Happy spring

I will abjure lame jokes about greenness and the new season and instead move right into an admission that will probably not ingratiate me to some of you.

Truth is, I’ve been a skeptic about many aspects of the green building movement. My eyebrow arches when, for example, someone uses bamboo flooring (which is held together with lots and lots of glue, often containing formaldehyde, and is shipped to the US on bunker-oil-burning ships) to floor a new “green” 11,000 sq. ft. house. Tough too to get on board when magazines feature low-VOC paints on one page and walk-in showers with multiple heads and bodywashers on another. Greenwashing, marketing whatever’s hot, and just trying to make ourselves feel better as we change almost nothing about our consumption habits—the suspicion of these plus the thought that a year’s worth of green living is negated by 2 minutes’ operation of a coal-powered electricity plant….you get the picture.

But after my time in the desert of cynicism, I’ve been reminded that every little bit helps, and just because larger forces are at work doesn’t mean we do nothing as individuals—as long as we keep lobbying against the big stuff, like coal-powered electricity plants. To this point, “Why Bother?”, Michael Pollan’s excellent piece in The New York Times Magazine of April 20, is worth a read.