Green Options

Dear Justin,

You make some very effective arguments! You are right to use my own posts in illustrating your thoughts.  Granted, those posts, written toward the end of the Sust Enable project, demonstrate that my original concept of Sust Enable did not pan out because its original assumptions were flawed.  Indeed, for other people to have success with living sustainably, they must be gentle, have fun, and go slow… three things that I failed to consider for myself when undertaking the “radical” experiment.

I think the strongest point you make with your last post is the importance of living in a way that honors your own health and wellbeing, not just the Earth’s.   This is something that I’ve learned to consider the hard way, through the tribulations of the Sust Enable project (during which I ran up against my own physical limits of hunger, sleeplessness, and stress).  I completely agree with that: respect for yourself, as a living being with needs, comes first in making a healthy approach toward respecting the Earth and other living systems.

However, I recognize that our level of comfort is learned–it is borrowed from the culture that surrounds us.  It is by no means an “absolute” measure of comfort or happiness.  Even our very venues for acquiring what you and I need to survive are hugely affected by the culture we were born into.  People in Third World and sometimes Second World countries live sustainably every day–and in my experience when visiting Mexico, are considerably happier than the average American.  Is this because they have struck a good balance between respecting the natural world and their own personal patterns, in ways that over-worked, over-stressed and over-consumptive Americans can only dream of?  It’s a theory.

Hi Justin,

I deeply appreciate your thoughts and your comments from “Towards a (Re)Definition of Sustainability - #1″.  I can tell that this is something you’ve been chewing on!  Me too.

I believe that changing a million lightbulbs to CFLs is absolutely NOT sustainable, because CFLs are currently (and probably will never be) manufactured sustainably, and so that option is simply unacceptable in terms of one-Earth sustainability.  It may be more “green,” but it’s only an excuse to continue exploiting the Earth and its priceless natural arrangement.  Besides, what are the benefits of using more electricity versus not putting more and more mercury into our landfills and environments due to CFLs?  I’d like to see those numbers, too.

I think I seem radical (and truly, some of what I’ve tried has been too intense for me to even handle) because I demand sustainability NOW, and reinforce that sustainability can be possible NOW.  You are correct in saying that, in terms of basic “impact,” 10 people living off the grid makes less of a global difference than 1,000 people changing lightbulbs.  But will using “green” lightbulbs–or any kind of lightbulbs at all!–ever be one-Earth sustainable?

For more on this same kind of lens/perspective, check out Derrick Jensen.  He argues that, for instance, using less gasoline doesn’t mean all the gasoline won’t get used up.  We are simply attempting feel-good tactics to remove ourselves from the guilt that comes with this awareness: that we are utterly dooming ourselves and all of life on Earth by our worldwide actions.

So what’s the trade-off there: a life that’s slightly more inconvenient (but possibly more satisfying) that allows for life on Earth and a thriving ecosystem… or one single lifetime that is convenient, comfy and luxurious, at the expense of hundreds of lifetimes to come?