Three Lies We Tell Ourselves About Our Environment

You wake up in the morning, roll around for a few minutes, turn off your alarm, and start thinking about breakfast. The first 25 minutes of your morning are a product of habit, a product you’re not about to give up on because it’s too easy to be complacent. Groggy-eyed and empty, you don’t think twice about starting up your car and sitting idle while meddling with your tunes for the ride.

I believe that if we make an honest attempt to fix the little things, break habits, and act responsibly – general populations may adopt a friendlier mindset. Small acts by individuals may seem relatively unharmful, but when North America – at roughly 340 million people – acts in near unison every day, we are no longer individuals.

Lie No. 1: I need my car each and every day. We are Creatures of Habit, and breaking any habit takes a new train of thought. The same way small changes over time may save the forests; one can’t choke a person until she admits that she doesn’t need a car to survive. Being the sole driver of a car each and every morning is completely unnecessary, and often selfish. I don’t even have to know about her problems, the size of the commute, or the horror of public transit. Only that sitting in your car is habitual and relatively destructive.

Without being particularly anti-car, I can say that yes, you consume fuel out of habit which you call necessity. Statistics have shown that while gas prices are getting ridiculous, they have yet to really reflect the cost that includes the cost to the environment – which eventually they will. A carbon tax will start to do that. What will it take for your car habits to finally seem ridiculous? Canadians now spend a good 30 percent of all consumer spending on things vehicle related – the more it costs, the more they spend. Old habits die hard.

Lie No. 2: Paperless is bullshit, and I can’t make a difference. We call our own shots, and believe what we think. While receiving some good advice about my blog from Penelope, she proceeded to announce that paperless is bullshit. I completely agree that paper-free is impossible, but it is by no means bullshit. She was probably alluding to what is called ‘Greenwashing‘; that it is a corporate trick to call something green to reap some other (image or monetary) benefits.

So, an internet (social media) entrepreneur gets to call paperless bullshit? Well, we tend to believe our opinion and then do what we can to back it up. As bloggers we do this. Global Warming naysayers: a prime example. There are two sides funding research about climate change, and each wishes to use it to their own end. Here’s my point: do what is healthy for future generations while the big money battles it out. Global Warming or not, make a point to conserve instead of calling conservation attempts bullshit. A move to paperless over time is absolutely foreseeable.

Lie No. 3: My City is Proactive. You may have seen my post on urban biodiversity, and how I rank urban ecosystems as one of the most important services a city has to offer. This is also true for cities or towns that promote sustainability and a conservation culture.

More recently it is being expressed that moving to a city of choice before a job of choice is good decision making. If you’re living in a city in which you haven’t been pushed to act positively due to public programs, you’re living behind the times. One example I see here in Victoria is Bike to Work Week – the traffic patterns are noticeably different, and the general attitude about it is positive (which is to be expected in a city of 250,000).

I predict that (and we’re seeing it already) the most attractive cities of tomorrow are the ones that are investing in change today. You should feel inclined to walk or bike, in fact you should be compensated. It starts with tax incentives for taking the bus, and continues with feeling the need to experience a natural looking city with nature and green space to offer.

As we manage our lives, we should be managing the environment around us, it’s called Stewardship and it shouldn’t be too difficult. We grew up disconnected from the land culturally; or if we didn’t, then why do we care so much for nice views yet struggle to keep our environment healthy?