Dog-Paddling Upstream

Recently I read an article in Orion by Janisse Ray, called "Altar Call for True Believers." In it she addresses the question of "preaching to the choir" among environmentalists, and argues that the choir is more in need of preaching than one might think. She calls for environmentalists to make more of an effort to walk their talk, to fully live their lives according the principles they espouse.

Now, I don't have much of a complaint with this argument in its general form. I agree that it's silly to suggest that people ought to use reusable bags at the grocery and switch to fluorescent bulbs when one is unwilling to do the same. These are small changes, and they add up.

But I found, by the end of the article, that my hackles were raised, and I'm trying to put a finger on why. What I've come to believe - and it's an uncomfortable belief - is that, if Janisse is correct, I am not a good environmentalist, if I am an environmentalist at all. On the heels of this belief is an even more disturbing one - faced with the possibility that my efforts are not only practically but symbolically empty, why should I bother? Why should I struggle, if nothing I do will ever be "enough"?

What also rankles is that it feels like I'm being addressed from a position of unconscious privilege.

That I am able to walk to work is the result of several coincidences, the control over which I had none. If I had not been lucky in being offered this part-time job, odds are that I would be spending many hours and many gallons commuting between our smallish town with its limited job opportunities and some worksite in one of the large sprawling areas that surrounds our town. The grocery bags I remember to bring are off-set by the miles we must drive to buy the groceries we put in them, and each time I use them I am reminded, when the cashier makes a puzzled face, what an atypical thing it is that I am doing. When I can find them, I buy fluorescent bulbs for our lights - and then pray that they will fit in the old, out-dated fixtures. I'd like for all my food to be local and organic, but were I to limit myself to such goods, only 10-15% of the groceries available would meet that standard. A composting toilet is an intriguing idea, but they are expensive, and I don't see our landlord letting us install one any time soon. Nor is a garden possible, since the yard is all in grass, and does not belong to us, and, moreover, we will not be here next fall for the harvest. I also lack the kind of support network that Janisse seems to have, a community of friends and colleagues who are near to hand when the zucchini need eating and the wood needs hauling. In a very literal way, I'm very much on my own, in practical day-to-day terms.

What I am saying, in this rambling, self-pitying way, is that even the smallest "green" actions require money, commitment, support, and opportunity. For the vast majority of us, running off to the backcountry to live in a house off the grid, fueled by our own woodlot, to eat vegetables grown only by our own hands or the hands of friends, to wear clothes made by local people - this is not possible. For one thing, there's not enough land for everyone to do this, even if they had the will and the means. And most people do not have either. Is your typical urban family going to know how to raise a goat? Is your average working class family going to be able to afford the amount of land needed to house and feed it? Remember that many people in New Orleans were so poor that they couldn't even flee for their lives - what does espousing a back-to-the-land ethos do for them? Then you add in that any of these efforts requires you to work against all the things that our society rewards as normal and everyday, and oh, boy, it gets tiring!

Moreover, those actions most of us can undertake successfully as individuals are not going to be enough. We're in a situation that developed over centuries, with a lot of money and time and effort being thrown into its development and growth, and I must tell you, the little consumerist changes we can make don't amount to all that much.

And yet, I still think they are worth doing. They are worth doing as small, symbolic actions, that speak to the hopes of a better future, while we grind away at less interesting but more fruitful activities like reforming tax codes and nagging our representatives and getting our schools to do more than churn out test results.

But this isn't the message I feel I have heard by the end of Janisse's piece, nor after reading many of the comments in this thread reacting to it. The feeling I get is that I'm dog-paddling, with much effort, while being swept downstream by the great river of the modern techno-consumerist mainstream. I'm making an effort rather than just giving up, but I know that there's not much I, one person, can do to stop the stream, change its channel, or reverse its flow. So then comes Janisse while I'm paddling away, tired and cross and largely on my own. In my more charitable moods, I envision her swimming alongside me with the grace and strength of a natural swimmer who's been swimming since childhood. In my more cynical ones, she's in a handbuilt birchbark canoe with a whole village of friends who can spell each other when they are tired. I'm wet, and exhausted, and she's lecturing me about how important it is to make a commitment to birchbark canoes!

Now, in a symbolic way, I get that her piece is an invitation to join the canoe and paddle with the crew, but in practice, most of us are swimming on our own, ridiculed or ignored by family and friends, isolated in environments where the very infrastructure defeats our efforts, dog-paddling away despite it all, despite the people we know roaring down the river in their big comfy motorboats, swamping us with their wakes. Janisse and her fellow-travelers are not my enemy.

Yet, I'm uncomfortable describing her as a friend, for all that she is a lovely, kind (and rather intense) woman in person. I just wish that she and the other birch-barkers understood a bit better why us dog-paddlers aren't swimming harder, and why so few of us seem to have lovely hand-made, sustainably harvested birchbark canoes. Until they do, a lot more of us are going to give up and succumb to the forces sweeping us all downstream, because then, at least, it's less work and you have lots of company, and no one nags you for not swimming hard enough.

Even though I'm not in the boat, and will never be able to be in the boat, I'm still part of her audience.

That is, unless us lowly dog-paddlers are in fact not, being something other than "real" environmentalists, and I very much hope that's not what she's saying. If it is, we're all in worse shape than I'd thought. What good is having a choir that sings beautifully, if the church is empty except for the choir?

Comments

[udge]

Reminds me of those who would rather vote Lefthanded-Vegetarian Party to make a subtle moral point, than effect a change of government by voting for a realistic candidate.

That was a good post, Rana.

[wayfarer scientista]

Ah, this is interesting because I bet, given her birch bark canoe, that Janice actually has a larger footprint on the planet then you do. I suspect that your dog-paddling actually means you consume less then she does and have less of an impact on the planet despite her belief otherwise. So take heart and enjoy the birds and the fishes and keep doing your part. Every little bit counts. I am sure of it. (From one dog-paddler to another)

[Rana]

Thanks for the comments - I've been going over this article over and over, and trying to reassure myself that I'm not simply resisting out of a sense of "It's too haaaaaaard."

I think what bothers me most are two unspoken assumptions underlying both the article, and many of the people who think/believe along similar lines.

The first is that the lifestyle chosen by a small minority of the population is simply a matter of will and choice - rather like believing that if people just ate right and exercised, everyone would be fit and thin.

The second is that this lifestyle is not only possible, but preferable - that it is the best way (perhaps even the only way) to be "environmental."

And I have trouble with both assumptions. I have trouble with the first, because it's grounded in so many privileged assumptions. Many people cannot choose where they live, many cannot own their own homes, many are limited by skills, abilities, responsibilities to certain locations, etc. etc. Not everyone is mobile, not everyone has a ready-made (or easily developed) social support network, not everyone has the money to make choices like the ones Janisse believes we all "ought" to. What this says, to me, is that there's a picture in her head about what an environmentalist looks like, and, honestly, I don't think I match that picture very well. I know a poorly educated, working-at-minimum-wage urban renter definitely does not.

For example, when she wonders if environmental groups ought not to forgo their annual conferences to save on all the jet fuel being wasted, it says to me that this is a person who's never known (or has forgotten) what it's like living in a community where you have no peers, no fellow believers, and how soul-warming it is to meet a bunch of such people in person, to encounter individuals you would never otherwise meet who believe as you do.

Or when she talks about using re-usable silverware and dinnerware at conferences; this is a good idea in the abstract, but in practice it assumes a certain level of resources - having the dinnerware available, having the people to clean it, having the facilities to store and clean it, etc. Adhering to this standard means that conferences are limited to those sorts of institutions that have a certain degree of capital and infrastructure, and the groups that have access to them. I find it disturbing that these are not elements in her equations - just the end product of not having to eat on a paper plate and having one's conscience disturbed.

And this brings me to the other aspect: the "should" assumption.

Let's assume, that in a perfect world, everyone is completely and totally committed to an "environmental" lifestyle. Why is the one being held up as the ideal in fact "ideal"? There seems, for example, to be little discussion about what an urban environmental ideal might look like - which is troubling, given that the majority of the world's population now lives in cities. Why is life down on the farm privileged?

I strongly suspect the influence of one of the most pervasive threads in American thought - the notion that rural life is more pure, more authentic, more nature-oriented, and that the roots of all evil - moral, economic, social - are located in the teeming cities.

And yet, historically, farms have been embedded in exploitative economies from day one. Colonial planters growing tobacco at a rate that rapidly exhausted the soil were not a pure community afraid of the market - they were heavily involved in it and highly profit-oriented. Ditto the people who destroyed the plains and produced the Dust Bowl. Ditto the people who decided to switch to fuel-based machinery over animal and human power.

Farming _can_ be done in a sustainable, environmentally friendly fashion. But it is not inevitable, not part of the inherent essence of farming. It is a deliberate choice.

I'm not saying urban life is inherently superior. What I am saying is that both draw from the same tainted well, and it's silly (yes, silly) to think that just because you've opted for one rather than the other that you are better, smarter, more green, whatever.

I don't think, in other words, that we need to be better believers.

I think we need to be critical, thoughtful, and open to possibility. And that includes being open to the possibility that our assumptions about an environmental good life might be more mistaken than we'd like to believe.

[Theriomorph]

Wonderful post, Rana, thanks for writing it (and thanks to Chris for pointing it out). The privileged baseline presumptions you point to are ones I've run into a lot as well, and it's a relief to see this articulated so thoughtfully.

[Ron Sullivan]

Indeed, and thanks for this. I've had my consciousness tweaked on the subject several times, being a city dweller with a tiny, shaded, shared backyard myself.

Once was when I was describing the lives of some of my immediate ancestors in a Pennsylvania company-owned anthracite-mining town to a friend in Arkansas. Friend asked, "Well, couldn't they just grow some food on their own land?" Well, no; the land thereabouts had been stolen from the Indians a few generations back and was pretty well polluted in many spots by mine drainage. Never mind that coalmining and taking care of a household with no appliances and few resources takes up all the energy a person has every day. (Despite this my maternal grandparents at least had a garden in their little yard, including a grape arbor I remember well. Not enough to provide more than a bit of produce and the occasional Sunday chicken, though.)

Another tweak happened when I was reflecting on the lives of the First Peoples right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, how they'd spend seasons by turns down by the Bay eating seafood and maybe some of the breeding ducks and up in the hills hunting game and harvesting the acorns from trees they had heritable rights to. This area was one of the most heavily populated places on the continent before Columbus, but there's no way it could support the number of people that are here now if we tried living in that fashion.

Ditto the whole continent if we all tried to live on our own little farms, of course. Or suburbs even. And I speak as one with a sad, thwarted, soul-deep lust for a piece of ground to call my own.

[Jennifer]

Hi Rana -- I followed a link here from jo(e)'s blog once & have been reading occasionally since then.

From your post I went over to read Janisse's piece, all ready to be pissed off, but I find that I agree with her. What she's saying, I think, is that we still need to be mindful. Even self-professed environmentalists.

Mentioning specific actions, as she does at the end, is tricky, because so much of it is a trade-off. I mean, my kids' daycare uses paper towels after washing hands (which they do a lot), which seems a ridiculous waste; but if they used real towels, they'd have to wash 50 a day, and how helpful is that? -- It's always the recommended actions that cause dissent, in my experience, because even though we say "environment" as if it were one thing, we're really talking about many many different landscapes, and prescriptives don't often hold across them all.

You know, I wonder about that conference. I see the value you place on it; gatherings are important. So how could one hold an 'environmentally responsible' conference for 250, or however many people? It would be hard to do in a hotel, they're so wasteful. But if you went to a forest, then you'd have all those people peeing behind trees and trampling vegetation & all. What if you had it at an outdoor amphitheater, in summer of course, with people dispersed around town in houses as well as hotels? And what if you served sandwiches and fresh fruit/veg for every meal, so that people didn't need any kind of silverware but only napkins? I don't know. It's interesting to think about.

Anyway. Sorry for the long first comment!

[Rana]

Hey - no worries. I actually prefer the long comments!

(I'll have one of my own in response, soon.)

[Rana]

Jennifer - I like the dispersed housing and sandwiches idea!
---

I've just gone to re-read Janisse's piece, because I want to make sure I'm not turning her into a strawwoman.

I think my resistance is with the issue of what it means, in practice, "to do better."

***

So, having re-read it, here's what I find. I'm still sceptical, if slightly more forgiving, because this time I noted a few (a few) places where she admits that perhaps some questioning of assumptions is appropriate - where she notes the low-consumption lifestyle of her non-environmentalist father (though - is that environmentalism, or poverty?).

But here's the thing. If she had simply argued that one needs to strive to be better, and left it at that, there wouldn't be much to argue with.

What gets contentious is that she judges instances of people falling short in terms of her own expectations - people buying nonhybrid cars, shooting hawks, using paper plates, etc. - and goes on to speculate as to "what the choir would look like" - and the first, detailed example she gives is a woman who farms on 98 acres and lives in a house made out of scavenged supplies (and, initially, in a tent).

No wonder the choir is tiny!

That's what disturbs me. It doesn't have to be, and not because we've all lowered the standards for joining the choir. Rather, we need to think long and hard, individually and collectively, about what "better" actually means, and what it costs to achieve it. We also need to think very carefully about whether the standard to which we aspire is an achievable one. Do we really want to create a group of environmental saints whose "sanctity" depends on a rural lifestyle?

(And, if so, why and what are the consequences?)

As we do that, we also need to think about who bears the costs of becoming better, because, as in Janisse's example about the turkey farmer, "better" for Janisse is not necessarily "better" for the farmer, who has to add to her workload and costs in order to ease Janisse's conscience, on top of her own efforts to practice sustainable agriculture. We're part of a larger web - one which includes other humans, including non-environmentalist humans - and it's arrogant to elide over the ways our efforts at self-improvement may carry costs not just for ourselves, but for people who were not consulted about the matter, and might have a much different (but still acceptable) solution.

All I'm saying, really, is that part of "doing better" - a part that Janisse, to me, gives insufficient weight to - entails thinking carefully and deliberately about our assumptions, our values, and our behavior, and to continuously question their validity - especially when there are implications beyond our own personal pleasures and discomforts.

"Doing better" requires sacrifice, and, for some, significant hardship, if the standard Janisse is offering is to be our yardstick. We need to acknowledge that, we need to ask whether the sacrifice is bourne more by others than ourselves, and we need to ask whether the ends for which we are sacrificing are, in fact, "better."

Finally, we need to be honest with ourselves about WHY we ought to "do better." "To save the planet" is too vague, and, besides, it is inaccurate. We are not "saving the planet" - we are trying to ensure the future of human life on the planet. Moreover, we are trying to ensure a particular kind of living - and that's where things get sticky. Each ideal we hold up comes with costs as well as benefits, and I would argue that our unwillingness to talk about the costs of our current ways of living is what got us in this mess in the first place.

So, for me, a significant part of "doing better" entails unpacking the hidden assumptions, costs, and privileges involved in various sorts of supposedly "green" lifeways, and not just going with the version that fits with my pre-existing sense of what's "better."

Otherwise, I'd be shopping at the Wal-Mart because they now have organic veggies!

[Jennifer]

The best example of an environmentally-responsible culture that I've ever seen is in Ursula LeGuin's "Always Coming Home." It's a utopia, though, set something like 1000 years in the future. Since I read the book a decade ago I've been wondering how we get from here, today, to her utopia.

A big part of the problem with the environmental movement is the sanctity you mentioned. It tends to be arrogant and holier-than-thou. My husband, who loves the land where he lives & has an intimate relationship with our nearby river -- he hates environmentalists. That he could be alienated from the movement is a sad, sad thing, to me...

What does an environmentally-correct lifestyle look like to you?

[bright]

i'm so glad to see fellow sinners represented... i came via faultline.org, and i'm glad i did. i'll have to read the prompting post and see if i agree or not, but your observations are very compelling nonetheless.

there was a similar thought on the slow cook's blog. i've also had conversations with my husband wherein he acknowledges that sometimes, he feels guilty for greeting my hippy ideas with disbelief. he knows our behavior at large is untenable, yet it is nonetheless weird of me to want to compost the cat doo. but, as with all communities there is always a continuum. i think this can't be helped. the hardcore adherents will always unintentionally drive people away... i think it's up to the rest of us to add to that continuum the more realistic and beginner level descriptions. the thing that matters is not that we all adhere to a single standard that looks unpleasant as well as attainable; the thing that matters is making whatever changes you can. this is totally lame to articulate though... no one seems to do it often or very well. so you get things like ecorazzi, that instead champion the teeniest tiniest things that green celebrities do. not that i'm knocking the site; we're creatures of marketing.

take heart though... once upon a time there were only 12 christians. can any of you walk on water?

[Moe]

Personally, I think we all spend too much time thinking about it and too much time listening to those who think they know better. Just trust your own instinct.

Obviously, we can't all "go back to the farm." As was mentioned, we don't have enough room. Plus, "back in the old days" of everyone farming for themselves, most lived in abstract poverty. We would do well to recall why the majority of people left that lifestyle. It's back-breaking 24-hour per day work. One drought and your family is starving to death, etc. And it's horribly inefficient.

The idea is not to go backwards in time in order to 'save' the environment. The idea is to go forward, and find better ways to live in our current form. Waste less, pollute less, conserve more - in your own world. Support worthy causes, but don't worry about those who choose to go overboard.

We'll get there. Little-by-little.

Great post.