The Enviro Rollercoaster

Well, so much for Earth Day. I did my part by cycling to my singing lesson and taking transit to a recital. But I kind of messed things up with the gas-sucking car ride to get groceries. It was a lot easier to be environmentally virtuous when I was single. Of course, being poor and not owning a car helped. I'll just try to bumble along in my 21st-century, modern consumer-ist way.

Sometimes I wish I could perform a grand gesture in tribute to the environment. Something big, brassy and lasting. My feeble attempts at cycling and recycling and taking 5-minute showers seem puny and unimportant at times. I know/hope I'm one of many doing the same things and that our cumulative gestures amount to xxxx number of cars taken off the road. Earth Hour was kind of comforting that way, with a whole community doing something very visible all at once. Then I read an article in the paper that said our energy consumption during Earth Hour actually exceeded last year's total (probably due to the harsh weather this year, although that wasn't entirely clear in the article).

I suppose the sight of all those blue and green bins lined up like little plastic tanks on the sidewalk, come garbage day are another indication that there's a widespread willingness to help. But then a monster SUV drives by, or I hear a car idling, or I see another "RRRRRoll up the RRRRRim to Win" cup tossed on the sidewalk, and my spirits take a dive. Up, then down, then up again for a while. Ah well, at least the enviro-snowball has started rolling... I dream that someday, eventually, it will flatten those guzzlers.