Cause and Effect. Supply and Demand.

As you may know, we in Georgia have been in a drought for over two years now. For most of that time we have been under level 3 and 4 water restrictions. It took awhile for people to get on board with the measures, but in the end the Atlanta metro area has cut its monthly water use between 12 and 26%.

That's a good thing right?

Well, apparently all our water conservation has caused a projected budget deficit for the Water System authorities. To remedy this shortfall they plan on raising the water and sewer fees roughly 38% this fall!

Now this is really hard for me to swallow, as we (my family) have basically cut our consumption rate in half from what it was four years ago. We are already paying $54 a month for 4,000 gallons... maybe this is cheap to some of you, but compared to our $12 water bill in Minnesota its already highway robbery!

The lowest pricing tier here covers consumption between 0 - 9,000 gallons, so basically we are paying the same rate as some people who uses TWICE as much water as we do.

Grr! It is so crummy to be penalized for doing the right thing!
*insert grumpy emoti-con here*

Spider Karma?

I just wanted to tell you all a story...

It all starts with me being a lackadaisical child, who loved the outdoors. I loved to watch bugs... and if my mom found one in the house I would do my darndest to save it and return it outside before she smashed it.

Fast forward... now I have a son who thinks rounding up bugs and putting them back outside is the "normal" way of doing things. Once in first grade he was sent home because a classmate purposely squashed a moth on the playground and they could not console him at school.

So... last night I went out after dark to put the trash down at the curb and walked into a very thick spiderweb. Although I am a "bug buddhist" I do not actually care to have them crawling on me, so I immediately dropped everything and ran straight to the house. I turned on the nearest light and proceded to brush off my head and shoulders and try to make sure I didn't have a hitch-hiker.

Well, after *thinking* there were no spiders on me, I looked down and saw one of my cats chasing what appeared to be a small black widow across the floor. I did a bad thing... I grabbed a nearby shoe and smashed it. It was pure instinct. I saw that red on black and the danger of it and freaked out.

So... now I am feeling guilty. Did I ruin 20+ years of bug karma? Was I spared a bite because of my past good deeds? I don't know... it has been on my mind all day.

A quote which reminded me of my blog.

On page 246, "The Hostile Hospital" by Lemony Snicket:

"There are many things in this world I do not know. I do not know how butterflies get out of their cocoons without damaging their wings. I do not know why anyone would boil vegetables when roasting them is tastier. I do not know how to make olive oil, and I do not know why dogs bark before an earthquake, and I do not know why some people voluntarily choose to climb mountains where it is freezing and difficult to breathe, or live in the suburbs, where the coffee is watery and all the houses look alike."

My son and I have been reading the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books together, and I find them very enjoyable even though the run-on sentences make it quite a challenge to read aloud.

Thinking about why I'm "Green" makes me blue.

This was my reply to a forum entry by a sociology student who wanted to know people's motivations and feelings on being "Green":

Even when I was very young, I always had a strong connection to the natural world and tried to tread lightly. Now that I have a son being a responsible steward of the Earth has taken on a whole new importance to me. I want to make sure that the planet and the future we pass along is a good one... not a wasteland created by our selfishness and greed.

There are times I look at American society as a whole, with our massive SUVs and McMansions and feel dispair at what seems like the hopeless task of getting people here to see the bigger picture and act accordingly. It feels like our government has sold us out, and industry and corporations have free reign to plunder our resources, pollute and contaminate our world, and manipulate and corrupt even the smallest building blocks of life for their own profit.

Even though I know there ARE people out there trying to pursue a more environmentally responsible way of living... I wonder if there are enough of us. Can we can do enough to turn the tide?

The saddest part is that there is one simple mantra every resident of the planet should know and live by: "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle." It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that, but most people aren't willing to analyse their actions on even such a basic level.

I see glimmers of hope sometimes... mostly from today's kids. Many kids really seem to understand the issues facing our world, and commit more passionately to solving them than their parents.

We all need to stop being so greedy and stubborn and start to consider what sort of world we are passing on to future generations.

Thats the night the lights went out in Georgia...

That's the night that the lights went out in Georgia...
Posted 8/10/2008 11:47 PM EDT on Planet Green

For the record, you can't currently view this on PlanetGreen.com, but you'll be able to eventually!

Anyways... we have had some pretty severe thunderstorms here in GA lately. Last Saturday we had 60+ mph winds, torrential rain and hail, lightning... It was pretty wild out and we ended up losing power. We sat staring out the window (like we shouldn't have) into the gloom and watching as pieces of siding flew around the backyard. We felt helpless and distraught, figuring we had a $1000 insurance deductible in our immediate future.

After about half an hour the storm had blown over, the lights were still out. There was nothing to do but go investigate the damage. We were relieved to find that the siding in the backyard and littering the street was not from our house. We began to gather it all up and made a pile by our driveway so its owner could reclaim it if they wanted. In a matter of minutes nearly everyone
on our street was out checking for damage, helping clean up, and actually talking to eachother (you know, like you imagine neighbors really do somewhere in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe).

It didn't take long for everyone to find out the owner of the damaged house was out of town. One neighbor got him on the phone to let him know what had happened. Some of the more resourceful neighbors set to trying to put a tarp over the big exposed area of the house.
It was astonishing.

Once we had straightened up our yard, we headed back in to see what our son was up to. He had actually picked out a boardgame for us all to play! We used to play boardgames at least once a week, but now that he is a sophisticated 9-year-old he generally has "better things to do".

So we played a few games of Cadoo... even though it is almost a little too easy for all of us now. The sun had set, the power was still out... and you can only sit around in the dark by the light of an LED lantern for so long, so we decided to go out.

Driving through the neighborhood you almost would have thought there was a block party going on. People were tailgating in their driveway, some were just leaning on the mailbox having a beer and chatting with the guy next door. There were actually kids of all ages playing ball in the street. For the first time in 4 years of living here I finally had a sense of community.

When we came home an hour later, people had finally gone in. It was 10pm and the power had finally come on after being out for 3 hours.

It's a shame they don't make one of those universal power switches for a whole neighborhood.... It would be nice if we could power everything down and actually have a true community once in awhile.