mandarine

An announcement

#2 will celebrate its zeroeth birthday sometime around end October.

This is an opportunity to recycle an old post that probably not everybody has read. If you have, you are welcome to read it again.

Introduction

A couple of years ago, I heard a heated argument between my brother-in-law and his cousin. The young mother of three had hinted something about my in-law still being single at age 35+ and having no active plans to found a ‘real family’. The accused righteously retorted that the cultural model of the normal family with kids is slowly drowning our planet in overpopulation, and that his choice was the reasonable one. He was this close to saying something like ‘as far as sustainable development is concerned, having kids amounts to owning a SUV’.

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Mowing is more fun when it allows for some creativity.

I was tagged for this parenting meme. I am afraid I will have to translate some of the questions so that it applies more adequately to my situation. A few context items: I have one son, and he is three and a half.
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Remember how I said people should read much more than they write? Well, I am doing just that at the moment. That and write post upon post for my gardening blog. This leaves me no huge motivation to post here, all the more so that I am under the impression I would be boring people with the same themes all over again.

For those dear readers who would protest they would not be bored, I offer two solutions:

1. I will be recycling old posts - I know I like to read them again. Maybe you will.
2. I strongly recommend you to read George Monbiot’s articles. He writes the things I would like to write. Only he does it much better. And he knows what he is writing about.

[…] why are we still prospecting for fossil fuels when we already have more than we can safely [global warming] burn? The reason is that governments are pursuing two completely different policies. One is to encourage the production of fossil fuels; the other is to discourage their consumption. Until this conflict has resolved our carbon cutting programs will fail. No company extracts fossil fuels as a hobby. Once removed from the ground, they will be burnt whatever demand side policies say. May I propose a new kind of carbon capture and storage, which is geologically stable and guaranteed to work? Leave the damn stuff in the ground.

George Monbiot, as podium speaker in the Nature podcast

Have you ever noticed how we laugh at other people’s supestitions, while we think we are not superstitious ourselves? Some of us find Feng Shue a stupid hassle that comes in the way of home and garden design; some of us eat pork with delight (sometimes with our left hand); most of us skip mass; we can say ‘rabbit’ onboard a boat. And we dismiss any claims that this will bring bad luck, bad spirits, or even hell our way.

And yet we rich westerners fall victim to a very dangerous superstition. A supestition which is destroying the planet, destroying other people’s livelihoods, destroying the livelihood of future generations. We believe that we cannot be happy with less stuff, less comfort, less energy. We sure believe we cannot be happy without a well-paying full-time job, however morally or environmentally or economically questionable said job might be.

All those who have stopped shopping, who have downshifted to a smaller house, who have sold their car will tell you readily: happiness and affluence are totally unrelated. And yet we cling to our stuff and our comfort like barnacles and limpets, and we feel helpless when we find out that our planet is dying, because there’s really nothing we can do about it.

Changing all the lightbulbs or buying a Prius or setting up photovoltaic arrays is OK, because it is about buying new stuff -this fits with our mental frame. But letting go of stuff and habits altogether is something we absolutely dread, unconsciously.

Emily’s challenge is about learning to let go, one finger at a time, so that we can discover not only that it does not cause misery, but it can even bring some feeling of pride (I am prone to this kind of feeling) and achievement. And in any case, it brings exactly the same kind of relief as when one unpacks after a long flight and finds out one had forgotten the anti-crash amulet home: we are still alive and well, regardless of what TV commercials want us to believe.

Emily’s ecojustice challenge is good for you. Everybody else does it. You’ll feel bad if you don’t. Do it now.