First, a Project Update:
Bed Stuy Meadow is almost 140 volunteers strong as of today, and almost 100 have RSVP'ed and been put on the map! Thanks to our latest sponsor, Lab 24/7, there will be an afterparty! I have raised almost enough money to afford lunch for the afterparty! Keep consulting the map if you want to watch this army of do-gooders grow! Email me to volunteer--it is going to be really fun! If you can't volunteer time, donate ten bucks and receive your own mini-meadow in the mail!
The flowers are going to be beautiful, but ultimately this project isn't about wildflowers or Bed Stuy as much as it's creating a smaller version of how things should be. The Meadow is really an environmental allegory.
Environmental action should be large-scale and positive, it should link local actions to a global context, and it should be all about incentives. It should feel really good. It shouldn't be about fear or lack. It should be about doing something specific instead of shunning something. Even token actions, like the Meadow, should be absolutely concrete.
Bed Stuy Meadow is the opposite of Earth Hour. Earth Hour is turning off your lights for one hour along with everyone else in the world. It's a good way to visually link everyone on the globe, but as a gesture, it's problematic. Sitting in the dark is the kind of thing a martyr would do, or a grieving person. It's negative, it's passive and it's vague. It's also about what you consume under the existing consumption regime--it doesn't fundamentally change the small-consumer-choices model.
Strong environmental actions can work on a lot of different levels. They can incentivize good outcomes so much that it doesn't even matter whether or not the person buying in believes that global warming even exists. They can improve quality of life in tangible ways that make people want more similar actions. They can present models that are more powerful than the existing Popular Environmentalism Model, which is basically about knowing the ingredients and supply chain of every single thing you purchase, and applying this information each time your hand reaches out to consume something.
I understand why the Popular Environmentalist Model came about, but it's got real limitations, because in this model there is only the Education Axis and the Consumption Axis. It's all self-oriented, and this creates a frustrating problem of scale. Doing the work to choose the right soap does not delight me. It's more like a tax on my empathy and intelligence. In fact, I wish that I did not know that most of the products in the grocery store are poisonous. This knowledge makes me into a finger-wagging tightass, mostly because I have very little power--all I can do is say no. We're back to sitting in the dark.
When I stop being a consumer and start being a citizen, my power increases dramatically. I am able to say that there should be no poisonous products in the freaking supermarket in the first place! Plants and trees are beautiful, and I can work to ensure that we all live with many, many more of them. Walking and biking is good for us and feels good. I can work with groups like Transportation Alternatives, and actually make biking and walking safer and easier. Food that's raised locally tastes better than food that's been shipped forever, and I can be a consumer at a farmer's market, or I can get even more involved in a CSA. Efficient homes are easier and cheaper to heat comfortably, and there is no reason not to agitate for higher efficiency standards in rental apartments in this city.
Whether or not global warming is ever ameliorated, we have an opportunity to make enormous positive aesthetic and lifestyle shifts. Wind and water turbines will reduce NYC's carbon footprint, but I think it's more important that they will reduce childhood asthma rates. Solar cells on every appropriate surface would reduce our carbon footprint, but they could also save a lot of people a lot of money, so what does it take to get solar panels on the projects and other kinds of subsidized housing? Green roofs would help our storm runoff problem, respire CO2 and reduce urban heat island effect, but we should do it because they are pretty--because they give you a new place to go sit and think and look at the sky.
Environmental action could consist of nothing but these kinds of legitimately delightful, totally tangible upgrades. And yet we sit in the dark and scare people and parse soaps and falsely make environmentalism into a Luxury Calamity that is best solved by purchasing a really expensive car, the most expensive vegetables, and doing an expensive renovation on your house.
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