Why Should I…?

I sometimes experience a fair amount of stress around deciding when to indulge myself and when to do without for the sake of our common good.

I’m not the most knowledgeable person about how various kinds lifestyle choices impact the environment or contribute to social injustice, but I’ve got a general idea. I know that the fact I am sitting in an air-conditioned room right now is contributing to global warming. I know that when I went ahead and ordered a new pair of Chacos because I love them so much, I was participating in a ridiculous system in which raw materials are shipped all the way to China, assembled, and then shipped all the way around the globe to me. I know that even though my Sodastream machine helps me waste less plastic that will end up in the ocean killing sea life, it’s manufactured in Israel, reportedly in an illegal West Bank settlement.

There are other things I do without. I haven’t had children, for example (a personal choice, but it does lessen my impact on the world). I minimize driving and bought a two-seater car because it gets decent gas mileage (this can be very inconvenient at times). I do almost no international travel and take very few vacations that require lots of driving or flying. I’m mostly vegetarian. I wear the same utilitarian clothes until they wear out, with no attention whatsoever to cultural style changes.

But this post isn’t about where I end up falling on the “green living” scale between indulgent and virtuous. It is about the stressful process of making all of my choices with the aspiration to minimize the harmful impacts I have on the world while still trying to enjoy my life. Where do I draw the line?

Maybe I’m crazy, but part of me sincerely believes that I’d be doing the world a favor if I had no harmful impact on it at all. That is, if I wasn’t here. However, seeing as I’m not about to kill myself, it sometimes seems the only option is to limit my indulgences as much as possible and just feel bad about them.

I realize my happiness doesn’t depend on my iphone, the occasional bacon slice, or keeping my home office at 80 degrees instead of letting it get to 90. I realize that the most important things in life are not material, and I can cope with more discomfort than I usually do without getting depressed. I could do without and still live a happy, productive life.

Still, when it comes to making the decision, “Indulge, or do without?” what arises in my mind are questions like, “Why should I do without (or endure the discomfort, or go through the extra effort, etc.), when so many thousands or millions of people will not? Why should I abstain from air conditioning a single room (where I work all day long) when there are entire air conditioned malls and stadiums all over the world? What difference will it make for me to do without?”

You may be inclined either to lecture me about my unnecessary indulgences, or encourage me not to worry so much and just enjoy myself, but consider how important and complicated this process of decision-making is for everyone on this planet. Those of us in industrialized nations are definitely over-indulging, but very few us will choose to live off the grid and spend most of our time and energy on material self-sufficiency. Where, on the spectrum between too much indulgence and environmental puritanism, should we aim to live?

Photo by Greencolander  (creative commons)