Figure 1: "Thank god I didn't bother to recycle that dumb old plastic water bottle! Think of all the time that would have taken me away from my main pursuit of concocting sustainable methods of being the hippest navel-gazer on the planet...!"
It's Wednesday and I'm feeling bitter as hell. Perhaps it's the fact that we overslept and missed preschool. Perhaps it's the lovely gray bullshit atmospheric aura that seems to hang around like a freeloading relative sleeping on your couch. Perhaps it's because my blog is little, bitchy and fierce, all adjectives stemming from its intrinsic lack of cash-making and scene-stealing.
So, awash in all this dismality, I birth my irritation with a blog/book/phenom The Lazy Environmentalist.
I had heard tell of this book first from some green blogs, Treehugger, probably, and my first thought was, Great. No matter that so much environmental degradation has come from our lust for convenience and easiness. Let's just promote the idea that changing our habits for the greater good is yucky and hard and subscribe to the idea that we can fix things by buying some carbon credits or a sweater made by Tibetan monks from repurposed silk or, Cod forbid, by blogging.
There's something elitist about the New Green that bugs the hell out of me. The insistence on having life exactly the same way, with the same conveniences and luxuries (which are truly the same thing in some instances) by just slapping some no-VOC paint on it and calling it Green, Sustainable, Eco-conscious, making it instantly Good. If you've got enough money and style, you need not fuss your pretty little head about such mundanities, like basic materials recycling. To quote Lazy Environmentalist founder Josh Dorfman,
"I won’t always place my empty water bottles in the recycling bin. Why? Because, frankly, it’s a pain and there’s nothing fun about it."
In other words, let's do this green, earth-saving thing, but only as long as it's sexy and scintillating.
What's that, you say? It's made by Prada and a Swedish design team? Fabulous. I'll take three. And hook me up with some carbon credits, while you're at it, Jeeves.
"No guilt trips," promises Dorman. "Never any sacrifice."
Yeah. Because Maude knows that's what got us into this enormous ecological mess -all that sacrifice.
As demonstrated by many a mother, guilt is terrifically powerful and if it makes you recycle or use fewer resources, then I'm all for it. I'm afraid the environmental situation requires folks to get past their personal feelings and buck the fuck up. Toss your goddamned plastic water bottle (!) in the recycling, even if it doesn't happen to have a joystick that tickles your dick attached to it, and realize that nobody is blaming you for the situation of global warming. It's been a long time coming, so the blame is rather diffused, anyway.
Unfortunately, you are living in what the Chinese cliche lovers would call "interesting times." So it's up to you to become a better planetary citizen - too bad, so sad!
Sorry, but you don't get to stay in a state of perpetual infancy anymore, even if it isn't your fault. Thus, a bit of sacrifice, a loss of convenience and a decided lack of fun. Suck it up, First World Cry-Babies. Because there's a whole lot more to unlearn.
So chalk up my crotchety finger-wagging to the fact that, unlike some of my hip and sexy counterparts, I don't have a line of stylish sustainably-sourced furniture, a satellite radio talk show, a book deal, or even an income-generating blog. But know this. On the occasions that I deign to buy plastic, at least yours truly endeavors to summon every last bit of her human courage and triumphantly manages to toss it in the right disposal bin.
Photo: Idle Moments by M.B. Parkinson, New York, 1896. LC-USZ62-83777
