Year of Zero

There is a better response to the accelerated consumption that goes on at Christmas time than to steal the Whos’ presents and dump them from the top of Mount Crumpit.

You can do that too, of course. But the best thing of all is to do put your money where your mouth is.

“I hate to say it. I know it’s a cliché but I am genuinely disgusted by the feeding frenzy that occurs at his time of year,” says Dave McLaughlin. He is referring to the season he still tries to love for the warmth and generosity it is supposed to engender.

He says there wasn’t one, but “probably three” straws that broke the camel’s back when he waded into the pre-Chirstmas frenzy to finish up his shopping: A customer on the cusp of physical violence at a lingerie store checkout, an altercation over a parking space, and the 30-customer lineup at Tim Horton’s. It was the lust for coffee that finally did him in.

“I thought hard over Christmas. I also watched an Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? A big chunk of Ellesmere Island fell into the ocean. A farmers Market opened up 2 blocks from my house. The planets aligned for me and I decided I was going to take a year off.”

What that means for McLaughlin is the Year of Zero. What he’s taking time off from is consuming.

Dave will get all of his food from the local farmers’ market or the bulk barn and will by hygiene and health products as needed. Beyond that he will not spend money on anything. His wife will use the car for work and Dave says he will probably still accompany her on occasion, but he will walk or bike to and from work and will only use the car when it is essential to his employment.

“Diminishing my ecological footprint is only a part of this. I was the Green Party candidate in the last federal election and I build wind turbines on the weekend. I also used to be a TV journalist in Alberta. I am well-versed in the reality of the impending peak in global oil and gas supply. People will be powering down and downsizing their consumption in the future whether they want to or not. We are leaving a wants-driven economy to return to needs-driven one. I’m just trying it on”

Dave says our heedless march to the resource wall has been fueled by advertising revenue-driven media and corporate influence in politics to maximize consumption-driven economic growth. “Our governments have become one-trick ponies and have ceased to think rationally about anything other than economic growth. Unfortunately we can’t have infinite economic growth in a world of finite resources. This is a harsh reality that should have been considered all along and now journalists and politicians and CEOs are going to act surprised when (like global warming) it comes home to roost.”

Dave hopes people will take up the challenge to join him in their own personal Year of Zero (YoZ, as it has already been labeled)
“It may be too little too late. But I have a two year-old daughter, and I want her to know that some of us were doing something.”
You can read Dave’s Blog at http://yearofzero.blogspot.com/