What would I Do Differently?

What would I do differently? I get asked this all the time and it is probably asked to establish whether there's an easier way to becoming more sustainable than the road I've taken. Not that I'm yet living sustainably but the gap is much smaller than it used to be. Also there is a lot to be learned and even more to be unlearned. So it's a journey and it's in progress.

The real question is 'what does sustainable mean'? Having gone down this road, there are many shades of sustainability often referred to as 'going green'. The most cynical type is really the 'greenwashing' of businesses or behaviours - the "PR Green". BP is a great example of this changing from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum with a nice green sun as its logo followed closely by being responsible for the largest oil spill in US history. Some things just are not sustainable and the way we’re currently exploiting the planet (and each other) falls nicely into that category.

Being sustainable today calls for urgent and meaningful changes in our expectations and behaviour. On a global level, technology will not save us. Technological progressions just increase our ability to outcompete our environment and are the antithesis of sustainability. When I began this process, I believed that globally we were capable of stepping back from the brink; that we could reason and rationalise and by doing so would come to the simple conclusion that we urgently need to make changes to our way of doing business and our capitalistic value system. However, now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to believe that we have more in common with the reindeer of St. Matthew Island than I ever thought was possible.

On an individual level, building a 'green' house or 'passive house' is not the answer either. Such a house may be a step in the right direction. It'll help to reduce one's energy footprint by eliminating the need for vast amounts of heating, cooling, water, electricity etc. But while there is an expectation for all the luxuries of modern life, that position will never be truly sustainable. It is also almost impossible to change one's own lifestyle when all your peers do not see the same need for change, which is a euphemism for sacrifice. In changing, one occupies an isolated position. Generally, and it's a generalisation of course, we're conditioned to take the path of least resistance with maximum comforts (and making difficult changes towards sustainability is not on this path). In fact I'll go so far as to speculate that most people will be willing to exhaust all of their savings trying to maintain their current lifestyle and only when they've exhausted all options (like borrowing more), will they accept change as inevitable. Ironically at that point, they'll be least able to make the change. Unfortunately I believe this to be true of businesses, schools and society at large.

“The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight” was a random pick of many books on the subject. “Plan C” by Pat Murphy was for me a better read and most recently there’s the “Post Carbon Reader” which gives an in-depth analysis on the subject. With a little bit of effort, it is easy to substantiate the message in these books. The message is quite simple: our economies (and hence lifestyles) are powered by fossil fuels and we are dangerously close to passing tipping points that will impose dramatic change upon us. It’s important to note that we will never run out of fossil fuels, we’ll just run out of our ability to pay for them (or the things they make). So the energy threat will never manifest itself as a shortage of energy but will always manifest itself as a financial one. In fact, there’s a large body of evidence that believes when energy costs exceed 5.5% of US GDP, it puts the US into a recession as illustrated in the graph. Whatever you believe, there is a direct link between the performance of an economy and the cost of it's energy inputs. So if you're going through a financial squeeze, then you’re probably on the road to Sustainability 101.

There are three major fossil fuel pillars in our daily lives: food, transport and household use. All of these are within our ability to control.

The average calorie of US food takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce and deliver to the consumer. In view of this, there is little wonder that in 2008 there were food riots in over 30 countries as the oil price spiralled up towards record highs. This was corrected by the Great Recession, which is now supposedly behind us. Today, again as the oil price goes through $100/barrel and food prices are hitting new record highs, food price triggered demonstrations are spreading throughout the Middle East – that region where globally we can least afford volatility as it has a direct effect on the price of oil. This could turn out to be a perfect example of a positive feedback loop. But what’s important to understand is that commercial food uses huge amounts of energy and the price of food is inextricably linked to the price of energy (fossil fuels). And in today’s society where very few of us grow our own food, we’ll just have to reach deeper into our pockets to feed our families.

We all know the cost of our personal transport. But is it possible to imagine a world without our ability to travel at will? What will you sacrifice to maintain your transport freedom - 200 channels of mindless television, mandatory holidays or designer labels? In our public transport starved country where private car ownership is entrenched, try climbing on a bus or into a taxi while your peers cruise in their airconditioned SUV’s and appreciate why this is a lonely road to take out of choice.

In South Africa our electricity costs are doubling every two and half years. So in two and a half years they’ll double and then two and a half years later double again. It's exponential growth at a rate well beyond likely increases in income. All of this energy goes into perfectly manageable lifestyle choices. So if you’re sitting with your salary cheque in your pocket and it fails to cover all the escalating costs in your life, you’re going to have to make some changes. And when you make this decision, it’s Sustainability 102.

So then, what have I learned and what would I do differently? I now know it’s possible to dramatically reduce the energy and water used in a house and I certainly don’t think it’s necessary to build a new house from scratch to do this. So the first thing I would do is not build a new house. If anything, I'd sell my existing house and move into a much smaller one and use the spare cash to make the following changes:

1. Replace every light in the house with low energy lights and preferably LED lights where feasible. This includes all outside security lights.
2. Replace the electric hob and stove with a complete gas unit
3. Retrofit a hot water solar panel to the EXISTING geyser and only use the element in the geyser as a last resort. Insulate all hot water pipes where quite a bit of heat escapes.
4. Heavily insulate the ceiling and ensure the roof is then well ventilated so that it does not continue to behave like an oven.
5. Plant deciduous trees on all east and west facing walls to protect them from direct sun in the summer. Remove all evergreen trees that block the sun from heating the house in the winter.
6. Learn to live without the many heating elements that are currently taken for granted: electric heaters, tumble drier (the sun works perfectly well), dishwashers & washing machines that heat the water (rather supply them hot water from the solar powered geyser) etc.
7. It’s prohibitively expensive to get off the electrical grid completely, especially if you don’t plan to make any lifestyle changes. If I were doing it again, I’d put in a much smaller electrical backup system and tie this into a deliberate lifestyle change. When you have no electricity, it’s a fairly compelling reason to change. So switching off unnecessary lights or the TV when no one is watching really will become a habit.
8. Transportation is where the change is hardest. Freedom of movement is well entrenched in our behaviours and society. You’re expected to drop you kids here, there and everywhere based on the functions at school or of their friends. The prevailing argument against our children walking or using bicycles is safety. There’s equally no appetite to create cycle or pedestrian lanes to change the status quo. It’s emotional blackmail and it works. So on this item, it’s really each to his own but the location of your house is very important.
   
9. Food is an interesting issue. It’s supposed to be possible to feed your family out of a vegetable garden the size of a front door. Ours is much bigger and we’re frankly very poor at it. Being organic in 'bug city' where there’s an orgy of growth of everything makes this fairly difficult. It’s much easier to grow veggies in the colder months. Nevertheless yields arrive in batches far greater than can be normally consumed. I’m now of the opinion that food independence can only be reasonably achieved by working within a small community where between the group, a reasonable diversity of products can be produced, preserved and shared. An improvement on this is Community Supported Agriculture where a community supports and shares the risk of a larger scale farming operation. It's as close as you can come to growing your own food without doing the growing. It also deals with the meat issue; urban dwellers prefer to believe that meat comes in vacuum packed parcels and this is one way to perpetuate the illusion. However when faced with killing your pet chicken or pet pig for the pot, vegetarianism becomes overwhelmingly appealing.
10. Finally, by installing low flow showers, not having any baths (jacuzzi or a swimming pool), we use very little potable water. We don’t have a meter, but we probably treat less than 150l of grey water per day for a family of four. Water independence at this rate of consumption is fairly easy to achieve considering the rains we’ve been getting lately and to achieve this you would also have to stop watering your roses.