Life

I’m no eco-warrior.
I’m concerned for the environment, sure. I’m doing what I can to reduce my impact on it, sure.
I appreciate tips and solutions to make things better, sure.

Turns out a lot of the stuff I’m advised to do… is what I’ve always done.

So when some brat starts yelling “How dare you?” at my generation — then I not only tune out to anything she says, I also get pissed off. I stop listening.
Don’t get me wrong. Climate change is very real and I applaud Greta for making noise — but she’s often making noise toward the wrong age group.
Most of my generation walked to school, spent their time outside, or with a book, maybe watched some TV on the only TV in the house. One. Per. House. Not one in every room. There may have been a hi-fi, too. Maybe a radio in the kitchen.
Now? TV in several rooms, a CD/mp3 player, a computer, laptop, tablet, mobile phone, games console etc. 
How many mobile phones have you gone through in the past 5 years?
Me? One. The one I’m using now.

So the “How dare you!” (and whatever other accusations they come up with) should be squarely aimed at people born after 1985. It should be aimed at precisely those 15 to 20 year old brats, who are oh-so entitled. Must have the latest phone / tablet / games console. Can’t possibly walk anywhere. Must have bottled water. Food has to come in “hygienic” packaging. Can’t wear anything older than one year, because it’s so out of date.
The bunch who throw out everything.

Meanwhile, we are told Diesel=Bad, Electric=Good.
I call bullshit.
Because the electricity used to charge those EV’s has to be generated somewhere. And most countries simply do not produce enough green energy to lower the carbon footprint of those cars. Not only do they run on electricity mostly generated by fossil fuel plants, the production is also heavier in CO2 than a diesel.
And then there are the batteries. Supposedly a battery lasts for around 100k miles, or 8 years.
Then what?
Not only does the replacement battery cost almost as much as a new EV — fostering scrapping that EV in the process — but so far we have no way to reuse those dead batteries. Or dispose of them. There are people working on this, but they aren’t there yet.
Ergo, there will be a mountain of dead batteries stacked up somewhere, until we can find a way to reuse them.
Meanwhile, that EV will be scrapped in favor of a new one.
While my diesel will keep going for another 100-200k. No extra production costs. No extra CO2. And I only burn as much diesel as I need to get from A to B, those 2-3 times a week I use it.
And what the hell happened to “Save energy, use energy saving light bulbs” and all that stuff?
Energy Star started in 1992, to encourage people to use less electricity with Energy Star rated appliances.
What, electricity is suddenly being generated out of thin air, and there’s so much of it, we now need to plug the car in, as well?
My dad recently came for a visit. He told me a guy in his block wants to put a charging station for his car in the underground car park. At first he was agreeable, then thought “Hang on. How is this going to impact the electricity supply to the apartments?” and called the energy company. They told him if there are 3 (!!!) cars charging on the supply, it’ll be lights in the apartments, because the cars will suck up all the electric. They cannot supply enough current to sustain charging 3 cars AND the apartments.
When he said well, up the electric supply, he was told that wasn’t possible, because it would require redoing all the cabling with heavy duty stuff, because the current lines can’t support the amount that would be needed.
So then it was a firm “No.” The infrastructure is nowhere near where it would need to be for everyone to switch to electric vehicles.

I’ll say that again, louder, for the ones at the back:
THE CURRENT INFRASTRUCTURE CANNOT SUPPORT EVERYONE SWITCHING TO ELECTRIC CARS.
There. Got it? So, you Eco Warriors — shut the hell up.

Then my cousin — a firefighter — came to visit and heard about this proposal.
First words out of his mouth: “Oh my God, DON’T!!!”
Slightly puzzled, my dad asked why he’s so adamant about it. After all, it’s just a charging station, right? 
So then Wolfgang explained that if that car caught fire down there, it would burn so hot, it would melt the concrete and cause untold damage to the structures around it. What’s more, the fire department can’t get their truck in there, and putting that thing out requires extinguishing the flames so it can be picked up, taken to a container full of water, where they submerge it for 4 days to put it out. Because it will continue to burn. And since it burns so hot, it would likely set everything down there on fire alongside it.
Awesome. Great move.

I don’t know about other people, but I am conscious of what I use. Not just because of the cost.
I like to be clean as much as the next person — but I don’t shower every single day. That doesn’t mean I’m dirty, or I smell. When I grew up, you had a bath once a week. There were no showers in most places. We often used the bath water of the person before us, too. Or shared a tub with a sibling when we were really little. That water wasn’t dirty, it was just not pristine drinking water anymore and there were some soap suds. It still got us clean. That’s what soap is for.
I would love, love, a grey water system. It really irks me that the water I use to shower, wash dishes, wash clothes…is just going straight into the septic tank. (No, I’m not connected to the main sewer system here.)
If I had the money, I’d have that water go into a filtered tank, and use it to flush the toilet, water the garden, mop the floor, wash a horse, the car… whatever. Instead of flushing tons of perfectly fine drinking water down the toilet.
But those systems are horrendously expensive here, and getting permission is tricky as well. That annoys the crap out of me, quite frankly.
I have a toilet that is also a candidate for a replacement. Right now it often fills the tank… and just keeps running. So once I’ve flushed, I turn the water off to prevent the water running constantly. Very annoying but the seal seems to be gone and almost impossible to replace. The really annoying thing is that I’ve had the innards replaced last year, because it was doing exactly the same thing — and now it’s doing it again.
Simple solution, if a bit awkward — but I wonder how many of the wannabe eco-warriors would just leave the water on and running until it’s fixed.
Also, because I’m on a septic tank, I’m very much aware of what kinds of chemicals I can’t use. There’s no bacteria killing bleach going down my drain — because I need that bacteria in my septic tank. I sweep the floor (mostly with a broom, rather than a hoover) and I mop the floor. I did just get a steam cleaner, but that’s because some stuff you just can’t do with a mop, or without chemicals, otherwise.
However, while the steam mop uses electricity to run — it uses far less water than my regular mop.

I tried to get the plumber to rig a pipe with a valve, going into the toilet cistern when I had the tap in the bathroom done, but…nope. Wouldn’t do it.

Now, I like it warm as much as the next person.
I have a few electric radiators, but my main source of heat are my wood burners.
I have a house with 2 bedrooms, 1 living room, kitchen and bathroom.
Of those… I heat the living room in winter. If anyone is using the room above the kitchen, then I fire up the kitchen wood burner. But otherwise — the kitchen door stays closed. The bedroom door stays closed. I don’t need to heat rooms I hardly use, and the kitchen heats up just fine when I cook. There’s a cat flap in the door so they can get in to eat, there’s another in the bathroom door so they can get to the litter boxes. It keeps the living room nice and warm…and that’s all I need.
I don’t sleep well in a warm bedroom, and in winter I just fire up the mattress topper if it’s really cold, so I can slip into a nice warm bed. Then it’s off again. There’s a little paraffin heater up there too, if it gets really cold that comes on for an hour or so, and there’s another in the living room, which also has an electric radiator set to 19C to keep it comfortable overnight, if the cats are down here. (No fur, so they do need some heat.)
Mostly they are under the duvet with me though.
I don’t need to burn through 1000’s of liters of heating oil, or 1000’s of KW of electrics.
Besides, the cats love the wood burner, because it kicks out a lot of heat, and it’s nice and cozy. 🙂

Every piece of wood that has no use or is too damaged to use — is firewood.
I pick up branches in the woods for next year’s kindling. Nothing goes to waste.
My favorite packing material is shredded wood-wool. Paper is for starting the fire.
If there’s too much paper, it gets soaked and turned into bricks with a little machine, then dried in the summer.
But according to Greta — my generation has turned the planet to shit, stolen her childhood, and whatnot.
Yeah, I don’t like that girl. Always pissed off and yelling at “old” people.
Look closer to home, closer to your own age group, thank you.
Because I never got driven to school. I either walked, or took the bus.
We never had bottled water. We used a tap. I still do that today. I even reuse plastic bottles when I can. I very rarely buy bottled water, and if I do, it’s carbonated water to add some fizz into apple juice, or make fizzy lemonade. Yes, I said “Make”.
I don’t wash clothes just because there’s a little dirt on them. Who cares? They get washed when they really are dirty, smell, or I come in soaked and caked in mud. 
I shower when I feel iffy, or my head itches, or I’ve done a particularly dusty job. I have a dust allergy, so that last one is a must. But I usually try to do the dusty stuff on a day where I want to shower anyway.
Still doesn’t mean that I stink. It just means I’m not obsessed with showering or washing my hair every 5 seconds.
Okay, I get it. If you work in an office, or in an environment where you get sweaty, or have a lot of customer interaction etc, then it’s not as easy to forego a shower. 🙂 But if you’re not encountering anyone — what’s the point?
Last time I bought new clothes…um. Don’t remember. I think about 6 years ago. Possibly longer. Oh, wait. I do occasionally buy a pair of jogging pants. But I have plenty in my drawers and wardrobes, and I barely use a fraction of it. A lot of that stuff are T-Shirts I’ve inherited from Paul, jackets inherited from Paul, pullovers… you get the idea. When Paul passed away, I pretty much tripled my wardrobe. So I don’t need anything except the odd pair of joggings when I’ve absolutely wrecked a pair, some leggings maybe, some knickers every now and then — but I still have plenty new ones in reserve that haven’t been worn yet, so that’ll be a while. Because… I wear stuff until it falls apart. I have T-shirts that are over 30 years old…and I still wear them. They are out of shape, discolored, definitely not the latest fashion…and comfortable, soft, sometimes almost seethrough. 
I don’t care. I wear those under a nice pullover, and no one is any the wiser.
And most of the clothes I did have already…came from second hand shops. Meaning some person bought new clothes, and instead of wearing them until they were worn out…they bought new ones and got rid of them. Some still had the tags on them! But at least they didn’t throw them in the trash, like so many do these days.
Mine get used as rags when they are no longer wearable.

So please stop yelling at my generation. We are the ones who took bags to the market when we shopped, we are the ones who walked to school, we’re the ones who played outside, we’re the ones who drank from the tap or a water hose, we’re the ones who got told to keep it short (or to send a postcard) because a phone call is expensive, we’re the ones who didn’t have any electronics, except maybe a walkman or a portable radio. We certainly didn’t have mobile phones. We also didn’t have gluten intolerance, nor were we “allergic” to everything under the sun. We didn’t scrub every surface to within an inch of its life, either. (It only got worse with Covid19)
When I see how kids grow up now, I am not surprised the planet is heading down the drain.
When I see a baby trying to tap the page of a book or magazine, expecting it to go to the next page, because they are used to a tablet… it makes me sad. 
I still have all the letters Paul and I sent to each other. ALL of them. He kept his, and I kept mine. They are a memory, a prized possession of mine. If the house were on fire, one of the first things I’d grab would be the box with those letters. That’s how much they mean to me. Everything else can be replaced.
So unless you print out emails, texts and the like — what will you have, in 30+ years?

I’m nostalgic, certainly. And things weren’t all rainbows and butterflies when I grew up. People will say “It was a simpler life” and they are right, to a degree. But when I see a peeled banana, wrapped in plastic, on a plastic tray — I see exactly what is wrong with this world.

I still take my own bags to the shops. I still wear my clothes until they are only good for rags. I still fix stuff rather than throw it out. I still walk rather than drive a short distance. I still reuse or recycle packaging where I can.
I have one TV. One hi-fi. No games console, but a computer. I have a tablet, but the last time I turned it on was about a year ago. One phone, and that’s about 5 years old now. Its predecessor is in the car as a spare, because the screen broke.

So, Greta, sort yourself and your generation out, before you accuse me of flushing your life and the planet down the toilet. Because I haven’t changed many habits from when I grew up. I lay that entirely at the feet of the generations who came into being from the 1980-1990’s onward. You are the ones who “can’t live” without all your gadgets and bottled water. 
Quite frankly: How dare you!