Being a contrarian and NOT buying (or being) green *UPDATED*
Am I the only one who has had it up to here and more with the relentless imperative that I buy green? I have this incredible urge to pollute and waste. I do not like being bullied, and I am being bullied.
When I’m at the store, surrounded by all the little soldiers staggering under the weight of their reusable bags, I ask for paper and plastic. After all, you never know which of those bags might rip. The irony is that, if the store told me that its costs would be lower if I brought my own bags, and that it would then pass that savings on to me, I might be inclined for my own economic benefit to bring in reusable bags. The green thing, however, sends me careening in the other direction.
When I’m at Whole Foods, which requires a PhD in garbage just to figure out which bin is meant for your particular piece of garbage (paper, plastic, compost, compost with paper, petroleum based, etc.) I throw everything into the lone generic “trash” bin. No more sorting for me, baby!
I just got invited to one of those neighborhood parties where a friend hosts someone intent on selling goods. In this case, the goods are handbags. I might have been interested (handbags, after all, are useful), if the invitation hadn’t stressed that everything was recycled, recyclable, sustainable, organic, and had received Al Gore’s personal seal of approval. (I made the last one up, but everything else was right there on the invitation.) I said no. I’m planning on going to Target tomorrow and buying something cheap, big and PLASTIC.
This is entirely separate from the fact that I have long believed that the whole climate change thing is a giant hoax, meant to destroy the American economy and elevate Al Gore’s (and his friend’s) wealth and status. The fact that it turns out the climate change people haven’t believe in it either, and have been using fraud, blackmail, bullying, and lies to perpetrate and perpetuate the hoax is just proof of what was already obvious to me, given the identity of those who scream about the whole human created global warming scam.
My green hostility is also separate from the huge element, not of class warfare, but of wealth warfare here. It is no coincidence that some of the most hysterical greenies (Gore, Tom Friedman, the whole Hollywood crowd) also live the most lavish, ostentatious, un-green life-styles. These nouveau riche nothings want to make sure that the rest of us don’t get too close in terms of lifestyle and purchasing power. If we do, there’s nothing else to distinguish these otherwise indistinguishable human beings from the rest of us peons.
As I said, though, my rant today is separate from socialism, class warfare and Al Gore-fare. Instead, it relates solely to my innate resistance to panic and pushiness. Don’t start screaming fire in my crowded theater and then try to heard me to an exit that’s just going to lead me off a cliff.
So pardon me while I go run some water, turn on some lights, throw some plastic bags and bottles into the garbage can, and run an unnecessary errand in my gas guzzling van. I feel the need to make a stand.
As Kermit lamented in the era before environmentalism became a moral imperative and apocalyptic movement, “It’s not that easy being green.”
UPDATE: I should probably add here that, like most of my readers, I’m not normally a wasteful person (aside from the occasional anti-green temper tantrum). My conservation efforts, though, come about, not because of green bullying, because I like to conserve my wealth and because I hate to fund Wahabbi-ism.
UPDATE II: I’m going to clarify my prior update, because I want it to be clear that I’m not advocating profligate use of resources or rampant pollution. There’s nothing wrong with conservatives being environmentally aware, whether because they’re cheap, or because they hate waste, or because they believe that humans are stewards for the earth, or because they hate funding Saudis, or for any number of reasons. Those who know me know that I’m frugal to the point of being a cheapskate, and that I live a very low impact life for a middle class suburban person.
I’m just sick to death, however, of the apocalyptic moralizing and bullying, and the frenetic, hysterical tone that characterizes the discourse about respecting the earth’s resources. As you can imagine, all of those negative influences reach a high pitch on a routine basis in Marin and, on those days when the din is too loud, I go and commit acts of waste as a form of civil disobedience.