Green – The Insurmountable Task.

“But of late, our commitment to green living has seemed like an insurmountable task.”

-The Green Life

Back to the homestead

I think about this every time I sit to write for this blog. Or every time I scan the headlines and read about yet another ecological disaster or how pizza is a vegetable or how sustainable energy resources are being strung along and blocked by oil interests. .

This is insurmountable. This is impossible. If I do the sustainable thing instead of the wasteful thing, who will notice? Sure, if I opt to turn on the furnace over putting on a sweater, I’ll regret it when the power bill comes around. But is anyone watching what I do?

In most cases, no. I have no idea how large my own neighbors carbon footprint is. I would say “and it’s none of my business,” but it kind of is. My efforts to reduce my impact on resources and the environment affect you. And yours affect mine. How is this not each other’s business?

This wasn’t meant to be easy. “Green” isn’t supposed to be mainstream or fix the economy or make anyone wealthy. Ideally, it is to ensure our children aren’t born into an environment any more toxic than the one we are experiencing right now. If it was, then it would just be “normal”, the way things were, and we wouldn’t be struggling to save our environment, our livelihood, ourselves.

I was drawn to a blog post on Tumblr last week, written completely out of frustration by a homesteader who felt like she was way in over her head. Between caring for her energy sources, handling all of the home-grown food, ensuring a survivable harvest, and just being in a remote location they felt like it may have all been a bad idea.

I don’t think any of this – living sustainably, being a homesteader (urban or otherwise) –  is a bad idea. I think it’s a necessary one, a difficult one, but one we need to stick to. It would be helpful to realize that a big part of having a more sustainable lifestyle is realizing one can’t really continue to live life the way they have been living it.

I agonize over every gallon of gasoline I have to purchase. I worry about how much of everything I buy from a retailer actually goes back to the producers. I feel a bit crestfallen when our political system chews up another hundred acres of virgin land for the sake of energy security.

Some days I get tired of the ump-teenth helping of whatever soup, stroganoff, or canned item that we put away when the veggies were fresh and the skies were warm. Or that even though it is twenty degrees outside I still have to put on enough clothes to give the compost pile a turn. After all, I could just order something in to eat. I could have just flushed all my food scraps down the garbage disposal. I don’t have to bother with recycling. But I do, almost militantly.  Wouldn’t it be less stressful to just toss everything into the dumpster and be done with it?

Less stressful to me, maybe. But the impact happens somewhere along the line.

But the fact that we could be feeling the very real and honest and brutal effects of our energy hungry, petroleum based lifestyles in my own lifetime means that I can’t give up on this. No one can. In fact, more and more people need to get ON BOARD with a sustainable lifestyle. And that is something no amount of legislation, ordinance, or even peer pressure could sway a person to do.

We’re sick. We have become a culture of convenience with so much technology in our day to day lives that effort is a thing of the past. Really, though, how beneficial is convenience  to anyone? Does anyone have callouses anymore? Do people still sweat? How many of us can safely say that we know how to do something with our hands? Something that requires labor and the manipulation of tangible items? I can only think of  a  few in my circles who can.  If something, anything, requires more than a few moments to acquire or process it is an inconvenience. I’ve written before on the importance of everyone growing at least one thing – so you can better see the kind of time, energy and effort it takes to produce a vegetable. A dirty, thankless job that spends weeks producing something which is consumed in a matter of moments.

Overall, we are at a point of conflict. Politically, socially, consciously. Is now not the most viable time to make the changes that need to be made? Not just a change, but a commitment? “A commitment to green living” that, when done enthusiastically, can grow into some truly world-changing movements?

What would it take for you to make this commitment to green? Or is the extra effort really too much to handle?