Welcome pt. 2: Being an Eco Freako

So let’s talk about the grand plan for this website. Most of the talk in part one was about climate change and for good reason, because that’s the by far the biggest problem we need to address in the world let alone the biggest environmental issue. But this website won’t only be about climate change. We plan to cover all topics related to restoring and preserving our environment. That includes covering the latest environmental news, information, technology, and best practices. We’ll have “how to” articles and opinion pieces and we’ll link to stories on the many other great eco sites out there to highlight their great content.

But this isn’t just an eco-information blog. Ultimately, we want this to be an eco-community of likeminded “Eco Freakos.” And yes, that means we want everyone to be a Freako. Being one really isn’t that hard. You just have to believe these 4 things.

1. Manmade climate change is real and needs to be dealt with immediately on a grand scale
2. Worldwide pollution and waste management are at crisis levels
3. We all have a responsibility to deal with the global environmental crisis
4. We all need to wear our environmentalism on our sleeves

Now, the first two points are rather self-explanatory but if, for some reason, you aren’t convinced just keep reading this blog on a regular basis and, at some point, we hope you are.  The other two points, however, likely need more explanation because one thing we don’t want is anyone thinking that, in order to be an Eco Freako, you have to be an extreme environmental activist. That’s not what we’re saying at all. We want to start a mainstream movement, not a fringe movement. Fringe movements don’t normally change public perceptions, so let’s clear up those last two points.

“We all have a responsibility to deal with the global environmental crisis.” What does that mean?

We’re glad you asked. It simply means you will do anything you can to be personally environmentally responsible by making changes to your home and lifestyle either big or small. Now, we know what a lot of you are thinking:

That’s it? That’s kind of vague and doesn’t sound like the beginning of a movement.

Yes, that’s it. Remember, we’re at a point where we need to get everyone on board in order to get the government to make the necessary big changes. This is all about the quantity of people buying into the climate change problem and doing something about it. We need a lot more people to start reacting to their houses being on fire. Any eco-friendly change is welcome.

That means if your first eco-conscious gesture is to change all of your light bulbs to LED, great. Want to organize a mass protest against the largest polluter in your state? Super. Want to start a recycling program at work? Sounds good. Want to simply buy less paper products? Fantastic. Every earnest gesture is welcome. We aren’t looking for everyone to become an extreme environmentalist, but we do want everyone to buy into the idea that we all have to do something.

Eco purity doesn’t exist so don’t let it be the enemy of the good.

Although we don’t have enough, there are a lot of passionate environmentalists out there, many of whom have pet causes that drive their eco-passion. And to them we say, you are heroes! Be passionate. Promote your personal cause all you want but, please, don’t look down on the people who either aren’t on the same page as you or are in no position to be on that page. Doing that will have the opposite effect of what you intend. But worse, it’s the wrong approach to solving our global environmental problem anyway. Why?

Because there is no “one way” path to environmental responsibility.

As you read through the content we produce on this website over the coming weeks and months, you’ll notice that not every environmental problem has an obvious solution or even one solution. There’s a reason for that. In many cases, the problem is only a symptom of a bigger problem. To better understand this point, let’s look at the 5 biggest environmental problems we face in the world today (not necessarily in this order):

• Manmade climate change
• Urban sprawl
• Deforestation
• Exhausting natural resources
• Waste management – overfilling landfills and littering the ocean
• Air and water pollution (chemicals)

Obviously, these are all massive problems but they are actually a byproduct of a much bigger problem:

• Worldwide human population growth and increased industrialization.

The world is crowded and we live in a modern world. It’s as simple as that. Seven and a half billion people is a lot even if we were living in the pre-industrialization age. We would still require an enormous amount of resources to sustain us and there would still be a lot of waste that we would have a hard time dealing with. But sure, our environment would likely be in much better shape.

Obviously, we don’t live in a pre-industrial world and there’s no going back. Not only that, it wouldn’t be fair to ask developing nations to stop developing in order to help stem the environmental crisis. Populous nations like China, India, and Brazil are trying very hard to prop up their citizens and flourish in the world’s economy. That means all those people need cars, houses, and every other thing that allows for living convenient modern lives. And for every “thing” that modern people want or need, there are natural resources and manufacturing plants needed to make them. Modern life also means increased access to modern medicine and health information which has led to longer life expectancy which contributes to population growth.

So while we need to fix big problems like climate change and waste management, the ultimate cause of those problems, population growth and industrialization, isn’t going away.

Which takes us to the issue of environmental purity. There is no such thing and we hope to show you why. Let’s take a look at a big environmental issue like plastics. There’s no doubt plastics have overfilled our landfills, cluttered our oceans, and seriously harmed wildlife. These are just some of the bad aspects of plastics. But even if we all agree these are serious negative consequences, and they certainly are, if we were to solely focus on this one issue, the ultimate problem, population growth and industrialization, isn’t going away and we still have a very big problem.

Here’s why.

A thought experiment: A world without plastic

Let’s say we all decided all plastics are bad and we shouldn’t use any plastic products anymore. That’s not practical or realistic but let’s just say so for the sake of argument. If we all were somehow able to stop using plastics we would see improvements in certain areas. The oceans would be a lot cleaner, for instance. Wildlife would be much better off. But does that mean the net overall effect of not using plastics would be positive? Maybe not. For example, if getting rid of all plastics means increased use of paper products then that’s likely an unacceptable consequence. Paper requires using more resources during production and, of course, there’s the huge issue of cutting down trees in order to produce paper in the first place. Trees that are needed to capture greenhouse gases. Trees that are already in crisis due to deforestation.

That’s just one example. With every other plastic product we would like to eliminate, we would first have to consider an alternative product and then calculate the overall environmental impact of producing that product during manufacturing. Many other alternative products require more resources during manufacturing and produce more waste. And that’s only part of the overall calculation. Plastic alternatives are usually much heavier so we would have to calculate the environmental impact of transporting those heavier products to the marketplace. Plastic alternatives are frequently less durable and have a shorter life cycle so we would have to evaluate the environmental impact those products have as they fail and contribute to already overfilled landfills much sooner.

So when we look at certain environmental problems, the solutions to those problems aren’t always obvious, and it’s likely there isn’t just one solution to each.

Remember, this was just a thought experiment

Now, don’t get us wrong. This was just a thought exercise to illustrate a point. We aren’t saying plastics aren’t a problem at all. They present many problems and, in many cases, we do need to reduce the amount of plastic products we buy, especially single-use plastics which have had perhaps the biggest negative impact to waterways and wildlife overall. In future articles, we plan to highlight many of those problems and promote better alternatives. What we are saying is the solution to the plastic problem isn’t one size fits all, and we think understanding that reality is key because we’ve seen other websites that seem to imply that there is no nuance when it comes to the issue of plastics. That we always need to avoid most if not all plastics and that’s all there is to it. It’s not that simple and we believe that evangelizing about singular problems that have complex solutions will only turn off and confuse would-be allies.

Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t universal truths to environmentalism. In fact, we can go ahead and name the top 4:

• Recycling when possible is always good
• Reusing when possible is always good
• Conserving resources like energy is always good
• Protecting our air, land, and waterways from harmful chemicals and litter is always good

These truths are broad but easy to understand and adopt. It’s when we drill down to specific issues that things start to get complicated, especially for individuals who lead different lives. Some environmentally-conscious people can give up their gas-fueled cars. Others can’t. Some people can plant their own gardens to bypass commercial farming. Others can’t. Some people can put solar arrays on top of their houses. Others can’t. And so on.

But this isn’t about “can’t” or “can.” It’s really about living in the modern world. Maybe you could find a way to travel across the country without taking an airplane, but would it be as fast or convenient? And by asking this question, are you an awful environmentalist?

Quick answer: no.

The modern world we live in

We, as individuals, didn’t create the current world we live in, so when we do something mundane like drive a car, fly in an airplane, or buy a plastic tote to store some clothes we aren’t betraying the environmental cause. We are simply living in the real world. As environmentalists, we want the real world to change. We want eco-friendly cars that are practical and affordable. We want eco-friendly mass transit to be just as fast and convenient as jet-fueled airplanes. We want net-zero houses to be commonplace and just as attainable as regular houses. These are all grand-scale ideas. Grand-scale ideas are the domain of the government because, unfortunately, we can’t wait for “the market” to give us what we want. The market needs aggressive prodding. We need the government to force and/or incentivize companies to give us the new green marketplace that is required to solve our global environmental crisis.

Encourage would-be allies, don’t insist

So as environmentalists we shouldn’t give other environmentalists a litmus test to test their worthiness. That doesn’t mean you can’t be passionate about something and encourage others to be the same. If you drive an electric car or ride a bike to work, great. Encourage other people to do the same if they can. If you always take cloth bags to go grocery shopping rather than use plastic bags, great. Encourage others to do the same. Promoting good ideas and encouraging others to try them is absolutely fine. But when it comes to demanding or laying down expectations, that’s what we need to do with our elected officials. The government needs to come up with the grand-scale solutions we need and we have every right to insist that they do.

But when it comes to individuals it’s a different story. We want every individual to be on the Eco Freako environmental train. And that simply means that we will do whatever we can to be environmentally responsible given our own circumstances. No eco-purity is allowed. Our goal should be to compare our progress to our own expectations rather than compare to everyone else’s.

It’s not a contest but we do want to start a movement in order to force change. In part 3 we’ll discuss how.