I’m Not a(n) XXXXXX, But…

25 thoughts on I’m Not a(n) XXXXXX, But…

1. I consider myself an environmentalist, but then I try to be more inclusive than exclusive. I also feel like saying that environmentalism has the same rap as the feminist label, and I refuse to let other people define what environmentalism is, especially when they don’t consider themselves to be one.

   I recycle, I tend to arrange all my car outings in one trips to save gas, when I go out with friends, I carpool as much as feasible. I inherited an SUV, but it’s reserved only for trips that require carrying large amounts of cargo (trips to buy lots of mulch, trips to the vet- I do rescue and often have to stuff large crates in the car), and we drive the compact cars 99% of the time. I do buy my cars new but I hang onto them until they die (I still have my first car!) I started my own business so I could telecommute. I do buy organic foods, and I make sure all my detergents and household chemicals are biodegradable and come from a natural (vs petrochemical) source. I no longer have time to compost, but I do not spray or fertilize my yard with petrochemically based products. I try to get the vast majority of my wardrobe through second-hand stores because I don’t want to buy them new (ebay is great for this). I’m not vegetarian, but I do eat mainly vegetarian and only choose domestic, organic meats. I try to buy in season from the farmer’s market as much as possible. So these are some of the things I do to try to make less of an impact on the environment, I have eco-guilt frequently, and yes, because the environment is important to me, I’m proud to call myself one. Buying into the environemntalist as a crazy tree hugger is like buying into the notion that feminists are man hating misandrists.

2. I am so an environmentalist. I’m not a poster child, but I strive.

3. I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I’m trying to define what environmentalism is for all and sundry. I just personally feel like I don’t live up to the standard that I set for being called an environmentalist…probably because I’m not out there getting arrested in a tree.

   Lauren gets it right that I sort of have ‘environmental guilt’. What’s enough? Is it ever enough? Using public transit, composting, gardening, reusing and recycling, eating local, eating organic – yeah, I do things that are environmentally friendly. But I still don’t feel worthy of being called an environmentalist. There’s way more I could be doing, but I don’t.

4. It’s interesting to me that the environmentalist label seems to come with different baggage than the feminist one. I think most of us (I’m guessing – correct me if I’m wrong) wouldn’t expect someone who called herself a feminist to be a full-time activist, no? But that seems to be the assumption around the word environmentalist. I don’t know why that is, but it’s an assumption I never realized I held until this post. My boyfriend and I were joking at the end of the Al Gore movie – just by virtue of being poor grad students in a big city, we’re already doing almost all the things he lists in the “What you can do” section at the end: we don’t have a car, we walk or take public transportation everywhere we go, we don’t have A/C (which was an unfortunate thing this summer!), we keep the heat set really low in the winter, etc. I’m vegetarian, and he’s mostly vegetarian. We also recycle and vote Democrat and generally pro-environment. However, I don’t think it ever occurred to either of us to call ourselves environmentalists because we’re not activists, and it’s not the single issue that determines our votes. But that’s not the standard I’d ever apply to someone calling him/herself a feminist, so maybe I’m being to hard on the enviro label. What do y’all think?

5. I don’t have environmental guilt. And I don’t believe in token-action “environmentalism”. I don’t believe every tree is sacred.

   That said, I consider myself an environmentalist. I believe the world holds more power than our culture gives it credit for, and that if we keep fucking shit up, we’ll end up wearing it in a very unpleasant way. We have to change how we live in a way far more fundamentally than blue boxes and bike-to-work day and buying organic veggies every so often.

   That said, I endorse recycling and biking to work and buying organic veggies. I just don’t have any illusions that it’ll save the world.

6. Ooh, the activism thing. I never thought of that before but I do see environmentalism as primarily about activism. Good catch.

7. And that activist bit is, as usual, something of a thorn in the side for people who are just good-natured environmentalists.

   Environmentalist may define a lifestyle, but doing environmentally-sound things needs to not get the short end of the stick. Efficiencies of scale say, for example, that the loss of domestic oil supply from the Alaskan pipeline shutdown would be totally negated if the American automobile fleet had just 1 MPG better efficiency.

   We’d consume so much less power if people would just screw in a compact fluorescent bulb and forget it’s there for the next five years or more before you have to replace it.

   Fuck riding a bike to the store — if people could just go once a week or once every ten days, and use produce from the garden or a store wtihin walking distance…

   Capital E lifestyle-Environmentalists drive the movement and are activists and maybe, even from my crazy-ass point of view, a little nutty. If more people were just little-e environmentalists, offering their compost waste for the neighbor’s bin, for example, such huge differences could be made.

   It makes this environmentalist a little sad to think of it.

8. Environ-mentalist? Never heard of it.

9. Lord, I have so much guilt on this one that I stay away from the word altogether. Now, I’m a vegetarian, aspiring vegan, avid recycler and outdoorsy sort of person. On the other hand, I like to drive a lot, and I like to fly a lot, and I drink a whole lot of bottled water.

   But if you’re asking me what my number one issue is when I’m going to the polls, this is it. Hands down.

10. I do not recycle, and have read studies which prove only aluminum is cost-effective and environmentally friendly, while all others actually harm the environment by producing more industrial air pollution than would be necessary if we just used raw material. I would recycle aluminum if greece had a recycling industry.

    I’m also told, so far as I can believe experts, that raw materials aren’t in shortage, as for example trees that we ourselves plant for harvesting are renewable.

    In other news, I do not own or use a car, I don’t litter, and I support biologically-grown vegetables. Basic good conduct, if embraced by all people and industries, would make a greater difference to everyone being openly hostile to the environment while a few activists try to save the world.

    I try to be practical about things, even though I go out of my way when my worldview is offended (e.g. when people attack feminism in my face). The obvious deduction is that my worldview doesn’t include being an environment activist, and that I have no environmental guilt.

    Guilt is something I try to get rid of anyhow, since women (and transwomen moreso) are forced to be too self-conscious and apologetic all the time. I’m not very successful in this, but I usually can’t be guilt-tripped into performing a certain action, whereas I *can* be persuaded by arguments and proof that I should perform said action.

11. I call myself an environmentalist, and I definitely suffer from environmental guilt. It just never seems enough. I did a carbon-calculator like the one Amanda linked a while back, only focused for the region I live in, and it put me at 1/4 to 1/5 of the average household here, but I still don’t feel like it’s enough.

    I take the bus to work when I can’t bike, but try to bike most of the time. I don’t own a car, or have a/c, and keep my house cold enough to wear sweaters and wrap up in blankets in the winter. I’m a vegetarian leading-towards-vegan, as is my partner. In the summer we buy our vegetables at a local farmers market. We co-habit in a house with a total of 6 people, which reduces our footprint and resource consumption. We recycle and we compost, and next summer I’ll start growing vegetables with the soil. There is no pesticide use on our tiny yard. I place enivronmentalism up near the top of my issues list when voting. I donate to environmental charities when I can (rarely because i’m flat broke), never go shopping without my cloth bags, and have joined local environmental groups. One of the reasons I am never having children is because of the environmental impact.

    Of course, alot of this just comes naturally because I’m a flat-broke student. The lifestyle is suprisingly comfortable though, I could do this forever.

    I am a bit of what you could call a crazy treehugger, because should the opportunity present itself, I’d pull a Darryl Hannah for sure. Also, that protest was not just about the environment – it was about saving a vital source of healthy food for an impoverished population.

12. I’ve never labelled myself an environmentalist but I think about the environment and how we’re fucking it up every single day. I have some guilt because I’m not as much of an activist as I know I could be.

    Like most here, we try to recycle when we can (we live in an apartment complex that does not give the curb pickup option), we eat organic foods, shop at the farmer’s market, carpool when possible, take our compost material to Lauren’s house (thanks!), forgo the car in favor of pedal power when possible, and when we walk to campus the partner and I will occasionally take garbage bags with us to pick up all the damn litter the college students throw onto the ground, fucking college students…

    But we’re not blowing up any dams to help the salmon ala Jensen, we’re not taking down cellphone towers, we’re not filing petitions, but I do hug trees every now and again and give dirty looks to SUV drivers if they don’t have enough passengers or cargo to warrant the vehicle and I always flip off the Hummer drivers because those rat bastards deserve it.

    It’s good to be “environmentally conscious” and “do what we can”, but none of us are really doing what it really takes to halt our culture of destruction.

13. I do not recycle, and have read studies which prove only aluminum is cost-effective and environmentally friendly, while all others actually harm the environment by producing more industrial air pollution than would be necessary if we just used raw material. I would recycle aluminum if greece had a recycling industry.

    I’m also told, so far as I can believe experts, that raw materials aren’t in shortage, as for example trees that we ourselves plant for harvesting are renewable.

    Don’t take this as a personal criticism, please, but you have been misled by paid shills for the raw-materials industry.

    Recycling aluminum is by far the common form of recycling that saves the most energy: aluminum takes an obscene amount of energy to refine from ore. But recycling both glass and paper is a net positive for the environment.

    As far as trees being a renewable resource goes, it’s true: in theory. But old-growth forests are not renewable on any scale meaningful in the context of our lifespans, and it’s old-growth forests that are falling to make “virgin” paper pulp. And with regard to the air pollution issue: spend fifteen minutes outside a pulp mill making paper from trees, and then visit a mill making paper from recycled paper, and it will become clear rather quickly that recycled paper produces orders of magnitude less air pollution.

    But if you’re living in a place where there’s no recycling industry, there’s not really much you can do on a day-to-day basis without becoming an activist. Other than limiting your consumption.

14. Chris hi!

    no personal criticism taken, and even now that you’re challenging these facts, I still feel as distant from saving the environment as ever, and I still don’t care to become an environmental activist.
    And I still don’t believe in bio-energy and life-force (of animal or plant life) and as a med student, I wouldn’t have any qualms if someone cut down a huge tree which spread vicious air-borne fungi around and poisoning the local community. Not everything natural is beneficial (belladona is lots more dangerous to us than artificial toxic substances). So I guess our agreement with nature is “don’t kill us and we won’t efface you”. Both nature and humans are violating parts of the deal, with humans being more vile of course.

    Although, from this conversation -from something Arianna said- I realised that I do take ecology very much into account when I vote. It’s usually bundled along with the rest of the left-wing promises (which I invariably fall for), but I suppose there is a small part inside me that does feel guilt.

15. I am concerned about the environment, but no, I’ve never considered myself “an environmentalist”. For me, it’s not the “activist” part that throws me—it’s the one-upmanship and next-to-impossible standards in the (visible) environmentalist community that throws me. It’s almost like the “mommy wars”—just like you can never be a “good enough” mother, it seems like you can never be truly environmentally conscious, either.
    And the classism in feminist circle pales dramatically with the classism I’ve observed in the environmental movement, even locally.

    I’ve seen a lot of cluelessness about the logistics of reducing one’s ecological footprint, combined with a sneering attitude towards those who “aren’t doing enough.” I liken it to visiting the mainstream parenting websites, only to discover I must be the only parent in existance that isn’t drilling my child in the conjugation of French verbs, or playing Beethoven’s Ninth, or whatever, LOL! Seriously. I mean, look at this thread! First, we have to make the confession about what we’re doing for the environment, and then we have to confess how we’d like to do even more, if only we could. Shit, if I wanted to feel guilty, I’d call my mother more often!

    I dunno. There seems to be a certain level of extremism in the environmental movement that isn’t present amongst other movements, and I don’t think that’s just my perception through the media, either. Round about when my daughter was born, there was a big environmental flap locally over mountain bike trails. Local environmental groups wanted public trails closed to bikes, because supposedly mountain bikers (who were the only group of people who bothered to clean and maintain this particular group of trails) were “destroying the environment”—the environment which happened to abut a major, suburban development with McMansions and a golf course. Somehow, the bulldozers, chainsaws, concrete trucks, pesticides and herbicides dousing the adjacent ground on a regular basis (mandated by covenant) aren’t destroying the environment—but a couple dozen people who ride bicycles through the small patch of not-yet bulldozed woods are? It was hotly debated at the time, and the mountain bikers “won”. The environmentalists decried it practically as the end of the Natural World As We Know It.

16. I don’t think I’ve ever really identified as an environmentalist. I do try to cut down on how much waste I’m creating, but there’s a lot of it that seems to be out of my hands. I try to bike as much as possible, I eat a vegan diet, and I try to avoid driving more than is necessary. But I crank the AC in my house and consistently forget to recycle.
    It’s almost as if I’m afraid to begin to identify as an enviromentalist because if I do, other people will start to try to hold me accountable for the choices I make that don’t mesh with that definition. “Hey, environmentalist, that cigarette butt you just kicked into the gutter is going to end up in the ocean!”
    And even though I eat a vegan diet, I buy cat food comprised of the same land decimating, stream and lake polluting, energy inefficient and water wasting animal products that I refuse to consume myself and feed it to my kitten on a daily basis.

    I experience environmentalist guilt because when I really start thinking about everything I *should* be doing, I know I come up short.

17. I think the term ‘environmentalist’ very much like ‘liberal’ or ‘feminist’ has been redefined by the right-wing. Of course I also think that liberals themselves have to share some of the blame for that occuring. Activism on certain issues such as feminism or environmentalism as popularly defined has always been led by white upper middle class folks, college kids (who oft fit such a description as well) or other groups that working class or middles don’t feel akin to.

    The left seperated themselves from the mainstream also by negative activism against popular culture and defining the ‘average’ american as a dope. The right grabbed this successfully and has gone out of their way to portray corporate interests as aligned with the public interest in a sublime, “you don’t feel like them because you’re one of us” campaign. So to say ‘feminist, liberal environmentalist” is to hearken images of hairy legged, hippy skirted, birkenstock(not that I have a problem with hairy legged women, hippy skirts or birkenstocks) wearing rich kids demanding that everyone make changes in their lifestyle that run counter to the consumerism and corporate culture that people aspire to or feel drives their paychecks.

    On a personal note, I have always seen myself as a bit of a quiet feminist/liberal/environmentalist after I released my need to be a red-eyed radical. I chose to live the part rather than speak it. I am often, much to my surprise called ‘hippyish’ or ‘far left’ and yet I don’t think I fit the mold that such labels attach to.

    I do recycle and have been pleasantly surprised to find that I have reduced my trash load to a quarter of what it once was. I am one of the few lower income people that does bother to recycle that I’ve noticed around here. I have in the past composted, but it is a time issue and difficult when you don’t own the land to compost on. I would never think of using toxic chemicals to grow plants or use any chemicals for weeding. As for recycling, I also try to give away clothes, furniture or any other items that I cannot use instead of just tossing them to the curb.

    Like many have said here of themselves, many of the personal actions to save the environment I find myself doing out of economic necessity. My company trucks have smaller engines, I try to make driving time efficient as possible, I consume and store less food than most middle class people, I have a window a/c that I use only when it is unbearably hot and that’s only been recently.

    I have sealed air leaks in the house, keep the curtains closed most of the time, keep the thermostat down, use the oven rarely, etc. If I owned my own property, I’d have more freedom to do more.

    Most important to me, I practice what I preach in my business. We try to use products that use recycled or ‘garbage lumber’ such as OSB plywood products, engineered lumber, non-asphalt roofing underlayment and the like. Also, we do recycle all metals and other products as we can. You’d be surprised at what is thrown away on a typical construction site, especially commercial construction. We encourage customers to utilize higher energy saving construction, such as thicker walls for a higher R rating on buildings, placing homes strategically with the environment, utilizing local materials rather than shipping in exotic woods or stone.

    I’ve never had a customer say, “No way! I don’t want that green building stuff going on on my property! Throw it away, give me a lower R-value now!”

18. I consider myself motivated by environmentalism. I’ve lived in Minnesota and kept the house at 45 degrees (night) and 55 (day), lived without a refrigerator, dumpstered the majority of my food, and biked or walked most places, or rode in my roommate’s biodiesel car. I decided to go to graduate school to get a degree that would allow me to work in the field (and unfortunately left the infrastructure that allowed me to live so non-consumptively). I expected a great community of environmentalists in my program, but what I found was a bunch of people bragging about Peace Corps work, who went camping every other weekend, outfitted with Gore-Tex and a million other unnecessary petroleum-derived products purchased at REI, before settling down to have multiple kids in the suburbs. Points were scored by making your own couple jars of salsa or having communal dinners once in a while, and recycling. It’s made me very depressed. At least most of these people were well-educated enough to know that allowing Bambi to breed in the midwest is a disservice to the environment. But I feel like the environmental movement has succumbed to the same capitalism- and status-driven conspicuous consumption the punk movement has suffered. You just aren’t an environmentalist if you aren’t driving a Prius, even if you’re riding your bike- biking is just so low-class. No-one cares about grey-water use or the like, unless it’s some expensive purchased “system”. There definitely is a need for environmentally-friendly technological advances (especially those that make it so easy that the average person doesn’t even know s/he’s doing something “good”, such as no-hassle city-wide recycling, or large-scale renewable energy systems); but whatever happened to plain old reduction of consumption? It’s not “sexy” enough. It can’t be sold. Obviously, not everyone wants to keep the house at 55 degrees, or forgo having kids for the environment, but eating individually-packaged camp treats in your Outback should not make anyone feel better. I know they aren’t popular, but I think anti-capitalists are the most environmentally-friendly, albeit sometimes unconsciously.

    I guess this is just a really long-winded way of saying that I don’t usually trust people that publicly call themselves environmentalists, in the same way that I’m wary of men that self-identify as feminists. Strangely enough, even though I went to grad school and got my tubes tied, ostensibly for environmentalism, I’ll identify myself as a feminist, but not as an environmentalist.

19. I’d be more likely to call myself an environmentalist than a feminist. As far as feminist causes go, I don’t do anything other than be the strong woman that I am. Can you be a feminist simply by adopting the basic tenets of the philosophy? Maybe. I was raised by parents who went out of their way to bring me and my sister up in as gender-neutral a household as possible. By the time I entered school, I had already discovered my own gender (somewhere between male and female, but matching my biology nonetheless) and my sister had hers (way more over on the female side of the spectrum). Needless to say, school was a bit easier for her. 😉 Anyway, even though I date women, and she dates men, we both consider ourselves queer because we don’t believe a person’s gender is based on their sex. If our parents weren’t still alive, they’d be rolling over in their graves because we’re both wavering over the label.
    Feminism can and should be an all-encompassing theory of gender parity, but 99% of it seems to be about a (straight) woman’s reproductive rights. It doesn’t affect me personally, but it is one of my my #1 voting issues, but only because politicians aren’t held accountable for their positions on any other “feminism” related issues. So yes, maybe I am a feminist in the broadest sense of the term, but I don’t care much for the mainstream feminist movement.
    However, I do go out of my way to be an environmentalist. I’m not going to list the ways here, because it seems a bit like bragging to me, but I do stuff that inconveniences my life in order to make the world a slightly better place. Actually, my entire life revolves around environmentally sound choices I’ve made.
    So to sum up. Living my life as a gender ambiguous female: not considered a “feminist” action by mainstream “feminism” (whatever that is). Living my life as a car-free, low-consumerist: considered “environmentalist.” That’s my two cents. My labels go to the group the highest bidder.
    Forgive the rambling nature of this post, I’ve been lurking a long time on feminist blogs and trying to figure out what was irking me.
    Regardless, keep up the good work. There’s a million different issues that need addressing, not just the ones that affect me! 😀

20. I consider myself an environmentalist. I have tons of guilt. Buying a car after leaving NYC was particularly painful (but I try to take the bus to work most days), but I have guilt over little things like being too lazy to rip the plastic windows out of envelopes so I can recycle them, or using too much toilet paper or other disposable paper products, or whether my furniture is made with sustainable products.

    I also agonize over whether or not my clothes were made in a sweatshop, where my vegetables came from, and shopping at exploitative big-box stores. Why is it so exhausting to try to be a good person?

21. KinfeGhost said:

    That said, I endorse recycling and biking to work and buying organic veggies. I just don’t have any illusions that it’ll save the world.

    Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how much better things would be if everyone did those three things?

    It’s not an illusion, it’s science and it’s real. It’s as real as little kids with athsma being able to breathe (if more people took bicycles or public transportation), reducing soil erosion from less stress on tree farms (more recycled paper = less demand for trees), less water pollution and a healthier ecosystem (from less pesticides).

    I guess I’m biased. I was an environmental studies major in college. There are things being done in the US that are good, just not as mush as the progress that is being made in Europe and other places.

    The US Conference of Mayors has adopted a resolution encouraging cities to enact the Kyoto Protocol at the local level – Mayors should run their cities as if the Senate had ratified the treaty. Currently 262 mayors representing more than 47 million Americans have signed on. The text of the resolution is here: http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/resolutions/73rd_conference/en_01.asp

    Keep up the good work people. You might not be able to afford a prius or to buy organic, but you probably can afford a phone call or stamp to contact your local government to see if they are using your tax dollars to do everything they can for your health and well being. (…that’s a frame environmentalism is rarely presented as – millions of people suffer because of pollution and the destruction of ecosystems and I hardly ever hear environmentalists talking about it).

22. I consider myself a conservationist rather than an environmentalist — simply because I think that striving to return to a previous state of nature is almost impossible. I currently work within my urban setting to create habitat for animals and birds, and I am active in reporting species sightings to local Audobon chapters, etc. I also do seasonal bird watches for Audobon census data.

    I walk to work, or bike. But I don’t buy organic. I recycle, reduce, and reuse, by I’m not going to forgoe a 2-hour drive to the beach.

    I am currently on the steering committe for the Haw River Festival which is a volunteer driven environmental field trip for local fourth graders. I am passionate about this work and the outreach we have with the residents of the local watershed — and I firmly believe that children should be exposed to the natural world early and frequently in their lives.

    I don’t believe in passing along environmental guilt; I believe instead of building a sense of stewardship and awe in both children and adults. I live less than a mile from the urban center of Durham, NC and there are nesting/breeding Cooper’s Hawks, Red-Shouldered Hawks, Red-tailed Hawks, Barred Owls, and Turkey Vultures all within a four block radius of my home. Just this Saturday I had a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk attempting to hunt the birds in my front yard. I love turning people on to this. Most people don’t notice, but once they do they tend to be enthralled. Very few humans show indifference once they know what surrounds them. Unfortunately, we as humans tend not to “see” what we don’t know about. My passion is opening up people’s eyes.

    There is a passage in Annie Dillard’s “Tinker’s Creek” where she comes upon a giant water bug sucking out the innards of a frog; she is in awe, both inquisitive and horrified. And she is inevitably changed by this interaction with nature; her thinking changes, her worldview shifts to accomodate this bizarre but functional act that she has witnessed.

    That’s me. That is the type of “tree-hugger” that I am.

23. FTR: I don’t buy organic because I can’t afford it. Most large retailors of organic goods manipulate the price and the buyers through guilt tactics. I would rather support local growers even if that means that they use conventional practices. Our food needs create environmental havoc no matter if organic or conventional; actually, all of our choices, including recycling have an environmental cost. Knowing this, however, and making wiser choices – when the options are available – is environmentally beneficial.

24. This article from the SF Chronicle, about Light Green environmentalism seems to match me well. I do what I can, mindfully– but not as my highest priority.

25. I quite definitely identify as environmentalist. But there are two problems I’ve found with the label, one of which was mentioned above.

    1. I’ve found some of the more activist environmentalists to have a knee-jerk, poorly thought-out response. There are a lot of myths out there about what’s really best for the environment, and people buy them. As an academic in the sciences, I bring a scientific perspective to my environmentalism, and sometimes that’s at odds with the activists. For instance, I think there’s a good case to be made for expanding nuclear energy in order to slow global warming, which gets an instant instinctive NOOOO!!! from many activists.

    2. The “you’re not doing enough” argument. People ask me why I’m vegetarian. I explain that I’m doing it for environmental reasons, and talk a little about resource use. A small number of people have responded with “but you’re carrying a plastic bag!” or something equally ridiculous. I do what I can do for the environment. I don’t live my life entirely around it. Sometimes I choose convenience. But that’s ok, the things I do are still valid and helpful.

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