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torn T-shirts, broken microwaves, outdated cell phones and disposable diapers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.
