Diamond-Cut Life

I just received a nice comment from Klara on “Why Bother? Three Great Reasons“. She is moving here to Portland soon and like many Portlanders, new and old, she is passionate about sustainability.

I imagine that also like many, she wants to find green-collar work, i.e. a job in sustainability. I’m going to refer her to a certain career counselor, Vicki Lind, the town’s unofficial maven of jobs in sustainability.

I used Vicki’s services frequently in the several years it took me to transition my career to the cool place it is now, promoting transportation options. Besides doing one on one counseling and job-seeking clubs, she does a one-day workshop for people seeking jobs in sustainability, through The Oregon Natural Step Network. She’s asked me to speak on the panel of people who successfully transitioned their career.

What if my town or yours sustained a terrorist attack early tomorrow morning? Would you and I freak out in surprise and fall apart? Or would we be emotionally fit enough to behave in constructive, responsible ways?

 As an advocate of sustainability, I believe in fitness of all kinds. For instance, I work at being physically fit and financially fit. My master’s degree, though, is in counseling psychology, and I see emotional fitness as the crucial fiber at the core of our lives.

 Emotional fitness – NOT the endless pursuit of feeling good — needs more of our attention. On all sides of the political fence we are overly focused on military responses to terrorism. But the strongest military in the world cannot make us emotionally fit i.e., able to deal well with adversity. That’s our own job.

 It’s knowable and predictable that bad things will happen, both natural disasters like earthquakes and manmade disasters like terrorism.  Realistically, we should expect that the 9-11 attacks will be repeated in some way – and our lives and economy will be disrupted, maybe severely.

 On the concrete level, do we have savings in the bank? Emergency food, water and first-aid supplies? Emotionally, are we fit enough to deal and cope constructively when a bad thing happens, rather than fall apart or freak out with surprise – when there’s really no excuse for being surprised?

Today I need to transfer $1,000 from Thor’s and my checking account into a savings account for taxes. Oh the joy. I’m doing a contracted project for Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center here in Oregon (joyful work, no joke) and of course as a contractor I’m responsible for my own taxes. Hence the need to save for them.

There is a greedy one inside of me that could resent taxes if I go down that mental trail. I don’t go down it because I know taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society featuring common-good things like roads and schools. Still, I think there is a greedy one inside each of us. I’d say human greed is a major player in our culture’s health care crisis, unsustainable use of resources, and so on.

But there’s much more to our nation than greed. For instance: seventy-five percent of people in the U.S. give to charity. Most of them aren’t even in a bracket to use those contributions as tax deductions. And low to middle income people give proportionately more of their income than more affluent people. Too, millions volunteer their time in any given year to ease suffering. I’d say humans are both greedy AND altruistic.

So what? So this: we’re at a pivotal point in global history where the consequences of undisciplined consumption and greed — that would be climate change — are forcing us to make a jump in our evolution away from greed. The common good now is a bigger animal than roads and schools; it is slowing climate change by using less fossil fuels. Altruistic in some cases, economically beneficial in other cases.

And the willingness to lower our national carbon footprint has to come from us, the citizenry, because governmental regulations in the end will reflect only our level of willingness, and no more. I know many disagree on that, so I welcome your comments.

Like many who are passionate about sustainability (or passionate about anything) I have sometimes been guilty of “us versus them” thinking. This is the mindset that eventually makes enemies of those whose views and practices differ from mine.

For instance, people who don’t recycle and compost, still use energy-guzzling incandescent light bulbs, and drive vehicles with more than four cylinders. Especially when they could have taken the bus. In other words, most of the U.S. population at least some of the time.

How misguided is it for me to pose my fellow citizens as enemies, even silently in my own mind? I’m sure many of ‘them’ excel in areas where I’m deficient. Moreover, I haven’t always lived up to my own ideals. And I’m not about to make an enemy of myself.

A basic spiritual tenet is that separateness is an illusion, that in the deep structure of life, all beings are both unified and interdependent. That sounds beautiful, but is a hard one to live out day by day.

What I can do with it is to catch myself when I go into ‘us against them’ thinking, and remember this world needs solutions, not enemies. And I’m asking you as a reader of my blog to help hold me accountable. If you see me backsliding, call me on it.

I want my blog to evolve into a vibrant and dynamic yet peaceful body of thought on solutions for sustainability.

U.S. culture is finally getting that global warming is both a fact and serious trouble. Good, great, excellent.

The problem now is that most people think somebody else had better do something about it — in effect so that business can continue as usual.

I embrace the opposite of that attitude: that all of us can do something about it, and that ‘business as usual’ is at the core of the problem. Today I’ll bypass the wonk-speak about lowering our carbon footprint and drill down to something much more basic to global warming: the guiding myth in our national psyche that bigger is inherently better, and makes us more powerful.

Bigger houses and bigger cars — both a major U.S. trend in the past twenty years — are a big part of what’s driving global warming, due to their fossil-fuel-neediness. Every square foot of housing being heated, cooled and lit adds to our atmosphere’s burden, and so does every added increment of vehicle size. I suggest that bigger is the opposite of better or more powerful: it is needier.

The idea that bigger is better surely comes from the ancient, primitive part of our brains that motivated our ancestors to kill animals big and meaty enough to assure our survival. We’re animals too; I get it.

But we humans have flourished and we have to evolve differently now, as in leaping to a new level of thinking and motivation. The business-as-usual belief of bigger-is-better is taking us over the cliff of climate change.

I suggest that one of the most effective things we can do in any given day to combat global warming is to assure ourselves and those around us that we have enough right now. That we don’t need a bigger house, bigger or faster car or more current widget as much as we need a stable climate. That all those things are themselves needy of toxic fossil fuels, both in their production and use, and can even turn us into needier people as we grasp at them.

That, rather, what we already have is plenty, and enough. If that sounds like heresy, so at one time did the notion that the earth revolves around the sun.

One time in my life, years ago, I went inside a WalMart store and purchased one item. It was a full-length mirror for $10. I felt grateful I could afford it because I was a self-employed artist at the time (read: poor).

I never went back to WalMart because I learned about the high cost of their low prices. For instance, many who receive relief food from the Oregon Food Bank have full-time jobs. At WalMart. Such stories are well-told in many places, and my thoughts today are actually about a more positive face of WalMart: their progress in sustainability.

(Think of sustainability as doing things in a way that can continue indefinitely across time without resources collapsing or other bad things happening.)

I’ve learned WalMart is using their famed control over their suppliers to require more sustainable practices of them. Here in Portland, my home, that is translating into huge warehouses being built to LEED certification (that’s Leadership in Energy & Ecological Design), including extensive solar panels.

That means these warehouses that will ship products to WalMart will use much less fossil fuels than normal warehouses — and fossil fuels, are course, are what’s driving global warming. Also, WalMart has done huge promotions of compact fluorescent light bulbs, shaping that market significantly in a much-needed way. It appears they’re putting some legs on the public commitment they made to sustainability about two years ago.

So would I personally recommend now shopping at WalMart? Well, the reason I won’t is the same reason I never darken the door of Costco: great volumes of goods at dirt-cheap prices encourage overconsumption. And overconsumption is, in my eyes, the root of our cultural problems and environmental problems — both sets of problems, intertwined in their causes and effects.

The research I’ve seen lately indicates that the happiest people are not the ones who consume the most, but the ones who are rich in loving relationships, community and service/volunteer work. If happiness is what we all want, more stuff at low prices is not getting us there.

I’m glad WalMart is becoming greener, but it doesn’t change their basic premise of unfettered consumption. Thor and I are continuing to shop elsewhere. I left my little art company behind, and have a ‘normal’ job now that I love. We can afford normal prices.

By the way, I gave away the full-length mirror I bought there to a friend. She has more stuff than friends, come to think of it, and is not the happiest person I know.

Maybe you’re like me in this respect: when I see problems, I want to find solutions.

No.

I don’t just want to find solutions, I want to live them out. I feel more alive that way, more connected. Lots of problems are both personal and public, both micro and macro. Ditto their solutions.

Here we have a national epidemic of obesity and a global climate problem of overusing fossil fuels. It doesn’t take a think-tank of Nobel prize winners to generate this little light-bulb: Ah . . . we need to use our bodies more and fossil fuels less. Two birds with one stone.

Some examples (please write me with your additions):

• using stairs instead of elevators
• raking, mowing & trimming our yards with human power instead of engine power
• washing dishes and lightweight clothes by hand instead of machine
• bicycling for short trips instead of driving
• dancing for recreation instead of watching TV
• planting seasonal foliage in our front yards instead of doing light displays
• walking around to visit neighbors instead of a sedentary evening “chatting” on email
  

You and I can model these behaviors to others, or we can ask others to join us in developing these habits in the first place. The point is that the status quo is not working, folks. It’s not working for either individuals or our shared home, the planet.

Problems: Overweight Americans and a climate overheating with fossil fuel use. Solution: Use our bodies twice as much as we’re doing. It even makes us feel sexier, which is more than you can say for many solutions to problems.

Two birds, one beautiful stone.

This morning I submerged a jasmine tea bag into the hot water inside my lovely little blue mug that I bought from a local potter years ago. I’ve done this most mornings for years, but today I suddenly thought to put a little saucer across the top of the mug while the tea steeps.

Why? Because I’ve learned that heat is so costly to the earth. Even here in Portland Oregon — the land of mighty rivers and hydropower — more than 40% of our energy comes from coal, the burning of which accelerates global warming. Heating water takes a lot of energy. Covering it once it’s hot is common sense, and shows respect for the price the earth is paying.

Now I’m sipping my jasmine tea, both tea and mug delightfully warmer than when they sit uncovered while steeping. It seems to me that life has dozens of these choice-points each day. Dozens of chances to be in the moment and respect the earth by consuming less energy. We have more power than we walk around imagining we have.

The casual observer takes me for a mainstream professional in my 40’s. My secret identity as a passionate lover of public transit is revealed below for the first time.

My household’s single car is a well-worn, two-door 1993 Nissan Sentra. Paid for many years ago, our investment fund is now as plump as its floor-mats are thin. It sits humbly unused most days as we gallivant around on TriMet. (Our only burglary happened on a rare weekday I had taken the car on errands. The empty driveway seemed to signal nobody was home. Lesson: our car is most valuable as a watchdog.)

TriMet equals physical vitality for me. When I step off the bus or Max my legs are my locomotion to my final destination, strong and springy under my body. I am fit; I walk miles every week.

TriMet for me equals civic engagement. I brush shoulders with people from all income levels and backgrounds– and observe they pose no threat to me. I’ve logged thousands of miles using transit without incident or accident.

Most significantly, TriMet reduces my carbon footprint in the face of global warming. It lets me be a secret activist as well as a secret lover.