Rethinking Lifestyle

Last week in this column I bemoaned the fact that we have become utterly, dangerously dependent on natural gas to keep us from freezing in our Canadian winter.

The heading above, lead an article in the Winnipeg Free Press last Saturday. The article was buried on page C2, and the record was reported almost as if this was an accomplishment. Certainly no concern was expressed. But we should be concerned.

It’s a funny thing. People will spend thousands of dollars on upgrading their kitchen with new cupboards, fancy granite countertops, Italian taps, lighting, hardwood floors etc etc.

We built our straw bale house 10 years ago. While living in Winnipeg, I came across a book on straw bale construction at our local library.

Last week I again found myself waiting at a railway crossing, waiting for a train carrying oil to pass. As I waited, I got to thinking. Such trains were a rarity just a few years ago, but they are becoming increasingly common.

We built our home-in-a-hill near Richer in 1985. We worked with an architectural drafter on the plans and during the planning stage discovered we were building on a granite shelf so we could afford to put in a basement.

Ten years ago when our last child finally graduated high school, we decided it was now or never to follow through on our many years-long dream of building a house…an alternative house… in “the country”.

Those of us who have become concerned about the sustainability of our lifestyle; how our lifestyle affects resource depletion, catastrophic pollution, climate change and a host of other environmental issues, are well aware that the activities of any one of us will do nothing to save this planet for our children and grandchildren.

We recently had “Black Friday” followed by “Cyber Monday” when people queued up to buy stuff that in all probability in many cases they didn’t really need.

Two posts on my Facebook timeline, one scroll apart, show just how bizarre the political economics of oil are these days.