How To Be Green OR How Not To Be a Fuckhead

You know what color I love? Puce. The muddy color of a dirty plum. Purple, puce’s more virtuous cousin. Royal. Majestic. Like an ox. No, wait – that’s blue. Blue, the color of the sea…or an ox.

On the other hand, do you know what color chafes my twat? Green. The color of jealousy. The color of a gangrenous wound, and the color of my beautiful, limpid eyes glistening after a good cry. Why am I crying? Red. The crimson, inflamed patience of someone stuck on a bus going twenty miles under the speed limit, forced to breathe the musky fumes of his fellow passengers because a single cyclist is riding in the HOV lane rather than the clearly treacherous, unnavigatable sidewalk.

Whether they wear spandex, or tight manpris, cyclists are people. They are still people. Are they cool? Maybe. Is cycling a less polluting way to travel than driving a car? Usually. But when a single cyclist holds up an entire bus of commuters, thereby causing more pollution than one cyclist could ever hope to, they deserve to be slowly, but gently, coaxed on the sidewalk by the front bumper of that bus. There could be nothing more green, more healthful for the earth and its bipedal inhabitants than caressing, physically coaxing a single man towards a greener solution with a two-ton bullet. That is humanity’s gift to itself.

What does being Green mean? It means reducing your carbon footprint. It means giving Mother Earth a loving reach-around and a pat on the back. But we’re getting confused, people. There are far too many factors involved in being Green for a single Earth-conscious individual to synthesize into a reasonable gameplan of action, so let’s juggle some thought balls and see if we don’t end up with a happy audience, or at least juggling's equivalent of a happy audience.

Many coffee shops offer silverware to use instead of disposable stir sticks. The thought here is that instead of filling a landfill with latte-skinned plastic straws, one can use silverware that doesn’t need to be deposited in the garage after one use. But, there are numerous factors at play here. A disposable stirrer needs to be produced, which means using gasoline and other pollutants. The stirrer is then thrown in the garbage after one use, eventually filling a landfill. But silverware must be produced as well, and though it’s not thrown away after one use, it needs to be washed after every use, which requires water, electricity, and the gasoline required to produce that electricity. Which option is Greener? Beats the shit out of me - but that’s the point. It is not clear which option is better for Mother Earth. Just as in the case of cycling versus driving, the truly Greener solution is not obvious, and might even might counterintuitive. What does this mean? It means Green-crazed yupsters should take a moment to consider the validity and weight of their actions, especially when throwing a non-verbal Tsk Tsk towards those who don’t ape them.

Another Green issue is what we foods we decide to shove in our faceholes. Producing meat is an inefficient use of energy in comparison with a vegetarian diet. This is indisputable. We grow food not to eat ourselves, but to feed and raise an animal, which eventually we will then eat. The scale at which meat is raised in this country means a massive amount of energy is being wasted on raising meat. If you have ever talked to a Vegan they will enlighten you to these facts; especially the newly converted herbivores, for though they ride tall, tall horses, they are more than happy to dismount for a moment to educate the steedless.

So, clearly, what we chew is an issue of the utmost concern, right? No. No, it is not, you self-important gobs of hummus. The average person has a finite amount of time, energy, and money to pursue their ideals. Being Green does not look the same across the board. One person might recycle every piece of waste they produce down to their used dental floss (squeegee, disinfect, dry, and reuse). Another might choose mass transportation over driving to the store in a really, really cool Hummer. Another might simply choose to donate their money to Green organizations that then use that money to further Green technologies. One might even forgo being Green altogether – stifle your gasps - and focus their limited excess resources not on reducing their own carbon footprint, but other issues, such as reducing the footprints of the homeless by volunteering in homeless shelters or in local foodbanks. To focus solely on one issue and consider it paramount to others is not only short-sighted, but unreasonable, and will probably lead to becoming a preachy dickhead.

There are many ways to help the Earth and the life on it. People choose to accomplish this through various routes, none of them more important, or moral than another. To forget this leads down a ruinous road of myopism, and of becoming a total fuckhead. Good day.