Green Living Myths

Earth-friendly living is a virtue, not an obligation. It is now common knowledge that the biggest problems facing our global environment stem from human activities. If these problems are to be arrested or remedied, who else but humans will turn the tide? It's not virtue that produces results when taking on many of life's challenges head on. It's only with a sense of purpose and responsibility that great things are achieved. Be it career, family or the environment, as a society, and personally, we are obligated to put forth a certain amount of effort to succeed in achieving what we need to live and protecting what has value. Our obligation to at least try to pay our own way in life, raise our children into healthy, productive and ethical members of society, and lighten our impact on the earth, among other things, is real.

It will be too difficult and disruptive to change my habits. There may be a period of adjustment as you embark on turning bad habits into better ones. Especially when you consider that changing habits and situations can occur a little at a time and over the course of many weeks, making corrections manageable. Changes do not have to be immediately broad and uncompromising. You can start by making small and simple improvements and build on them. And after doing something a certain way long enough, it becomes automatic, but just because something has become automatic doesn't mean that replacing it will be difficult. Forming new eco-friendly behaviors is simply a process of time, repetition and growth. Even in areas where you may have deep-rooted habits, rethinking the full experience and implications of those habits can reveal how unsuitable they really are. Take our dependence on the automobile, for example: do we love asphalt landscapes, traffic jams, road rage, brown skylines and filling our tanks at the pump? Much of the driving people do is more of a habit than a convenience, pleasure or necessity. And like all habits we want to break, we need only find a new one to replace it. Reducing how many days we do the driving-and letting a carpool buddy or public transit worker pick up the slack-reduces stress, accidents and traffic as well as expenses for gas, insurance, tickets, parking and vehicle maintenance. Giving up your car two to three days a week when transportation alternatives exist isn't a hardship-it's just an adjustment.