1: Going Green

Stanley Fish seems to be exhausted by the efforts of his spouse to make their marriage a green one, but there are worse things to be exhausted by.

The laziness of those who simply refuse to make any effort to reduce their own individual impact on the environment remind me of classmates I knew who expended more effort avoiding their high school assignments than they would have used actually doing them.

I'll be perfectly honest.

I understand the rejection of environmentalism that many Americans feel. I'm the same way. And if it's hard enough for me, a nineteen-year-old, to habitually do the right thing for the environment, I can only imagine how mentally distressing it must be for those from earlier generations, who lived before the mantra of "recycle, reuse, reduce" was drilled into the heads of elementary school students nationwide, must feel.

I admit (not without some shame) that I don't strive to be as environmentally friendly as I (as an American with a carbon footprint necessitating 4 worlds) ought to be, but I haven't given up on trying. Unfortunately, I'm afflicted like many Americans with the "I'll do it if it's convenient for me" syndrome. (In other words laziness, yes.)

Sure, I prefer to bike rather than drive or take public transportation, I recycle what I can, and I don't leave the faucet running when I brush my teeth (and scorn people who do); however I don't go out of my way to find green alternatives when less environmentally friendly products are exponentially more convenient to get to.

Because of this I appreciate the efforts that other people have made towards making it easier to lessen my carbon footprint. Those blue recycling bins make it 80% more likely that my recyclables will see a recycling plant rather than a trash dump. The actions of companies to tout their "environmentalism" will prompt me to support them over their less green competitors when there's no insurmountable difference between the products offered.

To live in an environmentally friendly way in the United States today means to support sustainable practices and production methods. It means to lessen your individual contribution to pollution by taking the extra second to turn off the lights as you leave a room, in winter turn the thermostat a little further down and in summer a littler further up than you may like it. Pay the extra money for local foods and suffer the indignity of public transportation.

In order to truly be environmentally friendly, we would ideally all return to village and/or nomadic life. No more cars, cities, or shopping malls. No more factories, mass production or international expedited shipping.

Is this possible? Of course. Is this likely to happen? No, of course not. Not until the next Ice Age, WWIII, or Armageddon.

So what do we do? We compromise. "Sustainability" is a concept that is generally understood to be the way to go. Sustainability won't save the wild but it will likely ensure that humanity survives longer than it would if we continued to live unsustainably.