fridge fools

This is what I'm talking about, people. You saw the GIGANTIC piece in the Times yesterday about the "trend" among greenies getting rid of their refrigerators.

First of all, I know I don't have to tell you when the Times devotes this much space to something, you can be sure a) The Wall Street Journal wrote about it a year ago and b) they're stretching the data more than a little to suggest a trend. Whatever. My real beef is with the people in this article who were crapping on refrigerators!

Moses didn't lead us to the Promised Land of Sub-Zeros and central air and TVs in every room so we could later turn up our noses at God's miracles. Every one of these innovations—and a whole bunch of others, including, but not limited to, the electric wine bottle opener my parents gave me for Christmas last year—was a reward to modern culture for managing to survive the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, two world wars, and mid-1970s prime time network television programming (S.W.A.T., Caribe, One Day at a Time—huh?!?). For slipper's sake, we deserve this stuff!

I love all my TVs as if they were my own children, but I couldn't live without my refrigerators. That's right, refrigerator plural—I've got two of them. One is a ridiculous GE Profile Arctica, a stainless steel side-by-side that has been the bane of every day since we bought it five years ago. And one is a brokeny old something-or-other we've dragged around the country for 25 years. This one lives in my basement and I would throw myself on the train tracks before I'd let someone take it away.

Why two? Because the kitchen fridge really is that stupid (it doesn't fit anything, stuff is always falling out, the vegetable drawer broke on like the second day we had it) and the basement fridge keeps things so super cold we fight like kindergarteners over who gets to have the first sip of "downstairs" milk. Plus, it fits everything—Thanksgiving turkey, all the beer you could ever think of drinking, emergency stores of Oscar Meyer bacon, and a vast collection of condiments and ingredients for dishes I'd like to make (pot pies!) but that have recently fallen off my son's list of favorites and moved over to his list of most despised. I don't get that. Anyway, my point is those people in the article who claim they'd rather be without their refrigerators than be responsible for their fridge's millions of pounds of CO2 emissions are lying.

People who unplug the TV so their kids' brains don't turn to mush, fine. Folks who dry their laundry on a clothesline instead of in a dryer, go for it. But getting rid of your refrigerator and using coolers and root cellars and keeping food outside during the winter? That's just posing. These people love it when their friends say, "What, you don't have a refrigerator?" Then they can go on and on about how "easy" it is to be refrigerator-free, how much healthier they're eating now, and how much better it is for the environment, i.e., how much better they are than the rest of us.

I liked the lady in the article who said she'd rather give up meat to reduce her share of CO2 emissions than get rid of her fridge. That's not a bad idea, but then what would I do with all that ground sirloin I bought on sale that's stacked in the freezer side of my idiotic upstairs fridge?

Here's a better idea: Breathe less! For the average 28,000 breaths you take a day, hold your breath about 120 times and reduce your daily personal CO2 emissions by 6 minutes! It doesn't cost a dime and you'd get to keep that awesome refrigerator (or two) that makes life worth living.

Just doing my part,

Karen

(PS, that appliance pictured above is my beloved basement fridge. She's a keeper, am I right?)