"Were You A Good Girl This Year?"

"He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows if you're awake,
He knows if you've been bad or good..."
so...?

"Do you think Santa's coming tonight?"
"I dunno."
"Why not? Were you a good girl this year?"
"Not really."
"No?"
"Well I was mean to my Grandma and my dog, and I called my mom an 'idiot' a bunch of times."


This surprising and refreshingly honest confession came to me from my 4-year-old niece this past Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is when young children take stock of their transgressions (as is New Years Day for adults) and they ponder whether a certain fat man will eat their cookies and leave presents. As soon as this question came out of my mouth, however, I felt like I really had no right to ask it, because I don't really think that I've been a very good girl this year either.


Unintended Consequences
A few years ago I saw James Howard Kunstler speak about what he calls, "The Long Emergency." In summary, The Long Emergency is the coming challenges the developed world will face with declining world-wide production of petroleum, as demand for it inexorably increases. This will have ramifications in cost of goods, food production, transportation, manufacturing, home heating, and just about everything else that makes the developed world, well…developed. This, in combination with global climate change, means that relatively rapid changes in our behaviour and attitudes will be required. These are not easy changes either. These are changes like reduced air travel, fewer food choices, more expensive everything. Curmudgeon that I am, I don't think that the majority of the population will go there smilingly.

The unintended consequence of becoming familiar with The Long Emergency is that I am becoming more of a carbon hog than ever. Me, the long-term bike commuter, vegetarian, Carter-freezing-in-the-dark kWh miser, "close the damn refrigerator", and local-foodie. My dream list of things-to-do-before-I-die includes a lot of travel. Places like: Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, Botswana, cross-Canada in a Westfalia (tick this one off) will not be practically affordable in the future. Combined with my health, I'm thinking "Let's go NOW!" Which also translates into "Let's use up as much petroleum as we can before others catch on that we're on the downslide from Peak Oil," or "Let's race to the bottom of the well," or, let's face it, "Let's trash the planet."

Sliding to the bottom

Lori's carbon emissions for 2009:

• Flight to U.S.A. for Christmas: 0.5 Tonnes (metric tonnes) CO2
• One half of 4-month cross-Canada Westfalia travel: 3.35 Tonnes CO2
• Other Westfalia usage: 0.40 Tonnes CO2
• Honda Civic local usage: 0.13 Tonnes CO2
• One half of household energy usage (11,400 kWh/2): 0.11 Tonnes CO2
• Etc (food, purchases etc.): 3.13*
• Total: 7.62 Tonnes CO2

We are considering retrofitting our home to become energy neutral, but our home energy use pales in comparison to our travel.

Even Gingerbread Houses Aren't Net Zero

While I was in the US I had a meeting with a designer/facilitator/innovator of net-zero energy homes. He flew to Washington DC and China this year to launch a new program for retrofitting existing building stock in the U.S. Jack is constantly flying to various places in Canada to teach people about LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design.) A fellow Bike to Work director just got home from Hawaii.

None of us have been very good this year. So what can I say about my behaviour?
"Santa, I was a pretty good girl, will you bring me a new planet?"

or maybe I just get a $100,000 Tesla

*Per http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

at the end of the day it IS all about her...

Drumheller – Please Don’t Feed the Dinosaurs

I didn’t expect to have such an emotional experience in a place like Drumheller. We spent the day at the Royal Tyrell Museum, which houses one of the world’s largest displays of dinosaurs. I found myself inspired by the minds that were able to piece together their discoveries. These paleontologists are able to define the history of life on earth mostly by squatting on their haunches, ripping their jeans, being bitten by no-see-ums, while digging holes in large rocks using a toothbrush. The museum itself inspires their visitors to think. Parents teach their kids, the kids teach their parents. Everyone is thinking and asking questions: How did this dinosaur eat? Why were their front arms so small? Do you think it ate meat? How did they make this model? Is this really bone or is it petrified? Do you think it’s a baby or just a small dinosaur? How long is a million years?

The Tyrell museum gives us the opportunity to see all this magic in the miracle of life forming before us. Seeing this, as well as our ability as humans to fathom millions of years of history, I couldn’t help but be horrified at our current blatant disregard of life on earth. Even in the museum itself the amount of waste created by the visitors is a bit depressing. It’s our one and only planet. The Tyrell covers the time since life took hold on this planet and that’s over 500 million years ago. According to Google, the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the sun will turn into a pumpkin (red giant -whatever) when it’s about 5 billion years old. In other words, we don’t get do-overs. It’s particularly puzzling when you see one of the exhibits is sponsored by Esso, as climate change looms as one of the most threatening challenges to all species on our little blue sphere. (Although seeing them associated with dinosaurs has some relevance.)

The staff and messaging in the Tyrell kept emphasizing the importance of science, and how everything in the museum was science based. I thought it was a bit unnecessary and obvious until I realize the context of the location in Alberta. Rural communities hold close to their religious ties, and this seems to be true in Canada as well as the States.

Travelling thru Alberta during the greenest time of year, however, is a wonderful experience of birth and new life. The crops are going crazy. The calves are running around while they can before sedate steerdom sets in. If you can forget than most of that canola is Monsanto’s ‘Round-Up Ready’ seed, the yellow in the canola fields is dazzling. So my thoughts keep going from polar opposites that won’t come together any more than two magnets with the same charge. Now I know how there can be something called "bipolar" disorder.