dead reckon

I’ve been an anti-environmentalist for most of my life.

This is because I respond poorly to guilt, and the green movement tends to employ guilt as its primary tactic.

If someone had said to me, “Hey, let’s reuse and recycle because it sucks less, and because it means less clutter in your damn house, and because buying things doesn’t make you happy anyway, and let’s avoid toxins because they make us sick, and let’s be kind to animals because they have big limpid eyes and pure little souls, and let’s not cut down as many trees because they help us breathe,” I probably would have hopped on the sustainability train at a much earlier age.

Instead we’ve got a lot of emotional appeals and Al Gore with his private jet of hypocrisy and carbon credits and that smarmy-ass dreadlocked clerk at Whole Foods and the personification of Mother Earth as some abused housewife that humanity at large is constantly punching in the teeth.

That shit doesn’t work. What works is seeing this:

on the beach you’re trying to enjoy after a Balinese rainstorm churns it up. 

(Here’s how the Balinese recycle: Trash washes up on beach. They take it to the top of the mountain. Trash washes downstream into ocean. Trash washes up on beach. They take it to the top of the mountain. Etc.)

What works is trying to move a 1,200 sq ft apartment by yourself, and feeling emotionally overwhelmed by the accumulated towers of STUFF AND OBJECTS AND THINGS, 90% of which you never use and just wish were out of your life.

What works is going to a landfill and being super grossed out by everything in it.

What works in hanging out in countries where they’ve never even heard of Target or Wal-Mart, and then coming back and going into a Wal-Mart, and seeing all the stuff in it, and realizing that there are hundreds of other Wal-Marts everywhere else in the country, and realizing that there are hundreds of factories (located in the countries you just visited) making the stuff that goes into the Wal-Marts, and thinking about how maybe 2% of that stuff is actually useful to humans, and then picturing the remainder of the stuff getting dumped into the landfill you visited.

So I guess that, since I hated every one of those experiences, I’m an environmentalist now.

But I’ve grown to hate the symbiosis between the corporate world and the green movement even more than I hate the excessive production. Sustainability does not mean consuming more stuff that is environmentally-friendly. Sustainability means consuming LESS.

If you buy a brand-new hybrid car, that’s fine, but don’t pretend you’re doing anyone a favor. (I’m looking at you, driver of the green Prius I saw on the West Seattle bridge, custom vanity plate “FORGAIA”.) If you build a beautiful brand-new house that’s LEED-certified, more power to you, but Mother Earth is still sobbing into her apron while the roast burns.

Once, when staying at the house of an extremely eco-minded couple, I saw about 12 different bottles of all-natural shampoo and grooming products in their shower. I think my $1.29 bottle of two-in-one bottom-shelf kids’ shampoo might be less of a blight on the face of the planet.

My point is: I DO think we should be kind to the earth and its plants and animals, but we must do so for selfish reasons, and we must be critical, and we must only do the stuff that works, and we also mustn’t worry about this stuff so much that it interferes with our enjoyment of life.

In my experience, natural deodorant is not stuff that works. So bring on the plastic packaging and the cancer, because I don’t want to live life without friends.

Nor will I make my own toothpaste. Can’t be bothered.

I bought some bamboo flooring for the Airstream because it was affordable and reasonably sustainable. I didn’t use salvaged flooring because I can’t be bothered, and because it costs five times as much, despite being old and used. “Sustainable” options that are only for rich people are not actually sustainable.

I didn’t buy the formaldehyde-free bamboo flooring, because it was more expensive, and because non-formaldehyde glues are not toxic when dry, but are highly toxic in their liquid state. That means they’re far more dangerous to the workers exposed to them. So they don’t have formaldehyde, but they do have bad karma.

And I’m not using this zero-VOC Mythic paint in my Airstream because it’s better for the earth. I’m using it because the graphic design is just too CHARMING, because it’s actually damn good paint, and because if I’m going to live in a 200 square foot space for the next year or whatever, I don’t want to get paint-poisoned in my sleep.

The aluminum in my deodorant, the triclosan in my toothpaste, and the formaldehyde in my bamboo floor will take care of that, thanks.