So I was thinking… always a scary thing, those of you that know me know that. Now this post is more of an editorial or introspective, an exercise in thinking as it goes. The basic premise is, since there is all this hull-a-balloo about carbon credits and the pros and cons (International Carbon Credit Conference 2009), my question is this. Can an individual make a living by getting paid to consume less? A kind of environmental exchange….
So the basic underpinnings of carbon credits is that a company produces in such a manner that they gain carbon credits for being green above and beyond some measure. (I am not here to argue these measures or their effectiveness of policy mandates etc…). Then that company sells these credits to a company that is maybe becoming green or just doesn’t care, but is trying to conform to the standards that were set by some body of officials. So more or less company “B” is paying for company “A’s” carbon credits and this could be for may reasons, maybe company A is more efficient, maybe company “B” is slow to change, or who knows.
So on the individual scale now what if we could have the same type of system. See a lot of people say that they don’t have the time to shop organic, they don’t have the time to recycle, they buy fast food cause it is convenient, Styrofoam is all the restaurant had, they buy disposable drinks because they don’t like the taste of their tap water, etc… Individuals have all kinds of reasons. And I am not here to make judgment on those reasons, if you have a reason I believe it is a good one.
What I would like to say is that for some of us out there maybe, we are students, maybe we are just thrifty, maybe we are just not busy, maybe we like to read, who knows. But maybe there could be a system out there where individuals that were efficient or motivated to take on new green living strategies could get paid to live that way for a given amount of time. Maybe not in cash, maybe our car payments would be made, maybe we could journal and share our experiences, maybe our cell phone bill or house payment would be paid, maybe it could be worked out that an individual (I am thinking student well mainly because I am a student) could sell their services, could be the role models that would reshape the behavior of others in an efficient manner and on a grass roots level. Maybe it could be a concerned family as well just wanting to show others that “yes they can do it”.
See often my dilemma is that it seems all to often being green is still being a consumer, being green is just another strategy to grow the profits of a corporation. I just watched a nifty documentary (that’s what I do on my spare time) “The 11th Hour” hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio, (its a decent movie, well better than decent, it is better than my movie productions). One of the interesting things I took away from the documentary was how the biosphere is a closed system. Meaning we are not exchanging biodiversity with other planets. And that the economy is one of many subsystems of that biosphere. They pointed out that as the economy grows with it's focus on profit and externalizes the true costs of products that are consumed it does so at the expense of the other healthy contributing subsystems within the finite biosphere.
So to be green and still just being another consumer of disposable society is interesting, it is I suppose where we all start to understand our true connectedness and then hopefully we move into not just being green consumers, but actually living in a manner where we truly understand the effects of our daily decisions and make conscious choices to contribute to the biosphere not just take from it.
At least that seems to be one of the places where I am at in my struggles to give back more than i take, to make it in this world of revenue, bills, growth, but in a manner that is not just another form of consumerism. Feel free to let me know if I am crazy. Hopefully you have enjoyed This Episode of The Think Box.
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