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Thursday, 13 August 2009 11:57 |
Sustainability Book Club Reads Greasy Rider
Bread Riot’s own book club meets monthly to discuss books that relate in some way to the concept of “sustainability”, leading to conversations about economics, agriculture, environment, personal lifestyle and local issues.
In August, members of the book club met at Doug and Beth Kearney’s house, passed around chips, salsa, bread and hummus, fresh cherry tomatoes, and cracked open Greg Melville’s Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future. Melville is a Burlington, Vermont, journalist who, with friend Iggy, embarked on a trip across the country in an old diesel Mercedes converted to burn vegetable oil. The self-imposed challenge was to determine if they could make the trip fueled only by the used and discarded vegetable oil available in the alleys behind Mexican and Chinese restaurants across the country.
They did. But the effort was so difficult, with so much time agonizing over where they might find oil and its dubious quality, a reader would doubt whether veggie oil-fueled cars would ever be anything other than a quirky hobby for aging (and aspiring) hippies with lots of time on their hands, in spite of benefits to the environment in decreased pollution and petroleum use. And, frankly, no one in the book made a claim to the contrary.
However, as a construct for the author to hang an entertaining investigation into alternative energy, it worked. As Greg and Iggy crossed the country, they assigned themselves “errands” which would be investigated at trip’s end. In a chapter entitled, “The Windbag Beneath My Wings,” the author reports on his trip to Al Gore’s 11,000 square-foot home in Tennessee. It was night when Melville arrived at the home of the global warming guru and found that it was lit up throughout, even though there was no human activity to note. The house and property uses the energy of seventeen average American residences. A Gore spokesman noted that Mr. Gore buys carbon offsets, which the author describes as “an environmental ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for rich people.”
Book club members appreciated both Melville’s commitment to workable environmental solutions and his clear-eyed and non-doctrinaire approach to wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels. He gave credit to Wal*mart’s green efforts in reducing packaging and energy use in its stores and trucking fleets, but suggested that the “green stores” were, so far, largely a marketing gimmick.
Summing up his own learnings from his veggie-oiled travels, Melville says we need to accept that while various alternative energies make increasing economic sense, to make a real difference, individuals will need to change the way we do things, even accepting the occasional inconvenience. He says “self-sacrifice was once a hallmark of American virtue. Now those who practice it are ridiculed or even scorned.” What we need, he says, is a big vision for a new world, so that everyday Americans will again want to make personal changes in lifestyle for the common good.
The Sustainability Book Club meets first Mondays at 6:00 p.m. at the homes of members. September’s book is Doug Fine’s Farewell, My Subaru, a memoir of the author’s sometimes ill-fated effort to turn his New Mexico ranch into a green oasis.
If you want more information about the book club, e-mail Elaney Hasselman at :
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