Saturday, February 2, 2019

Tacking Toward Virtue

There's a lot of stuff we can do better as individuals. We can drive less, or not at all. We can avoid plastic. We can quit eating meat. The only problem is, basically, as modern humans, every single thing we do is screwing up something. Massively, in all likelihood. The whole system's going to have to be done differently and some things not done at all, and it will take a mind-blowing catastrophe to get everyone on board with that, let alone the powerful.

The efforts of individuals are so inconsequential that it's easy to get overwhelmed. I've got some good habits and am working on picking up some others, but I'm still a net disaster for the planet.

But it seems important to try, even if a state of purity is unreachable, and so I have instituted my own personal cap-and-trade system. Cap-and-trade is that deal where a government--say, California--decides just how much pollution it's willing to tolerate, and assigns permits to polluters, who are expected to reach reductions in pollutants either by buying permits from some entity that realized efficiencies and wasn't using them, or by polluting less. It's a market system designed to lower overall dreadfulness. My own personal cap-and-trade system regulates virtue. Mine.

Here's how it works. I determine just how much I can stand to screw up the environment and give myself that many permits with an eye to eventual reduction. The unvirtuous me really, really wants to take long, hot showers. So it does, citing the fact that the virtuous me has quit using the clothes dryer altogether. The unvirtuous me still likes meat and cheese, so it continues to eat it, pointing out how often the virtuous me bikes or walks instead of driving.

The Virtue Index can change on a daily basis depending on the amount of beer consumed and the (related) number of shits given. It can change depending on how many young, earnest, attractive, aromatic hippie children show up at the door asking for my signature and a check for something virtuous. The first three every month score. The fourth, who might represent the most laudable outfit of all, has unfortunately exceeded my virtue dollar saturation point for the month. I have a house and a cabin that use different electric companies; for one of them, I pay more for the electricity to subsidize their green-energy output, so for the other one I don't. Never mind that I have a house and a cabin and could certainly afford to pay the premium electrical rate for both: these are cap-and-trade chips, baby.

But none of this is fair. I shouldn't buy bananas because of the fossil-fuel cost to transport them; but I don't even like bananas. It shouldn't count in the virtue index. And if we're being honest here, that business of getting rid of the clothes dryer turned out not to be such a big deal either. I know, it surprised me too.

Really, the only thing I can say for myself at this point is when I do pick up a new habit, it stays picked up. With that in mind, I announce my next new habit, much delayed. I'm buying bird-friendly coffee. If you are already peeved at the crows rawwking away at dawn when you're trying to sleep, rest assured this has nothing to do with caffeinating crows. But bird-friendly coffee is a really good way to put your money precisely where your mouth is. It's direct. It works. It matters.

When you buy coffee certified as Bird-Friendly by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, you are patronizing a coffee farmer who has agreed to leave the canopy alone, or nearly so, and grow coffee in the shade of a diverse forest. Most coffee is grown in plantations of coffee trees created by razing indigenous forest, a monoculture that does not support migratory bird life or most any other life, and (as is typical of a monoculture) requires pesticides and fertilizers to maintain. They get more beans per acre that way. The Smithsonian certification also guarantees a good market rate for their farmers so they are not tempted to clear their land to gain more coffee beans. This is freakishly specific. This is not lobbing monthly donations toward a good outfit that you hope is doing the right thing and not wasting too much. This is your money on the line, riding a dart right to the heart of real virtue. We want good coffee that doesn't wreck the environment, and we also want the farmers to be fairly compensated for it: we pay a decent rate for it.

I haven't done that, even though I've known about it for years. I've bought Costco bags of beans, three pounds at a whack, sealed in plastic, for approximately no money at all (that's where they hook you), and mine says "Rainforest Blend" on the plastic wrapper, so that people like me who are running a personal cap-and-trade program on virtue can pretend it's okay. It's not okay. It's like buying Fiji bottled water because it says "Earth's finest water, bottled at the source, untouched by man."

I don't care what else you eat or drink. Bullshit is not good for you.

21 comments:

  1. We watched a documentary called, "The True Cost" and now we call most garments "death clothes." Our latest virtue is buying clothes secondhand, made in the US, or by co-ops overseas that pay decent wages and provide relative safety on site. Blue jeans are the hardest part. New, American made jeans can run to $200 a pair.

    So I'm still in 501s and drive a hybrid car.

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    1. I've been wearing "death clothes" forever, simply because I like better quality clothes, but do not like to pay for them. Most of my clothes, furniture, etc. comes from consignment shops, thrift shops, garage sales, and dumpsters. Unfortunately the garage saling involves a bit of driving, but I always plot a route to avoid backtracking and work in errands that are in the area.

      I also use the internet to buy a lot of things I can't get secondhand, and unfortunately that involves Amazon a preponderance of the time. I figure that the trucks are making their routes anyway, so it's better for them to bring me my accoutrements instead of schlepping off to various stores to purchase them in person.

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    2. It's all so complicated. I wear, as you might remember, fleece overalls virtually every day in the winter--I have three pairs--and I've had them for thirty years. But now I learn they're made out of plastic!

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    3. The last couple of episodes of The Good Place were about this problem, and just how hard it is for people to be good when sourcing everything is so complicated.

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    4. It's a much bigger problem than individuals can solve, but I think it's good practice to be aware of these things.

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  2. I sort of knew about the coffee (and indeed it seems almost anything grown in bulk). My body took an objection to coffee years ago so I don't drink it, but the other household resident does. Something new to feel guilty about.
    I have a range of virtuous activities that I mostly do, but there is always scope for more.

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    1. We're all just fahts in a gale-stawm, as they say in Maine. But we have to try, right?

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    2. That Maine saying is somehow the most cheering thing I've read all week. I used to think that way. These days I walk around feeling like the galestawm is likely 30% composed of aw fawts and it gets me down.

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  3. There is a lot of good that is being done out there around the world. This looks like a great addition.

    I just hope that there is a pivotal point, coming very, very soon, where the leadership of the world actually gets serious about carbon reduction. Because individual efforts are only a trickle set against corporate and governmental shoulder shrugs.

    As you might be able to tell, I had Gloomies instead of Wheaties for breakfast. Tomorrow I might feel better. In the meantime, I am well acquainted with your personal virtue index system :)

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    1. I am a happy person who eats plenty of Gloomies. We're screwed. I do believe that. But one must soldier on.

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  4. The responsible thing would be to eat only locally sourced foods. For me at this time of year that would be a diet of mostly red squirrels and spruce trees. Granted there is more variety during the three weeks of summer, but mostly I just can't be that virtuous when it comes down to it.

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    1. Hmm...I could have roast junco and a bergena salad.

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  5. Excellent. AND it is usually organic which benefits your health and is grown by small farmers and you are keeping them in business. So many wins.

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    1. I should point out it isn't prohibitive. In fact I'm coming in at around $10 a pound, which is kind of normal, unless you buy Costco coffee.

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  6. You wrote: "The whole system's going to have to be done differently and some things not done at all, and it will take a mind-blowing catastrophe to get everyone on board with that, let alone the powerful." I would like to believe that a catastrophe would bring everyone on board, but I suspect that humans will do what they have always done when faced with catastrophe and just make a horrible problem even more horrible.

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  7. My (very minor) contribution was to unplug my Wii. I used to have it at the ready for when I wanted to play such virtuous games as Yoga or Platform Exercises, but it will save energy to only plug it in when I want to use it. I consider this the beginning of looking for other unnecessary power usages.

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    1. Oh dear. I haven't even begun to think about that.

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  8. I love reading your columns.
    Jenny

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  9. I'm also on the saving energy side by turning off everything unnecessary until I need it. Only the fridge runs non-stop. And the airconditioner during heatwaves, at other times I turn it off when I go to bed and just aim a pedestal fan at the bed for sleeping comfort.

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  10. No air conditioner. No dryer. No TV. A small car that runs on fumes. But I DO like my hot water!
    To compensate, I carry a bag and pick up plastic and styrofoam on the beach and the roadsides. And recycle it properly.
    Then I go home and immerse myself in hot, hot water. I've earned it.

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