Does the Gulf oil spill mean living green is an exercise in futility? Lately I wonder.
But let me back up a bit.
Like many people, I’m trying hard to do my part and to reduce my footprint on this earth, so that it’s habitable, viable and – dare I say it – even good for future generations, both human and non-human. I wrote yesterday about how the most difficult and expensive changes make the biggest difference, and the truth is that I can’t afford most of the big changes.
It’s much too expensive for us, but we still want very much to power our house with solar and wind or some other renewable that isn’t natural gas and isn’t coal or nuclear powered electricity. The reasonable alternative is living in an apartment where we can’t ever put up solar panels or grow much of our own food, or on the less reasonable side, perhaps living in a tent or some other temporary housing situation where we also can’t put up solar panels or grow our own food. I drive a long way to work every day. I hate that I have to do this, but the alternative to driving every day is approximately 4 hours of commuting on public transit, some of which would be unreliable at best. That’s a big problem on the occasions when I have to stay late, and I can’t always anticipate when that will occur.
I try hard to reduce my consumption and to avoid buying items produced far away in bad working conditions. In other words, I try to buy items made in the USA. It can become very expensive, and sometimes the alternative is to do without.
I have to admit, we could do better, but we score pretty well at our house on reducing waste. Oak Park allows lots of types of recycling, I’m becoming better at re-purposing items and finding reusable items, and we now compost almost all of our food waste and some of our paper waste. It’s a small victory, but I’m taking them where I can get them.
In thinking about all of this, I wonder where to draw the line between what seems to be the right choice and what is reasonable and possible. I’m angry that our choices are so difficult and limited, that we as a nation are so dependent on petroleum. I intensely dislike getting in my car to drive to work, particularly as I watch oil spewing into the Atlantic Ocean; it weighs heavily on my heart and conscience. In many ways, we all have a share of blame, but our alternatives are expensive and very difficult. Some are completely out of reach for many people, so I wonder how much blame we really deserve to shoulder. The fact is, it’s in the interest of many wealthy and powerful people to keep us dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels, to encourage us to buy cheaply made items produced in terrible working conditions in other countries, and to keep up our consumption high.
What’s the solution? Should I give up? I don’t want to give up and I believe that even if we move slowly, we can create deep and lasting change, but awareness of just how difficult it is can wear me down. I wonder, readers, how you keep up your drive to live sustainably. I would love hear any inspiring stories or ideas you have in the comments.
Until then, I try to remember that we are all in this together. I try not to cling to the hope too much, but I do hope that this spill wakes us up and that public sentiment will sour on continued oil dependence. I don’t wish for the employees of oil and gas companies to lose their livelihoods, but I hope everyone can make a transition to an energy policy that can be sustained over a period longer than a few hundred years. Don’t our future generations deserve that?
