What is sustainability, really?

A partial answer: Nothing we are doing today in mainstream society. Plastic recycling, brand-new cars that get 30-50mpg (30% of environmental impact from cars is due to manufacturing), glossy magazines targeting the rising "eco-consumer", self-proclaimed "environmentalists" who drive SUV's....

I'm tired of all the pretending. It scares me. I'm going in a new direction, one I believe carries the seeds of real hope. It can be summed up with one word that scares most of my fellow Americans: self-denial. It's time to drop the excuse, "It's not fair if only I have to do it!" It's time to step out in front and take serious measures. Our personal lives have to change, and there's no time to lose.

Here are some of the steps my wife and I have taken (and are taking) in the past three years. Most of these are considered extreme by most of our acquaintances, but none of them is near enough:

1. Electricity usage is responsible for a large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions, so we have completely stopped using air conditioning in our house. A healthy human body is amply capable of dealing with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F. My young son is doing quite well in the heat, as are we. Sweat is one of Nature's gifts. You get used to it. (Remember: it's about self denial.)
   
2. Natural gas heat is another major source of greenhouse gases, so we heat our house to 50 degrees F throughout the winter. We own warm clothes. We wear them. (My son insists on wearing T-shirts, and swears he's never cold. The body acclimates.) The heat gets turned up to 60 F for visitors, who are warned ahead of time to wear sweaters.
   
3. We have begun tending a large garden every spring through fall. We try to grow large amounts of starchy crops, which constitute the bulk of our meals. This helps us eliminate much of our impact on the environment relating to agribusiness and shipment of food products. Eating fresh garden produce has also improved our intake of important nutrients such as folate, which breaks down very quickly and is largely absent from store-bought fare.
   
4. Environmentally speaking, plentiful wild food sources are by far the best. We are benefitting heavily from the acorn and apple output of our neighborhood. We cut up the apples and make applesauce. Imperfections are to be expected. We cut them out. Large apples work well because you can get more unmolested flesh out of them with less work. Acorns we shell, cut up, leach out the bitter acid by running water through them, then process them through a variety of recipes (to be posted in the near future).
   
5. My wife utterly refuses to drive motorcars. I'm committed to buying only used cars with excellent gas mileage. My long term plan is to join my wife in total vehicular abstinence.
6. All our clothes hang dry. We have bought some drying racks, and in the summer use an extensive network of clotheslines in the back yard. The dryer is used at a minimal level to remove lint from problem articles before they are hung with the rest of the laundry.
   
7. We don't watch or own a TV. There's no time, and none of us misses it any longer. It's a useless addiction, as you realize once it wears off. In the absence of constant fantasy, the real world looms to its proper magnitude.
8. I am planning to install a water collection system on our gutters. There's no reason to pipe in chemically-treated city water when your roof sheds more water than you need just about every week of the year. Some mild purification is necessary for drinking. I'm mainly planning to use it to water the garden.
   

I believe these measures have already saved lives. Among climate experts, the strong scientific consensus (something very important to scientists and their audiences alike, contrary to the supercilious pronouncements of Michael Crichton) is that global warming is caused mainly by human activity. Hurricanes and heat waves are killing people. By combatting global warming, I am preventing potential deaths from even more serious disasters. This gives me all the strength I need to carry on.

I want to do more. Who else is really trying to give more than lip service to sustainability? What are your ideas? How far have you taken them?

Maybe you can't see my point of view at all. Maybe you're one of those whose lives are defined by their level of consumption. Are you convinced that I'm an eccentric crank? Let me know.