Howdy y’all! Remember me? I haven’t posted for three weeks as I finished my first semester’s work. I turned in my last paper at 3AM Friday, and taught my last class Friday afternoon. Of course there will be some chess lessons over the holidays; chess, after all, is forever.
I’m through, at least, as soon as I finish the last paper, which should be fun. As a math major I never took any science courses the first time around. So to meet the nat sci requirement I’m taking Renewable Energy this semester and The Thinking Body next.
Although I was acquainted with the relevant topics, I learned a lot in Renewable Energy. More importantly, I began consciously looking for opportunities to reduce the waste in my life. At the beginning of the class I was feeling perhaps a bit smug about living in a city without an air conditioner, with compact fluorescents, never using the heat, traveling on public transportation, and rarely traveling by air.
But as I discussed once before, I found credible estimates that we’d need three and a half Earths to support us if we all lived like I do, and eight or so planets to support an Earth full of Americans.
We all know we can’t keep going the way we’ve been. But what can we do? Well, surprise! If you’re an American, and you’re anything like me, you probably spend a lot of your time wasting resources.
Which I beg to you take as opportunity, not indictment. Many of our daily habits are built around an economy designed for cheap oil, unlimited fresh water, and electricity for nearly nothing. But when I look at the present and the future, and consider what kind of world the next generation will inherit, I can easily imagine that washing my shirt after two wearings rather than one can contribute to the total savings we need to make if we intend to build a lifestyle that our descendants can sustain. We don’t have to stop using energy; but we do need to stop wasting it, and there are many opportunities in daily life to do so.
I’ll be talking more about ways I’ve found myself unconsciously repeating wasteful habits, most of which are easy to change once I actually pay attention to doing so. But my point right now is that we really can make a difference with small changes in habit. For example, I’ve begun turning off my computer when I’ll be away from it for a couple hours. I’ve generally left it on, because I’m usually running Seti@Home, and because I’m used being able to check email in five seconds rather than three minutes. It’s a tradeoff that has to be made on a case by case basis, but it’s one where I can save energy at a small cost to myself, so I’m doing it.
The issue is really awareness.
I wear jeans several days before washing, but shirts tend not to smell as good on the second or third day. I suppose you could decide to conserve water by not showering every day too, but it might make you less popular. It's good to conserve when possible, though.
Posted by: Mahakal on December 21, 2008 1:59 PMAlso, I was thinking you could get some more environmentally conscious, i.e. hemp shirts to wear and then you wouldn't run out as soon and can do laundry less often.
Regarding your school, was it in some way established by Sri Aurobindo? I think pretty highly of him of what I have read of his.
Posted by: Mahakal on December 22, 2008 12:09 AMThe school (now CIIS, which morphed out of AAAS) was a true San Francisco experiment, which in a way started the Sixties. Alan Watts, one of the founders, said:
Coming to San Francisco I was plunged into a world of associations and activities so complex that I can record only outlines refreshed with occasional detail, like flowers scattered through a filigree of bare stems. For six years I was to be absorbed — for sometimes as much as fourteen hours a day — in teaching, and later in administration as well, at the American Academy of Asian Studies…Posted by: Chuck Dupree on December 23, 2008 11:31 PMThe American Academy of Asian Studies was one of the principal roots of what later came to be known, in the early sixties, as the San Francisco Renaissance, of which one must say, like Saint Augustine when asked about the nature of time, “I know what it is, but when you ask me, I don’t.” I am too close to what has happened to see it in proper perspective. I know only that between, say, 1958 and 1970 a huge tide of spiritual energy in the form of poetry, music, philosophy, painting, religion, communications techniques in radio, television, and cinema, dancing, theater, and general life-style swept out of this city and its environs to affect America and the whole world…