Our brave new world

We've enjoyed another beautiful week of autumn and a very busy, but great, weekend that included dining out with friends both old and new.  In our travels, we managed to visit the Chautauqua Energy Conference and Expo and collect a boat load of information. Rather, a couple of Wegmans reusable grocery bags full of information.  Lots of freebies, including a bag of compact fluorescents and weatherization goodies (window film, outlet draft stoppers, weatherstripping) from National Fuel, a coloring and activity book about water conservation, more reusable shopping bags, and the the usual reams of brochures and articles (I hope some of them were printed on recycled paper). It's going to take me a little while to read through and digest everything.

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on conserving energy, with government rebates as incentives-- Energy Star appliances, more efficient heating and cooling systems, better windows and doors, more insulation, tankless hot water heaters, etc.  There's also a tantalizing array of wind,solar, and geothermal options now available, and a "green" building (including straw bale construction) industry gaining ground, although the current costs of these technologies are prohibitive for most people.


In the gadget department, on the other hand, there are many fun, cool, and affordable little solar gizmos available, and there was a vendor who had a variety of them on display--various kinds of chargers and lighting, including this awesome little blinkie for bicycles.

Speaking of which, I would like to see more on transportation alternatives (not just hybrid automobiles) at future energy shows, as well as a presence of the local food/grow your own and compost/recycle elements. Surely these must be recognized as important components of saving energy and saving our planet.

Side note: there was a solar cooker on display, and coincidentally we had a conversation with someone at our church over the weekend whose daughter is involved with the Haiti Solar Oven Project.  We talked about the simplicity of making your own with aluminum foil as the reflective material (this seems like something I should have learned at Girl Scout camp), which led to my googling and finding an amazing variety of plans online.

I may now have to conduct some experiments of my own.

Glorious autumn

This past week has been a picture perfect illustration of why I love this season so much. And, except for the one day that it rained, we've spent most of it outdoors.

The fall colors have reached their peak. There are few things more beautiful than the tapestry of brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows (intermingled with the deep green pines) against a clear blue sky. When backlit by the setting sun, they glow like fire.

We walked on the beach (where our dog charges the incoming waves and tries to bite them, then looks baffled because there's nothing but water in his mouth), on trails in the woods and across a field, had a picnic lunch at an overlook park, did some cleanup in the garden, just any excuse to breathe in that crisp autumn air and partake of all the natural beauty.

I'm compelled to pick up individual leaves and wonder at them. The maple ones look painted.

Yesterday, on a drive through the rolling hills of this amazing countryside, we came upon an award-worthy photo op sight (too bad we left our cameras at home)--two young Amish farmers standing in their horse-drawn wagon in a field, against the back drop of dozens of wind turbines on the ridge that lay beyond.

Wind farms have been springing up in western NY in recent times. Wind is something we have in abundance, and is only likely to become stronger as our planet warms. This particular installation, in Wyoming county, produces enough energy to power more than 33,000 homes. Clean energy.

One cattle rancher who receives lease payments from the power company to host one of their turbines on his land (about 1,500 feet from his house) says the noise is minor. And, "the cattle actually seem to like it."

10/10/10 and Eaarth

I've been away with limited internet access this week while our new windows were being installed.

I feel remiss in not having written about the 10/10/10 Global Work Party events, but I'm a neophyte as far as organized events go. I'm still learning and getting plugged in to the pulse of what's happening out there.

Today's events are the culmination of a call to action by 350.org, founded by environmental activist Bill McKibben to raise awareness about the need for us to restore our atmosphere, rapidly, to less than 350 parts per million of CO_2.    

This is regarded by scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments as the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Already we are at 392 ppm and moving toward tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from melting permafrost.

This little video animation makes the point succinctly:

Since our policymakers lack the political will to take the necessary actions in a timely fashion, today's events constitute a grassroots demonstration (thousands of local events worldwide) that says to governments, Look! This is what we're doing. It's time for you to get to work too!

The closest thing to local that we have going on today are a variety of events sponsored by the SUNY Fredonia Campus Climate Challenge. Buffalo is hosting a bicycle workshop, for volunteers to rebuild bicycles and get them back out into the community.

And by the way, if you don't read anything else all year, you MUST read McKibben's new book, Eaarth.  It is an absolutely essential guide to the new era we find ourselves in. Old habits die hard, but they do not work anymore and we must have the courage to change. Not the kind of rah rah campaign sloganeering change that swept up so many people in the last election, but the real kind that means each of us has to start behaving differently.

I've been thinking

Hello out there. I've been keeping my thoughts inside my own head for the past week. Thus, no new posts here.


I've been reading and thinking about some of HUGE issues, like WATER and ENERGY, and those can get pretty overwhelming. You don't know how much you don't know until you start researching something.

We tend to take for granted that our water will always be there when we turn on the tap or flush the toilet. Yesterday morning our power went out for a short time, and it brought home the fact that, in this household, we require electricity to pump our water out of  the ground. We don't have a Plan B in case the grid fritzes out like it did in the summer of 2003.

Furthermore, I learned that the city of Jamestown gets their public water supply from two underground wells. Not that this is a huge big deal, but having lived for most of my life on Lake Erie, and now on Chautauqua Lake (and still in the shadow of the Great Lakes), I grew up with an assumption that "water comes from lakes."  And closely behind that one, an assumption that "civilizations grow near water."  What's to think about?

How about energy?  Are there any other ways we can rape and pillage the earth to extract non-renewable fossil resources to fuel our short-sighted lifestyles? Ta-da! Marcellus Shale is the rock formation that extends throughout the Appalachian Basin and contains huge, largely untapped natural gas reserves. Ah, but how to recover this resource from the rock?  Hydraulic fracturing technology, aka "fracking," involves drilling a wellbore deep into the rock and then pumping in fluids at a rate that causes fracturing to extend the crack deeper into the formation.  This is not a new technology, but its use in the Marcellus formation raises a whole host of health and environmental issues, ranging from the amount of surface water needed for the operation to the contamination of the air, soil, and ground water (drinking water) due to the toxic chemicals used in the process and the toxic waste materials produced by it.

Not that everyone worries about little things like that.

Which brings me to another issue. A wind farm in Chautauqua county seems like a no brainer to me.  Granted, I am a newbie here, dancing as fast as I can to get up to speed on all the local who, what, why, when, and where. We have the wind, there seems to be plenty of land available, why is money being wasted on development plans for a new coal-fired power plant in Jamestown when that is so last century?  Are elected officials required to lack vision? 

No impact

I watched an interesting documentary this weekend, called "No Impact Man."  If you subscribe to Netflix, you can watch it on your computer. You can also read Colin Beavan's blog here.

In a nutshell, Manhattan writer Colin Beavan, doing research for a book, decides to eliminate his personal impact on the environment for one year, dragging his wife and two-year-old daughter along for the ride. It means buying only local food, turning off the electricity, no television, no elevators, no cars, busses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no material consumption, and no garbage.

It is a fascinating look at how much we take for granted in our lifestyles that are out of step with about 75% of the people on this planet.  How much stuff do we actually need, and what is each of us personally willing to change to lessen our impact on the environment?  Do we even know what choices are available to us, or do we just go with the flow?


Obviously, most people are not going to wake up one morning and begin a radical lifestyle change.  Change is painful and undertaken in painfully slow baby steps. Even when that change is extremely beneficial--like exercise. It hurts when you start. You have to force yourself to keep doing it until you get the rust out and start to believe that maybe those muscles really do work after all. Eventually, you feel so great that you wonder why you didn't start doing this years ago.


I realize that I am still a neophyte in my quest for sustainability. We are enjoying the local food choices available to us, but do I really want to give up coffee and chocolate?  I can reduce my electricity use, but would I ever voluntarily turn it off altogether? I got over my retail addiction years ago, and enjoy treasure hunting for secondhand whatever-I-need at thrift stores, garage sales, ebay, craigslist.  (And I am finding that what I "need" at this point in my life is actually very little.) We recycle lots, but still...we are sending too much to the landfill.

Landfills are bad. Why are they bad? Well, all that garbage packed tightly together in a sealed space takes an awfully long time to decompose, so we can't make it disappear fast enough for the rate at which we are producing it.  And while it is decomposing, it emits a lot of methane gas, which has a much more harmful impact on the environment than carbon dioxide.  (Plus, a lot of the stuff we are putting into those landfills, like plastics, will not decompose in many lifetimes.)


So how do we make less garbage?  

First of all, by bringing less of it into our households to begin with. How much packaging does an item need?  At one end, this is a design problem on the part of the producer. At the other, it is a consumer choice. How do we send a message to the producers that we don't want all that packaging? Don't buy it.  Choose to buy things that are minimally packaged--unwrapped produce, items packaged in paper, which can be composted--or things which can be dispensed into reusable containers (items from bulk bins).  Say no to plastic bags--carry your own reusable bags.


Recycling is important, but there's too much plastic in the system and it doesn't recycle very well and ultimately ends up as garbage--so avoid buying it in the first place. 


Compost food scraps: if done correctly (google it,  it's not rocket science) there is no unpleasant odor and you end up with rich fertilizer for your garden (or your neighbor's), much better than going to Home Depot and buying it in a bag from somewhere else. 


Before you even consider throwing something out, consider how it might be reused or repurposed, either by yourself or by somebody else.  Jobs can actually be created when trash is reconsidered  as resource--whether for recycling, crafting, or secondhand use. Buffalo ReUse has built a business around green demolition and resale of building materials.  Broken items can be repaired. Things that are unwanted might be just what someone else is looking for. Give them the opportunity to make that decision before you send it off to the landfill.


So many little things we can do and most of it isn't even painful.

Wheels

I saw a guy riding his bicycle home from Wegman's this afternoon. That's remarkable because riding bikes as transportation doesn't seem too common here.

 I guess it could be the terrain. My husband and his friends are longtime, well-conditioned,  recreational cyclists who have probably toured a gazillion miles over the years (the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure, Cleveland to Oregon, not to mention the whole crazy long distance endurance thing known as radonneuring). Long story short, they don't let hills bother them, whereas a non-athlete like me finds them very challenging.

Recreational cycling seems to enjoy great popularity here, however, judging by the turnouts for events such as the annual Tour of Chautauqua, Tour de Bemus, and the weekly rides from the Holly Loft.

But cycling to the store, not so much. I know it's going to be a while before I can make it back uphill!

I'm better at walking, and Jamestown actually has some very walkable neighborhoods. You can plug your address into this little application to find your neighborhood Walk Score and what it means.

Still,  we tend to be awfully dependent on our cars, even as that becomes more expensive. What can we do?

We can  drive the most fuel-efficient cars we can buy, and keep them tuned up and the tires properly inflated.

We can drive fewer miles by combining all of our errands in a single trip, instead of making several separate trips.

We can carpool with co-workers or offer rides to neighbors when we're going grocery shopping, or attending the same event, to reduce the number of cars on the road.

We should be aware of when public transportation is an option. I didn't realize until just this week that Jamestown has public transportation. I mistakenly thought the CARTS provided transportation for seniors and people with disabilities. They do, but there are also regular bus routes in Jamestown and Dunkirk. More info is available on the Chautauqua county website here.

Green Home Chautauqua

The Jamestown Audubon Society has launched a new page, Green Home Chautauqua, on their website.  Its purpose is  " to be your gateway to resources that will help you create a greener home through renovations. In particular, we are interested in promoting projects that implement alternative energy sources and/or technologies & strategies that reduce energy usage."  It is a work in progress, as they compile information on local contractors, suppliers, or vendors of green technologies, books and websites useful to homeowners looking to reduce their energy usage, and accounts from homeowners who have already installed green features.
 
This is interesting because "powering down" is a key component of how we get beyond the challenges of peak oil and global climate change. It also makes good personal economic sense.

When we hear of green technologies, we tend to think of energy alternatives like wind and solar, water conservation measures like rainwater collection and low-flush toilets, use of recycled materials or renewable plant materials like bamboo and straw.   But there are many more mundane things that each of us can do to reduce our harmful impact on our planet.

Weatherization is the easiest way to cut energy bills (and use)  by reducing heat loss through cracks, gaps, and holes in your home. Weatherization includes such things as caulking and weather-stripping around windows and doors, using window film  (or adding storm windows and doors, perhaps even going so far as replacing windows and doors with new, energy efficient ones), adding insulation, sealing leaks you might not even think of, around electrical outlets and recessed lighting. Government funding is available for low-income families to receive weatherization services, which save the average family over $300 on energy costs in the first year.  Locally, this program is administered by Chautauqua Opportunities.

It's good for folks who don't qualify under "low income" guidelines to do these things too.  For a small investment at your local hardware store, and a Saturday afternoon of sweat, you too can enjoy energy savings and be snug as a bug in a rug this winter.


You can still get federal tax credits for installations through the end of 2010 of new energy-efficient doors and windows, storm windows, insulation, heating systems, and biomass fuel stoves with a thermal efficiency rating of 75% or more.

If you don't feel handy enough to do it yourself and can't afford to pay a contractor, here's an interesting idea:

A group of activists in Cambridge, MA formed a non-profit called Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET).  They organize free weatherization parties (which they call "weatherization barn-raisings) to teach volunteers how to lower their energy bills and carbon emissions.  The labor is free to the home-owners/tenants. They only pay for materials. It sounds like a good deal. In fact, they give how-to instructions on their website for other interested groups to organize their own HEETs.


As for us, we've always been conservation minded. We received the message that most people ignored back during the 1970's oil embargo. During the cold months, we keep our thermostat low during the day, and lower at night.  We like it that way. Sweaters and blankets work remarkably well! 

Now we live in a small house. You might even call it tiny. We like the small footprint, but we're finding we may not be quite tiny house people. So we're contemplating adding a second story. In the meantime, we swapped out our monster hot water tank for a tankless model that only heats water on demand.  We're replacing all of our windows this month. We compost and recycle. We use compact fluorescent bulbs.

When we need new appliances (which we don't, at the moment) we'll get the most energy efficient ones we can find.  The NY Great Appliance Swap Out program for purchasing Energy Star appliances was very popular and funds have been depleted, but you can still apply on their wait list because they anticipate further funding will become available.

Homeowner or renter, there are things everyone can do to live "greener."