So I’ve got this container of milk I’ve vanquished for my nightly bowl of oat puffs. Does it go in the trash or the recycle bin? Waxy paper isn’t recyclable, so it’s trash, or “landfill,” as we say little more honestly on California refuse bins. But the container isn’t all waxy paper, it has this plastic cap, and then a little plastic ring seal that must be torn off. What about that? It’s in theory recyclable, but tiny. Three pieces, really. The spout, the cap and the ring. Am I supposed to rip out the spout? Are these in recycling centers? And thous little rings from Almond Silk, are they sorted out en masse? Is there somewhere where these have coalesced at the bottom of a recycling bin? Or are they so tiny they end up as trash … er … landfill?
.
Today is trash pickup day and I’m beset with these kinds of questions. What’s my role as a responsible, sensible, ecologically-minded citizen? I don’t want plastics floating around in landfills or marshes or beaches or the Mariana Trench where the little ring of plastic will take a few eons to dissolve in the big drink, so in theory, if I can
recycle everything, and I mean everything, the pollution footprint can just feed itself. Net waste zero. The action is kind of like a hope. Or even a prayer, a kind of benevolent religious gesture, a kind of penance for my meek little existence. The recycling ritual a way for me to flog myself a little bit each Friday for my stupid consumer existence. With each plastic thingamagig tossed in the proper bin a little “I’m not worthy” absolved by an “I’m saved.”
.
I get why some people dissent from the recycling ritual. They have other ways to manage their existential angst. Apathy is one way, anomie another. Still others are defiant, rollin’ coal, and release their inner tensions by subtle and not so subtle acts of resentment and rebellion, muttering mocking sneers at the tree huggers. They think being saved is something else entirely. Something more in the realm of ideas of freedom, salvation and transcendence.
.
But then I hear that the economy of recycling has different things in mind than we all think. They’re full up out here. They can’t sell the material fast enough, or clean it cheaply enough. We used to ship hoards of plastic, glass, cardboard, to China. And they’re not taking any more either. So the material sits there, and without a buyer, is turned to trash again. And by trash I mean landfill. The curtain pulled back, the acts of penance, the propitiation of Mother Earth, has become a fraud. So now the little rituals of dividing the refuse in the garage are gestures without meaning, signs without significance.
.
Yet under it all, it’s expected that I’m responsible for my carbon footprint. And in a sense that’s true. I’m alive – so I consume. And the message from the green minded world, the environmentalists for the last fifty years or so, has been basically to mind consumption. What’s the result? Countless products wrapped in icons of green leaves, icons of post-consumer recycling, little badges of assurance that we’re buying only the best, non-toxic, most ecologically-minded, wisest, compassionate, sensible consumer product that tell me I’m a better person. Consumption without the toxic side effects. Even the polluting companies get a greenwashing pass. BP is now “beyond petroleum.” Oil companies tell us that they’re making homes for coral reef with their decommissioned sunken offshore oil rigs. Chevron is making homes for fish, what are you doing to prevent ecological collapse?
.
Well then, I can match that. I’ll stop consuming oil and buy a Tesla. Or perhaps a cheaper, shittier version of one. Some people say that EVs will take over ICEs in the next decade. (That’s “electronic vehicles” and “internal combustion engines” for the uninitiated.) Which sounds lovely, but remain very, very expensive. Yes, they do in fact produce less emissions and less pollution and break down less often and yadda, yadda. And they again absolve my guilt in my one in seven billion paltry little life by making it my personal right and market-friendly consumer choice to participate in the EV miracle by choosing – or not – to buy a Tesla. It’s an appealing thought actually. Rolling around in a very quiet luxury sedan that can drive itself and accelerate faster than a v-12 Lamborghini Aventador Best of all, it doesn’t fart out refined dinosaur dookie. Isn’t that what we’ve been traveling on the last century – dinosaur ghost slaves? “Ah, listen to that exhaust note!”
.
Again, it’s up to me. It’s my choice. Or your choice. Our choice. Consumer demand. Consumer product. Market decision. Isn’t it strange how it always boils down to this core nugget? The earth question always down to that core narrative – the economy. Any environmental disaster, every environmental legislation, every thought about any of it reported in the press and the evening news ends with a note on how much it’ll cost, or how many jobs will be created, or how production is delayed. Sure the Deepwater Horizon was bad – how will it affect production!? And tourism in Mobile?! Always, in the end of any debate allowed in the commons of he main stream media is reduced to the care and maintenance of the hallowed ground of the economy.
.
This economy is untouchable, unimpeachable. The prophets of capital tell us it’s the best and only system. It’s all being, all knowing, all seeing center of the universe can do anything, achieve anything, climb every mountain and so on and so on. But what it can’t seem to do anything about is fix the environment. The only thing it can do about it is make it a market choice. A fraudulent market choice, but one nonetheless. The message, “it’s about you. It’s your choice if you want a clean planet. Do your part. Wear a sweater. Buy green locally sourced fair trade organic grass fed post-consumer.,…” Pollution? Mother Earth will “take care of it.” Oil, after all, is natural.
.
Years ago we used to have a government to curtail the excesses of capital. But then government sold out to the market under dreams that we could vote with our dollars instead. Then the EPA’s staff was replaced by fossil fuel lobbyists. They reframed “protection” as “regulation,” and transferred the role of responsibility to the rubric of resentment. Maybe there wasn’t a particular day it jumped the shark. Maybe it was always a scam. And in the end, like the corporations, outsourced environmental stewardship and responsibility to individuals. They called it “freedom.”
.
And so it goes that “only you can prevent forest fires.” You need to stop eating meat. You need to recycle. You need to buy the right light bulbs. You need to waste less. Don’t use so much water, turn it off while you brush your teeth. You need to drive less. Buy an EV. Want to clean up the plastic in the ocean, get a teenager to do it. The list of injunctions grows daily. It’s hard to keep up. I understand if it makes you grumpy. We’re all grumpy about it.
.
It’s similar to the market answer for healthcare. You’re on your own. Get insurance. Can’t afford it? Get a job. Not full time? No benefits? Don’t get sick. If you do get sick, get well on your own. Start a GoFundMe. And if you can’t do that, die quickly. It’ll be cheaper.
.
Economy sucks, no full time stable employment? No pension, no benefits? Your country no longer manufactures anything but weapons and pharmaceuticals? Too bad sucker, get another gig. Join the precariat. Turn your car into an Uber. Get an unpaid internship. Start a fetish porn website. Turn your extra room into an AirBnB. Take in a lodger. Ebay and Craigslist your crap. Barter. Sell magazine subscriptions. Sell Mary Kay or Herbalife or some other MLM Ponzi scheme crap product promoting eco-friendly health and beauty products. Stand outside Home Depot and sell some carpentry skills if you have them. Hitch a ride to trim in the Emerald Triangle, or to pick lettuce in the Central Valley.
.
Want an education? Rich? – come on in. Not? – take out loans for the rest of your life. It’s your choice. That’s what freedom’s all about.
.
Want security? Get a security guard and a surveillance system. Get some guns, protect yourself. Get cozy with your second amendment. Can’t afford that? Too bad. Worried about wildfires? Get a private firefighting crew, like Kim and Kanye did. Oh you’re an actual normal person? Oh well – gonna have to move.
.
Feel anxious? Depressed? Schizo? The world’s a bummer and it’s got you down? Get some pharmaceuticals and change the chemistry of your body. Get a grip, get some therapy, become well-adjusted. Never mind that it’s not a great feat to be well-adjusted to such an ill world.
.
Think the world’s coming to an end? Go buy a private island like Peter Thiel, or missile silo, or a bunker – just for you and yours where you can eat spoonfuls of apocalyptic televangelist Jim Baker’s prepacked buckets of mac and cheese. Want salvation? You are responsible for your own salvation too, just like you need to get your own apocalypse bolthole. It’s on you, brah!
.
This is what we have in a society that has abdicated any responsibility for stability to the whims of the market and the predation of finance. Capitalism has outsourced social responsibility to You. And I mean the impersonal cosmic YOU, as well as …. er …you. And that’s why I’m stuck here on a Friday trying to figure out what to do with that little plastic ring. Why is this now my problem? I’m not the company that made single use disposable thingamagigs, but I am tasked with it now being a problem. I’m down with doing my part where I can. And yes, I get why this duty harbors resentment. And the ickyness of both of these feelings have the same origin place. I’ve come to a conclusion … I’m being gaslighted. The economy is all powerful, and we’re all in lonely helpless impotents in the cult of selfhood.
.
My own use of carbon is a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal fraction compared to the enormity of fuel used every day in international shipping. In any given day, the U.S. military uses more fuel than the 140 million people of Nigeria. No one ever asks the military to shop green. International shipping? Forgetaboutit. I’ve hard time imagining Amazon – which has such a lovely jungle-sounding name, doesn’t it? – agonize over their recycling habits. They don’t. The irony is not lost on me that as Amazon.com grows, the actual Amazon shrinks.
.
Because of all this outsourcing and privatizing of social responsibility, all this onus placed on individuals makes social movements, movements of solidarity, harder to create. In the last Gilded Age, the Progressive Movement changed politics, driven by social solidarity and evangelism. Same went for the Great Depression, driven by organized labor and grassroots democratic socialists. Can there be another wave? A Green New Deal? What quorum of power will drive this most critical turn? Could it be the first generations in human history that are being brought up in a world so bleak that extinction is literally possible?
.
A renewed belief in good government in the right hands will have to overcome the petty resentments endemic to the cult of the self. The tool of the people is supposed to be the government. Somehow the conservatives have turned this into a bad word. But it’s only the government that has the ability to express the power of the people rather than the will of profit over people. The battle of the century, in fact the battle of all history, is a contest of priorities. People or Profit. Life or Death. And I suspect that this is the main theme and challenge of the 21st century. The quest: to see if we can un-gaslight ourselves and snap out of delirium of Late Capitalist sleepwalking before it’s too late. There will be a time – soon – when this is not a radical idea but the only path to sanity.
.
Is it possible? Perhaps, though I’ve no evidence. However sometimes the world is surprising. Things will seem stable but tense, and then – out of the blue – revolt. I think Lenin said something like “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” If the great calamity is as big as it’s being built up to be, there is no way in which society in a decade will resemble the society of today. And we’re all going to be very, very pissed off.
**
Suggested Reading:
Endgame by Derrick Jensen. This might be the most important book of the century.
A Fragile Dignity 