Green Options

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Early pioneers of the green movement must be conflicted: Their message has been heard and the green movement has seeped into every facet of our lives, from cars to buildings to food.  But with the movement’s popularity has come what many see as a hijacking of green sensibilities by people and companies who are trying to sell their products, many of which are either only marginally green or completely unnecessary. If the goal is to leave a smaller carbon footprint, to reduce waste, or to conserve energy or resources, we should buy fewer products, not more.

Let’s not start demonizing the corporations, especially those who have advanced conservationism through energy and fuel saving technologies, new environmentally-friendly products at lower prices, and new ways to recycle.  It’s no coincidence that the popularity of the green movement increased dramatically when corporations began to adopt - and promote - green practices.  Conservationism cannot be seen as the enemy of consumerism, but rather a lens through which to view it.

Pear pie. Pear ginger muffins. Pear cordials made from aging pears, sugar and vodka. Pears canned in sugar syrup. Pear jam.

When Mary calls me every year at the end of August with her annual message of “The tree is ripe – come pick,” I turn into the Bubba Gump of pears, gratefully using the four bushels of pears I harvest off her abundant backyard tree.

As the country whines about escalating food prices, there’s often rotten apples falling from some tree near you. Or pears, plums – name your fruit. You know the tree I’m talking about – the one you pass by every day in someone’s yard that is practically falling over with ripe fruit and you think to yourself, “Someone needs to do something with that.” How true – and that “someone” is you.

Talk about a sustainable homerun: By connecting with and harvesting a local fruit tree, you not only garner more organic, fresh, local fruit booty than you know what to do with – and put something to use that would otherwise have gone to waste. You build community by connecting with others. We’re talking community at its core, most sustainable essence, sharing abundance with others, relishing the gifts of the land.

Step up to the plate – or bushel – and tap into these unwanted fruit on trees in backyards across the nation that could be making the world a better place through more pie – or jam or cobblers or muffins – you get the picture.

Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you:

Last week I wrote about how much of my hard work when I toiled away for a large advertising agency (definitely NOT sustainability-minded) ended up contributing to the problems facing humanity. It didn’t get me much further ahead financially, either.

When I think about sustainability, I’ve come to the conclusion it needs to be something that’s holistic and inclusive of both my life AND my career, livelihood, or, if you must, “job.” It doesn’t make much sustainability sense [...]

For several years, my wife and I worked hard for the money at a job with a full service ad agency. Every year, however, we kept coming out on the short end of the stick: working longer hours, living with more stress, securing less net income to cover our mounting expenses. A recent New York Times article echoed the reality we felt more than a decade ago. According to their research drawing from data from the US Labor Department, employee wages are the lowest share of Gross Domestic Product since 1947, with the median hourly wage after factoring in inflation for American workers declining about 2 percent since 2003. Only the top percentile income earners have prospered while the rest of us whither under rising food and energy prices (and soon, rising prices for just about everything else). According to Census Bureau reports cited by the New York Times, the median pay among American workers is about the same, after accounting for inflation, as in 1973.

Besides helping sell products of questionable societal value (and with plenty of negative social and ecological impacts), we kissed off corporate America after just a few years on the treadmill to nowhere. Now we operate a diversified family-scaled, small business based on an organic farm powered by the wind and sun. We use our profits to make the world a better place and have built our business around our passions.

The main requirement of a for-profit business is to make profits, at least once every three years says the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). No requirement specifies how much profit must be made, just some. That’s the big difference between a hobby, where generating revenue is not the primary goal of the activity, and a business. There is no such thing as a “hobby business.” The non-profit business, formed as a special type of corporation depending on its purpose, uses revenues collected to fund its mission, whether it’s saving open space or planting trees around the world to help mitigate the effects of global warming, provide nature-enhancing livelihoods and prevent soil erosion like Trees for the Future does.

As my wife and I explore at length in ECOpreneuring and in my blogs, we approach our passions — writing, photography, hosting people at Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and desiring to restore the planet — not as hobbies, but as business enterprises. You can blog on the Internet about growing in your garden, or you can write articles about growing food organically in your garden for Hobby Farm Home magazine and blog for GreenOptions.com. One’s a hobby; one’s a business and provides income from writing about something you love.

This is a critical time for those who are passionate about America’s increased interest in energy issues. While potential relief at the gas pump is favorable, it is concerning to note how quickly interest in conserving energy can wane. We must continue to keep energy issues on the forefront of the pending election as well as in front of all of our elected officials in the days and months to come.

I went to Northern California recently on a business trip.  I got too much done.  Meetings, work sessions, proposals, emails, conference calls, and a few very memorable dinners. Four cities in just as many days. Before returning to San Francisco, I stayed with a friend in a small town up north. One sunny morning I decided to explore the area, so I asked her what there is to do.  Knowing me, she told me there’s a nice walking trail.  I could walk there or drive.  Well that was a no-brainer, of course I’d walk.

But I got thrown totally off track.  What I expected to be a calm, relaxing, reflective stroll beneath California oaks, turned into a passionate, ecstatic, breathless plunge into excesses the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in years.  It took my breath away, melted all self-control, and spun my world halfway round.

Oh, shame on you for thinking naughty thoughts.  It wasn’t the Adonis of the Litoral I encountered on the path (sorry gals… !)  It was an unassuming blackberry sprig.  Peeking out from the dried grasses along the edge of the path.  Winking at me in the sun.  I winked back, then looked around.  Is it legal to pick a blackberry here? I walked past it, choosing planetary well-being over my own base desires.  That’s probably the only blackberry sprig on this trail, and how awful would it be if I picked it rather than leave it for the birds or animals trying to earn an honest local living.

There are seven deadly sins. I can’t rattle them off to you but I’ll apologize in advance, because I’m fairly certain I’m guilty of some many most of them. With that being said I have two children and an obligation to turn them into stewards of the Earth. My children (like yours) are kind little people, but they have a propensity towards gluttony.

The common thread with families who conserve is that they’re part of a community and their children have a sense of obligation. Children are born narcissists and can evolve into selfish beings or amazing, giving and inspired members of our society.

How do we grow them up green?

Perhaps no one knows better than I do what it means to take individual responsibility for my environmental impact.  For those of you familiar with my blog, you know that for the past three months, I have been trying to live 100% environmentally sustainably within urban Pittsburgh.  A formidable task, indeed.

In Robin Shreeve’s provocative article, “Whose Responsibility is Sustainable Consumerism?”, she champions the youngest generation’s recognition that the responsibility for our actions lies with us individually, not mainly with corporations.  Three months ago, I would have toasted to her conclusion.  (Of course, I then believed we don’t need corporations whatsoever and we could live without them and be sustainable.)  Today, however, my reaction to Robin’s article is different.  I’m inclined to deeply disagree.

During the sustainable living experiment called the Sust Enable Film Project (which concludes by midnight today), I would argue that I succeeded in living sustainably less than a dozen days of the 3-month project.  Does this fact disappoint me?  At first, it did.  But I will tell you why my experiment failed.

There are systems in the United States–for getting food, for getting rid of our trash, for flushing away our body wastes–that collectively (and historically), we have all agreed to adopt and abide by.  They seem(ed) like the best solutions for problems we all face, and as a society (through the government) wereinforce these systems.  This was clear to me every time I flushed a public toilet, and another huge chunk was subtracted from my sustainable water use for the day.  This became even clearer when I learned that many sustainable living methods–such as dumpster diving, squatting, and building a composting toilet–are outright illegal in many towns.

Doing something illegal (like dumpster diving) if it seems right to you… that’s one thing.  Civil disobedience: often harmless, functional, and a true expression of freedom.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But going hungry because the society-subverting alternatives are more difficult, demanding or have greater consequences than the unsustainable, mainstream options?

We need to change the ECOnomic “story” that Wall Street, Washington DC politicos, and our capitalist culture of consumption are weaving.

We need to find a more sensible appoach to economics — call it ECOmonics — that doesn’t require infinite growth on a finite planet. For Earth’s sake and our sake, we need to get to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Quickly. Many of us, either as conserving customers or ecopreneurs, are already well on our way to helping make it so.

We’re reaching a point where the “More, Bigger, Faster” mode of economic activity — often at complete odds with social justice and ecological realities of a finite Earth system — must change. It is changing, by ecopreneurs who are determined NOT to destroy the planet or exploit people in the process. Like us, many green business owners are small sizing our operations to provide optimal control over our impacts. An egg is still an egg, one of the most complete forms of protein you can fry up in a pan, regardless of its size.

Our present growth-obsessed, global, capitalistic economic “story” seems broken when 5-percent of the world’s people uses 25-percent of its resources, produces 40-percent of the waste and, interestingly on the social side, houses 25-percent of the prison population.

One of the frequently repeated canons in the anti-nuclear catechism is that nuclear fission is irrelevant to any discussion about oil supplies or oil prices. The offered reasons for that dismissal is that nuclear fission is generally thought to be limited to large scale electrical power production, and oil is generally used as vehicle fuel. The problem with that notion is that it misses a huge, historical trend, and it also ignores the market reality in several remaining locations.

The US Energy Information Agency does a fine job of keeping statistical records of energy sources - though its predictive arm has had some real miscues over the years. The graph associated with this article provides a picture illustrates that the use of oil for electricity in the US may be small now, but that is because it was replaced by nuclear fission during the growth years in the 1970s and 1980s.

A survey by the National Association of Home Builders highlights the features that owners are most interested in when it comes to green homes.