California unplugged

It was the early 1970s, and Julia Russell was worried.

Everywhere she looked were serious environmental threats that nobody was doing much about. What kind of world, she wondered, would be left for her two young children?

Unlike many with similar concerns, however, Ms. Russell didn't wait for someone else to make things better.

"All our environmental problems can be traced to our modern urban lifestyle," says Russell, "and ... I began to experiment to see how to reduce or eliminate destructive processes and [the waste of] our natural resources."

Over the next three decades, as her finances permitted, she made improvement after improvement to the one piece of the environment she controlled: her own home, a modest 1911 California bungalow in Los Angeles's old, middle-class, Los Feliz neighborhood. That decision, says friend and former Los Angeles City Environmental Commissioner Ed Begley Jr., was significant because "it showed that the environment isn't just up in Yosemite.... It's right here in L.A.... Houses [today] are on life support with tubes coming in for gas, water, and electricity. The object is not to pull the plug, but to make them less dependent."

High on Russell's list were energy-conservation strategies. She insulated walls, floors, and ceilings, replaced some older single-glazed windows with dual-glazed models and applied heat-reflecting film to others to better control heat gain and loss. She added a solar-assisted hot-water system to reduce her use of natural gas.

Planting deciduous trees on the house's southern and western sides allowed her to regulate seasonal sun exposure.

Because "our food supply is totally dependent on cheap oil," she planted 28 fruit and nut trees - and a garden, which, year-round supplies a variety of vegetables worthy of a supermarket. Much of the irrigation is done with recycled water.

She chose energy-efficient appliances, compact fluorescent bulbs (saving up to 70 percent on her lighting costs), and installed a "light pipe" to bring sunlight from the roof to her kitchen - eliminating the daytime use of two light bulbs there.

Fifteen years ago, she got rid of her car, and has relied ever since on a trike and public transportation to do her errands.

Today, as California struggles to find adequate and affordable long-term supplies of electrical power amid the shambles of its failed deregulation scheme, one particular modification - two sets of solar photovoltaic cells, one with battery backup to ensure emergency lighting - seems particularly prescient.

From the beginning, she says, "I started to experience some wonderful benefits, but I also began to realize that if we're going to have a livable future, we're going to have to rethink, redesign, and rebuild the way we inhabit the earth.... That's what I'm doing here, and trying to encourage other people to do...."

As founder of the Eco Home Network, a nonprofit educational organization that assists people in creating a sustainable urban lifestyle for themselves, she has already had some success. The group currently claims a membership of some 600 in southern California alone.

Nevertheless, getting the word out has been a struggle. "It is not yet widely supported by society as a whole," Russell says.

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