Are Your Family and Friends Doing Much for the Environment?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I read about Americans, both young and old, doing really real neat things to improve their corner of the world. They’re cleaning trash from streams, driving smaller cars, living in downsized homes, converting to solar, reducing lawn herbicides, keeping colder/warmer homes, conserving water, composting, recycling, the whole green enchilada. Perhaps some of these measures are co-driven by finances, but still … They’re doing meaningful things and are responsible caretakers.

When I look at my extended family, it’s totally different. Jetting here and there for vacations or get-away weekends is commonplace. So is piling into gas-guzzlers to see one of dozens of distant friends. They will crisscross large cities just to shop at special sale and take long, 8- to 10-hour car trips in huge SUVs to visit distant family, beaches, vacation homes, etc – and I’m talking lots and lots of these trips. Skiing in Banff or Park City? Hey, let’s go! Looking back, I do not recall a single conversation we have ever had about our embattled environment and our responsibility as stewards. There may be growing concerns nationally over fossil fuels, but not in my family. It’s never, ever mentioned. It’s for someone else to worry about and sacrifice for.

Same story with my clients, who are wealthy. They jet, boat, travel, consume, etc. at prodigious rates and seemingly care not a wit about their impact on the environment. Burning up hundreds and hundreds of gallons of diesel on a yacht or fishing boat is commonplace. So is traveling by private jet – even to go to a party or watch a football game just 150 miles away. I can’t imagine any of them ever sacrificing or cutting back for “the common good.” They would scoff at the idea. Sacrificing even a little for others is simply not in their DNA. I’ve seen some running a huge complex of lawn sprinklers during bans on watering of gardens. There is no sense of a common cause as Americans. Of course, our leaders in Washington DC never, ever ask us to sacrifice.

Perhaps this is the norm. Perhaps the green folks profiled in news stories are exceptions. Compared to the behaviors discussed above, my consumption levels are well below the norm. I care and do what I can to make my corner of the world cleaner and greener, though I don’t have solar panels on my roof or (totally) abstain from eating beef. I have cut back on lawn fertilizer, stopped watering the lawn, wash my car very rarely, and now drive a smaller car. When the electric grid is burdened by overuse during weather extremes, I reduce my usage. I keep a cool house in winter. I am concerned about the world our grandchildren will inherit. Perhaps people feel there isn’t anything they can do to help improve the environment, other than to recycle their trash, so why even talk about it? Perhaps the idea of an environmental esprit de corps is naive. Meanwhile, I imagine people in Europe have a much more enlightened mindset.

My username is Caribbean Cruiser. The last time I’ve taken a cruise is five or six years ago. Still, feel free to roast me! :wink:

Comments? Your experience?

2

The wealthy pollute faaar more than the rest of us:

I promised myself if I ever won one of those billion dollar lotteries I’d buy carbon credits (or do something like plant trees or something else) to offset my new, jet setting lifestyle.

I’d think that is the least those billionaires can do. It’s shit like the article below that blows my mind (the second jet was empty except for the pilots…it was just a spare).

For my much more humble part I accept I will have an impact on the planet. It is unavoidable. I do have low-flow toilets and efficient appliances and heat/AC but their impact is still there and I am not willing to live without them. I still travel for fun but not often (maybe once per year) and I am not willing to give that up either. I have a car but use it sparingly and more often take mass transit (which is very easy where I live).

3

I’d say yes. Yes my family is doing much for the environment. But probably not enough.

When I hear of planting trees in exchange for carbon credits it makes me wonder if there was a forest denuded and extirpated somewhere in exchange for a new factory or housing development and the newly planted trees are for a monoculture tree plantation.

Like wetland mitigation seems sketchy. Destroy a functioning wetland for progress and recreate a “ wetland” somewhere else without the same function and habitat.

I really don’t understand the carbon credit market. Someone is making moolah at the expense of the environment.

4

We’re recycling and our city collects for composting, so our trash bin rarely even gets half full now. We drive modest cars with good mileage and keep them maintained. Our utility leverages green energy. We dont do many trips by airplane. I pick up trash I see and once in a while go out specifically to collect trash from hard to reach spots. We avoid single-use plastics. We’re doing our best and always look for more we can do - the job will never be done. Most of our friends are also doing various combinations of things that are available to them as well. I guess your perception much depends on where you live, what resources are available, and who you associate with.

5

We recycle, use city composting, donate whatever someone will take, separate items that can be diverted from the waste stream to be recycled or disposed of more efficiently at the collection point, installed low-flush toilets, try not to buy plastic-wrapped food, walk when feasible, combine errands, and pay a carbon offset for longer trips. We heat or cool the house to a minimum and adjust the room/s we’re currently using. We turn off lights when we leave a room. Until recently, we grew a lot of our summer produce; we’re revamping the yard over the next year with raised beds to make it less arduous and will expect a good yield even though the garden will be smaller. We’re having a contemporary, efficient HVAC replacement within a few weeks. Even though it rains a lot here, we’re careful with water. We try to shop at stores and use services that describe their ecological/environmental practices. We drive small, efficient cars and will go down to one car when one of these gives up the ghost. I don’t imagine this makes a big difference, but we feel obliged to do our part and we’re not alone in this.

6

Carbon credits are almost complete bullshit, and particularly those sold on the cheap to ‘offset’ emissions which are largely predicated on planting trees and other remediation acts of questionable negative carbon impact (in a useful timeframe if at all) are a complete scam, and by participating in it you are just helping to validate it in the eyes of the public.

In general, all of the things you do personally to mitigate your own ecological footprint are a rounding error in total impact, not only because the sum total of everything you do will be negated by some wealthy person flying on a private aircraft or some jackass ‘rolling coal’ down the highway, but because even the bare minimum of personal and household consumption in the context of modern industrial society produces waste and contamination that is enormously overwhelming the ability of natural ecosystems to rehabilitate or adapt. And even if we could adjust consumption on a societal level among ‘developed’ nations, the aspirations of developing nations to attain a comparable standard of living would more than compensate for reductions. Right now there are about 1.5 billion people who are responsible for the vast bulk of pollution, waste, and anthropogenic greenhouse gas production; even a modest reduction of per capita emissions would be offset by increases in the number of people reaching toward what a developed nation would consider to be lower socioeconomic class, even as the population in most developed countries enters significant decline in the coming decades.

This is not to say that you should not take efforts to reduce your footprint and curb conspicuous consumption; if it makes you feel good that you are making some contribution then that is a personal benefit, and it is an example to others that if spread broadly enough might actually inspire societal and regulatory changes that effect more than just ‘greenwashing’-scale efforts by the major sources of pollution, albeit too little and much too late. It will certainly help to prepare you—if inadequately—for the coming contraction of globalized consumer product production and inexplicably cheap travel. And doing things to reduce pollution and remediate your local environment is an obvious benefit. But in terms of impact upon the climate or global pollution it is essentially meaningless. That the recent COP28 Climate Change Conference was utterly hijacked by petroleum interests which sidelined any meaningful discussion about a drawdown of hydrocarbon energy and made token concessions to provide aid to developing nations facing near term climate catastrophe, even while revelations of just how quickly heating is impacting the cryosphere and oceans are becoming apparent in research, shows that individual contributions and scientific knowledge are no match for quarterly profits and petrostates determined to hang onto their only industries for as long as possible even if it makes their geographic location uninhabitable within in a generation or two.

Do what you wish ‘for the environment’ because it feeds your own soul, and because you wish to be (or appear) virtuous, but recognize that none of this is going to ‘save the planet’. Ultimately, the planet and the ecosphere will be just fine, after it goes through another mass extinction to eliminate a major perturbation and incidentally takes out millions of other species. So it goes.

Stranger

7

I appreciate the effort but I am not sure recycling does much, if anything for the environment. Where I live (Chicago) we had a “blue bag” recycling program (your recycled waste went into a blue bag which would find its way to recycling). I asked the guys who picked up the garbage and they said it was worthless. It all went into the same truck, got smushed and shredded and there was no “special” place it all went.

Of course, where you live may be better about it. Still…

8

True, yet I also would rather know I was doing what I could not to hasten the decline of the planet.

9

Isn’t the point that each person does a little bit and it adds up?

Kinda like littering. If you were the only person on the planet and threw your soda can on the ground it is essentially nothing. But, when millions of people do the same it becomes a real problem. So, like doing that but in reverse.

10

Yeah I know recycling is questionable, but it takes very little effort and if the city is getting a little from the cans and bottles, and they are not going to the landfill, I consider that a win. I know about the whole plastic recycling lie - most of the plastic we “recycle” ends-up going to the landfill. The composting is just as easy - and more stuff not going to the landfill.

This is the main reason for me. I like having a clean place to live and recreate - my local environment is the one I have to live with and see the most. I have no illusions my actions are having any effect on our global situation, good or bad.

11

That is the problem; it doesn’t ‘add up’ except on the balance sheets of corporations who claim tax benefits and reap PR rewards for blatant greenwashing and/or getting even more money from customers who are defrauded into believing that their extra ten bucks is somehow offsetting hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide emissions though some magical process, or that buy separating their recyclables they are somehow preventing the oceans from being infused with microplastics. All you are really doing by buying carbon offsets and celebrating recycling campaigns is paying for these companies to look good. And while minimizing your direct consumption of unnecessary goods and producing waste is well and good for you, turning off the tap while brushing your teeth does nothing to address the vastly greater amount of resources used when you buy a pair of jeans or a new smartphone that consumed thousands of gallons of fresh water. You can’t offset that kind of resource consumption in a lifetime of spartan personal habits.

Stranger

12

Careful…the city might sue you! (they probably won’t but it has happened):

13

I cannot argue with any of your assertions, but what do you proposed we do, just toss-up our hands and say “fuck it!” and go back to 1970s levels of pollution at our current rate of consumption? While many of the ideas being tried out today will ultimately fail, and a few of them are just plain corrupt, as you point out, maybe some of the things we are trying may eventually start to make a dent in one or two of our massive and seemingly intractable problems. I think we just need to keep trying and seeing what may eventually show some progress, but just dismissing everything as ineffective makes the situation hopeless (and maybe it is hopeless, but we all have to live our lives here).

14

I would not advocate for a return to “1970s levels of pollution at our current rate of consumption” (and certainly not for the reintroduction of tetraethyl lead to ‘regular’ gasoline), and I’m an advocate for renewable energy and sustainable industry where it is actually a benefit but doing things that only promote the ‘greening’ of the image of major polluters is utterly counterproductive and doesn’t do anything to “start to make a dent in one or two of our massive and seemingly intractable problems” because these are systemic problems that require solutions that function at all levels, not just from the bottom up, and in fact the systems that our industrial society relies upon have a massive resistance to change (or even admission of problems) from the top down for obvious reasons. Even if we had technical solutions for these problems that would scale up to extent of the problem, we lack the collective will to implement them until it is far too late to even start.

Like most people, I’m also very conflicted about it; I live in and largely enjoy the benefits of a industrialized, mobile society built upon hydrocarbon energy and extraction of mineral resources, not only for the recreational benefits but because it has also provided greater personal freedom, knowledge of the natural world, and access to information than any previous time in human history. Although I consider myself to be relatively frugal (at least, in comparison to the typical Western consumer) I have more technological devices and recreational items that my younger self would have dreamed of having, and I don’t want to give any of it up for some vague hope that it will slightly improve the prospects for future generations. I certainly don’t want to live off the land, performing subsistence agriculture day in and out with no time or energy for leisure or learning abstract knowledge, hemmed in by an insular local culture dominated by the superstitions of the most powerful and/or bullying community leaders.

So, yes, I think it is ‘hopeless’ to remediate the damage we have and continue to do while maintaining anything like both the size of the global population (or even the extant populations of developed nations) and the standard to which we are accustomed to living, even at significant level of austerity. In my opinion, we should be putting efforts into what can be done to oncoming changes to the environment and capturing the wealth of human knowledge in some durable format under the assumption that we can somehow maintain a sustainable population and infrastructure sufficient for some continuity of human society. But as I learn more about the various ways that we have or are on the brink of exceeding planetary boundaries with no indication of desisting, the less likely I think it plausible that we will be able to endure even if we can avoid all of the potential direct existential threats of nuclear war, engineered biowarfare threats, mass famine, and natural planetary-scale hazards.

Stranger

15

I am not sure how to read your posts.

Summarized: Is your position:

  • Fuck it. We’re fucked anyway. I’m going to enjoy what I’ve got till the world burns.

Or…

  • We can’t completely reverse global warming but we can slow it down and mitigate the worst effects if we all give up a little and/or work a little harder at this.
16

We probably haven’t made much progress. But I haven’t had to clear snow from my Canadian driveway so far this year. And it’s been decades since I’ve seen a news piece about the rivers in upstate New York or Ohio catching fire.

17

Just wait till the Supreme Court guts the EPA. Not making that up…they are already doing it (article linked below is six months old…happened this year).

18

Yes, absolutely. More or less all of them. A few are even more hardcore than I am about it, and i check almost all those sustainability boxes. My nephew who lives in a yurt while he builds his own house in the forest, my sister who grows most of her own food. We march and stuff.

There’s one niece who lives in New York City, who gets on a plane about once a month and flies to California and back, and that likely outweighs everything on the other side of the balance sheet, though.

19

unfortunately, USA is litter central–people will throw trash on ground 6 inches from trash can, and apparently cannot see difference between blue can and trash can. and most cities are mixing recycle with trash, since there’s less market for it.

20

I read stranger’s post as neither of those. It’s more of a scold of a mindset that appearing to do good is worse than actually doing good. However, actually doing good would require a collective effort that won’t manifest until there is tremendous damage to the world at which point the collective effort will be too late.

So, if you want to do actual good you have to change the behavior of humanity on a global scale and that’s a tough problem when everyone wants a better standard of living than they currently have. I’m of the opinion that people and institutions respond to incentives and I think that changing the system of incentives is the best way to achieve a desired outcome. If it’s illegal to produce waste except for a few inert exemptions industry and the market would innovate and the consumer would be paying for what are now negative externalities we all are inflicted with.

Here is a link about the concept of zero waste manufacturing. Towards zero waste manufacturing: A multidisciplinary review - ScienceDirect