It’s Not Easy Being Green
Kermit the frog was right on more accounts than one when he said “it’s not easy being green.” The fact that a dozen other authors have entitled their stories with the same expression says they tend to agree. Yes, green is definitely topic of choice these days.
For our accounts, it’s not easy living a green lifestyle. Living green, or ecological living, is defined as a philosophy that aims to preserve the earth for future generations of human beings and other life. It’s an understanding that the decisions we make today affect the environment and all living things within it today and tomorrow.
My husband and I like to think we’re doing our fair share of green living. We do a bit of gardening and raise our own meat. I work from home and save commuting costs. Ninety-five percent of our home’s heat comes from burning dead wood. Heck, we don’t even use air-conditioning.
But are we really living green? For every green, or ecological, thing we do, it seems there are anti-green consequences.
Let’s take our home for example. In order for us to garden and raise livestock, it’s necessary for us to live in a rural setting. This is a choice we’ve made and we love the county life. However, for anything we do away from our home—for groceries, for school, for church, to visit family—absolutely everything requires at least fifteen miles of driving and a half hour of time round trip to the nearest town, which in our case is rather small.
Driving to town has always been part of my life and I’ve never given it much thought. But just to keep me from becoming too smug in my greenness, author George Zens writes about ethanol in the Sustainable Times. He describes our insatiable dependency on fuel for our cars and how producing ethanol has a negative affect on food prices, the environment and our national budget.
What about burning wood for home heating? By burning wood in conjunction with our natural gas furnace, we save a bundle on heating costs, reduce dependency on depletable fuel and get a good physical workout to boot. Sure seems like a natural and ecological thing to do. But is it really? If everyone burned wood, how would our quality of air compare to the overall cleanliness we enjoy today? How concerned should we be about the growing number of outdoor wood burners, which often are less efficient and considerably more pollutant?
And finally there’s our air-conditioning. Or, lack thereof. We live on a hill with large, old shade trees that blow beautiful breezes throughout the summer. I never want to confine ourselves inside when we can easily relish the outdoors through open windows. Besides, are we becoming such wimpy people that we must always have air-conditioning? Ah, but let me confess. We have a swimming pool. It’s a 25-ft. above-the-ground eyesore that regularly requires electricity for filtering and chemicals for cleanliness.
Maybe I shouldn’t sound so self-righteous and hoity-toity after all.
No, it’s not easy being green.