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December 18, 2007 The Green Family: Walk/Run 
This month in the marathon training: Adding in the occasional metaphorical sprint or jog. This is where we start to leave lifestyle concerns behind, and you'll soon see why. Let's target a footprint of 6.0 ha for our hypothetical family of four people living in a house under 3000 square feet. You have the following options: Limit your car travel to 150 km/week. That's 30 km/day or, if you commute every day, living 15 km from the office and no other trips. Carpool 50% of the time, with the old limit of 300 km/week. Reduce your meat consumption to once or twice per week (the old assumption was meat every day but not at every meal). This will make you a superstar and bring you down to 5.6 ha. We are still using 3x or more our fair share, with some pretty significant changes in lifestyle. So I'm hoping that you can see by now that lifestyle changes on their own will not be the solution. This is why we're now going to start learning stuff, too. Learning is still relatively easy and not unpleasant and can make a better foundation for future action. So here we go: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the answers to the following ten questions (Google U has a good reputation for these kinds of studies): 1. The name and party affiliation (if appropriate) of your municipal, provincial/state, and federal representative. 2. The name of your bioregion. 3. Three native plants of your bioregion. 4. Where your drinking water comes from. 5. Where your garbage goes to. 6. The closest park or conservation area. 7. The name of one local environmental or naturalist group. 8. Where municipal and/or provincial/state agencies are required to place advertisements for public meetings. 9. The name of one piece of environmental legislation that is in force where you live (whether municipal, provincial/state or federal). 10. One local hot-button environmental issue. Now you've reduced your consumption by about 3 ha, and you are beginning to know where you live; you've achieved some basic environmental literacy. You are starting to run. Posted by Andrea at December 18, 2007 6:57 AM under The Green Family EMAIL this entry (comments fields are below this section) Comments I can meet and beat that driving challenge. I do at most 65 mi per week (that's ~104 km). Plus a lot of that is carpooling because my friends and I try to do things together or for each other: more fun and more efficient. Hey this vegetable ball thing I made last night for dinner (over baby spinach with honey mustard dressing) was awesome. And I can actually answer quite a few of the questions off the top of my head, largely because of my citizens action and political groups. :) You rock, this rocks...you know that, right? Julie Posted by: Julie Pippert at December 18, 2007 9:54 AM
I love questions like those. I can answer every single one of them -- except the name of my bioregion. It might just be ponderosa forest, maybe ponderosa/juniper. Are bioregions named that way? For the month of December I've stopped using my dryer. That's been my lifestyle change for the month. I keep meaning to blog about it but I seem to have kicked the blogging habit inadvertently. Summary: It's easy to live without a dryer. Esp. as my kids can now use the dryer as a fort. Posted by: Jennifer at December 18, 2007 2:44 PM
I, too, can answer most of these questions off the top of my head...mostly because (cough) my husband is the answer-elect to the first one. I got a job today! For a month! In NearbyCapitalCity! Which is not actually so nearby! So, I'll be taking the commuter bus! YAY! Posted by: Liz at December 18, 2007 3:38 PM
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