[Book Haul] No Impact Man, by Colin Beavan

To justify my nontstop book collection, I made an unofficial vow to finish books I've started reading, and to reduce the number of unread volumes in my shelves (i.e. read more). I'm happy with the progress I'm making, especially after turning the last page of Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard; the book that took me at least 3 years to read. It's a great book; worthy of the paper on which it was printed. 

The next unfinished tome to go down was No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process (whew! what a long title!). Written by journalist Colin Beavan, it chronicles his year-long experiment to make his household "carbon neutral" and reduce their overall ecological footprint to zero. 

As you may already know, everything we do basically leaves a "footprint", or impact, on the planet, no matter how miniscule it is. It's not necessarily a bad thing, as it is an inevitable by-product of being alive. It becomes a huge problem when, out of our insatiable desire for material things and have a better life, our footprint exceeds the earth's rate of regeneration; making it unsustainable. According to the website myfootprint.org, On the average, the consumption rate of the total population exceeds Earth's biological capacity by 50%. In other words, we need 1.50 Earths to sustain our need! But to be fair, the distribution is not equal throughout the world, there are nations that consume more as there are those who don't have enough. Such inequality is one of the main points of Beavan.

It is interesting to read how his family transitioned from a fast-paced lifestyle, with all the convenience and luxuries of a typical American middle-class, to baking their own bread, bike-commuting everywhere, and foregoing even the basic convenience of electricity. He also laments that throughout his experiment and him sharing to the world his re-discovery of the joys of simple living vis-a-vis working double-time to find more convenience, the media chose to focus on the fact that they stopped using toilet paper. 

The book loses steam a bit towards the end, when the experiment finally ended and they slowly go back to their original life. Maybe the pacing was different than the earlier chapters, but I felt it came short in telling how huge was the impact of his "year without toilet paper" in his daily life. He compensates through his philosophical discussion juxtaposing environmental activism with the purpose of our life, whereby, "there is a limit to how much less harm I can do. But my potential for good are unlimited." Profound as it may sound, it also had a practical ring to it. 

One of the two main points I take from this book is that planet would be much pleasant for us to live in if we step back, re-assess our lifestyle, cut the fat, focus on what's important, and pay it forward. We are too caught up with the current definition of progress that we have failed to evaluate if this is the progress we want. 

The other one is that going green is not about saving the planet, it's about saving ourselves from changing the planet too drastically that we cannot live in it anymore. Despite all our junk and pollution, life on Earth will find a way to evolve and prosper. Sadly, humans might not be too lucky.

from funnyjunk