The Green Family, Redux

When I first started doing Green Family posts, it was in the context of your typical dual-parent dual-income suburban car-based detached-house family structure. The challenges were apparent, but typical: how to reduce car trips, reduce water use, reduce packaging, instill a connection to non-human nature in a young girl surrounded by manufactured items in a built environment, and reduce consumption generally.

Things look a little different now.

No more detached suburban house; now we live in a townhouse/apartment hybrid. This reduces our electricity, heat, and water consumption drastically. No more car; we walk or bike or take transit everywhere. No more ginormous house demanding to have empty corners filled with useless brickabrack. No more woodlot down the street; now we are two transit stops from a great big beautiful park with a huge river through it. The challenges of shade gardening with native plants remain, but this is not the time of year for that.

So problems solved, right? We are living the eco-friendly lifestyle.

Not so fast.

On average a Canadian uses 8.8 hectares to support his or her lifestyle, and in the old house I used about six thanks to lifestyle changes. So, let's see: my new home is less than half the size of the old one, I never drive anymore, and I have nowhere to put new stuff so I'm not buying anything that's not related to the move (except books).

I now use 5.4. We would still need three planets if everyone on earth were to live the way I do. If I were to give up meat completely, give up all processed and imported foods (which in Canada includes vegetables and fruit--we're not talking cheetos here), I would use 3.1 hectares. We would still need 1.7 planets.

I'll wait while that sinks in a little.

If I live in an apartment building, never take a car anywhere, buy nothing, eat no meat at all, use energy conservation measures, and never buy any food whatsoever that isn't locally grown and not processed in any way, I still use almost twice as much as my fair share. It goes without saying that these are sacrifices I am not prepared to make, being an overly-privileged westerner with an entitlement complex.

I can't help it. I live in Canada.

It is cold in winter, necessitating heat, tying me into the whole energy production and distribution system. This system is wasteful even if I conserve (something on the order of 80% of electricity is lost in the transmission lines, and large gas and oil pipelines leak). Even if I drive nowhere, Canada is a large country where manufacturing, storage, retail and residential are spread out over enormous distances, so everything I own or might own travels a lot, sometimes several thousand miles; so yes I've reduced my personal mobility but the mobility of all my stuff remains high. I am alive, therefore I eat, and I eat in a country with a limited growing season where food in winter by necessity comes from far away (unless I want to risk scurvy, or learn canning--which will fit into the single mother's schedule how exactly?).

If you live in North America and plan to be housed, you will use much more than your fair share.

I am not advocating that we lie down and let the twin apocalypses of global climate change and resource exhaustion steamroll us into extinction. I am saying that personal lifestyle changes, while a good idea, are not and cannot ever be enough. You will not save the world with your credit card, whether you bring it with you and buy something 'green' or leave it at home and buy nothing at all. The world will not be saved in the shopping mall.

What I am advocating will be saved for another day, because this is long enough already.

Posted by Andrea at September 18, 2007 10:07 AM under The Green Family

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