No Impact World

After reading No Impact Man by Colin Beavan and putting all my initial skepticism about how someone with family (including diaper wearing baby daughter), in the middle of New York City could actually live with no impact for a year aside -- I found myself remembering and reveling the simple life.

Dig a little deeper before totally writing him off. You know me, I've fallen head over heels admiring him for his one-person-can-save-the-world attempt. It's worthy of your time. The book is incredibly honest, light-hearted, and engaging. There is also a blog and documentary to complement the book.

He attacks his goal in phases: no trash, local eating, no transportation, no electricity, etc. When he turns off power I could relate while realizing doing this in NYC is much more extreme. He mentions, "1.6 billion people--a full quarter of the world's population--still have no access to electricity." That was me, not too long ago, and not even fully because sometimes when the power was reliable I had a light and a source to charge my computer. It opens a huge can of worms.

How do you keep the food cold or yourself cool on a stale hundred-degree day? What do you do when the sun goes down? How do you charge electronics to keep up with the rest of the world? How do you do laundry or dishes without any labor-saving device?

I can answer all of these questions for you. It's not fun as Beavan learns. At one point his daughter is ill and vomits on two sets of sheets and pajamas. He "cheats" because in the middle of the night with no lights, when there is a machine at the bottom of your building washing clothes by hand is not ideal. I appreciate his honesty. I would have done the same thing, however in dear ole Lesotho, along with the rest of the quarter of the world, that is not an option.

So I'll tell you a story about my experience with a similar situation. Middle (host) sister was at school one day when another student vomited in her backpack full of school supplies. She told me the story as though the student had no other options. I believed her because I worked at her school and knew in her class all 78 students were packed like sardines in their classroom, meaning they file out one-by-one at break and lunch. Though it was my nature to protect her and everyone I knew closely from problems ravishing their country, I wished it was a bully I could teach a valuable lesson.

Unlike in Beavan's case, there was no way to cheat in this story. I watched her scrub that backpack for hours and hours covering four straight days. If I failed to mention in previous posts, Basotho are very clean people. When she finished you couldn't detect crusty vomit in any crevice or a smell. There were several times where I wanted to run down to the local shop and buy her a new bag. I couldn't give in as I had so often before because that is not why I was there. How sustainable would that have been?

To disgust you or break your heart a little more, all her notebooks filled with notes were ruined. They weren't replaceable, even if money wasn't an object. She took all my scrap paper and stapled a book together for herself. Then she proceeded to copy the notes out of her ruined, horribly smelling notebooks for weeks. Not only are they very clean people, they're perfectionist. She took her time to make sure each word was copied in a legible format.

That wasn't exactly a story of the simple life I miss. Instead it was to open your eyes to the rest of the world where "cheating" isn't an option. I realize people in America aren't going to give up their washing machines, hot showers, or cars. We should shift our focus from reinventing the wheel to, as Beavan suggests, "figuring our how to deliver the same level of (reduced) resources, by Western standards, to everyone in a sustainable way."

And I can't go without mentioning throughout the book part of his honesty comes in the form of self consciousness and curiosity, how do other people see me? Don't we all wonder if what we are doing to carve our fossil is the right thing? I constantly wonder if my opinions and views are too extreme. This book put me in my place. All this time have I been too busy chiding others way of living that I somehow see myself as righteous? A little less chatter, a little more action is in order.