It is still very much winter in Chicago. Sure, the calendar says March 1, but the piles of snow on the ground look more like mid-January. Everything is brown and crusty. A little bit of warmth is creeping back into the days, it is no longer pitch black before dinner. But there is also snow in the forecast this week. So there you have it. Still winter.

As I type I am bundled in a quilt with a sweatshirt and thick socks. I am cold. I’ve been icy for the better part of three months. Those of you who live in cooler climates know what I mean. It’s like your very bones get cold in December and just sort of stay that way until April.

In my last post I alluded to a conversation that I keep having and overhearing. I’d love to share a few more thoughts on it here. In most places it goes something like this “I’m really cold, this has been a crazy cold winter, so much for global warming eh?” This is usually followed with a smirk that sort of asks “what do you have to say for yourself now greenie?”

And of course, the brouhaha concerning fabricated data from British scientists at the University of East Anglia did not help the conversation. Whether botched data and graphs or feuding climate colleagues, many have dubbed this discovery of misinformation one of the greatest scientific scandals of the decade.

So whenever I run my mouth off these days about what we should care about in this world, those who generally disagree instantly bring up either the chilly temperatures of their midwestern winter or the climate scandal from the UK. And they press in and ask, “so what do you do if climate change is not real?”

To which I laugh and ask “is this really the issue?”  As if to say that if climate change is not real then somehow we are all just off the hook, we can do whatever we want? It’s like people who ask how I would live my life if there was not God. Would I suddenly decide to cheat on my husband and take up recreational drugs? Because somehow the moral compass has vanished?

Whether or not climate change is real is not the true issue when it comes to this conversation. The real question is why I insist on living my life in the sort of obnoxious manner that I often do, acting like tomorrow is a  non-issue. I can easily err on the side of a consumer-minded glutton and I can consume like nobody’s business, even on the hottest of days. I need to have this conversation so I can be better.

Let’s say hypothetically that climate change is false. Does that somehow change the fact that most of the garbage dumps are in impoverished neighborhoods? That in Chicago, the only two coal fired power plants in the city itself are both in minority neighborhoods? That my electronic waste still ends up in the hands of Ghana’s children or India’s poor?

The real issue is how my life impacts the poor and those who cannot help the fact that my trash is seeping into their groundwater. You do not have to believe in climate change to believe that this is not the way to live. Our moral compass should not rest in the hands of a scientific outcome. For those of us who are people of faith, the conversation is about more than just a few degrees. Show me a place in the Scriptures where it says to be purposefully wasteful, where we are told to take what we can get and then dump it and run when we are finished.

No, the real issue is not how cold my feet are in January or what climate scientists did or did not do in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. The real issue is asking myself if I, as a citizen of this planet, am living responsibly. Am I doing everything I can to make life better for others, for my own family, for the future? This is the real question isn’t it? The one that impacts humanity rather than sparks a fierce debate.

Let’s dig into the real issue, the one that is hard to face since (at least in my case) it convicts me and calls my whole life into question. Do I live wisely and well? This is what many of us running around in sustainable circles are asking. Not if the science is accurate (which is important), but is the trajectory of my very life accurate?

I visited one of the most fabulous friends today for an afternoon of playing with our children, six between the two of us. It was a visit complete with dangling costume jewelry and Darth Vader capes. An excellent afternoon of adventure if you ask me.

My friend lives about 30 minutes from our house so it was a little road trip with tollway driving in Chicago to get there. Those of you who live in big cities can relate. You sail along at a safe but respectable above the speed limit pace. Fast enough to feel like you are making good time but slow enough to not be nabbed by your nearest highway patrol person. As you cruise along you wince every time you see red brake lights ahead. You wonder, “is this a merely a slow poke changing lanes or am I about to hit traffic that will rob me of the next two years of my life?”

Thirty minutes and sans traffic jams we pulled off at my friend’s exit. Just a few blocks from her house we passed a new strip mall called Brookside Marketplace. A spacious parking lot filled with a few box stores, drive-thrus and chain restaurants. Nothing notable. What attracted my eye was the sign. “Brookside Marketplace.” This sign came complete with a metal sculpture of three children on their tip-toes, arms out to the sides, balancing on a log. It was designed to look as though three children were gingerly crossing a brook to find adventure on the other side.

It was a gorgeous piece of art actually.

Sitting at a stoplight I stared at it wondering where the inspiration came from. As the light changed and my engine moved us forward I saw a small brook that hugged the backside of the mall. A deep groove in the ground with ridges of ice and snow mixed with brown grass ran parallel to the backside of a big box store. I mumbled to myself, “this must be the brook.”

With my kids in the car I wondered if they would ever dabble in creeks and brooks the way the children in that sculpture did. You see, we live in the suburbs of the third largest city in the nation. With over 8 million people in the Chicago metropolitan area, we can find a strip mall in a blink. A brook with a log to teeter across? Not so much.

The irony slapped me in the face. To sell me on the fact that I should shop at this mall the designers used a whimsical little statue to lure me in. Never mind the fact that the brook itself was shoved to the back, out of sight, and fenced in to keep out any intruders (like playful children).

And it is easy to act all superior here, like I am above the Brookside Marketplace, until I realize that even in my ever-greening life, I still shop at a few of those stores. They sell cheap toothpaste and diapers and I can get a birthday gift for someone in less than ten minutes. My own desires for convenience, combined with millions of others, make the marketplace more desirable than the brook.

So I was reminded again today of how very important it is to shop locally whenever and however possible. If I shop local, I can walk to the store, I can support a local business owner, and the building that houses that store (at least in my town) is usually 100 or so years old. No strip mall, granted, no brook either, and no one making me feel like I can hop a stream on my way to a fast food joint.

So I ask myself again, as I do all the time, can I really see the valley from the Valley View Center? Can I really hop a creek at the Creek Side Plaza? Is there even a mountain in sight at the Mountain Vista Mart? Probably not. Shop local when you can and if possible, don’t shop at all. Instead, take a day to hop a few creeks, take in the views, and spend the day outside in the real places.

I have had two images thrashing about in my mind this past week. As a woman, daughter, and a mother, one of these images will likely stalk my memory forever. It is the picture of a young child in Haiti cuddling up to the dead body of her mother.

Her mother’s body is one of thousands like it lying in an open field. The life crushed out of it by falling debris and piles of rubble. The child is asleep alongside her parent, the one responsible for caring and calming her. Lost, confused, and snuggling tightly to the one place she knows to go for solace. The body of her mom.

Haiti, as we are well aware, has captured the hopes, prayers, and philanthropic efforts of the world. I’ve found myself crying during BBC reports and an hour later shutting off all the news and shooing my children away from the television. I explain that the images they might see are too graphic for a child their agee to understand. Ironic really because the tragedy involves the lives of children their ages.

The other image is closer to home. Of looming mudslides in Southern California. As unseasonably strong rain beats the landscape scarred last year by fire, mudslides threaten homes and lives. Turns out the vegetation that earlier wildfires gobbled up in smoke is necessary to keep the earth connected to itself. Without foliage to keep it all in place, without root systems, fallen logs and greenery to keep the mud in place, it will slide and take out homes and people in its murky wake.

I imagine my daughter’s frilly pink bedroom sliding forever into a muddy hillside.

Haiti and California have more than just the fear of earthquakes in common. The threat of disaster from eroding landscapes currently stalks them both. Aftershocks in Haiti are a way of life for a while, but rescue workers have shared another disaster that threatens their efforts, mudslides.

Haiti is one of the most environmentally impoverished countries on the planet. E&E reporter Nathanial Gronewold reports, shockingly, that only 2% of Haiti’s forests remain. 98% have been destroyed to meet energy and development needs. The result is a nation of naked hillsides where Matthew Marek of the American Red Cross says that “Haiti has experienced natural disaster-related fatalities regularly.”

And unlike California, Port Au Prince and other areas of Haiti lack virtually any infrastructure to aid in relief efforts. So the fear of mudslides and other disasters as people seek to pull one another from the disaster of an earthquake is frightening. Mark Ashton from the Yale School of Forestry reports that these slides can slow down relief efforts when they occur.

It is also a reminder of what an intricate world we live in. Who knew that as hillsides were deforested that it would eventually complicate some of the relief efforts from an earthquake unparalleled in the lifetime of our Haitian brothers and sisters. It is also a reminder that responsible care for the earth is about more than reusable bags and recycling. It is about preserving the very land, the earth itself, that was designed to protect and help all people.

Without roots and trees, whether destroyed by wildfires or by human hands, we cannot hope to rebuild a thing. Whether the threat of losing million dollar homes in the San Gabriel mountains, or the threat of losing more lives and rescue workers in Haiti, we need to care for the land so that the land can take care of us. It is a partnership that cannot be upset. The balance must be maintained for today, and to hold us safe for the future. In Haiti, as we scramble to save, to hope, to pray, to love, to help, let us do so hoping to partner in the rebuilding both the lives of the Haitian people and the land that sustains them,

I’m blogging from Colorado today. With John Denver’s sunshine literally on my shoulder and a few cloudless days of skiingbehind me. I would take a moment to lament the fact that my legs ache, my back hurts, and my lips are chapped, but those of you who ski will not have sympathy for me. Three days of sunshine in the mountains with good friends are worth the muscle aches.

Spending time in Colorado is always a boon to my soul. Majestic landscapes can do this to us, whether the shoreline of Maine or the grandeur of Lake Tahoe.

Pulled out of my midwestern slumber and chair lifted up to 11,000+ feet made my heart sail. One afternoon I took some solo time and made my way across the 5000 skiable acres of Vail. Heading to a place they call the “Blue Sky Basin” I took my time hopping on and off lifts to plop myself atop a snow covered peak (ironically, the site of a formerly famous act of eco-terrorism).

As I slid off the lift I was reminded anew of the vast wilderness space that is so accessible to many of us today. I shuffled my way over to the edge of the summit and took in the views. A majestic panorama, miles of open space. Jagged peaks, ridges that jut up into the sky, avalanche gulches where only thoughtless trees dare to grow. All this with perfect blue skies as a canopy.

I leaned on my ski poles and took a deep breath. It was quiet up there too. Sure, there were other skiers sitting at picnic tables, adjusting gear, crunching on snacks. But the overarching silence of the place was awesome. The backdrop was not the hum of a freeway or the clanging of construction equipment, but a sort of quiet that almost presses down on you. You cannot help but hear it, even with closer, smaller sounds nearby.

Anyway, it was pure bliss. And as I skied away I felt a little boost to my spirit.

As I made my way down the mountain and back to rendezvous with my friend, the moment had passed. We grabbed some coffee and within a few moments had tossed our gear into her truck and began the journey back to Denver with the other thousands of Saturday skiers bound for home on I-70. Which, can probably boast the country’s highest, weekly traffic jam.

Tourists, natives, locals, vacationers etc., all plodding along through Summit County and beyond. All who crept up to the mountains to sneak a view of the landscape or to hear the silence. All who took a gasp of clean air and grabbed a glimpse of blue skies, only to find themselves tailgating an 18-wheeler a few hours later.

As we snaked along I-70 I noticed again the landscape that is covered in increasingly brown and dead trees. Millions upon millions of dead lodge pole pine trees cover the hillsides of Summit County and other areas throughout the state. A voracious pest called the Mountain Pine Beetle is eating its way through the Rocky Mountains. From Montana to Wyoming, from Colorado all the way up through British Columbia, this pesky little bug is killing the forests.

After millions of dollars in research and seemingly endless hours of time, the USFS has largely determined that there is not much they can do to prevent the spread of the outbreak. And while it is a naturally occurring event that should simply clean out the forests and make room for new trees, this outbreak is particularly nasty for many reasons.

First, the average winter temperatures out West have increased and where the beetle once would eventually die with a long enough cold snap, a warm up of just two degrees or so has helped the beetle carry on. Second, our decisions to manage forest fires (often for very good reasons) has left us with overgrown forests that should have burned naturally long ago. This means that there are too many trees of the same age and they are so dense that the spread of the beetle is easy.

I could go on for days about the fight against this pest, that is expected to take out all of Colorado’s lodge pole pines in the next 5 years. But, what I realized as I headed down I-70 was that I was caught in between two worlds and I could not find a way out of either one.

You see, if indeed climate change is to blame for the beetle, then my chugging along, spewing CO2 from the car after a day of skiing is partly to blame. My desire to spend time in nature is harming it as well. But on the flip side, I do believe that we are designed to enjoy and marvel in open spaces and wild places. Not submit them to our insatiable appetite or destroy them, but to hike them or enjoy their silence is not a bad thing.

You see the dilemma then? Killing the very forest I went to enjoy definitely defeats the purpose. Is it naive and idyllic to want blue skies on a day of skiing and all the trees to be intact on the way home? Probably. But what is the alternative? Not to go at all? Some extremists would say yes here. I respect that. But will also confess I am selfish enough to want to play. So what do we do? Any thoughts?

As a child, whenever a teacher or parent would tell a group of us kids to “stop standing around and do something,” I would bristle. An outsider, who had no clue that our little conversation, game, or plot to take over the play ground was of supreme importance in our world, would irk me. Someone from the adult world would bark a few orders and expect us to give up on our recess dreams and clean up or head back into the building. Do something!

I always wanted to shout back that indeed I was doing something, I was planning, plotting.

As an adult I am acutely aware of how prevalent the concept of standing around and doing nothing really is. I recently read a book by Peter Rollins called The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. In the introduction Rollins talks about the penchant that many of us have for really, standing around and doing nothing. Whether it is a subculture of folks who consider themselves politically savvy or up on the latest needs in the developing world. Perhaps a group of people aware of racial tension who have been educated on how to break these barriers. It may be a congregation or community of organizers who know everything about charter schools or NGO’s, Immigration Reform, Climate Change or the latest details of Cap ‘n’ Trade policies. Perhaps just a small group of folks all hip on the needs in their community or a team of people who have just been to a convention.

Whatever the scenario, picture a cocktail party sort of atmosphere where everyone is up on all the latest needs in the world. They are so informed that they may even dare to mock those less informed. Yet they are doing nothing but talking about it all. Rollins says calls them “self-aware purveyors of irony” who stand around mocking the very behavior they are engaging in, and when any of us find ourselves here, we are (of course) ridiculous.

And as I read Rollins’ words I dared to let a smug sort of laugh slip out. I thought to myself, “how foolish of people, to think that life is just about standing around talking about the issues and then missing the chance to act on them.” All this while I was not taking into consideration all my own inaction. Now of course, this is not to say that reading up and talking about issues is a waste of time, but lately I am losing my patience with how informed people can feel (myself included) and yet choose to pass up the chance to jump in and do something.

Like last week when I dropped my children off at a two hour camp in town. A camp designed to get them outside, running around. A camp where arts and crafts of the nature variety were offered in an attempt to get our kids in touch with the planet. A camp where chatty, uber-informed moms stood outside their vans chatting with one another about all the great, enriching, informed things they were doing for their children. I stood watching them as I signed the clipboard to release them for the morning.

Children were lined up along the curb just a few feet from a line of cars that were all running. Everyone was idling their cars, air conditioners blasting away in each automobile. While the parents patted kids on the head and chatted with one another, the kids stood in line sucking down the exhaust fumes from their parent’s cars. The same fumes that were going into their lungs and into the atmosphere to add to our enormous carbon output. 

It seemed like such a benign little thing, idling the car for a few moments. Nothing big. But at that moment it was, for me, a perfect picture of our completely fragmented lives. And I will confess that while I do my best not to idle the car, and was not in the line of cars that day, I have my days when I am in some sort of other line in another place or situation where my dichotomies come screaming through. But this day I signed in my boys and then kept them at my side until the vans pulled away. Vans filled with parents who dropped their kids off for a day in the sun, a day at camp, a day of nature and sports. They felt good as they pulled away. They talked about how they were doing their duty as parents, getting them all involved in sports and with other kids. Having them do leaf rubbings or something else to learn about the earth. 

All the while standing around and doing nothing. Idling away. Idling itself, while a significant issue, is not the problem (although, eco tip for the day, if you are going to sit still for more than 30 seconds, TURN IT OFF, this means at the ATM too). But it all points to a bigger picture. For example, we send our kids to school, they learn about the rain forests and the beauty of the Amazon and the diversity of life there. They learn that they need to preserve it. Parents want them to learn this stuff. Then the same kids walk down the hall to lunch and, on average, over the course of a year, will throw 67 pounds of waste in the trash each year. The average yearly lunch room waste per child is 67 pounds. This is more than my school-age son currently weighs. 

Standing around doing nothing. Putting actions with words. 

Idle. If we are not careful, we are idling most of the time.