Eco-Crackpots and New Year’s Resolutions

by Eileen Weber

If being green is your cause, I applaud you. Whether it’s eating local, organic foods or composting for your garden or reducing your carbon footprint, it’s a solid plan that helps the environment. But while every movement needs its champions, there are some that take their interest to a level of fanaticism.

That’s when a good cause loses its steam with the rest of the general public. You, the sweat-pant-wearing, bon-bon-eating, armchair quarterback of life. Blossoming interest is lost once the passion for something—in this case, the environment—comes across as craziness. It’s just another good message gone bad.

Case in point: A friend of mine sent me a Facebook link to the Organic Consumers Association. In it, a woman called for an organic New Year’s Resolution. She is planning on taking her commitment of an organic lifestyle to the next level. She wants to eat more responsibly and hopes you will, too. Certainly a noble cause and I wasn’t alone in thinking that. A number of people responded positively to the organic challenge.

But for me, that challenge was more than a little bit tainted when one person responded by grand-standing. Where one woman tried to start a grassroots movement and offered others to join her, this crackpot wandered aimlessly from topic to topic: Everything from “It’s all the government’s fault” to a nation-wide increase in pill-popping to the evils of pesticides. Frankly, it was a bizarre and rambling romp through narcissicism.

He pontificated on his virtual soapbox and self-promoted to a nauseating degree (and, if the truth be told, piggy-backed on the original post). He says, after ridding his life of all his worldly possessions save two Rubbermaid bins, he is off to roam Canada for all the organic things the country has to offer starting January 7th. Lovely. Have fun. Pack a warm hat.

To be fair, some of what this man had to say made sense. When it comes to consumerism, we are often just pathetic sheep following the herd. We can vote with our fork and change the world just by word of mouth. Buy food and products from people who care about the planet. Change your bad habits. Get the chemicals out of your life. These are the things that can make a difference on this planet one person at a time.

But by surrounding it with a barge load of whack-o ideology and self-promotion, I stopped reading it. I stopped hearing what he had to say. I got to the “blah-blah-blah” point and tuned out. The purity of his message got completely lost. Rather than a carefully considered diatribe, it was a stream-of-consciousness jumble of thoughts. And, more to the point, it was a jumble of thoughts he cut and pasted from his own web site. What he had to say wasn’t even original material. (Oh, and did I mention he’s in a band? He was promoting his next album, too. Nice.)

Maybe I am just another armchair quarterback. But then again, so are a lot of other people. And, those are the people that need to hear the green message the most. The family who eats from their own organic garden and coops backyard chickens doesn’t need the lecture on the finer points of sustainable living. The one who needs a quick lesson on eco-friendliness is the sweat-pant-wearing moron who eats his own weight in red meat and throws out plastic like it’s going out of style. But, Mr. Sweat Pants is not going to listen if what’s shouting at him is just another moron promoting himself and not the planet.

With the new year just a few days away, what will your resolutions be? How will you make a difference? Or will you be just another pathetic sheep following the herd? It’s your choice.