Mordant Belle

Being “green”, environmentalism, and sustainability are all the rage these days, and I find it extremely annoying because of the blatant hypocrisy of it. It’s shameless.

It’s people standing around talking about changing their light bulbs or buying water bottles that use 30% less plastic or “organic” cotton shirts or using one of those crappy woven bags instead of the grocery store plastic ones.

When we’re still buying MILLIONS of dollars of water bottles in the first place. When instead of printing your “environmentally friendly” design on a brand new shirt, you could be buying old ones from the Salvation Army or Goodwill. When we drive instead of walk or bike, when we eat beyond our need and produce GALLONS of trash in one day and everything we do is just CONSUMING this planet. We are eating it alive, and we say we’re being helpful by changing our lightbulbs?!?!? Bulbs which we STILL don’t turn off when we leave the room?

Being green and sustainable and environmentally friendly is NOT about the collection of small details that do little to alter your overall lifestyle. That is the exact OPPOSITE of the point. In order to reverse the massive damage we’re doing, we have to completely uproot most of our current policies and practices, from state and federal laws to the way we run our businesses to the way we consume as individuals and families.

We’re talking reducing the number of cars on the road by 2/3rds at minimum. We’re talking forced electricity rations, walking/biking everywhere, reducing the amount of food we eat by half if not more, changing the packaging our food comes in so we don’t produce so much garbage, massively overhauling shipping so we don’t use so much fuel, and using things secondhand until they literally FALL APART. We’re talking BUYING LESS SHIT. Less of EVERYTHING. (This, THIS is the key: buying less less less of everything. It’s something none of us — including me — seems willing or able to do.) And America, land of instant self-gratification, the land of bloated overconsumption of everything from food to energy, is guilty of 25% of the harm done to this planet at least.

We are like millions of bug floating in the ocean on a piece of bread, and we just keep gnawing at it, and reproducing to make more mouths to gnaw at it, blissfully and willfully ignoring that it is the only thing keeping us afloat.

Is it possible to reverse the harm we’ve done? I think we could. Is it probable? I doubt it. We are too engorged with wealth, too used to living awash in plentiful resources ripped from so-called third world countries, too far removed from those countries and portions of society where frugality is not only a virtue but a necessity. And many of those portions of society are seeking to emulate the most overindulgent, because it seems so satisfying.

It’s not.

Who, among us, is satisfied? REALLY? Individually, collectively, and even scientifically speaking, only a fraction of us are really happy. When you search the depths of your soul, when you see what our economic policy and capitalist system has done to the only world we have — who among us has a clear conscience?

None. Me least of all, because I should know better.

I live in hope, but I also live in doubt. It is a strange, conflicting inner world, much like the outer one. I am not immune from hypocrisy myself; I, too, get distracted by the pretty designs, the colorful drinks, the promises of an easy answer and not a lot of bother.

But I know in my heart that’s not the way it works. How we can fix it, I don’t know. But the first step is destroying the illusion.

In the spirit of Tax Day, where everyone begins to wonder where all their money goes…watch an introduction to a simple but excellent 20-minute movie on the sources and solutions to consumption and sustainability: The Story of Stuff!

It’s smart, funny, and informed; Annie clearly knows her stuff. [Horrible pun horribly intended. Ha!] I love it when smart women give us such smart material; we hear too much bullshit from overblown PR spokespeople. She explains both simply and intelligently (how many people successfully pull THAT off???) the historical, political, economic, and biological facts about consumption, as well as providing solutions to help keep us from…you know…sucking the life out of our planet.

Watch!

For me, at least, this is just an excellent explanation of everything that is so fucked up with capitalist/corporate America today. It is the first, but certainly not the last, in the “Dumb USA” category, reserved specifically for examples of uniquely American stupidity, self-centeredness, and greed.

You can view the whole movie and download it for free from storyofstuff.com, as well as see her blog, source material, and other resources.

Thanks to the amazingly hilarious blog, Stuff White People Like, for the lead to this most excellent video.