Week Three Check-in

So, not too much has changed in my project since last week, except that I admittedly take fewer showers now. This is partially because of my "heightened awareness" of water use, and partially because standing in a bucket can be kind of awkward while showering. But, it's totally working; my roommates are on board with it, and seeing as my (male) housemate takes the longest showers of anyone in the house (and daily), this is a good thing; we're saving about 3 gallons each time he showers, enough for one toilet flush. I'm still taking army showers, which I feel pretty good about (I think I've cut out about 4 minutes of shower time for each time I shower; the last time I showered, I only had the water actually running for about 5 minutes).

It just feels like such an easy thing to do, I wonder why EVERYONE doesn't do it, or why we haven't zoned properties so that it's mandatory to actual grey water systems installed in houses. But then I think again about Engel's paper, and remember that not everyone is vegetarian (I'm certainly not), and remember that even the smallest of hardships/sacrifices are very challenging to overcome in collective action scenarios. I'm certainly guilty of it (I was vegetarian for 11 years...now I'm not), but now that I also see how simple action can be, I may test the waters (ha) with a few more sustainability measures. My inner pessimist then goes on to argue that my individual effort to save water (or even the effort by my two housemates and me) will have no actual impact whatsoever on supplies of the Colorado River. However, I do know that my mentality has changed, and that is such an important first step for realistic, practical me that I surprise even myself.

I generally still think that the best actions taken to urge conservation will be economic (dis)incentives, like a tiered water rate structure or rewards for decreased water usage. The point I made in my first paper, in which I addressed the topic of vegetarianism by analyzing Singer, Regan, and Engels' arguments, was that unless we are presented in an immediate way with suffering (and its connection to our life is proven to us in front of our very eyes), even reasoning as persuasive as Engel's will be unable to sway us lazy people of degenerating morals (hey, American populace, I'm talking to you--and yes, I acknowledge my role as part of the American populace). And that even then, some people who were face to face with a factory farm would still determinedly consume meat. But! I realized that my decision to attempt to conserve water, and knowing from the first time this project was explained to us that I wanted to do something that would in some way help the Colorado River, is actually proof that maybe I'm just a little bit wrong in my pessimistic outlook. I studied the River all summer, and after knowing nothing about it I became very fond of it (perhaps a personification) and very desirous of making a better future for it. This displayed a little bit of optimism that I originally wouldn't have believed possible.

So, after that jumbled ramble of reflective reasoning, my point is that I'm not as pessimistic towards activism as I like to think I am. I am a total environmentalist at heart, it's just my practical rationality (thanks, Kant) that gets in the way. But it feels good to let that optimistic environmentalist shine through every once and awhile, especially when it's to do something as important as "save the Colorado River." Now, the only problem is how to get the other 30 million users of Colorado River water to do the same...I see why this blog project was logically followed by the collective action project for class.

Just as a reminder of everything that is dependent on water from the Colorado River, here's some stops from our field trip down the length of the River this summer, from North to South:

 The Black Canyon of the Gunnison, with flows protected by (hard won) instream flow rights;

Glen Canyon Dam, which creates Lake Powell behind it (and which Edward Abbey speaks extensively of blowing up in his book "Monkey Wrench Gang");

 Dates growing in the literal desert/agricultural paradise (what?) of Imperial Valley, CA; and

The cracked dry Mexican Delta, where the Colorado River hasn't reached the Gulf of Mexico since 1998.

So, the moral of that story is: shower in a bucket! You and everyone else could actually make a difference.