So here’s the big question. Why don’t we change our ways? Why do we keep going straight ahead when there are warning signs everywhere, and when the wall we’re going to run into is getting easier and easier to see?

Professional environmentalists focus on what we should do, and they’re great at it. I’m astonished at how many solutions there, already being tried and proven. But what I focus on is motivation: why don’t we do what we should? Until that question gets enough attention, all the wonderful solutions in the world won’t save the planet.

Technorati : activism, eco living, global warming

Although we often quip that time is money, if every moment spent relaxing, playing with your children, or contemplating the ocean waves were a penny lost, every human activity could be quantified in terms of its monetary value. How much is your baby’s smile worth, or a game of chess, or helping a 10-year-old with her math homework? How about a day spent decorating the house for Christmas, or an afternoon in bed with your beloved?

Money can sometimes buy time – by making it possible, for example, to hire someone to do a task you dislike or aren’t good at – but the idea that time is money is misleading. People end up trapped by the need to finance a luxurious lifestyle and may in fact have far less free time than those who live more simply. E. F. Schumacher, the former Coal Board economist who became internationally renowned as author of Small Is Beautiful, economics as if people mattered, summed this up with what he called the first law of economics: “The amount of real leisure a society enjoys tends to be in inverse proportion to the amount of labor saving machinery it employs” – and, presumably, to the amount of money it has. In the same way, the more money a society has, the less real leisure time people enjoy.

In economic terms it seems that we always have a role to play: if we aren’t earning money we should be spending it. A good example of this, pointed out by Ivan Illich in the Limits to Medicine, is the way women have been encouraged to switch from breast to bottlefeeding. The change has provided industry with customers for factory-made formula. Contrary to the notion that we have more free time than our ancestors, a notion fostered by a culture which needs our continual contribution as employees and as consumers, people in some primitive agricultural or hunter gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure than we do. As a rule, they spent between 15 and 20 hours a week providing for themselves and their children, leaving the remainder of their time for socializing and relaxing. (This is not the case for many Third World women today, however; the chores of obtaining scarce water and firewood take up an increasingly large proportion of their day.)

Many people who live directly off the earth find considerable amounts of time to engage in activities that are not economic: enjoying religious rituals, fiestas and pow-wows, arranging marriages, renewing friendships. In Victorian novels, even working people seem to find time for festivities at county fairs and on market days. Our free time is less leisurely and more expensive than was our grandparents’. It is also less simple to decide how to spend our leisure time because our lives are complicated by multiple roles and by our beepers, computerized diaries and cellular phones. A Sunday afternoon ramble and pub lunch have to be squeezed between catching up with the weekly washing and finishing off a report for Monday’s staff meeting.

From Chapter 1 of The Green Home, (c) Karen Christensen 1995

How about doing one new thing today to lighten the pressure you place on the earth?

If you’d like to explore this topic, there are endless resources online. They vary a great deal, but they all seem to have the oh-so-worthy-and-more-enlightened-than-thou attitude I find so off-putting. The Simple Living Network amused me by suggesting I start with their “Web of Simplicity” section where, it turns out, all the information has to be added to my shopping cart–nothing is free! ($50 in publications on that page alone.)

One organization worth checking out is the Center for a New American Dream.

Crispina is renowned, both locally and nationally, for distinctive clothing and housewares made of recycled materials. Even the product tags are recycled cereal boxes! And everything is beautifully designed, with Crispina’s high energy and sense of color. Predictably, I happened to get to talking with someone who is doing renewable energy projects in various parts of the world, Paul LeBlanc of Delenova Energy. He too felt that we need to focus on solutions, not preaching doom and gloom, and said that his work is all about giving people practical housing options that are truly sustainable.

I also spoke over the weekend to a young designer in California who also wants to see more that’s upbeat, practical, and future-focused. And I really got the message when I took a copy of The Armchair Environmentalist to my hairdresser, and friend, Jeff. He thanked me and then said, “It’s not going to get me depressed, is it?” We’d just been talking about the state of politics in the U.S. and that was depressing enough. I assured him that it wasn’t, so he said he’d read it over his coffee Sunday morning. His nervousness really summed up the problem for me: I (and my colleagues, and you too) need to find a way to show people who care, like Jeff, that they can think about the environment without feeling down. We need to change the way we look at the world and our work, and start to build a wider, more powerful community for change.

ebay and other online exchange systems like Freecycle (which is only free stuff) enable us to transcend the local to find new homes for useful items, and to buy used items instead of brand-new things. In that sense, they are nothing but good. Nonetheless, as I’ve already discovered, ebay shopping can be quite engrossing, and expensive. I started by looking for a chintz pattern tea cup and have accumulated one or two things more than that (and that’s all I’m saying about it; my lips are sealed).

Besides that, the transportation and packing have to be counted in. My packages came practially wrapped in plastic tape, even though there was a sturdy self-sealing box, perhaps because the sellers get obsessed with getting top ratings for service. I guess my next step is to write to my new friends at ebay suggesting they start a green initiative. But given that one seemed to think global warming was a hoax, I need to give a little more thought to how I approach this one!

But we know so much more, in scientific terms, and we have remarkable tools for predicting the results of different courses of action. History—-and our great-grandchildren-—will judge us harshly if we do things now to protect and restore the natural environment we still, in spite of technology, depend on.

When I was in London last week, I got a taste of the past when I went to the Fan Museum in Greenwich.

I adore fans (my publishing company’s logo, in fact, is a fan) and there were beautiful fans from China, Japan, and European countries. What struck me was how their beauty, often, derived from nature. There was a case showing species of turtle from which polished tortoiseshell came. A large case was filled with Victorian presentation fans, the elaborate plumes women often carried when being ‘presented’ to the Queen. Ostriches are not terribly attractive, but their feathers are extraordinary, delicate puffy tips that must catch the faintest whisper of wind. Many of the fans incorporated other bright feathers, often with the species unidentified, and even shiny beetle wings. Some feathers were dyed, but most of the brilliance was direct from nature.

What were they thinking, one asks, the people who so profligately ‘harvested’ ivory and turtle shells and birds’ wings? What are we thinking, using clean water from ancient aquifers, timber from irreplaceable forests, and fossil fuels? It’s all a matter of perspective. Maybe what we need is ecological future fiction, to help us value the things we have in time to protect them.