P.S. It's Blog Action Day

And I have blogged about the environment on October 15th. Hope it was a success!

Acorns revisited

So I've been reading Bringing the Biosphere Home by Mitchell Thomashow for class and thinking about the acorn crisis as described by Carl Schaad on his blog, Blog Hero! and wondered if this was a way for people to discuss the same phenomena from different places. A discussion about acorns in the comments section of a blog could be the jumping off point for a whole exchange of information about each person's area.

Here's a quote from the book:

To interpret the biosphere, I propose a barefoot global change science. Cadres of citizens, schoolchildren, elders -- people from all walks of life -- meet in schools, libraries, parks, and on the Internet, to share stories and data. They pool their observations and expertise so they can track environmental change in their neighborhood. Via electronic communications, they compare data with folks from other places. Professional environmental scientists work regularly with citizen groups and schoolchildren to provide training and guidance. They jointly establish local research projects. Artists draw biospheric murals on the sides of buildings. A special television channel shows global change satellite maps twenty-four hours a day. Every computer is sold with built-in geographic information system software (135).

Thomashow says in the next paragraph, "Perhaps this is a naive dream." It's a groovy dream, I say, and one that can happen, we just have to figure out a way to communicate this idea to people that goes beyond exchanging our folk wisdom about bumper crops of acorns spelling a cold winter, and really, really start observing the changes going on in our little part of the biosphere. That's the gist of Thomashow's message, I think.

Borrowed the photo from MIT Press.

Acorns

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Blog Hero!, the other day and the author, Carl Schaad, told this humorous story about how he couldn't find his car the other day because it had been buried in acorns -- here's the link. Anyway, the thing that I found intriguing about the post (other than the fact that he mentioned "The A-Team"-- no one talks about The A-Team anymore...sigh) was the comments section. People around the country and the world were giving their reports on the signs of a long ol' winter -- one guy in Costa Rica said that the migratory birds were returning to his part of the world early as an indication of a cold winter up north. The last comment was a woman who wondered, "Hey, if it's a REALLY cold winter, what does that do to the whole global warming issue?" I read into that statement a kind of hopefulness that maybe the whole global warming thing was just bunk, anyway.

White Cliffs of Clover

We had a lot of rain the past week, and the clover seed sprouted. I had to seed twice, but with all the rain by Friday it was obvious that the clover addition to our lawn was a done deal. This photo was taken in the neighborhood litterbox area. In your face, anonymous cats!

Eco-Fatigue

A couple of times recently I've come into contact with this phenomena of "eco-fatigue." It seems inevitable that people get so worked up into a frenzy about living "green" that they start to get a little frazzled by it all. As I have been reading in The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, it's important to look at the big picture. One thing the authors want readers to keep in mind is weight. The weight of what you consume is more environmentally damaging than what is consumed. That's why, they contend, it is important to make the sound eco-choices when buying that new fridge or stove.

One example of this was listening to Talk of The Nation one day on my way home from campus. They had on Michael Valkys, a reporter for The Poughkeepsie Journal who was discussing a city ordinance that prohibits homeowners from placing clotheslines or drying clothing in the front of the house, critics claiming it takes away from the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood. So, essentially, if you put clothes on a drying rack on your porch or in your driveway you are a law-breaker.

My feeling is that if you want aesthetic appeal when you're outside, go to a national park. As the discussion went on they turned to the phones to get people's input about this, and it was a litany of complaints about not only this topic, but people complaining about other things about being environmental that get on their nerves. Maybe this was a good outlet for the frustrations people feel in dealing with these green decisions every day, but I felt like it was a little bit of a bash-fest to environmental living.

The No Impact Man Toast Debacle
DG keeps me up to date on No Impact Man, being a frequent watcher of his daily travails to leave less of a footprint. Awhile back she told me about a No Impact Man post about toast that, in retrospect, completely typifies this eco-fatigue. After making all this effort to make no-impact toast for his little daughter, Mrs. No Impact Man swoops in and gobbles down said toast and, understandably, he was grumpy. His fatigue, of course, may be more acute having to run a toaster off a solar-charged battery or camp toaster, or whatever, but when you are No Impact Man, things like making toast take on a lot more import. Daily chores that take 5-seconds for the rest of us world-destroyers are Herculean endeavors for him that require actual intention and then planning, and finally manifestation. Whew. I'm getting tired just thinking about making toast from a solar-powered toaster.

Took the beautiful toast pic from No Impact Man.

Two-Mile Rule for Cycling

Well, couldn't find anything on the 2-mile rule -- I know I'm not making it up, I saw it on some website, somewhere. But I'm going to post on it, anyway, to get it out there since I'm already using it in my posts.

The 2-mile rule for cycling is, simply put, using your bicycle for trips that fall within a 2-mile radius from your house. On this now-mythical website the person (forever unknown) gave a simple way to calculate this using a map and a compass. Using your bike computer (if you don't have one they can run really cheap to really expensive) would be a definitive way to figure out distances. Mapquest and Bikely.com would also work well for figuring out distances to some of your more frequent destinations.