One of the strangest things about my grandparent's house was that it had no garbage can. It had compost, a woodstove, and plastic bags so well re-used they were as soft as cashmere. I know I could never run my house without a garbage can (although we do recycle and compost), although maybe that's a goal to keep in mind for the near future.
Here's Judith Timson debating which generation is really the greenest.
1 comment:
So many of the "Green" initiatives we're seeing today are just cosmetic-- take "Earth Hour" for instance. Turning off your lights for an hour is nothing but symbolism, and the impact that symbolism is going to have on our lifestyle is negligible. I've got this sinking feeling that a huge majority of the people who took part in that exercise flicked their lights back on and came away with an inflated sense of 'mission accomplished'-- like they had fulfilled their duties as an environmentally conscious human being. Afterwards nothing changed. I don't think we've become any more less-impacting since all this hype began. Okay, so maybe we're more aware of some of the crazy stuff that's going on out there, but the idea that our carelessness and wasteful lifestyles could actually destroy the Earth is still unthinkable to a lot of people. Cognitive dissonance, right?
We will never, ever be as green as our forefathers. There were 2.5 billion of us in 1950, now we're careening towards seven. That's not to say that we weren't being as careless about the environment then as we are now-- I think that to a large degree their conservation efforts were a byproduct of necessary frugality. We're all rich Westerners now-- swimming in cash from tech stocks and future commodities trading. We don't feel the need to live modestly. In fact a modest life is akin to failure. It's funny to think of some of these gestures as an attempt to roll back the clock 60 years-- walking and bicycling to get around instead of driving, the return of reusable grocery bags, agriculture on an individual or family level. It's like we're at the crest of a roller coaster, scrambling to claw our way back to the bottom before we go over the other side. The only problem is that we're buckled in and we can't get out of the car.
Post a Comment