Last May, I let you in on my desire to live net zero in my Substack entitled, “Net-Zero/Gross-Zero: Our Topsy Turvy Quest to Live Ethically.” At the time I wrote that, I was living in the Catskills searching for a long-term home that could be as eco-optimized as a middle-class person could manage. Though momentarily distracted by Vermont (since the pre-fab net-zero company Vermod was very intriguing, but we ultimately couldn’t afford to live close enough to a city there due to the high cost of land), after a lot of dead ends, we ultimately made our way to Rochester, NY.
I wanted to point your attention to two pieces of media I helped to create this past week, both centering around the topic of net-zero living. The first is a video that my cousin Katie edited. But let me first tell you how I met cousin Katie (who is actually something like my fourth cousin).
Family matters
When my wife and I were living in Los Angeles, I got my DNA done by Ancestry—which I know means I sold my soul to the Mormons (who own Ancestry), but my curiosity got the better of me. Once I got my results (mostly Eastern European Jew alongside a fair amount of Italian on my paternal side), I started to cross-check possible DNA matches in Manhattan specifically (since I was homesick for the city, as I often am) with people on Facebook.
So I looked at the names of my matches, typed them into Facebook, and—since I can be pretty one-note about this kind of thing—I then scoped out whether anyone had any indication they were vegan.
That’s how I found Katie. She had a giant “VEGAN” banner on her Facebook page, which was enough of a sign for me to make contact. The two of us stayed in touch, and when I eventually moved to Rochester, Katie followed suit. She had been craving a change and sought many of the same things I did: a progressive city with relative affordability, coffee shops you can walk to, and a bustling vegan scene (including a vegan butcher, which happens to be around the corner from her house).
Net-zero nets zero clicks
When Katie wanted to try out some new editing software, she asked if she could make a video of me with my wife Moore talking about basically whatever we wanted. Since we want to make some hay around our decision to live net zero, we chose this as the topic, and Katie knocked it out of the park when it came to the way she packaged and edited this short film.
And here it is …
I’m personally tickled by the way this video came to exist, by way of a chance encounter with a distant (also vegan) cousin who now lives five minutes away from me.
Aligning my values
For me, this all ties back to living in alignment. We are trying to eco-optimize our home because we want our values to be reflected in our day-to-day choices, but also because we want to lower our footprint (which is also partly why we are vegan), create an avenue for replicable and scalable change (from veganism to net-zero living), and build community around these values and goals. That last one is where Katie comes in, as well as the other like-minded folx we’ve met since moving to Roc.
So on one hand, it’s totally bananas that a DNA match led me to my distant cousin—who has actual photos of our shared ancestors coming to the USA on the boat from Russia!—but on the other hand, it makes complete sense to me that my life is shaking out in this way.
I believe that when we define our values and do our best to live by them (which for someone else might not take the shape of moving thousands of miles, since obviously that’s a privilege I have that not everyone else does), other things start to align, too.
Nobody is saying that taking this step is going to be easy, but I think that once we start to shift around our lives in ways that reflect what we stand for—such as by eliminating animal products—entire worlds can open up for us.
When being vegan just isn’t enough
The video Katie made came out one day after I wrote an article for VegNews.com called, “When Being Vegan Just Isn’t Enough: How and Why I’m Making My House Net-Zero.” To be entirely honest, this article isn’t getting much traction (so feel free to click on it and share it), which I’m not really surprised by; listicles on vegan ice cream flavors or the best cruelty-free eyeliners tend to perform much better. Is anyone surprised? But for those who are interested in the specific steps we’ve taken to net-zero our home, that is the article for you. Here is an excerpt:
Since building our nest last summer—and with the help of financing and some federal as well as statewide incentives—here are some of the changes we’ve made on our quest to transform our house into one that is net-zero:
1. Geothermal
This harnesses the constant temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit starting about 10 feet below the surface of our yard. In the winter, we extract heat (it’s currently 8 degrees outside and 72 in our living room) and in summer, we look forward to cooling off by dumping heat into the ground. Because this is renewable energy, it reduces our energy bill significantly (it just takes a bit of electricity to blow air through the system).
2. Solar
Solar panels also reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. There is a great cost to the planet when we consider the ongoing dump of CO2 and pollutants in the air. Capturing the sun’s clean energy is an efficient way to bypass the destruction of dirty fossil fuels.
3. Insulation
Said to be the backbone of efficient energy systems, the magic here lies in providing a tight envelope to your home. The right type of insulation can also improve air quality within the home by reducing infiltrants and allergens.
4. Triple-pane windows
Triple-pane windows, much like insulation, are a necessary factor for sealing your home. Before they were replaced, the 100-year-old windows kept just 25 percent of the heat in our home; the new triple-pane windows now keep in 98 percent. They’re also resistant to condensation and will generally pay for themselves in the long run.
5. Hybrid electric hot water heater
Eco-friendly heat pump water heaters reduce your home’s emissions, and according to the Sierra Club, will have a much-needed impact on lowering greenhouse gas emissions in each of the 50 states over the next decade.
6. Heat pump electric dryer
A heat pump clothes dryer removes moisture by heating the air—then filtering and cooling it. While it’s condensing, that water collects into a tank, eliminating the need for a vent to the outside—one less place for heat to escape.
7. Electrification
Much like a new vegan who slowly replaces their leather shoes with vegan versions as they wear out, we’ve taken the tact to buy or replace appliances with high-efficiency electric ones as we go. The first order of business, since we moved in over the summer, was a grill; how else would we perfectly char our Beyond burgers to complete our American summer dinners? My wife insisted that an electric grill would be the ticket, and it was. Next came the electric mower for the part of the lawn that wasn’t dug up when the geothermal wells were drilled. Most recently, we got a snowblower (this is Rochester, after all). All are corded electric because my wife is very cheap—and because skipping the batteries helps to avoid the environmental cost of lithium mining, which we can’t avoid for the next phase of our journey: an electric car.
As a vegan, you can bet I love talking about my values. I’m sure that’s partly why we vegans get a reputation as being self-righteous. You know how the joke goes: “How do you know if a vegan is at a party?” “They’ll tell you.” Not entirely untrue.
When external values just aren’t enough
But we are also a deeply passionate bunch, and the vegans I know—though admittedly maybe a bit overly exuberant when it comes to talking about cashew cheese—are generally excellent communicators and very down-to-earth (probably because we’re literally hugging the earth while wearing leather-free Birkenstocks and emanating the scent of patchouli).
And yet, one thing I’ve been discovering about myself recently has been how my values are indeed well-defined when it comes to external systems (how I show up for others, including the planet), but not nearly as well-defined when it comes to how I want to show up for myself in the day-to-day. So I’ve been doing the hard work of looking inward and helping to determine those things that matter to me outside of my activism.
Someone who was angry with me once told me that I didn’t know who I was outside of my veganism. She later sort of apologized, but it did stick with me nonetheless. Mind you, it didn’t haunt me—I accepted her apology and have no bad feelings here—but I had to wonder if there was truth to it. I think there’s a nugget of truth to most things, so I would be remiss to brush it off entirely.
The part of it that feels true to me is that, by far, the aspect of my values I have spent the most time fine-tuning has been the values—like veganism and the offshoots of that (including my antiracism and my environmentalism)—that pertain to external factors: How I want to change the world. How I want to advocate. What I believe in.
Flipping that, however, I am left with those internal forces that dictate how I show up for myself in my internal world. How I think. How I process. How I let go. What I spend energy on. What I change about myself and my circumstance because it doesn’t match my value system.
And it seems to me I haven’t focused on those internal value systems nearly enough. I’ve been way too distracted with my goal of changing the world for animals. As a result, I’ve sometimes been sloppy with how I show up for myself.
Energy output
And so here we are. With the help of Brene Brown—and of my new, fabulous coach I started working with about a month ago—I am doing my due diligence to establish my values, examine my behaviors, and do what I need to do in order to realign my mindset, thoughts, and habits with what I actually believe in.
One way I’m doing that is by assessing the energy toll of using unnecessary systems that we continue to employ out of habit and convenience.
With my house, that might mean replacing a natural gas hot water heater with a way more efficient hybrid version (it’s electric and also pulls heat from the air). Same result, way less toll taken on the planet.
The same can be said about how I’m trying to show up differently for myself. Much like my house, I’m trying to lessen my use of antiquated systems that create toxic byproducts. Instead, I want to create new, more efficient ways forward so that I can align my mindset (and, thus, actions) with my beliefs and my values.
One way I’m trying to do that is by lowering the stakes. That means lowering the negative impact of running my home just as much as it means no longer expending energy catastrophizing in my head when something goes awry in my life.
These are both examples of lessening the negative impacts. When it comes to both my home and my head, taking the next indicated action is also a way to find more overall ease and comfort.
As with the eco-optimizations of my house—which just received its triple-pane windows but doesn’t yet boast a high-efficiency washing machine or permeable driveway—this is all a work in progress.
And, I suppose, so am I.
xo,
jazz
P.S. In the interest of lowering the stakes, I went sledding yesterday!
Thanks Jasmin! Late as ever, but loved the video and the piece on net zero in Veg News!