Environ / mental Health

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#1: Is your carbon footprint BS?
environmentalhealth.substack.com

#1: Is your carbon footprint BS?

Ikigai, Perfectionism, Smallness

Dan Vekhter
Sep 6, 2021
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Share this post
#1: Is your carbon footprint BS?
environmentalhealth.substack.com

This is my first post and it feels clumsy to write on substack. Everything feels new and unfamiliar.

But I gotta break past the resistance and just do it. My intention for this newsletter is clear: every issue, I will break down a podcast/other climate related media and riff on it, through the lens of both activism and mental health.

Poetry, essayettes, gratitude journaling, song and dance — it all might bubble up here.


In this inaugural newsletter I discuss the podcast: Is you carbon footprint BS?

Give it a listen if you feel inspired. The general theme of the episode is how useful is individual action on climate change?

Here are my take-aways:

Ikigai

Self-Development Ikigai: the meaning of life - zekluu

The podcast says that you should find you climate ikigai (they don’t use this term, but that’s the general idea). I don’t care to be paid for environmental work, but I like the idea of finding something I like, am good at, and that the world needs. For me, that’s writing this newsletter.

What’s your environmental ikigai?

Perfectionism

I just recorded myself reading a poem I wrote called The diaper at Vernooy Kill, on the theme of eco-perfectionism and self-compassion.

It’s really easy for me to feel guilty about being a bad environmentalist (e.g. not picking up trash, not composting, throwing away plastic, driving, flying…the list goes on).

Most people are like me: biophilic and busy. And often, busy wins out. In our current civilization, simply meeting my needs for money, food, shelter and transportation creates a stream of waste.

The best response to this is not beating myself up for being a bad environmentalist, but rather designing systems where biophilic and busy don’t have to be at odds with each other.

I will explore environmental solutions in further issues of this newsletter.

Smallness

Awareness of my own smallness is liberating for me. I wrote this little poem on the theme of smallness after listening to the podcast:

0.0000000003

16 tons of CO2 (that's what I will produce this year)

Divided by 50 Billion tons (that's what the world will make)

Equals

A decimal point

Then nine zeros

Then a 3

So if I killed myself today

That's the fraction

Of humanity’s CO2

I would reduce per year


Or if I 

Had no children

Took no planes or cars

Used no electricity

And lived off the land completely

This would be the savings too

(And a bonus: I wouldn't have to die)


But the world's 7 billion people

(especially the poorest)

Aren't moving to eco-communes 

Anytime soon

So we need to find

Other solutions


When I think about 

A decimal

Nine zeros

And a 3

I see that I'm

A drop in the bucket


I take off the lenses 

Of personal responsibility

And guilt


And I think about

The game

Rather than

The player

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#1: Is your carbon footprint BS?
environmentalhealth.substack.com
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