Creating Conservation

I live in the United States, and we are a nation of consumers in a world of consumers and hopeful consumers.  As I sit in front of my laptop and look around my home, I see very few items that I actually need.  The roof is one, the water in the tap, the food in the fridge, and the electricity that made all of that possible, and makes this blog possible.  Those items are needed.  Much of the rest simply is not.  Most of my items belong to the trappings of a modern life.  A life of comfort and convenience and ridiculous excessiveness.  In case you’re wondering, I am not rich, at least by American standards, and I don’t own much that I purchased new. Compared to those in a developing world though, I am rich beyond measure and likely live by a desired standard.  And this poses a real problem.  Those in developing nations deserve to live just as well as all of their fellow humans, but if the entire world, 7 billion people, live exactly as we do in the U.S., with our rampant desire for new and better and more stuff, what of will become of our home?

Developed Nations’ consumer culture is not one to emulate.  Frankly, we are doing things terribly wrong and our Earth is suffering for it at a catastrophic rate.  Landfills grow at an enormous pace and are filled with our cast offs.  Plastic bottles, torn T-shirts, broken microwaves, outdated cell phones and disposable diapers fester among rotting food, each a testament to our obsession with convenience, our disposable income, our love affair with technology and our wasteful attitudes.  Have you ever really thought about how that stuff in the landfills and the stuff in our homes were made, and how they came to occupy our space?  The answer is that energy was needed to create them and energy was needed to transport them.  Energy is a lovely sounding word and we’re taught to almost revere it in this country.  Energy is light and heat and progress right?  Sure.  Energy is also coal and trapped miners, oil and the Gulf spill, pollution and asthma, nuclear plants and Chernobyl.  Energy can be beautiful and it can be poison.  It can bring us great medical technology and great medical harm.  Energy is all of the above and it’s important to see it clearly. 

The environmental movement and clean energy crusaders offer suggestions and solutions to mitigate the damage we’re doing to ourselves and our plant, and each person has a responsibility to act if we are to slow down our polluting, runaway train.  Recycling, buying local food, eating less meat, using public transportation, purchasing used items, volunteering for river and ocean clean ups, participating in citizen science research, planting wildlife gardens, advocating for clean energy and voting for environmentally conscious policies are so important, and can result in a real impact if we are each willing to do some of these things, even just part of the time.  Just imagine 7 billion people deciding to skip meat at meal times just 2 days a week.  Reducing that much factory farmed meat from our world plate would save tremendous amounts of water, grain and fossil fuels from being consumed and would reduce huge quantities of methane, pesticides and antibiotics from our environment.  Now that you’ve imagined that, take a minute to imagine all 7 billion of us deciding to purchase 50% less stuff next year. 

Imagine us deciding to drive our old cars for a little longer, and then buying a hybrid when we have to.  Imagine us saying no to another pair of dark skinny jeans that were made in a country half a world away.  Imagine us filling a metal bottle of water from our tap before we leave so that we won’t be tempted to stop at the convenience store for a plastic bottle of water that came from some tap in some far away city and then transported to that store.  Imagine us using that old microwave, even if it’s not plated in stainless steel, until it won’t work, and then recycling it when it doesn’t.  Imagine your home with far less junk and embracing the “less is more” attitude.  Imagine a Friday night dinner party where everyone brings a dish with items from the farmers market and swaps old stories as well as clothes and books, while relaxing in your simple, uncluttered space.  Imagine you all agreeing that “this is what life is about”.  Imagine the windows open to allow the breeze to come in and the sound of an owl hooting just beyond your yard.  Imagine your body and mind and relationships growing cleaner and clearer.  Imagine closing your eyes that night and feeling positive about the future.  Positive about your future, your children’s future, that owl’s future. 

And now that you imagined that, I ask you to imagine a Friday night dinner party in your current life.  Chances are, this image will not portray nearly such a relaxing or healthy gathering.  But you can have a life similar to that if you want one.  We, especially those of us in the most developed nations, can decide to have that lifestyle, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.  We can choose better and choose less and choose to make our planet healthier for us all.