If I Were Serious...

If I were serious about a smaller carbon footprint, there is so much more I could do -- and yet, some of it really feels beside the point.

I could stop using paper towels, change from plastic to glass for food storage and abandon plastic bags; I could combine projects that use the oven, and I could maintain the thermostat at a lower level in winter. I could dry more clothes in air. I could be more careful to buy things that come from nearer rather than farther. But how good is that?

Already I live in a small, well-insulated space that's really close to where I work. I use the lightbulbs. I do run a computer, but not a television set. I don't have to drive to work, to the laundromat, or to the grocery store. I even don't have to drive to the movies, the hardware store, the doctor's, etc., etc. I do have to drive to see my friends, but I'm starting to have friends here, too, my home since August of this year. I do have to drive to professional meetings, because we are not thick on the ground in this part of the world -- that could change, but it won't be soon!

Mainly, I could stop riding on airplanes. When I took a couple of on-line carbon footprint inventories, it was sobering to realize how much that adds to the weight of CO2 I contribute. That's because I live really far away from my family, and if I want to see them, I pretty much have to fly. Maybe there's another way to handle this, but that will take time.

So it comes down to this: it's time for me to pay attention to the systems that spout carbon on my behalf. Electricity. Transportation systems. Urban design. The economy itself, based as it is on "consumer spending," which basically means moving materials from one place to another, using energy to convert materials from one form to another, packaging stuff and packaging the packages

Not just my own personal choices, but the bigger choices we all make together or someone makes for us. I'm sure of it: we can have a really nice life and use a whole lot less stuff, move a whole lot less of it from place to place, the whole nine yards. It's time to start imagining it, and I feel really old to be starting. But let's. Now is the time we have.