The Greening of Gavin

My Thoughts Travelling Home

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My inquisitive mind was wandering all over the place on the way home tonight.  I am going to share my thought pattens, even though sometime it may seem a little out there.  Here goes trendsetters!

First my thoughts were drawn to the preparation work that Kim and I have to do this weekend for Sustainable House Day.  Call it a spring clean if you will.  Weeding, tidying, building, etc.  Should be a great weekend I thought.  Building a wicking bed, and adding another layer to the cob oven and fixing up some cracks.

Then I thought deeper about the concept of Sustainable House Day, and that one day it will not be needed.  That day would be when everyone grows their own food out of necessity, and has chooks, fruit trees and veggie patches, and lives within their means.  Whether it be because of peak oil, or climate change, or economic downturn or all three is besides the point.  The fact is that it will probably happen and I thought that I am glad that I am well down the path towards a more sustainable lifestyle before TSHTF even if it does happen in very slow motion.

Then I thought about the most unsustainable house that humans have ever made.  The news today talked about a Russian unmanned space craft that was ferrying supplies to the International Space Station.  The ISS would be in my humble opinion, the most unsustainable house in existance.  It has to truck in food, oxygen, water, and everything else that humans need to survive, and don’t even try to work out the food miles!  Yes, it may be expanding our knowledge of space and science, but the costs to maintain it must be enormous.  No wonder NASA canned their manned space program.

Then I thought about the most sustainable house.  A Yurt came to mind, and so did a Wattle and Daub hut.  Easy to maintain, weather proof, easy to heat/cool and the materials are low cost.   Very sustainable, and probably very comfortable.

I kind of went off track in my head about this time as I began to actually listen to the podcast “More Hip than Hippy“, which I enjoy on my commute and have a laugh once in a while.  Val and Dori were talking to a lady somewhere in California that gets by without a car, and who lives in the ‘burbs.  Big deal I thought, and they were waffling on and on about how hard it is.  Yes this lady’s hubby had a car, which they jointly own.  Well that is not really getting by without a car now is it.  I might as well interview Kim on my podcast and ask her how she gets by in the suburbs without a car!  Same thing really, as we only have one car, and Kim chooses not to drive at all.  So underwelmed I felt, I skipped past that part of the podcast.  People must be really attached to their cars in the US, I suppose a bit like Aussies when I think about it.

Then I started listening to the Kunstlercast, and James and Duncan were talking about the Standard & Poors downgrade of the US governements credit rating, and The Long Emergency.  High unemployment, housing prices/values falling, people just getting by with crap jobs, and not many people taking about peak oil like James does constantly, which is quite important to the US seeing they use 25% of the worlds oil resources.  A little blip like a revolution in an overseas oil exporter and they have to start eating into their oil reserves, which is dwindling all the time.  He also talked about the leadership stalemate (or lack of said leadership) and that he was waiting for some left wing equivilent of the Tea Party to start up and start doing the things that the Democrats are, in his opinion, not capable of anymore.  Sound a bit like our Green party to me.  Then I thought that things just don’t look very pretty for our allies.  However I could have it all out of context, because I just listen to podcasts from the US, and am not living the experiance. 

My mind turned to transport, and the lack of a good public transport system.  Traveling on the train in the mainland capitals of Australia is very ancient Rome like.  All roads, and in this case, trains, lead to the city center.  A truly well designed rail system would have orbital lines that connected all of the lines to each other at various distances from the city center, a bit like NY, Tokyo, London, and Paris.  I remember that traveling in London and Paris when I was in my 20’s and how easy it was to get around on the Tube and Metro respectively.  All because the systems were well planned out and interconnected.

Interconnected.  I then remembered that we are all interconnected in the world, this world of Globalisation, and wondered how much longer it would last.  Cheap trade is not possible without cheap fossil fuels and now that is a thing of the past the cracks in the fabric that holds Globalisation together must be streaching hard at the seams ready to burst.

Then I pulled into the train station and traveled home in my hybrid car.  I wondered when more cars would be manufactured as hybrids or electric, and wondered when the price of petrol (gasoline) was going to get so high that people would start to abandon their SUV’s and massive 4×4’s on the side of the road because they couldn’t give them away!

It was about then that I pulled into the carport, met the dogs at the door, and gave Kim a big kiss and a hug.

There is no place like home!

The Irony of the Consumer Culture

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I pride myself in lowering consumption every single day.  So to my surprise along comes an email like this;

“Hi Gavin,

Love your work on The Greening of Gavin! And I wanted to personally invite you to be one of the first Advisors on ShopSquad, a free shopping advice website where shoppers and your readers can ask Advisors (i.e. you!) for advice.
If you recommend something that is purchased, from appliances to clothing to electronics to sporting goods, you get a percentage of the sale. You’re already sharing your expertise through your blog, so why not earn more money for it?
We think your readers would love the chance to get one-on-one advice from you, and ShopSquad is a great platform for you to monetize all your hard work. We’ve built several awesome tools for bloggers, including a referral program in which you can earn $5 for each of your readers who signs up.
Read our great press coverage or learn how ShopSquad works. When you’re ready, sign up free at www.shopsquad.com.
Feel free to ask me any questions: joycie.chen@shopsquad.com.
Thanks!”

Thanks Joycie!  Once upon a time, I would have ignored the email, but today it was just too good an opportunity to not pass comment on. 

So here goes.  Please dear readers, don’t be fooled by the simple, alluring, and siren like message above.  It is designed to appeal to your sense of greed and artificial desires and wants.  I will not be your shopping advisor, not now nor never in the future.

Joycie obviously loves my work (not), and having read my blog from start to finish (not) knows that I abhor the consumer culture and affluenza in its entirety.  So why in Gaia’s name did she send me this email?  To upset me?  Probably not, she and whatever marketing company she works for thinks I am a normal ‘consumer’!  ShopSquad sounds like just another marketing ploy to increase sales for some multinational selling tat that nobody needs, with a view to record profits and draining the planets finite resources!  Something that does not make me happy.  Sustainable living makes me happy.  Here is why.

The last five years whilst on our journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, we have never been happier. By discarding materialistic habits, and living a simpler life, we have found the bountiful happiness that eluded us for many, many years. It was in front of our faces all along. It was within us and all around us. It was in the joy of feeding the chickens every morning. It was in the gift from nature by watching seeds grow in to edible plants. It was in the conversations with family members at the table at dinner time and in the eating of home grown meals. Happiness was in paying down our credit cards, tripling our mortgage payments, and buying needs, not wants, with cash. It was in the beauty of the Sun, the Moon and the air that we breath. It was in the bees that pollinate my fruit and vegetables. It was just amazing. The old me couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Now my family and I can see everything and am truly happy. I give thanks for simple living and the lessons that it has taught me.

Joy and perceived happiness should never be associated with shopping.  ShopSquad be gone!

Common Sense Required

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With so much political rhetoric and media hullabaloo from opponents of the carbon tax or any such action on climate change, I thought I would let everyone know my thoughts on the current political debate being held across Australia. 

I believe that a good dose of common sense is required to understand the real issues.   A dose of common sense to decipher the media bullshit and political one-up-manship that is being thrust at ordinary Australians every single day in the mainstream media.  A dose of common sense to get back in touch with the reality of it all with the realisation that the furor of anti-climate action is being created by vested interests who choose short term profits and greed over the future of our children’s children.  A dose of common sense about the true meaning of not acting on the voluminous amounts of carbon dioxide and the five other greenhouse gasses that we spew into the atmosphere and oceans every day.

As far as I can tell it all comes down to risk management.  We make a choice based on the risk of action or inaction on what we are doing to our home.  Here are the four choices as I see it.

A.  If the majority of scientists are correct and man-induced climate change is happening and we do something about the cause to lower emissions, then great, it was money well spent and we have a future.  No issue.

B.  If the majority of scientists are incorrect and man-induced climate change is not happening, and we still do something to lower emissions, then no great loss, we have a clean planet to live on, species decline may stop and we begin to care about our planet.  Money well spent.  No issue.

C.  If the majority of scientists are correct and man-induced climate change is happening and we do nothing, then we spend no money and we are stuffed.  Changed climate, species loss including our own, and a general shit storm if the IPCC reports are anything to go by.  It’s life Jim, but not as we know it!

D.  If the majority of scientists are incorrect and man-induced climate change is not happening and we do nothing, we party like it is 1999 and we spend no money on reducing emissions, we still end up with a shitty place to live with a polluted environment for our children’s children.

Our choice is simple.  A nice place to live as in choice A and B, or a shitty place to live as in choice C or D.  The vested interest would like us to choose the latter.  I personally choose A and B, and am doing something about it in my own special way.  Our capacity for inaction in the face of the facts about climate change continually stuns me each day in this country.  It could be all of the media hype, which is hard to avoid these days, but I have weighed up the research and have made an informed risk based decision.

Now because I choose A and B, I will be attending one of the many family oriented rallies being held throughout our great land on Sunday, 5th of June.  Check out the Say Yes Australia video below for more information or click on the link.

This rally is great but lets not stop there. I find that you can influence other at a more personal level.  Think of it like this.  One person starts doing something out of the ordinary (taking waste coffee grounds home from the office for the garden, keeping chooks, turning off their work PC overnight, whatever), and then a whole bunch of other people will start doing it.

It’s almost like nobody wants to be the first to go out on a limb, but once that first person has broken the ice, it’s suddenly much more socially acceptable for others to do the same.  We really are social animals.

So lets get social and lead by example to tackle it from both angles!