saving the planet

We talked about saving the planet over turkey supper and chocolate cake tonight. Most of the foods we ate would need to be scrutinized and rejected, were we already seriously at work saving it. We've changed our lightbulbs, drive small cars, and try not to accept unnecessary plastic grocery bags, but so far have not made any difficult changes, or changes that cost significant amounts of money. David Suzuki guest-edited Saturday's Vancouver Sun newspaper, so we have lots of fuel for thought. (World saving tip: thinking does not produce greenhouse gases.) We talked for a bit about a totally "green" newspaper edition including ecologically -conscious comics, horoscopes and births and deaths sections. Now that would be interesting.

We decided better transit and less road-building will be a big factor in convincing people to change their habits. We also talked about the flooding that seems sure to happen in the Fraser River Valley. For the first time in more than half a century we are threatened with widespread flooding this spring, that will almost certainly put people who we know out of their homes. We make grim jokes about how our house on the hill over an ocean inlet will be beachfront one day, but they just aren't very funny.

Like all of our family conversations seem to do, It deteriorated (or morphed anyway) into a conversation about creative disposal of cremated remains so as not to take up more space and pollute the land with buried bodies or urns. Then I thought of a geothermal car. It would have a big spike that would prong down deep through layers of earth and rock, and a storage cell to build up a charge from the thermal energy underground. Once it was juiced up you could move maybe 10 or 20 meters forward and it would use its last bit of power to prong again to another underground energy source to juice up for another 10 or 20 meter trundle. Nobody thought that this was a very good idea.

So I guess we'll just have to do some real, serious stuff, since nobody in our family is smart enough to invent something that will be an easy answer to the problem. It was a good birthday supper for Alex. The conversation made me think about how he will live on this earth for at least another 70 years. It's really up to us what it will be like for his lifespan, and for the lives of his children. I know we have the creativity and strength to make changes. If it's anything like our family dinner talk, it will be a creative and colourful adventure, fueled by love and some good, non-polluting sustainable thought.

question: do you ever talk about the earth? about ashes?

mompoet - even when I'm dust, there'll be those I love eating chocolate cake and laughing