Effort put in : Upto 30 minutes extra time spent in household chores per day.
Result out : Me posing with my trash.
Effort in == result out ?
I did the individual actions that were intuitive to me:
Reduced landfill waste from domestic consumption.
Planted some trees.
Switched careers.
Bought less. Downsized. Bought better. Shopped second hand.
Composted.
Subtracted a car from our household.
Switched to a plant based diet.
Capped the number of flights I take to one-round-trip per year.
Moved to a neighborhood of higher density. Stopped city hopping.
Blogged.
Begged family to do better.
Tried talking to friends about sustainability.
Begged my partner to care.
Net result : I did my part for culture change. However, the culture around me has NOT changed.
Per day household work went up. My partner refused to clean our house saying “baking soda and vinegar shit show? You choose to make all of this harder on us. It’s on you.” “I am not carrying glass jars to the grocery and making life of underpaid store attendants harder. ” Patriarchy or just an average human in this society ? Or a non-solution pretending to be a solution ? I couldn’t even keep up with my ethics when the world punishes me for doing so. If driving to work is 20 minutes by car and taking public transit is 2 transfer 1.5 hour unpleasant process, only a person with no other choice would choose public transit everyday. Living closer to work would require 1.5 million dollar mortgage while living in 40 minute driving distance away requires 700 thousand dollar mortgage. Urban density is a climate solution. Us buying an electric vehicle made from a rare mined metal isn’t enough to solve transportation related emissions when majority of folks cant live close to work and are without public transit. Meanwhile, friends and family can not stop bragging about the flights they take for vacations and are turning into super emitters during a climate crisis !
I want to live a low carbon life. Every day should not feel like a test I need to pass. One person struggling to live a low carbon lifestyle while nobody around her cares, isn’t a recipe for anyones long term success for that individual. Maybe 0.1% of people can do this ? Not me. Not enough of us if we are left to our own devices without policy enforcement. We need culture change, low-carbon infrastructure and the political will to steer the sails using laws. The zero-waste blogger movement was a great starting point for culture change. But we cant stay in that intern/entry level job forever.
A Non-solution draining up bandwidth
Avoiding single-use plastic is something we should do as a civic duty. However, I was stuck in a self-optimizing purity-test of sorts centered around packaging. Looking at the graphs above, why would we zoom in on food packaging and make it the central focus of the entire movement ? Actions that seem intuitively eco-friendly to the boomer generation like living on piece of suburban single family house as opposed to denser urban housing, anti-nuclear energy, grass fed beef as opposed to lab-grown meat, millions of individuals buying cars as opposed to building public transit infrastructure, building parking lots in housing-deficit cities instead of car-free walkable cities, freeway expansion to ease traffic congestion, local organic food, carrying a tote bag, … are not the climate solutions of the hour. We have extra ordinary amount of knowledge and scientific guidelines in the form of IPCC reports and Project Drawdown. We have local organizations zoomed into tailored solutions for every environmental ailment imaginable. Why have I ignored the experts ? Maybe its to do with science being behind paywall and scientists being terrible communicators ? Maybe I was looking for something simple to do instead complicated-scary political actions ? Maybe I wanted solutions that didn’t need me to get out of my house and into the world ? Maybe we like simplistic solutions ? Maybe this was the way to get our feet wet and into the door ? Maybe culture change starts with learning to see landfill waste and embracing minimalism. What ever be our reasons then, we got to take the next step. Promote ourselves from the entry level job. Art, Science and political activism. Not extra household chores. Not anxiety about using shampoo in a plastic bottle.
Why are we missing the elephants in the room while chasing the mice?”
Dr. Foley
My breaking point :
A bunch of family friends who vote against every green policy, started using green cleaning products after reading my blog and continued to feel good about not voting for the green policies. ” Why cant they leave it to us ? I am doing my part.” Another acquaintance bragged about reusing some paper-gift-warp while being a super emitter. My blog’s impact, I got told ! I immediately took my previous blog offline. The movement was started by a human who used money saved from minimalism to take flights. The irony is not lost on me. I was un-educated on a topic I cared about and was misleading some very smart passionate woman who wanted to do their part. Was a mess ! I wish I could re-write everything and re-do all those years differently.
Meanwhile : https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
I quit my heroine-in-the-bulk-store persona and joined this line.
What should I be doing ?
If I have 30 minutes per day or 4 hours per week that I want to donate to the health of our planet, what should I do ?
To be continued in the next post.