Creating Eco-Warriors at the Gym

Already, I'm thinking of ways I can get out of my shrinking-carbon-footprint resolution. One day. That's all it takes to lose it. How is your exercise program going? Do you feel yourself resisting it yet? I am.

Humanity is fucked if I can't last longer than one day. How am I supposed to expect everyone around me to keep trying?

Then, I thought of all the things I already do. That's fair, right? I want to say that I recycle. I religiously reuse my grocery bags.

Does that even help my carbon footprint?

I guess any reusing and recycling should help because manufacturing burns carbon, right? Sometimes, I have to admit, I mix up reducing plastic use with reducing my carbon footprint. I've seen it done on other lists too. Plus, I'm pretty sure that if climate change doesn't kill us, plastic will. Let's just allow it, okay?

Ha!

Not one of you complained in that half-second I paused. Good thing I'm not doing this on Twitter. I could have had three thousands arguments in that half-second. But I'm not. I'm here, in the quiet space. Sometimes, it's a little too quiet.

So, here's what I do now:

recycle
reuse
make stuff (I tried to make blank books. It's hard to get the stitches tight enough. But I'm good at quilts and pies.)
resist buying new stuff
resist buying a real tree for Christmas
drive a Prius
turn off the lights when I leave a room
stack errands according to location
wear laundry an extra day if it doesn't smell
wash my car less often

Really, how do you make yourself smaller? I can't stop breathing out CO2. I bang back and forth between swearing off big trips and wanting to see all the gorgeous places in this world so I work to preserve them. That's a tough one.

I plan to plant some seedlings in the next couple of weeks. Because it'll be wet for three more months, it's the season here in the Pacific Northwest. My local Western red cedars have offered me at least fifteen little starts in the pots I leave out on the deck all summer. All I have to do is host them for a few seasons and transplant them when they're about three years old. I love doing that. It's like some quiet form of communication between me and the mother trees in my yard. They trust me with their babies.

You know, I was going to tell you my idea about gym memberships. Yeah, it's a crazy idea, but it could actually put some energy back into the grid.

See, a year ago, I needed to see a physical therapist to work on my shoulder. The machine she put me on to warm up actually calculated the number of Watts I produced and I found it invigorating to raise that number as my shoulder improved. Why not harness all that energy from all those machines? 

Why doesn't the Y connect all of their ellipticals, treadmills, weight machines, and stationary bikes to charge batteries or put energy right back into the power grid?

Just imagine the YMCA, 24 Fitness, Gold's gym hooking up whole rooms full of equipment that could provide the energy of a waterfall, especially now when people are busy enacting their New Year's resolutions. They could run contests for the athletes that produce the highest number of wattage, eco-battles. They could become powerhouses, literally.

Think about all those sweating bodies actually producing something useful in addition to making everyone healthier?

This morning, I sat down and tried to figure out how to actually do it, but I know it's already been done. It isn't complicated technology. My brother hooked his TV up to his stationary bike back in the early 80's but he stopped because he couldn't keep up the pace required by his TV.

This morning, I thought about copper windings and magnets and software to inform the one exercising how much energy she provides per minute.

Your treadmill runners, your elliptical hoppers, your indoor cyclists could become eco-warriors. Get that flywheel spinning!

Who's game? NordicTrak? Bowflex? Sole? How hard would it be to switch up some of your machines to put energy back into the system? You could be eco-corporations.

Which one of you wants to make the leap? Please do it. Our world depends on us.

Thank you for listening, jules

Resisting Inertia

What this world needs most to save us from climate change disaster is behavioral psychologists to work on helping us to enact change.

I'm not talking about climate deniers. Well, I'm not just talking about the deniers and how to change their minds. I'm talking about those of us who believe that climate change is happening and haven't yet changed our actions accordingly.

Think about it.

Eco-anxiety gets in the way. We know it's happening but we try to avoid looking at it too closely for fear of facing the truth.

The other day, I was listening to NPR and Shankar Vedantam interviewed two behavioral psychologists about their research grant to understand more fully how New Year's Resolutions don't work. I couldn't find the interview, but he has a new podcast called The Hidden Brain. When asked how successful these scientists thought they could be ultimately, one said 21% and the other said 25%. That's not promising.

And that's talking about changing the behavior of one individual, like me, who truly believes she needs to do something different every day to help save the planet. What about all of us together I want to ask those psychologists.

Have you ever tried to get fourteen people moving when you've decided to go somewhere fun? When there are just two of you, it's fairly easy. You talk about going. You decide to go. You get ready to go. And you go.

Add a couple and you can feel the molasses of humanity slowing you down. It's harder to get out the door even after you decided what you want to do. Add another ten people and there are sub-conversations and people who get ready but get bored waiting and get started doing something else. Then, there are the people who do nothing to get ready until the moment you think you're about to go out the door.

"I still need a shower. Give me five minutes," one procrastinator will say.

"I need lunch and a water bottle," says the one who showered first because she forgot about some of the things she needed to do to really get ready.

Then, you get the ones who actively resist going anywhere. These people are like the climate deniers or the guy I have to fight every single time I buy groceries at a particular store who gives me a new plastic bag out of spite. We think these people are the worst at holding you back, but they're not. If they were, you could leave those two behind and still take twelve people out to the trail head to hike Mailbox peak.

No, it's not them. It's us, the ones who really want to go sweat under our bras until we reach a place with a view.

Think about Puerto Rico. It was a fad on Twitter to push Congress to send them more aid for a few weeks, but after a while, the news went on to different track and we got back to our normal lives. Puerto Rico still struggles as I write this. They've begun to add some suicides to the lists of the dead on account of the hurricane. Think about that. If you were one of the people leading that charge, what have you done lately? The problem still exists but the excitement of the fad of helping has passed. The only people still pushing for relief there are the ones with loved ones there.

Am I right?

So, I'm actually going to try to have a New Year's Resolution that involves some climate change changes, some extra things I can do to keep the spotlight on that problem, some actual things I can do differently to have a positive impact on the environment.

Wish me luck. I hope I do better than a 21% success rate.

Thank you for listening, jules

No Promises for My New Year

Happy damn New Year. It's just a number. Numbers have to cycle. What difference does it make whether it's the beginning of 2015 or the end of 2014? Really, one minute doesn't feel differently than another yet we stand up like a bunch of idiots, count down, cheer, kiss, and blow off fireworks as if it's the middle of the summer whenever one year turns into the next.

I'm fifty-four fucking years old and every year I expect that there is a magic moment, a time between space, when I will feel different because a marker on my calendar has passed and I have to go out and buy a new one. Why is that? What is so special about 12:00am on 1/1/2015? What?

Just in case it really does mean something and there is that magic moment, that time when you have to kiss your favorite person or lose that spot in time and space for a whole year, I'm going to pay attention. I'm going wait until midnight. I'm going to kiss my husband. I'm going to hug my son good-night. I might even hand him a pot and a wooden spoon and let him stand on the back deck and yell and make some noise in the middle of the night. If we had any fireworks, I might let him set them off too.

But I look forward to my sweet warm bed. I look forward to closing my eyes and waking up in a new year, one I haven't sullied with resolutions or diets or broken promises to get more exercise or keep my house cleaner or to finally put those photos into scrap books.

Did you hear me clearly? I'm not making any promises, so if I don't show up for a lunch we've planned next week, don't be surprised. I just might be lounging in my cozy bed for an extra hour or two. 

Wouldn't that be nice?

Thank you for listening, jules