Edgy Mama

That’s the pnav in winter. Yes, there’s a feature that I want you to notice that is relevant to this post.

I took the kids down to the Fine Arts Theatre yesterday to hear part of the panel on “Finding Solutions to An Inconvenient Truth” (see below). I figured maybe it would be good for the kids to see what their Daddy does, since I can’t seem to explain it.

Because they’re kids, I went late, hoping just to catch a few minutes of Enviro-spouse and avoid the rest of the equally brilliant panelists. So we arrived while the lovely Dr. Dee Eggers was still speaking, but we decided to hang in the lobby and eat mass-produced and marketed cand. A few minutes later, the Fine Arts staff started turning people away. The crowd was standing room only, and the staff were concerned about fire code violations.

And let me tell you, some of the folks who got turned away were pissed. Which is good. We like passion and fire, particularly about issues dear to our hearts.

The manager kept telling people that the panel would be broadcast on YRTV and WPVM, but to no avail. Several people said, “You know that’s not the same as being here–being able to ask questions and interact with the panel.” Rock on, peeps. You are so right.

Perhaps we should call for a second airing of the panel? If so many folks want answers and want to participate, let’s give them a chance, right?

At the same time, I get nervous when peeps are pushing their own agendas out of anger and fear. We want environmentalism to go mainstream, not stay on the angry edge of disillusioned geeks. A good example, is that when E-spouse mentions buying flourescent lightbulbs at Wal-Hell, he was booed. Dr. Dee said, wait a minute, here. The point is to have low-priced flourescent bulbs that are available to the masses. We want it to be convenient and easy for everyone to buy flourescents. Or something like that. And she’s right. I don’t like shopping at Wal-Hell myself, but most of America does, and if a small percentage of those folks buy a few flourescents lightbulbs along with their cheap plastic crap, maybe we’ll at least break even.

So, after our sugar break, we snuck into the back of the theatre and watched E-spouse do his thang. My girl was fairly focused, although she admitted later that she didn’t understand much. “What’s a carbon load, Mommy?” she asked. “Ask Daddy, sweetheart,” I replied.

My boy basically yelled, “There’s Daddy,” and then rolled around on the floor between my feet. Then he found a thumbtack on the floor which he jammed into my stomach while saying, “Tickle, tickle.” It didn’t tickle.

Then we left. Autumn and her spouse, however, drove up from Charlotte to hear the panel, and she’s blogging about it today. So go visit her for more details.

The upshot or the quick and dirty of E’s presentation is this graphic about the changes we’ve made to the pnav over four years that resulted in our reducing our annual carbon output by 45 percent. The numbers at the bottom of the graph represent the tons of CO2 that we spewed into the atmosphere annually as a result of our electric and gas usage (or our carbon load). One of the main points of Gore’s film and of the panel is that we all are going to have to halve our carbon output over the next ten years if we want to start the slow reversal of global warming. Yes, it costs money. But it’s no longer really a choice. It’s a necessity.