The Greening of Gavin

My Name Is Gavin and I Was An Addict

@ By 7 Comments

Yes, you heard it correctly folks, I am a recovering carbon addict!  A bit of a shock I know, but I am working on reducing my addiction.  I am not the only one of these recovering carbon addicts, because it is not unusual to find many of them lurking here on this blog, reading these pages.  However, you may be surprised to learn that we have a major social issue right under our noses and that there are full blown carbon junkies all around us.  They might even be standing right next to you as you read this post.  Suffice to say, that if you can read this post, and are a user of the conveniences of modern 21st century life, then you are or were addicted to carbon at some stage of your life.

We burn it in our cars, make things with it, ingest it in our food, and generally use the stuff every minute of the day.  Unless you have totally removed yourself from ‘the grid’ or live in a yurt or cave, the unfortunate news is that you are a user!!!  There is a big downside to a planet full of carbon junkies.  The ramifications are events such as Climate Change, Fossil Fuel depletion, resource depletion, environmental damage, mass species extinction, to name a few.

So if we are all carbon junkies to varying degrees, who are the pushers?  For every addiction, there is a supplier of the goods that cause the addiction.  Well, I can think of a many, but I will just mention a few big, well established ones;

1.  Fossil Fuel pushers.  These shady characters lurk all over the globe.  They are the oil companies, coal companies and suppliers of natural gas that we all use.  They provide the raw materials for our addiction.  Some like Exxon-Mobil try and keep us hooked by stopping us from reducing our use by the use of dis-information campaigns, and others like BP are big on high risk operations with little thought for the consequences.

2.  Auto manufacturer pushers.  Some of these pushers make big petrol guzzling, hydrocarbon burning monsters that satisfy some legitimate needs, but mainly are used to further inflate the ego’s of heavily addicted carbon junkies.  They have been know to stifle competing, non carbon addictive modes of transportation.

3.  Advertising pushers.  All forms of advertising attempt to convince us to want new shiny things made with carbon or manufactured with the help of carbon based energy supplies.  Without these advertising gurus, we would not be so quick to get the violent urge to buy stuff that we don’t need and therefore satisfy our addition with a big hit of stuff.

4.  Economic pushers.  The modern economy is constructed in such away that it needs to grow at all costs or crash into recession.  When it hits a finite resource boundary, such as fossil fuels, growth becomes impossible in its current form.  By growing, we use energy, and most of human energy is generated by carbon laden ancient sunlight stored in fossil fuels.  The economy drives our addictive needs.

I could list more pushers like fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide companies that permeate our Industrial food complex.  I could list fast food companies who have transformed the way we eat and grow our food using these carbon derivatives.  I could list the real estate developers and the housing industry for giving little thought to the sustainability of suburbia.  You get the general idea by now.  However, just because I have pointed out a few obvious pushers, it doesn’t mean we are not partly to blame for being addicted ourselves.  Pushers don’t exist without junkies.

So if we are all addicted to carbon it is many forms, what can we do about it?  Well lets take the example of the three junkies that I met on the train the other day and turn the conversation on its head.  What if, instead of talking about methadone, they were actually articulating their carbon addiction.  This is how the conversation might have transpired;

First bloke, “How many tonnes of carbon are you on?”.
Chick, “55!”
Other bloke, “Shit, I am only on 40 tonnes!
First bloke, “Fuck, I am down to 30.  Where do you get your stuff?”
Chick, “Down at supermarket, see, I got some in my shopping trolley.”
First bloke, “You aught to go to rehab love, there is a free one in Fitzroy, for six weeks.”
Chick, “I need six fucking months mate!”

So as ‘First bloke’ said, and he really did hit the nail on the head, we all have to go into Carbon Rehab, just like any other addicted person would have to.  Whether it be self imposed or legislated by governments, it has to start right now.  Bleeding obvious, but just like an addict, very hard to give up for good.  Hey, I am no angel, I still use the stuff, albeit in much smaller quantities.

During my family’s journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, we have also found it hard to kick the habit, and to ween ourselves from carbon.  Our society is not geared up to go carbon cold turkey, even if we wanted to.  Like our family did, I suggest small reductions over time, tackling the easy and cheap methods first like energy efficiency, which will give you the biggest reduction in carbon usage for the least amount of cost.

Let all try to reduce our addiction, before it is forced upon us.  Peak Oil is looming and in the similar way that any addict gets withdrawal symptoms, we too will all suffer from a carbon shock if the current supply is taken away suddenly!  Anger and denial will be common place unless we take decisive steps now to kick the habit. 

So avoid the junkies if you can, and the road to being clean is a rocky one, however by all weening ourselves together, we might stand half a chance of survival on the other side of the peak.

Gulf Oil Spill

@ By 4 Comments

Last night, Kim and I were watching some news footage of all of the animals caught up in the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater disaster.  It was deeply saddening to watch, and we both had a tear at the end of it.  Our greed has let to this.  Our lust for cheap energy has led to this.  We have done this to ourselves.

I know it has taken a while to comment on one of the biggest environmental disasters that has occurred due to an oil spill, but I have just been waiting for the right words to come to me.  So here they are, inspired by James Lovelock’s most fitting work, The Revenge of Gaia.

I think that maybe Gaia has had enough of us and just burst out of her skin, in effect, and let cry a massive scream of ;

“You want oil, you bastards? HERE, I’ll give you all the oil you want and MORE!  Come get some!”

Change Works In Mysterious Ways

@ By 4 Comments

I have been reflecting today, and without trying to big note myself or getting big headed, I believe that I have a special talent to help people through changes with a couple of simple methods. 

Change in peoples lives, especially the few about to hit mankind in a few years, can cause all sorts of emotions manifest themselves.  From terror, to guilt, to a sense of excitement, anticipation and opportunity.  There are many people who resist change, and would rather continue on with the status quo, however there are some people who relish change and create opportunities to bring others along for the journey, but in a special sort of way.  Everyone who reads this blog or stumbles across it knows what my goal or mission in life is by simply reading the left hand side bar which is about who I am and the basic things I have done, but it is the reason of the how and why I have these goals that is the important thing.

One of my ways to promote change is to lead by example.  This is something that I learnt whilst in the Royal Australian Navy.  I learnt that you cannot ask someone to do something, being a task, behaviour, or change a personal value, if you don’t show that you practice that task, behaviour or have that value yourself.  Sure, in the military they most probably do it because of the command structure and discipline, however they won’t do it willingly and morale suffers.  On the other hand, if they see the person leading by practising what he/she is preaching, then they follow willingly and with enthusiasm.  I attempt to live up to this “lead by example value” in all aspects of my life. That was one of the reasons that I didn’t begin writing this blog until at least 6 months after our family began our journey towards a sustainable lifestyle.  Well, that and everyone urged me to write a book about what I had done, but I thought a blog was a better idea due to the interaction you receive via comments.  I wanted to explain the how and why I turned green and what my motivation was.  You can probably tell by the way I write that I am enthusiastic and passionate about all things green and sustainable, but you probably didn’t know that one of my personal values is that I do what I say I am going to do.  Another of my core values is to try and not let people down when I make a promise. I believe that it is these simple values that rub off on people, who either know me in person or read about my exploits via my writings.  It inspires people to act in a positive way, towards a common goal. 

The second special way of helping people change is to do things in such a way that they think it was their own idea in the first place.  This can be in the form of a simple suggestion, a comment during a TV ad, or leaving a magazine or book conspicuously open to a certain page at work or at home.  It can be in the form of harmless propaganda, like a poster showing benefits of a certain way of doing things.  People may think that this is a deceitful way of getting things done, but that is exactly how marketing and advertising works all around us as well.  I believe that if you have a message to give, you might as well utilise the best known way to do so. 

Let me give you a simple example.  We used to spend lots of money on cleaning products, but now we use only two or three main items for cleaning bathrooms and the like.  Vinegar and Bicarbonate of Soda are about all we use, the cleaning products that our grandparents used to use.  Now to begin with my wife Kim detested the smell of Vinegar and didn’t believe that bicarb would do as good a job as the shiny, new, advertised chemical petrolium based products.  I had to sutlely convince her so it sounded like her idea.  I must say that I was slightly deceitful in both examples.  The first was we ran out of Windex (a blue liquid window cleaner that stinks and makes me sneeze) kind of on purpose (my bad!).  I then suggested that we try vinegar and newspaper to clean the shower glass.  After a quick demonstration on how easy the vinegar got rid of soap scum and cleaned the glass, Kim was hooked.  That is all we use now, and I only had to make it seem that it was her idea.  Another example was with bicarb soda.  Once again we accidentally ran out of dishwasher tablets (you know, the ones that cost a fortune and are toxic).  I suggested a few tablespoons of bicarb in the bottom of the machine and some vinegar as rinse aid.  Guess what, as I expected it worked well and the dishes were wonderfully clean.  It even got rid of the smell in the machine!  Once it clicked, Kim thought that we should use it to clean the shower recesses as well which works very well to remove soap scum.  I even showed her my very cool method of making a stinky sink drain smell fresh and clean by pouring quarter of a cup of bicarb down the drain and then 5 minutes later tip the same amount of vinegar, and watch the fizzy show and the smell goes away and unblocks the drain.  Much better than highly caustic Draino!  As you can see, all it took was a comment or spark and it then became that other persons idea.  No fights, no arguments, no right or wrongs, just change for the better.  Now she tells all her friends about the miracle of vinegar and bicarb. She is a clever lady, my Kim!  Love her to bits.  Oh, BTW.  Now I have been requested to plant two orange trees in pots by you know who as well.  She loves the citrus we have so much, that more are required. I told you it works!

So, I suppose that the moral of the story and my method/talent that I have learnt through experiance is that if you tell some one to change they won’t and will resist like a stubborn toddler or teenager, but if you lead by example and help them with and along the journey, change is not only inevitable, but fun as well.  This is how I find making changes to my sustainable lifestyle, easy, painless and fun.

If any readers have other subtle ways to promote change and convince others towards a more sustainable way of living (other than screaming at them), please add them via a comment.  This could turn into quite a little toolbox of tips!