Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Treehugger's Green Lifestyle Experts

Woohoo! I made Treehugger's Earth Day list featuring "13 Green Lifestyle Experts Tell Us Their Earth Day Plans". (I'm #2 in the slide show). There are some amazing people on the list. I don't know how the hell I ended up on it.


In any case, here's the page with my plans for Earth Day. Go check them all out and see what everyone is up to!

What are you doing for Earth Day?

11 comments:

April Alexander said...

Because you're awesome, that's why!! Kudos to you and your crunchy lifestyle, well done!

April Alexander said...

Time to add "Tree Hugger" to your list over there btw! ;)

Karina said...

I saw that, and I got really excited because I have been following you for a while - it made me feel like I was on the cusp of something instead of the last to know. Haha! So happy for you!

Brad K. said...

Something about "NoImpact" man struck me as funny.

He is giving a talk.

What I see, is that giving 'a talk' involves an audience. Each member of the audience has made an extra trip that day, a voyage, that was in addition to their normal patterns of energy usage.

That voyage for all consume energy. Those that walk consume food calories, and unless they are growing their own food, all of it, they are relying at least partially on petroleum-powered transport to get the food to their distribution center or grocery store, and on the energy-consuming grocery store to keep that food fresh and available, and to discard the remnants and spoiled food.

Those that drive also consume energy, either directly fossil fuel powered, or indirectly (electricity must be considered fossil fuel energy until the last coal, oil, and gas fired plants are retired), Or they flew or otherwise increased the total energy and fossil fuel use on the planet.

Which, like consolidating school districts, for the same reason, strike me as about the last way to measure "no impact".

The outcome might be to influence people. If "talks" were all that were needed to instigate wide-spread change, I imagine that would have been blindingly obvious by now. Most talks preach to the choir, that is the crowd is motivated for change, and looking for technical details, that some will actually use. About those that attend a talk, that aren't already embracing the topic, that might change their thinking - again, success doesn't seem to be blindingly obvious to me.

No Impact Man might not be consciously choosing a career catering to people interested in the environment, but he seems to be measuring success in terms of revenue and crowd count.

In one sense the wealth of today's world - money - is a direct expression of the consumption of cheap energy. With the end of cheap energy (Peak Oil), the validity of measuring wealth in dollars gets to be an interesting question. And measuring success in terms of burning oil for Earth Day seems a bit . . ironic.

Chrunchy, I think you raise the caliber of the group at TreeHugger.

Erica/Northwest Edible Life said...

Congratulations! Way to carry the torch.

Amy in Tacoma said...

Brad, Colin's No Impact Year and blog had a big influence on me. I was just starting to think about living more green when I found it, and it appealed to me because I was living in another major East Coast city, Boston, at the time and his daughter is the same age as mine. Our similarities made me think that if he could do it, so could I.

Amy in Tacoma said...

I'm not doing anything special; I am working today, and tonight my daughter and I are undoing the braids in our hair and trying out new, natural homemade hair care products.

Anonymous said...

I brainstormed a bunch of ideas with my students and we've all decided to adopt: no computers, no tv, play outside and eat no meat for that day.

These are things we do at my house all the time but this is groundbreaking for some of "my kids".

Brad K. said...

Amy in Tacoma,

That sounds great, and I am glad he that his message is good.

Even if he is drawing a physical, expend extra energy for transport, group together to celebrate Earth Day. The only part I missed was the common "people from xxx miles/nations away will be attending!"

For Earth Day I expect I will be eating my usual turkey bologna and french bread sandwich. Maybe chop out a bit more sod for garden space. Does anyone know how to effectively remove established bermuda grass to for a reasonably productive garden? I am getting entirely too familiar with my mattock.

Greenpa said...

yeeehaa, Crunch. You must be doing something right. :-)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations-well deserved. Keep the crunchy stuff coming!!