112: Beyond Fossil vs. Electric: Practical Stewardship in Everyday Life

Speaker: Hey everyone. Today I wanna lean into a more grounded way to talk about environment stuff, not as a pro versus cons climate change debate, but as a practical look at how we use natural resources, what we can do in our homes, on our land, in our routines, so that we leave things in better shape than we found them ideally.

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So I wanna walk you through how we try to live in the Kummer house as relatively or reasonably good stewards of this planet. It's not perfect, it's not extreme.

But I think it's consistent with reality. And along the way, I'll touch on why some of those top-down policies like the European Unions plan to ban new fossil fuel cars by 2035, feel misguided when the infrastructure in trade-offs aren't yet solved. So here is a list not necessarily ordered in any particular order on some of the things that we've been implementing and that we are constantly working on.

That have the goal to leave this place behind in a better place than we found it. And number one is growing real food chemical free. You know, we try to raise or to raise and grow as much of the food that we consume. That includes vegetables, fruits, animals without synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides.

I dunno, it's more work. It's not for everyone. Not everyone can afford to raise animals and, and plant a garden, et cetera. But it pays dividends. You know, it's healthier soil. It leads to healthier soil, cleaner food, less runoff, and less dependency on corporate supply chains. Number two and very closely related to this is fixing the soil instead of draining it.

You know, we lean heavily into regenerative practices from composting to using cover crops, rotational grazing, minimal or no tillage at all. And over time the soil gets richer, more aerobic, more life in it. And yes, it's sequesters carbon, and that's really. A big thing because almost everyone thinks that agriculture causes more and more greenhouse emissions and you know, it's bad for the climate, bad for the planet, bad for the animal, bad for everybody.

But that's not true. That might be true for some cases of conventional or many cases of conventional agriculture, but if you do it right, if you follow regenerative practices, you actually sequester carbon, you improve soil quality, you do the exact. Opposite of what everyone or most people think agriculture does to this planet, to animals, and to our society.

It's one of the best ways, maybe the only way to get out of this situation that we are in by doing agriculture, right? Number three, walking, biking, and living with proximity. You know, in the Kummer house, when destinations are close enough, we walk or we ride. You know, we don't treat the car as a default.

It saves fuel, it keeps us healthier as you get a free workout. And it forces us to think about where we place things, you know, like shops, gardens, co-ops, et cetera, relative to our home and, and where we are, where, where we lo locate ourselves. You know, obviously that in many cases depends on infrastructure that facilitates, you know, walking like side paths next to the road bike lanes, et cetera.

And most. Communities in this country, as I've seen, at least compared to Europe, don't have that infrastructure. But that's something we need to work on so we can walk and bike and not use the car and not have three cars at home, one for every person in the household. From an energy perspective, for us, it's not about choosing either or, it's about using a, a hybrid approach that makes the most sense.

You know, we don't pretend solar or any renewable is a magic wand. It it is absolutely not. So we use a mix of solar where it makes sense and fossil fuel where we need reliability. You know, the goal isn't erase all impact. It's to reduce it intelligently and resiliently. So when cloud storms or capacity limits happen, you know, fossil helps fill in, but our demand is lower because of insulation efficiency and a smaller footprint overall.

That's our approach. You know, I, I love solar, but I'm under no illusion that solar is not the solution for everything. Neither is wind or any other of the alternative energy sources. They all have trade-offs that are very often forgotten in the discussion. From a home perspective, one of the best things you can do is live in a smaller home.

Our current home is not very big. The one we are in the process of moving to is even smaller. It's half the size. It's 850 square feet for a family of four and a German Shepherd in all of the things that we do here. So it's relatively small. It's not a tiny home, but it's not much bigger either. But what it is, it is gonna be well insulated.

It's well sealed, and it's smart in design, so we need less energy to heat it. We are forced to spend more time outside. You know, that's also healthier for us. That reduces, again, overall our footprint on energy, et cetera. And it's also easier to maintain and to repair if something goes wrong, you know? And it also keeps us more intentional about what we bring in, because there's less.

Empty space that we could fill up with crap. You know, you've probably have noticed, you know, the bigger your garage, the bigger your shed, the more you fill it with crap. If you're limited, you have to really think about, am I gonna bring this home? Or maybe not. And you'll realize, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, that a lot of the things that you bring home are more wants than needs from a.

Material perspective. You know, we, whenever possible, we try to stay away from stuff that requires petrochemicals, you know, so we go for wool, for wood, for natural fibers, for stone whenever possible. And when we use metal glass or, you know, polys plastic, we try to make them durable, recyclable or reusable.

But overall, we've been on a quest. To reduce our plastic footprint as much as possible. And if, I mean, that's very hard, of course, because everything is made out of plastic, but you can make an impact. You can choose to have fewer of those items, fewer fossil derived plastics that ultimately impact our energy consumption on a greater scale.

And then we try to cooperate with nature instead of working against it. You know, when we plant, you know, in harmony with seasons, we accept weeds in buffer zones. You know, we use biodiversity rather than monocultures. Let composting, cyclists run, et cetera. All of that really helps to be in line with nature.

You know, we don't try to control everything. We work with predation, with microbes, with cycles, and it's less about dominating and more about collaborating. I think that's an important aspect. As humans, we have failed. To beat nature into submission. Yes, we might have won some battles, but we are losing the war if we try to do that.

You know, we have to work with nature. You know, if you look at our backyard, I think that's a perfect example. It used to be a, it's. Uh, it used to be monoculture in our lawn when we purchased the property, and now everything is growing, but the soil is richer. There is more carbon sequestered. It's better food for our animals.

That means we have to buy less meat because we produce it on our home, produce it on our homes, that, et cetera. It's all combined and you really have to try and work with the cycles of nature instead of out trying to outsmart them. We are not smart enough. Nature has figured it out over billions of years.

You know, humans are not. Smarter than nature. It never seen it, but perhaps the simplest but most powerful thing that you can do is to, or that we do as well, to continuously ask ourselves, do we really need this or that? So before buying, building, upgrading, you know, maybe pause for a little bit. And I know it's difficult and we are not perfect.

We, I, I am, I happen to be a very impulsive buyer. Kathy is much better with this. So I get it, but if you really think about it, do I need this or is it just something that I want right now? And you manage to delay it or omit it. Very often we figure out, well, I actually didn't need it, you know, and so by.

Getting more, buying more stuff, filling our home with stuff that we ultimately don't need. You know, those decisions compound and overall you have a positive impact on our footprint overall from an energy perspective, from a waste and recycling perspective, et cetera. And I wanna pause here, and it's something that's happening in Europe that very much reflects kind of the overall theme of this episode, and that is.

You know, well in, in particular in Europe, you know, that gets often framed as strict climate leadership, but there are a couple of things that just don't happen to make sense. And one particular law that I wanted to discuss is the ban of fossil cars by 2035. So in less than 10 years, if it goes according to the current legislation, you can no longer produce a fossil fuel, meaning a gasoline or diesel car, or sell it in the European Union.

And so that basically means you'd have to switch over to electric or some other alternative fuel option that doesn't really exist in a grander scale yet. And on paper, you know, that sounds ambitious and kind of makes sense, but in reality, you know, the charging infrastructure, the grid capacity, manufacturing scale batteries, supply chains and recycling systems aren't there yet to absorb such as sudden at the end of the day mass shift.

And what's even worse is that this mandate locks in. A technological path before the full lifecycle trade-offs are worked out. You know, battery mining, that's not environmentally friendly disposal. What happens with all of those Tesla cars? You know, once the battery dies or you know, a. Is, is, doesn't perform anymore as as, as it did when it was new.

You know, rare earth metals, grid, stress, equity issues. There are so many things that are often overlooked or ignored or just, you know, kind of factored in and said, oh, that's not that much of a big deal. But I think it is a, it is a big deal. I mean. Can you just imagine, you know, something like this over here?

You know, I mean, we've seen it in California just to, you know, divert from, from the European Union for a little bit, where, oh, use electric cars. Use electric cars. Analyst. Don't charge your electric car because the grid can't handle it. I mean, you know, electric is certainly not the answer. We have a Tesla, so I very much appreciate the technology in all of that.

But we have it. One of the reasons is because we produce much of our own energy with solar panels. We don't rely then on the grid to charge the car where that energy from the grid here in Georgia likely is coming from plant bowing from a coal fired power plant. Is that any better than, than you know? I mean, you, you see the problem.

It's not really as easy as it sounds. And to make that European, going back to the European law work, you know, you need an enormous overhaul. You know, grid upgrades, huge storage, battery recycling at scale, localized charging everywhere. Raw materials, serenity, you know, and until those are in place, you know, mandates like the 2035 mandate, you know, tend to push problems around instead of really solving them.

And the point here is that, you know, first of all, waiting on policy to come up with those mandates. I don't like period, but it's also not something that really causes immediate change, you know, in the sense of. How much we take care of our planet because I, I don't, you know, I'm not gonna get into discussion whether or not climate change is real or if it's predominantly human influenced or not.

There are a lot of things that I believe we don't know yet, but one thing is for certain humans are incredibly wasteful and we tend to waste energy and a lot of other things that we could potentially avoid. And we also, poor, generally speaking, poor stewards of our planet. If you'll just look at conventional agriculture and how things are done, how wasteful we are.

There is a lot of room for improvement, but I think that those improvements have to happen on the individual level, grassroots kind of style. And so that's why I look at my, you know, what do I have under control? I'm not gonna wait for some policy owner to tell me what I can and cannot do. You know, I do what, what I think is best for me, for the planet, for the environment, so I can leave it in a, in a better spot than I found it.

And for us, that means, you know, fewer frivolous purchases making. Practical incremental changes in order to improve soil quality, to improve insulation energy use, moving into a smaller home, use the energy sources that are available and use them smartly wherever they make the most sense. For us, that's a combination of solar and likely grid energy.

In fact, on our new home, we are trying to get as much off grid as possible. Necessarily because we think the grid is evil, but we wanna be more resilient. We don't wanna have to rely on it. If it's there, great, we can use it. But if we can produce our own energy, the better it is. Producing less waste, you know, walking and riding the bike instead of using the car to go to a grocery store five minutes away.

That's just a huge waste of time. And especially then, if that means, oh, if I want to go to the grocery store, my wife wants to, you know, she takes the car, but I need to go somewhere else, I'll take another car. And then our daughter, as she gets older, you know, she has her own car because she wants to go then somewhere else, that's just a freaking waste of, of resources, you know, we gotta be able to do.

More with less, and that starts at home. And so, you know, that's the picture in my mind. And it's not a crusade or a condemnation of fossil fuels, but a realistic. Stewardship path At the end of the day, you know, the Kummer house is still a work in progress and will likely be forever. There is no perfect, but there is making small improvements over time and to be conscious, what are we doing and how does it impact the environment we live in?

Is it having a positive impact or a negative impact if we negatively impact it, because we would always impact it. There is no such thing as zero impact. Humans have an impact. You know, we are here and by building a house by. Building a road by building a road to see the Grand Canyon. All of that impacts the environment.

There is no way around it. And that's okay. We are here because we, you know, we can't do this because we have been put on this planet for whatever reason you believe, but we are here and we get to use the resources, but we have to use them smartly and certainly not wasteful. And so that's my message to you.

You know, don't wait on policy. Don't get wrapped up into the, oh, this, you know, electric cars are the future or fossil fuel is, is. Bad or fossil fuel is the best thing in sliced bread and we don't need any alternative energies. I think both are BS arguments. We really need to look at what we are doing and what we can do better.

And do that. You know, choose natural materials, walk instead of drive. Resist a needless purchase. You know, vote with your habits at the end of the day because that will then hopefully go from a take a bottom up approach and also influence policy hopefully in a good way. Whether we're gonna wrap it up, let me know what you think.

Is that reasonable? Am I full of or anything in between? Let me know. Leave a comment if you're watching or listening to this on a platform that supports, come and shoot me an email. I'd like to hear from you. Until next time.