I’d been thinking for some time of blogging about how environmentally irresponsible I feel about the fact that I hate sharing the road with cyclists. But then, as I kept hearing in recent days that the United States has 2% of the world’s population but consumes 20% of its energy, I decided to expand my focus to my overall suckage when it comes to being a good son to Mother Earth.
As it happened, I started shaping this blog post in my mind when I was out running this morning. Afterward, I sat down to read the newspaper, and three stories popped out at me. One was headlined “Gallon By Gallon, the Frustration Builds.” It was about high gasoline prices and America’s huge dependence on oil. The second headline read “Younger Generation Shows Less Concern for the Environment” and spotlighted poll results that suggest kids today are less interested in saving the planet than they are in buying the latest iPad. The third story was about how voters in India are backing candidates who promise economic growth. That speaks to the unprecedented worldwide expansion of the middle class that’s great for those escaping poverty but further strains existing energy supplies.
The gas-prices story quoted angry drivers who insisted they need big, gas-guzzling vehicles to haul lumber or feel safe in event of a crash. There was a time when those statements would’ve made me feel pretty superior, seeing as how I drive a compact car and all. I would’ve silently (or perhaps vocally, depending on where I was at the time) shouted at the newspaper, “Stop hauling lumber, you tree killer!” (never mind my own newspaper addiction) and “You’re probably causing accidents because you think you own the road, you Humvee-driving asshole!” Given my recent ruminations on my own culpability, though, as I read the piece I couldn’t help but note that an all-wheel drive Subaru sedan isn’t exactly a hybrid or a Smart Car, mileage-wise. Nor could I fail to acknowledge that I rarely take public transportation anywhere, or that hopping on a bike isn’t even an option as far as I’m concerned. (More on that in the next paragraph.)
I mean, I have my reasons, as we all do. Lynn and I test-drove a Prius, but we didn’t like it, and we felt the Subaru would handle better in snow. (Which is sort or ironic, in that soon there will be no snow due to human-caused global warming.) The subway takes too long, doesn’t go everywhere I want go, and is pretty pricey, to boot. Bikes on the roads are safety hazards, and anyway, every single cyclist in the United States—no, I am not generalizing!—is a smug prick, decked out in a stupid, advertising-littered costume, whose society I’m loath to join.
(Forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before, because I sort of have déjà vu about it. My favorite Pearls Before Swine comic strip goes like this: In the first panel Pig says, “Hey Rat. I hope you don’t mind, but I invited my friend Jeff over. He’s a cyclist.” Rat responds, “A cyclist? Dude, I don’t know what it is about cyclists, but every one I’ve ever met has always been so self-righteous.” In the second panel, Jeff appears, his arms raised messianically. “I am fit! I am great! Share the road!” he shouts. Then, in the final panel, Jeff points judgmentally at Rat and says, “You are fat. You are lazy. Share the road.” Rat looks at Pig and concedes, “Well, he’s humbler than I expected.”)
Anyway, moving on. The second article from this morning’s paper cited survey results published online this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Despite having grown up in an age of climate-change awareness and “reduce, reuse, recycle” messages, fewer high school and college-aged youths now, compared with their peers in other recent generations, seem to be taking environmentalism to heart. They are less interested in public activism or even in conserving energy at home, according to the survey results.
This piece, too, was sort of in my wheelhouse, because my old-fart stereotype of “kids today” is pretty much that everyone under 30, or maybe even 40, is too busy joining a flash mob or texting in ungrammatical shorthand to bother checking the thermostat or writing his or her congressperson to vote against making the North Pole ExxonMobil’s new headquarters. (Of course, in my mind, that’s an e-mail no young adult today could write, anyway, because they are illiterate. Oh, and that earlier crack about the iPad? That was just me piling on. The article made no mention whatsoever of technology use or social networking.)
But, you see, the thing there is, I’ve got to admit that I’m no great shakes, either. My two biggest contributions to responsible energy use, as I see it, are that I don’t live in a big house and that I’m a vegetarian. I therefore am not wasting energy electrifying a McMansion, nor am I directly contributing to all the environmental horrors of meat-based farming—which range from rain-forest destruction for grazing land to the ozone-destroying methane the farm animals emit. Those two things aren’t nothing—I wish everybody would seek right-sized housing, and that no one would eat meat, for both environmental and animal welfare reasons. But they don’t exactly make me Captain Green, either.
Take house size. While our place is suitably cozy for two humans, a cat and a dog, it isn’t as if I scrimp on the heat in winter or the air conditioning in summer. In cold weather, Lynn tells me to put a sweater on if I’m chilly in the house. I reflexively answer, “I don’t see why I need to wear a sweater in my own home.” Then I shudder as I realize I’m attitudinally channeling those McMansion owners, toasty-warm in their palaces. In the summer, I often have a fan directly on me, above and beyond the AC. The feel of the breeze and the whir of the blades cool and calm me. But they’re not doing the globe any favors, obviously.
Diet-wise, I know I’d do better by the planet and the animals by going vegan. I’m still, after all, supporting Big Agriculture by consuming dairy products, and I’m contributing to animal suffering. While this is oversimplifying things slightly, my justification for staying vegetarian is mostly that life’s hard enough without my purposely reducing my options on the typical restaurant menu from Very Few Choices to Bread and Lettuce. All of which is pretty absurd, because, for one thing, my life, relatively speaking, is pretty damn easy. And for another thing, these days I’m more often in vegan-friendly restaurants—with my vegan wife and our vegan friends—than I am in mainstream joints whose menus are heavy on slain livestock. But man, do I not want to give up that melted-cheese sandwich option, or eschew skim milk for my coffee.
In terms of activism, I give money to environmental causes and the politicians who support them. That’s what I do. I contribute a little too much money for our budget, actually. I need to cut back. But wouldn’t I be doing more good, anyway, by knocking on doors, making phone calls, lofting signs and possibly getting arrested at protests? None of that is happening. I’m not a joiner. I’m not comfortable in those roles. Given my lifestyle, I’d probably feel like a bit of a hypocrite, as well. I mean, I’d probably come home sweaty from a protest and turn the fan on high when it already was comfortable in the house thanks to the AC.
I don’t even tend to sign online petitions. “Privacy concerns,” I tell myself. Or, “It won’t do any good.” But there’s this, too: I prefer to research an issue before I'll sign anything. I very rarely feel like taking the time to do that.
This all leads back to what I conceded at the outset: I’m a sorry-ass environmentalist. Why I feel compelled to point this out in a somewhat public forum, I’m not quite sure. Especially since I’m not coupling this admission with a pledge of sweeping change. I do basic things like recycling our bottles and newspapers, and I’ll keep doing that. Maybe I’ll try to use the AC in the car and the fan at home a little less this summer. It wouldn’t kill me to do the homework and perhaps sign some worthy environmental petitions. I’ve stopped ordering eggs at breakfast places, and maybe I can build on that. I will continue to nonviolently coexist with cyclists; that’s the best I can offer there.
If you’re looking for a moral to this post, maybe it’s this: Never mind ruminating over the 99%-1% divide, as presented and popularized by the Occupy movement. A better question might be what role you play in the 2% that’s responsible for the 20%. You probably think you’re a pretty upstanding steward of the planet, and maybe you are. I used to think I was, before I started really looking at the story behind my story. If it’s within your will and power to do better than I'm doing, go for it.
But if you start commuting to work on a bicycle, don’t expect me to like it.
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