Living Green - Living green means more than just eating green salads and chocolate mint ice cream. However, living green is quite personal in how we live our daily lives sustainably. There are many web sites that address this and we'll list some good ones here. But, y'all come back now!
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For reasons to live green, please read this next section, and go to Sustainability.
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21st Century Kings and Queens
If you are reading this on the internet, chances are that you live better than the Kings and Queens of a short few decades ago. With an easy flick of a switch, we turn on room lights. That seems pretty simple to us, but before 1896, no one, even a king or queen, could do that. That's because the world's first large AC power system was created and activated in Niagara Falls, on August 26, 1895. All of the world’s power lines and house wiring systems were installed after that date! Power beyond kings and queens at our fingertips!
If, on a cold winter’s night, we’re feeling a little chilly, we simply go to the thermostat and turn it up. Voila! Our home heats up within minutes and we’re comfy and cozy again. Kings and queens of the 19th century had no such options. If they were lucky, they had a boiler system with radiators to produce heat. But the radiator didn’t exist before its invention around 1855. Before that, the fireplace was the common source of home and castle heating. No easy thermostats to adjust. It was necessary to continuously stoke a fire with coal or wood and live with cold drafts and smoky chimneys often releasing smoke into homes. Like a campfire on a cool night, someone had to constantly tend to the fire to keep warm, and yes, smoke occasionally got into eyes and lungs. At that time (pre 1855), if you wanted to talk to your cousin in the next town, even to send a message would require someone walking or riding a horse to deliver
for granted, even expects them or feels he/she has a right to them. And that’s part of the problem. In 2023, this is part of a more complex problem, even in affluent North America. Inflation has made it difficult for many to enjoy some of these basics which others take for granted. See also Economics
Over the last 200 years, we’ve become so accustomed to the benefits of oil that we can’t even imagine a world without products made from or enabled by oil. We assume these benefits will continue. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries wake up each morning with their dreams about to be realized of having the products, services and benefits of a world of cheap oil. Clothing, fertilizer, plastics, toys, building materials, gas for cars -- these are all, to a great extent, oil-based or currently depend heavily on oil for transport.
Unluckily, we’re running out of crude oil, but our expectations are growing, not diminishing. And more of us have these greater expectations, so much so that the earth cannot sustain the increase in physical resource depletion and pollution associated with greater population growth coupled with greater appetites for things.
North Americans today are blessed with the benefits of oil, partly because of our economic and educational wealth compared with much of the rest of the world. We possess about 34% of the world’s wealth with only 6% of the world’s population. In other words, much of the world lives with less than we do, many with significantly less. But, many of the developing
the message. Even the telegraph wasn’t patented until 1843 by Samuel Morse, with the first Canadian telegraph message sent between Toronto and Hamilton in 1846. No telephones existed, nor texting on a cellphone. Just 150 years ago there were no computers, no video games, no cars, no televisions, no smartphones or refrigerators. With just a modest income, a typical North American today (2022) takes all these things
nations are catching up; yet, the limited world’s resources including oil won’t let them catch up to today’s North American standards. Something’s got to give. That’s what this Spot-on-Green website will help us understand. What are the issues and can we do anything to share the wealth, yet leave the Earth sustainable?
For those who chose to live green, it is not always obvious whether an activity is really a green endeavour or, if so, at what level it contributes. For example, a drive in the country in a gasoline (fossil fuel) burning vehicle may be pleasant; however, the burning of gasoline is clearly a non-renewable resource-depleting pursuit – far from green. But, what about eating imported strawberries when out of season locally? Can another local fruit be substituted having similar nutritional value with less environmental impact in its transport to market, and perhaps other benefits like supporting local business?
These are the concerns, ideas, answers and solutions that will be explored on this website.
The wastefulness of certain resource usage not only depletes finite resources such as fossil fuel but, by contributing waste to the environment, appears also to affect climate change. Climate Change will be addressed herein at some depth.
Next, go to Living Green 101.
Footnotes
There are billions of people who, because of impoverishment for whatever reason, did not nor do have the privileges of many North Americans or Europeans, for example. The privileged are the main contributors to the wastefulness discussed above. Yet the impoverished may suffer more because of the excesses of the privileged..Going green globally can help balance the inequities of overindulgence on one hand and impoverishment on the other..Thinking outside the box and green-living can lead toward global sustainability and well-being beyond our dreams.