More potent than the most virulent tirades from flaming climate deniers, are the silent thoughts that circle in our minds and negate even our greenest intentions. It takes trained attention to catch these thoughts. Right now, for instance, I am about to go grocery shopping at Whole Foods. Only a few miles away. No objective reasons for why I can’t bike. Still, my mind is already made up:
I am going to drive. Don’t ask me to be good. Don’t ask me to be green. I don’t feel up to it. Need to be pampered. Out of sight, out of mind. Plus I am angry about stuff. Can’t deal with all that other shit. I fall back on what’s familiar, what I know best. Can’t, don’t want to make the extra effort. Right now, it is just me, me. Could care less about the planet, and what’s going to happen in ten, even a few years from now. It is too much work. I want simple. No room for other considerations.
See what I mean?
La Marguerite 
Is that the nearest store from where you live? I think it already sucks that our supermarket is not in walking distance. It’s half a mile away or so. That’s because we live a little away from the center of The Hague. I lived in Rotterdam previously, near the city center, and I had four grocery stores in walking distance. Where you live makes so much difference.
I wonder what would be needed to get more, smaller, neighborhood level stores in the US. Do US “liquor stores” carry fresh produce?
that’s a new one Meryn, may i suggest this to French bakers and American liquor store owners? since there appears to be one on every block.
a novel approach, right now i also could use a stiff pastry and a stout Guiness to embitter the lot.
Marguerite, i’ll fit in the trunk, go anywhere, especially away from myself, the human condition persists does it not?
good luck, people and planet, my moons are misaligned, hope yours converge soon.
Marguerite, if those are the types of thoughts you allow to enter your mind, then I think it can be shown that you will probably be single-handedly responsible for the boiling of the oceans in the future, and that you are probably already responsible for the plight of the poor Bumble Bees and, not only that, but the fact that two Beatles have departed before their rightful time.
Not to worry: There are many good therapists in the Menlo Park and Palo Alto area.
Seriously now, you make a great point. I’ll only add one thought. Among other things, your story points to the reason why we (humans) won’t be able to stop using energy. As we each do our (imperfect) bests to do what we can, it will be vitally important that we change where we get our energy at a societal level. For example, in the future, if you had some sort of electric car or other environmentally-friendly car, you wouldn’t have to torture your mind or do explicit on-line confessions just to go get groceries. You could just go, happily powered by clean electricity that came from the wind, or waves, or the sun, or whatever.
Finally, I’ve heard that a glass of red wine is great for addressing STCAS (“Short-Term Climate Anxiety Syndrome”).
Cheers.
It’s like I said, you need to help yourself with your goals.
A gambling addict trying to give up does not go and sit in a casino to have a drink. A woman prone to choosing abusive relationships and wanting to stop ought not to join a Letters To Prisoners group. Someone trying to lose weight should probably not get cable tv installed.
If you want to avoid driving your car, get rid of it entirely, or at least put the ownership in someone else’s hands, so that each time you want to use it you have to ask permission.
This is just one specific example, but it’s a good one. To give up a behaviour, you’ll find it easier to do if you don’t have immediate access to the tools for that behaviour. Why make it hard on yourself?
My Dear Ms. Marguerite,
You’re so unabashed as you disclose your no-longer secret thoughts about these challenging times we’re all facing. I’m embarrassed at how un-green so many of my thoughts and deeds remain. Thank you for your courage to encourage us to shed some more light (self-reflective consciousness) on such dimensions of our minds. Mutual support helps us heal.
If I may, I’d be delighted to reciprocate back to you some of the support your words have provided me.
Hopefully I’m not changing subjects too much = I want to acknowledge you for the work you’ve already done (and I selfishly hope you’ll continue doing). I much more want to light a candle rather than curse the darkness here and now.
Originally, I was going to post the following effort to acknowledge your hard, smart and good work (as well as that of other good folks like Mr. Jeff Huggins) on last week’s strand “Daring to Imagine A Sustainable World” So I hope you don’t mind me posting it here, instead; because I’m hoping it may help you feel good about all the candle-lighting you’ve been doing via this blog. Here goes:
I’m envisioning Marguerite and Jeff appreciating acknowledgment for the challenging work they’ve enjoyed performing during the past year or two = work that helps more people understand and act to prevent/manage/minimize the crises we’re bequeathing to future generations.
I mean comparable to the kind of acknowledgment delivered as an honor via an academic commencement address for post-graduates gaining extra diplomas/earned degrees in Public Service. Lo and behold, I found this yesterday (I enjoyed it and then thought of you two):
http://www.irshadmanji.com/im-dear-2008-graduates
I wonder if there’s some magical potion in the water fountains at NYU these days = perhaps so, if you consider these brief statements by three members of our species who work at NYU:
“the internet runs on love.”
by Clay Shirky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky
“Big brother is you, watching.”
by Mark Crispin Miller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Crispin_Miller
“Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the recognition that some things are more important than fear.”
by Irshad Manji
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irshad_Manji
Sometimes a simple
reminder that we have hearts,
helps heal our minds.
Ciao for now,
paul
P. S. – I just composed a note for Mr. Forthomme, so I’m hoping to re-connect with him sometime soon – wow, it’s been almost 10 years. Thanks much for the serendipity-service by posting your reference to him last week.
be happy with your choice…
I agree with both Meryn and Jeff :
1. groceries or shops should be nearer. They will have to be as if things go on like this, nobody will be able to go shopping at the mall or large shops out of town. (oil prices reached $135 this week, that’s plus 35% since January)
Personally, the shop where I buy most of my food is right in front of my house. I know, I am excessively lucky on that particular aspect.
2. If you really got to take the car, one should have the possibility to take one that is really efficient and/or fueled with something that won’t increase climate change or make other people starve (or both…)
So yeah, here am I advocating on energy efficiency.
3. Jeff is right, a small glass of Bourgogne or Bordeaux should do the trick to avoid STCAS 😛
4. and final. You shouldn’t put too much pressure on yourself. You must have decreased in an important way your CO2 emissions already. You can’t get back to naught once you had a taste of the all too affluent lifestyle.
I am not sure I am clear on that one, so if it was the case, please tell me and I will gladly get back to it with other words and examples.
Meryn, Independant corner stores don’t really exist in US citiies- like everything else here, it’s pretty much all run by megacorps. The few corner stores that exist are found in only the most broken of neighborhoods- places that the megacorps have written off as economically unviable. And the twin cash cows at these stores are cigarettes and booze.
I live downtown in one of the most ruined cities in the US- Detroit. There are only a few grocery stores within the city limits, and they are fair to awful. Most are on bus routes, but buses are unreliable here. Some liquor or corner stores have made an attempt at carrying a few vegetables, but they are expensive, limited, and not fresh. Canned food on the shelves in these stores is full of HFCS and other chemicals. Most of the population down here is quite destitute and they subsist on high-calorie, low nutrient foods like McDonalds. The median income in my neighborhood is less than $4,000.00 a year.
Detroit has a decent farmer’s market, but it’s hard to get there by public transit or by foot, so it’s patronized heavily by white middle- to upper-income suburbanites who drive downtown for their weekly Saturday morning “city” experience. The racial, economic, and social divide in Detroit metro runs very deep.
While Detroit is rather an extreme example of the situation, this pattern can be superimposed across most urban and rural areas of the US.
In recent years in Detroit, there has been a small movement towards kitchen and community gardening, but it’s an uphill battle to get folks interested in growing their own food when they don’t have good jobs or decent housing. By their estimates, they understandibly have bigger fish to fry.
Kyle, thank you for raising the ultimate possibility, and for confronting my – our – climate denying assumptions.
The automatic thought that came to me as I read your comment was ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! Getting rid of my car? You are dreaming, dude’ And I guess, Jeff, and Edouard, harbor some similar thoughts. There in this thread, lies probably the crux of the climate challenge.
I do not pretend to have an answer. Only some considerations. Let’s face it, realistically, the masses are not about to give up their cars, especially in the absence of readily available public transportation alternatives. For shorter distances, as shared in my post, the missing ingredient is a social climate that would frown on driving, and encourage reluctant bikers. Meryn and I have been having a conversation on the unexploited potential of social networks to spur such changes. This deserves further exploration. I also think municipalities could accomplish a lot through the institution of public biking initiatives such as Velib’ in Paris. Last, of course, energy efficiency needs to be stepped up.
Electric scooters. And little or modest-sized electric or mainly-electric-hybrid autos.
One good thing about the current roads is that they will be fine for smaller, lighter, environmentally-friendly, “cute” cars.
Somehow, many of us Americans started thinking of cars as if they need to be Sumo wrestlers, army tanks, or Titanics, rather than as lean, kind, respectful, ballerinas (to pick a comparison).
Cheers.
I agree with you Jeff.
I mean, I drive about 30 kilometers each day for the job. Do I need four seats for a car that will have only me 90% of the time ?
The day Renault, Citroen or any car maker will propose us a nice hybrid I ‘ll buy it.
As a matter of fact, Citroen already proposed recently a prototype that emits only 80 grams of carbon dioxide per km. mileage : 2.9 liters per 100 km. that’s around 80 miles per gallon.
http://www.elrst.com/2007/09/21/la-c-cactus-un-prototype-hybride-chez-citroen/
(it’s in French, but you got nice images and videos…)
Need ! 😛
Marguerite, it seems unthinkable to rid yourself of a car, yes. But think of it this way: imagine that tomorrow you get up to go to work, you sit in the car and turn the key and the thing just doesn’t go. You look under the hood – the engine is a smoking mess. It’s not going to be fixed for weeks. And then you realise your bank balance is low, you won’t be able to afford to fix or replace it for six months.
What do you? Do you stop going to work and the shops and visiting friends and your hobbies? No, of course not. You find a way to get there. You get up in the morning and grumble about the cold and the distance – but cycle anyway. You do it, because you have to.
If you can do it out of necessity, you can do it out of choice. So as your original post said, it’s a matter of your choices. But of course we’re human, some choices are easy, some hard. We can make some easier or harder. If I have the car there ready to go, it’s hard to choose to cycle miles to work on a cold morning. If I have no car, it’s easy 🙂
Meryn, while shops should be closer, cars more efficient, with more options for walking and cycling – those are things which take years to happen. Whereas Marguerite’s told us she can cycle today, but has chosen not to.
If you have a job you need to do, and a bunch of tools to do it, it’s always tempting to go looking for more tools. “Well, I have a drill, but if only I had this cordless drill, then…” which of course means the job doesn’t get done. The best solution is the solution actually used. Better that we ride our bicycles 10km today than drive there for five years and then cycle when the shops have moved closer.
Sitting at our computers looking at websites presenting wonderful dreams of the future and discussing abstract possibilities it’s very easy to forget what we can do here and now.
So, I walk or cycle to the shops, I get my wind power, I take the train, eat less red meat and so on. Will this change the world? Nope. But it’ll change me. And that’s a start. And then when people say, “I’d like to change, but… I need the whole world to change first!” I can say, “Well actually no you don’t.” Example is very powerful. After all, many people say, “but look, nobody is living this low-impact life, so obviously it’s impossible without living in a cave.”
If cities changed the way they were structured, if we had solar panels on the roof, if the supermarket sold only local food, if they put in more and better public transport, if if if if if… that’s all nice, but it’s not needed for me to reduce my impact. It’d certainly help, but it’s not necessary.
If you wait to assemble all the perfect tools, you will never build anything. If you find the best tools you can and then just build, what you build will not be perfect but it will at least be built. In the Army we had the saying, better a bad plan executed boldly now, than a perfect plan too late.
Get rid of the car, get on your bike.
Edouard, nice post! Whenever I hear about Citroen, I think about my mother’s 2CV from during my childhood. Talk about a barebone car!
Kyle, I totally get your point. And I admit to being a climate denier to some extent, still. The truth is, right now, I am only willing to go so far. Obviously, I am being a voice for the vast majority.
The point of my post is not to try to convince people to become bright green. Rather, it is to bring out in the open the level of denial going on in the secret of most people’s brains, and more importantly to give others permission to acknowledge these thoughts.
It is my deepest belief that we will not be able to achieve the changes we are hoping for, without such jumps in collective consciousness. That is, of course, without counting on gas reaching astronomical prices . . .
You’re welcome ! 😛
Hope Citroen will release the Cactus. It will be a bit expansive (16k€) but with the price of oil when it will be released, it will be a best seller.
I thinks they present it as the 2CV of the future because it is like this good ol’ car : efficient, light…
Regarding the end of your latest comment : oil prices are soaring, and there is no reason why it should stop. Quite the opposite I would say in fact.
And for the jump in collective consciousness, we as environmentalists and bloggers can help in that regard 🙂
Keep up the good work and enjoy your weekend !
A new kind of leader, the likes of La Marguerite, presents the rest of us with something of surpassing value: intellectual honesty. She thinks and speaks out courageously in an intellectually honest way. She does not cover-up or hide from what could somehow be real and true.
Perhaps human beings could more effectively address the emergent and convergent global challenges we see looming ominously before the family of humanity on the far horizon if so many of our leaders did not abuse human intelligence and ingenuity by choosing to adamantly idolatrize the endless growth of the global political economy.
Science, reasoning and common sense are being twisted and subrugated to conform to whatever thinking serves our leadership’s intentions to promote the politically convenient and the economically expedient, in the course of its worship of soon to become unsustainable economic growth.
La Marguerite, Jeff H., Meryn S., Paul H., among many other capable people, show us how ignorant too many of our leaders are of the human condition and the finite world we inhabit, and how selfish and harmful are the intentions of big-business powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and other ‘leaders’ when they seek to recklessly accumulate limitless amounts of material wealth and political/military power, come what may for the children, coming generations, life as we know it, and the integrity of Earth and its environs.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
Thanks Steven. At a minimum we are to foster honesty in the climate discourse. Starting with ourselves.
“Independant corner stores don’t really exist in US citiies- like everything else here, it’s pretty much all run by megacorps. ”
All four supermarkets I was talking about are part of big corporations. Two are from the same chain actually.
Big corporations can do small stores just as well as big stores. A typical Starbucks is not a very big place either! What matters is people’s shopping habits, zoning laws, real estate prices, etc. Conditions in The Netherlands seem to favor more small stores, but this is not something done out of environmental concern. It might have something to do with higher gas taxes here, but I think this is only a minor part of the answer. I must admit I don’t have a clue of all the factors influencing these phenomena.
The biggest chain in The Netherlands is called Albert Heijn. Apart from their regular (but still varying) formula, they have developed two sub brands: Albert Heijn XL, with a much bigger assortment, and Albert Heijn “To Go”, which is the size of a small restaurant, for very quick shopping, mostly found at train stations. I could imagine Whole Foods starting some kind of “light” version of itself in this way. I believe most liquor stores are independently owned, am I correct? They might reach far higher revenues with a new formula. Whole Foods could buy some of them out. I think SF would be a great place for a try out.
“while shops should be closer, cars more efficient, with more options for walking and cycling – those are things which take years to happen”
Look at it this way: Could Marguerite better “fight” to overcome her “sinful” tendency to not want to bike “a few” miles to go shopping, or do something to change the minds of many people that more, smaller stores are much more convenient *and* more eco-friendly. I applaud her deep concern for the effects of her personal deeds, but I doubt if we will ever need to make it this hard for ourselves. I believe – I haven’t seen it disproved – that a green lifestyle can be very comfortable as well. But this can be done by only individual changes. Thankfully, we’re not only individuals: Together we’re very powerful citizens and customers as well, and government and business will adjust their current “structural” offerings to accommodate to any adjustment in our collective taste.
So for some things to get better, we don’t have to change anything but our preferences, and be vocal about it. Isn’t that great?
“Hey, Mr. Whole Foods, I don’t like to bike miles to get to your store, and I don’t really care about 30 varieties of oil and 20 types of vinegar. You’re so smart, you solve it.”
Meryn, I’m always wary of any “solution” to a problem which requires that the person offering the solution do nothing, and someone else has to do lots. I find myself wondering if it’s really intended as a solution, or just a delay and excuse.
Meryn, Kyle, you are both right. We each need to do our share, and also collectively come up with a better infrastructure.
Kyle, that’s why I specifcally said “for some things to get better,” I should have stressed “some”.
In the end, we’re doing it all by ourselves of course, because government and corporations are run by us. You could restate what I’m saying is that we, as intelligent human beings, are able to make ourselves more comfortable. Just like you arrange things in your house for convenience, so we can do on a city or neighborhood scale. I think it’s a basic human tendency to make ourselves comfortable. We shouldn’t be hiding from that. But comfortable does not seem to oppose sustainable, when you consider all options lying before us.
In the end, government and corporations are nothing but legal fictions. They only exist on paper, and in people’s minds. They don’t exist like you and I or anything else physical does.
I should watch my writing more carefully, writing “in the end” two times… And I can’t swear here either…
*frustrated* 😉
[…] 28, 2008 by lamarguerite For all of us climate deniers, in various states, as in here and here and here, Meryn Stol found a new argument, for why we should all care, and take quick action, no […]
Jack…
C. In contrast, the Web is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections,…