#60, January 24, 2001
Suddenly, the electoral crisis is gone, replaced by the
electrical crisis. I pick up the morning paper from my driveway, and under the
icy moonlight read "Power Blackouts to Continue." At work, we've been
getting emails from PG&E asking us to please conserve. In Sacramento,
legislators and lobbyists struggle over re-regulation, recrimination. And this
morning the lights went out.
My colleagues and I were finishing a meeting to plan the
promotion of ecological efficiency throughout the company. All the meeting
notes were on my laptop computer. The lights outside the conference room
blinked out, but our conference room stayed flooded with daylight. My
computer's fan went silent, but the batteries kept the program running, and
nothing was lost. We, the well-prepared eco-pioneers, sat for a few seconds,
absorbing this fresh silence, appreciating the metaphoric poetry of our
situation. Then we finished our meeting.
I'm not worried that California will run out of power. We've
got a huge cushion of waste. Everywhere I go people habitually flip on all the
lights upon entering a room, regardless of the light required for their work.
The building designers are no better, passing up every opportunity to utilize
daylight for illumination and a host of other energy saving methods. Why? There
is no accountability. The designers and nearly all of the users don't see the bill
from PG&E, and fewer people still see the debits against Mrs. Earth's
account. That's got to change.
It brings to mind the experience of backpacking. A basic law
of backpacking is that anything you want to use in the wild, from tent stakes
to T-bone steaks, you have to carry on your back. This creates instant
accountability. If you want the luxury of a tent you can stand up in,
illuminated like your bedroom, fine! Just load up that thirty pounds of tent
and white gas lantern. The first payment comes from your thighs, when you start
up the switchbacks. You'll quickly learn that the six pound dome tent gives you
all the shelter you really want for your week in the mountains, and that little
candle lantern is just fine for illuminating pages of The Hobbit while you are
snuggled into your sleeping bag.
As you slow down and settle into the state of "mountain
mind", you begin to master the art of "getting by." You learn
how to wash your pot and plate with only a cup of hot water, because you don't
want to take another hike to the lake and have your stove again disturb the
starry silence (next time, you'll eat out of the pot and leave the plate at
home.) You discover that lightening your load needn't be deprivation. There is
less stuff to pack and unpack and keep track of and repair. There is less
separating you from the peace and beauty you seek.
Living lightly, wherever you are, becomes a
habit, then a form of art, even a way to worship the natural world and its
inhabitants. You are resourceful-- a wise user, and perhaps an inventor of
appropriate technology. You look for every opportunity to gracefully eliminate
wasted effort and resources from your life. (BTW, when you look for tools--
products and books-- to help in your transition to sustainable living, you
won't find a better source than Hopland's Real Goods Trading Company,
www.realgoods.com.)
My advice: take a backpacking trip in your mind, leave your
cars and your cares behind. Laugh and play, fall in love with the earth, and
pledge to protect her. Then imagine coming home, and thoughtfully choosing
which of your possessions and habits you want to keep. Let the others go.
When the next power outage strikes, seize the moment! Think
of everything it takes to get those electrons buzzing at your service, from the
billion dollar oil wars to the legacy of radioactive waste to the foolish game
of global climate roulette. Then ask yourself, for what in my life do I truly
need to have power. Challenge old assumptions. When the lights come on again,
see the world anew. Lighten your load, and walk lightly, joyfully upon the
earth.