I am as environmental as the next person, but I am kind of tired of having the brunt of the entire impending environmental crisis being laid on my shoulders. Just today, I was told that I was really wasting water because I made the heinous error of flushing Kleenex down the toilet as opposed to putting it in the trash.
Fair enough, but come on. Really? Let's put things into perspective.
I live in an apartment, so don’t have a yard to water in the summer. I don’t golf, so am not contributing to the draining of any aquifers that may be lurking underneath the ground, and am not importing water so that my course will be forever green.
I work from home, so don’t really contribute all that many emissions to the air. When I do drive, it’s not all that far.
I don’t have an air conditioner and my place isn’t all that big, so I don’t waste that much energy heating my place (and would waste less energy if my place was better insulated, something I have NO control over.)
I would guess that approximately 62.4% of the things I buy are used and come from fine Boutiques such as the Good Will and Value Village (don’t forget to pronounce the latter with a French accent—it really impresses people).
I recycle and donate my old stuff to charities. I try to buy local produce when I can and eat home-grown lettuce in the summer. I even compost.
So, stop blaming me and people like me for the degradation of the entire environment! Yes, there are things that I could do better, but my environmental/carbon footprint is not quite as large as it’s being made out to be. Just because I am not a patchouli afficianado doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the environment-- I just don’t think that I am the one who should be blamed.
Blame the car companies for waiting so long to make more fuel-efficient cars. Blame the city governments for allowing the residents (and golf course owners) to waste so much water. Blame the big corporations and mining companies who either ignore safety standards or pay big money to ensure that less safety standards are enacted. Blame rampant globalization and the greed of developing nations who want their rightful piece of the pie. Blame the companies who build factories in the same developing nations instead in the EU or in the US just so they can avoid strict environmental regulations.
Just stop blaming me.