There was a very interesting article in the LA Times today about how the drought, combined with efforts to protect endangered small fish, has impacted farming in the San Joaquin Valley.  Farmers are letting fields go fallow (reverting back to the desert status that the valley was before homesteaders and eventually farmers brought water into the area) and thus farmworkers are out of work.  Unemployment in the area is above the California average by 3.9%, but in some towns the unemployment figure is 39%.

A few months back, there was a similar article in National Geographic about Australia's farming community (also located in a former desert and dependent on water from other areas) and its collapse after seven years of drought on that continent. 

It strikes me that there are a couple of fundamental issues that will need to be addressed in this time of global climate change (or, if you are one of the few who don't believe the preponderance of scientific opinion, during times of drought).

1.  Is it the best practice to irrigate former deserts in order to grow our food?

2.  Are there ways of conserving water from non-agricultural uses in cities that demand water (and in Australia's case, trump agricultural water rights) that can help tide farmers over while we are working on #1?

The more I read about these types of issues, the more I realize that we need systemic approaches to problems that we've previously seen as easily addressed through human intervention.  In the case of California, we brought water to the desert, not realizing how that would impact the deltas during drought years; where seawater replaces fresh and kills fertile areas of our wetland ecosystem.

No suggestions for solutions from me...I'm far too new to this.  But it does get me thinking that sometimes our initial solutions cause more problems than the original issue did.

AND the woman in front of me in the grocery store line (this was a few days ago) were BOTH using resuable grocery bags.  I was so jazzed to see that one by one, little by little, we can have an impact on the world we live in.  Making it more habitable, seeing fewer bags in landfills and on the streets.  If we band together, we can do amazing things.

Then, in one of those little synchronicities that God likes to send our way, I found this YouTube recording of "Stand by Me" where the performance is a pastiche of different street performers around the world.  It's worth a listen and a look.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM
I'd embed it but my "content rich" weebly page takes long enough to load.  So click on the link above and enjoy.

And by the way, thank you each and all for standing by me.

Tonight is the night (again) for Earth Hour.  You may remember that I posted last year on this same topic, asking each of you to join me in turning out your lights for one hour tonight. 

From 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm, local time, turning out your lights for an hour will help reduce energy consumption, will send a message that you're serious about the need for change in the way we use energy, and may even provide some serious candle-lit snuggle time with a significant other.

(Just be sure not to burn the house down!)

If all goes according to my plan, we'll be snuggled up watching our DVR'd last episode of Battlestar Gallactica with a candle or two going.  Hope your Earth Hour is fun!

On a personal note, it's perfect timing for a little downtime for me.  Today is the two day after d/c power fade and I'm fully into it.  I had about 4 hours of extra energy yesterday morning...very enjoyable shopping and hanging out with Dan...then by afternoon was napping and reading.

There are far worse ways to spend a day! 

As I mentioned some months ago, I've been reading the book Cradle to Cradle, a mini-manifesto on how we can move from being mere consumers of our planet's resources into designing products, buildings, and infrastructure that work with nature's design rather than against it.

It requires radical rethinking on a scale past my "three R's" green consciousness (reduce, reuse, recycle), which is where most of us are on an individual basis in the U.S.  If that.

By peculiar confluence of events, I've been thinking more about my personal consumption habits; have been reading more about the ways we can rethink our energy sources, and about how we can (and should) restructure our country's approach to food and farming.

The meditation on personal consumption habits was brought about as I cleaned Uncle Stretch's kitchen last weekend.  He had, for a washrag, the top of an old tube sock.  At first, that struck me as amusing (especially since it wasn't the cleanest tube sock I'd ever seen).  But the more I thought about that repurposed sock, the more I realized it wasn't at all silly.

Why not use an item which was designed to absorb water, had ribs that could be used for light-duty scrubbing, and could be easily and safely cleaned for reuse rather than purchase throw-away sponges by the super pack?

It seems so retro.  Something that folks who lived through the Great Depression would do in order to be frugal; a habit that used to be irrelevant to our high-tech, revved up, consumerist lifestyle.  But frugality is something I feel will be coming very much into vogue as we dig our way out of the economic doldroms we splurged our way into...a quaint personal trait will become a positive characteristic.

On a grander scale, there are brighter minds than mine at work on how to rethink our approach to both energy and farming.  Thanks to Cindy, my sister-in-law, I read an excellent article (Farmer in Chief by Michael Pollan), addressed to our president-elect, about those very topics.  The article is well worth reading...but for those who don't have the time, here are some interesting facts from the article:

--Our food system uses the second highest amount of fossil fuels in our economy, trailing only cars in terms of consumption.

--Our farmers are paid to keep fields fallow rather than to plant crops that will replenish the soil and retain moisture.

--By separating the rearing of food animals and the growing of crops, we have inadvertantly created two problems:  Our arable land is growing less fertile and our factory feed-lots are producing literal tons of waste product.

In this last case, the waste products which used to nourish the farmlands, have become pollution.  So rather than having waste equal food, as posited in Cradle to Cradle, we have waste going to "waste" (pun intended) AND causing sickness.

I'm hopeful that Obama (and the folks in Congress) will be willing to step back from the way we've been doing things and take a fresh look; using an engineering and design approach to how we use energy (fuel) and how we create energy (food) for consumption.

In the meantime, I will be continuing my own evolution into a more responsible citizen of this planet.  One small example of a new habit I've picked up is saving scraps of paper (envelopes, receipts, the backs of cards and post-its) to use for note-taking and outlines.  I figure at the rate we get paper in this house, I'll never need to buy another notepad.

I'll continue to inform myself by reading and sharing articles and books about this topic.

And next time a tube sock gets a hole in the toe, it will become part of my rag collection rather than being tossed in the trash. 

Small steps.  Small steps.

 

As regular readers know, I've been steadily modifying my behaviors in order to reduce the impact I make on the earth's (strained) resources.  My efforts have been fairly simple.  I bought and use reusable shopping bags.  I bought and use reusable coffee cups for my Starbucks purchases.  I reuse ziploc bags (after washing them). 

I buy eco-friendly toilet paper, dishwashing liquids, cleaning agents and washing machine detergent.  I use cloth napkins instead of paper and rags instead of paper towels.

Small steps but positive ones. 

But one thing that keeps reverberating in my brain is the assertion by the authors of Cradle to Cradle that "less bad" isn't good enough.  We need to fundamentally rethink the way we do things if we're going to stop trashing the planet.  Literally.

Some of the wasteful things that make me go "hmmm...there has to be a better way" lately are:

--Buying small quantities of food in plastic tubs or glass jars.  (Think whipped cream--nonfat of course, Sally--and peanut butter.)  Shouldn't there be a way we could buy these things and reuse the container?

--Using wooden sticks to stir the sweetener in my reusable coffee cup.  The solution for me is to add the sweetener first, but what else could we do...make the stirrer out of sweeteners?

--Buying vegetables in little plastic wrapped containers that have styrofoam bottoms.  Shouldn't we be able to make a container that can be reused, broken down, repurposed?

--Plastic wrap over my dry cleaning.  Is it necessary?  Do I really care if my dress rubs shoulders with a stranger's jacket?

What are the eco-flubs that make you question?  See any solutions out there?