I am part of consumerist western culture.

Oh, I’m not blindly so. I eat local where possible (very hard to do during a Wisconsin winter) to cut down on pollution from transporting food and to help local farmers. I avoid the worst of the individually pre-packaged over-processed foods to cut down on packaging that just goes in the landfill (and because that crap is really bad for you and doesn’t taste very good anyway!). I walk around turning out the lights when they’re not needed. I recycle what the local government will pick up.

But I’m part of it nonetheless. I’m a little too sedentary (with the decline in health that comes with that), a little too quick to jump to the easy route, and my footprint on the planet is a few sizes too large.

In other words, I’m not too far ahead of the average American when it comes to my negative impact on the world.

I’m going to change all that. I love civilization, but if we don’t change soon (as in, decades ago) we’re goners. We’re making the planet “incompatible with human civilization” as we go and too many people are just standing to the side watching it happen. It’s not healthy for civilization as a whole and it’s certainly not healthy for me!

Saying you’re going to fundamentally change is damn easy. Putting it into practice though… that’s far tougher. Our polluting ways are like an addiction. We have developed a dependency on modern convenience to the point where we’re losing the ability to do things for ourselves and putting a strain on the entire planet’s ecosystem that will come back to bite not just us, but everyone on the planet.

Like any addiction, I know I’ll fall off the wagon. Probably more than once. When that happens, you just have to be firm but gentle with yourself and climb back on. But sometimes it’s hard to see how. It can feel like it’s insurmountable.

I think a lot of people are in the same place I am. You want to live a little more lightly on the earth. You want your grandkids to have an earth that’s capable of sustaining human life still. You want to be healthier in your own life and you want to make the world a healthier place to live. So let’s do it together. It’s a cliche that change must come from within, but very rarely does it happen in a vacuum. If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll take the time to think about your own impact and to consider ways to reduce the negative, perhaps even to have a net positive impact!

I’ll be writing articles here about different things I’m doing to change my ways, digging past some of the new “greenwashing” marketing to find out just how environmentally friendly certain products really are, and about the practical side of balancing a modern, civilized life with my attempts to leave the planet a little better than it was when I joined it.

I hope you’ll join me on my quest.