Living Our Green Future?

Joan Pick is not your average woman. Using only her own legs to transport herself (with the occasional new pair of trainers), Joan could well be the greenest person living in the U.K. She hasn't driven since 1973 and has been a passenger in a car twice in the 35 years since then. Once, she rode in a hearse for her mother's funeral and the other time in an ambulance when she dislocated her shoulder. She stopped using gas around the same time, hardly uses any electricity and eats only raw food. Is this the future for all of us?

Joan is now 67 and is in top-notch shape, which she attributes to her lifestyle. She was a scientist and writer for many years with a keen interest in energy consumption. In her flat, there is only one light bulb, furniture that has been there since the 1960s (very hip again now, I might add), an old fashioned radio, kettle that she uses to make tea, and she does her washing by hand. There is no heat, so Joan keeps warm by running and exercising (since she stopped cooking, she uses her pots and pans as training weights), as well as putting on extra layers when the temperature drops.

Her reason for living like this (as extreme as it sounds) is "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."

Her life may seem extreme, but Joan is very happy and feels that she is living a true life — without any compromise. Her main diet consists of seeds, fruit and nuts. Does she miss any cooked food? Not at all, and she never misses all the extra work that cooking brings. 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 a bit mad, but perhaps we will all have to adopt Joan's "slightly mad" lifestyle one day.