The woman with a tiny carbon footprint

[Guest guest]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/13/ethicalliving-carbonfootprints

 

Forget planes, trains or automobiles - if Joan Pick wants to go anywhere, she

runs. And she eats nothing but raw food. Is her lifestyle extreme or the future

we must all face up to? Emine Saner meets her

 

We all know we are meant to be reducing our carbon footprint, but I suspect that

many people wouldn't be prepared to go as far as Joan Pick. She hasn't driven a

car since 1973 and has only been in a petrol-guzzling vehicle twice since then

(once in the hearse at her mother's funeral, the other time when an ambulance

came to pick her up after she dislocated her shoulder). Her gas supply was cut

off sometime when the last Labour government was in power, and her electricity

usage is minimal. She eats only raw food and the only items she ever buys are

new trainers - because she gets around by running everywhere. Pick is 67 and

claims her lifestyle keeps her healthy. " I've been living on nothing for the

past 35 years, " she says.

 

She isn't, you gather, an average sort of person. She is charming, in her

tracksuit, ready to go out running, with her hair pulled into a baseball cap

bearing the symbol of the high-IQ society, Mensa. A scientist for many years,

she has a mind that darts off in different directions and it can be hard to keep

track of what she is talking about (perhaps because I am not a member of Mensa).

 

Much as I admire Pick's low impact on this frazzled earth, isn't her lifestyle

all a bit, well, extreme? She shrugs her wiry shoulders. " Does it look like a

hovel? " she says, throwing a beady glare around her Croydon flat. It doesn't; it

is neat and tidy, and the furniture is classic 1960s - very fashionable now -

that she has had for four decades. She last owned a television in 1975 and

listens to Classic FM and Radio 4 on an old secondhand stereo system. The walls

are hung with her own artworks. The only electricity she uses is a single light

(low-energy bulbs, of course) for the evenings, and her kettle, which not only

makes the tea she drinks all day, but provides the hot water for laundry - which

she does by hand - and bucket baths.

 

Pick doesn't have heating. It is a chilly day so I keep my jacket on, but she is

far less weedy than me. Doesn't she get cold? " Sometimes, " she says. How does

she keep warm? " Clothing and exercise, " she replies. Since she gave up cooking,

she now uses her heavy cast-iron saucepans as gym weights; space is cleared in

her living room for hula-hooping.

 

She decided to start living like this, she says, " because I realised we have got

the energy question totally wrong. I decided to imagine that the earth was a

business in need of sound management. We are all members of the board, a

shareholder, a trustee, a consumer and an employee. We believed that fossil

fuels were infinite, but they are finite. "

 

Pick was a scientist, and writer, for many years, with a particular interest in

energy consumption. She despairs that most people have to be forced to change

the way they live, rather than making the choices themselves. " They have to

almost bribe people to use energy-efficient things. It's terrible. I adopt a

[lifestyle] that is consistent with the sustainable management of the world's

resources. Everyone knows we have to have very severe cutbacks to meet that

standard, " she says.

 

Her world has shrunk to the distance around her flat in south London that she

can run to (which isn't small - she can run to Tower Bridge, several miles

away). These days, Pick spends her time going to the library to read the papers

- " It takes longer on a Thursday because I have to read the New Scientist as

well, but it's so awful " - and looking through Who's Who and Google to find the

addresses of the politicians, scientists and industry leaders she wants to write

to (Pick is a prolific letter-writer, tapping out her missives in dense little

letters on an old typewriter).

 

She rode a bicycle until she felt it had become too dangerous and the last time

she went on a plane, she says, was 1971. Doesn't she ever want to go on holiday?

" Oh no, " she says. " I've never enjoyed going on holidays. You can learn about

places by reading about them. My mother died in 1972, and my brother lives in

Dallas, so there's no possibility of going there. " I wonder if her life isn't a

bit isolating. She has never married and doesn't have a partner ( " a husband

might expect three cooked meals a day. Can you imagine? " ) and she admits, with a

sparkle in her eyes, that her friends and neighbours do think she's " a bit mad " .

Maybe she is, but perhaps we will all have to live like Pick one day.

 

She follows a raw vegetarian diet. " I had done studies of the food industry -

the beef industry and the destruction of the rainforest to fuel it, " she says.

" I was at a Mensa dinner, with a vegetarian ... " She doesn't continue this

thought. " I've always been a natural fatty ... I had tried every diet in the

book, so I decided to try a raw-food vegetarian diet. " When was the last time

she ate a cooked meal? " I don't know, I can't remember. " Doesn't she miss it? A

nice bowl of soup, a roast dinner? " Of course not. There's no mess. Have you

seen what I eat? " We go into her kitchen, where the cupboards are bare. She

opens a large tub full of mixed seeds and nuts, which forms the basis of her

diet, along with fruit and wheatgerm. " It's very easy to live like this. I

couldn't imagine living any other way now, " she says.

 

It seems a bit joyless to me (where are the treats?), but Pick isn't a joyless

person; far from it - she's delightful. I've made her late for her daily

two-hour run. We walk down the several flights of stairs together (she never

uses the lift) and she runs off into the afternoon sunshine.

 

 

 

 

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