Globally Green Living

The newest Wal-Mart strategy is to become kinder on the environment. They want to eventually become neutral. They have started pressuring their suppliers to reduce waste and they want to use renewable energy in their stores among other things. And truth be told, their headquarters are not by any means lavish as some other companies’.

Most environmentalists are very critical of this retailer giant but oddly, it might take a giant to make a difference. And that is not such a bad thing. Like one of my professors used to say, “carry on…”

I have said here before that one way to save money and the environment is to drive less, but let me expand on the subject. I work at a university where parking is a little bit of an issue. A parking permit is actually a hunting permit for a parking spot. I’m too cheap to pay for it, although it is really not that expensive if you consider that it’s an annual fee. Anyway, I just park in the street about 10-15 minutes from campus. This way I get a little bit of a morning walk and a little bit of an evening walk, which relaxes me, saves money on parking, and saves gas. And by being farther away from the campus I have to deal with less pedestrians crossing crosswalks and I also avoid some of the rush hour traffic. Everyone wins…

But my office mate is the lucky one. He lives in an apartment complex, so he just takes one of the free buses that stop at his complex and serve the university. While on the bus he can read or just relax while being taken to work. I wish there was a bus that served my area. I figure that that would save me about $100/month. With the savings of $1,200 a year you can go on a pretty decent mini vacation.

Every once in a while on my way to work I find things that people are trying to rid of and that are left on the curb. Actually, the same goes for my evening and morning walks with my dog. I have found a metal and hemp coffee table, a fold up metal plant rack, and a framed poster of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. One day I found a nice glass that I use in the office as a plant holder.

Speaking of plants, one of the departments in my office building put some dying spider plants out in the hall. They looked pretty shabby but the only thing that was wrong with them was lack of water. I adopted these plants and they have been doing double duty beautifying the office and removing toxins from the air. They look really vibrant and they just need to be watered once or twice a week. Oh, and when someone visits the office I always get compliments, which is a real mood booster…

A few years back I just got really amazed at how much stuff comes from China. How can it be that so many things can be made in China then shipped across the world and be sold at unbeatable prices?

The answer is simple. To cut costs you must sacrifice things like labor costs and pollution control. But it gets better. The negative impact on the environment of the Chinese modus operandi is so high that if one were to adjust China’s GDP growth rate, it would drop 5.8% to 3%. This drop represented a cost of $67 billion in 2004! At a 3% growth rate, China hardly would be an economic miracle.

But rates are rather elusive units of measurement. Let’s look at some hard numbers. For example, “Chinese environmental experts, estimated that annual premature deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution were likely to reach 380,000 in 2010 and 550,000 in 2020.” Water related pollution caused an estimated 750,000 deaths annually in China. That’s over one million people every year just from water and air!!!

The situation is so bleak that the athletes in the 2008 Olympic games will probably perform below par because the air in Beijing is so polluted.

What to do, what to do?… Pollute less, I guess. But the Chinese government is worried that that might dampen the fabulous Chinese economic growth. So, as I see it, the issue boils down to: do you want to be poor in a clean environment or would you rather have a little bit of money in an environment that could kill you?

The folks at AT&T must have been asleep at the wheel when they decided to send out the iPhone bills. Did it not cross their minds that they would be ridiculed for sending 300-page-long bills? Did they not think that they would be accused of killing too many trees? Oh, yeah, it also costs fuel to ship out all those bills and ink to print them and cardboard boxes to mail them in… Really! Is it possible that none of these high paid managers thought about that?

is the way people ask the government what it is doing with their money. It is rather different than the way the government is treated in Southern Europe, where I grew up. There, people just ask the government for money: a subsidy for this, support for that, etc. The funny thing is that Southern Europeans fail to realize that for their to be more support from the government, more taxes need to be paid and less tax evasion needs to happen. Maybe that type of behavior is a relic from the monarchic regimes…

It is rather surprising, then, to see Americans behave as Southern Europeans in the energy debate. It does not dawn on Americans that there is a consumption problem. The government can kick and scream and lower the price of gas all they want but until we handle consumption behavior, we will not find a suitable solution.

So, I quite enjoyed reading one of the contributions of a reader to a CNN energy report. The reader said “Americans are blind.” Such a simple thought and yet so true. And to think that when President Bush was first elected, he dismissed the energy problem. It’s too tempting to not say that had Gore been elected, we’d be further ahead solving the energy problem. But maybe someone else will come along to offer a simple and efficient solution. Let’s just hope that we don’t laugh in their face and call them crazy and a tree hugger like we did to Gore.

During today’s evening walk, Alfred and I had the pleasure of observing dusk setting. And since we’re a couple of nosy bees we also observed how many lights were on in each house. That’s when it hit me that there were no lights or TVs on at our place. Thus another benefit of walking is that you’re not at home using up electricity. It might not be much but if more people and dogs (frogs too, occasionally…) did it, it would add up to a significant amount. Every little bit counts…

Humans sure are interesting creatures. Perhaps we are the only species who can really use reason to try to prevent an undesirable outcome instead of simply learning from past mistakes.

There are a bunch of smart people out there, scientists they are called, who think that the human effect on nature and future weather is too strong to ignore. They don’t think that any of these big storms–the Katrinas, Ritas and Deans of the world,– are necessarily connected to this effect but in the future it is likely that we may see more of them. We have had this information since before the big storms happened with alarming frequency, meaning we were warned in much advance.

Did we do anything about it? Not really! It takes destruction and death for us to do anything about it. That’s OK, some people say because humans adapt! Sure we do but those that don’t die. That’s why we have epidemics where millions of people die in a short amount of time. Do these adaptation-promoting epidemics mean that we should stop doing research trying to find vaccines and cures for incurable ailments? No! Well, then why should we stop spending our resources trying to figure out global warming and other global externalities? Why does it take people dying to make us pay attention?

I often think about the absurdity of someone paying a gym to go walk on a treadmill and then circling around the mall parking lot trying to find the closest parking possible. Why not park the farthest away? And while you’re at it start parking on the farthest spot at work as well. All those little steps add up in at least these many ways:

1. You’ll save money on gas
2. You’ll burn more calories
3. You won’t get as stressed because there are always tons of parking far away
4. You are less likely to hit a pedestrian when you back your car out of the parking spot because there aren’t as many pedestrians farther from the entrance of the store(s)
5. Since you won’t use the treadmill or drive as much, you’ll save fossil fuel
6. You’ll also reduce your carbon dioxide emissions

All of that and possibly more just from one small change!!!

What’s there not to love…

very much, actually! Could this flower be any more perfect? I simply bow to Mother Nature!!!

This gazania (not dahlia) was featured today on the NPR blog “Talking Plants.” Just absolutely breath-taking!!!

Anyone who really knows me well knows that I am a Farmer’s Market nut, a true junkie. I just love going to a place where all the different veggies are laid out and you get to meet people who watched the food that you are buying grow. It’s not that I only eat organic food, far from it. It’s that I equate Farmer’s Market food with well cared for food, and that makes me happy. Even if the farmer uses a little bit of chemical fertilizer here and there, I don’t mind. If a plant is thriving and well cared for, it will resist pests better and one does not need to use pesticides or herbicides.

But all this care has to be paid for and sometimes there is a steep difference in prices at the supermarket and at the Farmer’s Market. I don’t mind paying a higher price for Farmer’s Market food, but sometimes I worry that the price has gotten too high, not because it costs more to the farmer but because the people that demand it are food snobs with extra-money to spend. I know all about market prices and the intersection of supply and demand. But sometimes I wonder if it is the demand that raises the price or if the higher price produces the demand. I mean, if you price your squash as $3.50 are you basically telling people with money that your squash is awesome and it’s so special that it’s worth every penny?

Brazilians think that they’ll be able to save the world from the dwindling oil supplies by producing more ethanol from sugarcane. I guess it would also help if we went on a sugar diet and freed some of our derived demand for sugar cane, thus leaving more to produce ethanol. This sounds excellent because it has other advantages such as:by consuming less sugar, we get skinnier, so we’ll be able to travel in smaller cars. Our weight will also put less strain on the engine, thus fuel efficiency will increase. It’s a win-win deal…

After many dry days and weeks and relentless bright blue skies, the storms greeted us yesterday with a morning rain outpour that lasted a couple of hours. The grim but very welcomed weather came from the west. As Alfred and I drove toward the city to go to the farmer’s market, there was a great dark cloud behind us. I wondered if it would really produce rain and whether I should have grabbed Alfred’s raincoat. I considered going back to the house to get it but decided against it because I did not want to waste gas or time. And so we made it to the city, parked in the Town Center garage and started our weekly market visit.

The first place we went to was to Richard’s to see if there was still any arugula left. It was difficult to maneuver through the crowd and, as always, Alfred wanted to make every dog he met his new best friend, so he was always on the lookout for a good sniff. As soon as I arrived to Richard’s stand I discovered that, unfortunately, no arugula was left and almost all of his bounty was gone. We walked away disappointed but soon enough we did find a different gem–watercress.

Only one farmer sells watercress ($3.50/bag) and this is the first year that I have seen it sold (but I have seen it grow wild in the creek at a local park). I love it because it reminds me of my grandmother who would make me watercress soup. She always told me to make sure I ate it because it was good for my blood. Come to think of it, I think that after my grandmother passed away I lost my interest in soup for many years. My mother’s soup was not offered with as much love or care, I guess…

And then I saw another winner–lettuce. It is nearly impossible to find lettuce at the market these days because the summer has been so hot that if one were to plant it, it would go to seed pretty fast. (Oh how I miss the plump butterhead lettuces that I devoured this spring!!!) But there it was, this crisp looking head of summer lettuce for $2. I approached the crowd waiting to buy flowers, quickly grabbed two $1 bills out of my wallet and offered it to the small, thin lady with white hair, sun-burnt skin, a big open smile and soft spoken voice in exchange for my catch.

(There! my dinner meals for this week were all taken care of: a light salad of greens, onion, cheese and a light vinaigrette accompanied by a cold glass of white wine. For dessert, a square of dark chocolate and a small coffee…)

And all of a sudden the rain came; first slowly, then harder. The crowd dissipated taking shelter under trees and buildings. Alfred and I waited for a while under a building entrance and then headed out to the coffee shop–the only one in town that welcomes dogs! I ordered a small Americano and a brownie and we went and sat at a small table to wait for some friends to arrive. We sat there on our own for almost 20 minutes, observing the rain outside and listening to the band playing in the coffee shop. Alfred was very patient, although he was also adamant about begging for a piece of brownie, but, of course, that request could not be indulged. Luckily, one of the baristas came by and asked if she could pet him and give him a treat. I said yes, and as soon as she approached Alfred holding a big cookie shaped as a bone, he sat down very perky as if saying “Look how well I can sit. Surely I deserve that reward!”

And rewarded he was as the rain continued to pour outside…

Or so it seems. Every time I call someone in Europe I am told of people who are on vacation, many of them at a beach somewhere. Well, I don’t think I will make it to a beach this year, but I still miss it quite a bit. Funny, the way things turn out. When I was a kid and my parents wanted to drive to the beach I was always trying to weasel out of going.

My favorite time at the beach is during the low tide when you have the baby waves come crawling through the sand trying to reach your feet. The sound of the ocean is also fabulous and rather relaxing. And the view, of course, is dazzling. You cannot feel blue after contemplating the blue ocean, can you???

OK, you got me. Sometimes going to the beach is no fun because it is dirty! Courtesy of the previous visitors…

Today when I woke up and tried to fiend something to write about, I found out that there had been an accident with the rescuing efforts in Utah because of a seismic jolt. That makes me very sad because I know that this is not the last time that events like this happen. This is not the last time that miners will be trapped or that rescuer efforts will be challenged. Nature has absolutely no mercy on us. In the global picture, we’re as important as those ants that we accidentally step on without giving it a second thought.