Acceptance

Did you know that, in terms of environmental impact, owning a dog is equivalent to owning and driving TWO gas guzzling SUV's simultaneously? It's mostly because of all the factory farmed meat and fillers in commercial dog food. In addition to that, dog waste spreads disease and pollutes millions of miles of waterways. Dogs are also a major killer of wildlife. Cats don't score much better and are a major cause of decline among songbirds and small mammals and reptiles. If you flush your kitty litter down the toilet, you're spreading Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that infects and kills aquatic wildlife such as otters.

Wind turbines kill migrating birds, and new evidence suggests that the vibrations they produce may cause nervous system disorders in humans. To install wind turbines and solar panels, forests must be cleared. Deserts must be covered. Habitat must be destroyed. Solar panels also contain highly toxic materials that are difficult or impossible to recycle. Electric cars use a lot of highly toxic batteries. Hydrogen is commonly made from coal, which produces carbon dioxide.

Studies have shown that "local" food isn't always the "greener" food. In the UK for example, it would take far more energy to grow strawberries and tomatoes in greenhouses than it would to grow them in Africa and ship them to the UK as is currently done.

The list is long and disturbing, and I'm learning that we modern people have two choices: party like there's no tomorrow, or try to conserve so the party is less wild but lasts a little longer. Either way, the party will end. There are just too damned many of us. And that, my friends, is a fact.

Biologists are quite familiar with a scientific concept called carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is simply the number of organisms an environment can sustain indefinitely. The concept is simple: a population grows slowly at first, then more and more rapidly. There are two possible outcomes: 1. the population levels off and reaches equilibrium with the resources the environment can provide. 2. a major spike in population shoots up beyond the carrying capacity, which is then followed by total collapse of the population. Basically, nature hits the reset button. It's nothing magical or mystical. It's just math. I've read nothing to indicate that any credible scientist or study suggests that anything but number 2 is the path we're on.

I believe I've reached a new phase in my life: acceptance. It's good in that I'm a whole lot less stressed (and thus happier) these days because I just don't worry about stuff very much - especially the things I have little or no control over. It's kinda sad though because the passion I had, that foolish hopefulness that the world could be saved and we could all live in some kind of harmonious Eden, is fading. My passion for things has always been one of my key personality traits. I'm known for it. Who am I without it?

To be clear, it isn't that I don't care about saving the whales or local agriculture anymore. I do. Outwardly I haven't really changed my habits in any obvious ways. I still think saving the whales is the "right" thing to do, though I must admit I don't know what "right" means anymore. The big change for me is internal. I can eat my local, seasonal produce and not get stressed or angry or exasperated if my neighbor doesn't, because I now think that ultimately it won't matter anyway. He's not destroying our society. I'm just delaying the inevitable.

I just don't believe our technology can save us. I believe, and this is just me, that we'll never be able to invent a clever enough machine or system to replace the natural system that nature put into place. No matter how "green" our cars or our cities become, they won't be sustainable, nor will be our population. Only small, dispersed groups of stone age humans can achieve true sustainability, as the North American native tribes had done for 10,000 years. The only way we can last is to live by nature's rules, but ironically by our own nature our culture can't seem to do that. We like to write and re-write, and re-write again our own rules, and pretend that we can overrule the natural world that created us - a world we're still very much a part of no matter if we choose to pretend otherwise.

I'm going to drive my truck and I'm going to love it for the simple joy it brings me, pink haired lesbians, pretentious cyclists and other ignorant Boulder do-gooders be damned. I'm going to relish the return of the farmer's market simply because it brings me joy, regardless of what affect it may or may not have beyond my tastebuds and my health. I'm still going to buy mostly American because it's something I like to do. I'll continue to hope my choices are having a positive effect on the world, but the Cult of Green is no longer my religion.

I'd like to talk a little bit about my last comment. Are you familiar with the concept of original sin? Many Christians believe we're all born sinners, and that our purpose is to spend our lives sacrificing pleasure to try and achieve a level of perfection that, by definition, we can never actually achieve. Seems a little strange, doesn't it? Why would God do that? It's as if you took a little kid, told him he's an awful, lowly, disgusting form of life, then put him in a magical candy store and said, "You have to spend your whole childhood in this store, and the only way I'll forgive you for being the disgusting, imperfect creature that I made you to be, is if you never touch any of the treats with which you must live. Every candy you could ever want is in this store, and I gave you a taste for them all, but you have to eat boiled spinach every day and never touch the candy, and only then can I forgive you for being the person I made you to be."

What?

Well whatever biological issue that made humans invent religion and believe stupid stories like the one above is alive and well even in the non-Christians. Baptists, the Taliban and Greenpeace all have one thing in common: a fanatic devotion to a fanciful, intangible notion that gives them hope but, sadly, isn't real. I think it had me too, because that's how I was living my life. Only I wasn't trying to get into a heaven in the clouds, I was trying to bring heaven to earth. A vegan friend of mine in Boulder is another great example. He's a vehement follower of the Cult of Green, as if he's morally superior to the infidels who eat meat and drive cars. The thing is, even if everyone on the planet lived like him - ate fresh produce throughout the snowy winter, had a posh office job, had plenty of clean water and nice clothes, had a pet cat, had a cute little suburban house, etc., we'd still be unsustainable. We'd still have to wipe out species to put up wind farms and ship our produce from some exploited African farmers. Sorry, but there aren't enough resources for 7 billion of us to be suburbanites with cats. Not even vegan suburbanites. Owning a car, in his mind, is the Green equivalent of "evil," yet he has no problem hopping on the bus for work, or even hopping in the truck with me when I offer to take him snowshoeing. Seems hypocritical to me.

So if an atheist is someone who turns away from a religion that worships God, what do you call someone who turns away from a religion that worships Green?

It's funny. When I finally stopped believing in the Christian God after high school, it was both liberating and sad for me. I'm experiencing that all over again. You can stop believing in the Christian God without turning into a bad person bent on wreaking havoc on the world. It doesn't make you any less kind or compassionate. Likewise, you can stop believing in the Cult of Green without becoming bent on cutting down all the trees and laughing at the loss of the whales. The difference, I suppose, is that you no longer justify your actions as a moral obligation to some fantasy cause, however much false hope it may give you.

Actually, that's not entirely fair. I can't of course say that there is no God with anymore certainty than I can say that there is. Nor can I say with certainty that the recyclers and the wind farms of the world won't save us. Maybe they will. I can't know. There's nothing at all wrong with having hope for a brighter future and working to make it a reality. I do have hope and I'd be lying if I said it played no role in my decision making process. I'm just no longer carrying the guilt and self-righteousness as commanded by a fictitious deity who makes empty promises.