No Impact Week

Have you ever felt resistance course through your body when the topic of conversation turns to personal responsibility for climate change? I feel it. My shoulders wind all the way up to my ears in tension. The tension is driven in part by an imaginary conversation. The year is 2050—the year so frequently cited in climate reports as a milestone year by which we humans must have significantly changed our consumption habits—and I am sitting with my grown children. What will I tell them I did to help?

When I am in denial, my knee-jerk response is to rest on my laurels. After all, I bicycle most places and use only re-usable grocery bags. Isn’t that enough?

For me, the honest answer is I can do more.

But where to begin? A recent story on NPR gave me a constructive starting point. The story featured Colin Beaven, also known as the “No Impact Man.” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112447407. A New Yorker, Colin eliminated all of his carbon dependencies for a year, together with his wife and daughter. Based on his experiment, he launched the “No Impact Project,” a web-driven project that challenges folks just like me to reduce emissions and waste while gaining health and time.

Ordinarily, I might be scared off from taking such a “change your habits” challenge. But this one is different. It is laid out in a neat “No Impact Week” with specific suggested steps. Over the course of the week, I’ll take a new step each day. By the end of the week, I will consume no new goods, stop making trash, switch to non-carbon transport, buy only local food, use less energy and waste less water. Taking a day at a time, this is an inviting way for me to ease into making a few changes for the better.

If your curiosity is piqued, here’s what you can do. First, you can, of course, test the experiment yourself by signing up at www.noimpactproject.org. Feel free to submit comments on Sustainable C about how it’s going. If that’s too much too soon, just follow along each day as I report through Sustainable C my reflections, particular challenges, and tips that make own habits easier to change.

Personal responsibility for the climate is a touchy topic because it involves so many of our creature comforts. I see no reason why we can’t experiment with how we interpret the idea of “comfort” to change patterns for the better. That’s the experiment that will give a jump start to Sustainable C. I hope you’ll join me.