We have to change how we live ...

We can’t go on like this.  Our everyday Western/American lifestyle -- is utterly unsustainable. 

Put that in your jeans (it takes 1000 gallons of water to make one pair of jeans) or yoga pants (80%of the micro-plastics in the ocean are from synthetic clothing or whatever exploited-foreign-worker manufactured pants you wear (In 1993, more than half of the garments sold in America were made in America; by 2013, that number was down to 2.6 percent.) and sit on it while we think.  

• At least 50 million plastic bottles are thrown away EVERYDAY in the US.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas, floats between Hawaii and California. 
  
• Peruse this quiz from the US Dept of the Interior regarding water consumption:  I’ll give you two of the answers. It takes 650 gallons of water to make a cotton shirt and it takes 450 gallons to grow ONE quarter pound burger patty.
• The average American throws away 82 pounds of textile waste (generally clothing we no longer want to wear) each year, which becomes 11 million tons of mostly non-biodegradable landfill each year.   
  

We can look at the ordinary habits of our days, weeks, and holidays -- and count the ways in which our present lives are unsustainable on this planet.  I found the above info in ten minutes of googling.

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Kathleen and I had breakfast together last week; achieved by each of us driving our (hybrid) cars one hour to meet at Simple in Lake Geneva. Simple sources the food locally, they make delicious breakfasts. Irony abounds. 

We talked about Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Unsheltered. In it a couple in their 50’s; Willa and Iano, have to deal with the stark reality that they are broke. Both have educations and excellent career resumes; neither is fighting dysfunctional habits, yet their careers were journalism and college-level teaching. Her newspaper went out of business, the college at which he had finally achieved tenure - failed. They worked hard all their lives yet became further and further behind financially. They have two young adult children and one surprise grandchild, and they are living in a house that is literally falling down around them. The novel intersperses a fascinating, based-in-truth backstory of two disrespected scientists who lived in their neighborhood a hundred years earlier.  Kingsolver is at her brilliant best pulling you out of your life just far enough that you can look back into your own precarious life. 

The prophet in Unsheltered is Tig, the early 20’s daughter who has recently returned from two years living in Cuba and is disgusted by the consumerism around her. She is the only one who seems to understand that the center is not going to hold; people must learn to live with less stuff and more awareness. By the end of the novel Willa and Tig have cobbled together warmth, safety, food, and enough joy in which to raise the baby who has landed in their life. There is deep, true love in this story; it is that love which propels individuals to find authentic lives that do not depend on things. 

It is a powerful novel that feels more contemporary than the evening news.  Wake up. The center is not going to hold. There is not much time to reconfigure how we are going to do life on earth. 

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Later in the week I heard the “Terry Gross: Fresh Air” interview with the young couple who produced The Biggest Little Farm. Which I have only seen this trailer for.  In the interview John and Molly Chester said these two things. Their points, my words.

1. Diversity is essential. Nothing healthy exists in isolation. When in doubt, add life. 

2. Monocultures are farms that use herbicides and pesticides, chemical fertilizers and antibiotics in order to grow one or two crops/animals year after year after year. When we move past that ecologically destructive model, new life will move in, take root, grow, and quite possibly become a pest. We can’t obliterate problems. We can only step back, pay attention, and consider what we can ADD that will address the excessive excess that overtakes lopsided abundance.

The answer is not to obliterate – but to pay attention and cautiously but bravely keep adding MORE life.

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I believe in thrifty thinking and frugal choices. Frugality is a way to afford our best values. I don’t believe in thrift and frugality that only pays attention to the out-of-pocket cost while turning away from what our choices cost earth and other people. We must rethink our easy dependence on cheap food produced at great expense to human, animal, and planetary health. We must rethink the casual way we hop in our cars to “run out” for this item or that.  We need to understand that simplifying our lives by donating away what we no longer want around does not make the world saner or healthier, the world doesn’t need 82 more pounds of spent clothing from me or from you this year. We need to figure out how to reconfigure and reuse what we already have.

Len asked me what we (meaning all of us) can do about how we live and how it has to change.

This is what I said which I didn’t even know I believed. Sometimes talking out loud surprises us.  “Intentionally frugal people are the people most likely to be intrigued by and unafraid of change.  We know we have challenges and problems; we have looked at and lived through losses and failures. Then we changed - and we are not afraid to keep changing. We are the people who get excited by what happens when we don’t spend all of our energy and money on stuff. We are the ones who have been surprised by what moves in when mindless consumerismmoves out.” 

This call to thoughtfulness is for all of us. Those of us who are frugal because money is challenging.  And those of us who have plenty of financial stability but are committed to preserving the earth.

What diversity can we add into our lives?

What problems can we address with MORE life, not less?

Kathleen laughed recalling a sustainable solution that happens towards the end of Unsheltered. The family is hosting a big birthday party for the baby. Guests are instructed to each bring their own glass since Tig refuses to buy disposable products. Tig has seen and believes that people can throw a great party without plastic glasses. 

Then Willa, the mother in this novel, notices that no one confuses their drink with someone else’s. When the party is over there is nothing left to clean but the food.

The celebration was simply about friends, music, amazing food, and a 1-year old.

How angry, loving, and creative can we become?