Examples of going green statements that can easily be turned around:
- Save water! It takes gallons of water to clean that glass. – So I used paper cups. Don’t use paper cups it’s bad for the environment!
- Don’t use that dishwasher, wash by hand. It uses less electricity and less water. – But I bought the dishwasher, it was made with materials that I can’t just waste. I want to use the dishwasher because I don’t want to stand there washing dishes.
- Heating oil burns cleaner and is better than using electric heat. – Heating Oil keeps us dependent on finite resources, yet electric and natural gas are also based on finite resources.
- Get rid of that car and buy a hybrid. -Â But my car is paid for, it gets 32 mpg, and it already exists in my life. Hybrids have actually larger carbon footprints (or so I have read, I don’t know that that is the gospel truth though) and batteries have to shipped from place to place. What happens when the batteries need to be disposed of?
I am very tired of the contradictory messages. I am tired of feeling stupid. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not doing enough or anything. There no one saying, “Yes, you’re doing good, here’s more that you can do…” in any kind of hierarchy. Maybe a Eco-pyramid or Earth’s Hierarchy of Needs to help people understand that they should be doing something that makes sense.
But for all of this, the message seems to get diluted to me, to the point where I’m ready to rebel against it.
I’ve changed my light bulbs to CFs, but I hate they light they give off. I love the warmth of incandescent bulbs. I’m not going to just replace all my bulbs, that’s completely wasteful. So when my incandescent bulbs in my home burn out I will replace those with CF’s.
But seriously, I’m very tired of articles, tv segments, movies, etc. telling me I’m doing it wrong, not doing enough or not doing anything. What’s next? Green computer ram?
So I’ve just given up on this whole “green” thing.
And why green anyway? Why not blue? The oceans are blue, the sky is blue, and I think blue is a better color. Certainly better than green.
I hear ya man! I’m sick of it myself. Like you, I’ll change the bulbs when they blow out, I’m not going to spend $8 each on new bulbs when the ones I have in are still working. Throwing them away still good is wasteful.
My city trash people, changed the rules on recycling recently, they said they are no longer recycling soda boxes from 12 packs, cardboard boxes, or Styrofoam. We must put those in our trash bins now.
Isn’t that a bad thing to do? Having all that cardboard cluttering the landfills when they can be recycled?
They can be broken down and used again, save a tree! Bt nope, they want them in the trash now.
Kats last blog post..I have to switch to digital anyway.
Those CF’s are expensive. And I agree that it is wasteful to just toss them out if they are still working.
I understand. I live in the most contradictory state about it too. For example; they practically threaten to shoot you if you don’t recycle, but then they offer no recycling services, you have to drive 30 minutes out of your way to drop off your stuff at a place that does take it (what does driving 40+ miles do for the environment I wonder?) and charge you an arm and a leg to do it. Oh and we hide our trash. All the trash collection in Vermont goes to OUT OF STATE dumps. Cause, ya know, it’s their problem now! Ha!
Sheesh.
Holy hell and amen.
Stephanies last blog post..Monday Porn…hehe.
Just discovered your blog and I’m enjoying it. I am a fellow WVian from the Parkersburg area. I thought I was going to die laughing when I read your “Corn-fed deer, it looked good on paper” blog.
I hear a lot of people frustrated like you are with the green messages that “they” (who are they?) put out there. I think you hit the heart of it with the car buying message. It is much, much greener to drive your existing car into the ground (even if it’s an SUV) then to ditch it and buy a hybrid. It is all about your “footprint” on the environment. There are all kinds of conflicting messages out there. The bottom line to me is to reduce consumption of goods and when consumption is necessary, do so thoughtfully.
About the color “green” to signify the movement, Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs doesn’t like it either. He says “Brown is the new Green”. Makes sense to me, the Earth is brown, not green (even the ocean bottoms are brown).
@ Kyra – If it weren’t so expensive, I imagine we would be blasting it off into space to “hide” it.
@ Stephanie – I see that you agree.
@ Mat – I was watching dirty jobs the other night, and it must have been the same episode. He talked about how going green takes a lot work, and getting dirty of course!
Yeah, I really hate being “forced” to go green because it is the fad. I live in West Virginia, live off my own land, and am becoming more self sustaining because I want/have to by my own right. not because somebody is telling me to do it. there are a lot of things I do up on my hill because I am being frugal, and not wasteful, there are also things that I do that leave a ginormous “carbon footprint” too. i.e. heavy machinery. saw mill etc…. I ‘m not green because it is “cool”…. good post btw….
Tim Appletons last blog post..Mute Math
The thing that drives me the most nuts (most nuts? whew) is the oil issue. Everyone is whining about gas and oil prices and screaming about ethanol and hybrid cars and giving up the SUVs, but no one is talking about plastic. Have you thought about how much plastic we use on a daily basis? And plastic is a petroleum by-product. Yeah. I’m just sayin’.
Coal Miner’s Granddaughters last blog post..Summer Fun?
To quote a fairly famous radio personality from Florida, “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’, I’m just sayin’.”
I think An Inconvenient Truth was a great example of the frustrating messages we’re sent. After all of the convincing, a short credits sequence gives us five or six tips for how to live “greener.” Is it really going to make a difference? Couldn’t he have spent more of the movie telling us how to make the damage stop in practical ways?
WTF?!! You actually talk to your readers now!! Man, talk about opening up a can a worms. Anyway, I was gonna let it slide but I thought you should know some Kansas hippie is talking shit about you:
http://prairiedreams.blogspot.com/
PS – If I have to start actually talking to my comment people – I will NEVER forgive you. Cheers!
Canuckleheads last blog post..Nana Question #2
I checked it out, it didn’t seem to much like she was putting me down. Just her opinion is all.
I also red the comments…and you called me a redneck…? What is your definition of that, cause where I am from, I am so not a redneck.
The use of redneck to designate “a union member” was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania, where the word came to be specifically applied to a miner who belonged to a labor union.
The best explanation of redneck to mean “union man” is that the word refers to the red handkerchiefs that striking union coal miners in both southern West Virginia and southern Colorado often wore around their necks or arms as a part of their informal uniform.
With the origin clear ~ it’s nothing to be ashamed about 🙂
Rebeccas last blog post..If you have a Blog ~ You Need Disqus
But we all know that it is used as slang to mean something else. 🙂
I’m active in trying to protecting our environment, and the responses of you bloggers is discouraging. Each of us has a responsibility to minimize our impingement on the resources that we share in common; it does not fall to some third party however daunting its prospect. If governments are inept, get another that isn’t. The earth is well past its carrying capacity; some one third of our numbers face starvation daily. It’s a matter of basic survival.
@ Max:
Good for you in being proactive in environmental protection.
I would like to direct you to this video. It’s only 5 minutes long, and very interesting.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e-LOtKIIKcg
I cant afford those stupid compact florecent bulbs i have a limited budget and theose lights are too expensive and im not about to go vegan just becuase of a bunch of mentaly incompetent of eco-freak green weenies and besides THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING and thee co-freaks can go take a hike