Doing What I Can - Entropy, Part 7
February 5, 2020

     I could – and I should – do all of that, and more.  Much more.  I can and should do everything I can think of to participate in the miracle of life under the sun, which is the miracle of entropy reversal.

     I can and should plant trees, lots of trees, all kinds of trees.  I can and should help others grow trees, support organizations that grow trees, and promote programs and policies that result in the growing of trees.  I can and should learn about my carbon footprint and work to reduce it.  I can and should try to take stock of all the fossil fuel inputs to my life and then figure out how to eliminate as many of them as possible.  I don't have to do it all once; there's a lot of low-hanging fruit out there.  For example, I can remove many, many carbon-miles from my food by buying locally raised meat and produce – and better yet, by buying local meat and produce that were themselves raised using little or no fossil fuel inputs (in the form of chemical fertilizers and industrially grown grains).  Even better still, I can raise a little of my own food.  I can plant a small garden, and maybe even get a few backyard chickens for eggs. 

     Or just a basil plant.  I could start with just one small basil plant.  I could start.  You could start.

     I can and should turn off the lights in the house, turn up the thermostat in the summer, and turn it down in the winter by a few degrees.  Or off.  I can and should try to avoid buying plastic or products in plastic packaging as much as possible.  Perhaps I should fast from plastic for Lent.  I can and should walk or bike instead of drive, as much as possible.  I can and should run my laundry on the cold water cycle most of the time.  I can dry my clothes on a clothesline, when the weather permits, or use an indoor drying rack or hang them on the shower curtain rod.  I can and should take shorter and fewer showers, and colder ones.

      I can and should do all of this, and more.  Much more.  And trust me, I have a long way to go on some of this stuff.  There is a lot more I need to learn.  There is so much I don‛t know.  There is so much I may not want to know.  Also, I love my comforts and my conveniences, and I don't want to give them up or think about how I could enjoy them differently.  Mostly, I love hot showers.

     But here's the thing: I could and should do all of this – including foreswearing hot showers (or maybe just some of them) – and still miss the point.  I could set out on a journey to learn to live a little more lightly on the Earth and still not understand what's really going on here, the predicament that we have gotten ourselves into by coming to rely so fundamentally on fossil fuels as our primary source of energy.

     And, spoiler alert: it's not about climate change.