Home Again, Oberlin

The title of this blog, you'll be relieved to know, once again, makes sense. I'm back in Oberlin, you see, and crashing at my friend L___'s place. He lives in SEED (Student Experiment in Ecological Design) or as it's better known Sustain-a-House. The idea is to experiment with low-cost ways to create more ecologically sustainable housing (read: low carbon footprint housing). It's a wonderful place, if somewhat cold, and L___ has been incredibly accommodating by allowing me to stay here.

I also want to say how wonderful I find this entire experiment. Finding cheap, low opportunity cost ways of saving energy is an important mission. One of my problems with the environmental movement has been its fundamentally privileged world-view. It's nice and good that rich, white people can save energy and have the time to dedicate their lives to working for environmentally sustainable ways of living, but not everyone can afford to pay for carbon offsets, buy a Prius, pay for clean energy, buy local, organic food, be a vegan, or any one of the numerous, drastic, and expensive changes advocated by environmental die-hards. So SEED House and projects like it are a necessary step to grow and rid the movement of its, frankly, shrill and preachy image.