The Experiment Begins

After my long hiatus away from the blog, I'm back again to type in a final entry for the year 2007. Many of my readers out there (all 4 of you) are probably wondering what happened to me recently. Did I get eaten by an escaped San Francisco Zoo tiger? Did I fall off my bike into the mouth of a volcano? Did I run away to a hippie commune and change my name to Moonbeam? All good theories, I must say. However, the real reason for my absence has been that I've been rethinking how I write this blog.

After posting about 25 entries, I've realized that I'm not providing much value to the entire blogosphere. Most of what I've said is not earth-shattering or new... it's been done before. During my month-long absence, I've continued to adopt better, greener practices with my life. But how exciting is it really to hear me talk about switching over to organic milk? Or buying non-toxic deodorant? Or reading another depressing environmental book? Not exactly the kinds of topics that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Blogs should serve one of two purposes: 1) to provide information, or 2) to entertain. Although my blog somewhat honored those two principles, it wasn't enough to grow an audience. There was no incentive for new readers to keep returning to this blog, because it provided no new information, and it only mildly entertained. Even though my blog might have been better than most of the garbage you find out there in the blogosphere, I don't want to add to the growing pile of useless content on the web.

So, after some thought, I've decided to try something different out with this blog. Instead of lightly touching upon random topics in the overwhelming world of environmentalism, I decided to devote the next month to one topic only and see what happens. I've always been curious about veganism, and know absolutely nothing about it, so for January, I'm making it a challenge for myself to go completely vegan. I really don't know what to expect from this. Everyone I've talked to says I'm crazy to even think this, but I beg to differ. Shoot... if Les Stroud from "Survivorman" can last for days without eating anything, I should be fine on fruits, vegetables, grains and beans for the next month. It's not like you're eating absolutely nothing with veganism. You just have to be more creative with what you CAN eat, and really think about WHAT you're eating.

Here's to a new year filled with healthier living. I hope you enjoy reading this blog over the next month. It should be rather interesting. I'm looking forward to February 1st when I can eat a hamburger again.

Brian

The Wearing of the Green

When you live a greener lifestyle, it starts affecting areas of your life that you never really put much thought into. For me, clothing was one of those areas. If I needed a new shirt or pair of jeans, I'd just swing by Old Navy or The Gap like everyone else and just buy something new, never really considering how my clothing was made or how it came to reach me.

But ever since the Green Festival, I'm now on a mission to end my dependence upon buying new clothes made cheaply in third world countries. It almost seems like an impossible task since most everything these days is made in either China, Malaysia, or India. The most obvious solution to this clothing crisis is to give up clothing completely and to just become a nudist. However, with winter fast approaching and the likelihood of me moving back to Chicago becoming ever greater, I don't think nudism is a viable option.

Another solution is to buy clothing that is made locally. You have to look harder to find clothing brands like this, but they are around. Quite a few businesses in California make clothing out of hemp, which is a much more environmentally friendly option than using cotton or synthetic materials. At $50 a pop for a hemp shirt, though, the thought of going buck naked suddenly seems a lot more reasonable.

So what's a poor environmentalist supposed to do to get some greener threads? The answer: hit the thrift stores. Many thrift stores run by organizations such as The Salvation Army or Goodwill get a bad rap, because people automatically assume that only bums would shop there. Yes, there are lots of nasty clothes found in thrift stores that even I wouldn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. But every now and then if you're lucky, you'll find some great stuff that will make even your most bourgeois friends jealous.

For example, today I stopped by the Salvation Army in Clemson, South Carolina to see if I could find any needles-in-a-haystack. At first, it looked like it was going to be a bust. But then my eyes fell upon a thing of pure beauty: a Red Sox T-shirt in perfect condition... for only $2! I couldn't believe my luck! But don't you worry, Cubbie fans. I also found a Cubs shirt for $2 that I nabbed. So not only did I manage to reuse "old" clothing and donate money to a good cause, but I also found a way to support my teams during next year's baseball season! Greener living never felt so good!

Thoughts from a Concerned Environmentalist

(Note to readers: The writer of this blog is temporarily incapacitated due to jet lag and a long red-eye flight without any sleep. So for today's post, he's sharing some of his thoughts made during the 5 hour trip down to San Francicso yesterday.)

As I type this, I’m heading south on an Amtrak train to San Francisco, where I’ll be catching a flight out east to visit family for Thanksgiving. I can see the San Francisco Bay passing by me on the right. The train tracks are so close to the bay, that it literally feels like you’re skimming across the surface of the water. You can see skinny white cranes lurking around along the banks, looking for food. Curious rock formations poke out from hidden beaches, and occasionally you’ll pass over a jetty of water, meandering all twisted like a snake into the bay. I feel quite privileged to be getting this unobstructed view of nature. I think if more people realized the type of scenery you can get from riding Amtrak, a hell of a lot less people would be driving.

The San Francisco Bay is such an amazing thing to behold. Yet, it bothers me to think that in 20 to 30 years time, a lot of what I’m seeing may be totally wiped out by rising waters. After going to all these conferences lately on sustainability, I can’t help but feel frustrated with the current state of environmental affairs. I find it hard to understand how people in politics aren’t grasping the severity of the situation we’re all in and doing more to solve it. After reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Field Notes from a Catastrophe, which shows undeniable proof that climate change is actually occurring... and occurring at a much faster rate than we realize, I think that it’s going to take a whole lot more than just upping the MPG on cars to change things. We’ve got to be doing more than that... we’ve got to be changing our lifestyles.

I think the big frustration that any environmentalist faces is how to go about bringing mass change to this world when the people who can bring about change—the politicians—don’t seem to care. The scientists have been presenting their data to Congress for decades now, only to fall upon deaf ears. Protesting doesn’t seem to accomplish anything anymore like it used to. And you can pretty much expect any letter you send to your Congressperson to end up in the shredder. So what do we do? If our nation’s leaders aren’t passing the legislation necessary to mandate change, then what’s left for us to do to fix our situation?

At both the conferences I attended, this question kept coming up. And the response given by all the experts was this: you can’t wait for Congress to fix things. You’ve got to take it into your own hands and do it yourself. Or, as David Orr suggested, "Suck it up." I personally didn’t care for this answer, and I don’t think many other people at the conferences cared for it, either. If you don’t have your own government backing you, then what hope do you have of changing things on a mass scale?

But then I started looking back to my state of California, who’s running into the same opposition from our government, and they’re still plowing ahead anyway. On both the state and local levels, people ARE doing things to change our situation. Look at San Francisco: they banned plastic bags from all stores, and just months ago banned all styrofoam containers. And now the city is providing free compost containers and compost pickup service for all residents. The people of San Francisco didn’t wait around for Congress to mandate changes to their lifestyle —they did it themselves.

One of the speakers I saw at the Green Festival, Paul Hawken, has stated that there are now over 2 million organizations around the world that are fighting for social change. Over 2 million! And most of these are grass roots efforts that no one ever hears about. They work to make our world a better place, and they do it by being role models for others to follow. It’s a silent revolution going on, where people are using their actions, not their words, to affect change. And it’s working.

So even though we would like our political leaders to hurry up and pass necessary legislation, we can do a lot locally within our communities to help make that change happen. It might seem like an uphill battle at times, but our work locally with others does make a difference. It is like what Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”