Going Green

I have recently become truly alarmed about Global Warming. The trigger has been my taking a course at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University. The title of the course is “Rescuing an Ailing Planet” taught by a Graduate Student in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. The textbook is Plan B 3.0 : Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester R. Brown.

I didn’t consider myself a latecomer to the environmental movement. I had just been passive, contributing to the Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, Earth Justice, Conservation Law Foundation, Wildlife Federation, Wilderness Society, Ocean Conservancy, writing the checks and figuring I was doing my part; contribute the money and let someone else do the legwork.

I’ve had a rude awakening. I need to do more. I need to reduce my carbon footprint. So far I’ve reduced my driving. I’m walking and taking the bus and red line more. I have stopped using my dryer. I hang my cloths on lines in the basement near the furnace. I installed a programmable thermostat, replaced my windows and back door with new insulated double paned units. I had more insulation (cellulose) blown into my exterior walls. I’ve replaced all the light bulbs with fluorescents. My next car will be a hybrid.

On the food and eating front I’ve cut out beef and reduced my chicken, fish and turkey to three times a week. I’m eating lower on the food pyramid, more fruit, vegetables, legumes and grains. I’ve learned some cool facts. Beef takes seven bushels of corn(water, fertilizer, oil for tractors and harvesters) to produce one pound of meat. Beef also consumes enormous amounts of fresh water and expels lots of carbon dioxide. To stop eating beef is the equivalent of giving up an SUV and driving a Prius in energy use and CO2 production.

Another cool fact is all this fresh produce we import, like grapes from Chile, bring with them fresh water (often scarce) from the producing country. Grapes are 95% water. We fly that water up here! It makes you think about eating locally or at least domestically.

Our economy and life style are petroleum based. Oil production is like a bell curve and we are already past the peak and on the downward part of the curve. All of the “easy” oil has been discovered. Oil from tar sands, for instance takes two barrels of energy from oil to produce one barrel for other uses. It requires a lot of sand being moved around and a lot of water as well.

Conservation is the way to go and after that we have to make significant life style changes. We should travel less, build smaller energy efficient houses, retrofit the old buildings and housing stock we have, live closer to where we work.

I’m thinking about how communities can get a handle on rental housing, enforcing, encouraging landlords to upgrade energy efficiency. There is a storm brewing for low to middle income tenants who cannot pay high rents and high utility bills too. Gas and Electric bills are in arrears and service will be cut off in May. The bills will have to be paid before service is restored for the next winter. This is the next housing crisis.

Journal of a Secesh Lady

I have just finished reading Catherine Edmondston’s journal of her life during the Civil War.

I am so grateful to “Kate” for making the effort to record each day, 1860 to 1866 as she experienced it. She recorded the reports, rumors, and her vitriolic response to the hated Yankee depredations. She also found time to record the ebb and flow of the plantation work her personal joys and sorrows. I feel she shared her life with me, a woman of different circumstance in 2008.

It is a hefty book, weighty in both substance and size. Many a night in bed I struggled to hold it upright at an angle harmonious with my bifocals. Reading it from beginning to end is a task of persistence and devotion. I feel rewarded by the effort.

The story offers the opportunity to travel back in time, to be immersed in the thinking and social fabric of the secessionist south.

At times I became impatient with her favorite themes, the gentlemanliness of the Confederate Officers contrasted with the “ill bread” Yankees, her acerbic abuse of Lincoln. Still what would you expect? Do you want social realism or some sanitized romantic novel?

The last entries, after Lee’s surrender, made the whole reading worth while. Catherine and her husband Patrick had three properties and about eighty-six slaves. She continues her entries for another year as they struggle, former master and former slave to work out a new social contract.

Catherine excoriates the “Freeman’s Bureau”, their meddling, rules and general mischief. It is frustration and miscommunication on all sides. The dysfunctional family that was the Plantation hierarchy falls apart before the reader’s eyes. There is a redistribution of power, misread on both sides as the model shifts from Master and Slave to Labor and Management. Kate has a wonderful ear for dialect and dialogue. You can hear the speech and see the participants confronting each other both uncomfortable and on unsure ground. It is the beginning of the transition period in race relations that may devolve into the Presidency of Barack Obama