Who Elected Us To Save The World??

And why is it no longer socially acceptable, or practically possible to lie in bed and pull the covers over my head and pretend the problems don’t exist?
I don’t know, folks. It seems to me that this generation is being simultaneously criticized for being lazy and unproductive while being expected to save the environment, stop poverty, support small businesses, end racism and misogynistic behavior, and find some way to make everyone happy all the time.
Really, I’m okay with most of that stuff. I shop locally, give money to charity whenever I have anything to spare, am not racist, and do feel that I am treated (as a woman) as an equal most of the time. It’s that fixing the hole in the ozone layer and stopping the icebergs from melting that really makes me whimper.
My awareness of environmental issues is something that started back in high school, during a government simulation activity. I was the Environment Minister for Saskatchewan, and butting heads with the guy from Alberta forced me into some real, in-depth research of what his province was doing wrong. (Turns out? A LOT) One of my best friends of the time was the Finance Minister, and also the brunt for some of my big rantings and ravings about how giving us a certain amount of money to make what changes we could on a province-by-province basis was simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH. This friend went on to become one of the most environmentally conscious geography students I have ever met. She is the type of person who stopped eating meat because it is just about the most wasteful thing you can ingest, and is now trying to start to eat it again because she sees her family throwing out meat, and figures that is an even bigger waste – she is the very practical type of vegetarian.
From that high school project through to my first year of university, I was quite well informed about the environment, and did my part in terms of recycling, using fluorescent bulbs, doing a hundred mile diet whenever it was convenient – that kind of thing. But somehow, the reality of the fact that our temperatures are increasing, our oceans are warming - in other words, that climate change was a real and terrible thing – never really imbedded itself into my consciousness. I was walking instead of driving because it made sense for the environment and for my personal health, but hadn’t yet had panic attacks about, well, we’ll get to what I have panic attacks about.
This attitude of mine changed last year, and it changed for one of the silliest reasons I can think of. My roommate at the time was something of a conspiracy lover. Whether I thought most of the stuff she was talking about was real or true or worthy of thought is beside the point – she seemed to enjoy just thinking about these things, in a pretty purely academic sense, and didn’t ask me to share any of her beliefs, which was fine. We ran into problems when she first starting looking into the multitude of myths surrounding December 20, 2012. And she chose to tell me about all of this stuff at around 2 in the morning on a night when I was already stressed about things that were happening in my personal life. And as she was telling me about how the earth’s polarity is changing, and how the Mayan people really were tremendously intelligent, and how Nostradamus kind of predicted it, I had a full-blown panic attack. I really did. I started hyperventilating, and sobbing, and as sh
e very solemnly told me that the scariest part about this whole inevitable situation for her personally was the fact that she had always wanted kids, well, I just about lost it. And I mean lost it in the scary sense, where I momentarily considered suicide as a preferable option to being stuck here when the Earth imploded, and picturing my boyfriend coming to try to find me in some sort of Homeward Bound epic that would end in his death and my heartbreak and I have to tell you, typing this is still getting me a little panicked. Woosh.
Of course, I have since looked into all the insanity myself, and have found things like the Cracked article on how ridiculous it all is (see here) And while I have discovered that the earth’s polarity is always changing, and has in fact switched itself several times without imploding, and while I realized that calendars have to end sometime, really, they do, and the date itself has no real importance, it was how I chose to comfort myself that has led to real panic about our environmental situation.
The way that I seek comfort is by asking other people what they think. Anyone who was at all close to me at that time can attest to the fact - they were asked several times a day, “But do you REALLY think it won’t end?” and it wasn’t until they got annoyed with my pestering that I was really comforted. Everyone told me that, of course, this was complete bullshit of the worst kind. But I ran into trouble when I consulted people who reminded me that, while the 2012 theory was bullshit, the Earth itself is, naturally, in a whole lot of trouble. My biggest BIGGEST mistake was in talking to that environmentally-conscious friend from back in the fourth paragraph. She offered the opinion that the world was in more trouble than anyone was really aware of, that steps being taken were not at all adequate, and that, while the world would most probably not end in 2012, we should probably resign ourselves to major natural disasters and the inevitable end of our lives being spent in log c
abins (if there were any trees left) with no electricity, heat, or anything else that would have to be run by gas.
Well. That was NOT COMFORTING.
And nor was the book that she brought with her when next she came to visit. Actually, it is a pretty wonderful book, called Gorgeously Green by Sophie Uliano. You can visit her most helpful website at www.gorgeouslygreen.com , where you will find lots of helpful hints on how to not only help the environment, but to help yourself at the same time. She recommends everything from cleaning products to furniture, all of which are great for your personal health, as well as the poor, battered Earth.
Now, mind you. This is an attitude that I have created in the past year since being introduced to Sophie and her helpful hints. Unfortunately, the only thing that I was able to gleam from it in my then frantic headspace was that my makeup was full of carcinogens, as were all the products I had ever used for cleaning my home, my body, and my life in general. I learned that all the smells of baby products I had learned to love were actually sickening and full of harmful chemicals, and that I was flushing a whole other kind of toxic waste down the toilet (above and beyond the kind that I already knew about!) For the next month or so, my poor little self vibrated between fear of one specific deadline for the end of humanity, and the inevitable changes that MUST be made NOW if a person wants to avoid a really really real deadline that humanity is just racing towards.
Now, dear people who are reading this, my aim in this entry is not to frighten you as badly as I was frightened. But I do sort of wish in spite of myself that everyone in the world could go through the same kind of panic attacks that I went through. Because it has helped to push me over the edge into being as green as I am able, given the number of things that are currently out of my control (things like not being able to lower the heat in my centrally heated apartment). Because if our generation is going to save the world, we need to do it, like, you know, yesterday. And there are so many things, big and small, that everyone can do. This is one of the reasons that I support the decision to give Obama the Nobel Prize – because anyone who can get America to be Green and stop people from throwing bombs at each other is aces in my book, and should be greatly encouraged. But that is another subject for another day. The subject for today, my friends, is my advising you to go have your own panic attacks, and then turn around and do something good for the Earth and yourself, while it is still at all worth it to do so.
Plus, I have to tell you, eco-friendly paint doesn’t require all your windows be opened, eco-friendly beauty products are making my skin glow more than it ever has, and shopping organic at my local farmer’s market is just good clean snobby fun.