Category Archives: Climate Disruption

Only after posting yesterday’s musing re encouraging others to consider changing behavior (vis a vis climate change) through modelling (which is, I guess, how they spell that word in Australia) did I realize that George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, exhorted us to “Be patterns. Be examples.”

For the full quote, click here

Relieved to wake up this morning to the radiators clanging. Because although I’m learning a little about how to heat this house, nothing’s actually changed.  We still don’t have a back-up system. And what I think is in place just might not be: Yesterday I discovered that our plug-in flashlight only works for about two minutes!

It’s a tricky balance, isn’t it: being smart about the predicted brownouts and blackouts due to climate change and remaining SANE about preparedness.

Speaking of sane: Yesterday I read an excellent piece, “How the Science of Behavior Change Can Help With Sustainability,” by Les Robinson, director of Enabling Change, based in Australia: We humans resent unwanted advice, especially when it threatens our comfort zones. Denial and resistance are driven by fear and the worst fears are social fears . . . Behavior change is therefore rarely achieved by persuasion or marketing but almost always requires modelling [sic] how to carry out unfamiliar behaviors with ease, aplomb and dignity.

Okay, today, in preparation for a Mass Save Home Energy Assessment, I watched this video—and sent it along to our tenants and to my got-other-things-on-his-mind-besides-energy-efficiency husband.

BTW: My friend Lynne explained that the reason utility companies do this is, surprise, they actually make more money when their consumers save energy!

If you live in Massachusetts (and given our stringent gun-control laws, right now, in this fraught moment in American history, I very grateful to be living in this state), here’s an excellent source of info, advice, ways to save money, etc. re heating your home, replacing appliances, burners, etc., etc.

Mass Save

* Although, cynical me, I don’t get why consumers are supposed to trust utility companies for this kind of information!

Late this afternoon, very spur of the moment, I joined a F/friend who drove us to Boston’s Jamaica Plain  where we ate delicious carrot soup and took a tour of the Green House.Check it out!

Okay, so maybe you’re not going to learn lots from that site—it’s under construction—but here’s a link re passivhaus.

So although there’s a ton of alternative ways to heat stuff out there (check out  yesterday’s comment/link re compost-pile water heating, for example), I’ve already confessed that I’m a hopeless aesthete, right? So when browsing Cambridge’s Black Magic Chimney and Fireplace store today, do I investigate pellet stoves?

Hell, no. I fall in love with a Vermont Castings stove. Which can be turned on with a remote. So is operational should we lose power.

And it’s so old-fashioned and pretty!

(I’m hopeless.)

Now: anyone want a baby grand piano? (Which is currently occupying the space this coveted stove could go.)

For your consideration: YOU being anyone using natural gas to heat your home. Yes. I’m hoping you’ll click on that link.

(And even if you don’t feel moved the sign the petition today, maybe just think about the folks of Arlington, Texas the next time you adjust your thermostat? I’ll be holding them in the Light, too.)

So a big part of this month-long Light and heat project should be bumping up against those irrational, stuck places in myself, right? And  acknowledging those uncomfortable, oh-that-again moments? Seems necessary. And honest.

So I’ve already discovered that although I thought I wanted to be open to whatever methods are currently available to save energy, my (ridiculous) house-pride/entitlement just might keep me from big-time changes. Like covering my drafty windows with plastic weatherizing. Way too tacky, m’dear! And, besides, just using Saran Wrap’s a huge challenge for non-dextrous me; I seriously doubt I am capable of effectively covering an entire window.

So I walked to Tags, a local, independently-owned hardware store about a mile from my house, to see what the latest, recommended-by-a-salesperson method to plug up leaky windows might be. Which turned out to to be a clear liquid you apply with a caulk gun (My VT daughter had recommended this stuff. You gotta listen to someone from VT, right?). Problem: The package warns that this stuff produces fumes. And, yeah, my windows are not airtight but it is the middle of winter. Everything’s shut tight. So shut tight that I can still detect the slightest whiff of the fish curry we had at Christmas. So, reluctantly, must pass on “the latest.”

So, promising myself to get the liquid sealer in, say, October, and to seal up everything one window at a time—with the back door wide open—I bought rope caulk and, relishing the playing-with-clay/hands-on work, plugged up the most egregious gaps. I’ll wait for a windy day to finish the job.

Oh! Something I don’t know: is this caulk toxic? Would Ruby, my precious, toddler granddaughter, get sick if she grabbed a handful? Since she won’t visit here until the summer, not an issue. But I’m investigating, anyway.

Gotta admit: When I saw “Julie and Julia,” my immediate reaction was, “Damn! Wish I could blog about some interesting project like that.”

Well, now I can.

For the next month, every day, I will blog re my (probably meandering/non-linear) exploration of how best to heat my old, drafty house.

Why?

Lots of reasons:

# 1. Every time I try to visualize a post-fossil-fuel future, I always get stuck at: How the hell would I heat this house after we run out of natural gas and oil? Related things to figure out:  how do I reduce my carbon footprint? And how do I prepare myself for the inevitable blackouts and brownouts which will accompany the climate change we are already experiencing?

2.  Just as, ten years ago, I felt like Spirit was asking me to do Something about race and white privilege—and, eventually, about our broken criminal justice system—I sense that same sort of nudging re climate change. (And, yes, I pray that way will open so these seemingly disparate leadings will somehow converge.)

Hence: Light and heat.

Last night I went to the Somerville Public Library to hear Boston College professor Charlie Derber, author of From Greed to Green: Solving Climate Change and Remaking the Economy, talk. The place was packed.

Among the many thoughtful, thought-provoking the slight, soft-spoken prof had to say was about time (maybe that should be capitalized?) and how we’re running out of Time and need to “trick it” by addressing the most immediate, compelling problems NOW.

Walking home under a two-thirds moon, waiting to cross the street and pondering his talk, an SUV gunned through a red light. Just as I was about to step off the curb.

“So what?” you say? Massachusetts drivers do that. True. I didn’t get hit obviously. So what’s the big deal?

Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety. But I think this kind of blatant disregard for civility is getting worse. (Steven Slater’s recent lionization reinforces my point.)

Here’s what I’m wondering just might be blowin’ in the wind: As this recession continues (Derber believes it’s really more like 25% unemployment), this hottest summer in history continues, and drought and Russian fires and Pakistani floods impact millions of people and scare the bejesus out of the rest of us, I think the day-to-day interactions between us are getting worse. People are highly stressed, pissed, confused. So why NOT drive through red lights, push and shove, be rude and greedy?

Seems to me that one of those immediate crises Derber suggested we need to address is exactly this. (And I’ve harped on this before.) On some level, people know what’s happening. That we’re not acknowledging that This Climate Change Thing is another Great Depression, another Pearl Harbor and, c’mon everybody, let’s roll up our sleeves and deal just makes them MORE pissed.

Who can blame them.