offsetting, biyatch

I just paid the low, low rate of $29.95 to offset my trip to Wisconsin next week and my trip to Norway next month.



The money goes to fund future renewable energy projects.

Did you know that my two trips produce almost 6000 pounds of CO2?

Each gallon of gas burned by our little cars produces 22 pounds of CO2.

That means that when Dan and I went to Bolinas yesterday (before first going to Fairfield accidentally, whoops!) we produced about 150 pounds of CO2, mostly because we weren't paying attention and went an hour out of our way, then ran into traffic. Damn San Franciscans! Like cockroaches in the hippie hovels (us included).

Because of Dan's and my combined terrible lack of a sense of freeway direction (I rock in the woods), we've also offset the car's emissions through cooldriver.org.


The climate change shit is all over. The news is crawling with it, much like Bolinas is crawling with SF a-holes in Mercedes station wagons.

It begins to freak me out.

More and more often it is hard for me to look at an egret or a seagull and not see the mercury buildup in its muscles, thanks to the pollution we're pouring into the ocean and marshland. I will drive myself crazy with these thoughts.

New favorite ecosystem? Oceans, where they meet the beaches. Fragile and beautiful and so foreign thanks to my midwestern years. I love them. I love the way I feel woozy if I look at the sand eroding from my feet as the wave pulls away from the shore, ankle deep in water. I love the pull of the water, how it works its movement into your body. The surfers yesterday in sleek black wetsuits like human seals, I am so envious of them.

I just read a local's report of a great white appearing next to surfers in Bolinas last month. Perhaps not so envious. Okay, still envious.


Maybe this winter when Dan and I go to Costa Rica/Yucatan/Belize we can learn to surf. Yes.

To do: Stop seeing nature as full of illness, even if it is. Start loving it unconditionally.

yours in hippie solidarity,
elka