Sightline schmoozefest

Today I was invited to an event at Sightline Institute. The topic of conversation for this event next month will be climate change. The email touted conversations and social connections as the way to begin creating change.

As a member of the Sightline community, you're part of a web of connections that make Sightline so effective, and that ultimately leads to change. 

I hope they're right.

Perspective Shift

This afternoon as I was working in the home office. The distracting whirr of the local leaf blower guy grabbed my attention as it usually does. This offending noise has been an ongoing situation. I have yet to figure out how to deal with it effectively. The guy can only shrug and say it is his job. This time he pulled out his cell phone and called the company he works for and allowed me to have my say with his employer who was surprisingly well versed in the city's noise abatement stipulations. She was far more defensive than she needed to be. I knew I was beat.

So what does this have to do with a climate change think tank? Follow the breadcrumbs.

We've got this lovely, noisy, energy-swilling device created to make work lighter. The device is manufactured because ostensibly it is filling a need in the marketplace. However, the work is nothing more than collecting leaves and moving them to trash bins. This is typically done with a rake. As I have personally discovered, with big jobs this is accomplished quite neatly with collecting the leaves onto a blue tarp, pulling up the corners of the tarp and hauling them to the proper dumping site. Good, clean work done efficiently with human energy.

Inject machinery usage, multiple energy requirements: electricity, oil for parts etc., and the noise pollution in a densely populated neighborhood, and what do you get?

You get some wiseacre, yours truly, left wondering why abandon the rake?

And again, what does this have to do with the good-hearted think tank?

Well, if I'm going to be encouraged to chat about the current state of climate change action, this is what I need:

• I need a say in revising this version of human "progress" with machinery usage.
• I'd like to have a conversation with the management company that only knows me as someone who complains.
• I'd like to convince this guy to be concerned about his hearing that he will soon be losing. He doesn't wear ear protection. I'm not kidding; you can hear this machine from two blocks away.
• I'd like to know if the wasted energy use and human impact explanations are understood.

Every human interaction, every expenditure of extracted industrial energy is open to scrutiny. Presumably this guy is getting paid for his labor. I am certain that the 45 minutes he blows leaves would be more effectively used raking. He simply shows up and does his "work" and there is no measure of effectiveness for the effort taken to redistribute leaves. (That's right. He doesn't collect them or dispose of them later. He just blows.) He gets a paycheck and so the economy is happy, but everything else suffers and continues unseen.

Allow me to be effective in one tiny area of life and I'd gladly show up to schmooze about how humanity can save itself from climate disasters--one leaf blower at a time.