My Alter Ego

I have to fez up to the cruel reality that I may not be as green as I claim to be. In my most recent blog entry I even announced that I was ready to move to Vauban, Germany to become even greener than we are in our South Beach home. It’s true that our only car sits in the parking garage for weeks at a time and is only used when we are entertaining visitors. It is also true that because parking is such a big issue in South Beach I make it a point to bicycle or take the $.025 bus to the grocery store, the bank, post office or just about anywhere that I need to go. It is also true that I don’t own a gas-powered lawnmower, don’t have lawn sprinklers and that I recycle most of what goes into our trash. But when I head back to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, all my green goes out to the deep blue ocean.

It’s not that I mean to be less green, it just happens that being less green is a lot easier. In the other half of my double life, I’m not just a condo-dweller but a seasonal rental house owner. So, it’s not that I have a lot of choices, but even using what I have available I’m not very conscious of minimizing my environmental impact. I rationalize my actions by saying to myself that I don’t have a lot of time or that the distances here are not as convenient for walking or that it’s too cold or too hot or too wet. Regardless, I find a way to acting very much like just about everyone else in the area. For transportation I get to use a 4X4 small pick up truck that my brother-in-law kindly lends me. He doesn’t use the truck as much because it happens to be a gas-guzzler, so I take it and I don’t even blink when filling up at the gas station. I use the truck to travel back and forth the Raleigh-Durham airport and I also to do my errands during the two weeks I’m here. When I’m here, I dispose of and buy all kind of ‘home stuff’ to make the house more comfortable to our summer renters and of course need a truck to move them.

When shopping, I’m not looking for ‘greenness’ as I’m looking for ‘value’. At the store, I want to know what is cheaper and whether it will withstand the onslaught of tenderness from renters and visitors and pay little regard to where the item was made or under what conditions it was made. When we have weekend guests, I go back and forth to the supermarket several times during the weekend and make little effort to maximize the utility of my trips or even to consider whether I could bring the items on a bicycle. It’s just so easy to hop on the truck and drive away that I don’t even take the time to think whether I might be missing something for which I’d have to return in a couple of hours.

And if this is me that I consider myself to be environmentally conscious, at least in my other half of my double life, what could we expect from those that are in complete denial that global warming maybe at least in part aggravated by our use of hydrocarbon fuels or those that feel that the world was created simply for man’s use and enjoyment? As long as it continues to be just so simple and cheap to get on your car and drive to do whatever, it will be continue to be a major challenge to convince at least some in the population to reduce the carbon footprint for the activities that we do daily. With the recent announcement of the new gas-mileage and emission standards made by the Obama administration just yesterday, I’ve been also listening to some talking about the possibility of a “gas tax”. Of course, proposing any sort of gas tax would be equivalent to political suicide, but thinking about it, this will be the only way I will feel forced to think about my driving habits seriously. It happened last year when gas was over $4 a gallon, but now that it’s back down to $2 we, including myself, are back to our old ways.

I yearn to be green. Really, I don’t want to live a double life. But I need some help. Only when it becomes economically feasible, will I truly leave the other half of my double life and live my life fully being a conscientious inhabitant of this wonderful planet. Please help!