About a month ago, I participated in the Weekend Without Oil campaign organized by DoSomething.org. You can read about my trials and tribulations here. Spending two days completely focused on my oil consumption was an amazing learning experience. The best part by far was that it gave me a specific day to start taking action; a reason to being doing all those things people kept reminding me to do (or stop doing). It wasn’t like before that weekend I didn’t know about the environmental effects of oil, or that I didn’t know what I could do to make a difference. Actually, it was the opposite: I was overwhelmed with all of the things I could be doing to live more sustainably. The campaign gave me a finite amount of time to test the waters — and realize that taking action doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Things from that weekend that I’ve kept up: Buying most of my groceries at the Farmers Market. Never buying bottled water. Composting. Reusable shopping bags. Way less meat. I picked a few things that I can stick to and then strive to include other good habits whenever possible. Am I doing everything I could be doing for the environment? Hell no. But I’m doing something.
Too far? I forgot my reusable grocery bags so I put everything straight back into the basket. Calm down, I'll return it
Sometimes doing anything just to do “something” can be just as bad as doing nothing. I remember an episode of Penn & Tellers Bullshit where they got a bunch of young hippie types to sign a petition trying to ban water just by calling it dihydrogen monoxide. I think it was the same episode where they tore bottled water a new one and made fun of over-zealous vegans. Most of the problems around these ideologies lie in that “all-or-nothing” dogma that many of these groups follow. It’s either their way or the highway, and I personally don’t find that attractive at all, but people have to believe something, and sometimes that something is that they are saving the planet by eating vegetables.
I absolutely (sic!) agree that there is a great benefit to moderation even when it feels going green or vegan or whatever would be most effective. Graham Hill tackles the issue in his TED Talk . The most prominent thing he says is this: If we all eat half the meat we used to, it’d be like half of us became vegetarians. Of course, just by saying the v-word, he invited a lot of zealots to call him a charlatan for breaking their dogma. I myself have been inspired by him to cut down on meat by 50%, and I’m not missing that other half one bit.
There is a lot of power in identifying yourself with a certain doctrine, using the name, being part of a tribe, jointly attacking “outsiders” for their “crimes against nature”. It takes a lot of wisdom and courage to go against the grain and do something just because we know it’s right and not because it belongs to some lifestyle we try to emulate or to have something to lambast people and to feel self-righteous about.
At the end of the day, the work you’re doing is way more productive than all the green hatespeech combined, and for that I salute you. Keep up the good work.
On a side note, maybe the world needs more titles for everything so people can feel good about whatever they’re doing. A compost movement, a telephone courtesy movement, a civilised motorist movement, a door-open-holding-movement etc etc. Game mechanics mayhap?