I'll take that SUV!

It'll make a great starter home on that land I'm gonna turn into Ecotopian paradise someday! When I flee the Big Shitty and sell my earthly possessions--minus the books and tools 'n stuff! I'll pack it all in the hyooge vehicle and ride off into the sunset!

With food I've dug up and replanted from compost heaps, and the chickens my neighbor thought they wanted but gave up on when they got to be too much work--

and--

and--

A goat and some BEES!

I didn't read all of the letters, but selling your SUV to help save the planet doesn't do Jack Squat for the environment. Converting it to propane would, however. Or draining all of its fluids and pushing it off a barge beyond the continental shelf. But when he said he was trying to sell it, he lost me. The rest of his actions were just those of a doddering amateur do gooder who really doesn't get it.

Yeah, and cut out the farmed meat (a euphemism for CO2 machine), too.

I've had compact fluorescent bulbs since they cost $18 each. I drive a '95 four cylinder car, my hot water heater just warms it, unless we're doing the sheets in the washer. I have no air conditioner. I use energy star appliances. We have a gravel front "lawn". A garden in the back. I do waste a little energy once in a while by accident. Or on purpose when I honk at a hummer driver on the phone.

So manipulation is OK as long as you have misgivings about it?

And no, it's not vitriol: it's opinion. The guy's a jerk. Does he have the monopoly on opinion? Do you? Why are you so angry about people expressing their opinion?

Pot roast is indeed tasty. But if you are truly concerned about greenhouse gases, you simply don't eat meat, and certainly not beef. The guy's a poseur, fucking with his neighbor(s), and he deserves to get called out on it.

and I stayed with it as I learned some community organizing tips and wanted to see how the meeting planned would evolve ....the part about Whole Foods and the meat was funny and I can't understand how some readers didn't see the fun he poked at his wife and himself! Pot roast is not the most healthful meat to eat although delicious and it is indeed eaten well done. I hope they made sandwiches of it or at least fed it to their dog...

I wish we ourselves could switch back to cold water washing of clothes but my husband and I each contacted a scary staph infection on our faces and necks four years ago and now wash as much of the laundry in hot, hot water as possible...cotton "everything" helps.

We try to make up for that eco-unfriendly HOT water thing we do, by keeping our home cool to cold all winter. living in Central California and cotton flannel sheets help. We have been using the energy saving bulbs for five years now but my husband works nights and I leave on the front lights (two) until he turns them off about 3am .

We use less gasoline by combining trips and frankly, staying home more! Everyone is trying to do little steps..we are blessed with local produce much of the year...things are bought "in season" and frozen for later...friends are starting to can or "put up" food from local stands again...and down here, so far from British Columbia, folks are also having impossible times trying to "unload" their gas guzzling vehicles...

Why all of the snotty remarks to this writer who honestly shared his misgivings about "manipulating" his neighbors? Seems to me he used thoughtful, in both senses of the word, methods and was sincerely trying to improve his comminity!

That's a much more interesting topic! I complimented her floodlights, and eventually got a chance to twist them when they burned out, and then screwed them back in. And she loved it.

Ah, valuable lessons in how to mobilize one's neighbors to go green...

but still, we all notice that the author has quite a bit of disposable income to shell out for this cause.

I've got lots of those swirly bulbs. If I owned a car, I could drive to organic farms and nature preserves and pass out flyers or something.

Okay, so this will look even odder, seeing as I seem to be throwing it into the middle of a hatefest. Then again, nothing to mitigate hate like good food.

Just wanted to let the author know that jerusalem artichokes are really good roasted, just like a potato or carrot. Give them another try some time and just put them in with the rest of your vegetables around a roast. Or toss them in butter and olive oil with chunks of potato, carrot, and parsnip, add some salt and some thyme, and roast them that way, uncovered, for a vegetable side dish. I've done some jerusalem artichoke recipes that were just plain nasty (never try a puree!), but roasting always works.

The folks at my farmers' market say you don't even have to peel them, but I haven't tried them that way yet.

I liked the article, by the way. Don't know what's with the vitriol, and have neither the time nor inclination to read it.

Kinda like an episode of "I Love Lucy" where she burns the roast when the boss is coming over to dinner. In this case the handy neighbor -- the p.r. guy who started Vancouver's "climate change public-engagement program" -- served as deus-ex-machina to make it all turn out dandy in the end.

Sappy, dude.

Very funny story, got some good results, but the SUV of foods, beef, as the centerpiece for this dinner? Burned one, bought aother? Grass fed, range bred, organic, still using up more petrochemicals, etc. and polluting more than foods lower on the food chain.

Biggest laugh of all.

I'd forgotten about the benefits of rain barrels. I remember "trying" to do an organic garden and wanting to collect water in this fashion. I guess giving up for the present doing the garden made me forget about rain barrels. And, I think rain barrels are attractive even though in my case, they will be in the back of the house. Thank you for bringing this back into my thought.