This week's New York Times Sunday Magazine, its Green Issue, features an essay by Michael Pollan that speaks powerfully about the climate crisis and the seeming disparity between its scale and what we are told we can do as individuals to help mitigate it. Change our lightbulbs? What good does that do to eliminate the hypoxia zone at the mouth of the Mississippi or slow the rate of melting at our Poles?
I am terrified. I know this is not a unique sentiment to throw out there - many of us are - but one thing that essays like Pollan's and the work of individuals and organizations both in New York City and beyond have helped me realize is that, in a twisted sense, we are lucky. We are at a point in time where our agency as individuals can effect massive change in a way I certainly haven't felt in my lifetime.
Sure, it's easy to feel defeated at times. We try to do good by recycling our junk mail, but what about the diesel-fueled truck that comes to haul away that puny pile of envelopes (or, in the burbs, the fuel you use to drive your recyclables to the dump)? We turn the light off in the kitchen when we're not in there cooking, but who do we talk to about turning off the lights at the top of the Empire State Building? Well, if we pose our questions like that, it certainly does become easy to think our actions are futile.
What we really need to do is, as Wendell Berry so brilliantly put it, Think Little. Don't measure your actions as an individual against the cumulative actions of a corporation, municipality, or society; measure your actions today against your own actions from yesterday, last year, or five years ago. Think about it.
Five years ago:
- I did not have recycling bins in my apartment.
- I had never been to a Greenmarket
- I brought all of my groceries home in double-bagged plastic
- I bought and drank from a different paper coffee cup every morning
Now add those things up. A year of using my beloved OXO coffee mug has probably saved about 250 paper cups from entering the waste stream. If I was coming home with twelve plastic bags from each grocery and bodega trip, I've likewise probably kept from using about 300 bags a year. This is not insignificant. And certainly if you combine my 250 cups with those of my coworkers, my friends, and my family - a tiny microcosm of this hugely populated world - our thousands of paper cups are nothing to sneeze at.
As the pull quote from Pollan's essay highlights, "For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of
how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about
changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will
not move until we do." So, while I have this platform from which to speak, I ask you (yes you!) to consider the moves you can make today that you did not make yesterday. No matter how small, no matter what you did yesterday that was better than the day before. Be selfish in the best way possible and concern yourself only with yourself, as an agent of change. We may be terrified, but we are not helpless.
For my part, I am taking a day out of the office tomorrow to dig in Eric's back yard, spreading compost and planting summer vegetables. Feels little, right? Maybe a little luxurious? Well sure, but it feels good, too. And that's nothing to underestimate.
New York Times: Why Bother?