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For me green is not a checklist of things to buy. Recycled toilet paper. Check. Reusable water bottle. Check. Organic cotton jeans and bamboo shirt. Check. Locally-sourced, seasonal produce. Check. These are not green in themselves.
Green is not a list of simple steps to take. Signed up for green power. Done. Swapped out incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. Did that. Bike to work or carpool a couple days a week. All the time. You could do any or all of these things and still not grasp the essence of green.
Still more than that, green is not a list of deprivations. No meat, no gas-guzzling car, no chocolate nor coffee that's not fair trade, no short-haul flights. If you think green is about deprivation, you've missed the point.
It's Not What You Do, It's How You Do It
Only when you see that more than anything else being green is more a state of mind, a deepening of awareness, an appreciation of the essential and complete interconnectedness, from the micro- to the macrocosm will you truly grasp it.
That's why I say green is about respecting community, first and last.
Respecting the community of your household, neighborhood and city; the relationships and mutually beneficial dependencies that are created; the community of cities and towns in your state or region, how they work together; the community of creatures everywhere from parks and farms, wetlands and wilderness, oceans and rivers...even inside the body and how to maintain health. Respecting the fact that each part is dependent upon each and every other part. And that no one part can be separated out from the others.
Dependency is a Good Thing
While on one level we are truly individuals (and I use 'we' to include all beings, all things), we are literally and metaphorically dependent on the community of creation around us that we help create. The degree to which we choose to acknowledge this interconnectedness and build as robust and equitable community as we are able is the measure of how green we are.
Why do we buy fair trade coffee? Because it helps maintain the people and ecosystems surrounding its production, the community of coffee production, to a greater degree than non-fair trade coffee which sees maximization of profit as the highest goal.
Why is limiting meat consumption (if not entirely eliminating it) and choosing locally produced and organically produced food, from small or medium scale farmers considered a greener option than industrial agriculture? Because you are building community: The farmers, the land, the animals, the plants, the microorganisms in the soil are all respected, not just seen as lifeless units of production or machines.
All those simple steps are important, but they are (to paraphrase Bill McKibben) just calisthenics to train the mind, to increase awareness of the impact of your actions of everything around you. Do them. But they are not the goal.
Neither are the products you buy the goal. In fact green consumerism is only marginally better than any other form of consumerism—and it's a slim margin at best. It's the attitude of acquisition that's as much a problem, when it comes to natural resource consumption, as it is the items consumed.
Cultivate Awareness of Community, Always
Keeping in mind that you will never eliminate entirely your impact on the planet (which too isn't the goal of being green), if you want to really dig into what I consider to be the essence of being green, do this: Seek to to experience and acknowledge the empowering dependency we all have, from the individual to the ecosystem and planetary level. Seek to understand and build this community.
Communities
Putting the Green Back in Community Development
Nagoya: City Planning for a Car-Free Future
How to Print Your Own Money, Build Community and Not Get Arrested by the Feds
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