eco-worriers
San Francisco Magazine: Green with Worry: on the Bay Area’s rising neurosis around every little environmental impact, from food orthorexia to fear of plastic.
In a blink, Bay Area residents have gone from being the most eco-conscious in the nation to the most eco-neurotic. We fight with our spouses over plastic bottles, head to our therapists in tears over rising oceans, and swing uncomfortably between guilt and denial every time we pull out a credit card or jump in the car. So how do we save the world without driving ourselves (and everyone else) crazy?
these little things people are fretting over – plastic bags, recycling, lightbulbs, hybrid cars – only make up the smallest percentage of total real negative impacts on the environment/global warming, but they are the things people feel they have the most control over. industrial pollution – including agribusiness/food production – far outweighs the impact that any single family has, or even collectively. what is true is that consumer spending drives most of these businesses, so instead of fretting about the plastic bag, people should be more concerned about what they are or aren’t putting INTO the bag and where their money is going. what’s ironic is “eco”businesses marketing (greenwashing) the hell out of consumer goods, from bamboo clothing to recycled dinnerware, but really the only green thing to do is stop buying so much stuff.
the article has tips on practical things to do that make a difference, and about how to stop stressing so much over the small stuff.
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Very funny … I mean- the spousal fights over being green. It is so true, Amy.
This sort of resounded for me in some way. My mother moved somewhere specific bc she loved a certain creature. She goes kayaking with this creature everyday, has these creatures living off her dock and is involved with lots of conservation work for these creatures. These creatures are endangered and the reasons are all human-related: getting hit by uncaring boats, habitat encroachment, etc. She is about 5 minutes away from moving out of her paradise bc she is becoming increasingly obsessed with the ecological destruction of her paradise and this creature. Everyday she stops large speeding boats and picks up garbage from her paradise. Every trip to the grocery store pulls on her heartstrings bc she sees more and more habitat destruction t in the name of development and progress. She has a very intimate relationship with nature and it hurts her to no end when she sees rare birds nesting in grocery store parking lots bc another grocery store just had to be built.
i think a lot of people can relate to that story about your mother, especially environmentalists who pick a certain species to defend. in a lot of the endangered species v. human development disputes, people wonder why anyone would get all twisted around about a red-legged frog or a certain small species or insect, but if you spend most of your time focused on that animal, you begin to see all the ways everything affects it, and then you become sort of obsessed with protecting it because to you it becomes the symbol of protecting everything.
i think the same is true with some of the things mentioned in this article, like paper recycling – people know that the small thing they are doing isn’t THE thing that’s going to save the world, but it’s the thing they have control over/know the most about in their lives, and it starts to represent the whole issue. so while it may seem strange to go through your neighbor’s trash and pick out all the recyclable bits, it doesn’t seem strange if you imagine all the enormous landfills in the world, and envision them growing, every day. i know i angst about throwing ANYTHING into the trash these days because i have this huge image of landfills in my head, and the thought of adding anything to it is painful.