Tag: anti-green

Green =/= Sustainable

In the comments on last night’s post – which is still generating discussion – I mentioned that I see a difference between “green” and “sustainable”.

Sustainable living is driven by common sense. Green living is driven by ideology.

Sustainable living will often cost less – economics are a factor. Green living will cost more it can require paying a premium to maintain ideological consistency.

This caused some confusion. Let me make some distinctions between the two:

Green

  • Decisions that are green consider only the environmental impact.
  • Green priorities exclude all else. The triumph other considerations on the basis of a higher moral order.
  • Green ideology pursue a net gain for the environment – things becoming greener. More trees and undevelopment (eg removing human traces from nature).
  • Green practices mean using as little as possible in terms of “natural resources”.
  • “Plant more trees” is a green mantra.

Sustainable

  • Sustainability is a philosophy of ensuring something can continue in the same manner in a reproducible or reusable fashion. Stuss’s example of using cloth nappies is a great example.
  • Sustainability does not pursue a net gain for the environment – but no net loss. Building a lodging in a National Park is ok – provided there is not significant damage to the surroundings.
  • Sustainable practices seek to replace what is used where possible.
  • “Leaving only your footprints behind” is a sustainable mantra.

Two ways to consume

The debate goes on back here. It’s been a thoughtful – and helpful I think – discussion on the environment, hippies, and sustainability.  Join in. If you like.

One of my objections to paying a premium to be green is that it seems like such a waste of money. For example, I don’t like that chickens live in terrible conditions in battery farms. But I like eggs. So I must buy eggs. Do I, when faced with this conundrum (and being unable to have my own chickens because we live in a townhouse):

a) Buy free range in the hope that this will stimulate the market for free range eggs and eventually remove the premium price we pay to soothe our conscience.

Or,

b) Save that money, buy the battery eggs and use the difference to pay for things I think matter more. Like giving money to support the work of my church.

I lean towards b. I think there are much better causes to resource. I like that the free market lets me make that decision, and doesn’t dictate the terms of my charity to me through levies and stupid taxes.

Which is why I don’t like emissions trading. Or the Green movement. They have no sympathy for that idea. They want their special interest to be everyone’s special interest. I have blogged about this before. In ranty fashion. Here. And Here. This little quote from  sums up what the dissonance I feel when it comes to the central green argument:

“Apparently our biggest problems are land clearing, extinct bird species, salinity and greenhouse gas emissions… and that my friends is why I hate hippies.”

That’s a quote that has stood the test of time.

Anyway, I didn’t start this post to quote myself – but rather to quote this guy, from a really interesting blog I subscribed to today:

“My grocery bill from Safeway, where I buy Nestle products and pesticide infused produce is 50% cheaper than my bill from a socially conscious store like Whole Foods, Mother’s Market or PCC.  While being committed to shopping in socially conscious ways, I am also committed to spending less. Savings on a grocery bill can be given to the Aid and Assistance Fund at church, go to help purchase backpacks for less fortunate students at my kids’ school, or be sent to my favorite non-profit organization in South Africa, Ithemba Lethu.

Waterworks

I hate the Greens. And the environmental lobby group. Which is a good thing – because not only does my coffee machine produce the carbon emissions of say a motorised scooter – drinking coffee is the least sustainable environmental exercise around when judged by water consumption in production. That is pre-cup production too.

From the Economist:

“A cup of coffee, for example, needs a great deal more water than that poured into the pot. According to a new book on the subject, 1,120 litres of water go into producing a single litre of the beverage, once growing the beans, packaging and so on are measured.”

What’s hip about hippies?

Today’s post comes courtesy of me. I’m allowed to that once in a while, it is my blog afterall. Today I’d like to write about hippies. There’s very little right about hippies (that’s a little bit of political humour for those out there not clever enough to pick it up). Some hippies are ok. I’m all for peace (most of the time), harmony (but I’d actually prefer social melody. Harmony suggests different people managing to be different while appearing to sing to the same tune. So by extension social melody must be everyone doing the same thing which I think is a much higher goal. Provided everyone does what I think is the right thing. Let me rephrase that so it sounds less arrogant… Provided everyone does what God thinks is the right thing… I’m not sure that seems less arrogant actually, I’m not claiming that my will is perfectly equal to God’s. Could this be the longest bracketed statement ever to grace the pages of my blog? Who knows.), tranquility, and protecting the environment. But I have some questions about the whole green movement.
1. Who decides which green causes should be fought for and protected – why save the whales and eat lentils – surely lentils should be protected.
2. How can hippies justify protecting trees while smoking (burning) grass (marijuana)?
3. Why do they fight big battles (ozone protection) while ignoring, or contributing to, smaller problems (bad body odour)?

I guess my stance on hippies makes me anti-green, and in an amazing coincidence it turns out my car is anti-green in colour. I created a colour completely devoid of green, and full of blue and red in paintshop, and I came up with a colour alarming similar to my mauve excel.

What really gets me is the skewed priorities hippies have towards their particular cause. Sure whales are nice, big, friendly animals – but what about the thousands of starving Japanese children who’d benefit from eating the whales brought in by all the whale-harpooning daddies out there. Think of the children. It does seem to me that the green movement has a fairly warped sense of important issues. Some may argue that there are thousands of issues out there and it’s great to have people concerned for all of them, everyone needs representation. Which would be fine if the green voice wasn’t so loud. Once upon a time, when I was a poor uni student (read that how you will – I did mean that I lacked financial stability but I make no claims to greatness as a student) I was walking on my merry way to uni when I was accosted by a well meaning hippy type who wanted me to consider supporting an obscure wild life protection group. I understand that this girl was doing her job, which is a pretty crappy job, and was probably being paid by commission. But her suggestion that I change from sponsoring a compassion child to sponsoring a panda because it was “national change charities day” proves once and for all that hippies are stupid.

This diatribe was encouraged by an article in the opinion pages of today’s Sydney Morning Herald. The article looks at the quality of life in Australia – analysing whether things are actually any better with the strong growth in the Australian economy. Apparently some things are good. Some things are bad, including an increasing tendency for families to break down (or up – funny that two opposite words mean the same thing – I guess the keyword is break. You could probably even say break sideways and people would still understand). But this isn’t the biggest issue our culture has to deal with. I guess I’d agree with that (I’d probably say the underlying issues of human selfishness and greed were bigger problems – and the issue underlying those issues is sin). There are plenty of other issues out there that could be at least as difficult as a family break up. Child abuse, murders, an alarming suicide rate… there’s plenty of problems in our society that an increase in cashflow doesn’t seem to be solving. But no. Apparently our biggest problems are land clearing, extinct bird species, salinity and greenhouse gas emissions… and that my friends is why I hate hippies.

In other non-hippy news… Tim started a blog today – its title is a delightful pun on his name. I must say I’m flattered by all the people who are starting blogs just because I have.