If the planet doesn’t notice, why do it?
Why buy local and organic, forgo meat, grow your veggies, walk to the farmer’s market, bike to work, use compact fluorescents, take cold showers, insulate the home, drink tap water? Why do all the right things when it doesn’t matter?
The running joke in our home by now is that whenever my wife or I does anything the other finds annoying, we turn to the stock phrase of: “Why bother? The planet doesn’t notice.”
The standard response: “I do.”
It’s true you won’t save the planet by eating your locally grown veggies. There’s a good reason to believe it may even be counterproductive: if it either causes a chain reaction of unfortunate events—like having the “local” farmer drive his beat-up pick-up to your closest green market from his farm across the state, instead of having a densely packed, relatively efficient 16-wheeler truck in the veggies from across the country—or if that one act of environmental kindness makes you sin in other areas, possibly increasing your total footprint.
But eating your local veggies also happens to be good for you personally. Both because the local heirloom tomato does taste better, and because it actually is better for you: more actual sun, more vitamins, fewer pesticides, more taste.
It also just feels a lot better, foraging for food on foot at the farmer’s market rather than relying on pre-packaged, processed “food”-like products to stock your pantry. (Of course, that feeling goes both ways. Some happen to feel good about slicing their ripe summer tomatoes. Others prefer the appeal of 4-minute meals and the ding of the microwave.)
Most importantly, by doing all these good things, you are preparing yourself—and your children—for a future when many more of us will be doing these things—not because we suddenly all turned into environmentalists, but because positive policy change makes many more of these actions profitable for the rest of us.
