Why Environmentalism is So Difficult

I try to take care of my planet.  I pick up other people's trash and it infuriates me to see people cutting down trees when they should just leave them alone.  Needless to say, I try to do my part.

But it's hard.  In the old days, you just tried not to use more than you needed, and you put your trash where it belonged.  Simple enough.  But these days the environmental movement has grown in many directions and these different factions of environmentalists don't agree on things.  They all drag scientific claims into their corner and try to appeal to our emotions with pictures of animals and children, but their methods disagree with one another which leaves me scratching my head.

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For example: what are we to do with paper towels? It sounds simple, but it can be complicated.  For example:

While cleaning a spill with a paper towel, I suddenly hear my cat making a fuss.  I assume it's nothing, but as I turn around I see a hippie standing behind me dressed as a Native American with a single teardrop in his eye.  I'm moved as he tells me that throwing away the paper towel  creates landfill waste that breaks his heart.  I think that a thin paper towel covered in biological substances from my kitchen is going to biodegrade in a landfill rather efficiently, but the hippie who just broke into my kitchen says no and sheds a second tear.

Sooo, I need another solution.  Cloth towels!  Just like Little House on the Prairie!  I get out my cloth towel and do the extra work of washing it afterward  just to keep my paper towels out of landfills. Suddenly, I'm visited by another environmentalist who is crying great tears.  She points to my washing machine and my dishwasher and says that I'm hurting wildlife by dumping soap into the rivers.  In her hands is a dead fish that choked on Palmolive. She is soon joined by a dehydrated fellow who tells me that I'm depleting our supplies of water when I wash my towel.  Unable to deal with the emotions they have heaped upon me I agree to stop.

Recycling - that's the key!  The woman holding the dead fish and her dry friend both smile and leave so I can employ my new plan: use paper towels again - but I'll recycle them this time!  It's so simple, why didn't I think of this before?  But, predictably, I am visited by yet another environmentalist with a terrible sunburn and a breathing mask.  What's wrong?  He tries to tell me, but his coughing gets in the way, so he shows me some research that shows that recycling paper emits more greenhouse gases than simply creating new paper.  My great idea is actually hurting the ozone layer and killing the planet by releasing more carbon - I was better off just buying new ones and throwing the old ones away.  According to many, our planet won't last another generation or two due to global warming, so I shouldn't do anything to contribute to that.  Running out of trees is terrible, but the effects of global warming are said to be far worse!

How about those wipes that come with cleaning substance on them, already?  I head to the store to buy some of these, but the first two environmentalists I met, the smelly one and the crying one, are in the cleaning isle of the store shaking their heads.  This product contributes to landfills and pollutes the ground and rivers.  Back to normal paper towels.

I head to the paper goods aisle and see another environmentalist standing in between me and the jumbo pack of paper towels.  He's holding a small sapling of a tree and asking me if I want to take away its future so I can clean up my kitchen.  I have to admit that at this point that pizza sauce on my kitchen floor is getting pretty rank, so I take some paper towels and rush home to clean up my mess.  Naturally, all of the environmentalists and their friends protest my decision by holding hands and surrounding my house singing Peter, Paul, and Mary songs (which I like, but they keep insisting I'm not allowed to sing along).

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Now, you see, there are competing theories of environmentalism that don't work together.  Some tell me to just do something and it will help, but, as you can see, plenty of popular ideas are useless or counter-productive.  I've even been told recently to recycle paper in order to stop global warming, which I think makes no sense.   (Of course, asking me to recycle paper to save trees would make more sense, but I think people like to say "global warming" whenever they mean "something bad is going to happen to the environment.")

So, I'm stumped.  Do I care about the environment?  Of course I do.  It matters that we take care of our planet, but we don't have unified and well understood goals for doing so.  The answer should come from science, but that community spends its time defending the words of politicians so they can continue to receive grants and, as such, is not helping us do anything but muddy the waters.  Responsible environmentalism is hard.