For People Who Care But Don't Have a Lot of Time

This blog has been a long time in the making.

I've been interested in the environment ever since second grade when the well-meaning Mrs. Flanagan introduced us to the concept of Earth Day and how we too could save the planet.

This was also the era of Captain Planet and Louie the Lightbulb and with my affinity for animated characters who would regulate my moral choices (this is what happens when you also grow up in the age of animated Sunday School characters) I was a sucker for the quick sell.

As a slightly sanctimonious budding environmentalist I would follow my mom around the house turning off light bulbs as soon as her foot would reach the doorframe. Never mind that the rest of her would still be in the room. "I'm coming right back," she'd gently comment. "Doesn't matter!" I'd harp. "Every little bit counts!" Meanwhile, I would beg and plead for every new Barbie that would hit the shelves of our local big box store.

I was also pre-Goth (that was an ill-advised phase that stretched from high school well into college). But my angst over that which could and could not be recycled could match any Cure or Smiths song hands down. In the Midwest we could only recycle #1 and #2 plastics. Any #5 or worse, #6 would send me in a spiral of despair as I mournfully committed it to the trash.

***My dad was far from absent in my upbringing, but his work often occurred at the same time as my save the whales campaigning.***

Now I am full fledged adult and while my rabid tree hugger nature has calmed down, my eco-anxiety has gone up. Carbon footprints, cap and trade, BPA-free plastics!? All of these words would only have produced quizzical stares fifteen, even ten years ago. Now middle schoolers converse fluently about such topics while I kick my middle school self wishing it had done more than moon over Uncle Jesse from Full House during my formative years.

I can't totally fault myself. The aforementioned advances are relatively recent, even the word "sustainability" wasn't embraced until after the new millennium. But new technologies and concepts pop up every day. And what's worse is that we live in an age of information overload and an ever surmounting pile of demands- from the mundane like making sure that one has clean underwear for tomorrow to taking care of one's own retirement as the age of pensions is long gone.

Surveying even the most basic Barnes and Noble's "green" section can cause vertigo. If I barely have time to pick up my kids from school, make dinner, and get everyone's laundry done while taking the dog for a walk how can I possibly squeeze in time to read that tome on saving the earth!? (this is a hypothetical person as I have neither children nor a dog. But it does describe a lot of people)

Google provides awesome searches and there are some extremely useful books out there as well as really good blogs. But this is my small part. I hope to provide succinct summaries of various "sustainable" topics and that it may be of service to you.

To paraphrase Peter Barnes, in his dedication from Climate Solutions: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, "this [blog] is dedicated to fellow owners of our one sky.