Just thought I'd help draw attention to Green as a Thistle - a daily blog by a young lady at the National Post in Toronto. The idea is to, each day, make one green change in her life. The changes are cumulative and so, theoretically, by the end of the one year trial period she shall be living more environmentally in at least 365 ways. I've browsed through the archives and I think it's very impressive. Certainly, if you are wondering about things you could do then this will provide a treasure trove of practical and interesting ideas.
The other enjoyable part is, of course, getting her appraisal of each change and reactions to her steadily changing life as the changes start to add up and play into each other. This definitely feels like a kind of "everywoman", not one of the parodies of a parody which critics like to point and sneer at, thus making a rather radical experiment highly approachable and far more plausible to the reader.
A few of my favorite posts are...
"Go Big or Go Home" - Giving Up Plastic
"A Plastic Fork in the Road" - Chopsticks!
"From Record Album to Photo Album" - Fairly self explanatory!
Meanwhile - How to Green Your Sex Life
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5 comments:
Look, I can appreciate her effort, but reading her blog is actually enough to put me (and probably a lot of other people, if they get that far) off being more environmentally friendly. It's more annoying than inspiring.
She says her blog is geared for the average person (Day 191) but it's clearly not. It's hard enough to convince the average person that being more environmentally friendly is not only doable but desirable without throwing in suggestions like shaving in the sink (Day 208), getting rid of highlighters (Day 302), par-cooking spaghetti (Day 209), and not using toilet paper when you pee (Day 191).
For so many people, living in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable manner seems impossible and/or undesirable, because they get fixated on these tiny, seemingly crazy changes rather than implementing the big ones, like biking or walking [rather than driving] more often, using environmentally friendly cleaning products (better for their health too), recycling, etc.
Ultimately, if we keep going down this road we're going to lose out, because we'd be way better off having 50% of the people implement the big changes rather than 10% (if that) of people making the little changes like shaving in the sink.
Can't we make big and small changes? I also want folk to toss cars (something this woman does), buy homes built to the ENERGY STAR standard and stop breeding so damn much. But it all adds up and I do not believe that the human capacity for change is a finite resource - unlike oil, air, water and most other things.
Besides which, she has plenty of big changes as well - like learning to live without a fridge and selling her car. Yet what I often hear people balk at are the big changes. Per-perhaps some folk are better for the "leap in with both feet" approach while others take better to a series of gradual, "manageable" changes? As I've said before, there is no single, silver bullet for climate change.
You sure you didn't maybe get hung up on the messanger, instead of the message? I know I sold the writer as well as the writing, but her personality is as irrelevant to the life changes as a scientists method of telling jokes is to his experiments results.
Well, I do think Kate has a point in that it's easy sometimes to get lost in the details of what you do. That's why most groups (PETA springs to mind) can sometimes come across as eccentric and socially ignorant. It's all about perspective.
For example, asking people to just "toss cars" doesn't make a lot of sense, especially in countries like Canada and the United States (or at least, plenty of regions inside of said countries). European nations have an easier time of this for reasons I am going leave entirely to your imagination! Also, because it's obvious. (Although I have now taken more time in one of my famous recursive loop of disclaimers...)
My point, anyhow, is that you can't just ask people to ditch cars unless there is something better to offer. Which means that light rail and subway infrastructures ought to be taken more seriously. Also, crappy bus systems? You need to lure people over by making the change seem easy, convenient, and more affordable (this is key). That in and of itself is frustrating, but getting humans to do something en masse is really like flailing your arms at a group of incredibly apathetic cows while they graze and find your presence undesirable.
Yes, I just compared humans to cows. At least I didn't go with the oft-abused sheep analogy?
So, yeah, telling people that 'we can do this!' and having inspirational music and U2 and fancy graphics on news channels, and then giving them a list of 150 (this is a made up number - just for the sake of making a hypothetical) 'small things' they ought to do--a great deal of which are just going to be annoying and unpleasant--strikes me as the wrong way to approach this sort of thing.
On a semi-related note, how do you make tree-hugging seem cool when we've had decades of people viewing them (sometimes rightly so) as those who simply find yet another cause or whatnot to jump into head-first for the sake of offering their life purpose? People who are fanatical and then mad at those who aren't as pious as they? That sort of thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger was right when he said that the problem with the climate crisis is in its marketing. It needs to be 'cool,' no pun intended. Asking people to not use toilet paper when they pee isn't as cool.
Oh don't be started on this pseudo-environmentalist bullshit about 'overpopulation'. The last time we went through that, it led us to that nasty little beast we call coercive popualtion control. Ignoring the obvious human rights violations committed in the name of "we want people to stop breeding so damn much", it managed to set back humane birth control movements and immunization programs back a good 15 years.
Birth rates in the most industrialized naitons have been dropping for years now, to the point that many of us (Canada included) are below replacement-level fertility. Birth rates remain high in many developing nations, where a) each child consumes far, far, FAR less than the average child in the industrialized world, and therefore having less kids is likely to have far less of an environmental impact than you hope, b) the chances of dying before age 5 are so high that people have to have 6 kids to have a decent shot of having ONE that lives to adulthood, and c) children are likely the only source of stability parents are likely to have [the welfare state not exactly being affordable when you have a GDP per capita of 400 bucks a year]
Back to the main subject at hand, would you rather have 10% of the people making big AND small changes, or 50% making the big changes? Ultimately, very few people, save the hard-core environmentalists, are going to be swayed by any argument that involves them shaving in their sink or not using toilet paper. Chances are (and we see this far too many times), people are going to look at this and say "Wow, what a crack-pot. If this is what teh environmental movement is about, I want no part in it. They're crazy."
All right, hold the phone (or the web, or whatever) -- just thought I'd jump in here and defend myself. First off, THANKS Oliver for the linkage, it's always interesting seeing what others think of my challenge, whether good or bad. But just a couple points for sailrox: I know a LOT of people who are incredibly average and who enjoy my blog because they feel I'm speaking from a fellow average person's point of view. The entire goal of it was to, yes, do a lot of crazy things that only the most die-hard hippies do, but to write about it from a normal person's perspective to see what the treehuggers are right about and what they're wrong about. And oftentimes, it's not easy to predict -- for example, little things like recycling my receipts or buying in bulk can be a huge pain in the ass, whereas selling my car and unplugging my fridge have turned out to be surprisingly easy to deal with. Also, I frequently shaved in the sink before this challenge, so I don't see why that's a big issue, and since when is using a pen instead of a highlighter such a big sacrifice?
Anyway, my point is that it's worth making small changes as well as big ones, we just all need to find out for ourselves what those will be. Maybe one person will go vegetarian but keep her car; maybe the next person will sell his car but continue to take long, hot showers every day. Neither of these people should be discredited for making the choices they do.
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