July 10, 2006
Why don't we change our ways?
I have never been a professional environmental, paid a salary to do something to save the planet. I've made a little money writing about it and that's about it. I am still very much a pleb, an amateur. And I have always intended to stay that way, because that's the only way to understand the perspective of all the regular people whose efforts are needed to change things, really. It won't be the professionals (though they can help) and it won't be the politicians (till they're pushed). It will be ordinary people, mobilized to save their communities and ways of life, and perhaps their species, too.
So here's the big question. Why don't we change our ways? Why do we keep going straight ahead when there are warning signs everywhere, and when the wall we're going to run into is getting easier and easier to see?
Professional environmentalists focus on what we should do, and they're great at it. I'm astonished at how many solutions there, already being tried and proven. But what I focus on is motivation: why don't we do what we should? Until that question gets enough attention, all the wonderful solutions in the world won't save the planet.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:04 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
Yuppie environmentalism
I've been accused sometimes of being too cheerful an environmental writer, not nearly doom-and-gloom enough to get people to turn from their wasteful ways. I believe, yes, that's it's better to do something than to do nothing. But to claim that it's easy and cheap to solve the problems caused by driving, as does the TerraPass website, "Prevent global warming, reduce carbon dioxide pollution, promote alternative energy", strikes me as Pollyannaish, at best. Venture capital looking for a way to turn a profit, at worst.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2005
Leisure time and consumerism
I began my first book on environmental issues with a chapter on time, because that's what every one of my friends brought up when I told them I was going to write about practical things we could do to make the world a better place. Here's an extract from that chapter:
Although we often quip that time is money, if every moment spent relaxing, playing with your children, or contemplating the ocean waves were a penny lost, every human activity could be quantified in terms of its monetary value. How much is your baby's smile worth, or a game of chess, or helping a 10-year-old with her math homework? How about a day spent decorating the house for Christmas, or an afternoon in bed with your beloved?
Money can sometimes buy time - by making it possible, for example, to hire someone to do a task you dislike or aren't good at - but the idea that time is money is misleading. People end up trapped by the need to finance a luxurious lifestyle and may in fact have far less free time than those who live more simply. E. F. Schumacher, the former Coal Board economist who became internationally renowned as author of Small Is Beautiful, economics as if people mattered, summed this up with what he called the first law of economics: "The amount of real leisure a society enjoys tends to be in inverse proportion to the amount of labor saving machinery it employs" - and, presumably, to the amount of money it has. In the same way, the more money a society has, the less real leisure time people enjoy.
In economic terms it seems that we always have a role to play: if we aren't earning money we should be spending it. A good example of this, pointed out by Ivan Illich in the Limits to Medicine, is the way women have been encouraged to switch from breast to bottlefeeding. The change has provided industry with customers for factory-made formula. Contrary to the notion that we have more free time than our ancestors, a notion fostered by a culture which needs our continual contribution as employees and as consumers, people in some primitive agricultural or hunter gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure than we do. As a rule, they spent between 15 and 20 hours a week providing for themselves and their children, leaving the remainder of their time for socializing and relaxing. (This is not the case for many Third World women today, however; the chores of obtaining scarce water and firewood take up an increasingly large proportion of their day.)
Many people who live directly off the earth find considerable amounts of time to engage in activities that are not economic: enjoying religious rituals, fiestas and pow-wows, arranging marriages, renewing friendships. In Victorian novels, even working people seem to find time for festivities at county fairs and on market days. Our free time is less leisurely and more expensive than was our grandparents'. It is also less simple to decide how to spend our leisure time because our lives are complicated by multiple roles and by our beepers, computerized diaries and cellular phones. A Sunday afternoon ramble and pub lunch have to be squeezed between catching up with the weekly washing and finishing off a report for Monday's staff meeting.
From Chapter 1 of The Green Home, (c) Karen Christensen 1995
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:44 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2005
Green (or greenER) solvents
Another intriguing article in New Scientist, this time on Clean Solvents. Get this: "Because to make medicines, cosmetics and bathroom cleaners, as well as paints, inks, plastics and lubricants, you need vast quantities of solvents to dissolve the chemical reagents. For every little pill, for example, you may produce 25,000 times its volume in solvent waste." What matters here isn't just the welcome fact that there are some improvements in the works. I'm struck by how ignorant I have been--even working in this area for quite a few years now--of the sheer scale of impact. We've been living in such blithe denial of how dependent we are on inefficient, dirty industrial processes. I feel quite certain that this fact is going to be front and center very soon, and my goal here is to figure out--for myself and my readers--how we can make a transition to a sustainable way of life at a pace that'll enable us to avoid an intervening disaster. Keep reading, don't be afraid. We can work it out together.
How about doing one new thing today to lighten the pressure you place on the earth?
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2005
Paying for the simple life
I was looking through a pile of green magazines and clippings and came across some things about "simple living." I have mixed feelings about that whole movement because it's so much a product of, and dependent on, privileged Western economies. But I started writing in an anticonsumerism vein in my very first book, because there's no doubt that a lot of the environmental crises we face could be solved by an approach to material goods very much along the lines of the weight loss approach proposed in the bestselling French Women Don't Get Fat: Appreciate what we have, choose new things for their beauty and utility, find more rewarding and healthy ways to spend free time (rather than shopping), and be creative.
If you'd like to explore this topic, there are endless resources online. They vary a great deal, but they all seem to have the oh-so-worthy-and-more-enlightened-than-thou attitude I find so off-putting. The Simple Living Network amused me by suggesting I start with their "Web of Simplicity" section where, it turns out, all the information has to be added to my shopping cart--nothing is free! ($50 in publications on that page alone.)
One organization worth checking out is the Center for a New American Dream.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2005
Green words
I’ve been trying to figure out how best to communicate the benefits of environmentalism, and what it is that turns people off about what we greenies say and do. The weekend gave me several opportunities to talk this over. On Friday evening I went to a wine and cheese party at Jack’s Grill in Housatonic, a preview for my pal Crispina’s annual Earth Day Studio Sale.
Crispina is renowned, both locally and nationally, for distinctive clothing and housewares made of recycled materials. Even the product tags are recycled cereal boxes! And everything is beautifully designed, with Crispina’s high energy and sense of color. Predictably, I happened to get to talking with someone who is doing renewable energy projects in various parts of the world, Paul LeBlanc of Delenova Energy. He too felt that we need to focus on solutions, not preaching doom and gloom, and said that his work is all about giving people practical housing options that are truly sustainable.
I also spoke over the weekend to a young designer in California who also wants to see more that’s upbeat, practical, and future-focused. And I really got the message when I took a copy of The Armchair Environmentalist to my hairdresser, and friend, Jeff. He thanked me and then said, “It’s not going to get me depressed, is it?” We’d just been talking about the state of politics in the U.S. and that was depressing enough. I assured him that it wasn’t, so he said he’d read it over his coffee Sunday morning. His nervousness really summed up the problem for me: I (and my colleagues, and you too) need to find a way to show people who care, like Jeff, that they can think about the environment without feeling down. We need to change the way we look at the world and our work, and start to build a wider, more powerful community for change.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
Online shopping--good or bad?
Boy, this isn't a question I'll answer today: Is online shopping good or bad for the environment? I was thinking about it because I spent three days last week at a conference in Portland with ebay as my neighbor. I was there to promote an encyclopedia and they were there to recruit, and during slow times we had fun chatting about websites and customers.
ebay and other online exchange systems like Freecycle (which is only free stuff) enable us to transcend the local to find new homes for useful items, and to buy used items instead of brand-new things. In that sense, they are nothing but good. Nonetheless, as I've already discovered, ebay shopping can be quite engrossing, and expensive. I started by looking for a chintz pattern tea cup and have accumulated one or two things more than that (and that's all I'm saying about it; my lips are sealed).
Besides that, the transportation and packing have to be counted in. My packages came practially wrapped in plastic tape, even though there was a sturdy self-sealing box, perhaps because the sellers get obsessed with getting top ratings for service. I guess my next step is to write to my new friends at ebay suggesting they start a green initiative. But given that one seemed to think global warming was a hoax, I need to give a little more thought to how I approach this one!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2005
Don't Make Mine a (Big) Mac
You may not remember the McLibel trial in Britain, the most expensive case, I think it was, in UK history. During the days I lived there, McDonalds did about as good a job as George W. Bush does today at promoting a positive view of the United States. They sued everyone, from big time journalists to small time authors like me. I think I have the distinction, though, of being the only American ever threatened by McDonalds with a libel suit, because I lived and wrote in England. I was testing Google searches this morning, trying to understand how their ranking works, and came across the story I wrote about my encounter with the Big Mac, McDonalds vs. Christensen story, and much more about the McLibel case.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:03 AM | Comments (0)
February 9, 2005
Harvesting nature
You may have noticed that environmental history has influenced my thinking. It ought to be possible to learn from our mistakes, after all. It’s some comfort to know that humans in the past, too, have messed with their environment throughout history, turned forest into desert, polluted rivers, and poisoned themselves!
But we know so much more, in scientific terms, and we have remarkable tools for predicting the results of different courses of action. History—-and our great-grandchildren-—will judge us harshly if we do things now to protect and restore the natural environment we still, in spite of technology, depend on.
When I was in London last week, I got a taste of the past when I went to the Fan Museum in Greenwich.
I adore fans (my publishing company’s logo, in fact, is a fan) and there were beautiful fans from China, Japan, and European countries. What struck me was how their beauty, often, derived from nature. There was a case showing species of turtle from which polished tortoiseshell came. A large case was filled with Victorian presentation fans, the elaborate plumes women often carried when being ‘presented’ to the Queen. Ostriches are not terribly attractive, but their feathers are extraordinary, delicate puffy tips that must catch the faintest whisper of wind. Many of the fans incorporated other bright feathers, often with the species unidentified, and even shiny beetle wings. Some feathers were dyed, but most of the brilliance was direct from nature.
What were they thinking, one asks, the people who so profligately ‘harvested’ ivory and turtle shells and birds’ wings? What are we thinking, using clean water from ancient aquifers, timber from irreplaceable forests, and fossil fuels? It’s all a matter of perspective. Maybe what we need is ecological future fiction, to help us value the things we have in time to protect them.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:49 AM | Comments (0)
January 1, 2005
Extreme weather events
We've all started the New Year thinking about the tragic loss of life and destruction of communities in Southeast and South Asia. No doubt you've found one of the many sites through which one can make a donation--I always think of the wonders of online fundraising developed during Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign--and I thought readers might like to read a few words from an article on extreme weather events, published in a wonderful work I had the pleasure of publishing in 2003, the Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. This is a balanced, scholarly work and not a campaigning publication at all, so I find its commentary all the more helpful. The author concludes by saying, "The fact that nature itself produces extreme weather has been used imprudently as an excuse to avoid rectifying human activity that could unleash more of it."
From the Encyclopedia of World Environmental History, edited by S. Krech, J.R. McNeill, and C. Merchant (Berkshire/Routledge 2003):
"Only a relatively thin crust of the surface of the Earth is solid, and this is divided into plates that float on a molten core and grind against one another. The hot, molten material from the interior explodes periodically in the form of a volcano, which can produce extreme weather. When earthquakes or volcanoes occur in the ocean, the sudden release of enormous energy displaces a huge quantity of water, resulting in a gigantic wave referred to as a tsunami. Societies exist in this vortex of autonomous dynamics and flux of energy transformations that we call nature. The effects of any of these depend on the geophysical and built structures lying in their path.
"Fortunately extreme weather is rare in most regions in the time span of a human life. There seem to be self-regulating mechanisms in nature that keep climate in a steady state and usually make change gradual over the periods of time that are pertinent to humans. Most of nature’s fluctuations, such as the seasons, day and night, and so forth, are regular. The tides, for example, are based on such astronomical regularity that they can be calculated two years in advance.
"The present steady state could however be tipped into one with characteristics that may not be as supportive of human society. Human activities may inadvertently produce a positive-feedback loop that disrupts nature’s balance. Climatologists do not have definitive evidence that human-induced global climate change will result in more frequent and intense extreme weather, but they argue the hypothesis is plausible. The fact that nature itself produces extreme weather has been used imprudently as an excuse to avoid rectifying human activity that could unleash more of it."
Raymond Murphy
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:44 AM | Comments (0)
December 29, 2004
Not so virtuous
I once wrote an article called "Losing My Friends While Saving the Earth." That was after my first environmental book came out (Home Ecology, published in London in 1989, in the US in 1990). I tried to do everything then: my new baby was in cloth diapers, I scrubbed the tub with baking soda. (And this wasn't because I had time or money to spare. We were dead broke, and I was working two part-time jobs and juggling a baby and a toddler. I was hypercharged, a woman with a mission.)
What I found is that while some green tips are easy, clear, and really do the job, others just plain didn't work. And as I got to know other authors, I discovered that they weren't quite as rabid as I about actually testing what they recommended. I starting collecting the weird advice people dished out to an unsuspecting public ("Write small so you'll use less paper." "Use lemon juice instead of bleach.")
As a result, I lightened up (a little). I changed how I approached each task, and focused more on what you might call the "lifecycle" of any given activity. How much damage does my oven cleaning do to the planet? Not much, considering how rarely I do it (every five years or so). In my life, ovens are definitely the small stuff, and I am not going to sweat it. Each of us needs to find a balance that allows for doing good and staying sane, after all.
But I'd love to know whether baking soda (or something else) works for you. Here's one method to try: Nontoxic oven cleaner.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2004
New Year's cleaning
While we still talk about "spring cleaning," I notice that autumn's a time when a lot of people get rid of junk, and I feel the urge to clean about now. It's ridiculously cold so I can't throw windows open, but there's a lull between Christmas and New Year that makes me feel domestic. And I like the idea of starting 2005 with clean moulding and shelves rearranged.
And with clean ovens, too, after the Thanksgiving and Christmas baking. Like you, I've read those Green tips about cleaning an oven with a paste of baking soda and water. Forget it! The crud in an oven is baked on. I actually have two ovens to clean. One I did with the dregs of a can of oven-cleaner, and lots of scrubbing. For the second, I actually used the self-cleaning system (after 10 years in the house I got it to work!).
Neither method is at all green. The first uses strong chemicals in an aerosol can; the second uses a heck of a lot of electricity.
I've learned two things: (1) it's really nice to have a clean oven (as you can tell, this doesn't happen to me very often--maybe every five years), and (2) prevention is the name of the game, in cleaning as well as personal health. I don't want to go through this--the smells, the guilt!--again soon, so I'm going to put a baking tray on the lower shelf to catch drips, and use larger baking pans so food doesn't spatter. Easy stuff, isn't it?
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:39 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2004
Greeting Cards
When I open an envelope this time of year I find myself hoping for more than just "greetings" from the people I really care about. I want to hear what's really happening with them. I want to connect myself, in return, with more than a hasty signature at the bottom of a card. The waste of exchanging holiday cards bothers me, but it is the one time of year that we reach out to a lot of people who aren't a regular part of our lives, and that's a good thing.
This year, as my live changes in the course of starting a new publishing business, I have a yen for paper and pen and the time to remember just why I'm staying in touch . . . time to tell certain special people that I care, and catch them up a little on what's really going on in my life.
Here's my plan for the hectic holidays of 2004: I'm going to write real letters to a dozen distant friends, old-fashioned letters with an enclosure or two, an article they might enjoy, or a copy of an old photo. Then I'm going to email another dozen people I've lost touch with. This is going to be my season of renewing connections, and for that I don't need a box of greeting cards.
(By the way, aren't e-greeting cards the worst idea ever?)
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:47 AM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2004
Simply Salt
Over the weekend I was catching up - well, not catching up at all, but trying to get a little less behind. I found a couple of old-fashioned Mason jars and filled one with epsom salts and the other with plain old kosher salt. As simple (and cheap) as you can get in the world of beauty products, and I found myself thinking that I should put this in the blog. But, I said to myself, what good is using salt going to do, really? Will this help save the planet? 
No, it won't, by a long stretch. But what counts is the connections. Damage to the planet happens by a domino effect, and it's little things we do that reorient our thinking, and can reorient our connection with the natural world.
(The epsom salts, by the way, are good for soaking tired feet or a tired, stressed body, and the kosher salt I mix with rose-scented almond oil to make a body scrub.)
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:50 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2004
Giving Thanks
We've just celebrated the most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, with a free-range turkey, mounds of mashed potatoes and garlic-roasted squash, and even homemade pies this year. After the U.S. election result in November, it's been hard to feel thankful and even harder to feel happy about being American. But there is something special and restorative about an event we all - red states and blue states, vegetarians and meat-eaters, old and young - celebrate together. And it's good to see the earth's bounty so much a center of our festivities - unlike what you see in the manic shopping that started the next day! More about Christmas shopping to come.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)