Positive Thinking for a Better World

First of all, I want to mention how honoured I am to have people actually reading my blog. I usually feel like I'm talking to myself here, which is okay, but now that there might be visitors, maybe I should try to fix the place up a little!

As often as possible, I like to attend the Sunday morning celebration at my local Life Enrichment Centre. I enjoy being reminded about our connection with god and each other, about the power of prayer and positive thinking, and about the law of attraction. The music is very uplifting, too! A lot of the information about environmental problems, pollution, peak oil, water shortages, and what might happen if we don't change something quickly is very scary and overwhelming. It is easy to get sucked into a very dark view of the future, a future that includes poverty, hunger, illness, cold, and chaos.

Personally, I don't think the world is coming to an end. There certainly could be some suffering in the years to come, but there is already a lot of suffering. Even if oil and gas and electricity
become unaffordable for most people, and we all have to live like our grandparents did, or like 80% of the rest of humanity does right now, I don't think that would be a disaster. Maybe more people would start gardens. (I have been learning about intensive gardening, and how
much food you can get out of a very small space - it's INCREDIBLE!) Maybe people would share more, and go for walks more, and get together with their neighbours more, and cooperate in
child-care more, and maybe we wouldn't be so stressed out and busy, busy, busy all the time.

Maybe I have a utopian view of things. Maybe there will be chaos and crime and hunger and suffering.

No matter what the future might bring, it is essential to look at things from a positive point of view. Each time I plant a new raspberry bush or tomato plant in my yard, I feel grateful that I
have a yard, and I imagine enjoying the delicious fruit that will grow. Each time I visit the farmer's market, I think how wonderful it is to have such a resource available. Each time I go for a walk in the spring, I try to notice how life magically renews itself every year. On the flip side, every time I forget my own cloth bags, or buy a fast-food meal, or fill up with gas, it is useless to berate myself for screwing up. Instead, I try to just notice what happened, and
remind myself of my intention to do better, to use only what I need to use, and to be a good steward of what I have.

Looking at all the problems in the world with fear and panic will not help. Trying to make changes from a mental viewpoint of fear and panic only causes more suffering. Instead, I think about the type of world I would like to live in, one where we all have clean air, comfortable homes, plenty of nutritious food to eat, and supportive communities to share and celebrate with.

How to live

One of the reasons that I chose homeschooling for my family was because I believe that I need to demonstrate to my children what is the right way to live. Going to an institution for 8 hours every day whether you like it there or not, whether it makes you happy or not, is not the right way to live. Many adults do go to jobs they hate, that make them stressed out and sick for 8 hours every day. That is not the life I chose, and it is not the life I wish for my children.

This principle applies to almost everything I do. I believe that being married and staying married is the best way to raise children. I am committed to that, and I am actively demonstrating it to my children. I try as much as I can to live according to my values, with
integrity, so that when I say something, I can say it with conviction, and not have a little voice inside reminding me that it's not 100% true.

Well, I spent tonight reading all about people who are "farming" on their city lots, producing a significant proportion of their own food, often with a surplus to sell or share with others. One of the solutions to dealing with "peak oil" and dwindling oil supplies and skyrocketing prices is to become self-sufficient. If you can grow most of your own food, and you have solar panels and solar ovens to provide your energy needs, and composting toilets instead of plumbing, then there isn't very much that you really need. You certainly don't need a job that pays $80,000 a year. You are self-sufficient.

One of the biggest problems for people living in poverty is food insecurity. They don't earn enough money to pay the rent and to buy groceries. If people were able to produce their own food, it wouldn't matter so much. I remember talking with a co-worker of mine, describing his life growing up on a farm. He said that they never had any money to buy things, but there was always food to eat. On an Alberta farm, there were always steak and potatoes and vegetables,
bread and jam and milk and eggs. They never went hungry.

Well, all the reading and thinking that I am doing leads me to believe that becoming more self-sufficient and less environmentally destructive IS the right way to live. What this means for me is that I need to figure out how to do it so that I can model it for my children. I want them to grow up experiencing a good way of life, a sustainable and healthy way of life, an abundant and rich way of life. Gardening is definitely going to play a part in that.

Environmental Meltdown

The more I read, the more frantic I get. Yesterday, Envirowoman posted an article on her blog ( http://plasticfree.blogspot.com/) that had me feeling completely nauseated and overwhelmed. Please, take 20 minutes out of your life and read it! You will never look at plastic the same way again. It's here:

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health-fitness/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we_2.shtml

(One day soon, I am going to figure out how to put lists of my favourite blogs into a sidebar, and also how to make a word link to something, instead of my clunky method of pasting the whole url. One day. I swear.)

It is very easy to become completely and totally overwhelmed by the problems out there, and by trying to figure out what to do first. There are a few categories of issues, which I'm going to briefly outline here:

reduce the garbage
eliminate plastic
buy and accumulate less stuff (because everything you buy is going to end up in a landfill someday)
eat locally-grown food
become vegetarian
become more self-sufficient (grow your own food, getting "off the grid," learn some old-fashioned skills)
use less electricity
use less water
use less gasoline (walk, cycle, public transportation)

It really is a lot, considering that most people are totally occupied just figuring out how to pay the rent, buy the groceries, and get the kids to soccer on time. I am going to share with you some of the changes that we're making around here. This is still baby steps, because I am learning as I go. I have to thank my husband, because most of them involve his help. He isn't quite as freaked out about the environmental stuff as I am, but he is extremely understanding and cooperative.

• I have stopped using Q-tips. It's a small thing, but I had to start somewhere.
• Derek fixed the toilet that was constantly running. Hopefully that will cut down on our water usage.
• Derek replaced the showerhead to a low-flow style. I was already in the habit of turning off the shower while soaping up, but now it is ALSO a low-flow, so it should save even more.
• We are installing a clothesline. First, I bought the clothespins. Then, I bought the clothesline kit. Now, I need to wait for Derek to install it. He knows I'm pretty fired up about this one, so I'm sure it will only be a week or two.
• Derek replaced all the lightbulbs in the house with the curly CFL bulbs.
• Derek shut off our furnace fan. For some reason, our furnace fan used to blow 24/7/365. It never, ever stopped, winter or summer. Now, the house is very silent. Now, I can hear the fridge running.
• We replaced our windows a couple of months ago. Technically, this doesn't belong on this list, but it will definitely help with the heating bill in the winter.

One of the most important things I did was to review my gas, electricity, and water bills for the last 18 months. It was VERY enlightening. For instance, I figured out that our family uses about 20 cubic metres of water each month. It varies from 17 to 24, but it's around 20 cubic metres. That number was completely meaningless to me. Thanks to the internet, I learned that 20 cubic metres is 5283 gallons, or 20,000 litres. That is 600 litres every single day. There are only 4 of us.

I also learned that our house uses about 1,300 kilowatt hours of electricity every month. I still don't really know what that means, because I can't compare it to anything, and I totally and completely do NOT understand electricity. My poor hubby has tried several times to explain it to me, to no avail. I need to find the children's book of electricity, with really good pictures, and maybe I will figure it out. Anyway, 1300kwh is a lot. Way more than average. We can definitely do better on this one.

We use about 150 GJ of natural gas in a year. That sounds like a nice, small number, but it's not. We installed new windows this year, so I am very curious to see how much that cuts down on our usage. I don't really know what else we can do to reduce this. Keeping the temperature kind of low, and washing our clothes in cold water are the only 2 things I can think of.

Here are some things that I want to do soon:

• Switch from ob tampons to the DivaCup, or some other variety of non-disposable "unmentionable."
• Start shopping at the farmer's market, at least once in a while.
• Develop a habit of ALWAYS carrying canvas shopping bags with me so that I NEVER have to resort to plastic ones again. EVER. Plastic bags should be illegal.
• Find an alternative to those thin, filmy vegetable bags that you use at the grocery store to wrap your veggies in.
• Switch to vinegar, baking soda, and soap flakes and start making my own cleaners, shampoo, etc.
• Talk to my neighbour, who is vegetarian, about what they eat for supper. I am a pretty good cook, and I can make at least 100 different meat-based recipes, but I only have a handful of really good vegetarian dishes in my repertoire. My husband won't eat most of them.
• Find and join a Community-Shared-Agriculture farm, the kind where you buy a share, you go and help out a few times a year, and you get a portion of the produce.
• Learn more about my options for locally-grown food, like what on earth to eat. I don't think that sugar, olive oil, coffee or chocolate are available locally.
• Start making more things from scratch, like cookies, muffins, and granola bars. This way, they won't need to be individually wrapped.
• Figure out how to go on a picnic without wrapping everything in plastic. I just don't know how to do it.
• Get my bicycle tuned up so that I can ride it again. In another year or two, when the youngest is off his training wheels, we could actually run some errands by bicycle.

That is enough to keep me busy for quite a while.

My Latest Craze!

I haven't blogged in ages, but it's because I've been so busy
reading, reading, reading! My eyes are burning from all the hours
logged at the laptop. What is the cause of all this excitement?

No-Impact Man! I happened upon a New York Times article about someone
doing a year without toilet paper, and found the blog of a man who is
doing a one-year experiment to reduce his environmental impact for
the year to zero. He is a normal person, living in New York City, who
is learning as he goes and swearing off cars, taxis, buses, subways,
garbage of all kind, new purchases, electricity, running water, etc, etc.

Of course, he links to a whole bunch of related blogs, which I have
been devouring. One woman in Vancouver has made a commitment to
acquire no new plastic in 2007. Another woman in Ontario is adopting
one new "green" product or habit every day for a year. A couple in
Vancouver wrote a book called the 100-Mile Diet, describing their
one-year experiment with eating locally. Personally, I don't think
that would be all that difficult. I mean, in Vancouver, you're right
beside the ocean, and the Okanagan valley. How hard could it be? I
just finished doing a unit study on the Inuit with my daughter. Now
THAT was difficult. They ate a lot of meat, and they ate a lot of it
raw because they had no fuel to cook it with. Mind-boggling.

Actually, the unit study on native culture and the environmental
stuff I'm reading are firmly linked in my brain. Through most of
history, in most places, people had to use whatever was around them
to live. If you lived near water, you fished, and fishing and water
and boats were important to your culture. If you lived on the plains,
following the buffalo or the caribou was really central to your culture.

I am trying really hard to figure out what my culture is, and what my
values are, and to create a community of some kind, so that my kids
can have those things (community, values, and culture). Living as
part of nature and part of a community and in harmony with my values
are essential to raising my kids.

I used to live with a few really environmentally-minded roommates,
and I was fairly well-trained in low-impact living. I never did go
vegetarian, and I never did give up my car, but I am at least AWARE
of most of my transgressions. I have gotten lazy in recent years, and
I've decided it's time to clean up my act.

My first major change was to begin composting. It really isn't that
difficult at all. You just toss your kitchen scraps into a pile in
your backyard. Cover it with some dry grass or leaves. Ignore it for
a couple of months or years, as needed. Done. It can be way more
scientific if you want it to, but that seems to be the simple version.

My next goal is to get a clothesline. We run our dryer A LOT. My son
has been wetting the bed every night lately, and I have been washing
and drying his comforter every single day. I REALLY need a
clothesline. I am also going to get my husband to shut our furnace
fan off for the summer. The fan runs 24 hours a day, year-round,
circulating the air in the house. When it's cold out, it blows hot
air, of course, but the rest of the time, it just blows air. I wonder
how much money we will save if the fan only blows when the furnace is
actually on.

From what I hear, environmental living can be quite frugal. We spend
about $350 a month on water, electricity, and natural gas. How much
could we reduce that bill? If I cut back from 5 loads of laundry a
week down to 3, and use a clothesline, and shut off the furnace fan,
is that going to save us money? I will keep you posted!

What I am REALLY concerned about is how to reduce the amount of
garbage we create, especially plastic. Most of it has to do with the
kids. It is unbelievable how much crap comes into the house related
to them. Dollar store items, loot bags from birthday parties, happy
meal toys at the fast food restaurant. Every time I turn around,
someone is handing us a dooddad or a gizmo for the kids. Even the
groceries are bad: the yogourt comes in little tubes, the drinks come
in little boxes, the granola bars are individually wrapped.

I guess I can't change everything all at once, but now that I have
been reminded, it is time to do BETTER.