I recently sold my Volkswagen Eurovan, a vehicle I had been quite fond of. But I moved to a part of Seattle where owning a car is more a hindrance than not having one. Besides, I no longer have to shell out cash for maintenance and repairs and insurance and monthly parking fees. Plus, I walk a lot more and pollute a lot less. And when I do need the occasional wheels, Zipcar is right around the corner.
The perfect arrangement it would seem, particularly since I work at home. And here’s another important advantage: I’ve taken another step toward simplifying my life.
I’ve been doing that a lot lately—getting rid of what I don’t need, buying only what I do need, and generally making decisions based on whether I’m simplifying or intensifying.
At least that’s how the theory goes.
In the past, I’ve often gone through periods of such purging in order to free myself of possessions because of the freedom it affords—whether perceived or otherwise. It would be nice to attach some altruistic or spiritualistic sentiment to my actions, but the fact is, I’m happier when I remove the clutter. If in the process I end up consuming less and using fewer resources and clearing the path to enlightenment, so much the better.
I’m not suggesting that I live a Spartan lifestyle. I enjoy good food and good wine and a good bed and indoor plumbing. Having lived without many of these at one time or another, I can attest fully to how nice they are to have. To this day, the sound of a flushing toilet is music to my ears.
I’ve grown accustomed to other luxuries as well. I live in an apartment with more than one room. I have LED nightlights in many of those rooms. I even have an air purifier that keeps my rooms smelling as sweet as a daisy freshener.
So, yeah, I’m still enough of an entitled American to be using more than my fair share of the planet’s resources. I might be below the national average (or I might not be), but I remain enough of a participant that there’s no way I can cast stones without shattering my own glass house. Even my breathing releases CO2.
Yet no matter where I do sit on the scale, I can’t help but be aware that there are a lot of us on there and that we’ve just about tipped the damn thing over. Clearly, we can’t continue to live the lifestyles we’ve been living without even more serious consequences than we’re already seeing, not only to the global environment, but also to the people and places and flora and fauna directly affected by our gas-guzzling, climate-controlling, resource-intensive, electronically-engineered, consumptive lifestyles.
According to an article in the Guardian, China now emits more carbon dioxide than the US and Canada combined. Yet on a per capita basis, Americans continue to out-emit the Chinese by four-to-one. Plus, one of the reasons the Chinese are belching out so much CO2 is to produce products that keep us little American consumers happy.
Even if we don’t factor in our second-hand smoke, the US continues to hold the number one slot for per capita emissions among the world’s big economies. In 2009, for example, each individual in the US pumped out an average of 17.67 metric tons, compared to 1.72 metric tons in Indonesia, 1.38 in India, and 1.13 in Africa.
It’s not surprising that we’ve been getting away with this, given how much wealthier we are than most of the world’s populations. The Millennium Project—commissioned by the UN Secretary-General and supported by the UN Development Group—estimates that more than one billion people live on less than a dollar a day; that every night, more than 800 million people go to bed hungry; that every 3.6 seconds, another person dies of starvation.
Even here in the US, the wealthiest country in the world, the outlook continues to grow grimmer. According to the US Census Bureau, the real median household income is dropping, the poverty rate is rising, and the number of people without health insurance is greater than ever.
So it’s a pretty bleak picture all around. Sure, a few in this country are fairing better than most, but the rest have either stagnated or lost ground, with the poor in particular taking it in the shorts.
And much of what has been happening on the national and international stages can be directly attributed to our lifestyles—and the politics and belief systems that protect those lifestyles. We might want to ignore our complicity in all this, or even flat out deny it, but few of us can absolve ourselves from some level of participation.
Yet at this point, it’s no longer a question of the parts we’re playing, but rather what we can do to turn these parts around—and do so quickly.
At least that is what I ask myself. Or more precisely, I ask what I’d really be willing to sacrifice so that others may have their fair share. Turning off lights and running less water and using biodegradable products and eating organic produce and burning less fuel and recycling trash are certainly better than doing nothing, but they barely scratch the surface when you consider that every year six million children die from malnutrition before they reach the age of five.
When we take into account the disrupted ecosystems and overpopulation and depleted resources and oil-driven wars and attacks on civil liberties and the many other challenges that face us, we are at a critical juncture at every front. We are at a time that calls for radical shifts in the way we think and the way we act. And the longer we delay, the more the planet is destroyed and the more lives that are lost.
I don’t pretend to have the answers. I’m not even sure I’m asking the right questions. Nor do I believe that there are any easy fixes. It has taken centuries of complex maneuvering to get us here, and change of any sort is rarely easy, especially shifts of such magnitude.
Yet to be of any consequence, the changes we embark upon must be on a grand scale, without being sidetracked by trendy lifestyles choices and well-publicized social experiments, without basing our decisions on tweeted accolades and Facebook-friendly fantasies. We’re talking change that transcends our needs for entertainment and instant gratification, change that takes into account those living now and those yet to be born, change that values the ecosystems that support and sustain us, change that is moral and just and responsible, change that recognizes and seeks to preserve the sanctity of all life.
During World War II, people in the US made a great number of sacrifices to support the efforts on the Pacific and European fronts. They recycled, they rationed, they came together as communities for what they perceived as the greater good. Not all people participated. Not all people agreed with the war effort. And not all people were honest in their dealings. Even so, many did participate, and their participation made a difference in that effort because they believed in something larger than themselves.
Perhaps if we could come together in that way now, but this time to fight a different type of tyranny—the tyranny of poverty and hunger and disease and environmental devastation. But it would call for sacrifice. It would call for commitment and courage. Above all, it would call for compassion and a belief that there is more to life than our own self-interests.
But it starts with individuals willing to commit to making significant changes in their own lives, people willing to sacrifice on a personal level for the greater good. And that, of course, leads me back to myself and to my original question. What, exactly, am I really willing to give up so that others might have lives worth living—or be able to live their lives at all?