Thursday, April 16, 2009

Being Green During the End of Days

I'm a child of the 70's. By that I mean I was born in the 60's, and thus had many of my formative experiences during the Carter administration. Thanks for your condolences. For those of you who don't remember the 70's, or weren't alive yet, I can summarize it like this: it was just like the late 00's (only more genuine). We had a recession. We had an energy crisis. We were internationally unpopular. We were under constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Financial watchdogs were publishing dire warnings about our impending federal insolvency. The country, as a whole, had very low self-esteem. I actually wrote to Jimmy Carter and suggested that many of our problems would be solved if we scrapped the automobile and returned to traveling on horseback. The fact that I was horse-crazy had nothing to do with it, of course.

As you probably know, 9/11 and our other modern troubles have caused a real "return to religion" for many Americans. It wasn't too long after that that the field across the street from my neighborhood sprouted an Islamic school. Which was a weird thing in itself, because I felt really conflicted about it: on the one hand, I believed many Muslims were suffering bigoted societal backlash daily, finding themselves lumped in with terrorists through no fault of their own. On the other hand, I instinctively eyed the school as if it was a bomb-making den, raising my eyebrows whenever I saw lights on at night. Apparently, our psyches contain multitudes.

Not long after the Islamic school appeared, an Evangelical church began construction in the same field. Nature abhors a magnetic monopole. A year or so went by, and we watched the church rise, and we watched both the school and the church gain more congregants, and at the same time the economy was faltering, our Iraq efforts were neatly balanced between embarrassment and travesty, and "global warming" was being traded in for wholesale "climate change" because things were apparently just too awful to predict.

Right about when gas hit $4.00/gallon, three cheerful teenagers, two girls and a boy, showed up on my doorstep. They wanted to tell me that the Evangelical church was open and would be holding its first service that coming Sunday. I welcomed them to the neighborhood, and I mentioned that we'd enjoyed watching them all work together to build the church. They asked me if I thought I'd be attending. I said, "Well, I may come by for a service just to meet you and welcome you, but I'm unlikely to be a regular."

"Do you not believe in God?" asked the girl on the right.

"I certainly believe in some kind of God," I replied, "but it's probably not one that your church would recognize."

"Really? In these times, you don't think we need Jesus more than ever?"

"No, not as such. Sorry," I said.

Then the young man spoke up. "You know, the End of Times is coming, can't you feel it? With what's going on in the world, the climate, the wars? We're running out of resources?"

I smiled at him reassuringly, and said, "I won't argue with you that things are serious these days. And I understand why you're feeling as worried as you are. If you believe things are that dire, I can't really dispute it, because you may be right."

"But you don't believe it?" he asked.

"No, I don't."

"Why not?"

"Because this is just like the 70's," I said. "And after the 70's, we had such a run of prosperity and good fortune that most people don't even remember the 70's happened. Seriously, it was just like this. so it's hard for me to get too worked up about it."

All three of them just stood on my porch blinking at me. After a bit of awkwardness, I put in, "Really, welcome to the neighborhood. You have a lovely church, and I'm sure you will enjoy it very much. Best of luck to you all." That broke the spell, and they muttered goodbyes and wandered off in search of the next door.

It left me pondering, though. Any time history repeats itself, it never repeats exactly. It's always a variation on a theme. I've noticed the many similarities between then and now, but I've also noticed differences. It's hard for me to know whether these differences are real, or whether they're just the difference between the child-observer I was in the 70's and the adult-observer I am today. I was a very earnest, patriotic child. I am a more laid back and cynical adult. But it seems to me as if, this time around, we're kind of... pretending. Pretending to be worried about the environment. Pretending to have a recession.

Obviously, lots of real people have lost real jobs are are really struggling. What I'm trying to say, though, is that, in general, I get the same sense of fickle self-obsession off our "crises" as I got off the preceding glory years. People talk about economizing and cutting back, but these are the same people who just finished remodeling their entire house even though it didn't need it to begin with. They're not really economizing, they're just at a good stopping point. They're not talking about buying a bunch of townhouses to flip for easy money anymore, sure, but that talk was hot air all along. They whine about the drastic decline in their 401k's, but since most of them aren't near retirement, it's just whining. They aren't buying a new car, but that's because their current SUV is only three years old.

And "going green"? Surely I'm not the only one rolling my eyes at the faux-greennness running rampant in stores these days. I thought it was all just advertising glitz until I decided to replace my kitchen floor this year. Now, remember: I'm a child of the 70's. So while I'm attracted to the idea of buying a "green" floor, I know that the absolute best "green" move you can make is to not throw things out before they're used up. So I'm not replacing my kitchen cabinets and countertops. Or my kitchen appliances (though I realize one could have a debate about the fridge). I'm not replacing the carpet in the rest of the house even though it may only have a few years left. I'm keeping the wood foyer. So all I'm doing is pulling up my vinyl flooring, which has an intriguing mold colony growing in it, and replacing it with cork and tile flooring.

Now, to me, this is huge. This is the biggest remodeling thing I've done on my house since I moved in over ten years ago. I'm very excited about being able to get a new floor. But, the thing is, it's not turning out to be that easy. Because I don't want to do this myself, I want to hire someone to do it. And since we're all just pretending to have a recession, it has been very hard to get anyone to call me back or show up to give me an estimate. Maybe it's just my recession-proof area, but as soon as people hear I have a mere 350 square feet to redo, they practically hang up on me. The one estimate I have in hand is quite high, as if they've slapped a "tolerance fee" on, hoping I won't bother them by actually hiring them for my petty little job.

Meanwhile, I hear on the radio that people who are wanting to "go green" and "get back to basics" by growing some of their own food are hiring companies to come out and build them a garden. They interviewed a young couple who had a company come out, test the soil, till a 10 x 10 foot area, truck in more soil, pile in a few chemicals, and give planting and cultivating advice. They were happy to have paid over $1,200 for this service. Now, look, if you want to spend over a grand getting some dirt dug in your back yard, that's fine, and I hope you get lovely tomatoes. But don't try to tell me you're "economizing" or being "down to earth". I have no problem at all with you enjoying a luxurious dabble in the new fad of home vegetable gardening (which is also, by the way, a total reprise of earlier fads -- remember Victory gardens?). Just don't try to tell me the recession made you do it, or that you were motivated by your deep concern for the environment.

So you can tell I'm a little crabby. That's because, when all this gloom gathered, a whiff of my old 1970's earnestness came back to me. I hoped people really would get back to basics a little. I remember when we'd buy a new car, and all the neighbors would stop by to see it and admire it. I remember when hiring someone to do a few handyman jobs was routine, and a giant remodel was something only rich people did. I remember when lawns just had to be mostly green and mostly mowed, with a few nice flowers by the front bushes. I remember life before weed whackers and obligatory mulch.

We've come such a long way since then -- more energy efficient homes and appliances, a better awareness of our impact on the environment, a sort of democratizing of luxury -- but we had lost any sense of moderation. I was hoping that these "troubled times" would bring the moderation back into the equation, so that we could enjoy these improvements with less stress.

I fear now, though, that this all really is just like the 70's, and that now, like then, when our good intentions meet the tedious aspects of meaningful implementation, we'll declare our impatience with such drudgery and will go out and have the 80's all over again.

And I'll be stuck with this moldy vinyl floor.