Some mornings I write briefly (before dashing off to meet the vanpool) about something that’s been cooking in my mind for some time. This is one of those mornings, and what’s been cooking in my mind is the now fully-baked conviction that we’re in training.
Whether here in Oregon or all over the U.S. and world, those of us who are buying food as locally as possible, minimizing our home energy use and using transportation options instead of driving alone are the part of the human race that’s in training for how our species will have to live in the future. Right now in 2009 it still seems like reducing our use of fossil fuels is all about choice. But global warming and peak oil will be changing that.
My household creates half the carbon footprint that the average U.S. household uses — and we have a very high quality of life. We’re happy and fulfilled: we have a great community of friends, right livelihood, (i.e. work we love doing) and Mount Tabor park, like a small forest, a couple of blocks away. At times we can hear an owl’s soft hooting, or a woodpecker drilling into a tree. I have a vegetable garden and a few fruit trees; three chickens are around the corner this spring. It is not my experience that treading lightly on the earth is a grim path of deprivation. I see it as a richer life altogether than the mainstream path of consumption. That’s why I call it the Diamond-Cut Life.
As one of my green friends stated, “We’re ironing out the kinks now for how everyone will be living in the future”. He thinks it’s fun. And so do I.
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Of course, your life style seems wonderful and enviable. It is truly admirable that you are working to reduce your carb0n f00tprint. But surely you realize that your way of living is completely inaccessible for most of humanity. There’s not that much land. There are 150 million people in Bangladesh, about 3000 per square mile. Not much room for gardens. What I’m getting at is, we need to think of ways of living that everyone can use, not just those lucky enough to live in Oregon.