I just read Colin Beavan’s book No Impact Man. Saving the Planet One Family at a Time.
I also just lost this entry because I had forgotten the notebook wasn’t plugged in, so it ran out of power just as I got to the end and ARRRGGGGHHH!!!
Honestly, in the end I will get better at this stuff. When did I unplug the mains cable? In my sleep? Why didn’t I notice that little red light?
So I began again. I saved as far as I had got, or thought I did. Suddenly the machine closed down. It was installing Windows Updates. No warning that I could see. I HATE Windows Updates. According to Matt’s bicycle magazine, research suggests that if you curse and swear a lot you can endure higher levels of pain. So . . .
Outside it’s raining again. It rained all day Friday. Yesterday it was sunny while I was sitting in a training session in Edinburgh; it started to rain while I was on the way home. Colin Beavan talks about “the little heralded water crisis”. “If we use it all up,” he points out, “there ewon’t be any left to drink.” It’s hard to imagine that in Scotland. That word ‘sustainability’, which is now a manadatory element on our teaching curriculum, means rain forests in Brazil, water shortages in Africa, bush fires in Australia. It is all somewhere else. What we have is a Sunshine Shortage.
Only it’s not all somewhere else. It’s a little planet and when you read the Beavan book, you feel it shrinking. Like the little cellophane packets I wrap my pamphlets in, each with its disposable unstick strip which I dutifully collect and put into the grey bin but soon it will be a blue bin, the landfill bin. (This week we acquired a green bin. We now have four different colours.) That Colin Beavan book is worth reading. It has some horrible formatting features, but it makes you uncomfortable in a worthwhile way. Unlike Windows Updates.
Jon and Kirsty (Fuselit) have decided to restrict the paper issue of that magazine (beautifully and uniquely assembled by hand) to 100 numbered copies. After that it will be readable electronically. (Colin Beavan’s family could read as much as they wanted electronically during their no-impact year — just no newspapers and no new books.) For Jon and Kirsty the reduced paper commitment means their input will be more sustainable. It’s eminently sensible. They are doing wonderful work. Read them. Get one of the hundred numbered copies and keep it forever!
I think I will reduce the print run of the HappenStance pamphlets again. The boxes in the spare room are reproaching me. I think it’s good to have fewer copies and have them (hopefully) treasured. I can’t bring myself to go electronic with poetry, though I’m not in principle opposed to e-readers or even to reading books on an electronic screen — if I could find one that WOULDN’T SWITCH ITSELF OFF TO UPDATE WINDOWS.