The Princeton group is suggesting we measure and reduce the collective carbon footprint of individuals, rather than businesses. Individuals wouldn’t be held directly accountable, but the nations they’re in would take responsibility for the needed carbon reduction. This makes sense to me because it focuses on the end-users of all the emissions. If people consumed differently, businesses would have to follow suit.

Background: On average, each person in the world produces five tons of CO2 per year, with Europe producing twice that, and the U.S. producing 20 tons per person per year. With three billion people in the world, 50% of the carbon is being created by only 700 million individuals. They need to consume less if global warming is to be slowed.

How can you and I reduce our carbon footprint? In many cases, it looks the same as saving money, i.e. using less electricity, slowing our pace in summer heat rather than cranking up the air conditioning, spending less money on gas, saving on our heating bills in winter, and most of all, flying less. One approach to the latter is staycations for far-flung families.

“All of the world’s high CO2-emitting individuals are treated the same, regardless of where they live.”  That statement is part of the short abstract of the plan, which is designed to engage developed and developing nations alike, and address the energy needs of  millions living in extreme poverty.

While I still hope the Senate passes the Waxman-Markey bill, which focuses on a cap and trade system for U.S. businesses, I hope even more that this more global and progressive Princeton-based initiative takes off.

Sidenote: My brother Mick is visiting from out of state, and I see my family so little that I’ve been more focused on him than on blogging in the last few days. All three of us are leaving for a weekend in Bend tomorrow, and I plan to post again from that beautiful town in Oregon’s high desert.

• Our Next Car: Prius Or Honda Hybrid?
• Portland Needs CRAGs, not Craigslist
• Learning To Count Carbon
• The High Country Road of Walking The Talk
• Carpooling Is Saving Me $6,800/year

Fourth of July at Moss Creek Campground

Fireworks, begone.

The piney air penetrates

My limbic brain-stem.

Intoxicated On The Fourth

Tipsy on pine air

I decline the wine, and write

Of independence.

Independence On The Little White Salmon

Oh, say can you see

Your way clear to using less

Stuff? Camp. Hike. Talk. Joy.

photo courtesy of Michael@NW Lens

• The Flow Of Wine And Money, Part II
• Celebrating the Fourth, Diamond-Cut Style
• The Flow of Wine and Money
• Steroids, Courage And Climate Change
• Happiness In The High Desert

In modern times, my home state of Oregon is not known for economic prosperity (our unemployment rate, for example, is often highest in the nation), but is richly colonized by the creative class, i.e. writers, artists and all types of innovators. Among Oregon’s writers, the best-selling author is Jean Auel, of prehistoric fiction fame. Oregon’s best writer, though is arguably Robert Leo Heilman, a soft-spoken, intensely literary man who has worked all his life at physical labor and never darkened the doors of a college classroom.

I talked with Robert on the phone recently, having read his award-winning book Overstory: Zero: Real Life In Timber Country. He’s lived in Myrtle Creek for 31 years, a small town in rural Douglas County, Oregon, with his wife Diane. Overstory: Zero tells in first-person essays of life there and larger truths, of loving land that is being torn apart, of baseball and community, of laboring and being laid off,  of Reagonomics and how the alleged trickle-down played out in rural America. Mr. Heilman’s prose is highbrow and grounded. It’s open-hearted yet pointed, politely forcing us into clearer thinking about our lives and our nation.

Am I the only one who thinks this guy is brilliant? Well, Overstory: Zero has five-star ratings from folks who voluntarily reviewed it on Amazon. If I were you I’d buy a copy to read this summer (he did not ask me to say that :).

Robert Leo Heilman seems to me like a distillation of Oregon itself: rich in the things money cannot buy, like relationships, connection to nature, honest work, a creative inner life, community and sense of place.

Come to think of it, that’s also a description of what I call a diamond-cut life.

Having introduced you to Robert Leo Heilman, in Part II I’ll write what I learned in my conversation with him and print, with his permission, a choice anecdote  from a recently written, unpublished piece.

• Oregon’s New Solar Highway
• Living It Up At The Laurelhurst
• Books That Excite Me Or Make Me Laugh
• Join Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben
• Inviting Guest Posts!

Bryce believes that while we do need to live more sustainably (the central premise of the diamond-cut life), Waxman-Markey is not really about climate change, but is about government control, and therefore is wrong.

I went to visit his blog on self-reliance, which is a good one, chock-full of practical advice on wide-ranging topics like spending less than you earn, emergency preparedness, dealing with swine flu, and even the dangers of an entertainment-centered lifestyle. I’m in full agreement with Bryce’s ethic of self-help, personal discipline and taking 100%  responsibility for one’s life.

Here is where I challenge the self-reliant, anti-government perspective, though: how exactly does the world reduce its carbon footprint enough to avert catastrophe without government involvement and ‘control’?

Pulitzer prize-winner Jared Diamond describes in his book Collapse how many societies have extinguished themselves in the past by overusing their resources and degrading their environment. The Mayans and the Anasazi, Norse Greenland and Easter Island are a few examples among many. In contrast, a few societies disciplined their resource-use and thrived instead of collapsing. But how? The discipline that allowed survival instead of catastrophe happened from the bottom up (the general will and organization of the common people) in the small societies of highland New Guinea and Tikopia. In Japan of the Tokugawa era, it happened from the top down (government control).

I see no sign of a nationwide or worldwide  groundswell from citizens to voluntarily reduce carbon emissions. (In this respect, Diamond-Cut Life is ahead of its time , though its emphasis on finding happiness is not).  Rather, our emissions keep growing. We have a crying need for government control of the carbon emissions that cause climate change, similar to the way that we need police departments in cities to deter people from stealing and assaulting at will. The good of the whole is crucial, and individuals have always throughout history had to submit some (not all) of their desires to it.

Self-reliance of individuals, while important, can only take us so far. It can’t address the larger overarching issues that bind us into societies and civilizations. And our civilization will degrade and eventually collapse if we don’t sharply reduce carbon emissions and control climate change. I challenge those who fear the government controlling carbon emissions more than they fear the wholesale societal collapse that the Maya, Anasazi and Easter Island societies experienced.

I imagine that the people of those cultures objected, also, to the idea of consuming resources more slowly than they were doing. If they’d known where their lifestyles were leading them (chaos, starvation, bloodshed and cannabalism) they might have accepted some restraints on their consumption. We do know where our lifestyles are leading us, and we need to accept restraints on our consumption, i.e. production of carbon emissions.

• House Votes on Carbon Cap & Trade Bill This Friday
• The Climate Doesn’t Play Politics
• Our Carbon Reduction Group
• Steroids, Courage And Climate Change
• Carbon Emissions: Focus On Individuals Rather Than Businesses?

If  it passes, this bill will be our nation’s first legislative response to global warming. The House narrowly passed Waxman-Markey last Friday, and it now goes to the Senate, where it faces more opposition, led by the states most dependent on oil and coal.

Doesn’t ‘treason and betrayal’ sound too extreme and reactive of Mr. Krugman, as if he has an axe to grind? How could people elected to Congress in an educated, democratic country be committing treason and betrayal?

The answer lies in the fact that the climate and the natural world don’t care about our economy, our political system or our human desire to conduct business as usual. The climate is warming much faster than even the pessimistic scenarios of a few years ago. We’re looking at New Hampshire having the climate of North Carolina by the end of this century, and Illinois having the climate of East Texas.

As Mr. Krugman points out, the politicians who oppose Waxman-Markey don’t like the policy implications of all this, so they’ve decided not to believe in climate change. I would add this is similar to earlier in U.S. history, when the country’s economy was so dependent on slavery that most people decided not to believe slavery was immoral. It was easier to pursue business as usual than a paradigm shift. But their denial did not prevent the end of slavery and the accompanying paradigm shift from happening.

Here at the Diamond-Cut Life I tend to focus on changing our lifestyles so that we’re living more sustainably. But political change is equally essential. Mr. Krugman is right that Congresspeople who refuse to take action on climate change by voting for the Waxman-Markey bill are commiting treason and betrayal. Instead of  practicing leadership, they are following the leadership of ExxonMobil, which today happens to have a quarter-page advertisement directly under Mr. Krugman’s editorial. Their ad claims with a straight face that it is simultaneously addressing “the challenge of sustainability” as it also continues to “deliver superior stockholder returns”.

That is like cotton plantation owners in the South claiming in the mid-1800’s that they are addressing the challenge of slavery as they also continue to deliver cotton at the cheapest possible price.

• House Votes on Carbon Cap & Trade Bill This Friday
• It’s Cool To Be Adult
• Self-Reliance Versus Government Control
• Better Than Bigger: Getting to Enough
• Run 7 On 7 Wins Diamond-Cut Carat Award

The biggest downside of staycations, to me, is not getting to see faraway loved ones in person. An option we always have, though, is old-fashioned phone visits, the kind where you really settle in and have good, unhurried conversations with friends or family members on the phone. Email communication usually does not build close relationships as well.

• Schedule the phone visit as you would an in-person visit. Example: 11 a.m. on Saturday morning when you’ve finished breakfast, you have nothing else scheduled, and you’re unlikely to be interrupted. Or, your Wednesday lunch hour if you feel confident your work won’t encroach.

• When scheduling, account for your loved one’s time-zone (11:00 Pacific time for you equals 2:00 East Coast time for him). Name who is calling who so that you’re not calling at the same time getting dumped into each others’ voicemails, or both sitting there waiting while nothing happens.

• In the days prior to the phone visit, jot down notes of what you’d like to talk about. The anticipation of talking is fun. Examples: how is his new job working out?; the amazing way your strawberries are coming in this year; is Mason playing baseball again this year?; the way your boss praised you at the all-staff meeting; would she please send over that good soup recipe she made that time you last visited?

• Consider looking at a photo of the loved one as you’re talking with him/her in order to feel closer. You could also look at photos online together and discuss them to catch up on news.

• Use a landline rather than a cell phone for the phone visit, if a landline is available and affordable.  Landlines usually give a better-quality connection, letting you hear the nuances in each others’ voices better. Sometimes a long-distance friend and I have split the cost of an hour-long phone visit — one of us just calls the other back in the middle of it. The caller uses their cell phone to call the landline of the other, to minimize costs.

• Consider walking in a park or strolling in your own garden during your phone visit. For a kinesthetic person (as I happen to be) the physical motion may be the best way for you to concentrate and be fully engaged. Sometimes I pull weeds or pick blueberries, but I don’t look at papers or a computer during a phone visit - those things take me mentally away from whoever I’m talking to.

• Lively voicemail exchanges can be a great phone-conversation alternative for busy but sociable people. This approach involves no scheduling; you don’t have to be free at the same time. My close friend Libby and I, a thousand miles away from each other,  love to leave detailed voicemails in which we first respond to the other’s last voicemail (”Yes, I can see how you’d feel that way!” or “Since you asked for advice, here is what I think I’d do in that situation”). Then we give each other updates on our lives. At its best, it’s like being on a riff together, the string of energetic voicemails creating a running conversation in which both of us get to express ourselves fully, and also feel listened to.
• Consider that the listening, communication and relationship-building skills that we and our children build in high-quality phone conversations are valuable in all parts of our lives, including our work. And looking at the carbon-constrained future of our world, the costs of oil and long-distance travel will only keep going up. Nurturing our long-distance relationships via the telephone is both a loving and smart thing to do.

photos courtesy of ktylerconk

• How To Talk About Money
• I’m In Love! His Name Is WES . . .
• Twenty Ways To a Simpler, Happier Life, Part II
• The Real Cost Of Gas: $15/gallon
• Getting Consumed By Sustainability

• Embracing Change
• Stampede To Small Cars?
• Obama, Racism and the Primary World
• Back To Church And Crossing Over
• Wendell Berry & Wes Jackson: Support the 50 Year Farm Bill

Thor Hinckley, manager of the nation’s leading renewable power program, supplied this guest post. Thor is my husband.

To quote from Nobel laureate Al Gore: “For those who care about the global warming catastrophe — this is the moment”. The Waxman-Markey legislation known as the Carbon Cap and Trade bill is coming up for a House vote this Friday, June 26th. Our work now is to get our legislators to pass this overdue bill, officially named the American Clean Energy & Security Act.

Click here to find and contact  your representative and tell them to vote yes on the Waxman-Markey bill this Friday.

This bill is likely to come down to a very narrow margin, so our actions make a real difference. More information at Repower America.

photo courtesy of Juampe Lopez

• The Climate Doesn’t Play Politics
• Oregon’s New Solar Highway
• Self-Reliance Versus Government Control
• Driving A Prius In The Wild West
• Living Out The Triple Bottom Line

Unlike many resources pages, ours has a nimble fly-out design so that you’re not stumbling over dozens of entertainment-related links when all you really wanted was a good single link on how to stop your junk mail, or conserve water or electricity, or find a green job, or be more sustainable in your business . See for yourself.

From now until the Fourth of July, we’re running a contest.  It will have two winners; each gets a $50 gift certificate. One winner will have given us the best (single) link to add to Resources For Good Living. The other winner will have given us the greatest number of pretty good links to add to our new page.

The $50 gift certificates will be to Powells Books (you can shop online from anywhere, as well as here in our fair city). If you win the contest and you tell me, “Alison, I already have too many books!”  I’ll buy you a gift certificate to the independently owned business of your choice. No chains, no big-box, no so-called ‘adult’ stores. (It’s so fun getting to make the rules.)

What makes a good link to Resources For Good Living in the Diamond-Cut world? Well, the diamond-cut life is about chiseling our happiness down to the core of consumption, so that we’re consuming far less than the average American, and making ourselves (and sometimes those around us) happier in the process. So the Resources links are based on that principle — less consumption (or more responsible consumption), and more happiness. Post your suggestions here. Feel free to lobby for why it’s the most valuable link and should win the contest. Good luck!

• Resources For Good Living: Suggest A Link!
• Seeking A Diamond-Cut Life
• Biodiesel, Carpooling and Happiness
• The Peak Of Happiness
• Looking Forward To . . .

Margaret, who leases her pedicab from Cascadia Pedicab, cheerfully took me and my bags to my destination, answering my many questions as she locomoted everything with her legs. (I’ve always maintained that our bodies are the ideal technology for short trips.)

“Doing a pedicab is the best job I’ve ever had,” Margaret said. “I get to choose my own hours, be outdoors, get lots of exercise, talk with people, and wear whatever I want.” (She was actually wearing a beautiful camisole-style dress. Not that I care about clothes).

I love that pedicabs create zero carbon emissions, healthy and meaningful work for their operators, and fun for those using them. Think of the faces of people you typically see riding in cars, and the faces of the people in the picture above. Who looks happier?

photo courtesy of BikePortland.org.

• The 80-20 Rule Of Resources
• Death of Retail & Naked Ladies
• Unclothing The Horse and Juliet Schorr
• The Very Best Diet, Part II
• Top Ten Tips On Xeroscape Gardening