This post is written in sadness and anger. Also it has nothing to do with Shaw in particular, but the planet Shaw resides on. Hopefully I’ve edited it in a way that it makes sense.
Going to the greenie save the Earth concert/rally won’t save the Earth.
Changing one light bulb from incandescent to CFC, won’t do it either.
Neither will recycling do it either.
They are great starts to greener living. But those little things won’t solve anything if we keep clinging to and promoting lifestyles that undermine and cancel out green efforts. Or worse mocking, demonizing, and criminalizing others efforts to live green or simply. The New York Times did a piece almost calling people who live green mentally ill. One of the subjects in the article, a Jewish woman who cooks and heats the house with a wood burning stove, has a beautiful (but long) response, that if you have time you should take a read.
She says several things that I’ll try to sum up. We can’t really expect other countries, like India and China to clean up their emissions and their environment if we can’t lead by example and show that you can have a good quality of life for your citizenry without destroying the planet. We, as Americans, need to find ways that change the American Dream in to a Green American Dream that other nations admire and desire. But we’re not there yet, and only G-d knows if we’ll ever get there.
My dryer, followed by the AC is the biggest energy hog in the house, and that saddens me because I know what the green solution is, and I don’t want to do it because it would crimp my quality of life. Air drying. When looking at my Pepco meter, the dial speeds at 100 mph when the dryer is on. But I will not stand in the way of people who air dry or want clothes lines in their back yards (things that forbidden in many HOAs).
The Green movement in some parts is just another product to be consumed; bamboo sheets, hybrid cars, stuff made from recycled stuff, LEED buildings, organic anything. What of making stuff last longer so you don’t have to keep buying more stuff and having the send your old stuff to the landfill? Keeping and maintaining a 1989 Honda, doesn’t show the world how green you are as well as a 2008 Prius. Buying a eco-sensitive house doesn’t make much sense if it requires a 2 hour commute, part of which is spent idling on the beltway.
This year as a nation we’ve been freaking out about energy and the ability to borrow money so we can go out and buy cars and buy more crap we don’t need. Maybe we should spend more time figuring out how to use less electricity, less gas, less water and how to make cars and other things last longer, and consuming fewer non-necessities.
But until we truly change the way we live day to day, until we find living green rewarding, we are doomed.
