Green Options

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After being fairly fearful as a child, I am happy to say that not much genuinely scares me nowadays. The list of things that make me want to hide under the covers at night is quite short: clowns, Teletubbies, Pee Wee Herman, SPAM (the kind in the can), Disco. Overall, then, I am a pretty happy and peaceful fellow–though like all humans I still have my moments of nervousness and anxiety.

Nevertheless, I have often experienced periods of serious dread and despair when it comes to the environment. Even when my green aura does not develop streaks of black, I frequently sense an underlying fear about the future state of the Earth and my life upon it. Sometimes, a specific cause will precipitate these fits of fear. Perhaps some scientific study or news report will declare some more grim data and dire predictions–the International Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, for example, or another attempt to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Perhaps a book or magazine article I read will draw my attention to the poor state of affairs and the bleak outlook they seem to foreshadow–Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 or Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees come to mind. At other times, though, there will be no direct cause that I can point to…the fear just sits there gnawing at away my innards.

Earth Day 2007 was a particularly rough time for me. As the holiday approached, usually a joyous one for me, it seemed that all my usual natural delights caused sharp pangs of grief and concern instead. All I could feel was a sense of their fragility and impending destruction. Then, when the Virginia Tech shootings occurred, I nearly broke down and lost all hope in anything.

I wanted to write about these sorts of experiences because I think many other environmentalists, and even folks who simply care about some patch of Earth or appreciate a good sunset, likely have experienced similar moments of fear, despair, and hopelessness. This seems almost inevitable, since there is so much bad news coming at us left and right, with terrible predictions about food shortages and natural disasters and species loss, and with the period for reversing the downward spiral apparently getting shorter. Speaking for myself, I cannot help but be afraid when I think of what my own life will be like in the world to come, what unknown struggles and sacrifices I will be forced to suffer through.

So I am hoping here to open up a discussion about ways for coping with these Dark Nights of the Green. I have found a few things that seem to work pretty well, and I know other folks have similar approaches to loosening that knot of terror that often develops deep within your gut.

The “decider” has decided to screw each and every person with pulmonary disease with what appears to be a “who cares” attitude.  The headline above, taken from an American Lung Association news release, tells it all.  As a matter of fact, for the boomers coming on board who haven’t yet, or are just beginning to feel the effects of lung disease, you should be furious.

If this provision never becomes law, then those of you who may someday become victims of lung disease, will have to do without rehab when you reach Medicare age.

Congress overwhelmingly approved the Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation Act, which, among other things, would make life easier for Americans who suffer from lung disease.  This, you say, may not tie into environmentalism, but think again; coal smoke, smoking, second-hand smoke, pollutants in the air, all add to lung disease, and heaven knows we’ve had a century of air pollution pouring into our lungs.  It isn’t over yet.

Most railroads have shown a reluctance to use a biodiesel blend in their locomotives, but the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad has decided to test the concept this summer.

The first biodiesel blend train pulled out of Creston last week, hauling 52 cars of wheat and 500 gallons of biodiesel in the locomotives saddlebag tanks.  Officials are using a 25 percent blend of biodiesel in the tests.

The fuel is made by Columbia Bioenergy, located in Creston, which uses canola oil, restaurant grease, soy and other crops as feedstock.

Step Right Up And Be Amazed

It struck me today that our fearless leaders, would-be’s, and corporate giants seem to think we’re all a bunch of rubes gathered outside a carnival sideshow, leaning on the barker’s every word.

Urging Congress to lift its ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, our fearless leader, you know, President Bush, told lawmakers, “There is no excuse for delay“.

It got worse, “Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response.”  Gimme a break.

My first post on green walking provided some hopefully handy tips for you to go walkabout, to get out in nature and do some green walking. In the age where any travel that is not sustainable is terribly costly in many, many ways, it is more imperative than ever for each of us to become a peripatetic.

But here is the good news: Green walking is not just “nature walking” per se, not just walkabout. Green walking is also ideal for city travel…helping cut down on many kinds of pollution, smog that obscures the lovely natural views everywhere, travel expenses, resource consumption, and driver rage, just to name a few things.

In order to facilitate your transition from commuter to sustainable commuter, from walker to green walker, I offer here a few more tips on green walking in a city environment…on going urban walkabout.

1. Like walkabouts in nature, urban walkabouts should be as sensual as possible. Although some urban settings have been deliberately “greened up” with strategic flowerbeds, parks, and eco-friendly architecture, many cities are truly urban jungles–forests of concrete. But even here you can listen to the cooing of pigeons or find some green things struggling for life in the cracks of sidewalks. And there are often flower shops, produce stands, and pets to be encountered. So enjoy these instances of nature-here-and-now whenever you can. Of course, the sun is almost always shining–or if not, then rain is falling or wind is blowing–so you still can likely get some sensual stimulation on your urban walkabout if you pay attention.

“Love has no bounds” is an old cliché. Everyone loves “love”–from Valentine’s Day paraphernalia to sappy greeting cards. And environmentalists say they love nature, love the Earth, love a place or animal.

Obviously, nature is often “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson puts it.1 However, nature also has its soft-and-fuzzy side, which provides a wonderful lesson and model for how humans in general and environmentalists in particular can relate to nature. A particularly splendid example of this is animals “adopting” other animals.

I have been watching a pair of cardinals parenting a baby cowbird at my bird feeders recently. Cowbirds (like other birds, such as the cuckoo) will lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and let the foster parents do the dirty work–changing dirty diapers, wiping runny noses, feeding at all hours of the night and day. And so along with the little baby cardinals flapping flopping and squawking like mad, this little cowbird is right there with the rest getting dutifully fed by the cardinals. I am sure all pet owners can recount endless tales of cats adopting dogs, dogs adopting cats, and so on.

In my previous posts on sacred places, I have claimed that:
1) Sacred places in our past are crucial for making us appreciate nature and formulate an ecological consciousness. So they are crucial for environmentalism.
2) Sacred places are readily available in our present lives, not isolated to extreme or remote locations. So if we want to save the wilderness/wildness in nature and the wildness in people, then we have to recognize and sanctify the nature in our lives and the nature in ourselves.

Now (for the sake of time), I would like to say a bit about sacred places future.

How can we ensure that our children and those beyond have places that they can hold sacred? Obviously, on a general level we have to continue (increase!) efforts to preserve species, habitats, resources, and overall biological diversity. That goes without saying. I want focus here on how we can ensure that our children will be sensitive to nature–that every future generation can be a Generation W (Wild) filled with lots and lots of little green men and women.

Even as we fall more and more under the tyranny of technology, even as we enter a “brave new world” that is more like the one Huxley envisioned than Shakespeare, there are many possible sacred places for future children. But I think some of the most will be green homes, green schools, and green screens.

No, my title is not a pickup line overheard at a recent Earth Day festival (though it bloody well could be!).

Instead, what I refer to here is how the environmental movement is far from homogenous if one truly looks at the diversity of individual motives and methods for going green. The green movement is a patchwork quilt, each patch distinct and yet firmly sewn to those around it, all of them sewn together into one single, strong fabric. E Pluribus Unum.

And I think this diversity is a good thing overall. If environmentalism followed a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all paradigm, then I doubt it would ever have been or continue to be a vibrant, viable reality in our lives. More importantly, this diversity allows more and more individuals to practice sustainable living and so reduce humanity’s footprint on the fragile soil of our Earth. In the end, then, every shade of green may be a good one.1

But that statement begs the question: What’s Your Green?

In order to help you answer that very tricky question, I have compiled a list, in no particular order, of some of the many shades of green visible in the world today:

* Single Green Fe/Male: This shade includes any environmentalist actively seeking a significant other. These folks see all Earth Day festivals, rallies, and so forth as opportunities to schmooze and scope for hotties.

* Greenalicious: Any desirable or eye-catching person, place, or thing related to the environment or environmentalism. A frequent term used by the SGFs and SGMs.

* Spring Greening: These people seem to follow the seasons physically and emotionally. They like only spring and summer, when things are warm, alive, and growing. If you have Seasonal Affective Disorder, then you fall in this shade.

* Ooey Gooey Green: All the folks who turn into poets, philosophers, and purveyors of grand clichés whenever they see something “beautiful” (meaning just about everything) in nature.

* Virtually Green: These environmentalists spend nearly all their time online and/or otherwise partaking of nature via technology.

* Greed Green: Largely but not exclusively the shade for corporations, this variety goes green only because it brings in plenty of green. One example, and there are many, is this statement from the spokesperson of a very prominent organic produce company: “I’m not necessarily a fan of organic. … Whether we stay with organic for the long haul depends on profitability.”2 Although purists will surely bristle at all signs of this shade, I am not as quick to condemn a business or person for going green only to make a profit. Certainly I would prefer a pure heart in everything, but when companies go green in any way, even if their motives are mixed, they expand the availability of environmentally friendly products, make more people aware of environmentalism and so able to take part, and so in the end help to make a positive impact.

*Greenback: Here you find all the über-rich environmentalists–those folks with eco-friendly mansions, state-sized estates donated as easements and treated as wildlife/habitat preserves, fleets of hybrids, etc. Although Greenback does not necessarily start from a base of Greed Green, it sometimes may.

Stop Missing the Trees for the Forest!

In an earlier post, I discussed sacred places in our past and “sensory flashbacks”–how our physical senses can open up a wormhole in time and space to take us (mentally speaking) to the places in our past that we cherish. I would like to focus here on the sacred places in our present lives–that is, to discuss the dire need for recognizing the sanctity of our surroundings and why these sacred places (recognized or not) are so crucial.

Anyone who cares enough about nature to become a card-carrying, tree-hugging, thump-stumping “environmentalist”–or even to bother going green at all nowadays–surely recognizes that nature has special sacred places. Places that somehow touch the heart and stir the spirit. Places that somehow capture and convey just what it means to be alive on Earth. Yes so many people recognize that, as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, “There lives the deepest freshness deep down things.”1

When people think of “sacred places” in nature, though, I fear they most often think that these are also “wild places” exclusively. They believe that nature’s true majesty is found in the places where the human footprints are well buried beneath leaves or worn away by the winds of time. And, they believe, nature is found in the places where it is at its most “extreme,” most overwhelming, and most picturesque, where the sights and sounds and smells and schizophrenia of city life seem like a nightmare vision of some distant planet.

Mark Powell over at blogfish has written a characteristically thoughtful post on the need for getting and appreciating the “wilderness experience.” What he says is really great, especially since he emphasizes that we need “to save the wildness in people” in addition to the wildness in wilderness.

Like surely all environmentalists, I believe that we need to continue protecting the most inspiring, intimidating, and “wild” places in nature. Of course!

But we also need to focus just as much, if not more, on those sacred places whose “wildness” or “naturalness” is not prominent, pristine, or necessarily imperiled. We need to recognize and cherish, to sanctify, all those sacred places in our present lives where nature sneaks in and infuses in us the wild woolly wonder of Nature.

We need to sanctify not only the “extreme” wilderness experiences but also the “boring” nature experiences.”

Today, Americans remember the many men and women who have died as part of their service to our country in the military. With fireworks and barbecues, memorial services and quiet reflection, we pause from the normal weekly grind to honor those who helped give us all that we cherish today.

In this period of remembrance, I also think that environmentalists can and should pause to reflect upon why it is they love, fight for, and, yes, fear for nature in all its many manifestations. Why, that is, they even bother to get active for, to serve the Earth.

Let me begin by asking a question: Has anyone ever saved your life?

Yes or no, I am sure you can imagine how grateful you would feel towards the person, as well as how much you would want to repay that great deed by helping ensure his or her welfare.

Well, nature literally saved my life. It was during a time of very deep depression, when health problems (physical and mental/emotional) exacerbated serious discontent with my academic work and with life in general, that I was saved by nature. Sparing you details, I can at least say that “saved my life” is no exaggeration. For I often felt like Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost: “And in the lowest deep a lower deep / Still threatening to devour me opens wide, / To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.”1

Has some sight, some sound, some smell, some taste, some feeling out in nature ever literally stopped time and sent you back in time? Has something purely sensual in the natural world opened up a wormhole and transported you through space to someplace else?

I am sure that many of you reading this have had some physical-mental “sensory flashback,” as I am calling it, through the time machine of your sensual body. And although there are many reasons why environmentalists go green, I think that these sorts of experiences play a crucial role in making us sensitive to the wonders–and the fragility–of the Earth.

French novelist Marcel Proust gives a superb account of this very phenomenon in the opening “overture” to his grand encyclopedia of sensuality A la recherché du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-27). After eating a bit of a small cake, called a “petit madeleine,” dipped in lime-blossom tea, Proust’s narrator has a profound sensory flashback that launches the novel itself:

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory–this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal.