Why don’t more of us conserve more? I’m looking at you…and myself.

Many of us realise the nature of the threat posed by climate change, peak oil, peak everything else, fisheries collapse, ocean acidification, desertification…the list is getting longer, especially recently.¹ Even if you don’t know about all of these dangers, you know enough about one or two to know that one or two is enough to do us in. Yet many people still live lifestyles they know to be wildly unsustainable, even actively harmful. Why?

This is not the place for a detailed discussion of each of the threats previously mentioned. I am going to assume that, if you are reading this, you accept that we face at least one very severe threat that will cause great harm. There will be damage to individual and social prosperity, the economy at large, health, our standard of living, and so on. If unchecked, it has the potential to set civilisation and population back considerably. There may be differences over timeline, level of awareness, beliefs about our ability to adapt, and so forth, but we all accept that we face a severe threat. There are millions of people who accept this about climate change and/or peak oil, and/or other environmental concerns and/or etc.

And yet you still drive?

I still drive. I am very aware of the extent of many of these dangers, and how driving is contributing to making them worse. I know carbon emitted by me² indirectly contributed to the drying up of Lake Chad, which resulted in millions being driven from their lands into other, already crowded lands…and a genocide ensued. I know that any carbon emitted by me is contributing to sea level rise that will drown parts of Delta, BC, just across from my home of Victoria.

And yet I still drive, and so do many millions of ‘ecoaware’ people. How can I live with myself?

Here are my reasons:

• I live in a car-based society. I would prefer to live in a walkable community, but those are exceptionally rare. I am working to create one, however.
• If we greened our economy, then living green would be no sacrifice. However, we don’t, so if I want to go green I have to do without things, like jobs I can only take if I have a car, and do other things I really don’t want to do, like carry the groceries home. (If the economy was green I’d be walking to work or taking an electric train or working from home.  The train would stop inside a station in the mall, instead of across the parking lot. And grocery stores would deliver – most do for free now – or I’d get a cart of some sort to haul the occasional heavy load home.)
• Any individual contribution is lost as the rich fly to Paris for Valentine’s Day. Without all of us going green, we’re done. I’m willing to go much deeper green than I am, but not if I’m the only one.

All for one, or none for all

That is our current situation. There are a lot of people unwilling to change, never mind sacrifice. I know that unless they do, we’re all done. But until then, I have to live in this society, and I can’t always get the locally-grown organic wine. Sometimes it’s the cheap stuff.

It’s partly a trade-off, in that it takes more time and money to live green than otherwise, and that means other things don’t get done. In my case, I need time to write this blog and do other things that I consider important in creating a social tipping point, after which we ‘get it’ and go green fast. If the choice is between darning socks and giving a presentation on climate change, I will choose the latter.

I am working to change the example I live and the mainstream view. I am doing this both to give myself the greatest security and because it’s the right thing. We should not be destroying the planet or ignoring reality because it’s convenient and temporarily profitable to do so. Those are inadequate justifications for destroying our natural capital.

And because most people are not changing, there will be consequences. I am working on building a passive solar home, for example, which is the right way to build and the best way to protect myself and my family from some of the consequences of our collective inaction on climate and peak oil.

Are those who sacrifice more, more moral? I suppose the Bible would say so, while the preachers for many of the largest U.S. ‘Christian’ churches, and the vast majority of CEOs, politicians and economists, would say no. My money’s on the Bible in the case, up to a point. So why don’t I sacrifice more? I believe that people are both selfish and selfless, that each is ‘right,’ and that the good life requires balancing the two.

In a world of want, you could reduce yourself to a very impoverished level as you sacrificed as much as possible to be the most moral. Or, you could enrich yourself somehow now and give money to charity later. I prefer taking care of myself so I can help others – and taking care of myself does not require tens of millions of dollars.

Ultimately, it comes down to one’s personal morality, including how willing you are to live with dissonance between morality and action. For me, I do not believe it is more moral for me to sacrifice below the point of a middle class standard of living.

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¹I would also add the corruption of many democracies, in particular that of the U.S., is a great threat to Americans and possibly the rest of us, but the article is about conservation or lack thereof.

² To the nimrods: Yes, I know that I exhale CO2 and yes, I realise that my demise would end this, and no, I am not proposing any should die to reduce CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions. I am saying people will die if we do not reduce non-carbon-neutral processes.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first book (from left-to-right) is Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet – something the authors found a tremendous challenge. And they live in Vancouver, where far more can be grown than anywhere else in the country. They found certain foods were simply no longer available. Here’s a telling quote from the book:

Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie?

The next book is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Kunstler explains why peak oil is imminent and a problem.

The next two books are growing your own vegetables year-round in a solar greenhouse, something we might all want to look into. The second also has “recipes for soaps, teas and things like that which can be made from greenhouse-grown items” which sounds fun.