By Donald H. Harrison
SANTEE, California, April 6 – I don’t drive an electric car, or even a hybrid, but I can be proud, in a green, tikkun olam sort of way, about my tires. They’re filled with nitrogen, so I’m at least doing something about that global warming.
A fellow at a tire shop here explained to me that just by driving around on these tires I’m doing the environment some good. Or at least I’m doing it less harm than when I used to have tires filled with compressed air.
He told me that molecules of nitrogen are biggerand fatter than the molecules of oxygen—the other major component of air. The nitrogen molecules are so fat that they have a hard time leaking out of the tires, unlike the oxygen which finds it fairly easy to penetrate through the tire walls.
Because the nitrogen stays put, the tire pressure stays constant. And constant tire pressure means better gasoline mileage. Which means I buy less gasoline than I otherwise would.
Using less fossil fuel and spending less money make me feel pretty darn good about my nitrogen-filled tires. But. wait, the man at the tire place explained to me that I’m a humanitarian too! By using nitrogen in my tires, I’m freeing oxygen to be used elsewhere – like in all those tanks that help people with respiratory problems
Near the tire store is a grocery store where Nancy and I like to buy our fruit and vegetables. I am not a vegan, nor one who demands that my vegetables and fruit be organically grown, but still, in a green, tikkun olam sort of way, I’m helping the environment, or at least doing it less harm, by buying and consuming my vegetables.
Every time that I reach for a piece of fruit, or a vegetable, instead of eating a hamburger or some other form of meat, I’m lowering the demand for animal products. If enough of us do that, perhaps the big food companies will decide to sell off some of their land holdings instead of increasing them to accommodate more and more feedlots and slaughter houses. By lowering the demand for cattle, we lower the strain the cows put on our planet’s resources. We can even reduce the amount of methane that flatulent cows put into the air.
As with the nitrogen-filled tires, there are other benefits. Every time I eat a vegetable, I’m eating lower down on the food chain. So what? So, let say an insect and a worm eats a vegetable and in turn are eaten by a bird, and then I eat that bird. In a sense, when I eat a chicken, or turkey, I’m also eating remnants of the vegetable and the insect and the worm. The more links in the food chain that I consume, the more potential I have for ingesting at the same time any pathogens that attacked the vegetable, the worm, the insect or the bird. So, from a defensive point of view, I lower my odds of having health problems just by eating the vegetable.
In a green, tikkun olam sort of way, I can be pretty darn proud of all the vegetables and fruit I eat.
Now, we don’t bring our own reusable cloth shopping bags to carry home our vegetables, but we do choose plastic bags, and some people—but not all—say we can be proud, in a green, tikkun olam sort of way, of that too.
Both paper and plastic bags can be reused prior to being thrown out, so what’s the difference?
Paper bags are more easily biodegradable than plastic bags, but, on the other hand, plastic bags take up far less room in the landfills. Furthermore, far more energy and resources are used in cutting down trees and manufacturing the paper in the first place. It’s a close call but plastic seems the more environmentally friendly choice.
Just think how good I can feel if I carry home fruit and vegetables in plastic bags that I vow to recycle more than once before throwing them out –especially, if I take the vegetables home in my car riding on nitrogen-filled tires. Why, I’m becoming a regular Al Gore, I am.
*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at sdheritage@cox.net