A New Year is an unfilled vessel, a giant and pristine bowl of nothingness. Anything can go in it: old ways or new beginnings, borrowed dreams or novel ideas. What we toss together in this year’s “big empty” will soon become the substance of 2009, a mixture of our own making.

What will we choose to put in there? What contents will create the most satisfying future?

Often we make a list of New Year’s resolutions — an inventory, short or long, of the personal behaviors we want to change. A list serves as a reminder and gives us a sense of accomplishment when we can put a check mark next to something. “Done! Ta-da!”

Our common predicaments lead many to have similar lists. We want to get rid of our addictions, lose weight, eat right, or stop smoking. As the calendar turns from 2008 to 2009, let’s make those New Year’s resolutions, but in slightly different ways. We can:

• Rid ourselves of our addictions to fossil fuels and gas-guzzling autos.
• Go on a low-carbon diet, losing the weight of our heavy carbon footprints.
• Eat right, instead of eating highly-processed foods that rely on unsustainable methods of production.
• Stop smoking — from smokestacks, vehicle exhaust pipes, lawn tools, and other emitters of greenhouse gasses.

By thinking for just a few moments, each of us can add resolutions to our list to change behaviors that are harmful to the planet and to others. What’s one thing we could do to reduce wasteful dependence on fossil fuels? How might each of us create a diet based on local, more sustainable foods? How can we use fewer synthetic chemicals and instead use substances that work with the cycles of nature? What can we do to reduce our encroachment on nature, or to meet human needs more fairly and efficiently?

Answering these questions, putting the steps on your list, and then following through will help create a more sustainable home, city, and world. Let’s put these steps high on our list of resolutions this year. And let’s hear a lot of “Ta-das” from the big bowl of 2009.

If you need more specific ideas for doing all of the above, please go to www.tnsmonona.org and click on Insights: More Steps to Sustainability (Monona Fall Guide).

Thank you to Wisconsin Public Radio

Sarah Carroll is the Show Manager for Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? on Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR). She participated in the first round of study circles offered by The Natural Step Monona (TNSM) in the spring of 2007. That April, when TNSM started a book drive to create the Sustainability Section at the Monona Public Library, Sarah boosted it with a donation of a dozen books collected by WPR staff from their expert guests, the authors themselves. Donations included Lives per Gallon: the True Cost of our Oil Addiction by Terry Tamminen and 365 Ways to Change the World: How to make a Difference — One Day at a Time by Michael Norton.

As the one-year anniversary of the Sustainability Section’s opening approached this November, Sarah gathered and donated fifteen more WPR books, including The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Brian Fagan, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of my Stuff by Fred Pearce, and Freedom from Oil: How the Next President Can End the United States’ Oil Addiction by David Sandalow.

Thank you, Sarah and WPR, for your generosity!

Warming up the car

A reminder: Modern, fuel-injected cars — those made within the last two decades — do not need to be “warmed up” before being driven. If you’re doing so, you’re wasting gas, increasing pollution, and increasing the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. Don’t believe me? Here’s the advice from Tom and Ray, the Car Talk guys. “The proper procedure is to start the car. If it starts and keeps running, put it in Drive and go. Go gently (don’t back out of your driveway and floor it right onto a highway entrance ramp), because you’ll be warming it up during your first few minutes of driving, but DO drive it.”

“If it’s bitterly cold out, like 10 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, you can let it warm up for a minute or two to allow the oil to thin out a bit and circulate completely. But other than that, if it runs, driving it gently is the best way to warm it up.”

And if your goal is to warm up your body, try warm gloves and a hat instead.