Green Burn-Out

This Texan finally hit the "no more meat" enviro-guilt level when I read a section from the Sunday NY Times "Week in Review" entitled, "Malthus Redux: Is Doomsday Upon Us, Again?" (This photo, of Haitans searching for food, accompanies the article.) While I can't imagine willingly having the fortitude to become vegetarian, the stats make clear that meat eaters in the U.S. are on a crash course with what appears to be an emerging global food shortage.

So I come in and tell my colleagues my decision to move as far away from meat as I can and hear, "Then you will have to become a vegan because keeping chickens is almost as energy intense as producing meat." That brings me to an article from the Sunday NY Times "Sunday Styles" section on enviro-burnout entitled, "That Buzz in Your Ear May Be Green Noise" . It leads with a woman whose been schlepping heavy, reusable milk bottles only to find out that transporting these bottles back to the plant for cleaning is probably less sustainable than using lightweight, compostable paper cartons.

It goes on to describe what I experienced this morning as "green noise" which is the "...static caused by urgent, sometimes, vexing or even contradictory information played at too high a volume for too long." The result: folks like me think it is futile to give up meat (or fill in the blank for whatever you are trying to do to respond to new awareness of the environmental crisis.)

The article also goes on to describe what enviromentalists are doing to respond to these challenges. Some see the need for simplification like cheat sheets. Others are trying to make information available so we are better able to customize and prioritize how we respond. From just this morning's experience, I can say that the folks in the know better decide fast and decide well because most of us already feel like our informational plates have been tuned to burn-out for way too long anyway.

Susan Herr