair, our nails. And I don't believe that societal pressure is limited to women either. Ask any American bearded man whether or not he feels societal pressure to shave. The answer is very likely, "Yes!"

I do believe one can be environmentally conscious while still preferring to remove some body hair. It's important not to conflate "eco-friendly" with "alternative lifestyle that I support." It's great if you don't want to shave or wear make-up. Good for you if you don't care about fashion. But, conversely, wanting to shave, wear make-up, and liking clothes does not make you anti-environment. Honestly, I've personally never understood what the big problem with shaving was. I don't know about you all, but I bought a Venus razor about five years ago and change the blade approximately once a year. As far as I'm concerned, the plastic and energy expended here is pretty minor. Waxing has its issues, but I circumvented that problem by switching to threading my eyebrows. For me, given that I prefer to remove (some) hair, giving that up would pretty much constitute hair-shirt environmentalism.

I think, in the end, grooming decisions are a matter best left up to the individual. (Or maybe the individual and their significant other.) As I see it, my job, as an eco-nut, is not to judge or to proselytize. My job is simply to say, "If you wish to remove your hair, here are some more environmentally friendly ways to do so."

Suburban Bliss

2010-01-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

So, as I mentioned earlier, I have moved back to the land I grew up: the San Francisco Bay Area. And while I'm looking for a job (a super fun enterprise during this, the worst recession in 70 odd years) I'm living in the burbs.

I haven't lived in the suburbs since college, and even then I lived in a suburb that was, in essentials, not a suburb but an extension of the city. So while I was prepared for the obvious annoying things about suburbs, such as having to drive everywhere, I had forgotten some of the more covert annoying things about suburbs.

For instance, leaf blowers.

Can someone please explain leaf blowers to me? I don't really get their point since they just seem to blow leaves around and make a lot of noise, but every gardener in the burbs uses one. Including my mom's gardener. Ahem.

Front lawns.

I love lawns, really. I understand that grass wastes a lot of precious water, blah, blah, blah, but grass is also so nice to lounge on. Or play on. Except, when was the last time you ever saw someone lounging or playing on their front lawn. That's right. Never. What's the point of wasting all that precious resource on an ornamental front lawn?

Speaking of wasting water, the other day I was going for a jog and I noticed a hose that was turned on and spilling water straight into the gutter. I assumed that there COULDN'T be an Earthly reason why a person would do that on PURPOSE. I mean what possible reason would someone have for that? So naturally I assumed that the hose must have been left on accidentally, and as a good Samaritan, I should inform the owner of the house as such.

So I knocked on the door, and a man came to the door, and I politely informed him that his garden hose was turned on.

"Oh, yes. I'm going to turn that off soon. Thank you for your concern," he said before shutting the door.

I still have no explanation.

It's a weird, weird world out here in the burbs.

Wherein I Take Up A New Activity

2010-01-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

In my infinite wisdom, I have decided to try a new activity. And because I'm uncoordinated, clumsy, a wimp about winter, and slightly afraid of heights, clearly skiing was the obvious choice for me.

No, seriously, I am looking forward to trying out skiing, especially because I feel that it will cement my status as a Yuppie Northern Californian. However, what I am not looking forward to is acquiring all the accoutrements that skiing apparently requires.

In fact, when my friend Kel sent me a list of things I would need, I almost changed my mind. It's not just the skis and the boots and the polls. No, no! There are parkas and ski pants and hand-warmy things that go in your gloves.

Dude. I don't even own gloves.

So now I'm on an epic quest to rent and borrow as much as I can, and buy most of the rest used. After all, there must be tons of people who take up winter sports, buy all the crap, and then realize they're too lazy to actually engage in said winter sport. Right? RIGHT?!!

Sigh.

Well, if any of you have any bright ideas for how I can avoid buying this stuff new, I'd appreciate it.

In the meantime, I'll be here wondering why I didn't take up Civil War re-enacting instead. I hear used muskets are a dime a dozen on Craigslist.

The Newest, Most Awesomest Eco Trend

2010-01-12T16:42:00.001-08:00

Ladies! Are you tired of the same old body? Looking to change your physical appearance for the better in 2010?

Then I have just the idea for you!

No, I am not talking about the totally awesome pink button that is all the rage over at the BlogHer blog these days.

I mean really. How many people are gonna see that thing? Your husband? Honey, he's already locked in. And chances are, he doesn't look that closely anyway.

No, if you really want to upgrade your body this year, I have two words for you:

Boob Job

Now you may be thinking, "Huh. I always wanted a boob job, but I've been prevented from getting one due to my environmentally conscious way of life."

And I understand this predicament, believe you me. But luckily, there is now a solution.

An all natural boob job. See, it's simple. Doctors simply suck some of the fat out of your ass and stick it into your boobs.

They're recycling your fat! I mean what's more eco-tastic than that!!

For too long this procedure has been frowned upon by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons who argued that fat recycling (or up-cycling as it were) could make mammogram readings problematic. But now, the society's task force has issued a report with this extremely positive endorsement:

[Fat up-cycling]could potentially interfere with breast cancer detection; however no evidence was found that strongly suggests this interference.

No evidence STRONGLY suggests that putting your ass fat into your boobs could hinder doctors from detecting breast cancer!!

Now, the downside to this extremely natural procedure is that, unlike silicone, you can lose fat. So, if, for example, you start working out, your boobs might go away.

But come on. Who wants to work out anyway? Exercise is so un-eco.

So, do it for you. Do it for your husband. Do it for planet. Hell, do it for Al Gore.

Because you know what they say. Recycling your Brita filter is so last decade. This year, all the cool greenies are recycling their fat.

On Not Coveting Things

2010-01-08T09:26:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking quite a bit about my non-consumer year lately.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, that year changed my life. Completely. Although there are many things that have fallen by the wayside (for example I'm currently back on toilet paper) I will never shop the same way again.

I can never shop the same way again.

I'm not perfect.

I still covet things.

I'd like a new MacBook Pro. An iPhone.

But I'm also perfectly comfortable using my current computer and cell phone until they die.

And ... and this is the most cool thing to me ... I no longer covet other people's material possessions. I no longer see a friend buy a house or a car or a Kitchenaid mixer and wish I could afford those things.

I do buy things now, but when I buy now, it's almost always after genuine deliberation. I buy jeans after thinking about it for a month. A new thermos after needing one for weeks.

I have finally begun to learn the difference between wants and needs.

And of all that has come out of my non-consumerist experience, that lesson is the one I cherish the most.

I Have a Home!

2010-01-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

And it is ...

drumroll please

The same place I was born, grew up in, and lived for 18 years of my life.

Yes, I am officially declaring that I now live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It took some soul searching, traveling, and living in New York for two months, but I'm ready to come home. I loved London but I missed my friends and family more than I realized.

Plus, the Bay Area also has amazing weather and Rainbow Grocery! Plus a whole host of awesome sauce bloggers like her, her, and her. What's not to love?

So, yes, I have a home. Now to find the right job.

Still A Non-Consumer at Heart

2010-01-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

I've recently begun playing a game with myself wherein each day I inventory the clothes I'm wearing.

For instance, today I'm wearing

1) A shirt that once belonged to a friend of a friend
2) Jeans that once belonged to my sister
3) Shoes I found in a Freecycle bin in my dorm in London

The only things I've bought myself in this outfit are my socks, bra, and underwear.

This is not an infrequent occurrence. In fact, it's incredibly rare that I wear an entire outfit in which everything I wear I bought myself new.

This is my life. Two and a half years after I started a mad challenge to not buy anything new, my life has been transformed.

Today I went to Target to purchase some underwear. As I passed the racks of clothes, I thought, "Huh. That's a cute shirt."

And then I moved on.

I had come to purchase underwear. And that's all I wanted or needed to buy.

No impulse shirts. Or knick knacks. Or purses.

I didn't need that stuff. I didn't want it. I didn't want to waste time looking at it.

I just picked up my underwear, and got out of there.

Happy 2010

2010-01-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, all!

Last year was a really good year for me. Among other things, I traveled around Europe, I learned a tremendous amount, and I graduated from a Masters program.

Unfortunately, last year was not so great a year worldwide (as I'm sure we're all aware.) I won't bore you with a recap of the year, but let's just all agree we have our work cut out for us this year and decade.

The problems we face right now are large. It's undeniable. And it's easy, given the size and scope of these problems, to simply throw up one's hands in the air and say, "Forget it. There isn't anything I can do, so I might as well do nothing."

I have been very tempted to throw my hands up in the air, time and time again.

And yet I continue to persevere. To plod. To hope against hope.

There were some days last year when I was miserable. When I was sure that I wasn't smart enough, good enough, or educated enough. But I took it day by day, I kept working, and at the end of the year I somehow had a shiny Masters degree.

Although it may seem ludicrous to compare the climate change crisis to graduate school (torturous though it may be) I believe the same principles apply.

Take it day by day.

Because if we all keep pushing on icebergs, big things can happen.

So this year, I resolve to persevere. To hang tough. To look cynicism in the eye and say, "To hell with all that."

And to keep pushing.

Happy 2010 everyone. May this decade be infinitely better than the last.

Vote For Me!!

2009-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

So, recently I had the honor of being nominated by Cath in her First Annual Reader's Choice Comment of The Year Award. That is right, I have been nominated for COMMENTING on a BLOG. If I win, this is totally going on my resume. Award Winning Blog COMMENTER.

I wasn't going to troll for votes, but then I saw that other people were totally doing it. Okay, technically speaking, Microbiologist XX didn't TELL you how to vote for, but come on! She totally wants you to vote for her.

Plus, I just looked at the stats and right now, I only have ONE vote. That's just wrong. Microbiologist XX and this Massimo dude are totally raking it in. And yeah, I GUESS Microbiologist has a kind of funny comment about falling out of a sailboat, but you know it's kind of like, dude, clumsy much?

And Massimo's comment is just about how people used to call him Moose. Well, people used to shorten Ruchira to Cher but you don't hear ME whining about it. I say quitcherbitchin MOOSE!

So dude. Help me take down those two geeky scientists types. Go to VWXYNot RIGHT NOW and register a vote for my snarktastic brilliance.

Because if the holidays are about anything, they are about winning.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

2009-12-16T18:22:00.000-08:00

Previously on Arduous Blog, I worried that without the gift buying and the card writing, etc, etc, I would be unable to get into the holiday spirit. That the season (courtesy of axial tilt) would somehow simply pass me by. That without consumerism, the holidays are meaningless for a secular person.

I am happy to concede that I was wrong. I have enjoyed spending time with friends and family, going to holiday parties, listening to Christmas music, and looking at lighting displays.

And in some ways I've enjoyed all these things even more because I haven't had to deal with the stresses of gift buying and card writing.

I wouldn't want to do this every year. I do love buying gifts for my friends and family. Finding the perfect present.

But it's a relief to know that one can still enjoy the winter season even without all the stuff.

Carnival Time

2009-12-14T23:11:00.001-08:00

I'm in LA, drinking in the sunshine, eating at my favorite restaurants, watching cheesy bad movies and helping Miss V with her search for a wedding dress.

But over at the Big Green Purse, Diane has an awesome carnival related to climate change. Read a little about what the amazing Green Moms have to say.

And for some irreverent dirt on Copenhagen, check out The Thistle's series on the climate talks.

Evaluation Time

2009-12-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

So, because I know you all want a daily update on my various beauty experiments, here it is:

Coconut oil as deodorant = bad
Coconut oil + baking soda as deodorant= good
Coconut oil as body moisturizer= awesome
Coconut oil as hair conditioner= no frizz!

All in all, I'm pretty happy. The baking soda and coconut oil combo are working pretty well for me although I have yet to find a good way to apply the baking soda.

And I'm very much enjoying the coconut oil moisturizer. My feet have become super soft in just a week. I was worried that I would smell overly of coconut, but I find that the smell dissipates fairly quickly.

I liked the conditioner as well, but a certain person who will remain nameless claims that it makes me smell like a FOB. Because it's okay to dress Indian, but God forbid one should smell Indian!

I HATE FREEZING MY BUNS

2009-12-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

So once upon a time, two years ago, I entered the Crazy Chicken's Freeze Yer Buns competition. (Wait, it's not a competition you say? Oh, how little you know me.)

My goals were lofty, and my determination was strong. I would go the entire winter without turning on the heater in my apartment.

And lo! I did succeed. I went a whole winter never turning on the central heating, and only turning on my space heater a handful of times for a couple of hours a piece. The Freeze Yer Buns champion trophy was mine. (There's no trophy? Then why do I have a sculpture of Crunchy's frozen butt on my mantle?)

And then I moved.

And it turned out?

Places that aren't LA are bloody cold!!

It turns out, that Freezing Yer Buns is SO MUCH HARDER when it is actually FREEZING. Or even when it is you know, 10-15 degrees above freezing like it generally is in Northern California these days.

I do not like it, not one bit.

So, I have become an epic failure at freezing my buns. I have the best of intentions, but, but ... heat is so warm and lovely! Without heat, I get lethargic. I can't do work, I can't play, I can't do anything but think

WHY IS IT SO FRICKIN FREEZING?!! I MISS SUMMER!!!!

Le sigh.

So, um, I suck. But conversely, my buns are nice and toasty.

Holiday Cards: Honest Opinion

2009-12-09T15:54:00.000-08:00

So, for the first time in about five zillion years, I'm not doing holiday cards.

I've been doing holiday cards probably since high school. There are about 100 people on my list, and I include personal messages in each card. It's my way of reaching out to my loved ones and saying, "Hey, I'm thinking about you, even if we haven't seen each other in a while."

However, this year, what with the wandering and the lack of money, they're just not happening.

But I've been thinking, maybe, perhaps, of doing a holiday e-card. They're free, they're easy, and they don't involve using paper or mail or any of that junk. On the other hand, an e-card just doesn't say "I'm thinking about you," in quite the same way a snail mail card does.

So I'm torn. What do you guys think? Are any of you doing e-cards? Do you see them as a good eco-option? Or do you think the holidays are the time to reach out with actual pen and paper?

What Not to Buy For The Holidays

2009-12-08T14:24:00.000-08:00

Actually, this post is not really going to be about rampant consumerism. I'm not going to suggest you pare down your list, or avoid plastic toys. I am not going to wax poetic about the joys of thrift shopping, or suggest you buy people experiences instead of things. I'm not going to plug Etsy or encourage everyone to take up knitting. After all, I've written those posts, you've written those posts, and frankly, today I'm just not feeling it. Instead, I'm going to talk about bad eco gifts.

Bad eco gifts? Is there such a thing, you may ask? Yes, as much as it pains me to admit it, there are.

Such as?

Diva cups. Don't buy your 15 year old niece one for Christmas. She won't appreciate it. Really. Please. Don't do it. And DON'T EVEN THINK about buying a used one!

CFL light bulbs. This is the gift that keeps on boring. Let's think a little more creative, shall we?

And also, no reusable grocery bags, please. Once upon a time, you could maybe get away with getting people a cool reusable bag. But at this point most people have reusable bags coming out of their ears. Stay away.

Carbon offsets. Buying offsets for yourself are a way to perhaps ease some guilt. Buying them for someone else is just reminding them of their eco-sinner ways. Stick to donating to an environmental non-profit in their name.

Baking soda. Yes, you can do a million things with it. But it also costs less than a dollar. And everyone has a box in the fridge.

Anyone else have some bad idea holiday gifts? Or alternatively, think I'm wrong about my bad idea gifts? Let me know!

This Post Is Not About Copenhagen

2009-12-07T11:01:00.001-08:00

Although the talks began today, I don't much feel like rehashing right now. In any case, I think it's worth it to let a few days go by and see how things develop. I have moments of hope and moments of depression, but I think at this point, we just need to adopt a wait and see attitude.

So instead, let's talk more about beauty products!!

Because, let me tell you, after the whole coconut oil experiment, I am suddenly DYING to try new fun eco-nutty things. I go around trolling the internets wondering what to try next:

Apple-cider vinegar toner?
Do I dare try olive oil on my face?
Can I make my own chapstick?
Baking soda in my hair? Ew. No.

I would love to get to a place where my beauty products consisted of all natural products made from an incredibly small number of ingredients. I'm not sure how likely that is right now ... I still use Neutrogena face wash and Kiehl's toner and moisturizer. (There's no such thing as a natural SPF moisturizer, is there?) And because I had so many face issues last year, I'm not dying to futz with that. On the other hand, I do love using coconut oil as moisturizer....

In other daily deodorant news (I know, you've been watching this space breathlessly) I tried the coconut oil mixed with baking soda with good results. I'm going to keep at it for a while. If it doesn't work out, I'll move on to the crystal.

Or Maybe Not

2009-12-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, I take it back.

The coconut oil did not hold up yesterday. I mean, it seemed to work just fine for about five hours or so. But it doesn't have staying power over the whole day. (I still think it works better than Tom's, which I don't think even worked for five hours.)

Although, I am sold on it as a body moisturizer. I put some on my legs yesterday morning, and this morning my legs still feel super soft.

So, now I may try mixing the coconut oil with baking soda. I am really hoping that this doesn't make a weird paste. I'm envisioning a situation much like Ross with the leather pants and the powder and cream.

I'll keep reporting back. But at least I can still use this whole jar as a moisturizer!

Dirty Hippie Deo

2009-12-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I officially became a dirty hippie.

I know what you're thinking.

The diva cup did not make you a dirty hippie? What about giving up toilet paper? What about washing your hair with soap? Those things didn't make you a dirty hippie?

To which I say no! But yesterday, oh man, yesterday.

I bought a jar of coconut oil and used it as a deodorant.

See, about a year ago The Thistle wrote a post about how much she loved her coconut oil deodorant. And I kept meaning to give it a try, but I already owned a Tom's of Maine deodorant. Which frankly was pretty useless, but I figured I needed to use it up.

Anyway, I finally lost? pretended to lose? my Tom's deodorant along my many, many travels, so I figured it was as good a time as any to give the coconut oil a shot.

After I got over the momentary "Oh my GOD! I'm such an eco-nut!" pangs, I found that ... I think it works!

I mean, truthfully, I'm not entirely sure. It seemed like throughout the day I seemed to smell mostly fine. But like, I had never really spent too much time sniffing my underarms when I was wearing antiperspirant. Mostly I just assumed it worked. So now I have no real basis for comparison. Plus, since coconut oil still allows you to perspire, which I think is probably a good thing, it's obviously not going to have the same effect.

So, it works. I think. But if you see me, and I ask you to smell me, don't get weirded out, okay?

Thoughts on ClimateGate

2009-12-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

I've been following the Climategate blow out with a fair amount of interest recently. For those of you who haven't heard, basically some one hacked the emails at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and then published the emails on the internet.

And the emails released were incredibly damaging both for climate science and the climate scientists involved.

Now, I'm not a hard scientist. So when Real Climate explains this email by Phil Jones:

"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

by noting that:

"The ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all."

I'm pretty much willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Although, scientists, if you actually use the term "trick" to mean "way to solve a problem," you ... really shouldn't. It's not jargon, it's just stupid. If it ain't a rabbit appearing from your top hat, it's not a trick.

So, I'm willing to cut the climate scientists some slack and acknowledge that "insider language" that may look damaging to an outsider could very well have been used in private emails destined for colleagues.

But there isn't really any good way to explain why Professor Jones tried to delete emails that were requested under the Freedom of Information Act. And while Real Climate tries to defend some of the less than polite emails by noting, "Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person," I'm not sure that that's such a great excuse.

Indeed, a mere couple weeks before the ClimateGate blow out, another blow out took place over the internet, in which Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute contested that Joe Romm of Climate Progress had repeatedly resorted to McCarthy tactics to smear anyone who disagreed with Romm at all about climate change or the policy implications thereof.

As a frequent reader of climate blogs, I have to say, it is a little shocking how much these blogs do descend into ad hominem attacks on fellow colleagues. The unprofessional impoliteness is not limited to private emails, and in any case, as everyone knows, in the digital age, nothing is private. I get that all scientists do not get along. I understand that science is competitive, and I do not expect the world's top scientists to be singing "Kumbaya" and holding hands with each other. But the lack of professional courtesy is out of control.

If there is something to be taken away from this PR disaster it's this:

Nothing sent over the internet is ever private.
Professional discourtesy will come back to bite you in the ass.
There is a need for transparency in science.

And the biggest take away:

Science is political.

It's useless to deny it. There is no such thing as completely objective science, at least not in a highly charged and uncertain science like climate science. And the sooner we start acknowledging this, the better.

For a brilliant analysis of ClimateGate, check out Mike Hulme's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Captain Scrooge

2009-12-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

I'm not doing Christmas this year.

No Christmas cards, no presents, probably no tree. Nothing.

I'd like to say it's because I'm being a good non-consumer, but it's really because I simply cannot afford it this year. Christmas usually costs me around $1000. I don't have $1000 to spare, hence no Christmas.

I'd like to say that having no money has woken me up to the true spirit of Christmas, but the truth is, not participating in the cards/presents orgy kind of means that actually, I'm just kind of ignoring the holiday season. Le sigh. Does that mean I have to consume in order to appreciate the holidays? That's a pretty freaking awful thought.

But what is a non-consumptive Christmas for a secular person? I guess one could say it's about friends and family, but I think every day of your life is about your friends and family.

It could be about Christmas music. I do love listening to carols.

Or about strolling the neighborhood looking at Christmas displays. Although given that the displays are an example of someone else's consumerism, I'm not sure it's fair to call them non-consumptive.

It could be about Christmas cookies ... except that eating cookies is literal consumption.

I guess the truth is, I'm not really SURE what Christmas is about without the consumption. But this month, I hope to find out.

Hello

2009-12-01T20:54:00.000-08:00

I've been a bad blogger lately. I think I seem to have more absences than I have periods of consistent posting. And I can't really explain why it is, except that lately I have felt pulled in several directions at once.

Oh, also I've been a wandering nomad. After spending two months in New York, I spent a week in Chicago. And now I'm in the SF Bay Area for a couple weeks before I go to LA.

So let's see. I'm in California. I'm applying for full time jobs. Which is basically a full time feat. Meanwhile, I'm trying to do some writing privately on a couple things I have going. A novel that I've been mulling over for the best part of five years.

What else? I made the turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner for twenty. An impressive feat for the girl who two years ago couldn't cook a turkey burger on a Foreman, don'tchathink? I also made a vegetarian stuffing and cauliflower gratin. The stuffing was actually the biggest headache. I wanted to use store bought bread stuffing mix, because I just did not have time to sit there and toast and cut up loaves of bread. Big mistake. I had to go to four stores in search of stuffing which didn't contain high fructose corn syrup.

And this week I've been just eating left overs! How very No Waste of me. But really it's because I'm too lazy to go grocery shopping.

Anyway. Bay Area bloggers, let's meet up! The rest of you, I love you, and I'm sorry I'm such a bad blog buddy.

Yes, This Is Important

2009-11-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about Melinda's recent posts about environmental social change. Read her thoughts here about how to get people to change their lifestyles, participating in your community, and how doing it alone is not enough. It's a great series of posts and it asks a lot of important questions. Why is social change important? How do we affect change? How do you build a social movement? These are questions I have been pondering myself for the past two years.

There are a lot of people critical of individual action in the name of the environment. It is easy to poke holes, to label people as hypocrites. It is easy to point out that the changes we all make are microscopic drops in oceanic buckets. But none of those critics ever have a better solution. Almost everytime I go to a lecture on climate change, without fail, someone in the audience will ask what they can do about the crisis we face. And almost always, the answer given is, "Well, the truth is there isn't much you can do aside from vote."

How is that helpful?

I remember many years ago when I saw "An Inconvenient Truth." I still remember the combination of fear and helplessness that washed over me. The world as I knew it was coming to an end, and there was nothing I could do about aside from changing a few lightbulbs or considering a Prius. After I saw that movie, I immediately went online and bought a Terrapass. Then I continued to do nothing. For about a year. Because well, there was nothing I could do anyway!

And then one day everything clicked. I realized there was something I *could* do. So, I attempted to do it all. I stopped shopping, I started air drying, I even made my own jam and butter and started taking public transit in Los Angeles of all places. And then I moved to London in order to attain a better grasp of environmental policy issues.

Almost every seasoned environmental social activist knows that none of the changes we make are enough or anywhere near enough. But we also believe that our work creates a ripple effect. It is hard to determine the exact results of social action, especially one as amorphous as the environmental social movement. But it seems to me increasingly clear that the world is growing more environmentally aware. And part of that is due in part to a growing band of environmentalists who are challenging conventional rules on air-drying laundry, increasingly patronizing farmers markets, as well as advocating for a global deal on climate change in Copenhagen. Individual action at home begets slightly more public action which begets large scale activism for international change.

Do we need a global deal on climate change? Yes. Do we need more government investment in renewable energy? Yes. Do we need higher efficiency standards? Yes.

But we need social change to get those things. We need social change to help us maneuver to a new era of renewable energy.

In the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, one of the culprits cited is the American people who were not ready for the electric car. As I drove around the city of LA, I would be haunted by this failure. I'd drop by the library where the only empty parking spot was that reserved for electric cars. I'd drive by my coffee shop and see another empty parking spot labelled "electric vehicle only." The infrastructure was there, but we had not been able to change people's behavior. Of course there were many other reasons for the failure of the electric car, but I believe that this example demonstrates the need for a social movement. We cannot transition to a new era of renewable energy without changing people's behavior.

And that's why this social movement is important. In the end it's not about the plastic bags saved or the reusable coffee mugs used though those are good things to do. It's about the large scale awareness that is gradually being generated. That's why I continue to fight and work to grow this movement.

Yes, this is important.

Transportation Smackdown

2009-10-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

I've been traveling a lot and experiencing a number of different public transit systems. Each one has its pros and cons ... for example the New York subway is

Open 24 hours
Is super cheap (P.S. New Yorkers, stop complaining about subway fares. $2.25 is a ridiculously cheap price to go anywhere in the city.)
Nice and roomy (especially compared to the London Tube)

On the other hand, it is also

Kinda dirty
Difficult to get across town
Doesn't properly service the East Side
Still hasn't moved on to smart cards (Though you could also say that is a 'pro' since you know, people argue that London's smart Oyster cards are yet another way of the police monitoring our actions. To which I say, yes, but they are just SO DARN CONVENIENT!)

Anyway, I was thinking of doing a series of posts on transportation systems and then we could all vote for the best one. So I'm asking you all for your input. What are the transport systems you love? Which ones would you include in the Transport Smackdown?

Monday Non-Depressingness

2009-10-26T12:14:00.001-07:00

So sorry for depressing all y'all with my post from Friday. I agree with many of the commenters that sometimes it is necessary to be positive in order to incite people to change. I agree that telling people The End Of The World Is Nigh is not overly helpful for a lot of people. I still remember seeing Inconvenient Truth, being COMPLETELY freaked and also feeling helpless in the process.

So I'd like to reiterate that while I think we may have to entirely change our way of life in order to deal with climate change, I also believe strongly in the power of human beings to innovate and adapt. And I don't at all believe our situation is hopeless, nor do I think the great number of changes we may have to make in the future will be all bad. Change is scary, but change is often more scary in theory than practice.

And today it's Monday. A happy Monday!

So instead of depressing all y'all, I am offering some link love to a couple posts I have enjoyed recently. Leela Raina writes "Why I Shouldn't Date an Annex 1 Guy."

And a rebuttal (of sorts) from Fergus Auld on "Why Annex 1 Guys Can Be A Good Date After All," although Fergus doesn't particularly provide a good defense of his American Annex 1 brothers. Maybe *cough* because there isn't one.

Both posts come from the blog "What's With The Climate," a forum for the environmental youth movement on the Indian sub-continent. I interviewed several people from the youth movement for my MSc dissertation, and I have to say that the work youth activists are doing all over the world is truly inspiring. If you're interested in learning more about the youth movement, check out "It's Getting Hot In Here," which is THE website for the international environmental youth movement.

Sober Friday

2009-10-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

Well, now that the Crazy Chicken has outed me as "that annoying Bill McKibben hanger-on," I figured I might as well produce photographic evidence of my hanging-on. And maybe my annoyingness, I don't know, a picture IS worth a thousand words, right?

So yes, I met Bill McKibben at a seminar the other day. It was supposed to be a jam-packed event, but then it wasn't, which sucks for the no shows but was awesome for me because I got to ask him a few different questions and then have a short little conversation with him.

I've read "Deep Economy," before, and I have to admit, I've been a little hesitant about Bill McKibben in the past. But I have to tell you that when I met him in person, I was deeply impressed by him.

But I was most impressed with his honesty. I mean I was also depressed by his honesty, so it was sort of a cycle of impressed!/depressed/impressed!/depressed. When I asked him about the critics who say that achieving 350 ppm would be so difficult and result in such rampant unemployment that we simply should not aim for 350, I expected McKibben to offer some false assurances that getting down to 350 would not rock the foundations of the economy. Instead he said that it was a fair criticism. But that he believed the alternative was worse. And that anyone who tells you that responding to climate change is not going to be extremely hard? Is just plain wrong.

And that got me thinking. There is a lot, a lot, a lot of talk on the blogosphere about how we should live simply because it will make us happier. Or that it doesn't really matter whether we believe in climate change because we all can find reasons to "clean up the Earth." Or that any small change can make a difference.

I get where all these bloggers are coming from, I truly do. And to a certain extent, I agree. Yes, I believe that I became happier when I snapped out of my consumeristic mentality. Yes, we can all find reasons to pollute less, consume less, etc. And yes, every small change does make a (small) difference.

BUT.

I also think it's becoming increasingly obvious that responding to climate change is going to take more than turning your thermostat down a notch, or carpooling.

In fact, I can't think of a single solution to climate change that won't result in the devastation of certain sectors of the economy.

Let me provide you with an example that I have mentioned before. Britain is one of the few countries that will meet its Kyoto Protocol target. Why? Well, because Maggie Thatcher pretty much killed the coal industry.

Now, it's great that Britain is meeting its targets, no question. But the North of England is still not recovered from that devastation that occurred 20 years ago.

Yes, new renewable energy will provide new green jobs. But a coal miner can't become a solar engineer over night. Which means that unless we invest heavily in job-retraining programs and the like, we will be looking at mass unemployment in various sectors. Even if we do invest heavily in job-retraining, we may still be looking at mass unemployment.

I realize that this post is turning into one very depressing post, but I think we probably all need to face up to the fact that combatting climate change may mean massive unemployment. It might mean a serious scale-back in people's creature comforts in the Global North. It will mean that Northern governments will have to funnel a lot of money to the South for adaptation and technology transfer. None of these things are going to be fun for us in the North. Combatting climate change may very well make us less happy. It might involve way more sacrifices than we wanted to make.

Now, I'm not saying any of these things are certain. Of course they are not. It's possible that in 50 years time, I will look at this post and laugh at how bleak I was.

But I think we need to start confronting the possibility that we will have to entirely change our lives to combat climate change.

Equity, Equity, Equity

2009-10-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Last week, I wrote about what I believe to be the biggest obstruction in getting a global deal at Copenhagen: equity.

This week, further confirmation that the equity issue is going to derail any chance of an agreement comes from the New York Times:

Negotiators have accepted as all but inevitable that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks will not resolve the outstanding issues in the time remaining before the Copenhagen conference opens in December. The gulf between rich and poor nations, and even among the wealthiest nations, is just too wide.

Remember, the United States refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol because the protocol did not limit emissions in India and China.

Now, most of you have probably heard over and over and OVER again about how there is no point for Americans to lower their emissions if China does not because any drop in American emissions will be offset by an increase in Chinese emissions. We have all heard this meme so much, that perhaps it's not surprising to see this FT/Harris poll. According to the poll, 63% of Americans believe that China must lead the way in emissions cuts, and only 1/5 are in favor of offering aid assistance for adaptation from the developed world to the developing world.

I swear, this poll makes me want to cry.

So let me repeat a few points.

Number one, America outstrips China in terms of historical emissions.

Number two, America outstrips China in terms of per capita emissions.

Number three, America outstrips China in terms of luxury versus survival emissions.

Number four, if carbon emissions were calculated correctly* (where carbon emissions are consumed, not where they are produced), America would once again outstrip China in terms of annual emissions. China's emissions are high in part because they are responsible for manufacturing cheap crap Americans CONSUME. They are not high because the Chinese people are cruising the streets of Shanghai in their pink Hummer limos.

The country that absolutely MUST lead the way in cutting emissions is: America.

That's it.

Until America starts getting serious about cutting emissions, we will have no real global deal.

*I understand that this is a normative statement, but it's my blog.

How To Lie With Statistics

2009-10-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

The other day, everyone's favorite Fake Plastic Fish wrote a blog post about Tapped, a new documentary about bottled water.

And then yesterday, Tom Lauria of the International Bottled Water Association responded writing:

We at IBWA participated in the filming of “Tapped” and were disappointed in how our informative comments were discarded. Do you realize 90% of bottled water companies are small, family-run businesses? According to plastic industry studies of recycling, empty water bottles are the most recycled item in single-stream recycling programs. Blogs like yours should encourage morew recycling and not discourage consumption of water — in any form. Water is fundamentally good for all people. We live in a busy world and have bottled water there when you want, regardless of what you are doing, is always a plus. If people are going to a vending machine, what should they buy? What item in the vending machine is not made of plastic? Since it all must be recycled, why pick on the healthiest beverage available, namely bottled water?

Oh boy. There are SO MANY things wrong with that statement, that it's hard to even know where to begin. But perhaps my favorite is his statement, "90% of bottled water companies are small, family-run businesses."

Oooooh, Tom, you know, I'm a girl who is a sucker for stats, and you totally NAILED me with that sexy, sexy statistic.

Except, number one, we don't know where the stat comes from. Tom doesn't link to a source, so we don't know where his data comes from. A quick Google search reveals that this is a line that the IBWA uses A LOT. In front of Congress, on their website, on YouTube videos. But I could never find the statistic cited anywhere unrelated to the IBWA.

Number two, it's stupid. So what? Most marijuana sellers could call their business a small "family-run" affair, too.

Number three, it's deliberately misleading. 90% of bottled water companies might be small family-owned businesses, but they might only account for 1% of the market share. Meanwhile, the 10% big businesses may well account for 99% of the market share. That's like Minute Maid saying that the lemonade industry is mostly small and family-run because there are thousands of kids with lemonade stands.

So just to clear up the confusion, of the top 10 bottled water brands in 2007, one was owned by Coca Cola, one by Pepsi, and SEVEN by Nestle Waters (a division of Nestle.) Only one was privately owned: Crystal Geyser.

The point is while Tom would like us to believe that the bottled water industry is really just a bunch of mom and pop outfits, that is not the case. But even if it were the case, it's not a real justification for supporting the bottled water industry. However, it is a nice illustration of why we should always be wary when industries trot out statistics, because stats can be spun in deliberately misleading ways.

Protect your right to water. Drink tap.

California, Here I Come

2009-10-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

I'm in California for the weekend, but will be back in New York on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone, and to my Indian readers, Happy Diwali!!

The Road to Copenhagen

2009-10-14T21:15:00.001-07:00

What is the biggest issue that we face in crafting a global deal on climate change at Copenhagen?

This was a question I was asked recently, and for me, the answer was a no-brainer.

Equity.

In fact, in my opinion, the greatest challenge we face at COP-15 is the same challenge we have faced ever since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Back in '92, equity was written into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (called the UNFCCC for short. The UN loves them some acronyms.) Article 3 of the UNFCCC states:

The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.

This section of the convention was included at the behest of developing nations, who wanted to ensure that some concept of equity was included in the text of the convention. Perhaps the delegates at Rio assumed that they were putting the issue of equity to bed. It's in the convention, we're all agreed, and now we can move on.

Except not so much.

Run a quick news search with the words "India + Equity + Climate Change." You'll find countless articles stressing the need for equity to be central to the debate at Copenhagen. It's clear the equity debate is far from over.

But what does equity mean? What are "common but differentiated responsibilities?" What is the disagreement really about?

Well, it's about how we calculate and allocate greenhouse gas emissions. Southern countries want equity of per capita emissions. Why? Because, per capita, Southern countries emit much less than Northern countries. For example, according to 2006 data, China has surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide emissions. However, their per capita emissions are about a quarter of the US's per capita emissions. And when you take into account historical emissions, the United States is clearly responsible for a much greater proportion of historical emissions than China. (Remember carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about a century or longer.)

Moreover, as The Centre for Science and Environment, an Indian environmental NGO has pointed out, not all emissions are alike, and that it is important to differentiate between survival emissions and luxury emissions. For example, an Indian farmer's cattle might produce the same amount of emissions as an American soccer mom's SUV. But the cattle are very likely necessary for the Indian farmer to feed his family whereas the SUV is clearly a luxury.

In addition (I told you this was complicated) many scholars are now arguing that calculating emissions produced is wrongheaded. The real question is: where are the emissions consumed? So China may produce more emissions than the United States in part because of China's large manufacturing industry. But if those manufactured goods are then consumed in the States, is it really fair to allocate those emissions to China? (Incidentally, this is why people are completely off base when they argue that they shouldn't change their consumption habits because Americans can reduce their emissions and it won't matter because of what China does. China's emissions are linked to American consumption. )

So now some of you may be reading this and thinking, "Gee, this sounds like a huge clusterf**k, but why should I care? Does it REALLY matter how emissions are allocated anyway?"

First of all, I would argue, that yes, it does matter. But really, you should care because, frankly, we will never achieve a global deal on climate change until we resolve the issue of equity. Until we agree on how to allocate emissions. Until we agree on North to South technology transfer. Until we agree on whether the North should have to fund adaptation efforts in the South. Until we realize that there is no them, only us. So yes, we should rally for a deal at Copenhagen. Participate in the International Day of Climate Action. But we need to rally mindful of what is necessary.

Equity.

Shopping at the D'Ag is a Drag

2009-10-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that for the past several years, I have been very spoiled by my supermarket options. When I lived in LA, I lived a few yards from a Trader Joes and a Gelsons. When I lived in London, I lived around the corner from a Waitrose (cue chorus of angels and shining lights. Waitrose is the bomb, dude.)

So I always had a good store very nearby to go to for all my staples: peanut butter, jam, pasta, etc. Sure, none of the stores had bulk bins, but they did sell less-processed food that often came in glass jars. I could find peanut butter that was made solely with peanuts. I could get jam with no high fructose corn syrup. Gelsons carried local milk in returnable glass bottles. Waitrose carried an extremely wide selection of fair trade products. While my ideal was always to do my shopping at the bulk bin store and farmers' market, a lot of time that just didn't happen. But these stores were not bad alternative options.

Now, living in New York I live further away from a grocery store than I have lived in years. And the closest store is a D'Agostino. Which means that that is where I end up shopping.

First of all, it's a little bit of a shock just how small grocery stores are in New York City. I kind of don't understand it. I mean I know it's a small island, but they seem to have plenty of room for you know, Chase bank branches on every corner of every street. They seem to have scarily large Duane Reades. So I'm not sure why all the grocery stores I've been into are so teensy tiny, but whatever.

And then, once you're in the teeny tiny D'ag, they only seem to sell processed brand name food. Peanut butter with thousands of ingredients. PICKLES with high fructose corn syrup. Produce flown in from all over the world (though I guess I should be thankful that my grocery even HAS a produce section.)

And that's when I realized that this is how Americans shop. I've been on planet hippy grocery stores for the past few years, and I'd sort of forgotten. I'd forgotten that everything is Kraft, Nestle, General Mills, Heinz, Oscar Mayer. I'd forgotten how HARD it is for the average person to avoid high fructose corn syrup. I'd forgotten what it was like to live in a world where you had two choices: Skippy or Jif.

Now, I know, I know. New York has lots of good farmers markets. And I can go there. And I should. And New York even has a Trader Joes. And I'm sure if I tell you all where I live, someone can point me in the direction of a natural food store or bulk bin store not far from me. I know there are other options and it is possible for me to find them.

But that's not going to change the fact that *most* people don't shop at natural food stores. Or bulk bin stores. Or Gelsons. Or Waitrose. Most people shop at Ralphs. Or D'Ags. Or Walmart. Or Tesco. Or Asda. Where it is almost impossible to find food without high fructose corn syrup or palm products or industrial soy and corn.

And that's the problem.

We can, as individuals, aim to make better decisions. We can try to be better consumers. But ultimately, it's not fair to blame the consumer because they shop at the grocery store next door and not the one that you have to take two subways to get to.

Now, I do believe things are slowly changing. D'Agostino carries quite a few organic products, and frankly, I know industrial organic has major issues but yes, I will take some Earthbound organic spinach and Horizon Organic Milk in a pinch. There are more whole wheat products out there, and there are some alternatives to high fructose corn syrup. But there is still a long way to go.

So, I think I'm going to keep shopping at D'Agostinos for a while. Not the least because I'm lazy and I will always take the option to buy my groceries on the walk home from work. But also because it is a good reminder for me that the rest of America does not live in my happy grocery bubble. So we have a lot of work to do.

Congrats to Elinor Ostrom

2009-10-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Indiana University political science professor Elinor Ostrom became the first woman ever to win the Nobel prize in economics. I'm not going to comment on other Nobel prizes given out this year, but I am extremely happy that Ostrom won.

Ostrom won for her work on common pool resource management wherein she challenged the "Tragedy of the Commons" theory. The "Tragedy of the Commons" essentially states that an open access resource, such as an open pasture, will inevitably degrade. This is because each individual using the pasture will act selfishly and use as much of the natural resource as possible. What's best for the individual will trump what's best for the society at large and eventually the pasture will be barren. Anyone who has had to deal with a nasty kitchen at the office can see the "Tragedy of the Commons" at work. Since the communal office kitchen belongs to everyone and no one, everyone leaves their dirty dishes in the sink, and no one bothers to clean them.

The "Tragedy of the Commons" theory led policy makers to conclude that the only way to manage common property would be to a) privatize it or b) put the property under national control. Forests all over the world were nationalized in a misguided attempt to prevent inevitable environmental degradation. But a strange thing happened when forests were placed under national control. A lot of them experienced worse environmental degradation than ever.

See, what Ostrom realized is that many common pool resources are not just open access but are unofficially managed by communities in various ways. To go back to the office kitchen, the kitchen could degrade. HR could step in and officiate over the kitchen. The company could "privatize" the kitchen and decide that actually the communal kitchen is now Sue in Accounting's kitchen. OR, the workplace as a whole might come up with informal means of managing the mess in the kitchen. For example, you might give Bob a dirty look when he leaves his dish in the sink without washing it, thus prompting Bob to wash his dish. Or you and your co-workers might decide that everyone is responsible for maintaining the kitchen once a week.

Ostrom's work demonstrates that common pool resources are managed in a number of different ways by communities, communities can often best manage these resources themselves, and that the "Tragedy of the Commons" is far from inevitable. Her contributions to the field of natural resource management are invaluable, especially now as we attempt to deal with the numerous environmental crises facing us. So congratulations, Dr. Ostrom on your well-deserved honor.

Your Questions Answered by Orangutan Outreach

2009-10-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

Orangutan Outreach was nice enough to leave a lengthy comment answering some of your questions and comments from this blog post. I'm reproducing it here in its entirety so that everyone can see it. If anyone associated with RSPO would like to respond, I would welcome a continuation of this conversation.

The RSPO [Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil] is nothing but a greenwash. It is a great idea, but in reality it is doing absolutely nothing to affect real change on the ground. Its most powerful members are actually some of the worst offenders in terms of deforestation. They just smile and keep having meetings while the destruction continues. They make great fanfare about their desire to have a whopping 20% or so of palm oil be sustainable by 2015. This is a complete sham, because if the destruction continues unabated, the entire forest cover of Indonesia will be gone by then... with but a few token parks left over to gloss over the harsh reality.

Many well-meaning companies use the RSPO as an excuse so as to not have to deal with the ugly truth that they are knowingly choosing to use ingredients that are actually contributing to the devastation of the planet. The greenwash has been going on for a while as this Greenpeace article from nearly a year ago demonstrates. Another good report by Friends of the Earth can be read here. Only New Zealand is effectively fighting back against the palm oil industry because of its horrific ecological destruction. The problem is so acute now that even the World Bank has agreed to put a moratorium on loaning to palm oil companies. Companies such as Lush are paving the way for a palm oil-free product line.

The most ridiculous counter argument of all is that the fight against palm oil is some sort of 'Western' or 'neo-colonial' plot to hold back the 'developing world'. This is a complete farce. First of all, the poor farmers are not improving their lot in life because of palm oil. At best, they become slave laborers on mega plantations-- earning so little money that they are still living well below the poverty line. Nearly all the profits from palm oil go to wealthy investors who are as often as not Westerners themselves-- or Malays and Indonesians who are anything but 'local'. They are fat cats living far away-- often in Europe and North America. Indigenous Dayak people are duped out of their land and then forcibly removed by the corporations. Then even poorer people are brought in from outside areas to work the plantations.

No one is trying to 'deny the poor the right to develop'. In fact, the same people who are trying to stop palm oil development are always in favor of some other type of compensation for keeping the forests standing-- either through REDD, carbon trading or local investment in agricultural practices that maintain the integrity of standing forests-- such as sugar palms instead of oil palms. This investment is meant to go to local people-- not politicians and businessmen in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.

This is not a conspiracy to keep down any one group of people. It is a global problem that needs to be dealt with NOW. Saying "You destroyed your forests so we can destroy ours!" will simply result in a planet in which we all suffer.

Indonesia is the 3rd largest carbon emitter on earth-- after China and the US-- and it is not even an industrialized nation. All the carbon comes from deforestation and the burning of peat. This goes hand in hand with palm oil development. It is often the same companies working both sides of the deal. The cash from the timber is used to pay for the oil palm seedlings.

So even if you don't give a damn about orangutans, maybe you care about your own future? Or your children's future? If those forests go, we're all going with them... human and ape!

Visit the Orangutan Outreach website to learn more!

A Moment of Hope

2009-10-09T08:33:00.001-07:00

It seems like so much of the news these days is scary, bad, and depressing. Health care doesn't seem to be moving forward much. There are grave doubts about our ability to get a global deal at Copenhagen. Sometimes, I feel the whole weight of the world, and I want to throw up my hands in the air, and say, "What's the point?"

And then, I see a little something that reaffirms my faith in humanity. That makes me realize the capacity of people to do good in the world. That prods me to work harder and reach for more. Because if a boy with no resources and barely any education can build a fricking WINDMILL in his village? Then surely we all can achieve so much more.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

William Kamkwamba

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

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Ron Paul Interview

Palm Products Are Killing the Orangutans

2009-10-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, I went to see a really moving documentary about the rainforests in Indonesia. Without words, the film was able to convey the damage being done both to the rainforest and to the orangutans who are apparently going extinct as we speak. It was quite a remarkable piece, and as soon as they get the film online, I will be sure to link to it. After the film ended, the director and another orangutan activist spoke a little bit about the film, their efforts, and what is causing the destruction of the rainforest in Indonesia. Basically, the problems are: the timber industry and the palm industry. The timber industry destroys the rainforest for lumber, and the palm oil industry cuts down the trees for their palm plantations. Which means that palm products are killing the organgutans. And this is a problem because according to the director of Orangutan Outreach, palm products are in EVERYTHING. So while it is very difficult to live a palm-free life, "It is possible," he assured us.

So now, my sadness seeing the film was compounded with the growing horror that palm oil, sodium palmate and other palm products are now on my growing list of Things to Avoid. You know, along with:

High Fructose Corn Syrup
Industrial Corn Products
Industrial Soy Products
Factory Farm Meat
Food in Plastic
Non Fair-Trade
Non Local/Non-Organic

Is this even POSSIBLE? Actually, yes. If you bought most of your food from a farmers market and found a natural food store (preferably bulk bin), you could avoid all these items in one fell swoop. (The palm products are probably in your soap and make-up though, so watch out there.) However, if you shop at a regular old grocery store, like the D'Agostino I patronize around the corner, then I would say, no. It's just not possible. Which is again why it is important for us as individuals to change our practices, but that's not enough.

The ever controversial Crunchy Chicken posted today about whether you can eat meat and still call yourself an environmentalist. Most of the commenters simply argued that it was silly to set an extraordinarily high threshold for the label "environmentalist." Moreover, many argued that as long as you ate sustainably raised meat, that was okay.

Now, I totally agree with both these points. However, I also think it's important to point out how difficult it is for many people to find sustainably raised meat. Again, if you just shop at the major local grocery store, which most people do, a lot of times, you won't find that option. And that's a problem that we urgently need to fix.

In the mean time, avoid the palm products, fellow eco-nuts. And for more information about the orangutans, visit RedApes.org.

Kindle!

2009-10-07T12:37:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's right folks. I am the proud owner of the Kindle. For a birthday present/graduation gift, my sister and mom chipped in and bought me one.

And after a month of owning it, I have to say, I heart my Kindle. I am the person who always carries around 10 books on any trip I take ... even if it's for only a day. The Kindle allows me to do just that. Everywhere I go, I have a choice of reading. Plus, it's small and light and fits into my bag. As for reading on the Kindle? Well, it feels a little weird to curl up on the couch with a small white screen, I do admit. But honestly, after a couple of pages, I get lost in my book and none of that matters anymore.

Okay, so the Kindle is great for portability. But how good is the Kindle for the environment? Well, the answer to that is of course ... it depends.

A study by the CleanTech group factored in the environmental costs of producing a Kindle, the environmental costs of producing and shipping paper books, and the environmental savings from buying e-books. The study concluded that if you replace over 22.5 new books with e-books over the lifetime of a Kindle, then the Kindle comes out on top.

This means that the Kindle is great for people who buy a lot of new books. However, I've spent the past couple years buying used books most of the time. So for me, the Kindle probably isn't the most sustainable option. While I probably will purchase over 22.5 books during my Kindle's lifecycle, I will mostly be replacing used books, not new.

But, it's still not a bad option, I am using the heck out of it, and considering my current nomadic existence, the Kindle is really the perfect gadget for me. Plus it was a gift!!

And hey, now that I have my Kindle to play with, I no longer have a burning desire to buy an iPhone.

Congressional Calls

2009-10-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

I recently went to a panel discussing the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade legislation that was approved by the House, and is waiting ratification in the Senate.

It was a very interesting discussion, though there were parts of it that were slightly depressing. Like when ALL THREE panelists agreed that we simply could not bring the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.

One of the panelist's comments really stuck with me. She basically was arguing that we need a stronger bill than Waxman-Markey, but the problem is, we environmentalists are getting clobbered. The other side, she said, is mobilizing, they are calling their Senators and Representatives. But for whatever reason, environmentally minded people are not doing a good enough job in mobilizing.

This kind of surprised me a little, but maybe it shouldn't have. After all, I haven't called my Senators about Waxman-Markey. I haven't called them, because, well, I have my reservations and disagreements with the bill. But what I realized, from this woman's comments, is that, even if I have reservations with the bill, I need to be calling my congresspeople to simply affirm my support for SOME climate change bill.

Here's the thing. The next two months leading up to Copenhagen are crucial. We cannot afford to let them pass without making our voices heard to our elected leaders. It is crucial that our leaders understand that there is a sizable portion of the electorate who wants a global deal for climate change at Copenhagen. That we care. That this matters.

So, I'm going to start by writing my Senators. I'm going to write about Waxman-Markey. I'm going to write about my reservations, and I'm going to write about the things that I feel are important.

And then I'm going to call my Senators to follow up.

And then I'm going to write the White House.

Because yeah, I have my misgivings about Waxman-Markey, but I've realized that the point isn't Waxman-Markey and the text of that specific bill. The point is that I need to register my support for environmental legislation.

What about you? Have you called your elected reprentatives about climate change?

Oops, I Did It Again

2009-10-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

Oops, I did it again.

I failed with my blog.

Got lost with real life.

Oh, reader, reader.

Oops I screwed up a tad

But please don't get mad.

I know I'm not that innocent.

More regular posting schedule coming your way this month. I swear ... by the moon and the stars in the sky. Okay, I'll shut up now.

Is this Still On?

2009-09-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

Hello? Check one, check two. Anyone out there?

Hmmm.

Well, my frequent absences from blogging probably mean that only one person is now reading this, but I have semi-successfully moved continents. I say semi-successfully, because really, all I've done since moving is 1) worked 2) slept 3) caught up on awesome American television 4) got a new mobile phone number.

I am sort of existing in a permanent state of exhaustion. I still have a hacking cough that I picked up in Bombay (pollution is my friend!). I am still jet-lagged. I still don't know where a good portion of my stuff is.

I'm also suffering from a little bit of culture shock. I know ... culture shock between London and New York City? But, yes. And sadly, New York is way less green than I would have imagined. The fair trade products that are all over London still haven't made their way across the pond. Where are the compost bins? Hell, where are the recycle bins?!

On the other hand, the subway is open 24 hours and the bars are open until 4am, and you can get any food you want delivered to you at 11pm. Plus, American chocolate chip cookies are so much more satisfying than digestive biscuits. But I do miss my jacket potatoes with beans and cheese.

Anyhow, more to follow as I recover from moving exhaustion and adjust to this new city.

Checking In

2009-09-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

Hello all. I'm checking in from India (briefly.)

I've had a very nice trip, relaxed, ate good food, chatted with my relatives, saw some monkeys in a tree and a peacock on the street, etc.

I've also tried not to think about environmental matters too much. After all, I'm on VACATION. And after the stress of finishing off my dissertation, I need a little break.

But I can't help it.

See when I got to Bombay, I found that the city has introduced stringent water cuts. Which means that between 11pm and about 5 am almost all water is shut off. And if the city doesn't get more rain in the next couple months, the water cuts could get worse.

Meanwhile in Delhi, there are now more cars on the roads than in Bombay and Chennai combined! Thankfully, work is underway to expand the Delhi metro, but I'm not sure even the metro will do much to stymie the rise of automobiles.

India continues to change. A bus in Delhi proudly claims to be a bus from the largest CNG fleet in the world ... I actually think the buses in LA claim the same thing. There is more awareness about pollution, of environmental matters, of organics.

But at the same time people continue to buy cars. Traffic worsens. Old traditional ways of life are disappearing in favor of "modern" less sustainable methods.

India is a country on a precipice. They can choose: sustainable development or unsustainable. They can choose to make their vast population a problem, or they can choose to make it the most incredible asset by investing in said population.

They can choose to become an epicenter of technology by innovating and designing new clean technologies or they can continue with the same old carbon emitting technologies.

I don't know which way India will choose.

But I know what I hope for.

I Know, I know

2009-08-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

I said I was going on hiatus, but then I read some controversy-producing blog posts and articles and I can't help but comment on them. Also, I'm trying to stretch out the three hours of dissertation work I have left as long as possible for maximum crankiness.

Beth recently posted a link to an article by Derrick Jensen in Orion Magazine entitled "Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change." The first couple sentences of his piece are pretty abysmal actually. I mean he invokes the NAZIS for crying out loud. And unfortunately those sentences do Jensen a great disservice because the rest of his article is actually quite thoughtful and insightful.

What Jensen is arguing is not that an individual's actions don't matter; rather, he's arguing a very specific point: that individualist environmentalism is not particularly helpful. By individualist environmentalism, I mean environmentalism that is not part of a broader linked-up action, but is done on a personal basis in the home.

Now, recently, one of my friends A got her landlord to put in a gray water tank into her bathroom. Which is pretty awesome, right? Anyway, she was telling us all this, and my friend J interjected and pointed out what a small difference one gray water tank is. Not that he didn't think it was worthwhile, but what's one gray water tank when there are wide swathes of residential lawn, golf courses, and water intense agriculture all over California? And the truth is, my friend J is right as is Jensen who also points out how small residential water usage is in comparison to agriculture and industry.

The point Jensen is making is ... well ... It's the Institutions, Stupid. (Seriously, I HAVE to get tee-shirts made saying that.) Given the crisis we're in, individual action isn't going to cut it. It's kind of like taking an Advil when your appendix is bursting. What is needed is institutional reform.

So, basically, ludicrous and easily refutable first few sentences aside, I completely agree with Jensen. But, in my mind, Jensen doesn't go far enough. Pointing out that individual action isn't enough ... that's the easy part. Look, we all KNOW individual action isn't enough. But as Jensen points out, we're in a double bind. One can give up, and go with the status quo, or one can participate in semi-meaningless individual action. There aren't really many other options for most people.

I think the point is, that individual action can result in two things. One: it can result in complacency. Oh, I recycle and bring my own bags to the grocery store, so I'm doing my bit and I can just sit back.

Or, two, it can propel people to action.

The thing is, if it weren't for individual environmentalism, I would probably not be here in London procrastinating my dissertation. I became individually involved and then became part of a political movement LATER. So I think the real question is, how do we motivate more people to take individual environmentalism one step further? How do we harness the energy from the individual environmentalist movement and use that to change institutions? Those are the real questions that need to be addressed, and it would be great if a few journalists put their thinking caps on and started working on that instead of trying to just shit on personal environmentalists.

Speaking of sh*tting on environmentalists, Elizabeth Kolbert goes after a few in her recent New Yorker article, specifically Colin Beavan and Vanessa Farquharson. Basically, she accuses them both of participating in one-year eco-stunts in order to gain publicity.

To which my response is, "Yeah ... so?"

Did Colin and Vanessa engage in eco-stunts? Sure. But what's wrong with engaging in stunts? Participating in stunts is valid political behavior to attract public attention. Again, speaking from personal experience, I was motivated to change my lifestyle because of people like Colin and Vanessa. And as someone who has arguably participated in her own stunt (though I never wrote a book about it), I can testify that you don't come out the other end an unchanged person. Although my year of strict non-consumerism is over, I shop much, much less than I used to and my entire life philosophy has changed greatly. And knowing Colin and Vanessa as I do, I know they have been transformed as well.

The most ridiculous part of the article is where Kolbert talks about how Colin needs to engage in more political behavior instead of personal environmentalism. I ... kind of don't understand how Kolbert completely missed that Colin is ALL political environmentalism ALL the time these days, what with his new organization, and his protesting, and his meetings with politicians. In fact, Colin has had his ass handed to him by his readers several times because they MISS the personal stories. So if his book, which I haven't read yet, is heavy on the personal anecdotes, that's probably just because Colin knows his audience.

In the end, Kolbert accuses Colin and Vanessa for missing the forest for the trees, but really it's Kolbert who misses the personal transformation because she's too busy criticizing Vanessa for flying places and getting laid.

While I'm On Hiatus....

2009-08-27T04:19:00.000-07:00

Read this.