trying to cut down (Petroleum Junkie, part 2)

10%.

That’s the goal I’ve set for myself for reducing my personal usage of petroleum products and other fossil fuel gluttony in the next few months. 10%.

Living where I live, working where I work, I can’t stop driving. We can’t completely change our home heating needs. It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to cut out plastics entirely without major lifestyle changes.

But I’m determined that I won’t keep going as I have been. I’ve worked with vague goals and good intentions for a long time, but I’m not getting all that much closer to breaking my addiction. I need a specific goal, with a concrete number. Like 10%.

I’ll start with things that I can easily monitor: home electricity use, heating oil, and gasoline. I’ll check our bills for the past year for comparison. For gas for the cars, I’ll have to make a rough estimate of consumption, as I haven’t saved all of our receipts. (I intend to keep better track now.) For other things, like plastic use, I’m still planning to make changes, but I may be less able to estimate a number.

Seeing as I probably won’t get reach the 10% goal immediately, I’ll set a deadline. Let’s say by the end of 6 months. Oh, hell. Let’s say 3 months for electricity and gasoline use. By the end of September. For heating oil the real test will be the winter. For each month, I’ll have to evaluate more-or-less based on the month of the previous year.

Below I’ve broken down my plans into short-range and longer-range ones, and I’ll tell you a bit about what we do now.

The starting point
I don’t know our actual usage is yet. We are a family of 4, living in an 8-room house with drafty 20-year-old windows and an oil furnace for heat and hot water. We use lots of electric appliances and electronics, do lots of laundry¹. We have 2 window air conditioners that we use in the summer, and living in New England, we use heat several months of the year. We drive a fair amount: we live 9 miles from public transportation, 3 to 8 miles from stores and services, 20 and 45 miles from our workplaces. Most of our friends live far from us, and our families are even further. We buy food and beverages in plastic packaging, and the kids have lots of plastic toys.

Efforts we already make/have made:

• We drive small cars. (mileage in the 26-30 mpg range)
• We often work from home
• We use the window air-conditioners fairly sparingly (we don’t have central air)
• We replaced most of our lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs
• When we had to replace our furnace, we chose a more fuel efficient one
• Our washing machine, dryer and dishwasher are energy efficient models
• We use reusable bags for groceries, and increasingly, other shopping
• I consider packaging when shopping, and favor goods with less plastic.
• We reuse the plastic bags and containers we do get as much as possible.
• I try to buy local produce
• I get much of the kids’ clothing second-hand
• we recycle plastics
• We do other kinds of recycling, composting, reusing, and reducing that probably add up

Short term plans:

• Check last 12 months for electricity, fuel oil, and gasoline usage
• monitor current usage
• make better use of informational resources like the ones from my electric company
• buy more local goods: goal of 50% of produce for summer/fall
• Select electric company provider which uses renewable energy sources
• adjust our usage of…

electricity
• Check to see what is plugged in or turned on that needn’t be
• Turn off lights/don’t turn them on
• Get better nightlight for bathroom and/or hallway (we leave a light on for Phoebe at night)
• Line dry more clothes (goal of 1 load in 4)
• Change temperature of fridge
• better monitor use of air conditioners

heating oil:

• Use only cold water for laundry under ordinary circumstances
• Time my showers, and reduce time and/or temperature
• turn down the heat in the winter, especially at night and when we leave the house
• be less lazy about weatherizing our windows, doors and other draft sources

gasoline

• Take train for at least some commutes (at least 1 in 4)
• avoid using the air conditioner in my car
• better combine trips for recreation and shopping/errands
• have occasional family train trips rather than driving for recreaction/visits

Mid-range plans:

• get programmable thermostats
• Replace windows or get storm windows
• consider getting ceiling fans installed
• Evaluate purchasing habits

Long-term plans:

• Move closer to public transportation (as well as closer to work & friends)
• Investigate alternative heating and cooling methods, such as geothermal and solar
• Get a more fuel efficient car: hybrid or electric (I’m determined that the next car we buy will be one–I’m liking the Leaf)
• Grow some of my own food

Other green choices I can make along the way:

• Buy gas from companies ranked higher for social responsibility. (The ranking page has been updated, by the way. Sunoco is still highest ranked, and Hess is next. BP is now near the bottom. Near the bottom mind you–there are still companies that rank lower!)
• Take the stairs more at work and in public buildings (I need more exercise anyhow!)
• Invest in green technology
• Paint my house green.²

I know that these things aren’t enough³, and I don’t plan to limit my efforts to my personal use. I plan to take actions in the public sphere as well: by speaking out in support green energy initiatives, through grassroots organizations and voting. I will support stricter regulations in the oil industry. I intend to participate in bringing about greater energy conservation and awareness in corporate and industrial environments.

This has been a follow-up to my post Petroleum Junkie⁴. If you made it this far, you might also be interested in several recent posts at Momcrats: Where do we go from here?, Baby, You Can Drive My Car., Where Do I Go From Here? A List of Proactive Steps and Planes, Trains Automobiles & BP Boycott: All a Red Herring.

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¹ Loads of it, even.
² Just kidding.
³ You may have noticed that I haven’t set any goals as far as reducing my air travel. I noticed that, too. I just can’t go there right now. But I promise not to buy a private jet.
⁴ Sorry this post is so long. I’m very wordy. I’m trying to cut down.

don’t it make my blue eyes red

I’m back home now, in case you were wondering. I had a wonderful visit out in California with my mother, sister, brother-in-law and two adorable nephews. It was great to spend time with all of them, and to be around to help out when an extra pair of hands was needed. My mother’s art show went very well, too.

I got to spend some good bonding time with my nephews. I’m totally smitten with both of them. Diego was pretty wary of me at first (who wants company around when feeling icky?), but we had some quality time together, and by the end of my stay, he even let me get a few snuggles in. My younger nephew, Mateo, is too cute for words. He’s about 17 months old (which is 5 months younger than Theo), and a very happy little guy. I can’t wait for the 4 cousins to get together again–the last time was when Mateo was just 7 weeks old.

I have found myself frequently wishing that Massachusetts and California could somehow be neighbors. Whose idea was it to put all those big states¹ in between?

I took the red-eye back home on Thursday night, arriving Friday morning. I don’t know why I ever expect to get anything like a reasonable amount of sleep on those flights. The flight from West to East Coast is barely over 5 hours, and it’s not like you can actually easily sleep the whole 5 hours. (Well, not without fairly extreme measures.) I think I managed at most 2 hours. My flight arrived around 7:00, and I’m quite sure my eyes were nice and red. After getting some breakfast at the airport to kill a bit of time (despite my stomach’s insistance that 4 am was no time for breakfast), I took an airport bus out to near John’s office where he was able to meet me. (I’d taken the train in to work and the airport on my way out, but the train schedule didn’t mesh well with John’s work schedule for Friday for him to pick me up at the train station.) I then spent several hours hanging out zombie-like in John’s office, and even curled up in a ball on his office floor getting a couple more hours of sleep.

It was also wonderful to be reunited with Phoebe and Theo, of course, later that afternoon. John dropped me off at home, and then picked them up from their daycare and preschool to bring home to me. I got tackled in the best sort of way.

The last few days have been a blur as I’ve struggled to re-adjust to this time zone.

And now I’m heading into another work crunch time. There’s another conference coming up in just over 2 weeks, and my research group has a poster in it. I haven’t committed to going to the conference myself, and so I don’t have to go. However, it’s a conference I’d really like to go to, as it looks like a fantastic program. The trouble is, it’s in Albuquerque, which is awkward to reach from Boston. (There are no non-stops, and the schedules are tricky. There might be another red-eye involved.³) Plus it would mean leaving John alone with the kids again–for the third time in three months. Ack! Is that considered spouse abuse? Right now, I’m feeling just too tired to take on another big trip, but perhaps in the next few days I’ll feel differently.

In any case, I have a lot of work to do for the poster for the conference, and other work-related projects involving staring at my computer. Eye strain, here I come!⁴

—————

¹ Big red states.²

² Red like my sad weepy eyes.

³ Here I am, talking about all this flying around the country, and you probably are wondering about my stated goals of trying to cut down on my petroleum habit. Yes, I realize that I have a problem. But I’m also still working on my plans to address the problem, and the post wherein I will bore you with those details.

⁴ I figured I should keep up the red-eyed theme.

East Bay Open Studios (or, What I’ll be Doing This Weekend)

This weekend is the second weekend of East Bay Open Studios, an event during which artists around the East Bay (as in, the region across the bay from San Francisco) open up their studios (or other exhibit spaces) to visitors. It’s a great chance to see a wide range of artists–over 400 artists participate.

My mother, whose fabulous mixed media artwork you see below, is exhibiting some of her recent work along with several other local artists in Oakland, CA. I’ll be keeping her company during the show. I’m really happy that I get to be in town for this show, as I tend to miss out on such things due to living 3000 miles away…

One of 49 images from my mother’s collection of 6”x6” pieces entitled Butterflies at Iguassu.

More information on the show can be found here.

The May 2010 Just Posts

Welcome to the May 2010 Just Posts.

May was a hard month in the US, with BP’s colossal oil spill dominating news and minds across the country and the world. To reflect this, Holly (my partner in the Just Posts) has put together a special section on posts from the oil spill from May. Please go read her post to see what she has to say. (Keep in mind that Holly lives in New Orleans, a city that is already being directly affected by the spill.)

Just Posts for a Just World, May 2010:

• When Arizona was Multicultural, by Left Coast Cowboys
• Mi Amiga, Getting Up Off Floor, and In Park, by Jen at One Plus Two
• Dear Diane Day 15, at Homelessness Is Over
• Triumph Over Adversity Fairy Tale, by Julie at The Artful Flower
• America the Beautiful, by Wreke at Wreke Havoc
• Hey, DADT: start packing your bags, by girlgriot
• Scout and Sense and Sexuality, by Emily at Wheels on the Bus

Just Posts for a Just World: BP Oil Spill, May 2010

• Summer of Tears, by Mike Roberts at Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper
• Bombshell Expose: the real reason the oil still flows into the Gulf of Mexico, by JoAnnMor at Blogster.
• Give Us Back the Gulf and our Lives, by Bayou Child
• Thoughts on the BP Protest, by Guest Postess Sandy Rosenthal at NOLAFemmes
• Oil Spill Protest, by maringouin at NOLAFemmes
• Thoughts from the Gulf, by Amanda Mueller at NOLAFemmes
• Ode to Oysters, by Swampwoman
• Oil Free Zone!, Cajun Ingenuity, Tenacity over Tears, and A “slick” that ain’t so slick, by Bayou Woman
• Helping to Rename BP, by Painted Maypole
• Sunday Relaxing and This Link To…, by Liprap’s Lament
• The Big Deal and BP, Rethought, by Cold Spaghetti
• Hell in Handbasket, by Voix at Voix De Michele
• Before the Oil Comes, by Velveteen Mind
• Heartbreaking, by Absence of Alternatives

If you have a post in the list above, or would just like to support the Just Posts, we invite you to display a button on your blog with a link back here, or to the Just Posts at Cold Spaghetti. If you would like to have a post included next month, you can find out how to submit posts and all sorts of other stuff about the Just Posts at the information page.

shortlink for this post: http://wp.me/p2jCr-1ea

bear with me

A festive bear, as colored by Phoebe. (Age 4 and 1/4.)

A lovely picture Phoebe made for me this morning. Please note the 2 squirrels in the picture. One of them is climbing the tree, the other one doesn’t know there’s a tree. (So I’m told.)

Tonight I’m getting ready to go out to California for a week-long visit with my family. I’ve been hoping to get out there soon, and I was able to make it happen. (Have I mentioned lately how wonderful John is? He will be solo parenting while I am gone. The week will go fast for me, I’m sure it won’t go so fast for him.)

I’m really happy that I’ll be getting to spend some time with my mother, sister, brother-in-law, and 2 adorable nephews. I’m also happy that I was able to work the timing out so that I can attend my mother’s art show this weekend. (I’ve been meaning to post about that–maybe I’ll have a chance to in the next couple of days. In case I don’t, she’s participating in East Bay Open Studios.)

I’ll be taking the train in to work tomorrow morning for a meeting, then going to the airport for an evening flight. What I should be doing now is packing, and not sitting here at my laptop yammering. Then there’s that whole sleep business. I should probably be doing some of that, too.

petroleum junkie

Like so many, I am angry at BP. They have done unfathomable amounts of harm to our ocean, to the wildlife that calls that ocean home, and to the economies that rely on that life. They have done damage that will take enormous amounts of time and expense to address, and much damage that may take years to recover from. Some damage may be permanent. The ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is utterly devastating.

It’s appalling to realize how much profit BP has made–over 5 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2010–at the apparent expense of comprehensive safety measures.¹

Many people are calling to boycott BP. I’m not about to go out of my way to patronize them, but I’d never actually bought gas directly from them before.

So, what can I do to send a message?

Clearly, I need to buy my gas from a company that is more socially and environmentally responsible.

Would you believe that in a fairly recent (pre-”spill”) ranking of gas companies by social responsibility, BP came in second. Second from the top!

As gas companies go, BP has had a relatively clean and green record, boasting the following positive actions:

$600m to update pollution ctrl/workplace, working with Amnesty, working with WWF, low-sulfur gas, largest solar company, solar powered gas stations, member of CFCP, 1998 Enviro Steward Award, best overall effort in industry, abstains from political contributions, Malaysian GW education program, Non-Discrimination Policy, 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers, Greenhouse Friendly Autogas in Australia, 2004 model human rights efforts, self-imposed emissions caps

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not supporting BP, and I think they should pay heavily.⁴ I am disgusted by their irresponsible behavior, both in allowing the Gulf disaster to happen, and their actions since. (Such as using highly toxic dispersants, preventing journalists from accessing affected areas, etc.) The trouble is, their actions appear to be based on more-or-less standard practice in the oil industry.

I was horrified to learn about comparably large scale spills that have been going on in Nigeria–for decades. According to the Guardian :

…more oil is spilled from the delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico…

As you might imagine, the effects of this ongoing situation in Nigeria are devastating to local wildlife, local economies and the health and well-being of the people who live there.

Who is to blame for this? As far as I can tell (from that Guardian article and this source), several oil companies are involved: Shell, Chevron-Texaco, and Exxon-Mobil.

But you know who else is to blame?

I am.

Me, and all of the other hundreds millions of people who use the oil. Like the oil that BP has been pumping out from the ocean floors, the oil being drilled in Nigeria is headed for the shores of wealthy countries: “the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports.”

We use it not just for our cars, but for a whole bunch of other things. We rely on it for our way of life. We lament when gas prices go up, but we still keep consuming. And we are so dependent that we let the oil companies trash our environment and ruin the health and livelihood of thousands of people. All in the name of profit and convenience.

I know I’m not the worst offender. I don’t make billions in profits from oil. But…

We drive. We fly. Our house is heated by oil. We use plastics. We purchase goods that are transported by trucks. Driven on roads paved with petroleum products. We buy goods that come from across the globe.

I use petroleum products every day, in just about every aspect of my life. I am a junkie.

I can’t quit cold turkey.

I’m not ready to give up everything yet, but I’m planning to cut down.

If you’ll bear with me, I’ll share some of my plans (both short- and long-term) to reduce my personal dependence on petroleum.

———
¹ I love this commentary about the grand scale hubris. It’s bitingly funny. With dinosaurs.²

² For that matter, I’m pretty amused by the FB page called “Plugging the Gulf Oil Leak with the works of Ayn Rand.”³

³ In case you haven’t guessed, I am not a Libertarian. I’d like to see heftier regulations going on in the oil industry. But that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

⁴ BP has had other “black marks,” too, mind you. In addition to those listed on the ranking site mentioned above, there appear to have been many more recent safety violations.

h/t to laloca for the links on Nigeria and gas station rankings.

6 in a million giraffes

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a friend telling me about a cool online project: One Million Giraffes. Someone has started a website where he has the goal of collecting, as you might guess, one million giraffes. What you might not guess is that he is trying to do so by 2011, and that he wants all the giraffes to be created by participants without using a computer as part of the creative process. (For the full rules and more details, check out the rules page. There’s even a blog featuring favorite giraffes.)

Whereas my immediate response in learning of this project was to make some giraffes, it has taken me over a month to actually send mine in. But I’m happy to say that I uploaded my photo of 6 giraffes last night, and they now appear on the site. They are currently on page 2 of the site, but I expect they’ll be bumped down pretty fast. For the direct link, go here.

Here are the giraffes I cut out the same night I got the email–I took a piece of orange construction paper, folded it into 6, and cut the giraffes in a stack free-form. Then I taped them to the window.

These are not llamas.

Phoebe observed, very observantly, that my giraffes had no tails, and that giraffes have tails. She was right, and my giraffes looked more llama-like than giraffe-like. So, I retrieved them and retooled them to be tailed.

I also liked this picture of their shadows.

visiting UNESCO World Heritage sites

What do Casa Batlló (a funky modernist house designed by Gaudí in the early 1900s) and the Pantheon (a Roman temple built in 126 AD) have in common?¹ They are both listed among UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The World Heritage List includes 890 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.

Having been provoked to investigate the question by a comment on my last post, I found myself going further down the rabbit hole to look carefully through the list. I observed that I have visited far more such sites than I had realized.

Those places listed were among the most memorable places–dramatic, intriguing, charming or downright awe-inspiring– that I have been to in my life. I would gladly return to any of them.

What’s more, many of the places that are on my mental list of places to visit before I die are on that list: the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, the pyramids of Egypt, to name a few. Still other places I recognized from the travel tales and photos of my mother and grandmother–places I would love to visit as well.

All of these things have made me realize what an incredible resource this list is. I now have it in my head that in the years to come, I will expressly make efforts to visit more sites on the list. I’m going to consider this a grand checklist of wonders of the world.

Below I have listed the sites that I have been to so far. I count that I have visited 24 sites in 9 countries.

How about you? Have you been to any World Heritage sites? Are there places on the list that you long to visit?

UNESCO Word Heritage Sites I have visited²

United States

• Mesa Verde National Park: This was one of our regular haunts of summer camping trips with my grandmother and sister.
• Grand Canyon National Park: I went there on a separate camping trip with just my grandmother, when I was a teenager. (I can’t remember the year.)

Japan: I visited Japan in 2004. I went to a conference in Nara, and stayed a few days in Kyoto as well. (I want to go back.)

• Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto (Kyoto, Uji and Otsu Cities)*²
• Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara*

Heian Shrine in Kyoto.

The giant Buddha in Nara.

Brazil: I visited these sites in 1991, during my semester abroad as an undergrad.

• Iguaçu National Park
• Historic Town of Ouro Preto
• Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia
• Central Amazon Conservation Complex*: I’m not sure the part of the Amazon I went to is in the region listed, but I feel I can count this one, having been to the rainforest in Amazonas.

United Kingdom

• Tower of London: I know I went there when I was 9 years old, but have little memory. I also revisited the Tower in 2005 with John.
• City of Bath: visited in 2005

At the Roman Baths in Bath.

France: I lived in France for 2 years, though they weren’t consecutive years. The first was in 1980, the second in 1988. Some of the sites here were visited during the first year, some the second. More recently, I visited Paris and Versailles in 2007.

• Chartres Cathedral
• The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes*
• Mont-Saint-Michel and its Bay
• Palace and Park of Versailles
• Paris, Banks of the Seine*: includes the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and many more monuments.

A view of the Seine showing Notre Dame.

Germany

• Völklingen Ironworks: John, Phoebe and I headed here as an excursion from Saarbrücken, during our stay there for a conference in 2007. It was an amazing place, and I would love to return there with more time to explore and photograph. (I posted some photos from that trip before.)

The Völklingen Ironworks as seen from the train station in Völklingen.

Switzerland

• Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch*: I’m not sure whether or not to count this one. I visited Switzerland with my mother on our European trip of 1984, but I don’t remember exactly where we went. I do know we saw some Alps, though…

Italy: I have been to Italy two times. The first time was in 1984, on a trip around Europe by train with my mother. We visited Florence and Venice. The second time was in 1988, when I travelled with a high school friend. We went to Rome and Florence by bus (from France), and stopped in Pisa as well.

• Venice and its Lagoon
• Historic Centre of Florence
• Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura*
• Vatican City*
• Piazza del Duomo, Pisa*: I was lucky enough to go while visitors were still allowed to climb up the leaning tower.

Spain
My trip to Spain was just this past September (2009). (I want to go back.)

• Works of Antoni Gaudí* I visited 2 of the properties in Barcelona included in this listing–Casa Batlló and Park Güell.
• Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville*

Columns in the Park Güell in Barcelona.

Details from inside Alcázar in Sevilla.

——–
¹ Aside from being 2 of Sally’s favorite buildings on earth, that is.

² Places marked by an asterisk are those where either I have not been to every monument within a listing, or where I am not certain whether the particular location I visited falls within a region listed.³

³ I haven’t been to the Historic Centre of Brugge, but I did just recently see the movie In Bruges, which makes me feel a bit like I’ve been there. (Or at least like I’d like to go there…)

images: These are photos I took on various trips since 2004. One of these days I hope to unearth and scan photos from my trips before the days of digital cameras…