Half empty/half full? Chicken or the Egg? …. Does it matter sometimes when the stakes are so high?

A friend of mine recently was speaking with me about something which I found quite interesting… and sort of characteristic of part of the big problem we have as a species…. We got around to the topic of Climate Change (NOT global warming), and she told me a story that made me think….

…..Checking out at the supermarket recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. I apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days“.

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations“.

She was right about one thing–our generation didn’t have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then? After some reflection and soul-searching on “Our” day, here’s what I remembered we did have….

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Wales. In the kitchen, we blended & stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a water fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?…..

Now I may not be old enough to have had my nappies washed (actually I think I do remember my mother washing and hanging many white cloths to dry now that I think of it), nor some of the other things this person spoke of, but what I found most interesting about this conversation was the mere thought of this person (the cashier that so quickly blamed all the problems of the earth today on… the other generations), that the problem was…. someone else’s.

That seems to be something we as a species are very good at doing… blaming someone else. We have done it for far too long when it comes to this Global Warming thing.

Today, with our recycling programs, our hybrids and our energy saving (everything), we like to think we are doing so much better than generations before us.

But are we really?

We are consuming more than ever. Our technologies drinking up more and more energy, the amount of “stuff” we are accumulating is forever raising. Whenever I see an advertisements for travel, generally they all now include “shopping” as part of the amazing get-a-way adventure. Airports have been turned into giant malls (and indeed the planes themselves) as the drive for us to consume penetrates everywhere. No longer is it just enough to have one of anything. One needs to have two… three… or more.

So I wonder what this person meant by…”your generation”? for in my thinking…. I don’t see this as a generational thing at all. We are ALL to blame for the situation we are in now, and with the increase in technologies and each passing generation, our consumption has risen, and continues to do so. Sure, we may now require our factories to produce things cleaner, we may expect our cars to release less CO2, but in the end, our consumption goes on … unabated, and I fail to see how anyone does not see the connection of that to the larger problems we have right now. Just because one recycles, or uses a hybrid (which in itself brings up a whole other set of issues), or buys energy saving products, the amount of things we are buying is not changing, and what people don’t really seem to understand is that unless we make a change in that area, nothing will every change… at least not until the energy sources run out, or become priced out of our price range (along with EVERY product EVER made as ALL things in our existence in some way, shape or form are touched by oil).

I may not be that old, but when I hear conversations such as this it makes me wonder when it is a person hits an age where they start to see the “big picture” of everything. Perhaps that is a bit generalizing in its assumptions, and to say it is an age thing before one sees the big picture is like saying that all persons with a degree are…”smart”. 

What I should (or mean to) say is, if we don’t all soon start grasping the REAL big picture of what is going on, the consequences will be something this generation (I speak of the one whom speaks like this person did) will have to deal with the backlash when it comes your time to be “one of those whom did not have the green thing back in those days”