ARGH! No wonder the Earth is going to hell in a handbasket. Here I am, an educated, well-intentioned woman with the support of my friends and family, and going green is a massive pain in the tail. Why, if I didn't have 20 hours a day to devote to it, unlimited educational resources at my disposal, and enough guilt to bring down the Vatican, why, I don't know how I'd do it.
Ok, maybe that's a bit much. Perhaps I should watch less Planet Green. Or focus on my accomplishments. Or heck, even give this blog a rest. To be fair, I am a bit of a control freak and insomniac who tends to think things to death. On one hand, that's the perfect person to lead a massive lifestyle overhaul. On the other hand, I'm totally overwhelmed this time. The gap between the average American family and the green ideal is so huge, I hardly know where to start. Worse, the more I look for guidance, the more I discover I'm not doing, and the worse I feel. One of my favorite people is moving away soon, and the only silver lining to her move is that I won't feel so guilty now that she won't be inside my evil, wasteful house anymore (my words, not hers - she's actually very non-judgmental, hence, one of my favorite people).
But I don't need her around to make me feel bad anyway. I just tried two different ecological footprint calculators and got vastly different, confusing results. One said I was a "40". 40 what? I can assure you, I ain't 40, thank you very much. The other said my household is so wasteful that our eco-footprint is 25 hectares. That's 250 acres, right? Really? Because I just watched Wa$ted, the show based on this very calculator and watched people in a 5000 sq. ft. home who took 40-minute showers and didn't recycle and their footprint was only 104 acres. I'm not strip mining an endangered animal reserve in my backyard. I don't slash and burn tires for fun. I don't wave plastic bags like prayer flags out my giant SUV windows while driving through protected wetlands. So what gives? Maybe the calculator sensed I'm on the Gulf Coast and automatically factored in the oil spill.*
I've had it with feeling guilty. I've had it with way too much information, and conflicting information at that. I'm tired of being frustrated with the limitations of not owning our home or land. There MUST be more people in the same boat as my family than on the green boat to sustainable living. Right? We can't be the only bad people left, right?
Here's my new plan, just to get me though this slough of despond. This week, I'm embracing all things green. I'm going to try, for one week, to focus on being green. I'm not always going to make the best choice, but I'm going to at least make a choice. I'm going to consider my options before acting. Maybe there are greener choices right in front of me that I'm missing, overthinking, or simply overlooking. I'm going to embrace the mountain of information and decisions, just for these few days, rather than being buried by them. At the end of the week, I don't know if I'll be more green or less, pleased or disappointed, exhausted or rejuvenated, but at least I will have dedicated myself to the Earth for a little while, and no matter what, that can't be bad.
* Actually, 25 hectares is about 61 acres, which is probably pretty accurate. However, the fact that each calculator uses it's own units and doesn't explain them just goes to demonstrate the challenges of going green.
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