The Gleefully Frugal

There's a great article in the New York Times today about people embracing frugal lifestyles in today's tough economy.  More than just a practical (or necessary) budgetary act, frugality is being given much broader consideration lately; it's what the article refers to as "the emergence of thrift as a value."  I'm thrilled to see society progressing this way.  

The article primarily focuses on the economic and social sides of the trend towards thrift, but it's not shy about also linking the environmental benefits of embracing thrift.  Regardless of whether you're giving up paper napkins because you've realized they were an unnecessary expense or because they are a waste of paper, you are benefiting the planet with your conscious decision to live with less.

On the economic side, the article also addresses the "paradox of thrift," the concern that when  the economy is already struggling, it is dangerous (even "catastrophic" as the article mentions) for people to react by saving instead of shopping.  However, the argument I'd make is that our economy has reached a tipping point and we can no longer be as focused on material consumerism if we want to be even remotely sustainable.  And I'm not even talking environmental sustainability here, I'm talking the survival of civilization.  I think that the only economic solution that will get us out of this mess is the one that recognizes "gleefully frugal" anti-consumerism as the way of the future, and manages to build an economy from the ground up accordingly.  Exactly what that economy looks like, I'm not quite sure, but I'm certain that with some creativity, that economy is possible.

Sincerely blogging better

I'm a neglectful blogger, and I apologize for that.  It's been brought to my attention that my blog on sustainability didn't turn out to be very sustainable itself. Oh, the ironies.  I'm going to try to fix this.  In the coming weeks, you will hopefully see some changes to Sincere Green.

These changes will partially be in the look and layout of the blog, in order to support the changes in content that I also hope to make.  The intention of the blog was to be all green all the time, but it turns out I have a lot of loosely related interests I want to talk about too.  I often find myself wanting to talk about materialism and the economy and notions of success or status, but I haven't blogged about these things in the past if I couldn't make a clear connection to the environment with the topic.  Realizing this, I thought about starting a brand new blog with a broader frame to give myself the freedom to write about all of these different topics, including but not limited to the green ones. 

My sister just called me to advocate for keeping the Sincere Green title of my blog and allowing myself more freedom within this existing blog- and I think she's right.  She pointed out to me that all issues relating to the economy and our consumer society do impact the environment eventually, and one of the biggest problems we have today is that people don't readily see that.  So, she argued, whether the point I am writing about at any given time has direct links to environmental issues or not, it's important to keep the distant correlations in mind, and to talk about non-environmental topics in the context of the environment too.  So I'm going to give myself the freedom to go outside the green box-- to see what I'm inspired to write about when I am not limiting myself to green-only topics, and we'll see if I become a better blogger for it.  

Here's to hoping!

Change to get excited about

The election of President Barack Obama will mean a lot of great changes for the environment, I believe, and today we're seeing the first few examples of the changes to come.  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she is appointing a special envoy to lead US efforts to fight Global Warming.  I am so thrilled that the global issue of Climate Change is going to be addressed holistically, not just by the department of energy or department of transportation as a domestic or industrial issue, but also addressed by the department of the state as an international and diplomatic issue.  

I don't know a lot about Todd Stern, who is expected to lead the envoy, but he worked in the Clinton administration and was involved in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in the 90s.  Hopefully not signing the Protocol wasn't his idea, and we'll see more progress on that front in this administration.  From the looks of some of his articles online, I'm thinking we can expect to see great progress. 

The White House blog also announced that President Obama signed a two memos today that deal with energy independence and climate change.  The first directs the department of transportation to raise CAFE standards (fuel efficiency standards) for 2011 model cars.  The second memo will allow California and 12 other states to raise their emissions standards higher than the national standard.  I applaud this decision, and am curious to see how it plays out- what kind of challenges still lay ahead of states trying to lead the way for energy efficiency, and how much will the oil and auto industries fight back?  We'll have to wait and see- but I've never been more hopeful in my life that progress is upon us. 

There's "green" and then there's green

I just wanted to share an interesting and slightly depressing NY Times article about two very different "green" inauguration galas going on in DC this weekend- one much more sincere than the other, in my opinion.