My newest purchase

How lame am I that I find this completely exciting? Here she is:

What do you mean, "what the hell is that?"?








It's my new lawnmower! A manual push reel mower. And no, I didn't steal it out of some ancient tool museum. I bought it, on sale, at Menards. She works like a beauty- 18" cutting blade, adjustable height, etc. I feel really good about my purchase because it requires no gas or electricity of any kind; my own little contribution to saving the earth.


What hit me in the head and caused me to think this purchase was a good idea? Well, our yard isn't all that large (which is good because coming from Chicago with no yard at all, this isn't too much of a shock to our never done yardwork systems), and PBS made me feel really guilty.

I watched this NOVA program last week, "World in Balance" and it made me feel bad about how much energy the US consumes. It was a fantastic program about radically changing populations in rich and poor nations.

Here is a description:

In the first hour, "The People Paradox," NOVA investigates three countries where social and economic forces have produced starkly different population profiles. In India, women still bear an average of three to four children. Within a few decades the country will overtake China as the world's most populous nation. NOVA interviews a young Indian woman who nearly died delivering her eighth baby. Three of her children have died, and another pregnancy may jeopardize her life. Nevertheless, her husband and mother-in-law want her to try for another son—a highly prized asset in traditional Indian culture.

Meanwhile, the population pyramid in sub-Saharan Africa is beginning to resemble an hourglass. Adults between the ages of 20 and 60 are dying in the prime of life, largely due to AIDS, leaving the very old and young to fend for themselves. In a powerful personal story, NOVA interviews a 19-year-old Kenyan woman who suffers from AIDS. Her parents have died, and she is raising her four brothers and sisters as well as a nephew. Like many teenage girls in Africa, she is a victim of predatory sexual behavior by an older male, through whom she contracted HIV. Funding cuts in family planning assistance from the United States are putting many young women at risk for unwanted pregnancies, HIV infection, and illegal backstreet abortions.

In the second hour, "China Revs Up," NOVA takes the pulse of China's hyperactive economy, which is the fastest growing in the history of the world. During the last two decades, China clamped down on its population growth through its controversial one-child policy, but in recent years it has relaxed those rules, moving in the direction of more reproductive freedom. As the sprawling country develops from a poor nation and aspires to a more middle-class lifestyle, China's air, land, and water are beginning to suffer. Already, a massive dust cloud of eroded soil from Mongolia has darkened the skies over North America, and air pollution from Beijing and Shanghai regularly wafts as far as California.
The prospect that all Chinese will strive to live like middle-class Americans is daunting, since it has been calculated that if all the world's people had an American standard of living, two more planets the size of Earth would be needed to support them. But one planet is all there is, and "World in the Balance" shows that it will take our best scientific and technological efforts to make this one do for all its inhabitants—present and future.
Carbon Emissions, 1995
The amount of carbon dioxide polluting our atmosphere has risen 30 percent in the last 200 years as a result of increasing industrial and automobile emissions. Plants convert carbon dioxide back to oxygen, but human activities are now releasing more carbon dioxide than the world's plants can process. This map shows in magenta today's greatest polluters—the United States, Europe, China, and Japan. In the next 50 years, as industrialization increases, many of the purple areas on this map will turn to magenta and the green areas to purple unless stricter emissions standards for factories and cars are put in place.

I mean, I'm not going to stop shaving my armpits and buy a VW van to live in, but I will think twice about how much energy I use.

Maybe I should try a lighter subject next time...
like homelessness or the child sex slave trade?