A long time ago — that is, a few months ago — I sat down to have a think-thunk. I didn’t manage to come up with many answers, nor were all my thoughts very clear, but the essential question I was revolving around was: How shall we live?
I can turn my water off when I brush my teeth. I can reuse plastic bags as my garbage bags. I can bring an environmentally friendly bag when I go shopping.
I’m not willing to give up my books if I can help it. E-books are not the same thing as physical paper books. I can’t hold e-books in my hand; e-books don’t have that faint aroma of fresh, clean pages. This book love is definitely damaging the environment.
Like me, many people probably think that we can’t keep our current way of life and still expect everything to be fine. Our consumerist culture is not completely okay; global warming is not okay; exploiting other people and the environment is not okay. We realise that we need to change, perhaps drastically, but no one is really sure of how we will live. On the one hand, change is a natural process anyway — every generation’s lifestyle differs to their parents. We will change whether we like to or not. But maybe that is just the thing — it’s one thing to choose to change, and another to be forced to change. By the time we change because we are forced to do so, circumstances are probably quite screwed up.
So people experiment. There are people and things like No Impact Man (whom I first heard of through Genevieve), and the 100-Mile Diet. Are they really making a difference? In the grand scheme of things, their singular efforts probably don’t even scratch the surface. In the grander scheme of things, they might be the pioneers who push the movement to look for more responsible ways of living.
Right now, we can afford to play a game of this-or-that. I can turn lights off when not using them. I don’t want to give up my iPod. I can turn the tap off while brushing my teeth. I can’t give up my piano. I can travel by public transport or walk. I don’t want to give up flying. One day, I want to try the 100-mile diet myself. It’s obvious from this list that the damage I do by what I don’t give up is overwhelmingly greater than what I do “sacrifice”. But that’s kind of the truth as well, isn’t it? We inevitably leave our mark on the planet. We can only try to limit it — or we can do more. Some argue that reducing our current energy levels is not enough; we need to live sustainably. It’s an important argument.
I don’t know if this is the right way to go about changing the way I live. No one does. But I want to keep looking for and trying new ideas — or old ones; my grandmothers are experts in using everything and wasting nothing, particularly because of the wars — for living. We’ll have to change anyway. This is my attempt to change in the way I want. It’s my method of parrying the prediction that disaster will strike before we do anything, and society will change so drastically, we won’t recognise our own way of living. Give up the things I don’t need for the things I do want.
Because it’s not just the books that matter. Toilet paper is pretty high up there too.
