Welcome to the Commenting Pixie Party!
"How it will all end, I cannot say, but I can tell you that what you are witnessing is The Battle of Wills: Lazy Women Edition." Once again, I snorted water out my nose. When will I learn?
"*Non-whiny addendum: while I was busy maligning him and whining, LG completed a puzzle of the entire 50 states. The whole thing. Naming each state as he placed it in its proper place. Because he knows all of his states. And is now working on his capitals." LG Rocks the house with his brains! Omigod!!!!
Smart boy!
I love the notion of the Lazy Woman Edition of the Battle of the Wills.
You're becoming my motherly role model, you know that?
Just wait. Soon you'll be saying to Baby Blue the kinds of things I've been saying to Matt for years: "Are your legs painted on?" "Do I look like the maid?" "Who do you think is going to pick that up?" "Get it yourself!"
Yeah. All the befores/bad examples in the child-rearing books? We got 'em right here!
"Are your legs painted on?"
Thank you, Kathy! I needed that laugh soooooooo bad.
Rana, if you had any idea how I was taking out my Oil-Drum-related crankiness on my spouse and children today, you would not appoint me as your role model for ANYTHING. Unless you are looking for a Useless Cranky Angst role model.
He is a genius! 50 states! My gosh!
Ha ha, was LG like that too? Or is it definitely a woman thing? I am desperately thirsty but feeling too lazy to go get water. I am wondering if perhaps a frappuccino will get me going. Hmmmm.
I know this feeling! I spent all weekend trying to find five minutes for myself. But Judu would have none of it.
Hope LG feels like working more puzzles today!
jwb
It's not about postponing the apocalypse (although, if we really could convince enough people to do it, maybe we'd at least reduce some waste. Wouldn't that be nice?). It's more about becoming virtuous so that when the apocalypse happens, I can have a clear conscience. I recognize the irony, but honestly, our country's practices are going to sink us sooner or later. If not peak oil, then global warming or the divide between the rich and the poor. I just don't want to be guilty of following the stagnating status quo just because it's easier.
And in a sense, knowledge is power. Of course we're not going to affect governmental policy, but should you start to see the effects of peak oil (or insert your catastrophe here) in your lifetime, I really think it'll be psychologically easier to take if you're aware of it. I can't speak for the others on the Oil Drum, but that's my goal.
Although, about affecting gov't policy, it's interesting that a number of people who run peak oil websites were targeted by Rep. Jay Inslee (WA) who's trying to draft a new energy and conservation bill. Apparently people in the gov't are reading our websites, and even if it's not because of us that they're writing bills, they want us to know. I found that pretty heartening.
Why, hello, Ianqui. Welcome to the commenting pixie party. Sorry that it's a cranky edition today.
Let me see if I can (read: my children will stay interested in the TV long enough to allow me to) articulate what is making me so cranky about all this.
First of all, I certainly believe that all these catastrophes (and some other good ones, like bird flu) are just around the corner. Perhaps my knowledge of them will allow me to be better prepared -- both psychologically and materially -- for them when they actually occur. But my inability to translate my knowledge into any sort of power to PREVENT the catastrophes from taking place makes me gnash my teeth in despair. I can't help it -- I hang out with public-health types. It's all about prevention!
I don't dispute that you are reaching decision-makers in the federal government, and thank god that you are! But I am not a decision-maker, and there is very, very little that I can do to induce change at the structural level where it is most required.
As far as making personal decisions that reduce mine and my family's use of resources, I have been doing that for years. Close to public transportation? Check. Small house that requires fewer resources to heat/cool/furnish? Check. Walk to daily destinations? Check. Buy produce at farmer's markets when possible? Check. Guilt and groceries? I'm already all over that.
Have these and other decisions I've made helped to make the world a better place? I don't see it. It makes it cheaper for me, sure, but does it improve the lot of the commons? Not as far as I can tell.
I wish I could comfort myself that I will feel more virtuous when the catastrophe comes. I will not. Can I explain why?... That might be a separate post....
I think that you will end up feeling more virtuous, since you already have some of the tools necessary to whether crisis (again, should it happen in our lifetimes). That you live in a place where there's already public trasnportation and local farmers will help make things easier for you. People who live in suburban sprawl in a huge house far from any community or farmer's market will be in bigger trouble than you and your family.
I know, it seems futile to me a lot of times too. And NYC is not going to be sustainable in the long run, so I can't even shore myself up with the resources of my community. But I think you really do have to believe.
Truth is that I never meant to become a crusader for this kind of stuff, but I got caught up in it. And I feel like some people really have been affected. So if I've affected 10 people, and they go an affect 10 more people, maybe, just maybe something will change. It definitely won't change if we do nothing, but as long as we don't get our hopes up too high, it can't hurt to try.
(PS: I mentioned this post to prof goose, so he might come over too. I definitely don't mean to be sicing the oil drum on you, especially since you obviously are on our side, so to speak. I just wanted to give you advance warning 
.
Oh, you Oil Drum folks are always welcome. (Prof Goose and Heading Out have been here before, for this.) I am most certainly on your side. It's just that I feel so hopeless, and helpless, and then pissed at myself for taking out my hopeless/helplessness on my poor kids and husband. Definitely not making the world a better place by making them miserable!
Yeah, as you can see, I'm a little behind on the blogroll...
First, LOVE that smartypants of yours. Such the little egghead/stand-up comedian.
Second, your Power is power, and I don't have any paragraph, as well as Ianqui's suggestions, are why I like Voltaire's Candide so much. Maybe it's hard to change the world in big ways overnight, but I'm cultivating my own damn garden (garden, family, neighbhorhood, etc.). And if all of us right-thinking (not right-leaning) people would do that, I think we'd accomplish quite a lot.
Or maybe I'm hopelessly naive (she said, eagerly anticipating tomorrow's primary elections...).
You know, I get the sense of despair and being too small to matter. And, yes, it's really a problem that demands large-scale solutions by big entities with money and resources; it's not going to be solved by individuals acting in small ways.
But I think I get what Ianqui's saying -- that even if this doesn't have a direct practical effect on the overall problem, it does have small yet important effects on how one looks at it. If nothing else, you are modeling for BB and LG a life that doesn't depend in essential ways on a Big Oil system. And your neighbors and friends and the clerk at the grocery store are also affected -- in ways that they would not if you didn't make the effort.
It's nice to know that my presence isn't dreaded.
This is actually ridiculously on point with what I have been thinking about lately...
Collective action takes individuals that are willing to perform positive actions for a purpose. I've talked about this a lot lately, because usually, like the 72 year old who doesn't pay to join AARP but still gets the benefits of their lobbying government and the golden (insert state here) care, people are prone to "free ride" on the efforts of others.
I've been very hesitant to "call for action" because of exactly the frustration you're feeling, PS. There's no visible benefit to changing your light bulb. It's an intangible. And usually, unless people are motivated by the logic of a cause, something intangible isn't going to get, or more importantly keep, them active.
That's why these small things than Ianqui's been talking about can postpone the inevitable...make society come in for a softer landing.
Rana's right...see?
You all are right, of course. But there's this little part of me that says, "Well, we're all going to be equally fucked when the time comes -- those who made an effort and those who didn't -- so why not live it up now, while we can?"
I'm not proud of that little part of me, but I might as well admit that it's there. Because they're not going to hand out medals to those of us who drove fuel-efficient cars, or became vegetarians, or did without voluntarily.
I guess that's why I'm only taking the steps that my natural inclinations lean towards anyway -- choosing a walking community, buying local and organic produce when possible, etc. Because if I do things that I don't want to do now -- like giving up nightly trips to the ice cream shop (driving, plastic containers) -- I'll just be more resentful later, when none of us have choices anymore.
On the light bulb issue, by the way, does anyone know if there is still mercury in the fluorescent bulbs? Because my number #1 reason for not buying them anymore is that it makes me nervous to store used mercury-containing light bulbs in the basement while we wait for our town's once-a-year hazardous waste day.
Wow. I'm with you, mostly, Phantom, in that I've not seen any good come of my choices/sacrifices. And I'm particularly angry with political parties (but that is a whole other subject, really), and have just opted out.
I think you do what you're comfortable with, and that's all you can do.
And what a smarty you have for a kid! Amazing. And BB is well on her way to developing some killer skills.
If you ever come back, Ianqui, I just left a comment here. It was the cereal that made me cranky!
Wait! I'm not done.
Yes, I also agree with the living it up now thing. I tend to apply that to outrageous, sporadic things like taking a trip to Mexico this summer (I'll start local vacations later, when I have kids and can't travel far anyway.)
I think you'd probably agree that buying local and organic or putting in fluorescent bulbs aren't really sacrifices, but if everyone did them we'd be so much better off. Even becoming vegetarian wasn't at all a sacrifice for me, but I'm respectful of others on this one (even if I gently promote organic meat).
So yeah, I don't advocate living in a solar house in the woods and subsisting only off of your own garden. I just want us to do the little things, to keep us conscious of what's going on out there.
Awww, but whining is fun once in a while.
Why *don't* you advocate living in a solar house in the woods? No, I'm serious. I live in Oregon and there actually are solar houses in the woods here, in fact there's a series of solar duplexes just down the street from me. But solar is expensive and no one understands it, so even in sunny Central Oregon very few houses have solar.
But that's not what I meant to say. I meant to say: why *don't* you advocate more extreme measures than make people comfortable?
ps Yes I'm up late again. It's the only way I can write/read in peace!
Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about last week--the environmental movement is all stick, no carrot, and people (most of them) cant' be motivated by fear and guilt on any sort of practical, long-term basis.
WE NEED CARROTS.
It sounds like you, Phantom, desperately need a few carrots. As you say--if it constantly feels like you're sacrificing and other people will benefit and in the long-run we'll all be equally screwed, it's hard to keep up fighting the good fight. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the bioregionalism and deep ecology stuff didn't work for you--what do you think would?
Is there something out there, some positive vision of the world in the future, you think you could work *for*, instead of a terrible future world to run away *from*?
Bioregionalism certainly does work for me, but I don't see any clear path to work "toward" it, besides making the same individual choices that I make on a daily basis anyway -- privileging New England and other Northeastern states (and the Maritimes!) when purchasing products, food, and services. Again, I don't see my individual choices doing anything to affect the structures of society. The rhetoric of democracy notwithstanding, my sense is that ultimately the choices that will shape what a post-oil world will look like are far removed from my hands. Feel free to convince me otherwise, though, Andrea! I'd be a lot less cranky if you could.
Jennifer, I think the Oil Drum folks would say that, though it certainly benefits the current owners of solar homes (though maybe it doesn't benefit the woods in which those homes are built), solar is not ultimately a solution to the energy crisis because the production of solar panels requires fossil fuels. In other words, if we ALL got ourselves solar panels, it would take a tremendous amount of fossil fuels (and other rare materials) to produce them for us.
Not to mention that they wouldn't do us much good at least 60% of the time here in damp-n-cloudy Massachusetts...
PS's response about the solar houses is certainly part of it. I mean, in general, living in isolation in the woods is a bad idea because humans need community to provide one another with the services to live our lives. Mixed-use small cities are the way to go (I like NYC, but it's too big, too monolithic. I'd prefer a smaller city.)
The reason I don't advocate us all becoming survivalists is because I'm not a wacky doomsayer. I don't want to turn back all of our technological progress, and I want to benefit from it too. I just wish that everyone would do their part to flatten out the oil peak and allow us time to develop alternative energy sources. Decreasing imported foods, using energy efficient lighting and heating (including the occasional solar panel!), moving out of the suburbs and into more densely populated areas would all benefit society while allowing us to live the lifestyles we're used to.
Well, that's a complicated subject. I have an answer but it's a really long-winded one, so I'll try to get it up on Beanie Baby in the next day or two.
I definitely understand the "why should I sacrifice if we're all gonna get screwed" mentality.
I guess the thing is, I don't see most of my environmentally friendly activities as sacrifices. I prefer using cloth bags, because they don't hurt my shoulder, don't break, and don't fill up my drawers. I still end up with enough plastic bags from the times I forget to use for my garbage; that's all they're good for. Organic food is expensive (though not as much as some people think -- you have to shop carefully), but most of it I simply _like_ better than its mainstream equivalents. I hate changing light bulbs, so having fluorescents is great! (Plus they're probably helping me afford the organic food.) I'd much rather walk or ride my bike to work/stores/school than drive, and I love commuter trains when they are available. I am pleased that my car gets good mileage, because that means I don't have to spend as much on gas, or visit the gas station as often...
And so on. I'm certainly not perfect, and I know that some of my acceptance of these things is based on _learning_ to prefer them, but there's also a lot that is just so much easier and _nicer_ than the "bad" alternatives (organic cotton cloth without commercial sizers? mmmm!) that I have trouble understanding why anyone would _not_ make that choice.
Well, except for the expense. But I'm usually willing to wait until I can afford nicer things, rather than buying the cheapo version right away. (Not always, but for most things.)
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