I just saw a car commercial where they make fun of a guy using VR, calling him a loser, while the handsome guy and his gorgeous GF rush off into the wilds in their new SUV. It’s kind of strange to think in most ways I agree with the message and certainly would have been behind such a thing ten years ago, but now, with all my current knowledge, I can’t help but think things such as, “Those nature lovers will pollute as much as VR guy does in an hour during their first 2 minutes of driving.”
Maybe it’s bad for my mental health, but I can’t help but notice all these things now.
Some of the most environmentally minded people I’m friends with happily fly across the USA several times a year without blinking.
People I know with solar panels on their house, who drive electric vehicles, get pissy when they find out someone is coming to their dinner party who refuses to eat beef.
I write a bunch of environmentally based WildernessPunk articles about pollution all summer, but then drive my family to Colorado.
I’ve talked about some of these issues before, such as we all have our little pet projects which make us feel better about ourselves and remove our guilt while perhaps making us feel superior to our neighbor. One of mine has always been bike riding. Yep, I rode my bike throughout six full winters in Flagstaff. Four of those while owning a Forerunner. Sure, that’s cool, but does it cancel out the air conditioning I now use in Tucson? Maybe it bought me some good karma, but it’s getting eaten up quick.
I’m not trying to come down on people for doing something I do myself. I’m more interested in investigating the phenomenon of why our minds work this way. Why do some of the most environmentally minded people I know disregard their knowledge and goals so quickly when it comes to their own behavior and needs?
Sure, driving is one of the worst things I can do to the environment, but I have kids and of course I need to get to work. What do you want me to carry a dozen bags of groceries on my back for two miles? Get real…
Of course, one plane flight equals the yearly United Nation’s goal for what a single person should be polluting in an entire year, but I’m not just going to blow off taking a vacation.
I’m an environmentalist, but my daughter is just being crazy when she says she wants to be a vegetarian.
Why is it so easy for us to disregard our own ethics and knowledge? “We all need to stop driving so much, but of course I’m not going to blow off my road trip.” Why are the vast majority of people like this? Are we all just exceedingly selfish? Do we think these rules apply to everyone but us?
Some people want to blame the government or corporations. But how many people do you know who are saying, “Thank goodness the gas prices are going up, this is probably cutting down on a lot of pollution.” Sure, the billionaires and the gridlocked governments could be doing more, but only a naïve idealist should be waiting for them to kick anything into gear. Some billionaires might donate half a percent of their wealth to something so they can have a self-congratulatory banquet and maybe some governments might spend .03% as much as their military budget on a few token programs, but maybe the one thing the mega-rich oil company CEOs and I agree with is it must come down to personal responsibility and choice.
In the end… even when an evil bastard like tRump is in office, we are still voting every day with our wallets.
So yeah, corporations care about profits more than life and politicians just want to line their pockets and egos… yadda yadda yadda… But I think the biggest culprit is not the corps, the governments, or the individuals. In the end the real villain is our culture.
Allow me to break this down, while I throw myself under the bus. I just wrote an article where I outline how crappy it is to drive and now, I’m driving over a thousand miles to take my family on a road trip.
Do corporations care? (Great he’s buying loads of gas, and spending loads of money to support various businesses-Win!)
Does the government care? (What a good American helping support our economy while engaging in a traditional American value-Win)
Did any of my friends even hint that I might be acting like a hypocrite going against what I had said just a week earlier? (Nope, not a peep. The friends I visited were happy to see me and the friends I left wished me a good time.)
So again, it isn’t politicians, corporations or even individuals slowing me down or causing me to think twice. Why, because being responsible to the environment or your pledge to it, isn’t part of our culture.
Right now, for the most part being a ‘good’ person = being anti-environment. Let me give you a few examples.
My mother is getting older, I should fly home to visit her. = I’m a great son
My kid just joined a soccer league, I’m going to be busy driving him all over this summer and need to order him some gear on Amazon = I’m a great dad.
My wife loves Colorado so I’m going to drive our family there this July. = I’m a nice husband.
I love nature so much I’m going to drive to a new mountain I have never hiked this weekend = I’m a nature lover.
What if we changed this?
I should be spending time with my aging mother, but I’m too selfish not to live where I want to.
Whatever my kid wishes to do is more important than any other concern. We are both too selfish to consider anything other than our desires.
Screw my ideals, they aren’t as important as me having a good time.
No matter what I believe, or know is right, is not going to make me behave any different than any other American?
Probably one of the biggest similarities between a tRump loving MAGA shirt wearing right wing Evangelicals and the Prius driving They/Themer is neither one is calling their friend out on any of the real environmental crimes they commit daily. Sure, at best, someone might suggest you buy an electric car, give you shit for not recycling, or tell you hunting helps protect the environment, but this is all pennies on the dollar crap. Okay, right, if you maybe do this and that you’re cutting down 3% on the damage you are doing to the Earth…amazing.
Arizona Wild Horses
The bottom line is doing whatever the hell you want, no matter your ideals, is part of American culture. A part, which a few people give a token blurb against, but almost everyone embraces no matter what side of the political aisle you like to sit in. And if any leftist wants to claim they are better than the right because they bought an energy efficient dishwasher, they should remember that poor people use less resources and then go fuck themselves. Just so they don’t feel left out, if anyone on the right says they love America, their first step should be to drive a little as possible and put solar energy panels on your roof, unless you like giving billions of hard-earned American dollars to the fascist theocratic countries of the Middle East. Personally, I think anyone who buys a monster truck should be forced to have an ‘I heart Islam’ bumper stick affixed over their license plate.
Have I gotten my point across? Have I proven I’m as bad as the next guy? Is there a place we can go from here?
Let me try to throw this out there. Perhaps, changing our culture should be our first step in the country and is probably more important than riding your bike to work or being a vegetarian.
Okay Boneman, how do you propose we do this?
Carefully choose which of your hobbies, tasks, and requirements are the most important while keeping an eye on their Negative Environmental Impact.
Stop feeling superior and think we’ve done our part by picking one or two positive choices while still engaging in thirty negative ones.
Create a culture which encourages pro-environmental choices instead of traditional values and stereotypical self-congratulation.
Give prestige and status to people making positive choices while calling people on thinking it is okay to do whatever they wish and still consider themselves decent folks.
Be more impressed with the guy who made his own supplies out of dumpster dived materials than the dude who spent 400$ to have the same thing shipped from China.
This article could go on for 10 more pages, but then what would I write next week and aren’t we both burning fossil fuels by writing and reading this?
Lastly, don’t hate me, and try not to think of me as being a hypocrite for taking my family on a road trip. At least I’m knocked off any high horse I might have found and realize I’m no better than anyone else. I’m there with the rest of you struggling somehow to make this all work for more than another 20 years.
“I’m not telling you what choices to make, I’m just telling you every decision you make is an environmental choice.”
I’ll admit it. WildernessPunk has been a bit glum of late. I could go into why being gloomy and doomy is quite appropriate for our current slice of the moment, but I’ll save such things for a different time. Instead, I’d like to look back on WildernessPunk. In a few days it will be the 6th anniversary of WildernessPunk, and since I might, very appropriately, be celebrating off the grid on that actual day, I feel it would be okay to jump the gun a little bit and talk about WildernessPunk now.
WildernessPunk began on August 1st 2016. The first posts were written in the forests and deserts of the west and at times in hotel rooms. I was homeless, living out of a backpack, with just my bicycle and borrowed laptop to keep me company. My life was a wild ride of freedom and wonder mixed with challenges, sadness, and anger.
Most of us can look back at our former selves and often cringe at the horrible situations we allowed ourselves to get into. At that time my life had exploded as I had finally broken the hold a narcissistic leech had on my life. Unfortunately, this newfound freedom came at the cost of not seeing my young boys, losing my employment, my ride, and everything else I owned. I had managed to grab my backpack, but little else.
WildernessPunk at that time had been part journal, part philosophy, and obviously fueled in some degree by anger. I also had the goal of somehow raising enough cash and trade through creative internet use to fund living in the woods. It was an exciting time and part of me still misses the adventure. Although sleeping in a torn-up tent in the woods, with two rat chewed blankets when the temperature is below freezing might not be as fun as it sounds.
Flash forward a while, after embracing a bit of Lokiness, I managed to get most of my things back, achieved a divorce, and relocated to Tucson. It didn’t take long for my life to improve. I reconnected with my lost love, jump started my RPG games, and began the slow and dangerous journey toward seeing my boys again.
As my life changed, I knew I needed to change WildernessPunk too. There is a big difference between riding my bike 10 miles to a hidden encampment and sleeping next to the most wonderful woman I have ever met.
So WildernessPunk became less of a journal focusing on my attempt to live between the worlds of technology and wilderness. It changed its focus to how one could remain true to these ideals and goals while living in an urban setting. My hope was not to shame or depress people, but instead to help give them the tools to create a lifestyle which would help lower their Negative Environmental Impact.
I also sought to dig into the real facts which involved mankind’s interaction with its environment. I wished to help dispel falsehoods and shine the light on things which may have escaped our notice.
Then two things happened.
After years of enduring caustic venom, having police called on me when I had committed no crime, and driving 1000 miles a weekend, I managed to get full custody of my boys.
Covid hit the world.
While other writers were finishing novels and starting new projects, my writing slowed down as I took up home schooling and caring for my kids 24/7 during lockdown.
Perhaps another change came over me as well. I was profoundly in love and living the best years of my life. Patton Oswald said something similar too, “It is hard to be grumpy when the butterflies of happiness are dancing through your heart.”
While I was living my own ups and downs during this time, and it was mostly ups, my country and much of the world was getting kicked square in the nuts.
45 and the religious right are doing everything they could to remove human rights, promote racism, and increase poverty. But the USA wasn’t the only country embracing totalitarianism and fascist beliefs. Like scared children who are just smart enough to foresee their upcoming grim future, some people need Big Brother to tell them what to do. Whether it is a Sky Daddy or a cult leader, there are humans who, in their heart of hearts, want someone to tell them what they should be doing.
And then they want to tell you what to do and how to live.
We need to face it, some people are worried about the health of our planet and issues like world poverty, overpopulation, and extinction, while others are more interested in censoring books, banning lifestyles different from their own, and promoting the validity of ancient myths. This is a strange dichotomy to put it mildly. I might observe it is more than a bit odd that the group which believes they will live eternally is more concerned with the here and now, while the group which thinks their lights will one day extinguish are trying to protect the Earth’s tomorrows.
So what should we be doing? What should our attitudes be in 2022?
Let’s dive into the painfully obvious. We’ll call them the Fantastic Five.
Organized religions are doing more harm than good and need to be weakened and dismantled at every opportunity.
You would have burned me alive for being an atheist a few centuries ago, so fuck you, your time has come.
We need to do everything in our power to protect the 12% of the natural environment which is left on the globe.
Humans have grabbed up 88% of the Earth. That’s enough for one species. We need to have a chance for there to still be some biodiversity left before the fossil fuels wells run dry and we won’t have the power to destroy everything with the ease we have now.
The number one priority in every country should be to have their largest line item be renewable energy.
We fought wars in the Middle East for over a decade. We wasted enough money blowing people up to put solar panels on every building in the USA. We would have never needed a drop of Middle Eastern oil ever again and maybe those fascist countries would have to rethink their crimes against their own people when their purses went dry. Cut the military budget by 5% a year and use this money for renewable energy research. I think Captain Obvious just called and wants to talk to the President.
We need to rethink what is virtuous
Is the mother driving her kid to a dozen activities a week a great mom or a selfish environmental criminal? Does raking your lawn make you a responsible neighbor or are your destroying the natural habitat for animals, while doing your part to waste resources, and contribute to global warming? Are you into nature because your drove 120 miles on Sunday to take a great hike or are you 100 times worse to the environment than the guy who played video games on his television?
Remember it isn’t the other guy. Every choice we make either helps, hurts, or really freaking hurts this world.
No one in the USA is really an environmentalist except the homeless. Consume less. Quit buying crap, and focus your capital on education and projects which help you save money and the environment at the same time.
Do you agree? Do you think I’m crazy? Perhaps you believe I’m overreacting. But as the gas prices rise, you’ll have a choice, you can either go broke trying to live in the paradigm of the past or you can create your own.
Alright, I know, I’ve gotten a little heavy with my last few WildernessPunk articles. The Last War, I mean, ouch. So instead of dragging some new atrocity into the light, I’m taking a more positive proactive view of our modern cultures and the pastimes many of us enjoy. Most likely we all don’t occupy ourselves with the same activities. Some people do a wide variety of things while others possess a narrower focus.
I would also mention some activities bleed together and many involve actions which could cause an increased pollution trail; such as playing softball, but then BBQ after the game, or grabbing a hotdog at a concert. Also, things like ‘taking a vacation’ are too vague and possess too much variety to address as a topic. I’m not going to dive into these side pocket issues but instead shine my spotlight on…
Common Leisure Activities and their Environmental Impacts:
If I didn’t mention your leisure activity please forgive, but with the data I’m about to outline below, I’m sure you could figure it out if you were so inclined.
As Blackrain79 says, “Let’s jump right in.”
Music Concerts
Like many things on this list, this activity usually involves some level of transportation to accomplish. Let’s say 10 miles with a medium car creates 7 pounds of carbon. Of course, the bands will need some juice to play these days and the concert hall has lights and plumbing, but if everyone is turning off their lights and lowering their environmental controls before they go to a concert, this could be a win for the environment. Enough people must go and be there for long enough for the energy they aren’t using at home to counter act the individual transportation cost and the carbon print of running the show.
Let’s assume you bring a date, drive a round trip of ten miles, and stay there for 4 hours. 3.5 pounds for driving – Your normal 2 pounds an hour x 4 (8) = in the positive 4.5 pounds let’s minus .5 pounds for some power running in your absence, and also to keep my head from spinning, so you are currently up 4 pounds of good karma. Assuming they have a small kitchen they are creating about 800 pounds of pollution while you are there.
Conclusion:
If you drive 10 miles, going to a concert is environmentally friendly as long as more than 200 people attend the concert. If you don’t drive this would be about cut in half so only 100 people would have to be there. If there is no restaurant on the premises, you could probably tack another 50% off the number of people needed.
Reading
Like everything else this could have a wide spread. If you buy a few used books at once and then share them, you are probably knocking it out of the park, while ordering the new 50 Shades of Whey in a huge box from Amazon makes you an environmental criminal. Also, are you burning a light while you read or plugging in a device to do so?
The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden determined it takes reading 11880 pages on an ebook to counteract the environmental cost of making it compared to buying normal books. But keep in mind this is just for its construction, not its use.
The average reading device creates 7.5 pounds an hour.
The average book creates 7 pounds of pollution to build. (I’m going on the high end here, but some agencies put it as low as 1.3 pounds and several companies have moved to using mostly recycled products)
If it takes you 10 minutes to read 6 pages this means 36 pages an hour, so if the average book contains 360 pages, reading a book on a cell phone or a device creates about 75 pounds of pollution. So reading a page book is more than 10 times better for the environment than reading an ebook on your phone and this is only after you read 33 360 page books to counterbalance the environmental construction cost to make an ereader. (We’ll get to cell phones later and you won’t be happy)
For the last decade I’ve been hearing ebooks were better for the environment. I guess that myth was a few thousand percent wrong. Putting it another way books beat reading on your device or cell after the first hour of reading.
Shipping a book to your house. I had a hard time finding this amount online, so I’ll just drop this fact here. In 2020 Amazon created over 113 billion pounds of pollution transporting goods to people’s houses. 113,740,000,000 pounds.
Printed books could help damage biodiversity, however once the price is paid, we can get 10 hours of enjoyment. Compare this to 10 hours of watching television (.2 pounds an hour) and if you’re watching television by yourself you get 2 pounds of pollution. Yet nothing is easy. More than one person could be watching the television at the same time. But you could also resell the book or hand it down to someone. The same book could be read dozens of times and of course you could be buying it used.
Conclusion:
Forget about your ebook reader or doing anything extra on your cell. Try your absolute best to never order anything which needs to be shipped to you. However, if you buy 50% of your books used and try to have some of your books read more than once, your reading hobby is probably slightly more efficient than watching television.
Television
I saw several different stats presented online. Some were as low as .009 an hour and other rose much higher but I’m going to go with a television creating .2 pounds of carbon an hour. Of course, there was the basic construction of the television, but for most families this is watered down quickly by the sheer numbers of hours the TV is used. Also, in theory, the trail per hour could be divided by the number of people watching.
Conclusion:
When I was a child, watching the television all day was considered one the worst things you could let your kids do. This could still be the case in some respects but as far as having an impact on the environment television, compared to many activities is a big win for the environment.
Surfing the Web/Social Media
This obviously covers all computer use so it doesn’t matter if you are surfing the web or writing an article like this. Also, many people use social media and play games on their cells and not computers, but don’t worry, we’ll get to them later.
Using a computer creates about .4 pounds of pollution an hour or about double that of a television or one 18th as much as a cell phone. This number compared to an hour of driving (42 pounds) is barely noticeable. (Note that if you are streaming on your laptop or playing online video games this amount roughly doubles)
Conclusion:
While not a harmless as reading a recycled novel, or even watching television, computer use is pretty low on the environmental impact scale.
Role Playing Game
Alright, on to my favorite. Again, we need a half dozen books to get started, but keep in mind I used a book last weekend which I purchased in 1979 and have used every year since. At 7 pounds a pop, the 6 new books I bought for Dungeons and Dragons 5e had less of an impact than an hour of cell phone use and I’ll be using them for decades. I buy figures which are now made of plastic and paint them, so materials are being created and transported to my town for me to buy. Then again, I’m using as much plastic as the container of orange juice I hope might get recycled and these figures will last long enough for my grandkids to use.
There are common things like, yes we’ll have lights on and maybe heat controls going, but if I was home they’d be going anyway and, like a concert, if 5 people are using less at their homes because they are at my house, I’m going to allow this to cancel out my use of power for the event itself, if anything I’m saving on general electricity use by gathering people together.
Conclusion:
After some initial cost, which is quickly watered down over the decades and five households using the power of one, it is quite possible Role-Playing Games might be one of the few activities on this list which helps the environment, although in the end this will be balanced by how far the players drive to your event and if any of them carpool etc. (FYI I have carpooled to gaming sessions a lot lately, but from 2017-2021 I exclusively rode my bike to games held at one of my Game Master’s homes.)
3 players 30 miles of driving = 21 pounds of pollution. Maybe minus 1 for more people sharing the climate control and you do have a heavy price tag of 20 pounds per session which isn’t good. However, if you can assume adults would have probably driven the same amount on a Saturday anyway and are heading to my place instead, I think we can still consider RPG as an activity which can potentially lower the carbon cost for a small group.
Hiking
Hiking itself does little to hurt the world, but many nature lovers forget their enjoyment of nature can be a selfish act. With so many of us living in cities how far do you have to drive to get to a decent hike? I’ve heard many people bragging about how far they traveled to prove how much they groove on nature, but if you drive 80 miles on a Sunday to hike a remote trail, are you a nature lover or a nature destroyer? Would you be kinder to our world if you didn’t put your pleasures first?
Conclusion:
With driving creating .7 pounds of carbon per mile this can be a sticky issue. Perhaps multi-tasking like shopping on the way home or collecting wood for your fireplace during the hike can curb this waste some. If you really like to hike, it might be proper to pay for your hike by doing things such as not eating meat for a week after your hike or only watering your garden with gray water for seven days.
Camping
Similar to hiking, much of the real cost here is driving to the site. While camping we might eat more, consume more meat than usual, and pound a few extra brews, but it isn’t like we wouldn’t be eating at home. We could also be saving on our cooking carbon cost by using coals from a fire which we would have burned anyway. We’ve already determined driving creates .7 pounds of pollution per mile. However, if I’m lowering climate controls, using televisions, computers, water, and electricity while I’m camping (55 pounds a day, let’s suppose you bring this down to just 15 while you aren’t at home), this all but cancels out the carbon footprint of my drive if I only travel 115 miles per 3 days of camping.
Conclusion:
While not perfect, camping can be a lower impact activity. If a person is hunting or collecting firewood during the trip this could be lower still.
Hitting a Tavern
At the risk of sounding repetitive it is all about the driving here. If you turn off your lights and lower your climate controls, you are actually helping the environment as long as you walk or ride your bike to the place. The tavern will be using lights and climate controls, but they would have them on if you weren’t there anyway. (For similar data see Music Concerts)
Also note buying beer on tap is much better than buying bottles. Also drinking at a local brewery is much better than drinking beers shipped across the country. At home if you only buy cans and recycle them you are lowering the environmental cost by 20%.
The closer the better, and if you decide not to drink and drive this is actually a plus for environment. Sure, the beer has a carbon footprint while being created and transported, but if you were going to have a few beers at home anyway…
Gardening
This seems like an environmentalist’s slam dunk. You are getting exercise, recycling seeds, and food waste, and creating food with a much smaller carbon footprint. Still seeds are produced, processed, and shipped. Are you using fertilizer? Did you transport mulch over distances?
Conclusion:
We might not be getting off without a hitch, but if you compost and use seeds found in your food, recycle your grey water, and reuse seeds from your own garden, this might be one of the few hobbies, if done right, which could lower your footprint instead of increasing it.
Restaurants
So obviously much of the carbon footprint will be similar to the same meal at home. If you eat a cheeseburger your pollution trail is huge whether you eat at home or out. Like other hobbies mentioned above, in theory, if everyone lowered their climate controls before they all went to the same place it could take some of the edge of the pollution price, but did you drive there for just one meal? Obviously if I make say 60 meals per trip to the grocery store, my gas price is divided by 60. If I take the same 4 people out to eat that would take care of 4 meals and, let’s be generous, and say I get 2 more from leftovers. So just in terms of gas use, eating out wastes 10 times as much gas as making your own meals. Same thing, more or less, if you have food delivered to your door.
The average restaurant creates 1,300,000 pounds of greenhouse gases and pollution a year. This equals 3616 a day. Say the place is open 12 hours a day and your dinner lasts 2 hours. This would mean they are creating roughly 300 pounds of pollution while you are there. (Some of this includes the whole back story of the food’s production and transport so it not entirely occurring there within those two hours) Assuming a typical American has an active 12-hour day, this would mean if you were home, on average you would be creating roughly 2 pounds of greenhouse gases an hour (This would mean 4 pounds for your 2 hour stay). Although to be honest every time we prepare and consume food our output spikes considerably but let’s just be nice and said you turned down your air conditioning, cut all your lights, walked to the establishment, and this made your use even out to average. So if over 75 people are eating in the restaurant at once you could in theory be consuming less. If 150 were present you’d be cutting you footprint in half, but if only 25 people are there you are part of an increase in your own imprint per hour by 3 fold. (12 for 2 hours instead of 4)
Conclusion:
If you can walk to a place and turn everything off before you leave, eating out might be a wash, or even an upswing, but if you add 3.5 pounds per person to drive two people ten miles there would have to be over 200 people eating there for you to break even. If only a 100 people were eating there you are creating a footprint about twice your average.
Video Games
As stated above running a television for an hour creates much less use than a cell phone (See Above). Therefore, if you are playing the games on your television your energy use is low. However, if you’re streaming it doubles the use. Either way you are still using about one 60th the power playing them on your cell phone requires.
There is also the cost of constructing the game controls and individual games, although they might give you more hours of pleasure than some products we purchase so that lowers their overall pollution cost. However, lights and climate controls are also involved with most indoor activities.
Conclusion:
Playing video games is just a few levels worse for the environment than watching television unless you are playing them on your cell in which case you might as well fire up your diesel truck for an hour and cook lamb on the engine.
Sports
This depends a lot on the sport. If you are walking to the corner to play a round of hoops with a ten-year-old ball, you are barely creating a ripple. However, if your hockey goalie needs pads to be shipped here from China, it is going to be a big environmental ouch. If I must drive my kid 30 extra miles a week to make it to soccer games, this isn’t going to help matters either. And obviously, all golf courses should be destroyed, or at a bare minimum only be watered with recycled sewage waste.
Conclusion:
A bigger swing in possibilities with this one, so hard to nail it down precisely, but obviously if you are using items for long lengths of time and not driving to make it happen, your trail is minimal, but you can also jack up your footprint if you toss out your ideals to insure you and yours can do whatever they wish regardless of price.
Cell Use
This might surprise some but running your cell phone for an hour creates 7.5 pounds of population, roughly equal to driving your car a mile. As stated above this is roughly 18 times the use of a laptop.
Conclusion:
Save your cell for texting. Try use it as little as possible and unless it is an emergency or you hate nature, never stream data or play video games with it.
Giant Concerts/Events
Much of the environmental costs of these things is the trash remaining behind and the trampled land. Have you ever seen the forest after a rainbow gathering? It will probably take it 10 years to recover. Of course, many events take place in areas where all life has already been removed. Usually, these events involve a lot of driving, sometimes hundreds of miles, so that’s a big loss. Food and other supplies are transported out to these events for your needs. The carbon footprints for these events are colossal but are also divided by the number of participants. Carpooling and other tricks could help lower this cost further, but if you’re driving a few hundred miles it’s hard to think of this as anything other than a big environmental fail.
Eating the transported food can be considered a huge additional loss, but if you’re lowering your energy use at home while you are gone, we’ll just give you half credit the campers get. However, keep in mind that if you bring your own supplies you are closer to camping stats other than the colossal mess let behind.
Conclusion:
Like camping we can just bottom line it with the driving involved. Since the concert goer is only getting half the credit of camping due to consuming transported goods, which include the bands themselves, one household can only drive about 60 miles before starting to accumulate a carbon debt. If you are driving 600 miles, which is probably less than most people are doing, you are creating 400 pounds of pollution. Of course, carpooling multiple households which are reducing their homes climate controls and energy use could cut this in half or by a third.
Many people enjoy large events, but I hope they don’t ever call themselves environmentalists.
Going to the Movies
Like other hobbies mentioned above if you lower your output at home and a large number of people share the luxury of the theater, this is probably not the worst thing you can be doing as long as you aren’t driving too far. When I was a kid, we had to drive 30 miles to a movie so that would be a huge dig. With it only being four miles from my home currently, a monthly trip to the movies isn’t too bad.
Conclusion:
One of the stronger choices on this list as long as you don’t overdo it.
Poker/Cards/Board Games
These requires a certain number of resources to construct, and sometimes ship from China, but as long as they are used for years or even decades, a night sitting around a table rolling monopoly dice does little harm. Card games would be even better for the environment.
Conclusion:
As long as the games are chosen wisely and used often this is probably a big win because modern families could certainly be doing other activities instead which would create much larger footprints.
Coffee Shops
Like other things mentioned, as long as you lower yours and share a place’s climate control with others, you start with a potential upswing. At the risk of sounding repetitive, how far you drive plays a huge factor in whether you might be saving a few Watts versus creating 15 pounds of filth. However, with each cup of coffee creating, on average, half a pound of pollution the more you drink once there, the larger your footprint would be.
Conclusion:
If you can walk there, you might have a reasonable chance to not be an environmental villain if you only have a cup, but if you drive 10 miles and drink 2 cups you just added 8.5 pounds of pollution to the environment.
Creating Art
This is another one which includes a wide spread of activities. If you are a kid drawing in an old notebook with a nicked pen, I wouldn’t worry too much. Certain paints and supplies have heavy environmental tolls, and these products should be researched before purchase. Also, if you ordering items built in China, this is a giant kick. Many artists dumpster dive their supplies and recycle objects around their home to help with their creating. Such things certainly lower your work’s impact.
Conclusion:
Much like sports, with proper choices this can be a great activity and often makes the world a more enjoyable place. However, one should remember to curb selfish choices if you wish to help this planet.
The Real Conclusion:
This ended up being a long list, but I hope you found it useful to discover all this information in one place and this has also made you reevaluate some of the other activities you enjoy and gave you the knowledge to decide what’s best moving forward.
In the end I’m not telling you what choice to make, I’m just reminding you that every choice you make is an environmental choice.
Author’s note:
Some hobbies are just so painfully obvious, regarding hurting the environment I didn’t bother to mention them. If you are into destroying the forest and deserts by four wheeling and pumping chemicals into the water with jet skis, you are on your own and probably didn’t dare to read this article anyway.
Long before I owned a computer or there was even a hint of there being an internet, I published a small underground Zine called C.H.A.O.S Collected Humans Against Outdated Systems. The year was 1992 and I was working with my friend Sasha who would go on to become a college professor who currently teaches at the Keene State. Sasha and I didn’t always agree on everything but when it came to politics and protecting the environment, we were on pretty much the same page.
40 years ago, we each made some predictions about the future. Maybe someone should start a religion about us, because unfortunately most of our predictions have come true or are certainly heading that way.
One of Dr. Davis’ articles which has stuck with me for 40 years was An Alternative, which I have mentioned before. This is the idea humans need to preserve as much of our natural environment as possible with the assumption the human machine will one day grind to a halt. Then, with at least some of our biosphere in one piece, it will be easier for it to jump back to where it was 10,000 years ago.
My prediction was equally dark and involved the creation of new anti-terrorist laws (hmm did this happen in 2001, I think I nailed that one). Once created, these laws would be expanded to include monkey wrenchers and environmentalists which take a more extreme stance toward protecting the environment (This has happened as well). These laws will set up a system where the people in power can call anyone a terrorist and lock them up without due process.
This is all being done in preparation for The Last War.
The Last War: The Last War will be the final battle for the Earth which will take place between people who place comfort and capital over life and the continued ability for the planet’s ecosphere to survive as we know it and the people who support all life and the ability for it to continue to exist in its current forms.
If you don’t think this battle is coming, I’m sorry to say you will be proven wrong because it has already begun.
The quality of life in the USA and other areas is already declining and has been for a while. Villains such as tRump are being elected because people don’t have the same opportunities and capital their parents and grandparents enjoyed. Let me ask you to ponder this, if people are already steaming mad because they can’t buy a home or have a job which pays half as much as their father and their money stretches half as far, how are they going to feel when they can’t afford to drive their car? Are the folks who are willing to vote for a racist rapist when they still have a job, going to be against digging for oil in the middle of the Grand Canyon if it will help them afford a gallon of gas? I think you know the answer to that one.
What will The Last War be?
In my opinion, The Last War was started by the rich who will do anything to maintain their wealth, and the corruptible masses will support them. If you think they won’t you must have been in a coma since 2015. Let me toss out the headlines from an election in the future.
The Left: We have a hard fight ahead of us and to do right by our country we are going to have to tighten our belts and make sacrifices for the general good.
The Right: The Left are trying to tax gasoline until the price is so high people can’t afford to drive to work or take their children to school and now they want to force us all to drive electric cars. I don’t know about you, but I always thought America was the land of the free and we deserve a choice. Vote for me and I’ll bring back the prosperity of the past and…
Most people take the easy answer over the idea of having less, or when they are asked to do things in a harder manner. Also, in 20 years, more people will have less than their parents and grandparents and they could feel like they have been screwed over and deserve what others had and will be spitting mad about it. Which way do you think they’ll vote?
We may have other hot button issues in 2022. Things like gay marriage and abortion may be lost. Schools will probably start giving every kid a handgun and a concealed firearm permit when they graduate high school, but I’m going to make a new prediction.
They say it’s all about the economy stupid. However, most of the economy comes from the Earth in one manner or another. Minerals, food, oil, natural gas and almost every product we consume comes from our planet. What’s going to happen when there is less to mine, eat, and use to make jet skis? The CEOs aren’t going to want to stop their cash flows and their supporters want cheeseburgers and cheap gas. So what’s going to happen if we let it? The corporations are going to go after the last 10% of the natural earth we have left. Some people are going to try to stop them, and we will enter The Last War.
Perhaps you’ll have heard it here first. I’ll give it another 20 years before we are in the foxholes either metaphorically, or certainly for some it will be literally.
Hello and welcome to this week’s WildernessPunk. I’m going to endeavor to get a new one of these out every weekend this summer. Aren’t you excited? Is doing this a positive accomplishment, or do you dread what sort of depressing negativity I might scrape off the crusted, overused bong our planet is becoming?
I’m not writing today to go into the positives and negatives affecting you and your world. Instead, I seek to discuss the opposing methods which could be used to improve our planet’s current declining condition.
If you are reading this, I assume you care about the health of our world and wish for things to improve, yet what’s the best path for us to pursue to make this happen? I’ve read many articles and books (I’m reading one currently) where the author runs off a laundry list of all the horrible things humans have done to our earth and the reasons why things are just going to get worse in the future.
Is painting the grim picture the best thing we can do to affect a positive change within ourselves and our culture? Sort of a drug rehab philosophy; You must hit rock bottom before you realize you have no further to go and only then can the true healing begin. I’ve worked in drug rehabilitation units, and I can say by personal experience I think this concept is bullshit. The idea that things must get worse before they can get better is false.
Let me give you an addiction analogy. Joe drinks too much. He just lost his job and things are going downhill for him. By AA logic it will somehow help him to lose his housing too and only when he becomes homeless will he be ready for change.
I disagree. Following this AA scenario through, Joe will go to recovery for 28 days and then walk out sober and homeless. He will have to get a job, hold it for three months (at least) while crashing in his car/friend’s sofa/park bench to have a chance to rent a new place. Hmmm, do you think this will be easy? Will Joe feel like a loser and become depressed? Maybe he’ll need a way to relax or just get bored sleeping in his car. Just a sip and he could forget for one night though…
But what if Joe decided to get his act together, or his friends and family helped him, before he reached rock bottom.
Joe doesn’t lose all his things and waste his money starting all over.
Joe will have other methods to entertain himself instead of drinking such as a television, computer, music, books etc.
Joe will have a much easier time finding a new job and keeping it if he has clean clothes and can take a shower each day.
Joe will feel more relaxed and have a better sense of self worth than if he was sleeping outside and this sense of self worth will help give him the strength to know his life just might be worth the effort he’s putting into it.
This is less true when it comes to our environment. Do we need to hit rock bottom before we struggle to improve? Perhaps people will be more interested in making a change by then, but will cutting down all the rain forests before we wake up help us in any way? I’m going to say no. Our goal should be to keep as much alive as possible before we enact change, so we’ll have more left worth saving. If all we have left are cities, corporate farms, and animal factories, personally I’d be inclined to say why bother.
So do we get there with scare tactics (negativity) or with the hope that our motivations and innovations will win the day eventually (positivity).
Let’s break it down.
Negativity: +
Proving the severity of the situation could force people to act.
Scientists can show us what we shouldn’t be doing to our planet.
Negativity: –
When a problem seems insurmountable some might wonder if there is any reason to try.
Depression can lead to stagnation and apathy instead of action.
Positivity: +
Believing we can create a better world leads people to discover how we can make this better world occur.
Having the confidence that we can make a difference helps motivate us to do so and create new innovations which can help save our globe.
Positivity: –
If people think scientists will discover some new tech which will save us all in the end, why worry about our behaviors now?
People could get false virtue flags while they are driving 50 miles a day, eating more meat, and killing all the native plants in their yard but they have earned it because they recycle 15% of their waste.
In the end it will probably be a mix of both camps which will save us. I, however, would prefer to stand with the positivity camp. The more we change, adapt, and innovate the better our chances of survival are. I hate to stand on the shoulders of the myth technology will save us, but still, other than a human ending plague, I think technology and new innovations are this globe’s only chance.
Here are some new ideas on the horizon and in some places some of these have already started to happen.
Biodegradable machines, such as cars can be made from plant fibers.
Meat can be grown/cloned in huge vats and then distributed to grocery stores. (Side note: I did write a novel about this in my Skinjumper series, I guess I should get the William Gibson award for 2013)
We could design a bacterium which could eat all the extra carbon in the oceans.
Governments could use tax money to help fund science instead of making billionaires richer and supporting the military industrial war machine.
So let’s get positive people. Remember, worst case scenario, we die off and in a 100 million years from now our house cats will have evolved into bipedal hominids and can give civilization another go. Wait, cats? Maybe we should try mice instead.
Hello, welcome back if this isn’t your first time, and let me quickly state, I’m not usually like most writers. During the pandemic lock down, some took time to finish novels and brought their writing to a new level. Pah, why be so predictable. Me, I wrote less and spent more time with my kids, but since the pandemic is over(ish) I guess it is time to pick up my pen and laptop and dive into the meat of these seriously messed up times we are living in. Where to start right? But instead of reviewing subjects which have been reviewed a thousand times before, I will endeavor to focus on one concept at a time and here goes.
Recently, I was having a conversation with a gentleman, and I causally brought up the issue of overpopulation. He told me there is no overpopulation and bringing it up was racist. Let’s break this down to his two points 1. There is no overpopulation of humans. 2, To mention there is overpopulation is a racist thing to do.
Overpopulation
What would too many humans on the planet look like?
Resources are being used more quickly than they can be replenished.
Animals are being overharvested for food and going extinct due to the destruction of their environment.
Humans are occupying more than their fair share of the planet we share with millions of animals and a multitude of plant life.
The quality of human life is decreasing.
There are obviously more issues which could be discussed but this isn’t a term paper.
Resources:
Humans began to irreversibly change our environment long before the current era. Before the raise of Rome, much of what we now consider the Middle East was overgrazed by human’s nomadic herd animals and turned grasslands, which once sported a wide variety of animals, into near lifeless deserts which have only grown over the past four thousand years. While traveling through Tunisia in North Africa, I was told by a local guide that the country had killed off almost all the non-domesticated animals which once lived there three thousand years in the past.
Between 2002 and 2012 the Earth lost 880,000 square miles of forest (High Resolution Maps of the 21st Century Forest Cover Change. Science 15 November 2013) Our planet’s wilderness areas have dropped from covering 100% percent of the Earth to merely 22% percent. Also, only 11% of our photosynthesis takes place in these wild areas. (Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty, “Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world.” 2009)
Lastly the amount of land required to exclusively feed all of humanity, which remember was once zero, had grown from nothing to – in our lifetimes.
In my opinion, does humanities growing use of resources indicate our species has an overpopulation problem?
Yes
Overharvesting
It is clear the oceans are being overharvested. The number of fishing vessels increased from less than a million to 4,000,000 since 1970 yet even with this increase the yield of fish has dropped two thirds. (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome 2012) One might argue if we plant crops how can we be overharvesting them? However, human crops are now covering over 40% of the Earth’s surface (James Owen, Farming Claims Almost Half Earth’s Land,” Published December 8, 2005). How many resources are being using for just one species and the animals we’ve domesticated for our uses? 200 years ago humans and our animals were 1 percent of the biomass of mammals on this planet, but currently we are over 90% (Christian Schwagerl “The Anthropocene,” 2014). Personally, I think if we must clear cut forests and destroy hundreds of animals and their homes forever, this counts as overharvesting. If you don’t think ruining the planet for other life forms so you can have a cheeseburger is not a system of overharvesting, I think we should have a long talk.
Are Humans overharvesting the Earth?
Yes
Human Occupation
10,000 years ago 100% of the Earth remained in its natural environment, today only 22% of the Earth’s land has retained its natural environment. We are approaching having over 50% of this planet’s lands covered in human farms. I think this sums it up, moving on.
Is the increase in the lands humans occupy a sign over Overpopulation?
Yes
Quality of Human Life
This is a tougher one because look, we have a computer in our pocket now and door dash and… five roommates. Yes, in many ways the quality of human life has improved. There is less poverty than ever before and over all human’s life expectancy is increasing, (except in the USA).
However, is living in a city better than the country? This is hard to gauge, but as rent and real estate costs roars through the roof, for many, the dream of having their own place is just that… a dream. For others, they can only afford to live in tiny apartments with extra roommates and family. They are the lucky ones compared to the growing numbers of homeless and with rentals the way they are, coming up with 3000$ to move into a new place while you are living in a car or park might be one level below impossible. Some people, myself included, have been ‘blacklisted’ (if this term has its roots in some racist BS please forgive me) by the corporations which own most of the rentals currently and will refuse to rent to people who might not have settled some old debt with a landlord who evicted them years ago. These people, myself included, remain unable to rent a place no matter how much cash they have in their wallet.
I guess it comes down what improves the quality of a person’s life. Are younger folks spending time on their phones because it is better than hiking, or because the hiking trail was paved over, and they can’t afford a car to drive to a different one? Would a couple like to observe animals in the wild, but they can now only see them on YouTube, so they stay home and relax on the sofa. Another couple dreamed of moving into the country, but they are required to stay in the city because their whole family lives with them.
In the end, quality of life is more ambiguous. Who had it better, a settler who had forty acres to spread over but dies at 51, or the dude who works at JiffyLube but enjoys his cable package up into his 80s?
Out of the 4 measures I used to determine whether overpopulation was real, 3 were a strong yes and the last might be considered a tie at best. So given this, I’m going to conclude overpopulation is a real issue and it certainly wouldn’t be out of hand to state we are in an overpopulation crisis. However, we still have another claim to investigate.
Is Claiming there is an Overpopulation Problem Racist?
I see where this concept is probably coming from. “Oh no, the brown people are overpopulating their countries, using up all their resources, and now trying to come here and take ours.” Yep, that would be racist. Or if we take more of a fascist view, “Those other type of people are having too many babies.”
Part of me wonders if this is some shield, used by the left, to help them avoid the root causes of almost all our troubles we currently face on this planet. “Wow, overpopulation, that’s a problem almost impossible to solve, but if I just think racists are concerned with it, I can just ignore it, because to admit it is an issue would make me a racist.”
Many on the Right tend to ignore any problem which would decrease their cash flow and profit remains more important than nature, so we shouldn’t expect much help from them on this issue. They may complain about it and perhaps it can dip into racist rhetoric, but is the Left going to do any better steering their policies away from confronting the negative effects of overpopulation and shying away from this reality by categorizing overpopulation discussions as a boogie man which will associate themselves with a racist paradigm?
Is being concerned about our oceans being overfished racist? Is demanding lumbering companies attempt to replant the forests they cut down racist? Is trying to eat a healthy diet and create less waste racist? Is trying our best to think of ways plants, animals, and humans can continue to live on this planet safely racist?
Neither the Left or the Right has any excuse not to do everything in their power to make this planet better for their grandchildren and preserve every form of life we can. And I wish to end on a positive note for people who have made it this far. I’m not trying to be a gloomer/doomer, I want things to improve and if you want to help here are the 3 top things you can do without too much effort to help our planet.
Attempt to limit your food waste as much as possible. Discarded food is the leading cause of unnecessary pollution in the USA.
Create a compost, grow a garden as big as possible, and recycle water as much as you can.
Consume less.
Thanks again for making it this far and welcome back to WildernessPunk. You’ll be seeing more of me.
What am I talking about this time, gentle readers? For those of you who know WildernessPunk you are familiar with its style of looking at important issues from a different perspective. While most people out there have their steadfast side of an argument where they hammer against those with a different view, WildernessPunk likes to tackle an issue sideways, which is easier because no one can see you coming.
So let’s consider industrialization for a moment. Much of it has been for the greater good. The invention of the cotton gin and vaccinations, yep, they sure make life better. But what about those innovations which improve on something we’re already capable of doing? For example, we washed clothes before we had washing machines, we cleaned dishes before we had dishwashers, hell, we even got from one place to another before we had vehicles, so why did we invent them?
To save time.
One could argue it makes our lives easier and improves the quality of our existence, but let’s focus on time, and not just because it’s in the title. You’ll see why shortly.
Let’s just hone in on something easier to wrap our heads around than the complex use of fossil fueled vehicles. I’ll pick on washing machines. Alright, in the past, or the present if you live in the other 80% of the world, when your clothes got dirty you washed them yourself. This might seem like more of a pain, but was it?
Positive benefits from washing clothes by hand
A person got exercise
You were aware of the resources used
You were more likely to recycle the grey water
Little or no carbon waste was created
You might get some fresh air and observe nature
No noise pollution
You didn’t have to waste capital on purchasing and repairing the machine
More space within your dwelling
Clothes got cleaner
Negative consequences of using a washing machine
Creates pollution during each use
Uses resources and creates pollution mining the metals to create it, during its construction, and through transportation
Takes capital to purchase and maintain
User gets much less exercise
More water is wasted and can’t be reused
Takes up space
Does not clean clothes as well as hand washing
I find it interesting how quickly these changes become mainstream. Modern washing machines appeared in 1907 and just over a 100 years later, many people can’t imagine wearing clothes which aren’t washed by machines. How did an unneeded luxury become a necessity? Perhaps more importantly, how does this effect our interaction with the environment?
Do you need a washing machine… No
Do you need to use a washing machine to clean your clothes… No
Are you a true environmentalist if you use a washing machine… No
Did I just piss you off? Well perhaps it’s time to put your money where you mouth is, or in this case back into your pocket with all the cash you’d be saving. Or another alternative is to just not call yourself an environmentalist and get on with your life. The upside is at least you won’t be a hypocrite. And in case you’re wondering… I did blow off using a washing machine for 10 years and look at my biceps, wow.
Moving away from the WM for a minute, I think we all need to reevaluate our intentions. What are your values? If you are crying out about climate change as you toss your clothes in the dryer, crank up the television, while you order something from Amazon, before you drive to the store, YOU ARE NOT AN ENVIRONMENTALIST, I don’t care what memes you post, what music you listen to, or how many piercings you have.
Things which were luxuries are now demanded and if you don’t use them you’re a freak. Well perhaps it is time to, as Hendrix said, wave our freak flag high. Here is just a quick list of luxuries you can not have and still be an environmentalist.
Unrequired Luxuries
Washing Machines
Dishwashers
Imported foods
Beef and Lamb
Video Games
Driving to places less than two miles away (If not further)
Daily showering
Hygienic products
Pets
Lawns
This list could certainly go on and I’m not saying you can’t have some of these things, but if you claim to be an Environmentalist at all or care about Climate Change, you need to relabel these items as luxuries and not as the necessities we think of them as.
One final note. In 2018 one in four people in the USA was considered obese. We think we have saved time with all these labor saving inventions, but what we have really done is sacrifice our environment and our bodies for the privileges of spending more money to get tasks done. So yeah we might be saving time, but you could very well be paying for this time on the backside of your life by dying earlier because you lead a more unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle. All the while the environment is also paying the price because of the greater amounts of industrial waste you continually create. Oh yeah, and you’re paying for the privilege of polluting more and being less healthy. And if you spend money at a fitness business and drive yourself there, because you don’t think you have the time to do your own calorie burning tasks by hand, you just lost more time, used more resources, and created more pollution, while decreasing your cash flow.
I’m not trying to be the ultra-downer. I’m just trying to bring up the idea that if you need to exercise to stay in shape, perhaps you can do tasks which help the environment, instead of hurting it, and save yourself money instead of wasting it. It is a long road toward being an environmentalist, but we all just got one step closer.
What provides you with your inner strength? If I asked you this, you might list off the things which inspire and create the cornerstones of your life. Perhaps goals, projects, jobs, friends, and family would make the list. If you dug deeper you might move out of your normal lane and list more rugged skills like camping, hunting, bicycling, and hiking which provide you with a stronger inner core through stepping outside of your comfort zone. Some people take it up and notch and increase their positive self-regard by extreme acts such as sky diving, swimming with sharks, or trying to find a decent date.
Sure we can all list a few things we currently do or have in our lives which help maintain our self-esteem, but what about things which set the stage for who we are? What events fortified the foundations for who you became? What trails, which ended both well and badly, created the fortitude within you which helped establish the adult you are now?
Have you noticed how things which happened to us when we are younger are the most potent? How many of you reading this still listen to the same type of music you liked in your late teens? You are more likely to remember your first date or kiss than your 3,000th. Hopefully I am talking about kisses and not my 3000th date. That could indicate a problem.
Number of Television Watched
Personally, I believe surviving challenges as a child set us up for success and a positive self-regard as an adult. I’m not suggesting you let your preteen be chased by a bunch of deviant Taliban predators. The task should meet the skill level or… maybe surpass it by a few degrees. Challenge brings out the best in us and of course children are challenged in school, in social situations, and through various competitions. But this isn’t what I’m talking about.
First off, sports don’t count. It is a group being told what to do by adults set within a formatted framework of rules. Sorry, but saying, “Golly, Billy sure kicked a ball a lot tonight,” just isn’t what I’m talking about here. Again, most of school is just following rules like a billion other kids. Do this, learn this, follow these math and science rules of thumb… And unless the social situations end up leading to violence, this isn’t what I’m discussing either.
What I’m talking about is an unexpected and unsupervised test of one’s metal. I’m not sure what it is about natural challenges, but they often seem the most potent. Sure being chased through the city by murderous addicts would be intense and coming through it in one piece could help establish positive self-regard, but still cities, have police, distractions, rival gangs, hell you might be able to escape by just running up to a random door.
Perhaps it is a throwback to our roots as a species, but facing an obstacle out in the wilderness is a whole different situation. Here are some reasons this could be.
Reasons why Wilderness Challenges are more Potent
There are usually few or no other humans present
Nature doesn’t give a shit, it can’t be reasoned with, and doesn’t quit
Often solutions are long ordeals and not quick fixes
The items you have are all you get unless you make yourself more
The skills everyone present possesses become more important
Simple things like fire, water, or a knife can save you
Lack of getting these simple things can mean your doom
Nature is the great equalizer, being rich or poor, black or white, straight or gay, conservative or liberal doesn’t matter to the bear, the sun, or the blizzard
Let’s get back to character building and childhood. If you are chased by addicts you can blame them, but you can’t blame nature. When it challenges you, you can only blame yourself if you fail. Conversely, if you triumph, no one can take it away from you. Cheating is difficult, and hell, even cheating is something you could be proud of when faced with a true challenge.
So how important is it to have respect for your own skills and abilities? How much do earlier childhood victories help shape who you are? I feel that knowing you can overcome obstacles, even smaller ones, independently, and owning the experience of winning out against adversity as a youth, can set the stage for believing you can do so again as an adult. If you have never been individually challenged, how would you know whether you could persevere?
Again these do not have to be huge tasks. I don’t recommend dropping your eight year old off in the artic, but knowing at an early age you have what it takes to kick it into high gear, problem solve, hang tough, and keep yourself and others safe gives children the positive self-regard which will help them make it through their much harder adult life.
But what if they aren’t challenged. How will they react to a random issue when they have no back up? Will they be lost? Could they feel they are ill prepared to tackle an issue which isn’t solved by a cell phone?
“Kids are very nervous today—they have a lot of anxiety,” says child development specialist Rebecca Weingarten. “We need to promote constructive failure,” says Weingarten. “Kids can’t be afraid to face the normal repercussions associated with taking risks.”
So we know free play is good, but how does this translate to daily activities?
“It means no adults, no restrictions and no added rules during playtime,” says Thomas Dittl, a kindergarten teacher who is a big advocate of free play. “When you give kids room to explore and learn on their own, amazing things happen. I’ve seen this happen time and time again with my kindergarten students. They figure things out on their own. They learn how to share. They invent new ways of doing things. Even at a young age, it’s setting them up for future success.” https://bit.ly/2KRNiiG
So we know adventure is good for the brain and body. I’m not advocating forcing your kids to do things, but they should at least have the opportunity to gain the esteem boost which comes with self-reliance and risk. In the end it will make them healthier inside and out.
Alright now, just for fun, I’m going to make a quick list of a few of the things I did or had happen to me before I entered High School. I hope my mom isn’t reading this.
My early childhood adventures/risks/challenges
Faced off against a vicious dog, armed with a pipe, on a ledge above an abandoned junk yard. Age 5
Escaped from several feet of quicksand. Age 7
Saved my brother after he fell through a fishing hole in the ice. Age 8
Found and excavated an old trash midden Age 9
Explored and mapped out all the woods I could reach between the highway and river where I grow up. Age 10
Kept my brother from being swept over a waterfall. Age 11
Chased off 2 buglers with a baseball bat Age 11 (They robbed my neighbors that night)
Saved friend who was about to be swept under in an ice covered river and then made sure he didn’t get hypothermia. Age 12
Explored an abandoned three story house. Age 13
I’m not trying to brag, but I can look back with pride and mark my earlier years by accomplishments and not by what level I reached in the Halo game my mom bought me.
A few thoughts before I dive in. First, I know we all get hit over the head with the three Rs. The second is, since I’ve already covered Reduce and Reuse in the last few articles, we can fast forward to Recycle. Still bored… don’t worry I’m going to WildernessPunk this and get to the core of this issue. Recycle is the last of the our list of six ideas we can all accomplish to lower our Negative Environmental Impact (NEI)
Here’s a quick review of those six ideas
Minimizing Food Waste
Commuting by Bicycle, Walking, Buses
Use Energy Wisely such as high efficiency devices and keeping them unplugged
Consume less
Eating for a Climate Stable Planet
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse
Yep, yep Recycle. All of us do it, or at least I hope so. But are we recycling enough? More likely, we’re trying to recycle too much. Too much, one might think recycling is one area where more would always be better. We might like to think the Recycle fairies find some use for all the items we imagine we’re keeping out of the landfill.
But what happens to the items we put into our recycle bins which can’t be Recycled? Could we be creating more problems by trying to Recycle to much? What happens to things which can’t be Recycled when they arrive at the recycling department?
So are we doing more harm than good by Recycling more than we should? Chances are… yes. So let’s dig in and hash all this out so we can be good WildernessPunkers, shall we.
First off, what we can Recycle will of course vary from country to country, state to state, and town to town. So um, we’ll just focus on where I live. It might not be exact, but at least it will help educate us on a general system which should be close to accurate for most of us.
Like always, let’s strive to keep this simple and make a few lists. The first will be what we can recycle and the second will be things you might think are okay, but are not.
Commonly Recycled Goods
Cans, but make sure things like soup cans are clean
Plastic, water bottles, other drink bottles, clamshell fruit or take-out containers, rigid plastic like detergent bottles
Paper, junk mail (plastic windows on envelopes are fine), newspapers, office paper, shredded paper in clear plastic bags, and cardboard
Plastic bottle lids, but only if the bottle is dry and they are screwed back on
Plastic lunch containers, if they are clean
Cardboard cereal and pasta boxes
Aluminum foil, pie pans etc, but only if free of food
Milk containers, again as long as they are clean and dry
Shampoo bottles if clean and dry
Cardboard, but condense and remove tape
Glass jars, label can stay on but loose the lid
Items which cannot be Recycled
Plastic containers which have not been cleaned and dried
Styrofoam
Plastic straws
Juice bags
Plastic bags
Prescription bottles
Batteries
To go coffee and soda cups
Bubble Wrap
Pet food bags
Election Signs
Yard Waste
Hazardous waste, not in curbside, but some companies can help
Smaller items
Yes, I know some of this is a bit tedious, but if you really care about saving the Earth and stepping up to knock down your NEI, then this is good to know. Putting items into the recycle bin which can’t be recycled is much worse than tossing it into the landfill. It can break down the machines and cause whole truckloads to be contaminated and thrown into the landfill.
Also in case you were wondering…
“When done thoughtfully, recycling is cost-effective. Less energy is required to make products from recycled materials than to produce them from raw materials.” Benjie Sanders / Arizona Daily Star
And just for a fact teaser here are a few stats.
There’s a reason people say to recycle paper and save the trees. According to Waste Management, recycling 500 average phone books could save between 17 and 31 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 587 pounds of air pollution, 4,077 kilowatt hours of energy and landfill space. https://bit.ly/2JcL7JX
So I’m going to leave this here. Over the past few months, I’ve done what I’ve set out to do and covered, in a brutally realistic manner, what each household in the USA could, doesn’t, and should accomplish to lower our NEI as individuals and as a country. Of course more could be done and a greater insight gleaned with continued work, but more often than not, a simpler approach is more likely to succeed than an exhaustive data explosion.
On a person note, I’m not sure about all of you, but I know I’ve learned a lot by collecting this information. We often suffer from accepted delusions and I hope I’ve helped pop a few erroneous thought bubbles.
I would also like to state, I’m pleased to have completed this process. Not only because of the positive benefits of sharing, but also because of some of the darker places my research brought me too. We have a long way to go, but as my uncle’s show used to say, “Knowledge is Power.”
And come on America, we got this. We’ve stepped up before and we can do it again, especially when this might be the most important thing our species has done in 10,000 years.
Looks like I took another mini break from WPing after my last camping adventure. What have I been doing besides bingeing on ‘True’ Horror stories and proofing my newest novel which probably will never be published? After celebrating Patriot’s Day, I also hit one of the rare and lonely rivers which cuts through southern Arizona, the San Pedro. But enough about me, for I intend to finish something I have started. I hope my parents haven’t just fainted.
What I’m talking about was addressing the list of the 6 things we can all accomplish, within our urban environments, which will help lower our Negative Environmental Impact (NEI).
Here’s a quick review of those six ideas
Minimizing Food Waste
Commuting by Bicycle, Walking, Buses
Use Energy Wisely such as high efficiency devices and keeping them unplugged
Consume less
Eating for a Climate Stable Planet
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse
And as at least three of you might know, number 1-4 have been covered bringing us to… Eating for a Climate Stable Planet. No, I’m not coming for your hamburger, but I do intend to toss some data out there. But before I do…
I’ve noticed some interesting things since I’ve begun to seriously investigate our NEI. (Some of you might want to stop reading now) Most of the people I associate with all claim to be environmentalists and interested in helping the environment. But despite their claims, they do little more than the average Trump supporter to accomplish anything to really reduce their NEI. Most people, recycle, have maybe one small pet project, post a few anti-pollution memes on Facebook and call it a done deal. Meanwhile, in this country, the average person pollutes about 200 times more a day than someone living in India. Think about it, chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re 200 times worse than someone living in a more traditional environment. If we went back 10,000 years your current lifestyle would be causing about 1000 times more damage than Rutroo the Barbarian.
I’m not demanding you change, but unless you’re living in a tent in Alaska, I think few are the Americans who can claim to be environmentalists. “Hello, I’m part of the worst polluters the world has ever seen, but I’m an environmentalist.”
Still, what are the, would be, heroes of the Earth to do?
I hope we wish to do more than admit we’re hypocrites and wander off mumbling. Part of having to power to change is the knowledge of how things currently are and what could be done. This being said, let’s look at the environmental cost of what we eat. Buckle up people, because for most of us, this is going to hurt.
Many may remain unaware the consumption of food creates to highest NEI for humans. It beats out the resources we use for running a house and transportation. So if eating creates the highest impact on our environment, rethinking and adjusting our eating patterns might be the easiest way for each of us to lower our NEI, or is it?
Obviously the first, but perhaps not the easiest step, would be for as many humans as possible to become vegan or at least vegetarian. Yes, this would help, but it’s really not so simple. For instance the difference between low meat eaters and vegetarians is only a 12% drop. This is great and if everyone did this, terrific, but this still doesn’t address the remaining 50% NEI vegans create. Even the difference between a guy who eats a steak every night and a vegan is only double. It seems strange you have to change your whole life, and make things rather difficult for yourself in multiple ways, just to cut this in half and then be stuck. We just can’t lose this 50% best case scenario NEI creation… or can we?
So if we’re looking at a 50% NEI even if we’re trying our hardest with what we eat, lets looks at where this 50% comes from. It isn’t too complicated. Plants and meat cost energy and resources to produce. Then more to prepare and package. Then still even more to transport to our local store. Then a bit more to remain in a temperature controlled building until we purchase it. Still not done, even at our home we’re using energy to keep the refrigerator running and then cooking our yummies for consumption.
Since this is a lot to take in, I think we would be better tackling these one at a time. So here’s the list of
Food’s Baseline Negative Environmental Impact
Food Production
Food Preparation
Food Packaging
The Transportation of Food
Housing Food
Maintaining Food
Food Production:
We already know producing meat can up to double your NEI, depending on how much and what type you eat regularly. But whether you’re vegan or on the cowboy diet, this is still contributing to your food’s baseline NEI. Eating less meat will help this greatly but as previously stated the difference between a light meat eater and a vegetarian isn’t huge.
WildernessPunk Suggestions:
Grow your own food, raise your own animals, and reuse grey water to do so whenever possible.
Eat foods which require less resources and energy to produce.
Food Preparation:
Apparently this is considered part of the food production process, although producing food seems different than preparing it to come to us. Interesting to note, whether one’s vegan or on the Cowboy diet, this is one the highest producers of NEI through the food cycle, if you include huge amount of food waste which occurs as is mentioned in WildernessPunk: The Number One Thing. https://bit.ly/2KVVHGQ
WildernessPunk Suggestions:
Grow your own food, raise your own animals, and reuse grey water to do so whenever possible.
Do not shy away from purchasing food which appears imperfect.
Food Packaging:
There is less data available in regards to what percent of a food production of NEI is creating by its packaging. One interesting trend appears to be the more (better) food is packaged, the less food is wasted. Still part of me wonders how our dystopian ancestors will feel while walking through fields of Styrofoam when they hear “They had to make everything as perfect as possible for three generations or so and placed Styrofoam under each piece of meat. This helped people live to an older age, so they could pollute even longer, now go eat the caterpillar paste out of the communal pot and remember to share your fork with the whole village.”
WildernessPunk Suggestions:
Buy bulk when possible, but be sure not to do this if it creates food waste.
Attempt to buy food with the least amount of packaging possible.
Recycle, reduce, and reuse this packaging as much as possible.
Buy unpackaged foods.
Transportation of Food:
This is where vegans create as much NEI as the biggest carnivore. It appears transporting food creates roughly 11% of its NEI and is in many ways what we might have the least control over, but let’s take a stab at it anyway.
WildernessPunk Suggestions:
Grow your own food, raise your own animals, and reuse grey water to do so whenever possible.
Research what types of food are produced near your area and try to eat these whenever possible.
Buy food at local markets.
Avoid exotic foods.
Storing Food:
This appears to be the smallest producer of NEI. Only 5% of the overall NEI is created by maintenance and storage.
WildernessPunk Suggestions:
Use energy efficient transportation when buying food.
Smaller more focused trips to the store help reduce food waste.
Research which of your local stores are more eco-friendly.
Maintaining and Preparing Food:
The average citizen of the United States’ use of electricity makes up 14% of their NEI. Refrigerators make up only 8.8% of this. So roughly 1.2% of our yearly NEI is created from refrigerator use. Which is probably one of the most reasonable uses of energy in our country. This is only increased with the knowledge the best thing we can do to lower our NEI is to limit food waste. (See WildernessPunk Number One Thing) Also interesting to note our refrigerator use alone produces twice the NEI the average man in India creates with everything he does.
Cooking food creates slightly less NEI than refrigerator use and is easier for us to avoid by purchasing more food which doesn’t need to be cooked.
WildernessPunk Suggestions:
Keep refrigerator on a higher temperature.
Be efficient when removing items.
Try to compost food which gets too old to eat or feed it to animals.
Try to avoid buying more than you can eat before the food goes bad.
In most cases, give the expiration date on food an extra week or two.
Eat food which requires less energy to prepare.
Recycle time saving products which are big energy wasters.
Food Production is one of the hardest things for the average consumer to influence. Of course, limiting your meat intake is the best way to lower your contribution to our NEI. Producing as much or your own food as possible is also a strong play.
This may seem like a hard bunch of data to take in, but if we think of things as a national effort, we would start looking at huge improvements. If as a country, we could produce 20% less NEI the effects would be staggering. And as always keep in mind all these improvements, help the environment, our country, and our personal finances. We have nothing to lose but our NEI.
WildernessPunk 