I got this one in the white2tea tea club a while back, and just haven’t gotten around to trying it. In fact, full disclosure: I’m deeply behind on teas, so behind that I’ve actually paused my subscription to the white2tea club so I can have a chance of catching up.
This is an absolutely lovely tea and it took me about four steeps to begin to be able to brew it right. The website contains brewing notes, which I stupidly didn’t look at until I started to brew it, but to make a long story short, this is an oolong that has been pressed into a brick and for blah blah blah production reasons, this makes it a lot easier for the leaves to not come out in whole pieces, so they brew much faster than I expected. Because of this, my first few steeps smelled amazingly floral and delicious and tasted chewy and overbrewed.
But the final steeps, when I finally pulled halved the brewing times were amazing—floral and delicate and heartening, all in one.
A few steps closer…
My favorite thing that happened this last week: Xcel (our utility company) sent out a technician to check our gas meter because they didn’t think it was working properly.
To put things in context: earlier this year we got an electric heat pump water heater. Our home gas consumption is now limited to the stove (which we will replace semi-soonish; that's going to require a panel upgrade) and a back-up gas furnace that gets used for the 3-6 days a year when our non-cold-climate heat pumps can't handle the outside temperature (we got these in 2017, so when we replace them, we'll get something that should cover us for 100% of the time, not just 99%). When the hybrid electric vehicle dies, it gets replaced by actual electric.
So that's our plan for decarbonizing our home.
But saying that makes me think that I need to talk about the goal of individual action. In general, I think we should prioritize systemic action, and my goal here is not to proudly proclaim that I am personally solving the climate crisis. As long as Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol is commuting 1,000 miles, one way, every day, by private jet, my switching from a gas stove to induction isn't going to make a dent in the climate, and I know that.
The thing that actually matters to me is that these things make me more comfortable and cost less money. When we added insulation to our home, we stopped having drafts. We have solar panels; when we switched from a gas water heater to an electric one, we stopped paying to heat our water. I'm looking forward to switching from a gas stove because I have asthma, and when our indoor air quality improves, that will help my breathing. Renewable electric energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, and that's only going to get better in the coming years, so I'm saving myself money by doing all of these things.
What I do is a tiny difference to the planet, but it's actually a huge difference to me. Climate adaptations are a place where our individual selfishness--for the 99.99% of us who can't afford to live in Newport Beach and fly a private jet to Seattle on a daily basis--and the things that are good for the planet overlap. We can be selfish about climate in most instances, because what is good for the climate largely makes our lives better.
Do we like being more comfortable? Do we like spending less money on energy? Yes. Yes, we do.
And what do we do in our more comfortable, less costly homes? We write to our legislatures and ask them to regulate private jets, because come on.
In the meantime, if you're interested in coming up with a decarbonization plan, check out Rewiring America. They don't include things like insulation (probably because that's not an electrification project), but it's a great place to start.
More 2% solutions
About a year ago, I talked about 2% climate solutions: things I am trying to do that have a tiny climate impact. As I said above, I think the most impactful things that need doing are (ahem) regulating the 0.01% of stupidly wealthy individuals and the conduct of major corporations.
So I want to recognize that doing small things that have climate impact are not a solution. They can, in fact, be a distraction--the entire concept of caring about an individual's carbon footprint distracts from the systemic nature of the problem.
So what these are (at least for me) is an acknowledgement that in some climate friendly future decades from now, which I truly hope materializes, these are the things that we will all be doing because we've regulated the crap out of industry and billionaires and we're going to have to do everything possible to keep the world as non-disastrous as possible.
I am trying to adapt to these things while I am still vaguely young (forty-eight counts as young, right? I would have said no in my twenties, but I'm convinced it's young now) and have actual brain plasticity, instead of complaining about necessary changes in my seventies.
Here are the things I've done in the last year.
Hang laundry out to dry rather than use a dryer. I know this is standard for people outside the US, and simultaneously isn’t an option for some people—many states in the US are not dry-hanging laundry friendly, and if you don’t have much space but do have a lot of kids, this is problematic. But living in very dry Colorado, with laundry for two? It’s a great option, and it extends the life of clothing, too. I had to rearrange the way I did laundry--you can't just do three loads all at once--but I found that it didn’t take that much more time than using a dryer.
Walk instead of drive. I’m lucky to live in a place that is very walkable. I’ve been slowly expanding my walking range to about 2.5 miles, and I generally don’t drive anymore to things that are less than 2.5 miles from my house. Does this take more time? Yes—for the appointments further from my house, it definitely takes more time. But I actually really enjoy the exercise, and my area is walkable without me having to spend much time on non-residential streets. This is one of my favorite “climate” “adaptations” because I feel so much better, and I sleep so much better, when I walk.
Eat a lot less meat. I have slowly been replacing meals with meat for meals with tofu (I also substitute fava bean tofu / pumpkin seed tofu, which I can buy from nearby grocery stores, for protein variation), beans, and meat replacement products.
I still eat meat, but I’ve gone from being meatless about 20% of the time to being meatless 70% of the time. The percentage is still creeping up as I learn new recipes and add them to my repertoire.
Try to be intentional about purchases. We live in a day and age when we can get literally anything delivered, sometimes in a matter of hours, and I have ADHD and my ADHD loves that. But the ecosystem of creation, shipping, purchase, and delivery costs money. I am still working on this one, but I am trying to be thoughtful about purchases.
Turn potential climate guilt into action. I had a conversation with my eldest sister about this (she's a climate scientist), because there are always more things I could be doing. The point she made was this: feeling guilty doesn't actually improve the climate, and there is a vested interest in large companies wanting you to feel guilty rather than taking action.
So if there is a situation where you feel guilty, the correct thing to do is to push someone else for systemic change. Are you feeling badly that you're taking an airplane to visit your parents? Feeling badly does not reduce atmospheric CO2. Instead, call your legislator and say that you want them to prioritize high-speed rail. If you feel guilty about the climate impact of your devices, contact Apple or Google or Microsoft or Facebook and tell them you're upset that they are jeopardizing necessary for human life climate targets in favor of building out data centers for artificial intelligence. Are your to-go cups wasteful? Send a message to Starbucks letting them know you won't go there as long as the CEO is destroying the planet with his commute. Or, if you're in a place that doesn't allow you to hang laundry, email your state legislator about passing a right-to-dry law.
The list of companies and billionaires who are worse than you on climate is effectively endless. Don't feel guilt over your tiny climate footprint when you can use that energy to place the blame--and the need for action--where it belongs.
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