Lots of folks have made this point, but here’s a particularly good piece on the subject, called "Beware the EcoMoms," by Laura McKenna. She begins by caustically pointing out that New York Times reporters don’t get along well with moms, especially those of the suburban variety, which in my limited-but-personal experience is absolutely true, and can result in a lot of snarky prose. Such as:
The EcoMom party has arrived, with its ever-expanding “to do” list that
includes preparing waste-free school lunches; lobbying for green
building codes; transforming oneself into a “locovore,” eating locally
grown food; and remembering not to idle the car when picking up
children from school (if one must drive). Here, the small talk is about
the volatile compounds emitted by dry-erase markers at school.
True enough, but more importantly, you can’t buy your way out of our mutual responsibility for climate change. As McKenna writes:
The greenest people are totally unhip and
unlikely to be photographed for the Times or a glossy magazine. They’re
still wearing their clothes from twenty years ago. They aren’t keeping
their home spa-worthy clean. No need to worry about polluting the air
with chemicals, if you aren’t dusting every five minutes. They aren’t
constantly renovating their kitchens and bathrooms, all of which uses
enormous amounts of energy and resources; they are still living with
the Formica numbers from the 70s. They aren’t jetting off to Europe to
browse the Paris markets; they go bowling in the next town over. They
aren’t constantly shopping for new things and tossing out the old
things.
This is some poetry in all of this. Grandma with the Hummels has a
smaller carbon footprint by doing absolutely nothing than the wealthy
do-gooder in the Range Rover attending the NRDC fundraiser.
If you must have a hip home and global warming is a concern, then
there are other ways to go. Pick up end tables from a garage sale and
paint them. Buy an old house near the center of town. Don’t get your
nails done.
Finding "the poetry" in such a lifestyle: now there’s a worthy goal. Let’s hope we can.
Kit Stolz 