My Fair Share

I recently got to wondering about how much of an impact on my carbon account would there be from repeatedly slashing a whole bunch of leguminous trees that I have growing.

Conversation moved from slashing, to compost, to humanure.

Hmmmm.  I pooped in a bucket for a while before creating our own - ahem, hypothetical - black-water system.  We have a whole lot of bamboo growing on top of it - and growing Very Well, too. But when I stand near the bamboo, the species selected to grow to 12 m to shade the new extension, I see clearly the need to have a Carbon Account book - no amount of humanure could realistically compensate for the size of the extension I am nearly finishing.  That about two thirds of it is from recycled materials is - perhaps ironically - immaterial.  The fourteen 6m lengths of zincalume roofing that I used to cover the aluminium foil/fibreglass insulation is more of a declaration to the world of what I really believe than any amount of carbon accounting.

I guess that was an example of the honesty that is needed to avoid any accusation of hypocrisy.

Interesting, though.  The wife and kids have gone to visit the relations, leaving me to complete the extension.  Irony.  Since they have been gone, it is very obvious, the amount of debits from the carbon account has declined sharply.  Yet, the reason for them going - so I can get a lot of work done on the extensions, it is equally as obvious, is to do something that creates an awful lot of carbon debits;  it matters little that I have turned off the hot water system and have not cooked since they left.

Irony?  While doing the renovations today, I was listening to a program on the wireless about an island somewhere (does it really matter where?) that currently is indundated an extra 600m by every high tide, when compared to 30 years ago.  When asked if they thought it was due to global warming, the local folk simply asked:

 What is global warming?

I guess I’m just feeling a little despondent.  What’s more, the local show is in three weeks and I haven’t made any jams, and I doubt that I will have any produce to enter.  Even more importantly, I am not sure that I will have anything - other than a deep-seated sense of hypocrisy - to offer The Crop Circle in little over a month.

PS. I say, Kyle, in which category in the Carbon Accounting spreadsheet should I record tonight’s beer consumption?

Okay, I get that planting trees makes deposits into our “account”.  And that composting - as with other forms of disposal (see laws of thermodynamics) - makes withdrawals from our account.

But…

We have a whole heap of plant that we never let to grow real big - so they never grow into proper trees.  Instead, we deliberately slash them when they are about 1.5-2m high, add use the slashings for mulch/compost and, ultimately soil improvement.

Observation tells me that the rate of plant growth is far greater when they are slashed than when they are not.

My question:

according to the spreadsheet we are using, how does one reconcile the increased growth rate of the trees (deposit) arising from  the slashing, with the increased carbon output (withdrawal) from using the slashings for mulch/compost?

Or, am I just trying to weasle myself out of facing some hard facts?

I won’t even consider a discussion about the effects of improved soil structure on the carbon balance (not because I don’t want to know, I just don’t think my brain could cope with the mathematics).

Kyle/others?

Day 3 of this Carbon counting thing, and already we are way over.  I haven’t included electricity, or food (haven’t bought any) or any of the things that we usually do.  Nope.

Really, all we did was drive to the airport (300km return) and put the wife and kids on a little old aeroplane for a 2000km round trip (each) to see the grandparents.

To try and make myself feel marginally better, I also included a kilogram of aerobic composting, but it just did not seem to make too much of a difference to the carbon used by travelling.

Lesson of the day:  don’t pay too much attention to people who tell you that they are saving the planet by composting (especially if they tell you this in the airport lounge).

One of the four goals of FairShareInternational is:

10: tread lightly

Reducing my use of water, energy and minerals by at least 10%, based on the national average per capita consumption. [this is 10% per year until you can go no further]

Now, I’ve been plugging along at this for a few years, and recent results from the conclusion of the 90% Reduction Challenge indicate that we did reduce our consumption by (at least) an additional 10& in the past 12 months.

One of the things about this particular goal is that has built in to it the notion of permanent change. The reason for the 10% figure is to make changes that are do-able long term. While the 90% reduction thing obviously exceeded this target, it did something that was incredibly valuable.

It kept me counting.

By keeping track of our consumption, we were able to respond (or not, as the case often was) to keep us more or less on target. It didn’t matter if the target was 90% above or 90% below. Just as my professional roles in corporate governance rely upon data to make future decisions based on past results, so too do I believe that data are - in many ways - the key to maintaining momentum.

Kyle, over at Green With a Gun, agrees. He also has a better grasp of spreadsheets than I, and a greater interest in creating reliable personal data management tools based on credible international data. Aligned with this has been his creation of a new unit of currency: the carbon. This unit forms the basis of his 1tonne carbon lifestyle concept, about which he has written in some detail. To assist with this, Kyle has put together a spreadsheet to help track carbon expenditure.

I had a look at it. I spoke with my wife about it.

It is getting a little too close; a little too personal. For some reason, keeping records for this spreadsheet is a bit more confronting than working with percentages. Hard data that might lead not just to hard questions about our actions, but about our values … about how much we really care about not just our fair share, but the right (?) potential (?) of others to have their fair share.

In terms of MyFairShare, this tool looks like it will enable my family to track our carbon consumption such that we can see just how much more than our fair share we are using. [Note that I did not presume that we were using just, or less than, our fair share. Our ecological footprint makes it clear that we use more than our fair share of natural resources.]

As of July 1, we will use this tool to discover our own excess. To discover not just by how much we need to reduce, but by how much we have exceeded our fair share. How we respond to this information I do not know.

But, dear reader, I will be sure to share both our figures and our thoughts with you.

Note: I had this sitting in drafts, ready to post on July 1. I now see that Kyle has offered a single post to actually launch this idea, a challenge that he calls the Carbon Account Challenge - Can You Balance the Books? He’s even gone and made his own little picture thing - you will notice it included above.

One of the common cliches that I hear is that it is our children’s future, and that is why we should look after it.

I’m not sure that I agree.  I’m not sure that I disagree either.   Come to think of it, perhaps I am Just Not Sure.

Something that I am sure of is that the present is their’s as much as it is anyone’s.

Now is now.  Even in the future, now will be now.  Sure, acts now affect those future nows. But, really, it is the cumulative affect of nows that creates the future - regardless of whose future it is.

I like my kids.  Some folk will find that a strange thing to say, but my experience over the past 18 months of being a stay at home dad - having a fair bit to do with other parents of young children - is that a great many people dedicate large portions of their income to their kids, and some even speak volumes of their love for them.  But, it doesn’t seem so common that they like them.  Not really.

Why?

They don’t seem so keen to do stuff with them.  They (the kids) are an inconvenience.  Their every exploration seems like Just Too Much Trouble (I know this by the response of the mother of the other child when she found out that her kid and mine were smashing eggs with a hammer at our place - but only because the lady next door wasn’t home to give them to!).

Perhaps interestingly, these parents are the ones who I have more frequently assert that the future belongs to their children.

I like my kids.  And I like them now.  One of the reasons I quit work was so I could be with them now.  Not in the future.  Now.  So I can like them now.  So I can care for them now, and care for their now.

Perhaps by doing this, we are together caring for our future?

So, this is it.

As at the beginning of the 12 month project, we sat at 11% below average consumption.

As at the end of the year, our cumulative average across all categories for the year was 46% below average.

This included significant “costs” associated with investing in those things needed to generate a more sustainable reduction beyond the year.  To be honest, it also included things that were completely unnecessary in the grand scheme of things - renovations of great aesthetic and personal utilitarian (and property value) benefit, but which really speak nothing more than to my own excess in some areas.

If we look at how we finished the year:

Electricity - 3% of average

Water - 20% of average (which includes water used for the garden)

Petrol - 6% of average

Gas - 0% of average

Garbage - 12.5% of average (includes construction debris and the bottles of Too Many Beers)

Consumer Goods - 27% of average

Food - 36% of average 

Overall, this gets us a figure of 14.9% of average, or an 85.1% reduction.

I guess now I wonder how I feel about that.  There’s much that could be said.  Many might cheer and be excited - including me.  Many might moan and berate - also like me.

I think I will defer to wondering about what the most significant learning was from this whole exercise.  There are two, somewhat contradictory, but equally influential in my life:

1.  My family is not me, and so my own goals cannot be presumed to be ours.   My marriage is more important than my percentages, and my children are more important than the world that their grand children will inherit.  This is not to say that I am keen to abrogate my ethical responsibilities to future generations.  No, it is simply a recognition that, as our ye olde mate, Jonny Donne tells me, no man is an island, entire of itself.  With this comes, as my old man said once when I was an impetuous 15 year old, we all have obligations to everyone.

2. Thanks to Evan, I have learned that: Sometimes I think that we should flip flop our thinking and instead of thinking that we have to “reduce” our consumption by 90% that we can look at it as using “only” 10% of the average person.

What does this mean for this year, and those that follow?

Last year, we used more than “our fair share”.  Using Evan’s idea, I did not reduce my consumption by 85% so much as we took 5% too much.  There is little to be congratulated for a life of excess … my footprint will still require half an earth more than we have.

Looking out the window, I see the winter crop needs some help, and I am reminded of Geoff Lawton’s wise words:

all the world’s problems can be solved in a garden. 

It’s been a year.  What has happened?

In electricity, we started with an annual average consumption for our district of 12750kWh.

Our consumption for the full year has been  6784kWh, equating to about 18kWh per day.

A combination of purchasing so-called green power as well as doubling up with carbon offsets meant that we would be carbon neutral with electricity at 14kWh.

For the entire year, this means we tracked at 4kWh per day, or 13% of the local community’s average consumption.

As at the end of this challenge, we were averaging 15kWh consumption per day, meaning that after the green power and carbon offsets were applied, we were tracking at 1kWh per day.

So, if we kept going as we ended this 12 month challenge, then we’d be at 3% of the local average electricity consumption.

I’ll visit the other categories when I have crunched some more data.

I mentioned in my last post that we are starting up a group to share surplus produce, seeds, plants, breads etc.

The dilemma we are having at the moment - and what a great life we must have if this is the biggest concern we have - what to call it….

Any ideas?

I like seeds.  I like how they grow from an itsy bitsy thing into a whole big and bountiful thing.

I think I like community for the same reason.

Just like it’s often better to delay sowing a seed until the soil is sufficiently fertile, the same it often is with ideas.

Over a year ago I started talking about gardening and food and seed saving with others.  Well, they just started asking, as an extension of their visits to my house with their kids, or as general conversation about what we’d each been up to.

Over a year ago I noticed that I was pretty good at growing cucumbers, eggplant and a few other things, but not so good at growing mint, carrots and cabbages.  Someone else had lots of fruit that was spoiling and creating a headache for them as it rotted on the ground.

Over a year ago I thought that it would make a whole lot of sense for us to share.

Over a year ago I started to prepare the seed bed, started to lament the waste of growing so much, started to lament the difficulty in doing all things by one’s self, started to lament the rise in cost of food, started to lament the inefficiency of it all.  But, as with soil building, I did this by focusing on replacing what was missing, rather than compensating for it …  fertilising the seed bed of people’s imaginations rather than poisoning obstacles in their thinking.

It happened last week.

You should start a food co-op.  Nicky said to me.

laugh laugh laugh laugh.  I said.  It would be great, wouldn’t it.  I said.  I can’t do it at the moment. Already stretched too far.  Wouldn’t do a good enough job.  Keen to see it happen, but.

It couldn’t be too hard, could it?  She said.  Not if we start small.

No, I can’t imagine it.  I said.

I guess we just have to start with swapping the stuff that we have too much of.  Just to get things started.  She said.

Yeah.  I said.

The conversation went on, then

I guess we just need to set a date and do it.  She said.

Yeah. I said.

But people may not have enough stuff to share yet, so they may not come if they don’t feel like they’ve got enough to swap. She said.

We could set the date a few months ahead. I said.

I’ll get the calendar.  She said.

a bit later…

 August 10.  Yeah, that’s a good date.  I said.

We can swap all sorts of stuff. She said.  Not just produce, but seedlings, plants, seeds, cakes, bread, jams and preserves, all sorts of things, we just specify that it’s got to be wholesome, organic stuff. 

A few days later, I run into one of the other ‘mums’ up the street…

Hey, you grow some of your own food, don’t you? She said.

Some - although it’s not looking too good at the moment. Just corn and zucchinis, mostly. I said.

Why don’t you come to Nicky’s on August 10 and swap some for things that you haven’t got …

I could have done it myself a year ago.  But, I don’t think it would have been as successful, or have the longer term influence that I think it might have.  A delay of a year - it caused me frustration, just as not being able to plant seeds straight away causes frustration.  But, come harvest time, it is true that you reap not just what you sow, but you reap what you sow into.

Anything bigger than a standard letter does not get delivered by the usual postman on his motorbike.  Instead, it gets delivered by a chap that my kids call Parcel Man.  He drives around town in a van, beeping his horn outside your place to let you know that he has a parcel for you.

We weren’t home when he came this morning.  We were out dropping a kid off somewhere on the other side of town and were just leaving when Parcel Man pulled up across the street.  Out he leaped and hurried across to stick a parcel through the open window of our slowly moving car.

Saw you from across the way, he said, referring to the open paddock that separated us from the road along which he’d been travelling.

Thankyoo, Parthelman, said the 2 year old in the back seat.