It's not Easy Bein' Green...

So I took this quiz that I found on Laura's brother's blog. It's a quiz that measures one's ecological "footprint," that is, how much you make your mark on the earth. The news is not good, folks. I apparently take up 20 acres (and while that's less than the American average of 24, it's still not pretty) and if everyone lived like me, we would need 4.5 planets.

4.5 planets.

Now, I will say 2 things about this quiz: 1) it has an agenda, and as such, 2) it is written with quite a bias. The two of us live in 650 square feet and have one car, a Honda Civic. Yet the choices on the question about square footage were: 500 square feet or smaller, 500 to 1000, 1000 to 1500, 1500 to 1900 square feet, 1900 or 2500, or 2500 or larger. Well, dang. I had to check option 2. I want credit for those 350 square feet in the world that we're not taking up! I'm only halfway joking.

I also was disgruntled at the question about flying: how many hours per year? 100, 25, 10 or 3 hours, or never fly. Well, heck. Would 3 hours a week add up to the one or two times (at most) that I fly a year? I refuse to do math if it's not absolutely necessary! I chose "never fly."

Kennan commented on the question about generating waste. The question was "compared to people in your neighborhood, how much waste do you generate?" and the choices were: much less, about the same, or much more. Hey! What happened to slightly less and slightly more? I won't tell you what I had to check.

After taking the quiz, it's a little startling to see that although we are "living small" right now, we're still apparently a fairly large boil on the planet's butt. Here I thought I was not-so-bad, especially compared to others.

But again, where's the credit for other stuff? For having a Compassion child or supporting ecological causes or RECYCLING? I can't believe that wasn't even on there. I guess it was part of the "waste generated" question, but what if you live among either extreme of conservationists? You could either come out looking good, because your neighbors are all dumping toxic sludge into the 'Hooch or looking really bad, just because you don't have pigs in the backyard to eat your scraps. And what about water conservation?!? Arrrrghhh!

I think the real question is, where are a person's priorities? Even if I could juryrig the test to give me a much better score, and even though I try to not let the water run, turn lights off when I leave the room, etc., I'm still pretty preoccupied with my own comfort. The most motivation I have to conserve things is to keep the bills down. (Ooh! That's another one! What about on-line bill pay, which cuts down on paper used and gas used to deliver the mail?) I really don't have the motivation to help take care of the earth. And that, my friends, is a problem.

Because we're supposed to take care of the earth. When God said, "Fill the earth and subdue it," I don't think he was saying to fill it with trash. So the question is, as it is in everything else, am I willing to sacrifice my comfort to do what the Lord asks of me? Am I willing to get off my butt and walk to Tech for Bible study, which requires starting out earlier and possibly arriving a bit sweaty or cold? Am I willing to also time things so that I can take the shuttle to Emory as opposed to driving over there? Am I willing to try to find space in our already tiny kitchen for recycling containers? And am I willing to "live small" forever? I want a house someday. I sometimes wish we had another vehicle. And if we had more money to buy more of the things I would like (which all seem to come double shrink-wrapped in one of those obnoxious hard plastic cases that it takes a machete' wielding ninja to hack through), we'd generate even more waste!

I know people who live in nice, fairly large houses, who have 2 vehicles, etc. etc. who really do care for the earth. They recycle. They carpool. They have at least one Compassion child. They have room to compost in their nice backyard, where they grow veggies. I think one of the things that the mentality behind the quiz doesn't take into account is, if Kennan & I were to move into a hut in poverty-stricken Bolivia and live, as the people there must, on rice & beans, that wouldn't actually help the problem! Not to mention that we'd have to put a higher score on our flight habits.

It's not how much you have, it's what you do with it. Yes, we need to do better. Yes, we can make more sacrificies both for the conservation of the earth and for the care of her people. But for some unknown reason, God has put us here in the land of opportunity to make wise choices. We have the chance to make decent money, which can then be given to various worthy charities. We have the opportunity to affect public policy that affects how many layers of wrapping you can put on a single item (for crying out loud!).

The point is not to live simply, but to live well, and with purpose.