The End

The end has finally arrived: summer is upon us and this concludes the lived ethics project.

If I was to do it different I would have picked a larger goal to try and achieve because I feel like because my goals were relatively small I was less inclined to do them. After watching No Impact Man, though the radically altered their lives I somewhat feel like it would have been better to go all in, instead of just picking one small thing about my consumption habits to change.

My original goal was to cut out one-use cups. And for about a month, I was really good about it. Not only did I buy a new cup, but the impending colder weather made me more inclined to drink tea, which i'm less likely to go out and buy a cup of anyway. By about week five, I lost my reusable coffee cup, and I became more lenient. Like, a lot more lenient. So lenient in fact that I've  kept all of the iced coffee cups (one-use) that I bought in my room just to show myself how much I was failing. 6 cups. Horrible.

Anyway, if I compare my habits of being wasteful at school compared to being at home, being at school far outweighs being at home. At home, I rarely buy drinks/snacks with a lot of trash etc.. Because telluride is expensive and usually I don't want to spend the money. If I do go out, I never go to to-go places, but instead go to restaurants where personal waste from a meal is diminished. Ideally, I would like to return to the patterns I had at home, it just makes it easy when you use "fake money" and don't ever feel the impacts (monetary) of what you're buying and the trash its creating.

Overall, I enjoyed the lived ethics project just because it made me think about the choices I make on a day to day basis, and at least notice my unhealthy habits of consumption and wastefulness.

Preserve Inspiration

Sitting eating lunch the other day, I was inspired by something sitting on the table. Bon Apetit works hard to provide sustainable, local food to all the cafeterias, and aside from that, they try to educate students about the decisions they make.

The five points outlined in the above picture, ideally examplify how to lower your carbon foot print in what you eat. I love how this is outlined because though it's simple, the steps described are realistic. Bearing in mind that these are steps for a "low carbon"diet, they cater specifically towards lowering ones carbon emissions. I don't necessarily think about my carbon foot print in terms of what I eat; I am more inclined to focus on eating meals that are local because I simply like to know where my food came from. However, these points are attainable, so I don't see why I shouldn't take carbon impact into account.

In the film "No Impact Man" they follow all of these steps on the basis that they are trying to make as little of an impact as possible. In one of the scenes, their meal mainly consists of roasted root vegetables because that is all that is available locally, in New York, at that time of the year. If I was to follow the same plan, living in a mountain town in Colorado, I virtually would have nothing to eat. High altitude Colorado is such a harsh growing habitat that the growing season is limited to June-September (roughly). Living in a remote area reaffirms that merely by eating, you make an immense carbon impact. Though I can easily waste less food, or cut out beef and cheese (as is mentioned in the picture) it is really hard to not eat foods that have been shipped in, eat only seasonal foods, or skip packaging altogether.

I think the eating locally movement is great. I really believe in knowing where your food comes from, eating locally, and eating few processed foods. However, when I really think about it, I see that following that meal plan has severe limitations because of where I live. Overall, it makes me question whether humanity (as a whole) is mean to live in place where the use of modern technology is what mainly enables them to survive?

Solidarity.

After reading Marion's paper "Geoengineering, Solidarity and Moral Risk..." I mainly took away this idea of society working together to both create strength and make change. Solidarity is crucial to any successful plan where you have multiple parts working together, or are trying to unite to change something. In the case of global climate change, I don't think I ever thought about how crucial solidarity is.  GCC is a huge problem that could have catastrophic repercussions, and though we have all of these ideas (such as geoengineering) that could help combat the effects, nothing will come of them if we don't unite and agree to do something.

I grew up in Telluride, CO. A very small ski town, in the southwestern part of the state. It'a essentially one, small box canyon, with a town located at the very end of it. I live about 4mi outside, and every time I wanted to go to town, I would take the one road leading in, and drive past miles of pristine valley. This valley (rightly named "the valley floor") is essential to what makes Telluride, Telluride. It's 4 miles of absolutely no development.

The land was owned by a developer who wanted to turn the space into golf courses, and mega mansions with man-made lakes etc... Luckily, most all the locals were not ok with this. The Valley Floor was bought from the developer for $50 million: donations came from 1,600 people in 45 states and seven countries (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-07-telluride_N.htm). 

Now, the Valley Floor will never be developed. It will stay pristine for generations and generations to come. This story, from my little bitty town and Colorado, to me, is a great instant of environmental solidarity. As a town, we came together to save something of immense natural worth, and it was incredibly worth the fight.