The Good Rabbi's Blog

Recently, I read an article in the New York times about an individual who is attempting to live for a year without leaving any impact on the world (in terms of a footprint). Basically, this guy has decided to live a life devoid of electricity, money, and other amenities of a modern world. He doesn't use toilet paper, and generally tries to live life with absolutely no impact at all. Oh, and he also blogs about the experience, and has already secured a book deal.

Quite frankly, I must admit, I'm very tired of this kind of thing. First of all, a lot of environmentalists' claims are nothing more than tired arguments that fail to hold up to a good scientific evaluation. I know, it hurts. We want to believe that eating organic food is better for us, that we'd be better people if we were vegetarians or vegans, paying for "fair-trade" certified foods actually helps someone, and that recycling actually does the planet and the economy some good. It seems like the right thing to do, but in reality, none of these are true.

When one examines the true costs and benefits of all these things, it turns out that most environmentalists have sold us a big steaming pile of compost. Why these are not true is the subject of another blog post, as I'd like to focus on this particular individual here (if you're interested in some details, shoot me a note and ask away. I'll do my best to respond (either via e-mail or via blog post) with some details).

Leaving the particulars aside for a moment, it's interesting to me that people have these ideas, sometimes cool, but mostly weird, to do crazy things and then blog about it during the process. On one hand, I think it's interesting to see how people document various things, but I have to wonder about what led them to the original idea in the first place. Some ideas make sense, like a friend of mine's idea to couch surf for a year across the country, and write about the process. That remotely interests me. I guess it wouldn't be so bad, if the people that did this were halfway decent writers. At the end of the day, I think they're not really all that good, and their kids are even worse.

In this case, however, I must admit that I'm getting very sick of these tired arguments that somehow these pinko commie liberal hippie treehuggers are better than the rest of us because they use organic products and recycled toilet paper. The simple fact of the matter, is that they're not, and they're actually dumb enough to pay double the price in order to use substandard products just because someone put the word organic on the label.

In the case of this guy from New York, he is blogging about this (uses electricity both for posting updates, and reading them), already has a book deal (the book will most likely be printed on paper, and people will probably have to pay for it), and he's also making a documentary of the experience (which will most likely be shown in an air-conditioned or heated theatre that charges $16 for a ticket and a small popcorn). All this sounds like a lot of impact to me. It's also impossible to measure the effects of his "lack" of an impact. I guess I can take solace that he's imposing this lifestyle on his wife and two year-old daughter. I guess he never thought about the impact this would have on them...