Being Green

There is a fan-damn-tastic article in Sunday's New York Times magazine about living green by Michael Pollan. I haven't always agreed with every Michael Pollan has written, but this article is spot on. Sure, we could all be defeatist and hey, pass me a big Mac and the keys to a Land Rover while you're at it. But really, REALLY, we have nothing to lose by doing everything we can, even just little bits, to try and make a shitty situation a little less shitty.

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was "50 simple things you can do to save the Earth". My copy is still lurking around somewhere, dirty and dog-eared, and I've been thinking of buying a minty-fresh copy of the new edition that just came out and passing it off to some young 'un. I wish I could tell you that there are little check-marks next to every item in that ol' well-loved copy of mine, but the truth is I probably only did a quarter to half of the stuff in that book as a kid.

None of us are perfect, and if we think we have to live up to some unrealistic standard we are, it's true, doomed to fall short. But there is good in trying, and if we even save only a part of what we aim for, we will have achieved something.

I always think about that cheesy story about the sea stars. Do you all know the one? After a big storm, a guy is walking on the beach, and all these sea stars are washed up far above the high-tide mark. They're all dying, and as he's walking along he comes up on this one lone man throwing sea stars back into the ocean. So he asks him "What do you think you're doing, you can't possibly save all these, they're dying. What difference can you possibly make here?" And the guy just chucks another star into the ocean and says "I made a difference to that one."

I think about that story a lot.

It's not comfortable to make changes. I don't know how you encourage people to change, to be uncomfortable. I think everyone has to make those decisions for themselves, and I think that given the chance and the right information maybe they will. I sure hope so.