Environmental Activist Tired — Practical Environmentalism Requires Individual Responsibility: Eco-Opinion

I’m environmental activist tired. Today I went out to my back yard garden. I pulled up a bunch of native grasses that recently went to seed, and threw them in the brush pile. The brushpile is about 10 feet high, made out of non-native privet bush branches I’ve been trimming on my acreage. I’m piling them high instead of burning them at the suggestion of my forest ranger Dad. After seeing a video of my bonfire, he suggested I make a brushpile for birds and small animals to get protection and shelter in, especially during the winter months. So I did. The grass seed heads and native plants I’ve thrown on the pile will provide food as well. So I’m tired.

I’m also environmental activist tired because I’ve been ripping out my front lawn and planting native wildflowers. I’m also letting the native plants around my property bloom and fade so I can spread their seeds around. Where there are several purple ironweed and yellow crownbeard plants drawing in pollenators like butterflies, moths, bees, wasps and hummingbirds, maybe next year there will be dozens, if not hundreds. The air will be humming with nature’s pollenating crew, busy at work.

Tired Of Environmental Activist Protests

What I’m really environmental activist tired about is listening to and watching all these protesting environmental activists who sit on plastic-fiber chairs in front of plastic and petroleum-base-dye posters and read off of non-recycled paper under the glare of hundreds of thousands of watts of lighting in giant air-conditioned auditoriums. They yell out: “How dare you!” to governments and corporations. They demand sweeping legislations and massive socialistic cultural shifts forced on entire populations. They sit down in the intersections of giant cities and cause traffic jams, forcing commuter cars to belch even more pollution into the air.

I’m environmental activist tired, because I have yet to hear any of them say: “This is what I PERSONALLY, as an individual eco-activist, will do today to help save the planet. This is how I will get my hands dirty. This is how I will change my personal behavior.”

I’m environmental activist tired that they demand that their fellow environmental activists do nothing more than skip out of school, march in the streets, carry signs and protest. Or, if they’re really active, spray-paint a slogan on a fence or city wall. Or sit in the middle of a street and block traffic.

I’m environmental activist tired of the new activism that says as long as you post something on Facebook, as long as you protest in the streets and complain long enough, and as long as you point the finger at someone else, then YOU are doing your part.

I’m tired because Facebook activism and social media philanthrophy does not count. I’m environmental activist tired because these well-meaning, shouting people abdicate their own responsibility. They push it onto faceless governments and corporations, or blame Trump for it all, and then thump their chests and proclaim with loud, self-righteous speeches: “We fought the good fight. We did our part.”

No, you are not doing your part by simply talking and marching in the streets. That is not taking action.

True Environmental ACTivists Versus Environmental Protesters

Do you act? If you are riding your bike or taking mass transit everywhere, I might listen to you. If you are recycling paper and plastic, or, even better, as my friend talks about in her blog and I write about with haiku, if you’ve made a personal committment to not buy plastic, I might listen to you. If you have ripped up or are ripping up your sterile, chemical-filled lawn and are replacing it with wildflowers and other plants “For the Bees,” I might listen to you.

If you’re plogging: If you pick up trash every time you walk, bike or paddle somewhere, or if you deliberately wade into rivers and streams or walk through woods and meadows and gather up others’ thoughtless garbage, I might listen to you. If you are composting and growing your own food as both an environmental and health statement, I might listen to you. If you’re collecting rainwater and saving grey water to flush your toilets and water your plants, I might listen to you.

But if all you’re doing is screaming and yelling about how people of my generation are ruining the world, if all you’re doing is chastising those of us who have been trying since we were younger than you, if all you’re doing is demanding faceless and nameless corporations and governments do the things you’re to lazy (or young) to do yourselves, then I can only say this:
How dare you.

You’re not an environmental ACTivist. You’re an environmental protestor, a child wanting to scream and yell and hold its breath until it gets its own way.

Because I’m environmental activist tired of your crying and your rhetoric, I’d rather listen to the wind rustle the leaves in the trees and wildflowers of my property, the buzz of insects as I walk down my country road, the birds chirping as they hop through the sweat-stained branches I piled up for them.

Environmental Activist Front Porch Sense

My wife made this FrontPorchSense.com video about personal responsibility and individual, practical environmental activism. It fits in nicely with her logical view of not waiting for the government to fix things you can take care of yourself.

https://frontporchsense.com/2019/09/practical-environmentalism

#LeavingTheHerd #EcoActivist #PracticalEnvironmentalism

By the way, I also found this excellent Practical Environmentalism article about actions to help birds.