Ah, New Year’s resolutions. We all make ‘em, but how often we keep ‘em is another matter entirely. I don’t really know what it is about a New Year that makes people more resolved than usual, but I suspect the prospect of a fresh start, however superficially it comes about, is attractive.
There seems to be a lot of media space given to talking about how New Year’s resolutions don’t work. And let’s face it, losing weight, spending more time with family, quitting smoking, learning advanced Russian and dropping out of the Rat race are all very well in theory but they are damn difficult to do. Most people need more than the clock ticking over from 23:59, 31/12/11 to 00:00 1/1/12 and a celebratory party to inspire them to change their lives. New Year’s resolutions will probably fail.
Which brings me to a confession. This year I made a New Year’s resolution. I can hear you now, ‘You fool! Yeah, I know. Stupid thing to do.
This year I want to be less of a drag on the earth’s already stretched resources.
‘The environment?’ you say, ‘well, that was a bit boring and predictable.’ I agree. I mean, hell, how many blogs have been written about changing lifestyles and how many times have we had it drummed into our heads that recycling is the way of the future and that making carbon emissions is a crime concomitant with murder?
But I’ve been feeling guilty about my ecological footprint for some time. I suspect that I have ecologically big feet. I mean I try, but when you have a busy life something you just do the easy thing.
One day I was chatting to a friend’s eco-warrior mother. If carbon emissions were Romans this lady would be skewering them from her chariot. Seriously. I admitted that I drive to work every day. From Grafton in Central Auckland to the North Shore. She looked at me like I’d just admitted a predilection for killing kittens. I guess in her eyes I had. But she recovered quickly. ‘But I suppose you use sustainable transport?’ Well, no. I didn’t. Don’t.
I got defensive at this point. But I worked such long hours! And if I did actually catch public transport I’d have to catch three busses to get to where I wanted to go and three to get home and frankly after a long day of hard work I just wanted to bugger off home as quickly as I could and have some wine. My challenger backed off, but the conversation left a slightly nasty aftertaste in my mouth. After all, was my own convenience more important than the glorious blue planet and the little fishes? Or was I making excuses because modern life in a developed country when you have decent employment is cushy and any threat to that is just not acceptable?
After all, in 2011 the population of Earth grew to seven billion. In 1910 it is estimated that there were only about 1.8 billion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates). How can we go on? Seven billion people and all of them eating, shitting, discarding, breathing, drinking and eternally consuming and consuming.
I know for a fact that I’m not doing everything I can do to stop humanity drowning in its own filth. I misappropriate items that could probably be recycled to the rubbish, I send food scraps to landfill – I don’t compost, I live in an uninsulated house (typical New Zealand!), I don’t always buy local products over imported, my energy consumption is more cavalier than I’d like to admit, I grow nothing of my own except a few herbs, I eat meat, have appliances that aren’t necessarily built with energy conservation in mind and I have been known to drive very short distances because of pure laziness.
To be perfectly honest, I suspect that laziness is the cause of most of my crimes.
It seems to me that, although I have quite good intentions and I try (when it’s not too hard). I’m guilty of grave irresponsibility as a curator of the Earth because I’m too bloody lazy.
And perhaps that’s the problem with everything. New Year’s resolutions for instance. If we approach sustainable living with the same attitude we approach quitting smoking because it’s the first of January and it’s something we always meant to do (i.e. good intentions, poor follow through) then I think we will probably drown in our own excretions. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. The Bulletin of Atomic scentists have just moved their doomsday clock closer to midnight.( http://uk.news.yahoo.com/doomsday-clock-moves-closer-to-midnight.html) Fun times.
So, this year, I am not going to be lazy. I’m not going to take the easy option. I’m going to go out of my damn way to go down an eco-shoe size.
Step one will be working out exactly what I do need to change -- exactly how big are these feet of mine? More on that next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment