A Pocketbook Environmentalist

Last week I discussed my ambivalence about riding my bike to work. It was fairly nice yesterday, but again, I didn't ride to work. I had to return 40lbs of library books. I had a televised commission meeting until 7:30pm, and needed to look presentable. I drove. 

The truth is, I'm really a "Pocketbook Environmentalist." If "being green" benefits my bottom line, or reduces our energy consumption and thus bill, or tastes better, I'm for it. For example:

Now that it's not a frozen pile of dirt, I've begun adding kitchen scraps to the compost pile. I'm probably not "doing it right" but whatever. If we have leftover egg shells, too-old spinach, or anything not meat, I'll dig a hole in the compost pile and bury it. This adds nutrients to the compost, which will be recycled into the garden and landscape beds and produce better flowers and edibles. It positively effects my wallet by letting us keep the smaller garbage bin. 

I farm/ garden, mostly for the pleasure of it. I like cutting flowers from my yard and having fresh arrangements in the house. I like to give them to friends and take them to work. There's no way I could afford huge bouquets every week! And it also reduces the environmental impacts of shipping in exotic flowers for my pleasure.

I "farm" because I like fresh vegetables, to the point of disdaining tomatoes for 10 months of they year because they aren't fresh. Tomatoes just taste so much better right off of the vine! Same for asparagus, sugar snap peas, potatoes, corn... everything. Growing it at home benefits our budget; a $1.27 pack of seeds is much cheaper than buying 15 heads of lettuce. And it means that we don't throw out half a head of lettuce a week. It's great to run out to the garden and snip chives, basil or cilantro for dinner. We usually don't need these herbs in huge quantities, so having just a bit of them available saves us from buying, then throwing out, a bunch of fresh cilantro every time we make fajitas. Of course, growing these at home removes the pesticides, fertilizers, packaging and energy consumption related to transportation from the environmental cycle. 

Plants, "starting" on the front porch, and pillowcases drying in the sunshine.

We also hang most of our clothes to dry after a short spin in the dryer to remove wrinkles. This is a time-tested lesson from my momma. It means you usually don't have to iron things, unless you want them to look really crisp. It also means you run the dryer for 10 minutes instead of 55, thus saving you money (and energy). Our laundry area has a rod useful for hanging shirts and it's usual to see jeans and trousers hanging from the trim work in our hallway. I want to put up a clothesline in the back yard this summer to be able to dry things more regularly. I strung one up between the poles in our kitchen porch this weekend, in the 40 degree sunshine, but the porch roof throws the area into shade by noon and the house protects the area from wind. It took a while to dry our duvet cover, sheets, shams and pillowcases, but 4 hours in the sunshine is a lot cheaper than an hour and a half in the dryer. 

An impromptu clothesline. 

Are there things I feel "environmental guilt" over? Certainly. We could do a better job of recycling our plastics and paper. We should do a better job. You'll note I didn't say that we should recycle our glass, as doing so would have sent DJ into an apoplectic fit. Here's the deal with glass recycling for us in Bozeman: There is a glass crusher in Livingston, then they ship it to Seattle for reuse. By the time that I drive my glass to Livingston, then they ship it to Seattle for reuse, we've used more carbon fuel to "recycle" the glass than it would to produce new glass. Our market is too small for effective glass recycling, so I toss my glass without remorse. 

Except for the beer bottles. My husband home-brews; we can always use beer bottles. 

Paying attention to politics

In the last six months, at the most, I've become increasingly aware of American politics, to the point of considering participation in a manner beyond just voting. Somewhere on the other end of the internet my mom is laughing, for two reasons: 

It seems like since I was young, my parents have treated me on some level as an equal. Maybe they totally faked me out by pretending to include me in a conversation, but they never said "Courtney go away, we're talking about grown up stuff." Instead the let me listen in about their work, our extended families and issues that were important to them. Maybe they didn't know I was listening, but sometimes they'd ask my opinion about whatever their subject of conversation was. My usual answer was "I dunno," to which my dad expressed exasperation at my lack of an opinion. 

By the time I was 20 or so, they wished I'd shut the hell up with my opinions. I had opinions about things I didn't know much about (I now try to keep quiet unless I'm knowledgeable about the subject). 

Probably around the time my opinions formulated my mom suggested I take a political science class. I roundly refused, mostly because my high school government class wasn't my favorite subject. She thought I'd like it, thought it might give me an opportunity to use my people skills and my newfound opinions. In my opinion, I didn't think I would enjoy it and was already getting enough politics from my history major. 

And I spent the bulk of my 20's with only a handful of opinions and stances on political items, mostly the social issues that, for reasons I still can't grasp, have become political.

Sidebar: Isn't there something inconsistent about Republicans saying "I want smaller, less intrusive government" while at the same time saying "Except for you, women. I want to tell you how to run your vagina*"?

But in the last six months, I've become acutely aware of how politics impacts my life. I work in local government, so does my husband, and maybe this kind of exposure brings politics to my attention in ways it doesn't other people. The issues that really seem to get my attention lately though are:

• Healthy food/ farm subsidies. Can someone tell me why we're subsidizing the corporate corn industry to make High Fruitcose Corn syrup, but not small family-owned farms or veggie and fruit growers? 

• Health care. I have a Mother In Law who can't retire, thus freeing up a job to be filled by a younger employee of my generation, because she takes four figures worth of drugs a month to keep her Lukemia at bay. She probably couldn't qualify for health care with her pre-existing condition, and even if she could qualify, she couldn't afford it. Isn't access to health care a basic tenet of a "civilized" first-world country?

• Debt, both on the home front and federally. We paid off our consumer debt last week. We don't live outside of our means, and don't plan to, ever. We live in both a City and a State that despite the Recession, are both currently in the black because of careful budgeting. Why is that impossible to expect from our government? On a more personal level, the debt incurred by college students chasing the dream of an advanced degree to "get ahead in life." I'm lucky to have escaped four years of undergrad and two years of grad school with "only" $24,000 in loans. My monthly payment, on a 10 year repayment plan, is $318. I consider that "not bad"; although I am in a career field where I do not anticipate making over $50,000/ year, ever. But let's see... economists wonder why the generation under 30 can't afford houses or apartments? Uhh... because we're so busy paying off our education! $24,000 would have made a hell of a down payment! And I have friends with liberal arts degrees and twice what I have in debt. 

Those are only three items. I have so many other opinions. But I think it might be getting time to transform my mouthy opinions into action of some sort, I'm just uncertain where to start. 

*Sorry mom. I said vagina on the blogosphere.