The Green Grandma Speaks

It’s time we added a noodge to the conversation on environmental sustainability. As a Baby Boomer, I am tired of all the global climate change naysayers, who insist there’s no problem with global warming, global dimming, water pollution or habitat degradation. You know who I mean: people who insist there are more trees on earth today than at any time in earth’s history but neglect to mention that these are not the same trees we’ve harvested or thrown away: they are not 750 year old sequoias, they’re ittsy bitsy little seedlings planted to keep the hillsides from sliding into the valleys. Or, people who insist the air in Los Angeles is cleaner than it has ‘ever’ been - ever since when? 1965? Or those who are sure that drowning Bangladesh and Florida will actually be good because it will give their hilltop retirement home some oceanfront.

Baby Boomers like myself have had a lot more than we earned for ourselves. We have benefited from the results of the lucky chance of Second World War’s positioning America as chief capitalist (as well as lead democracy) and we went to college on the second generation of the G.I. Bill. Now, we imagine that we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps (where did the bootstraps come from, anyway?) and by golly, we are going to drive an Urban Assault Vehicle because there is a LOT of DEEP snow in Southern California, and anyway, we buy the gas ourselves. And we are already annoyed about paying for our parents’ social security and our grandkids’ schooling, so we are going to use up our share of everything we’re entititled to - and our share is equal to whatever we can grab and guzzle and pay for in cash, credit, or equivalent.

What we leave out of the equation is the fact that we benefitted hugely from the largesse of the generation or two ahead of us, who lived through at least one great depression and tried to prevent their progeny from ever having to deal with that kind of deprivation. These same people managed the Cold War sufficiently well to be sure that the major super powers didn’t blow up the entire planet, instead limiting themselves to post-colonial meltdowns and police actions in places where people were mostly brown and poor. Meanwhile, they kept us well-protected and well-educated and we got pretty good jobs and made a bunch of money, more than any generation in the history of the world: we are so special.

So perhaps it’s not suprising that we also forgot that there were people coming behind us. Our children and grandchildren are not mere extensions of ourselves, but people with dreams and needs of their own. We have failed to be good stewards of the riches we took for granted: we should be meeting the needs of the present day without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. But instead, we grab what we can now, and hope we’ve left behind the technological, political and ethical tools the next guys will need to just scratch along. We are not paying the price of our felicity - our children and grandchildren and the planet will pay.

So now we’re up against a deadline: stop messing up our planetary backyard, start cleaning up the messes we’ve made, and commit ourselves to forego a vacation on the International Space Station in favor of repairing some of the damage we’ve done to the air, soil, and water our posterity will need. Otherwise, that posterity will curse us.

Upton Sinclair said more than fifty years ago that it was difficult to persuade someone of the truth of something when his/her salary depended on not believing it.

Tell that to the grandkids.

Sustainably Yours,

The Green Grandma

www.livegreenlivesmart.org