Tiny dog's guide to half-assed environmentalism

Fact: earth is doomed, and probably sooner than we think. I really don't like to think about this, but I'm sadly convinced. How can anyone who passively receives incredibly dire environmental news stories every nanosecond via radio, internet, TV, and print news come to any other conclusion than the end is near?

I don't have nearly as laissez-faire of an attitude about the impending ball of flame that is our current home planet now that I am no longer a cynical, child-free person with no stake in earth beyond 2050, and I don't doubt that said offspring will judge me and all of us very harshly for our current profligate use of finite natural resources, and propensity to spew pesticides and carcinogens every time we flinch. And yet, I am by nature a fatalistic person with a deep loathing for judgmental idealists who wear token environmental gestures like the Papal Tiara. True environmentalists kill themselves, on the spot, preferably (as was said in a recent Dilbert) over a packet of seeds.

And yet, I've got to do something. Not only do I have a sad-eyed little baby destined to inherit a cancerous smoking crater of a planet, but I live in a very liberal city full of people who wear vegan shoes. And I hate to stand out.

With this I bring you:

Tiny dog's list of enviro-token attempts, and their relative thus-far payoff

Canvas shopping bags

I started this one a few months ago, following the example of a favorite blogger of mine who is, oddly, a conservative Christian attachment parenting lactivist into bento and environmentalism.

Pros: No more giant tumbleweeds of plastic bags clogging up that stupid plastic bag holder you got from Ikea and guiltily cram plastic bags into so that you don't have to face the wastefully depressing act of throwing them in the trash, because no facility on earth recycles the damned things. Also, canvas bags hold a lot more groceries and are easier to carry. Some stores also give you a credit for each bag you use.

Cons: Slack-jawed 22 year old grocery store clerks roll their eyes and take four times longer to load the bags, irritating everyone in line behind you. You also have to remember to take the bags out of your car and into the store.

Notes: Trader Joe's sells some nice cheap ones.

Verdict: Totally worth doing just for the fact that they are easier to carry.

Hybrid car

Pros: Play game of trying to drive a certain way to click off the gas engine. Very entertaining in traffic.

Cons: Baristas at drive-through coffee places can't hear you drive up. Also, specific to my situation, form factor of hybrid car (SUV) negates moral superiority points. Lastly, hybrid technology is probably the Betamax of car engine formats.

Verdict: Awesome.

Organic produce

Pros: Vague, wishful thinking that you are helping innocent baby to avoid blowing mutagens into her brain cells like foam insulation

Cons: Very expensive. Bugs. What does organic really mean? They still use pesticides. Is mass scale organic farming even feasible or is this some boutique choice for urban liberal food snobs?

Verdict: Not sure it's worth it

Composting

Pros: If your waste removal company supports composting, this is a very easy thing to do. Notable reduction in household garbage output.

Cons: If your waste removal company doesn't support composting, get out your overalls, backhoe, and can of earthworms. Also while you are at it, you might as well build a self-sustaining bio-dome where your house used to be, constructed only of green materials because you probably have a lot of time and space for such projects.

Verdict: If your waste management company supports it, do it yesterday.

Hippie personal hygiene and cleaning products

Pros: A short-lived warm feeling that you are keeping a tiny fraction of chemicals out of the planet's water supply

Cons: You will smell like some dude who has been sitting in the sun at some European music festival on someone's farm, selling hemp bracelets. This doesn't work in relationships and in corporate office settings.

Verdict: Untenable. Tom's of Maine needs to get to work on some deodorant that actually results in deodorizing.

Unplugging vampire appliances

Pros: Apparently you save energy if you unplug all of your stupid little gadgets from their plugs with the big black box that gets hotter than the plates on a NASA rocket, I read somewhere.

Cons: All the stupid little gadgets made by all the stupid technology companies that are overloaded with flippy glowing screens and TVs and jukeboxes and digital turnip twaddlers come with useless crap lithium ion batteries that cost more than the Hope diamond and bleed out like an Ebola victim before the sun sets on a single afternoon.

Verdict: Battery technology sucks.

Stop using all those damned plastic and paper cups and plates

Pros: Stop feeling like a jerk every time you eat lunch.

Cons: Have to get in habit of labor-intensive activities like making and bringing one's own lunch, washing and carrying around your own damned coffee cup, and resisting lure of in-house corporate cafeteria restaurants like Ezell's Fried Chicken.

Verdict: A good idea, when you can wrestle your own laziness and lack of pre-planning into submission.

Cloth diapers

I'll wait here while all childless readers run screaming from the room.

***

OK, parents. Remember when you thought that diapers were going to be the Hardest Thing About Parenting? There aren't enough LOL's in AOL's lifetime text chat logs to capture the hilarity of that misconception, are there?

Pros: Smug feeling of passing liberal parenting bar exam while preventing local landfill from indefinitely housing 50 gigatons of superabsorbant gel-pellets with the radioactive half-life of enriched uranium. Also, cloth diapering not quite as arduous or gross as they say, although note use of qualifier "quite."

Cons: You will enter into a Byzantine world of countless cloth diapering technologies in which none has any specific guarantee of working for you, and in which all require a significant investment of cash. You will find yourself using terms like "stripping" and "pocket doublers." You will need to begin using cultish Dr Bronner's-style soap products, and line-drying laundry like Laura Engalls. Spouse may relentlessly complain about vague diaper pail odors.

Verdict: I can only seem to manage it on weekends, and would not have dared to try it before 6 months of age, reasons which I will not detail for the sensitive childless people who foolishly kept reading.

Conclusion

Some of these activities may make you feel special, but sadly do not erase the fact that earth is doomed to become a barren spinning orb peopled by cancerous zombies swimming in a landless bog of red dye No. 3, rat poison, phthalates, and raydon.