A Dad Moment for Father's Day
Crikey! Do I have to think of everything?
This Dad Moment is in response to more "aaah" responses to An Inconvenient Truth. I repeat, despair is as much a part of the problem as denial. The only acceptable response is action.
That does not mean going somewhere and picketing (burning more fossil fuel in the process), then going home and doing what you always do. Acting means changing your own life, and doing what you can to get other people to change their habits. I thought I'd toss out a few everyday things, large and small, to prime the pump.
I just changed cars. The timing was involuntary, since I had totaled my previous one. Making better mileage a priority wasn't. My new ride has 20 percent better gas mileage than my old one: five gallons a week.
"Only five gallons? AAAAAAH!!!"
Umm...it's not just about me, or you. Assume 100 million people consume five gallons of gas less each week. If you're weak on math, that's 500 million gallons a week less. Makes a difference, doesn't it?
Do you run the water when you brush your teeth? Of course you do, if you're a red-blooded American raised with unlimited water. If you spend two minutes brushing your teeth, you just sent six gallons of water down the drain. Why do you do it? Because your parents did it. Why did they do it? Same reason. You can rinse your brush at start and finish with a pint or so.
Gentlemen, do you run the water whilst you save? See above. You do unless you've been in the Navy or Merchant Marine. There, you discover you can do the same chore with about a pint of water.
Female shaving has never seemed to be a shared activity but I'm sure there's a parallel practice.
Feeding your all-American running water habit at the sink blows off more than fifteen gallons of water a day: enough to give a Somali refugee family more water a day than they've ever had in their lives.
It's about habits. There are the large habits of nations and corporations, and the small ones of millions of individuals, carried on literally thoughtlessly every day.
I could go on. I will, by cracky, if I don't see some evidence that people understand the difference between taking small actions now and pathetic hand-wringing over the failure of large interests to take large actions. As the old environmental saw had it: think globally, act locally.
This Dad Moment is in response to more "aaah" responses to An Inconvenient Truth. I repeat, despair is as much a part of the problem as denial. The only acceptable response is action.
That does not mean going somewhere and picketing (burning more fossil fuel in the process), then going home and doing what you always do. Acting means changing your own life, and doing what you can to get other people to change their habits. I thought I'd toss out a few everyday things, large and small, to prime the pump.
I just changed cars. The timing was involuntary, since I had totaled my previous one. Making better mileage a priority wasn't. My new ride has 20 percent better gas mileage than my old one: five gallons a week.
"Only five gallons? AAAAAAH!!!"
Umm...it's not just about me, or you. Assume 100 million people consume five gallons of gas less each week. If you're weak on math, that's 500 million gallons a week less. Makes a difference, doesn't it?
Do you run the water when you brush your teeth? Of course you do, if you're a red-blooded American raised with unlimited water. If you spend two minutes brushing your teeth, you just sent six gallons of water down the drain. Why do you do it? Because your parents did it. Why did they do it? Same reason. You can rinse your brush at start and finish with a pint or so.
Gentlemen, do you run the water whilst you save? See above. You do unless you've been in the Navy or Merchant Marine. There, you discover you can do the same chore with about a pint of water.
Female shaving has never seemed to be a shared activity but I'm sure there's a parallel practice.
Feeding your all-American running water habit at the sink blows off more than fifteen gallons of water a day: enough to give a Somali refugee family more water a day than they've ever had in their lives.
It's about habits. There are the large habits of nations and corporations, and the small ones of millions of individuals, carried on literally thoughtlessly every day.
I could go on. I will, by cracky, if I don't see some evidence that people understand the difference between taking small actions now and pathetic hand-wringing over the failure of large interests to take large actions. As the old environmental saw had it: think globally, act locally.
posted by Uncle | 12:44
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