(Fair warning: rant ahead! Check out some really cute puppies or join MyPoints if rants aren't your thing.)
I think I knew that Earth Day was coming up but the real reminder came when I checked Google today. They changed their logo's primary colors to a happy, huggy lush waterfall scene with a shiny, happy turtle — one that was no doubt protected to the fullest extent of federal law. Today was our yearly reminder how horrible we are to the environment as a species, and how much closer we've come to cooking, poisoning, and asphyxiating ourselves on this planet.
I'm firmly convinced that we won't do nearly enough to save this planet unless we have absolutely no other choice, either by the government saying “NO!” loudly enough to get our attention, or by things getting so hot, dry, and polluted that we taste the consequences of our actions every day. Because being green is inconvenient and expensive, and we like things easy and cheap. If given a choice, I'm not likely to buy a more environmentally-friendly product unless it saves me money. A lot of people don't really have the choice.
We like electricity that just works as opposed to electricity that depends on energy from solar panels fed into batteries that we have to maintain. We like gasoline engines powerful enough to pass that grandmother in the left lane. We like our coffee available 24-7 in a Styrofoam cup so that we don't have to go to the trouble of brewing it ourselves.
Oil prices are going up. Gas prices are going up. This says loud and clear that more oil is demanded than is supplied. We're not conserving oil overall. We're using it up as fast as we can. This behavior says that three and a half bucks is nothing. If we were really serious about conserving oil, there would be a $10 per gallon tax on gasoline. Heavily taxing the oil companies like Russia does isn't the way to do it, because it's not the source of the problem. People buying “doolies” and SUVs for their commute are where the rubber meets the road, as it were.
But what do we do instead? Let's remove the federal gas tax for the peak driving season! Make it cheaper so we can keep driving as we have been! And let's probe and pester the oil companies because they made the misstep of investing decades of exploration and beaucoup bucks bringing all of this oil to the economy, and how dare those rotten scoundrels make so much freaking money at the expense of struggling Americans. That's entirely the wrong answer. The only way to reduce the impact is to use less! We'll get to $10/gallon one way or the other, but the slow road up will do the most damage.
As it is now, most green purchases people make are to save their own money. (I'm all for saving money! Sign me up!) I use CF light bulbs because they last longer and draw less current than incandescents — money savings for me. I buy a fuel-efficient vehicle because the gas costs me less to get from point A to point B. I recycle with our county's landfill only because I can dump my non-recyclable stuff for free. Otherwise I'd be looking for someone to buy my plastic, glass, and metal. If “good for the environment” is all a product has going for it, that doesn't sell on a large scale. “Saves you money” does, and if it happens to be green, well then great, you get a little green star on your forehead.
The same goes for businesses. It's all to pad their bottom line, or grudgingly taken away from it because they'll suffer more for not complying. Green to IKEA is charging for plastic bags so it doesn't have to pay for them. “Going paperless” is more about cutting the business' costs and shifting them to us. Catalytic converters make cars more expensive and decrease gas mileage, but new cars have to have them. Any company that sells green to people — whether it's organic, renewable, or recycled — is done only because there's a buck to be made. There's big money in catalytic converters, wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells, free-range chicken, and organic oatmeal. They're not doing this out of love for the giant panda. (Did you know that they're actually really violent animals?) Good feelings don't put food on the table. Moving product does.
Oh, and people living off the land with a neutral carbon footprint out in the middle of nowhere? Many of them probably just want to be the heck away from the cities in the event of a bio-attack. There's safety in isolation. Or they see today's debt-driven, oil-driven lifestyle for what it is — wholly unsustainable, and getting more expensive every day — and they want to learn how to live otherwise before they're forced to. It's less about the environment and more about their survival.
Before you get me all wrong (!) I'm not a hyperconsumer. I buy used things, I have a fuel-efficient vehicle, and I separate out my papers to recycle even though I really don't have to. I just don't see Earth Day as having much impact beyond being a yearly reminder: “Oh yeah, taking care of the planet is a good thing to do.” Until humans, and the households, businesses, and countries that they run, put surviving on this planet ahead of their self-interests, the locomotive is just going to accelerate toward the cliff. The problem is that we're beyond the point of it not hurting, and the less it hurts now, the more it will hurt later. Unpopular decisions will have to be made, and I just don't see that happening until we're all up against a wall.
What can we do? I guess a whole lot of incremental changes add up to a big change, but even the biggest change is too little too late now. The best thing to do is prepare. Prepare for $10 gas, then prepare for $20 gas. Prepare for hotter temperatures and less convenience. Prepare for not taking a long hot shower every day. Prepare by learning useful skills, like canning, sewing, gardening, hunting. Prepare to cooperate as opposed to getting ahead.
And prepare to save. Get some CF light bulbs. 😉
Kudos to you for telling the truth about oil consumption and oil company profits. I don't hear anyone screaming about price gouging and conspiracy theories over the price of corn, dairy products, etc (a by-product of this sham called e85).
Six years ago I made the mistake of buying an SUV. It fit our needs and lifestyle at the time but shortly afterward, our lives changed dramatically and I've been commuting in that gas-guzzler ever since. I've got no one to blame but myself. Yes, I could sell it. That doesn't solve the problem though — it just shifts it to someone else. Some day I'll replace it and when I do I hope I make a smarter vehicle choice.
Earth Day is just another media hype day. It's one day where people use cloth bags and feel better about themselves.
The general population is not the least bit concerned about saving the planet or reducing the consumption of oil. If it can, or will put additional money in my pocket then I am interested. I will makes noises that I am in support of saving the planet, however, if saving the planet means that I will not be able to stop at Starbucks that day and get my 12 word fancy coffee, then count me out. I do not want to inconvenience myself for anything. Life is difficult enough for me; I cannot add another thing to my plate, so someone else is going to have to put the "Save the Planet" magnets on their gas guzzling SUV or Truck. I have to take care of myself, and that is a full time job!
What's the hard choice that no one is willing to make. What would be the best way to limit our impact on this world? Limit our population. If we weren't increasing our population daily and instead reached a plateau of human population, both our consumption of natural resources and pollution of the world would also stop growing exponentially.
But no one will say the obvious, the world is not a infinite resource, and the best way to limit our impact on it is to limit each couple to two children. But that wouldn't be easy so lets just keep reproducing until there are no resources to keep us all alive and we have a massive die off from starvation. But hey, at least we'll have the freedom to make babies that are born into a desolate world.
Thats the end of my extremist rant.
Perhaps if we started teaching our children abstinence instead of relying on the schools to hand out condoms and birth control pills our population increase may not be so extreme…
Very well said! I think the only way for "green" to really get off the ground is if it is economically viable. Like you said, no one is going to pay to save the world. Luckily, there are a lot of sustainable companies out there that ARE cheaper in the long run. Now, if only I could get over the sticker shock of the initial investment, I too could have solar panels and free energy for the rest of my life. Oh, wait, for that, I'd have to stay in the same house. Which means I have to stay in the same city, and I can't trade up when my income goes up, and suddenly the idea that there is no such thing as a "starter house" seems WAY ungreen…
But back to my original compliment, great post.
@Angus & Kevin Waldron: The populations of the United States, western Europe and Canada are flat or falling. How is it that extreme action is needed? Should we invade India and force them to adhere to a 2-child-per-couple law? I believe plenty of people are already starving there, so they are making their own choices. China already has a 2-child-per-couple law. I don't think your recommendation will be nearly as effective as you imagine it to be, unless you envision a major genocide along with it.
@parent: Why are you convinced we aren't doing enough? What evidence is there that we really are damaging the environment as badly as you feel we are?
Global warming is happening. But what does that mean? Does that mean we're in a grotesque environmental collapse that no one has noticed yet? Or are we in a cycle of heating and cooling that has been going on for eons? No one knows for sure.
Peak oil? Maybe, maybe not. There's a lot of oil out there in relatively inaccessible places, like oil sands and oil shales. When oil gets expensive (like the present $120/barrel), the oil companies have a financial incentive to go after the tough stuff. And they are. On top of that, there's an innovative process which can synthesize crude oil directly from organic waste. Check out Changing World Technologies if you're interested. It is possible that as gas prices ramp up, both less convenient supplies of oil and synthetic oil will also ramp up rapidly, causing this price spike to look like the 70s instead of like the apocalypse. Remember the 70s? People thought the world was ending then, too, and it didn't.
A continued supply of oil at below apocalyptic prices gives engineers time to improve batteries, continue cleaning up gasoline engines, and improve production processes. Who says we can't gradually transition to cleaner tech? And who says it won't be cheaper and more convenient? The Chevy Volt has all the price advantages of a pure electric with a range boosting gasoline system to make it attractive to long distance drivers while battery tech improves. That's coming out in 2010.
The world produces enough food to feed the entire world, if only it could be distributed. We learned that CFCs were killing the ozone layer, so we ditched CFCs. Gas and oil prices are rising, so alternatives are being investigated in the grand tradition of capitalism. Populations in developed countries have always gone into plateau or decline.
Why panic? Is there evidence we should panic?
Good story. The article is right on, people won't do good just to do good, there has to be a cheap way to do good. Because in the end, contrary to popular belief, we're not all good inside, we're selfish and unloving hypocrites. But money-saving and green products are coming and are here, but like Ruthie said, they're mostly long-term. Thankfully the media induced panic is making folks think a bit greener, though for the wrong reasons I think.
I think global warming is pretty much all hype. We're warming up, so what? The environmental problem I see is acid rain, air quality that causes asthma, water contaminated with pharmacueticals, the world's best farmland paved over with houses and roads, and unsustainably cutting down rainforests in the southern hemisphere when we should have enough land and know-how to grow enough wood ourselves in our own developed countries. So I will recycle, drive a high-mileage car, grow a garden and walk/bike when i can; not because of global warming and panic induced by the media, but because these other issues are far more pressing and local.
When I go to the store and the produce is all from overseas, I worry about their chemicals and farming practices that our "enlightened" country can't enforce? Also, what happens when there's a political fallout with that country's leadership? Or when their wages catch up with ours? And when I drink my water these days (city or well water) it's laced with hormones and antibiotics someone else flushed down the toilet. Is that good for me or my kids? Is the haze coming out the back of my car good to breath for me, or the guy 1000 miles away where my car exhaust falls in the rain? When I buy lumber at Lowe's, have I helped destroy the home and community in South America somewhere along with contributing to air/water problems with all that shipping from there to here? The way I see it, costs are sometimes long-term and hard to see, rather than the $1.00 I save buying normal house cleaners instead of the "new" greener kinds out there that are safe to breathe. Or the $5.00 I save buying food from Chili instead of local organic produce. I save a little now, but what's the long-term cost? It's the same with energy. Save a little using oil now, or pay in the long-term because we don't have oil to make safety and medical plastic equipment that helps solve the asthma problems created by burning that same oil in our cars.
I do live in a city, 4 miles from work, walking distance to shopping and friends, and we are working on a garden. We buy organic/local etc when we can. We'd do solar if we could afford the installation cost. More than environmental sense, it makes economic, social and health sense. I'm not panicing, just trying to live smart.
@ Chase Johnson
It's not the nations you mentioned I am worried about. Its places like Mexico which at its current rate will increase its population by 40% in fifty years that catch my attention.
How do you scale your resources to accommodate that large an increase in population?
The thing to do is making it cheaper to go green solar power.electic homebuilt generators even wind turbines have come down in price how about using capitalism to our advantage!