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 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SUSTAINABLE LIVING January 20, 2007 8:40 PM

Sustainable living means living within our means, not only our individual means, but also our national means and our world's means. The United States currently consumes far more than its share of world resources. And our current wars suggest a determination to increase that excess, fighting other countries to gain even more, when we already consume more than our share of world resources. Oil, for example, is a resource that is overconsumed by the United States, compared to other nations. THe US consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. China is the next biggest oil consumer at only 6 million barrels a day, even though their population is almost 4 times as big as ours. Russia and Brazil have a population that is comparable to ours, yet they consumes only 2 million barrels per day compared to our 20 billion barrels per day consumption. The world does not have enough oil to sustain this level of consumption. And we are fighting wars to gain more oil, when we already consume way more than our share. That's a sustainable living issue on a world scale. In order to avoid wars over oil, we need to learn to consume less oil. We can rideshare, telecommute, use public transportation, or drive a neighbor to the grocery store and shop together. We can have vacations closer to home, entertain at home instead of going out to eat, and get involved in more pursuits at home, such as organic gardening. At a national level, we are using up our forest resources at an alaraming rate. We can solve this problem by using less paper, planting more trees, and avoiding chopping down a tree just because it drops leaves and flowers on our lawn, or other minor reasons people come up with to fell a beautiful aged tree. And you may have other solutions as well. Landfills are another sustainable living issue on the national level. Americans throw away one ton of trash per person per year, which is 290 million tons of trash per year. Each of us needs to address our share of that problem in our own lives, by buying less packaging, focusing on produce for our meals instead of TV dinners and boxed up instant meals. We can buy grains in bulk, which is something my family does. We can also reuse boxes, bags, and tins year after year to wrap Christmas presents instead of buying more wrapping paper, made by chopping down trees, and dumping it in the landfills every year. On an individual level, sustainable living means that we look at our future, not just the present, and evaluate what kind of life we will live 10, 20, or 30 years from now if we continue to consume as much as a society as we do now. We can refresh our own lives by planting trees for shade, fruit, wind protection, privacy, noise reduction, to attract birds, shelter wildlife, and much more. We can enhance our lives by by gardening, experiencing the healing of nature as we build our own native habitat, flower garden, orchard, or arbor for our own refreshment, as well as rejuvinating the earth with more trees. We can cut back on global warming by planting more trees because trees take in Carbon dioxide and put out oxygen. We are going to talk about simple steps that we can take in our daily lives, as responsible consumers. I will be sharing ways that I live sustainably in my own family life, and I will be sharing further facts about sustainable living, and ideas, simple things that you can do easily in your own life to help make our world a better place and stop it from plunging into an abbyss of depletion and pollution. You are important to this discussion. Please feel free to introduce yourself and share your own facts and ideas that we can draw from as we educate ourselves and our friends on this important topic.  [ send green star]
 
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