Earth Day 2007

Today is Earth Day, a day set aside to celebrate the earth and promote environmentalism. We did neither, really, having a perfectly ordinary Sunday. Mind you, over the years we’ve done more than many other people.
I went to the 25th Anniversary Earth Day in 1995 in Chicago, and for a time I was really motivated to do all the right things: Reduce, reuse, recycle (or course) and to do things like find non-toxic cleaning solutions. Like a lot of people, I found that convenience trumped commitment.
One lesson I took from that was that for people to live with less impact on the earth, it has to be easy for them. For example, when I lived in Chicago, as well as later when the two of us lived in a small rural New Zealand town, there was no kerbside recycling. Nevertheless, I’ve always been good about taking recyclables to the drop off place—using fossil fuels to do it, of course. In Auckland, we have kerbside recycling, and a far higher percentage of people do it (so many, in fact, that there’s too much plastics, glass and paper collected).
Another lesson is that people respond to financial incentives. On Earth Day 1995, I was living in what they euphemistically called a “garden apartment”: It was a basement, so dark that we needed lamps even in daytime. I changed all our lightbulbs to compact fluorescents and we saved a huge amount on electricity.
These things are still true today: People will choose better options when it’s easy for them—meaning it causes little disruption—and when they have a financial incentive for doing so. Get either wrong, and people make the wrong choices.
Here in New Zealand, forestry is being cleared for dairy farming at an alarming rate. Dairy farming has about the highest impact on the earth of any type of farming, both directly—the high number of resources the animals require—to more indirect things like pollution from run-off and allowing animals access to water ways. Commodity prices and self-interest of the landowners means that this seems like a good choice.
Commercial forests, mostly owned by foreign-based trans-national corporations with no connection or any real regard for New Zealand, are demanding all sorts of government concessions, or they threaten to clear-cut their land (as the smaller, private owners do when they convert to dairy farming). Right wing parties are quick to back the corporates, rather than stick up for New Zealand. But, at least in New Zealand these trans-national corporations don’t automatically get their way, unlike other countries.
Despite my opposition to corporate welfare, it’s only realistic to acknowledge that no business will do anything without getting something in return, because people don’t, either. So if I ruled the land, I’d use government and tax policy more creatively.
But I don’t rule the land, and I can’t have any more influence on the country than anyone else. So, I concentrate on doing what I can to make things better.
We have several things planned, including: We’re going to switch to more energy-efficient heating/cooling. We’ll replace vehicles with more fuel-efficient models (Auckland has a terrible public transport system, so cars are necessary) when the opportunity arises. Next year, I’m going to grow more of our own vegetables in raised beds held with timbers made of recycled plastic (closing the loop in recyclables as well as meaning no need to treat or maintain the timbers with toxic chemicals). We’re also nearly finished replacing 31 ceiling light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. Eventually, we’ll put in a rain water collection tank, too.
So: What are you doing to help?