Soapbox

Forget being green. Green is easily mocked. It’s polarizing. It’s better to talk about attempting to live a sustainable lifestyle and hoping others will do the same. That’s a different thing. It implies living within your means, respecting the environment and actively researching how to do so. Most people I know sympathize with the goals of sustainable living but unlike in other countries they don’t bother putting much of it into practice. Why is that?

It is only my impression but since the 1980s, Americans have ceded many of their rights and responsibilities to corporations and lost their sense of initiative. This is amazing to me – as someone who wasn’t born here. I always thought that’s what Americans were best at – having big ideas and acting on them. Instead they have developed entitlements and a sense of entitlement to go with it and what some mock as a “Big Baby” syndrome that means whining about the federal and state government, the City Council, taxes, the DMV, immigrants, leaf blowers, whatever.

This is why I’m not interested in changing anyone else’s opinions. But I do want to explore choices and what they mean. There is, after all, more than one way to live a sustainable lifestyle and I am always surprised at the authoritarian thinking displayed by both sides, left and right, on what that ought to be. I’m all for top-down regulation if it’s good science and properly justified, and I appreciate the good old-fashioned skepticism displayed by the other side. But most of all I’d love to see a conservative movement that articulates real choices – the best ways to defend and protect the environment instead of tearing it up in the name of liberty.