November 25, 2008
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My Disgraceful Carbon Footprint
I don’t know what my personal annual carbon emissions are. Various online calculators show results that range from slightly under 2 tons of carbon dioxide a year to just over 30. The discrepancy makes sense to me when I think about the questions each of those sites asks, and the things they all leave out. None of them is set up to comprehensively reflect my lifestyle and its environmental impact. That’s what I get for living on the edge.
I call my footprint, “disgraceful,” because I can’t help contrasting it to what it was when I was able to live as I chose, and to how much smaller it would be if I had the means to make some changes. When I lived off the grid and started my small gasoline generator only every week or two to charge the old car battery that powered my radio, I had no car and got much of my food from gardening, wild foraging, and fishing. I had a barely discernible carbon footprint then.
Loss of physical capacity has cut my gardening down to nearly nothing, and reduced my wild foraging even more. I haven’t gone fishing in years, but I still do receive excess game and fish from friends and neighbors. The carbon calculators can go wildly wrong in either direction when trying to estimate my footprint based on diet. They all ask if we’re omnivorous, vegan, or vegetarian. Only one asked where we live. Points are given (carbon points deducted) for not eating meat, but most Alaskan vegans use more carbon than we do because their fresh vegetables arrive here on an airplane. In winter, most of the fruits and vegetables available in stores are from the southern hemisphere.
Some of the calculators score us on the basis of our shopping habits. They give points (deduct carbon) for shopping at thrift stores, but none of the calculators recognizes dumpster diving. Anyone who has never picked her way across the stinky terrain of a public dump or gone over the edge of a dumpster to see what was in a bulging garbage bag, can’t know how unjust it is not to recognize the dumpster divers’ contribution to the ecology.
Sunday at AIH, a male employee asked Greyfox where he got his Ebert & Roeper gimme cap. Greyfox hesitated, thinking, trying to remember. I prompted him: “thrift store? …dumpster?” He said yeah, it had to be one of those, and the man gave him look of distaste and uneasily said, “Thanks for that…. little bit of information.” I think he was implying it was too much information, but he had asked, hadn’t he? A young woman employee who heard the exchange, volunteered that when she lived in the dorms at U of A there was always fine pickings in the dumpsters at end of term. We congratulated each other on our thrift and environmental awareness, and the man with the stick up his butt walked away.
I do think there is virtue in scavenging others’ waste, as there is in reusing and recycling one’s own. I confess that I might make more of it than it deserves because it helps me compensate for the ways in which my lifestyle crosses the line in the other direction.
I eat local produce as much as I can. On my last shopping trip, I bought organically grown carrots from this very valley, and potatoes. Buying Alaskan carrots and potatoes is a sacrifice. The price is usually higher than for California carrots and Idaho spuds, and the flavor of Alaskan root vegies is not “right” — not what my palate is trained to recognize as potato or carrot. The short season, cool temperatures, and acid soil here grow bitter carrots and sweet, waxy potatoes. After thirty-some years here, I am used to them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still notice the difference and appreciate an occasional exotic treat.
I cannot afford local eggs, even when they are available, which is rare. State law prevents local goat herders from selling their milk, so I buy imported milk. Alaska does not produce tree fruits at all, nor melons, nor winter squash. I like those things and buy them sometimes, but infrequently.
Crops such as celery and lettuce are available only for a brief summer season, and at a premium over airfreighted produce. We grow no grains, no long-season shell peas or dry beans, and the few green beans and snap peas available in summer are as exorbitant as the few greenhouse-grown tomatoes and peppers. It costs five or six dollars in summer for a small local green pepper, as opposed to under a dollar in summer or about two dollars in winter, for one flown in from California, Mexico, or Chile. Zucchini and cabbage grow like crazy in the midnight sun, and there is always a surplus of them during the short harvest season. Too bad I’m allergic to cabbage, eh? A balanced diet is not easy to achieve without spending a lot of money and leaving an enormous carbon footprint.
Much easier for me is keeping down my energy consumption. Frugal habits of a lifetime, reinforced in the environmentally aware 1960s, have really burrowed in and taken root since I have lived here where money is scarce and everything one buys is rather dear. Our annual electricity consumption last year was 4,041 KWH, way below the national household average. The wood we burn for heat emits much less toxic smoke than the coal and fuel oil that are the common alternatives here. I drive a small station wagon with good mileage, and drove it less than 1,000 miles in the past year.
Still, if I could, I would build a big greenhouse over a warm spring, grow my own food, and heat my house from the combination of solar and geothermal energy. I would scavenge more of other people’s trash. Even if I were wealthy, I wouldn’t want to stop dragging the goodies out of the garbage. I would like to be able to recycle more of my trash than I now can in Alaska. A recycling center in Anchorage recently shut down after a mere decade or two of operation, because it was not cost-effective to ship the stuff they collected Outside, and there is no industry here to use it.
I don’t think I’d want to go forever without another Idaho potato, but maybe, if I were to sail a boat to the West Coast and hitchhike to Idaho, I could have one I’d feel good about.
Comments (13)
You’re doing well, comparatively speaking — better than many. I intend to go vegetarian (mostly vegan) asap, as well as be wise about my purchases… even if it leaves me poor or eating and cooking with less efficiency. It’s an ethical thing – but if I were a freegan (and I probably will be at some point), I would still eat products with meat-extracts out of the dumpster. Every action has a ripple effect and I want to try and minimize any suffering I indirectly help bring about as much as possible.
Maybe the biggest problem is getting people to care about something they see as so detached from themselves – making them realize that oneness shit you talk about
i find that some elements of society foster increasing disconnection… for instance, my old school banned hugging and most physical contact… not that it really stopped me or anyone else, lol. repressive people…
I think there is virtue in recycling, too. I just wish more people who found other people’s recycling distasteful would donate more of the stuff that they probably end up throwing away so other people could get some use out of it. When I was growing up my friends and I always went thrifting because we wanted to have cool, unique clothes so there is absolutely no stigma attached to that for me.
We recycle here too through an online group called free cycle. we buy just about everything at salvation Army and thrift shops and thank God for grocery outlet, the lcoal farmers market, and the sr discounts.
You listed some great ideas I wouldn’t have thought of. Thanks for the post.
those carbon footprint tests annoy me…they are created for ‘mainstream’ folks so those who are different don’t really get an accurate answer. we raise our own chickens, goats & sheep for meat, eggs, milk and wool. but, that’s not a choice on those quizzes either.
have you ever thought of keeping your own goat for milk? (not sure it would be an option for you but they are relatively easy to care for.)
i often wonder about people who live in situations such as yours. i’d have to say the way you live your life more than compensates for the imported food you prefer. i totally respect your lifestyle.
Used to forage in the town’s landfill when I was a kid. Found lots of goodies there, I have to say. Eventually, they put up a fence topped with barbed wire and locked the gate. That ended that.
@tansytoes - I am totally not set up for keeping a goat here but would love having a little nanny. I have less than an acre, no heated barn or other shelter, can’t afford to build and maintain one, and would probably face rebellion from Doug, and conflicts with the dog and cats if I brought a goat into the trailer. Ideally, I could trade a dog and a dozen cats for one good goat, but… we’re bonded, alas.
I could buy a share of a goat, a workaround that some valley goatherds have devised to sell their milk without getting arrested or fined. Greyfox has even tried to do that for me, with someone who lives along the route between his cabin and the library where he uses computers and phone. He gave up in disgust after the second or third time he got there during posted hours of operation, found a sign saying, “back at [a time that was past by the time he got there]” and waited, but no one showed up. It is too far for me to trek down there and risk having it be a wasted trip.
It might not be such a great idea, anyway. I’d save about a dollar a quart, down from about $3.50 to $2.50, but the milk’s not pasteurized and wouldn’t keep long. The ultra-pasteurized milk I buy lasts so long I can get a month’s supply at one time
@warweasel - Several local landfills here were closed in the last decade or so, and replaced by “transfer stations” where stuff is collected in huge dumpsters for transport to a big central landfill adjacent to a prison, about eighty miles from here. We have to pay a fee based on the amount of trash we’re dumping, to get inside the wire-topped chainlink fence, but once we’re inside we can discreetly dive the dumpsters.
Where Greyfox lives, tenants occasionally abscond in the night, leaving a houseful of stuff and a month or two of overdue rent. The dumpsters at Felony Flats are overflowing coruncopiae.
.@quitchick - I have asked some people why they don’t donate their castoffs. Some have said they don’t believe in supporting drunken street people (Salvation Army’s mission) or the Mormon Church (operator of another thrift store here.) I remind them that there are three other thrift shops in Wasilla, one at a drug rehab center, one that supports a family services organization, and a private one that lets its owner vacation each winter in the tropics.
Talkeetna has a “free box” that grew from a box in the entryway of a church to a small outbuilding filled with boxes, where people can drop stuff and/or rummage through what other people have left. It’s very informal. Greyfox takes things we don’t need out of what he finds in the trash, and donates them to a thrift shop in Big Lake.
I too am a dedicated thrift shopper. Apart from the cost, I prefer the clothes that can be found there. I can’t afford, and prefer not to buy too much unnecessary ‘stuff’. I grow vegetables and use seaweed as compost. However I burn coal in the winter. I can’t afford wood or electric heating and as this is a coal mining area, coal is super cheap.
Kathy, those sweet-tasting potatoes… do they have a taste similar to that of sweet potatoes aka. yams aka. whatever you call them in the US? Or is it a different kind of sweet?
I always found sweet potatoes to be very sickly, they are one of the few foods I can barely eat. And I say “barely” because my outlook is bit like that of the Diogenes in my xanga pic… live like a dog; take advantages of opportunities to eat when something edible is available.
@Apocatastasis - To me, sweet potatoes or “yams” have a flavor somewhat similar to pumpkin or hard-shelled
winter squash. That is not present in our potatoes. They just have a
slightly sweet taste and a waxy mouth feel, and they do not make fluffy mashed potatoes. When baked, the texture is dense and waxy. Many also tend to have
scabby skin because the potato scab disease thrives in acid soil. On the other hand, they do grow here, and produce abundant crops of nutritious food in our short growing season. There are not many crops that do so well, and very few that provide as much vitamin C.
I am “reading back” on your site as I’m able and have to tell you how much I enjoy your posts! I’m at a crossroads in my life and soul searching on my next steps… I read this post and was remembering back when, I studied grey water systems… played around with designing my own berm home with earth filled tires as the base… I used to dream of living off the grid and much of what you talk about… now I fear my health is too bad to do it as I’d once wanted but… there is still so much I could! (smiles) I feel inspired… thank you!
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@Whoopsie_Daisys - If I have inspired you even a little bit, that pleases me. I loved living off the grid, and had grandiose dreams about getting way off the road system with that greenhouse built over a hot spring, but that’s not going to happen in this life. I’d have a hard time off the grid now, and an emergency ambulance ride a year ago made me glad I wasn’t too far off the highway.
You have been on my mind ever since I read your entry the other day about your pain and loneliness. Greyfox, my current husband, came into my life after my mobility and ability had been impaired by M.E. (“fibro”), and he never knew me without pain and “bad days.” If he didn’t have symptoms himself, he might not be so understanding. My ex-, my son Doug’s father, still tells people I’m a hypochondriac.