Carbon Footprints, food and working less at a job you hate.
Many who know me often get a dose of my ‘tread lightly and enjoy life’ philosophy. I generally hate working for other people, no mater what it is, so I try any way possible to be efficient in my life. My main motivation is to save money, but lessening the impact on our environment and resources is always an added plus.
Americans are generally sloppy, heavy footed beasts who consume to no end. I think they call that the “American Dream”. However, here’s another saying you often hear, “Americans are the hardest workers on the planet.” I think that often refers to how much we actually do work. We don’t know how to stop working.
Part of our hunger to work 50-60 hour weeks for the entire year is so that we can have what the advertisers think we should have:
- a huge 2,500 square foot home on 2 acres
- a fat steak on the table every night
- the next best gloss black SUV
I love one of the lines from the Movie “Fight Club” where Tyler Durden says,
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.”
Ask most workers to sit down for just a second and they will admit how miserable they are at their job. Perhaps the only thing that get’s them through the day is that latte from Starbucks in the morning. Maybe it’s the gloss black SUV in the parking lot. You can go out and look at it during lunch to see what you’re working for.
photo credit: foundphotoslj
At one point, Europeans seemed to have a much better idea of how much to work. France worked 35 hours or less. Germans often took a month off for vacation. I don’t know how it runs now.
We all have to work some, but is it really necessary to work 50 to 60 hours? If you could cut your hours in half, would you? To fully answer that question, you have to convert the value of the dollars you earn into the value of the things you buy.
Do you really feel like all the things you buy make you happy?
This morning, I was turned onto a new site by CNN. It’s called EatLowCarbon.com. It’s a simple visual site showing you the various carbon output of foods. In simple terms, the biggest offenders were beef and cheese. That’s your basic cheeseburger. Other meals like salads, and rice & beans scored much lower (better for the earth). Of course most people will say:
“Yeah, but I really like cheeseburgers.”
It doesn’t take complicated math to understand that rice and beans are much cheaper than beef & cheese. Most doctors will agree that it’s a great deal healthier as well. You get plenty of protein. So on that line of thinking, you have three or four incentives to eat less beef and cheese:
- It’s much healthier for your body as you age.
- It reduces the energy consumption and carbon footprint of this country.
- It saves you a lot on your grocery bill.
- It puts a damper on factory farming which is considered unethical.
To me, that’s a great incentive. By eating more vegetarian meals, we have reduced our food bill a couple hundred bucks. Dawn eats all vegetarian, but I eat some meat still. I try to mix meat in with other things like beans and rice if I can. That’s a start. You don’t have to be a hard core vegetarian. Just eat ‘less’ meat for a start. Work your way down. For instance, eggs have much less an impact than beef does.
There’s other parts of the formula as well. Buy from local farms by using local Asheville farmers markets. Buy in season. Grow food in your own yard. Raise your own chickens. Visit local garage sales. Buy used goods off eBay and Craigslist.
I seriously believe that with a little effort, many Americans would only have to work 30 hour work weeks. Saving that extra 10 to 30 hours is like heaven. And could you imagine the reduced impact on the environment? Think about the other ramifications like a reduced money-flow to Arab countries who support terrorism. Because in the end, everything we buy revolves around oil. It all has to be shipped somewhere. Do you really need that stuffed bear from Hong Kong?
You don’t have to make hard core changes, but each small change you make towards less consumption will translate towards less hours at a job you hate. That’s how I look at it anyway. It’s a way to be selfish and also help the earth. Perhaps we can call it environmental capitalism.