The One Where I Get All Aggro and Lecture Everyone

I watched this show last night on the Science channel called What If: The Oil Runs Out? I was dead tired and could easily have closed my eyes and fallen asleep but this program had my full attention.

It’s basically a combination of dramatization and documentary illustrating what changes we will experience in America as oil reserves begin to dwindle.

At our current rate of consumption, this could happen as early as 2012. That’s only four years from now. I should clarify that I wasn’t clear on whether this covered only middle eastern oil or ALLoil reserves. In any case, whenever it finally does ALL run out and it WILL, the implications are frightening.

People will begin to function in survival mode and it literally will become, in my estimation, each man for himself, so to speak.

Think about what the world will be like when we can’t move goods around the country via planes and trucks.

Think about how many people will lose their jobs because their company or vocation depends on petroleum in some way, shape or form.

Think about the food shortages as factories begin to shut down because of power rationing and because available food can no longer be distributed.

Think about medication shortages because those can no longer be distributed, either.

I could go on and on but it’s not necessary. The fact is, every aspect of our lives is going to change. Well, unless you’re Amish and have never depended on modern conveniences and even then, you would still have to contend with some degree of climate change.

I know some people will say this scenario is way over the top and that we will just drill for oil in places we currently do not (thanks to those wacky environmentalist types like myself) but hello? Someday THAT will run out, too. We need to accept this as reality.

President George Bush has. His home in Crawford, Texas is completely off the grid. That means his home is completely power and clean water independent from any utilities and of course, from oil. How much do you want to bet he has a basement loaded to the ceiling with food, medical supplies and other necessities?

So what I’m wondering is WHY aren’t we, as a nation, demanding change right now?

Why are we not demanding major tax credits to offset the costs of adopting alternative forms of energy in our homes and workplaces?

Why are we accepting the very weak environmental stances of all the current presidential candidates. I mean it’s great that at least some of them (*cough*Democrats*cough*) are considering these issues but the standards and goals they are supporting are so weak and will, without a doubt, be too little, too late.

I mean 40 mpg cars by 2020? Are you f*cking kidding me? We need 50 mpg within two years, IMO. And I am not so naive as to think there isn’t some industry influence going on there and perhaps some fear of upsetting the economy but come on! We don’t have time for politics here. We don’t have time for lobbyists to weaken these proposed standards even further. Honestly, how do those people even sleep at night?

And then there’s Mitt Romney, who proposes to not do a damned thing about carbon emissions until China and India do. I have a newsflash for you, asswipe — we’re already the only country in the world that has not signed the Kyoto Treaty. And furthermore, what kind of an idiot puts the fate of his country in the hands of China and India anyway? The shortsightedness of these people is maddening.

It’s time we got our heads out of our collective asses and started demanding the change we want from our leaders and working for change in our everyday lives. Even if it’s just baby steps of change each day, we can do it. And we have to — our future really does depend on it.

So what can we do?

Well, we can do practical things like carpool instead of driving alone. I know…carpooling is so quaint, so 1970’s, but if everyone did it, the impact would be huge.

We can also do things like refuse plastic bags at the store and bring our own when we shop. Those plastic bags NEVER degrade and tons of petroleum is used to manufacture them.

We can eat one less meat-based meal a week. Again, if everyone did this, the results would be staggering because meat production is extremely harsh on the environment and uses up massive amounts of water.

We can also do things like call our representatives and ask them to support pro-environmental legislation, pro-alternative energy legislation and anything else that results in less carbon, less oil usage and less plastic crap being manufactured.

We can teach our children that recycling is NOT optional. We can teach them about conserving resources and curbing wasteful or unnecessary consumption. We can set a good example by not littering, not buying disposable things and teaching them to discern between wants and needs.

We can work to elect representatives who support earth-friendly policies instead of representatives who live in a dream world and think we can keep going the way we are with no consequences.

This is just a short list of ideas. There are fabulous sites all over the internet that will tell you how to make small, painless changes that can actually make a difference if enough people work at it.

WE CAN DO THIS.

*high fives the internet*

/end lecture

•••

This month Green Mom Finds and the League of Maternal Justice will be giving away really cool stuff, including some super cool reusable bags in support of the BlogHers Act Canada Eco Moms Challenge. The challenge? Eliminate plastic bags, of course!

Meet Our New Green Baby

Until I decided to have children, I have to admit that environmental or “green” issues were a rather vague concept.

Sure, I was willing to support cleaner air and water. I mean, who wouldn’t? However, with the advent of my beloved internet that I adore so much that I wish I could kiss it, my eyes were soon opened to some really unsavory facts.

For example, I remember first reading that dairy cows were being implanted with devices that would constantly dose them with synthetic growth hormones (rBST, rBGH) made by chemical behemoth Monsanto.

As if that weren’t gross enough, I also read that scientists were linking that same hormone to female early onset puberty in S. America where the implants were totally unregulated and heavily used in both dairy cows and beef cows, too, to fatten them up faster.

Monsanto? Implants? Synthetic hormones? Seven year olds with boobs and pubic hair? WTF??? How is that even legal?

It was then that I started to realize that our government doesn’t necessarily act in the best interest of the people or the planet and corporate interests seem to have an awful lot of leeway when it comes to keeping products safe and industrial practices environmentally sound.

The bottom line? The government seems to care almost exclusively about the economy and corporations care about profits. I realized you have to approach these issues from that standpoint so I committed to buying green, eco-friendly and organic whenever possible.

A green mom was born! I bought my first half gallon of organic milk when I was newly pregnant and I’ve never looked back. I’m committed to raising my children with the healthiest food I can buy (within our budgetary constraints), removing as many toxins and chemicals from our household as we reasonably can and trying to make environmentally positive choices in everything we do.

All of this to tell you, my very smart and attractive readers, that myself and my fantabulous partner Cristina are today launching a new website called Green Mom Finds.

It’s both a resource site as well as a place to get new ideas every day for safer and more earth-friendly alternatives to the products that your family needs and uses.

We’ll be having some great green giveaways, as well as tracking other green contests around the web and scoring you some discounts to lots of eco and people friendly goodies.

We’ll also be highlighting other green moms around the web and serving up simple tips to help you and your family go green or get greener!

We’re really proud of the site and we hope you’ll enjoy it, too. This is the part where I try to flatter you into putting one of out pretty little buttons on your site because you are so cool and awesomely awesome.

And if that doesn’t work, I’m not averse to a little begging. My pride isn’t that important. So if you like what we’ve done and you want to lend us your support, pleeeeeeze put our button in your sidebar. We’ll be your best green friends :)

(If you’ve made it this far, thanks for being ever-so-patient and letting me prattle on about our new baby. You rock!)

It’s For Your Own Good?

In New Jersey, children who attend preschool or daycare will soon be required to have annual flu vaccinations (most of which DO contain mercury), despite protests from many parents who don’t think the government should be able to tell them what substances, toxic or otherwise, they must inject into their children.

Of course, I find this reprehensible because while it is in the public interest for all people to be vaccinated and I did choose to have my kids receive the normal childhood vaccines, having the government tell you can’t refuse something you feel could be irreversibly dangerous to your child is actually pretty scary.

I wonder how many people will object when they mandate that we must all be microchipped because it’s in the public interest?

But I digress, because what I really wanted to touch on besides the forced flu shots is water fluoridation.

If you want to talk about having something dangerous forced upon you without your consent, you need only turn to you kitchen faucet. In most counties, townships etc. in the US, water is fluoridated without the consent or permission of those who have no choice but to drink it.

So what’s wrong with fluoride? For one thing, it’s not medical grade fluoride. It’s actually a by-product of the phosphate industry that is considered toxic waste until they put it in your drinking water.

Additionally, fluoride is a cumulative poison. On average, only 50% of the fluoride we ingest each day is excreted through the kidneys. The remainder accumulates in our bones, pineal gland, and other tissues.

Is this bad?

Well, considering that fluoride is directly linked to thyroid disease, damage to the male reproductive system (and we wonder why male sperm counts are down 50% in the last half century?) and a whole host of other potentially dangerous health problems, I’d have to say yes. It’s bad.

Shockingly, the US Public Health Service first endorsed fluoridation in 1950, before one single trial had ever been completed.

Have you ever read your toothpaste tube? The directions state that you should NOT swallow toothpaste. Why? Because it’s NOT meant to be ingested — and yet we drink it in our water everyday.

The dental community acknowledges that fluoridated water does little or nothing to stop pit and fissure cavities, the most common kind of tooth decay and too much will actually cause dental fluorosis where the enamel of the tooth is eroded.

Both of my children’s baby teeth came in with enamel hypoplasia where the enamel was already damaged or missing. The dentist speculates that it’s actually dental fluorosis from drinking so much fluoridated water when they were in utero. Nice. Think my county water department will pay our dental bills?

Oh, and it’s totally in your breastmilk, moms. Your babies are being fluoridated whether you like it or not.

FLUORIDE WARNING FOR INFANTS

Does your drinking water contain added fluoride? If so, keep it away from infants under the age of one. This directive was issued recently by an unlikely source: the American Dental Association (ADA). Read the whole thing and see why fluoride is also now being considered a neurotoxin that’s dangerous to developing infant brains. It’s horrible.

I could go on and on and on about water fluoridation because the facts are really, REALLY jaw-dropping but in the interest of brevity, you can read about it at the Fluoride Action Network if you want more information.

Cross-posted at Moms Speak Up

Blog Clutter: Good, Bad or Doesn’t Matter?

I recently read a post over at Lorelle on Wordpress about blog clutter…you know, all that crap bling in our sidebars and any other stuff that isn’t inherently necessary to a blog’s existence.

Apparently, there’s a bit of a trend towards getting rid of all that stuff so that readers can focus on your content.

Content? Content? You mean people don’t care that I think free, unstructured outdoor play is good for kids? Or that I was the Parent Magazine podcast’s blog of the month? Or that Facebook Sucks? Or that Text link Ads can be rather lucrative? Or that we’re all invited to a fun blogger weekend getaway? Get outta here!

But seriously, folks, is the bloggy bling really deserving of the old heave ho? Personally, I have mixed feelings about it because yes, while it can be distracting and perhaps a little hard on the eyes, particularly when something is moving, twinkling or flashing, it can also serve the higher purpose of educating readers.

Yes, blog clutter can be educational in that 1) it helps us get a better sense of who the blogger is and what they’re all about and 2) it can help spread information about various causes, events and things you might actually WANT to know about.

On the other hand, however, having a ton of widgets and linky love things that send people off to other places probably isn’t so good for the blogger but if they don’t care, should we mind?

And then there is the never ending brouhaha over ads. Personally, I don’t mind them so much. Sometimes they’re even interesting but there remains a core of bloggers and readers who think content should be king and that ads have no business in the blogosphere. Bah! Tell that to the people who are known to earn a nice living from ads on their blog. I think it’s safe to say they aren’t going away anytime soon…

But alas, despite anything I’ve offered up in favor of ye olde blog clutter, I still find myself pondering the idea of having nice, soothingly tidy sidebars. In fact, I’m visualizing the sleek, milky white bars pared down to the barest of essentials and it makes me want to do it RIGHT NOW! But I’m awfully attached to my sidebar crap so meh. Maybe next month.

As a blog reader, is bloggy clutter perfectly acceptable, the worst thing since Carrot Top started wearing eyeliner or are you merely indifferent to it? What about on your own blog? Any plans to declutter?

In other news…I’m going on vacation for five days on Friday and I need a blogsitter or three. Anyone interested in writing a compelling, thought-provoking or humorous post (in other words something a tad more interesting than a post about blog clutter?) for me while I’m gone? Drop me an email — izzymom {at} g mail dawt calm.

No Kid, Huh?

Before I had kids, well, actually way before I was THINKING about having kids, I thought I didn’t want any. It wasn’t because I had a fully-mapped out “life plan” or big goals in which children would have been an impediment. Definitely not that. Burning ambition has never been my strong suit…

I just didn’t have that maternal yen back then. And it wasn’t that I hated children. I simply had no feelings about them one way or the other and seeing as I didn’t ever envision myself being married, it stands to reason that I never spent any time envisioning myself as somebody’s mother, either.

I felt I was destined for bigger things, though I had no idea what those things would be. Of course, looking back on that, I have to laugh. What on earth was I thinking? And smoking?

The biggest irony of all, however, is that I ended up exactly where I never thought I’d be and frankly, becoming a mother, even with all it’s drudgery and sacrifice, is still the best and biggest and most important thing I’ve ever done.

Some people will nod their heads in agreement. Others will scratch their heads because they don’t quite understand. And others still will gag in disgust because they hate breeders, particularly self-congratulatory ones like myself, and they hate children. Not dispassion for us or even dislike for us but hate. They hate me and they think my kids shouldn’t exist.

Now I can understand people not wanting to have children and I don’t think it makes you a bad person to not want to be a parent. I know people who have decided not to have kids and they’re nice, normal, well-adjusted people so far as I can tell and I have no issues whatsoever with their decisions.

I do, however, take issue with those who have a more…extreme point of view; people who feel nobody should have children.

Corinne Maier’s book No Kid: Forty Reasons For Not Having Children is exemplary of this kind of extreme thinking. Maier herself admits the book is “50% provocation and 50% a serious book…”

Maier wrote the book because she has moments in which she bitterly regrets having kids and also as a response to France’s “cult of motherhood”, fueled by generous state subsidies and incentives to have children, which were intended reverse a decline in its birth rate.

Says Maier. “In France, people go on too much about the glory of motherhood and you’re not allowed to talk about all the problems having kids causes…” The Glory? HELLO? Mommy/parent bloggers have already pulled back that particular curtain, thankyouverymuch.

I’m the first to admit that motherhood is hardly glorious. It’s a lot of work. Duh. We all know that. What I don’t dig are some of her ridiculous statements about a child-free France:

“Just imagine. There’d be fewer of us around so rents would be cheaper, it would be easier to get a job and there’d be fewer traffic jams.”

Just who does Maier expect to change her diapers when she’s a miserable ninety year old? I have a newsflash for you, lady… No new babies being born = a city full of old people with nobody to care for them.

Now, I’m sure her statements are somewhat tongue-in-cheek and primarily intended to provoke and rile up oversensitive mommy-types like myself and I can accept that. Ann Coulter does that crap all the time but SOME of the COMMENTS in reference to an article about Maier’s book are kind of sad and disturbing (and very poorly written).

Here are some of th comments, verbatim, with my own (biased) responses following in italics:

Corinne is fantastic! Having children is a form of environmental pollution. We need less people consuming unconsciously the blood and life of this planet. — Andya , Coulson, UK

It’s too bad your mother didn’t share your philosophy, Andya. But hey…since you think the world needs less people, perhaps you’d like to sacrifice yourself in the name of of your convictions?

•••

Overpopulation creates pollution (think about that , Mr A. Gore, having 4 (!) children). My wife and I are also childfree and loving every minute of it! Let’s abolish child benefit and the world will be a nicer and cleaner place. — john, ghent, Belgium

Dude, I know. I can’t believe they gave Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean he has FOUR children. OMG! But seriously, John, who has done MORE to stop Global Warming? You and your happily child-free spouse or Al Gore?

•••

I never wanted a child but because of a highly correctable mistake we ended up having one. The result for me was something that I never experienced before…total collapse and depression. Real depression. I became a stay-at-home dad, moving away from my home town of Toronto where I had a wonderful job and a marvelous group of friends, to Ottawa, a provincial, conservative and unfriendly town where I know no one. Furthermore, the child that I care for is loud, confrontational and has “special needs” as he has Asperger’s Syndrome, a flavour-of-the-month problem that supposedly denies the kid any social elan, which is certainly evident in this kid. Now I am poor, looking for low wage jobs and I am lonely and depressed. AND I HATE IT! Ms Maier’s book cannot correct the stupid error, but it it so refreshing to know that I am not alone. After reading the responses on this page, I really know that I am not alone. Thank you, Ms Maier. You are a true friend. — John, Ottawa, Canada

I’m very sorry to hear that you are suffering from depression but you know, there ARE treatments for that. Perhaps a visit to your doctor is in order, no? And by the way, Asperger’s is NOT a “flavour of the month problem.” Are you really that ignorant? He is your child, your flesh and blood. How can you be so cruel? In my not very humble opinion, you give creedence to the idea that some people shouldn’t procreate and it sounds like your son would actually be better off without you (and your negativity) in his life.

•••

I agree completely with Corinne. I have a 3 yrs old boy myself and seperated from his father. I’d give a lot of money to turn back the clock. It sounds cruel but it is the truth! But if you say that openly to anyvbody in your social circle, your a bad mother or even a bad person… — Caroline, Barcelona

Perhaps this will sound cruel as well, but why don’t you give your son up for adoption? You don’t want him but I can assure you somebody out there does and he would be much better off with them rather than having a mother who wishes he were never born.

•••

Less truly is more. haha! — molly, akron, ohio, us

Ahahaha, Molly! You’re sooo clever ;)

•••

Well, when we don’t multiply as a society, then our oh so pleasant society will cease to exist in 1-2 generations. And the other societies, you know, the less pleasant ones but with so many children, will claim the space with the remaining inhabitants. It’s that simple. — Esme, Prague, CZ

Finally, a voice of reason.

•••

Presumably the proudly childless will be expecting the offspring of the fertile to do all the work when they’re retired, man the hospitals, give them their medicine. Imagine if the work generation went on a tax strike. Why should their taxes go to pay for the welfare of those who didn’t want them to be born? — Guy, London, UK

Well said, Guy!

I’ve been reading this fascinating book called “The Nurture Assumption” and in it the author spends some time discussing how differently people parent today in the modern, urbanized world as compared to “traditional” societies (think villages and tribes etc). Even in just my lifetime, parenting has changed quite a bit.

For example, my parents never sought to entertain or stimulate me and didn’t even play with me all that much and that was NORMAL. And my parents certainly didn’t worship me or worry about boosting my self-esteem and college marketability every waking minute of the day. And that was NORMAL, too.

This is all to say that I know some parents (Not ME, of course. Heh) are kind of nuts and do some insane things that make them really easy to hate (Mandarin classes for toddlers anyone?) but wishing children away is not the solution.

Have you seen the movie “Children of Men?” It’s set in the future and human sperm counts are at zero. Nobody has been able to have babies for two decades and the youngest person on the planet is 21. While I totally get that it’s a work of fiction, it paints a very, very grim picture.

•••

For those of you who aren’t all anti-parents, anti-kids, I have some interesting news about a cool new mommyblogging anthology coming out next year. I’ll have a little something published in it, along with pieces by a TON of awesome bloggers that make me swoon when I think of the good company I’ll be keeping between those pages!

It’s called The Best Little Mommyblogging Anthology Ever and our fellow author and editor, Rita of Surrender, Dorothy, has worked tirelessly on this project for over a year. I am humbled by her abilities and mad skillz and just so thrilled to be included. Please pop by Rita’s place and check out the long list of contributors and maybe give her a ‘lil high five action because she truly deserves it!

•••

And finally, the caption contest winner will be announced in my next post! Stay tuned.

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