Why Being Green Won’t Work

I’ve been beating myself up for a long time for not being More Green. Greener. Greeny. Oh, sure, we recycle. We recycle everything it’s possible to recycle in Midland:  paper, aluminum, plastic, plastic bags, cardboard. We do everything to avoid throwing things away—take the magazines to school or to the hospital, send books via Bookmooch, donate the bigger stuff to the UU Church Annual Garage Sale or Goodwill. I buy almost all my clothes from Goodwill or garage sales. I don’t drive every day and try to walk to accomplish errands—the post office, the bank, the library—whenever I can.
But there’s a lot I don’t do. Confession #1:  I use The Bad Light Bulbs. #2--I leave the chargers plugged in and the computer on all the time. #3--Our vehicle is a behemoth. #4--I wear cologne.
And I’ve long felt guilty for these transgressions. I understand the dire circumstances of the world, the Garbage Gyre in the Pacific, the horrible air quality and scarcity of fresh water and huge areas of land that are used for storing our trash.
On this trip I had a revelation, though. Many of the La Quinta inns we stay in have replaced regular light bulbs with the spiral energy-saving ones.  I hate these:  there’s never, ever enough light. I don’t mind their using them in their rooms because I don’t have to live there. I don’t mind that all their lamps give off a sickly, pallid little bit of light. EXCEPT: I go nuts when they use these in the bedside light. I like to read in bed, and I like to stitch in bed. For either of these, you kind of need some good light, you know? It’s tough to do hand stitching when you’re in a cave. Never mind that some idiot with no clue about life designed the rooms so that the “bedside” light is a good three feet away from the actual side of the bed. What in the world was he thinking? I’m assuming it was planned by someone who’s never, ever, not once in his life plumped up his pillows and settled back with a good book.
Confession #5:  we travel with a pack of 60-watt light bulbs. If they have regular light bulbs, the kind you can replace, I take out their weasly little 40-watt bulb and put in the 60-watt bulb, so I can at least make out my hands, even if I can’t actually see the damn needle and thread.
I admire the people who are going Totally Green, making their houses Green and shopping Green and wearing Green, eschewing plastic and leather and paper and everything that isn’t 100% recycled. You see them on the pages of Yoga Journal all the time, these lithe, hip, eager young couples intent on Saving the Planet.
But as we were wending our way through the astounding crowds at the beach in South Texas this past weekend, I realized something:  It doesn’t matter a bit what upper-middle class yoga aficionados and their ilk do to save the air and water and soil. They can be as hard-working and earnest as anything, but they’re up against a much, much larger—unbelievably larger—bunch of people for whom the concept of “living green” is as foreign as “being king” or “flying naked.” These people don’t worry about Styrofoam or energy-efficient homes. They worry about shoes and dinner and making the rent. And—here’s the key!—they are reproducing at a much greater rate than the Greens.
It makes me wonder:  we talk so freely and eagerly about saving the planet, but you don’t much hear anyone talking about the one thing that absolutely MUST be done to do any good at all:  we have to control population growth. There are way, way too many people, and there are more people all the time. Constantly. Right this second, babies are being born. And now. And now. Now. Nownownownownow. Constantly.
But we don’t talk about that. Talking about limiting population growth is like talking about race or how much money you make. It’s like talking about religion:  no matter what you say, you might offend someone, so it’s best not to say anything at all.
Bullshit. The truth is that there are too many people, and unless we all agree to limit population growth in a very drastic way, things will happen that will do it for us:  wars, famine, disease—all the things that happen when there are way, way too many people vying for increasingly-limited resources.
People believe it’s their absolute right to have as many children as they want. Some say, “Oh, but we can afford them. We’re not like those people who can’t take care of their kids.” Meaning:  “We have money/education/resources, so we’re allowed to produce as many little consumers as we want.” You talk about limiting population growth, and people think “China,” and think it’s about killing baby girls. Or they think, oh, yeah, that’s a great idea for Those People. Make them not have babies.
The truth is actually that it would be better for the poorest people in the least developed countries to be the ones who had carte blanche in the reproductive arena, since their children will use WAY fewer resources than those of the richest parents. Plus they won’t live nearly as long, which is always a plus when you’re trying to save the planet.
So the wealthier, well-educated people are feeling all smug about how it’s their right—in fact, their DUTY—to bring healthy, wanted, coddled babies into the world, like they’re doing the world a favor. No. They’re not doing the world a favor, not by any means. They’re doing themselves a favor by allowing themselves to believe they’re Doing Everything Right. It’s selfishness, pure and simple. The world does not need this child. No one else needs this child. You don’t “need” this child.
You cannot force people not to have children. They’re going to do it. Rich, poor—everyone has their reasons why they must reproduce. Of course they do: it’s the reason we’re here. It’s biology, and you can’t fight biology. Not in the long run.
So here’s how I’m looking at it:  I do what I can. I recycle as much as I can, and I’m working at being less and less a consumer of goods. But beating myself up about using plastic? Trying to work in dim, cold rooms? Uh-uh. I’m not going to worry about it, because I’ve already done my part: I did not have children. That means I didn’t add two more humans to the population. Two humans who would, in the most conscientious scenario, have four more humans, who would have eight, who would have 16. It ends with me. Rather than adding more consumers and polluters to the out-of-control population of the planet, I’ve insured that I’m the end of the line. The EGE will have me cremated and use the ashes as fertilizer. By then I hope to have redistributed as much of my Stuff as possible so that all that’s left is a shameful little collection of used batteries and a plastic fork.