[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]Two different people have crossed my mind lately. First, H. David Nahai, the former chief of the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power. Nahai had infamously called for public water conservation while watering his own lawn and topping off his own pool as if the Colorado River aqueduct were his personal faucet.
Then there is Elizabeth Warren. Her name keeps popping up as the putative head of the soon-to-be-created Consumer Protection Agency. But while cruising her Amazon.com page, I was struck by the fact that she was selling two kinds of books. Moderately priced hard covers and paperbacks for John Q. Citizen, and overpriced law school textbooks for a captive audience likely going into non-dischargeable debt to feather her Massachusetts nest.
And I had thought the new poster child for hypocrisy was Al Gore, for preaching about global warming while flying around the world leaving a polluting jet stream in his wake, only to come home to one of his multiple, multi-bedroom, multi-bath houses – that we all know are for just two (scratch that, one).
My Lonely Campaign
Whom or what do we sacrifice on the altar of our personal beliefs? I’ve long subscribed to the belief that the personal is the political, but it appears that I have been alone here.
I’ve tried the “live what you believe” way of life, and I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. Back when I took advice from my family, I decided to move to, let’s call it a “working-class black neighborhoo”’ in South Central L.A. I was raised to believe that the devastation in inner-city neighborhoods was caused by white and black flight, not merely the ravages of drugs and crime, like crack cocaine. Well-off, and well-educated black families who had once been required by restrictive covenants and the like to live in segregated areas, had also created communities that thrived. When our doctors, lawyers and business people abandoned those communities and moved to predominantly white neighborhoods and suburbs, our cities were left with only the poor and most disenfranchised, and as a consequence, or by design, they faltered – badly.
Naively or self-centeredly, I believed that my professional, sane, non-criminal presence in the neighborhood would make it better, even if just a little bit. It didn’t work exactly as I had hoped. We younger folks were often in conflict with the older folks who thought everything was just fine – no matter how many police helicopter (complete with night sun) flyovers we had. No matter that we couldn’t get firefighter, police or other city services without severe armtwisting of our entrenched City Council representative. No matter that housing prices were exploding in other areas of Los Angeles while ours remained somewhat stagnant, ignored by banks and eschewed by real estate agents.
It took a full three years before I let the neighborhood go, even as I felt guilty about it. But my friends, many of whom shared my beliefs, often admitted that they’d never have made the choice I did. Political life for many I know involves dressing up, driving your fancy car to someone’s estate in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air, and writing a check.
The Way I Used to Be
I still wrestle with these kinds of choices, though on a smaller scale. For years, I was a paper planner. I dutifully recorded all of my appointments and notes on the corresponding dates in my pocketbook-sized calendar. Then at the end of the year, I bound them all together, labeled them with the correct year, and stored them on my bookshelves.
Last year, my mother bought me a Palm. Yes, I’m about a thousand years out of date, but I finally realized it was easier to carry all my contacts and appointments in one ongoing electronic calendar, rather than constantly having to flip to the appropriate date for the right information, crossing out old and new addresses, etc. My purse is much lighter, but there were pounds of paper and storage boxes going back to 2001 that I no longer needed. I recycled the paper, but remained in possession of the so-called storage binders. These cardboard wonders with their proprietary ring systems are now piled ten high in my office. The debate that continues to rage within me – should I throw something perfectly good away – again?
I posted my latest garbage dilemma on Facebook and the suggestions poured in. Post their availability on Freecycle or Craigslist. I hadn’t mentioned to my “friends” that I’d already done that – and waited an hour for someone to claim my free stuff. In flaky Los Angeles, it wasn’t the best use of my time. After being stood up, I got in my car, and motored on down to a store to get more stuff that I absolutely need today.
This column promises not to be another rant on the “stuff” in my life. I’m working on making peace with our “put stuff in a hole in the ground, and cover it up with dirt,” as our best method of disposal. Actually all the talk about conservation and recycling has made me do something odd – use more. After thinking about H. David Nahai, Elizabeth Warren and Al Gore, I came to a decision – I can no longer be bothered trying to live out my beliefs.
I still make an effort to live sensibly and sustainably. I’ve voluntarily lived in those neighborhoods three different times. I consciously remove myself from every solicitation list so I don’t have to participate in the destruction of the one hundred million trees felled every year just for catalogs. I drive as infrequently as possible, consolidating trips to save energy. But often, I feel like the only one.
Every week I watch my neighbors put out vast amounts of garbage – often spilling over into my containers. A dozen beer bottles thrown in the trash (not even recycled). A TV-size box full of shoes shoved into my bin. A garbage bag full of broken toys left in a heap for the overworked garbage man to collect after getting out of his truck to pick up. I know for a fact that we share the same hole in Sun Valley (or somewhere I don’t ever happen by). One day the current landfills will be full and the cost of disposal will increase. Every week I’m starting to feel like I need to get in my use of the cheap fill space before it goes.
The same can be said for water. Our cheap (and imported) water goes for less than a half cent a gallon (at least that’s what my DWP bill reads). For years, I’ve forgone baths and excessive lawn (when I had one) watering because I thought it prudent to conserve a resource of which we had too little. But if you drive around early in the morning, you’ll see the employees of many business and tons of early rising residents washing their sidewalks and driveways with hoses – as brooms seemed to have gone out of style. Even former DWP chief H. David Nahai didn’t conserve water until his usage came under scrutiny from a few bloggers and reporters. If the “environmentalist” head of my water agency wants to run his sprinklers every night or not use a pool cover, then surely I can run a few 60 gallon baths every week – after all, I don’t have a lawn or a pool. It’s obvious if I conserve now, I’ll be paying more for water later and will have missed out on the days of cheap, clean water.
My car only gets 20 miles to the gallon. Which, by the way, is an improvement over my last car that – on a good day – got 17 miles to the gallon. When I was considering which car to buy about 18 months ago, I considered waiting for a new fleet of hybrids to be released, and looked at the then current selection of high MPG cars – and chose mine anyway. I mean, on the way to the dealerships, I was surrounded by minivans and sport utility vehicles. It was not exactly an advertisement for an environmentally aware California there on the 405. My last neighbor had four cars for just one person. My newest neighbor just moved into a 3500-square foot house – just for himself. Compared to Al Gore’s Montecito dreams, he’s small stuff. With just one car and three people in three thousand square feet, I practically feel like Emily Environmentalist.
I’ve thrown up my hands. America’s failure to muster meaningful collective action has done me in. While I’ve been buckling down, everyone else has been on a free ride. The more I read about America’s vast consumption, and its unsustainability, the less I feel the need to conserve. If so-called environmentalists and socially aware world leaders gathering in Copenhagen to attend a summit on global warming can fly 140 private jets to get there and then import limousines (because the city’s 1200 weren’t enough) to roll through the town, then what dent can I make by taking a five-minute shower, recycling or driving less. The true answer, none.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? Let my consumption and disposal heyday begin.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
