Green Options

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“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.

You recycle, you drive a fuel efficient car, you buy organic food, you turn the thermostat down at night: in short, you are trying your best to make this world a better place. Your parents however still use incandescent light bulbs, still don’t recycle, and still look at you like an alien every time you suggest they trade in their giant land tank for something more sensible. If this sounds like your

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