Plant-Rich Diet

Like clothing, diet is an area where passionate climate activists often disagree! Both armed with scientific data, one person may argue that we must all become vegan to survive, while another claims that regenerative farming of animals is our best hope for carbon sequestration.

So I'll start with what we can agree on: eating a diet rich in organically grown vegetables and whole fruits is healthier for our bodies AND the planet. We are growing our own vegetables and buying vegetables from local organic farmers. We could certainly eat a larger volume of vegetables than we currently do! We are adding more greens into our diet, which we both enjoy and are easy to grow here.

We generally eat a vegetarian breakfast. One of us digests oatmeal well, and makes homemade oatmeal for breakfast, along with dried fruit and nuts. The other does better with a fruit, nut, seed, and raw egg-based smoothie. Snacks of fruit, nuts, and carrots also work well for us.

Making our other meals vegetarian is trickier because of our food allergies. We are intolerant of most legumes; we can't eat soy or tofu at all, and chickpeas, pinto beans, navy beans, lentils, peanuts, etc, are also problematic. We are both allergic to wheat, and one of us can't eat much dairy and dislikes eggs, while the other has trouble digesting cruciferous vegetables, garlic, and sweet potatoes. We have discovered that taking digestive enzymes along with the problematic foods helps, except for dairy and gluten. Still, we are much better off largely avoiding the foods we don't tolerate.

Since we are allergic to so many vegetarian protein sources, we are moving toward a Mediterranean diet as a healthy low-climate impact alternative to being vegetarian. The data on the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet is robust, and there are a wealth of tasty recipes available. It also has been shown to be nearly as effective as a vegan diet in reducing climate impact.

To feel less nostalgic for the foods we can't eat, we've found that it helps to list the foods we CAN eat, and to source them fresh, organic, and locally, to maximize our enjoyment of them:

Tree nuts: walnuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts

Root vegetables: carrots, potatoes, onions, and beets

Greens: chard, kale, arugula, and leaf lettuces

Nightshades: tomatoes, eggplant, and chili peppers

Grains: quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, corn, oatmeal, and oat milk

Squash of all kinds

Herbs, spices, curry, olives, mustard, balsamic vinegar

Fruit, especially berries and citrus

Rhubarb

Asparagus

Black beans, green beans, and snap peas (in small quantities with enzymes for both of us)

Eggs, cruciferous vegetables, garlic, and sweet potatoes (in small quantities with enzymes for one of us)

Mushrooms: oyster, lion's mane, etc.

Small amounts of sheep's milk feta and yogurt

Small amounts of locally sourced, ethically produced chicken and pork

Small amounts of wild-caught ocean fish

The Mediterranean diet includes 3 servings of fish per week and 1-2 of poultry. Since one of us doesn't like fish, our plan is to eat mostly plant-based dinners, with small amounts of chicken and pork, and for the one who does like fish to add some sushi or canned tuna at lunchtime, while the other supplements with fish oil pills.

Sustainable Clothing

Clothing, like diet, is an area fraught with emotional conflicts among environmentalists. I've worn a merino shirt and leather boots on a hike with a vegan clad all in fibers derived from fossil fuels.

So in my usual way, I'm looking for multiple good approaches here, and selecting several that work in our particular situation, rather than trying for a best recommendation for everyone:

• First, a no-brainer: we buy durable clothing that fits our style, our climate, and our bodies, but doesn't follow fast fashion trends, so that we can wear it for many years. For us, durable self-expression comes in the form of sweaters, jeans, flannel shirts, and boots.

• Second, we have very limited clothing for situations we aren't in often (such as working in person, and vacationing in other climates).

• To maximize the lifetime of our clothing, we wash our clothes in cold water with gentle detergents, and do not use the dryer. We've also learned that we need to avoid elastane because it quickly degrades in the intense UV at our altitude. Any stretchy items like underwear need to dry indoors on a hanger. And we are learning to darn holes in wool sweaters to increase their lifetime.

• We aren't able to buy or accept gifts of used clothing, because it is virtually impossible to remove the artificial fragrance that permeates thrifted items, and Ota is so sensitive to petrochemicals that she can't live in the same space with items that are emitting even small amounts of laundry fragrance. For those without this disability, recycling clothing is a great way to reduce impact. We can only participate in clothing recycling by donating items, and we do this regularly when an item no longer fits.

• When clothing becomes torn or stained and isn't in good enough condition to donate, we wear it for gardening or tear it up to use for cleaning rags. (In the picture above, I'm wearing an old plaid shirt with iron stains from washing it in well water where we lived years ago, and jeans that shrank and are now too short. Both are still comfortable and useful items of clothing!)

• We are selective about the quality of the clothing we buy. We'd rather pay a little more for fewer items that are made in an environmentally conscious way (for example, organic rather than regular cotton).

• We frankly prefer natural fibers to those derived from fossil fuels, so most of our clothing is made of natural fibers like cotton, wool, and alpaca, although there are categories of clothing (for example, wetsuits and ski pants) that are tough to fill with natural fiber examples, so we do have some clothing that is pretty much plastic.

• There's a lot of greenwashing out there and you can find supposedly scientific analyses that claim manmade fibers are more sustainable. Because the research is being supported by clothing manufacturers that are profiting from the high margins for clothing made of artificial fibers and obviously synthetic clothing sheds microplastics, we are skeptical. Here's a graph from a scientific article that shows the lower life cycle impact of wool vs acrylic for sweaters.

Climate-Friendly Investments

Most traditional retirement investments are funding the very fossil fuel companies and projects that you're on the streets protesting! It can be daunting to figure out how to take control of what your investments are supporting, especially if finance isn't your field and/or your employers, past and present, are limiting your options.

Here are the steps I took to divest from my retirement investments that were just matching the overall market or including fossil fuel companies in their portfolio:

1. I researched options and found a local investment advisor, Green Alpha, whose investment criteria match my values for both environmental and social equity aspects. Because our future economy must support these values, it is also a better investment strategy to focus on the next economy! From Green Alpha's website: "Real risks related to climate change, resource degradation and scarcity, and widening inequality are rapidly materializing. Innovative companies addressing systemic risks are leading long-term economic growth. Investing in those companies is our best opportunity to preserve and grow clients’ capital."

2. I worked with them to choose an appropriate brokerage and opened investment accounts for them to manage.

3. I filled out the paperwork to withdraw my retirement investments from the traditional company's accounts and send the money to the new accounts.

If you're just getting started and have only a little bit of money to invest, Green Alpha also advises funds that can be purchased with low initial investment: NXTE and AXSKX. Read more about the options on their website. Please note: I am not a financial advisor and do not receive any monetary kickbacks from the company for giving them as an example. I'm sure there are other good options but after much searching this is the best one I found.

This is a process that can take a while and require perseverence! Stick with it!

P.S. Bitcoin is a disaster from a climate perspective. From the Biden administration fact sheet: "From 2018 to 2022, annualized electricity usage from global crypto-assets grew rapidly, with estimates of electricity usage doubling to quadrupling. As of August 2022, published estimates of the total global electricity usage for crypto-assets are between 120 and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year, a range that exceeds the total annual electricity usage of many individual countries, such as Argentina or Australia. This is equivalent to 0.4% to 0.9% of annual global electricity usage, and is comparable to the annual electricity usage of all conventional data centers in the world. "