by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
It is chic to talk about “getting green” and reducing your carbon footprint around this time of year, and it is easy to point fingers at the utility companies and politicians, casting the blame for the state of our environment on others, but what does “getting green” really mean? The short answer is: living our lives with the least impact on the environment as possible. In the 1900s it was all about industry and production, but these days we are more technologically and scientifically advanced, so we can maintain our way of life, more or less, without flooding our own air and water with pollutants and destructive elements.
In Florida, we have some very unique opportunities and we also have some of the best reasons to make a serious effort to reduce our greenhouse gasses, since the 200-year projection puts our entire state below sea level. According to our governor, Charlie Crist, “...I will bring together the brightest minds to begin working on a plan for Florida to explore groundbreaking technologies and strategies that will place our state at the forefront of a growing worldwide movement to reduce greenhouse gases. Florida will provide not only the policy and technological advances, but the moral leadership, to allow us to overcome this monumental challenge.”
Although casting political dispersions and blaming inefficient energy systems for the problem may be partially accurate, James Orth, of the St. John’s Riverkeeper reminds that “JEA is all of us.”
And although a large part of our portion of the task at hand is to be vocal to our representatives that the environment is a serious issue to us (because you can bet that industry talks to them a lot about what they want passed, regardless of how that affects your groundwater or air quality). There are a number of small, simple things we can implement into our daily routine to reduce our impact and help sustain ourselves without using excess energy or creating excessive waste that ends up in our river or our soil.
To find out what these things are, I talked to James Orth of the St. Johns Riverkeeper and Jennifer McCharen of the Jacksonville Carbon Neutral Initiative (JCNI) to get some tips for the everyday Joe. We also talked to some local people about the viability of solar power in our Sunshine State, ways to recycle and its benefits, local farmer’s markets, organic eating and holistic health. While being an activist might not be everyone’s gig, being active is everyone’s job, and we have a variety of ways you can do that.
Social responsibility is never a focus of this publication, and our objective is not to make you feel guilty or to compel you to change the sort of person you are. EU is Jacksonville’s weekly entertainment newspaper and there are plenty of people around town that choose to make “living greener” their hobby. It is a great way to occupy your energies outside of work. It feels good to recycle and get a little righteous on your friends.
From things as simple as turning off lights and putting your home electronics on power strips that you can turn off to reduce your “phantom load” to getting rid of St. Augustine grass in your lawn and replacing it with native plants that are easier to manage while attracting butterflies and birds, there are plenty of things you can do that make a real difference. You can entertain yourself with these activities and feel good about it. Maybe you can’t stop using gasoline, but you could carpool. Maybe you don’t want to stop eating meat, but you could make sure that your meat and vegetables come from a nearby farm. Changes don’t have to be dramatic, but by changing some simple things you can make a dramatic difference.
“I’m going to do what I can to help people establish a personal relationship with the facts.”
As a photography student in New York, Jennifer McCharen was an unlikely person to return to Jacksonville and become an activist. She has never organized people to this degree and seems rather trepiditious about the idea, and yet she fits comfortably into the role and knows what she’s talking about. She isn’t one of those hairy-armpit activists that thrusts signs into the air and screams her agenda across parking lots, she speaks softly about the facts. She also doesn’t posture as though she has all of the answers, spitting vinegar at corporations and energy companies. She defers to science and published reports by leading experts in their fields and she works hard to build alliances with the corporations that are making an effort to affect change.
The goals of the Jacksonville Carbon Neutral Initiative are lofty and vast. In Jacksonville, a southern town not known for particularly active citizens when it comes to environmental issues, Jennifer and her group are faced with the challenge of first convincing people that are interested in the facts surrounding climate change to learn more about the problem. The next step is getting those people to take steps in their own lives toward a lower impact way of living. Then they have to advocate action and convince people that activism is necessary. After that, they have to equip these people with the knowledge and resources they need to act.
“Even people that are interested don’t know how to be part of a community that is active. Also, people that know about environmental issues don’t necessarily know about this one. There is a lot that needs to be done.”
JCNI is currently operated out of the pockets of its participants. They don’t have any underwriting and they do everything from organizing the Step It Up 2007 campaign to making the food for those in attendance.
“[Step It Up 2007] is a public dialogue on climate change. There will be five panelists presenting, and they are all experts for the region. They are not environmentalists, they are not politicians, they are not members of the media, they are scientific experts. The point is to rake climate change out of the discourse it has fallen into, which is primarily political. It is a scientific problem, it is an environmental problem. It is not an interest group problem and it is not about money. It’s about energy use and our place within the natural systems of the earth.” (Step It Up happened last Saturday, see sidebar on the event on page 16.)
And although it is “not about money,” it turns out that a good deal of reducing your impact actually saves you money. It’s an intuitive concept. The electricity you use shows up on your electricity bill. Reduce that use and you reduce your bill while burning less coal to produce that power. This is one of many reasons that it makes little sense to group the issue of global warming with any single political party.
“I’m big on having a conversation with somebody. Not throwing rhetoric out or posting it on the Internet, but getting people to come together and talking to them like intelligent human beings. If you talk to someone as an intelligent human being, this issue is very clear. Once people know you are trying to get them the facts and you are not trying to manipulate them, people will make good decisions. That’s the key. People have felt manipulated by the media and politicians on this particular issue. I understand why somebody wouldn’t trust Al Gore to tell them what’s true. I understand why someone wouldn’t trust Fox News to be telling them something they really need to hear.”
“The more minds you get thinking hard about something, the more creative solutions the community can come up with. Jacksonville is going to have different problems than New York or California, so only our community can really address our problems.”
Visit the Jacksonville Carbon Neutral Initiative’s booth at the Earth Day festivities at the Jacksonville Landing on April 21st for more details on what you can do to help Jacksonville become carbon-neutral or visit their website at Jaxgreen.org to get more involved.
The JCNI has ten easy things that you can do for little-to-no investment to reduce your impact on our environment.
1 – Plant a tree. It seems like a trite and quaint gesture, but an average tree absorbs 330 pounds of carbon every year it is alive.
2 – Grow a garden. This saves you money at the grocery store, improves the flavor and health benefits of your meals, is fun to maintain, and means gasoline isn’t being burned to deliver week-old vegetables to your table.
3 – Eat more plants. This is where my father would write this whole thing off as hippy-dippy malarcky, but the truth is that a plant-based diet is better for you and the planet. Time magazine stated that going vegetarian reduces your carbon footprint more than switching to a hybrid car.
4 – Switch to compact fluorescents. These bulbs are so much more efficient than incandescents that some countries are considering a total ban on the latter.
5 – Use power strips. This way you can turn off your electronics chargers and stereo equipment all the way. When a little red “standby” light comes on, that is part of an unused energy mass known as “phantom load.” Unplug anything that draws power even when not in use, or plug it into a power strip that you can turn off.
6 – Change your home’s climate. Adjust your thermostat to temperatures that are just 2 degrees more moderate than usual and you can save one ton of carbon per year. Insulating your water heater and turning it down ten degrees saves another 500 pounds per year. These also save you considerable money on your utility bills.
7 – Use cold water. Run your washing machine on cold water and save another 500 pounds of carbon per year.
8 – Reduce your waste. From recycling beer bottles and re-using to-go containers and water bottles to composting organic waste to benefit your garden, the less you send to the landfill the better.
9 – Consider getting rid of St. Augustine grass, which is difficult to manage and requires mowing, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.. Instead, what about a native plant garden that attracts butterflies and is already indigenous to our area. Go to www.fnps.org for more information about native plants.
10 – Be active in your community. Know what is going on and be vocal about change.
Step It Up 2007 is a grassroots campaign that organized a national day of climate action on April 14th. The Jacksonville Carbon Neutral Initiative joined in on this event by bringing a group of expert panelists to Riverside Presbyterian Day School on Saturday. The event started off with donated, vegan food (no animal byproducts) and coffee from Starbucks. Then the 150 to 175 attendees enjoyed a thorough education on global climate change, the local effects, what we can do about it, and the importance of accurate information. The panelists included Robert Farmer, a specialist in power technologies and communications for a sustainable future. Stephen Mulkey, the director of Research and Outreach/Extension for the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Florida. Jeff Martin, the president of the Florida Society of Geographers and an Assistant Professor on the faculty of JU. Pam Dement-Liebenow, a professor of Biological Sciences at FCCJ. Dave McLintock, the executive director of Energy Explorers.
After the panel the crowd was entertained by live bands. The bands that played included Airport Factory, Teen Vogue Dot Com, A Slight Breeze, Big Black Joe, and a some solo acts.
JEA distributed compact fluorescent light bulbs for free and The Nature Conservancy and Native and Uncommon Plants distributed maple and oak seedlings that participants could take home and plant. The Florida Solar Energy Center also had a display. The event was casual, fun, and informative. Look for JCNI’s next event on jaxgreen.org.
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