messages about cleanliness and looking good, but we don’t read or receive many of nature’s messages—the ones sent as news about gas prices and oil wars, global weirding and habitat loss, disease and extinctions, or the simple and beautiful seasonal cycles of our campus habitat. As a result, we don’t see or feel ourselves as environmental actors, participating wisely or wantonly in the rhythms and cycles of a living Earth.
When we wake up, some of us are conscious, but few of us are conscientious. Despite that fact, we all participate fully in the moral ecology of everyday life, making at least five ethical choices before breakfast. But we don’t feel like ethical actors because we’re just doing what comes culturally. We’ve made these choices not by our active options but by our passive participation in systems of choice. As this suggests, one of the most powerful things we do in life is to define normality for each other. If it’s normal to flip on the lights in the bathroom, we normally think it’s okay. But it might be more complicated than that. For example, when Joe and Jo College think they are just lighting a room, they’re also generating greenhouse gases. If they thought about it, they might think that this is “no big deal”—and that would be true, if they only lived for a day. But Americans live a long time, so all of our “no big deals” add up to major environmental impacts. As Eric Sorensen points out in his Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet, “If the average North American life expectancy holds at seventy-eight years, each person can expect to produce 1,630 tons of carbon dioxide over his or her lifetime.” The everyday actions of students are choices camouflaged as routines, but each of these habits is, in fact, a moral choice.27
Cartoon by Tom Toles. Reproduced by permission of Andrews McMeel Publishing.
Because what we do matters, we might want to wake up to more than the mere routines of the day. Mindful of the social construction of college culture and the busy-ness of campus life, we might try to set aside time for some big questions—ones having to do with the goodness of the good life or the health of the ecosystem services that we depend on. Mindful of the life-giving properties of water, we might try to conserve it for future generations. Mindful of our animal nature, we might try to be creatures who enhance habitats, instead of despoiling them. Mindful of the complexities of the human body and the other bodies that support it, we might nurture a sense of wonder for the natural world that includes us so generously.
Mindfulness: The quality of attention and care that keeps Earth in mind, so that we can mind our own social and environmental behavior. Antonym: mindlessness.
We might also begin to imagine and invent tools that literally remind us of our responsibilities for the life of the planet. Most current technologies are designed to be easy to use, and “easy” is sadly often just a synonym for “careless.” The thermostat maintains the temperature in our room; the TV stands ready for instantaneous power-up; the car starts with the turn of a key. Nothing reminds us that ambient temperatures, instantaneous electronics, and automotive travel are environmental issues. Nothing tells us about the implicit choices embedded in our machines. But we can remind ourselves of our environmental impacts—and change them—by designing machines for ethical impact as well as aesthetic appeal. In Sustainability by Design, for example, John Ehrenfeld suggests that a dual-flush toilet disrupts the normal flow of life just enough to make us mindful of our choices. Instead of just flushing, we have to make a choice about how much water to use—and if we know anything at all, we know the choice is both environmental and ethical. Eventually, this water-saving option might become second nature to us, and we might finally establish a mindless habit that actually conserves habitats.28
We might also consider reinventing the habits that threaten the planet’s natural (and cultural) habitats, so that our habits teach the people around us about the routines of a regenerative life. Unlike most humans in most of history, Joe and Jo College live in a segregated society, having separated themselves from the reflective experience of the natural world. Americans value “getting back to nature” on vacation, but that common phrase illustrates just how far we’ve removed ourselves from nature in our everyday lives. Instead of just living on the Earth, therefore, we might begin to live in the Earth’s cycles and rhythms, not just as consumers of ecosystem services, but as sources of ingenuity, creating regenerative designs—social, ecological, technological, and personal designs—that make it easier to live well with nature.29
Fortunately, Joe and Jo College live in an environment that allows reconsideration and reconstruction of the way we live in the world: the college campus. Unlike most Americans in the workaday world, college students could easily wake up to systems thinking—to see the systems that operate beneath the surfaces of everyday life and to change them. In the college environment of hope and opportunity, why not practice the mapping and modeling of natural systems, including the altered stocks and flows that result from our ordinary consumption? Why not pay attention to the inputs and outputs of our natural and cultural systems, and to feedback loops in nature and culture? Why not consider the cultural resources that we have to change the systems we live in, aligning our human systems with the ecosystems of nature? Why not make our lives mean something?30
Academic success won’t mean much in a world of ecological failures, and a college degree won’t be so advantageous on a planet warmed by five degrees. The grade we get in biology won’t matter that much if we compromise the planet’s biological systems. Cleanliness may still be next to godliness, but it won’t seem so special if it sucks up the world’s freshwater supplies. Putting on a cosmetic face in the morning may make us more attractive, but it won’t matter much if the guy of our dreams is full of flame retardants or other cancer-causing chemicals. Indeed, if we’re not careful and committed to environmental activism, we might find ourselves up shit creek without a paddle.
Our biggest environmental impacts don’t usually happen before breakfast, but if we woke up to our place in the world, we would see the amazing intricacy of nature and our part in it, and the amazing damage we can do without thinking. We would begin to understand the nature of college culture, including the power of habit, the power of example, and the power of institutions. And we would begin to use this new knowledge of our culture to change the nature of our relationship with the natural world.
2
The Nature of Stuff
You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
Eric Hoffer
Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an everincreasing rate.
Victor Lebow, “Price Competition in 1955”
Our secret plan is this: We’re going to go on consuming the world until there’s no more to consume.
Daniel Quinn, “On Investments”
Since the earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature’s diversity is gone?
Donella Meadows, as quoted in Simple Prosperity (2008) by David Wann
