Relatively speaking, most of us involved with the green community, energy efficiency, or sustainable living are Johnny-come-lately. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Rachel Carson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir. It was Muir who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, and has since been the leading the pack in evangelizing about the need for conservation and preservation. Ever the bane of developers, polluters, and exploiters, the Sierra Club remains one of the most relevant and powerful voice in the conservation community.
Thankfully their call to reduce our carbon output and hedge our bets on extinction has attracted many a new follower. But going “green” or adopting a sustainable lifestyle is not as easy as many advocates suggest. When someone commits to an environmentally (and socially) conscious way of life, the more they examine purchases, eating, transportation, and recreational choices, the quicker the green path grows complicated and murky.
Lucky for us we have Mr. Green (cue trumpets and confetti).
Bob Schildgen (a.k.a. Mr. Green) has been the regular host of the “Hey Mr. Green” column in the Sierra, the national magazine of the Sierra Club, since early 2005. Easily one of the most accessible voices in green living, Schildgen has compiled a “greatest hits” of columns in the recently published Hey Mr. Green. I had a chance to take a sneak peak at the book and believe that for those who are green-curious, the book hits the mark.
The collection of Q & A’s from readers are a quick read and perfect to place atop your low-flow toilet, or pack in your Sierra Club backpack (a premium for joining the Club, mine is red and black) during bike to work week. What I most appreciate about Schildgen, besides his well-researched and expansive wisdom, is his occasional gruff tone. Schildgen snuffs the idea of environmentalists being meek, tepid, spineless love-mongers looking to appease and ever please.
Topics Schildgen chooses to take on range from the usual “paper or plastic” to the more unique. Here are a few that surprised and amused:
- Should you eat wild Alaskan salmon or farm raised Atlantic?
- What’s the greenest oil company?
- Is organic really the way to go?
- Bottled beer or cans?
- What is the “greenest” form of (reliable) birth control?
One reader challenged Schildgen to advocate a vegan diet, claiming that any true environmentalist should see that animals have rights too. Mr. Green answers the question by basically chastising the reader, and suggests vegans should be less anthropocentric. It’s an interesting response and highlights one of the challenges of convincing people to live a more sustainable life.
Groups like the Sierra Club are often branded as extremists trying to take away everyone’s rights and force feed a politically correct (or environmentally correct) lifestyle on the unwilling. The divisive debate over how best to manage natural resources tends to define viewpoints as being either far left or far right. Once the labeling begins, the conversation and dialogue ends.
What Schildgen advocates is a more holistic approach to green living, where the big picture is as important as the details.
Choosing paper or plastic isn’t as important as realizing you could do more for the environment by walking to the store. Worrying about the carbon footprint of cremating your mortal remains or a graveyard burial pales in comparison to the impact of what you drive to work. Photovoltaics are great, but, the amount of resources we spend on coming up with new ways to harness solar energy might be better spent on finding ways to reduce power usage. That surprisingly pragmatic and centrist voice of reason makes the book a viable gift for the uncle who thinks the hippies are coming to take away his guns, and the tree-spiking granola who advocates cave dwelling.
Hey Mr. Green is available for pre-order at the Sierra Club website.
