COLUMN: It isn't easy being green

By Tobin Barnes
I’m going to be talking about two tangentially related topics. Yeah, I know. I do that a lot. Sorry, but bear with me.

First, it’s occurred to me that we buy about two-thirds more stuff than we need. Of course, as usual, I have nothing to back this up other than off-the-cuff, self-generated, baloney theoretics, but think about it. And while you’re doing that, take clothes as an example.

Tell me you don’t wear only about one-third of the clothes in your closet--if that. The vast majority of the stuff in there you hardly ever touch, and then it’s to get it out of the way. Some of the things you tried on but didn’t like after all or finally admitted didn’t fit. Should have taken them back, but you never did. Money down the drain. Kind of a guilt trip when you happen to notice them.

Other stuff, the distinct minority, you absolutely adore. Some of it you’d wear every day if people wouldn’t look at you weird. Those clothes fit right and feel right. For good or ill, they’re you, gosh darn it. You know those clothes and they know you. Only wish you could buy their kith and kin every time you walked into a store and thereby avoid the mistakes now haunting your closet, glumly hanging there rubbing shoulders with your buddies.

And that goes for all the other stuff we own, too. Two-thirds takes up space--it’s destined to be finally tossed some clear-headed day--and one-third we constantly use, admire, and love--yes, love. We’d pat them on the back and say nice things to them if only they were animate and not dumb things blankly sitting there.

So two-thirds of the stuff surrounding us is utter dreck. Maybe you should have thought harder before you bought all that self-inflicted clutter, but you didn’t.

And realistically, just how much analysis should you put into buying a shirt or some such thing to avoid being wasteful? Ten minutes, twenty, sixty, ninety--a day, a week? At some point, that type of painful, in-depth scrutiny before you pull the trigger on a crummy shirt seems wasteful, too. Someone’s going to see that angst, do the right thing, and put you away.

Besides, a lot of jobs depend on our collective wasteful purchases. The two-thirds, one-third process keeps the economy humming, heaven help us. Children would go hungry if we consumers weren’t busily snapping up useless production. Our standard of living depends on our constant shopping, spending, and tossing. It’s a finely tuned productive cycle based on waste. Amen.

And that brings us to global warming.

Huh?

Again, bear with me.

Rampant production, of course, necessarily loads the atmosphere with carbon, but then so does sitting there in your chair reading this. From what I understand, it’d be better for everyone else if you and I stopped breathing altogether.

Amidst all the desperately necessary study of global warming, we’re starting to get some bizarro-world reports that baffle us generally well-intentioned inhabitants (read non-Dummer drivers) of this all-too-fragile earth. And my suspicion is that some of these “facts” and “statistics” are nothing more than a smoke screen blown into the media, for some contrary reason, to blunt environmental progress. Make us think we’re darned if we do and darned if we don’t.

Take this for example. I was reading this thing by Tobin Harshaw the other day called “Confused About Carbon.” He quotes The Times of London as reporting this: “Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.” The environmentalist Chris Goodall, author of “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life,” goes on to say: “Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance.”

And therefore, for crying out loud, “The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”

Well, if that’s true, somebody shoot me now!

Either that or let’s find an Einstein, pronto, who can calculate some sense out of all this intertwined, convoluted, contradictory madness.

I know we’d do the right thing about global warming and earth stewardship if someone would show us how while not at the same time confusing us.