Eco-Anxiety

There's a new affliction that's being passed around and it's unclear how contagious it is. Thank God it's not anthrax, SARS, or bird flu (remember them?!)

This one is called "eco-anxiety"

I admit that I was a little miffed when I Google searched it and someone had already taken the concept as the title for their own blog (http://eco-anxiety.blogspot.com) I'd thought that I'd cleverly come up with this new concept. But alas, no.

Even if you've never heard of it, don't fret. Someone you know may soon be diagnosed with it as it's even gaining traction within the field of psychology. (http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/eco-anxiety.htm)

While you wait for someone within your close circle to fall victim, you can read some highly entertaining books (all of which I've read and highly recommend) about people who've tried to make the planet a little greener (and yes also made a little profit off their sometimes ill-advised but sincere exploits). These include in no particular order: Farewell My Subaru: an Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine, Almost Green: How I Saved 1/16th of a Billionth of the Planet by: James Glave, and No Impact Man: the Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life,

Mom Will This Chicken Give Me Man Boobs?My Confused, Guilt-Ridden and Stressful Struggle to Raise a Green Family by: Robyn Harding, Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by: Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life by: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp and Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer by: Novella Carpenter

Eco anxiety doesn't have a true clinical definition, but suffice to say, it's the feeling that no matter what you do for the planet- from changing all of your conventional light bulbs to CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) to living in a rammed earth house completely off the grid- it's never enough.

This is a shame that we live in a society that short of being dead we think that (to paraphrase the Police) every breath we take, every move we make will have a devastating impact upon the planet. And being dead isn't better- there were carbon emissions raising the wood that made your coffin, fumes emitted sealing. And it's not like cremation's much better- all that smoke that comes up and out, not much better. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

While I don't think that there is any magic solution for our carbon footprints, we can shrink the size of our individual footprint, and collectively, through our purchasing power and demanding of our elected bodies, we can mandate that industry does the same.

As Walt Kelly, creator of the cartoon character Pogo may have observed, "We have met the enemy and he is us" -fittingly for an Earth Day poster in 1970 But that doesn't mean it has to stay that way. http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm