Green is the Color of Money
The environmentalist movement may be full of morons and hippies, but there are some merits to caring about the environment. My biggest concern in my own life and the lives of my family and friends is Quality of Life. Having a safe, healthy place to live is absolutely paramount in one’s quality of life.
I am an average 26 year old man. I have an average office job and make average money. I have an average apartment with my long-term girlfriend Kati who nags me about marrying her. It’s about as normal as it gets. If a fringe section of the population decides to live ‘off the grid’ and poop in a bucket to use later as fertilizer, that’s good for them, but it won’t save the environment in a meaningful way. The only way to make the country (and later the world) a better place to live is to make healthy choices easier, faster, and more profitable. No one will deny that gasoline-driven cars suck, but electric and hybrid vehicles are either not available or too expensive for most people. If electric cars were cheaper than gas guzzlers everyone would have one. And if everyone has one, you see REAL change.
You’ll hear arguments from people saying that each person should do their part. Every little bit counts. Are you doing your part? Are you making decisions that will actually spread the wisdom of being Green? Or are you just doing things that will make you feel better about yourself?
The Earth Will Live
Let’s not be silly. We are not trying to save the Earth. We are trying to save the human race. The Earth will live. The Earth has been here for billions of years. Billions of species have grown, lived, and gone extinct. Losing panda bears to extinction is not going to be the thing that ends the world.
What I look for is efficiency. I want to get long-term gains from one-time costs. For example: installing quality insulation in your home for a one-time cost will do the job of several hundreds of dollars of heating and cooling for the foreseeable future. The same can be said for wind and solar power. There is no good reason not to invest in these technologies if you have the ability.
The planet can fend for itself. I just want a better life for myself, my friends, my family, and my pets. That better life includes healthy food, clean air and water, and a safe immediate environment. And I want everyone to be able to have these things without being rich.
Food
Organic food and produce was awesome a couple years ago. Now it seems like the same old crap can just slap an Organic sticker on itself with no repercussions. The biggest thing I miss about living in Mesa (Arizona) was all the local food stores and restaurants. We had Sprouts right down the street which had some of the best vegetables and fruits I’ve ever had. We had Flancer’s across the street from my work, who had the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten (and some pretty awesome pizza) all made with local organic produce. We even had Joe’s Farm Grill which was a hamburger stand on a farm that produced its own ingredients. All of these places were reasonably priced and had amazing-tasting food.
Now I live in a more metropolitan area near Las Vegas. Henderson and Green Valley are awesome suburbs with some decent places to eat and buy groceries, but nothing like Mesa and Gilbert had in Arizona. We have Whole Foods, which has similar stuff as Sprouts did only lower quality and double price. We have a Cheese and Wine store that I really like if I’m in the mood to live luxuriously. We have Lee’s Liquor which has the most awesome selection of imported and microbrew beers I’ve ever seen. We have Todd’s Unique Dining which is always an amazing treat. They have a different menu every day and all of it is produced with the freshest high quality ingredients (many local) at a premium price. These places are great, but they’re all expensive as hell.
Why is it so expensive to get fresh, healthy food that tastes good? Why can I buy a greasy cheeseburger at McDonald’s for 99 cents, but I can’t even buy those ingredients at the supermarket for that cheap? Because the government subsidizes shitty food. McDonald’s Cheeseburgers have animal shit in them. I don’t mean that as a general term like “I’m doing stupid shit”, they have literal SHIT in their meat.
Have you ever wondered why the rich are always the ones who are physically fit and beautiful? Part of it may be plastic surgery, but it is also due in large part to them being the ones who can afford healthy food. When I’m unemployed I can only eat ramen, noodles with pesto sauce, hamburgers, or bratwursts. These are all home-made items that can be made cheaply and are relatively healthy, but they are still more expensive than a meal at Del Taco. The only way I’ve found to lose weight and eat food that doesn’t taste like it was made in one of those little play-dough factories is to cook it myself. I can see every ingredient that goes into my meals and decide exactly how healthy I want to eat. I can also be assured that my hamburger has the right fat content (and has no shit in it) by watching my butcher grind it with my own eyes.
Organic doesn’t mean anything anymore. The only way to get good fresh food is to get local produce and eat at restaurants that use local ingredients. Local means the food is fresh, it doesn’t travel across the country to get your plate, and it isn’t produced in some factory with minimum quality ingredients to meet regulations. All of these things mean it can be relatively cheap, too. Find those local markets and spend your money there. Support your local businesses instead of going to national chains. I’d rather spend $5 at In-N-Out Burger to get a burger that uses local produce (and tastes better) than spend $4 at Burger King any day.
Anyone who is interested in how the food industry works should check out Food, Inc. (Netflix link) (Amazon link). It is a documentary about the Food business in America that will inform you where your food comes from and how to find the best places to eat and shop. It also contains some information that will make you think about the politics of food.
Air & Carbon
I couldn’t give two shits if my ‘carbon footprint’ was reduced. I would just like the air to not stink like fumes everywhere I go. The gas guzzlers flying down the freeway next to me belch out smog that flows into the vents in my car and irritates my lungs. I once drove through LA on my way to Gaming Conference in Northern California and I was sick for the whole day from the 1 hour I spent driving through LA. I don’t know how those people can live there. It smells horrible, it made Kati’s asthma flare up, and I — a perfectly healthy slightly overweight man — got physically sick without leaving my car.
Who lives near these highways and factories that spew garbage into our air? Poor people. Most poor people don’t have health insurance. Most poor people can’t afford a healthy diet for themselves and their kids. As a humanitarian, you should care about these people. They don’t have a choice except to endure these unhealthy environments.
Air pollution causes several health problems for anyone around it. In areas where there are higher rates of pollution in the air, more children develop allergies and asthma. Air pollution has been said to cause meningitis and encephalitis. These are factors that affect us today. These are the reasons I care about my environment.
Noise Pollution
I want a Hydrogen car. They are basically electric cars that hold their charge using hydrogen. They emit nothing but clean water. Why do I want one of these cars? Because I’m too lazy to stop for gas and I like clean air and quiet.
We have been focused on making our technology smaller, more efficient, and have less carbon emissions, but I think the next step should be quieter. Nothing pollutes my apartment worse than when someone rolls by on their obnoxious Harley-Davidson which serves no purpose (over a quieter motorcycle brand) beyond being loud and obnoxious. I had to go to a NASCAR race in Phoenix a couple years ago when I was working for 93.3 KDKB (Everything That Rocks! – I have to say that… heh) and the noise alone was enough to give me an incredible headache.
In my apartment, I have all of my electronics in my living room: my tv, stereo, video games, my PC and its components, EVERYTHING. The only thing in my bedroom that plugs in is my tiny alarm clock. When I turn off all my toys and go to bed at night I sometimes just listen to all the white noise and all the buzzing in my ears. And when you just lay in a quiet room and listen to it all it makes you wonder how you haven’t gone deaf over the years. The world around us is infested with technology. As much as I love every bit of that technology, it all makes noise.
Ever since I moved all of the electronics out of my bedroom, I have stopped getting stress nosebleeds almost entirely, which was a problem I’ve had since childhood. I’ve had less headaches and I feel far more rested when I wake up in the morning. I credit this entirely to the reduction in noise.
As I listen to the ever-present high pitched ringing in my ears, I am reminded of my noise canceling headphones that I use whenever I take a flight (thanks Uncle Rob!). If you get on an airplane and flick the Noise Canceling switch off for a few seconds with your music turned very low, you will be amazed how incredibly loud the inside of the plane is. If you don’t wear these headphones, you become desensitized to all that sound because it is so constant. I wonder how much of that noise we filter out in our everyday lives and the damaging effects it must have.
I was brought up from a very young age by an audiophile father who always taught my brother and I to value our hearing. He would make sure we didn’t play our headphones too loud or stand too close to the speakers at concerts. One of my dad’s favorite bands, The Who, has bragged about being “the loudest band in the world” too, so don’t judge him by the volume on his headphones. My dad’s an old school rocker.
Global Warming
Global Warming is a heavily debated topic, but to me it is an unimportant topic. If you tell someone that the average temperature in Alaska has gone up by 4 degrees in the last 50 years, they will not care much. I certainly don’t. If you tell them that 100 years from now, New York City will be under water, that may sound scary and interest more people, but I’ll be dead by then and my kids probably won’t live there anyway.
The fact of the matter is: if you shut down a factory in your town and replace it with a cleaner and more efficient source, you will immediately improve your quality of life. If you start eating healthier, local produce instead of going to the Olive Garden you will immediately improve your quality of life. If you encourage (don’t be a dick of course) your neighbors to get electric cars, you will immediately improve your quality of life. You don’t have to wait 50 years. You don’t have to think about your hypothetical great-grandchildren. You can think about how you live right now.
That is how you inspire people to change. You show them immediate rewards for their actions and THEN tell them that we have a bonus down the line as well.
Changing Laws to Live Better
Legalizing hemp and marijuana production in the U.S. would create a huge boom in farming the incredibly useful plant. Some of the side effects of this legislation would be very helpful for the environment.
Check out The Union (Netflix Link) (Amazon Link) for more information about the history and science of hemp and marijuana.
Creating a smarter power grid would make the electricity we gain –whether from current methods or future ones– get to our homes and businesses intact. Using the current structure of our antiquated power grid, more than 40% of the power we work so hard to produce is lost. We can have all the electric and hydrogen cars we want, but it won’t matter if we’re burning coal at 60% efficiency to charge the damn things. Electricity is more expensive every couple months too (or so my power company keeps telling me in my mail), so making it more efficient will reduce cost and consumption. It’d be nice to have a summer without any blackouts too of course.
Your Part
If you want to improve your quality of life and that of those around you, focus your energy and money on making it an everyday thing to fix the environment. Buy products from businesses that don’t produce pollution. Vote for legislation that taxes polluters and subsidizes more conscious practices. You don’t have to unplug your electronics, quit your job and start a farm somewhere. You don’t have to convert your car to ethanol with a special adapter. You don’t have to go vegan.
You may not be anyone important on the national scale, like a politician or a celebrity, but you do have power in your paycheck. Make sure your money, your votes, and your positive words go to the right places. It’s really easy. You just have to learn what you’re buying before you buy it.