Autism and Green Guilt

Sometimes, green guilt overwhelms me. There is so much paper, water, electricity involved in the process of living, especially here in the United States. We've recycled for years, conscientiously, as much as possible, down to the tiniest scraps of paper, the most meticulously folded and flattened piles of boxes, the exactly appropriately colored glass, depending on the city where we lived. I've tried to keep faucets off in between rinsing dishes when I wash them, and I've taken many other measures to reduce water usage, imagining what it would be like to have to carry all that water myself from a nearby river or stream and trying to use it accordingly.

We drive Hondas. It's the best we can do right now. We can't buy a new car, a hybrid or anything else, for awhile because of our budgeting plans. When we lived in San Francisco, we used the handy public transportation for all kinds of things, on a daily basis. We can't do that where we live now because there is no public transportation. So we drive pretty much everywhere.

The things we could or should do can be overwhelming, whether it's cutting out paper towels completely, mixing up our own cleaning solutions (baking soda + vinegar), eating local foods, buying organic, recycling clothes and toys, xeriscaping our yard, watering almost never...it's a huge list and sometimes unmanageable when you're living a regular life. And then there's this: I've just finished reading a story in Time magazine about "ecoparenting." The piece adds to the burden of green guilt that most thoughtful people probably carry around, telling me that having children is just about the most environmentally irresponsible thing one can do, that each new baby burdens the planet even more. Damn. Too late to send them back now.

And of course, it is irresponsible to have children, thanks to the Way We Live Now. Sure it is, thanks to burning fossil fuels, water resource mismanagement, burgeoning industrialization of farming and ranching, the now-finally-diminishing thirst for SUVs large enough to house a family in some countries, McMansions for a family of four that could hold a village, and the snubbing of public transportation in flyover land.

The thing is, you know and I know that we don't all have to live that way. Some of us struggle at the bottom, recycling tiny bits of paper, thinking about every drop of water, xeriscaping. Great. Little drip-drips of environmental awareness translated into little efforts at environmental responsibility. Among only a few of us.

But here's the deal. It's not actually our responsibility, here at the bottom of things, at the end of the service chain. It's time for the people at the beginining of that chain, the ones who design cars, who know damned good and well that there are alternative ways--clean ones, usable ones, renewable ones--to step up and put up. Time to stop worrying about whether or not it is economically viable, doable, feasible for them to mass-produce products that address some of our fundamental environmental problems on a larger scale than I and my little family can imagine with our tiny efforts to recycle and reuse.

As it is now, only the rich and aware can afford most of the real, big-bang eco-friendly adjustments available on the market right now. Only people who have money and time on their hands can pull this off. Those of us who live busy, child-filled lives rife with booboos and outings to parks and swimming and hot-hot-hot Texas summers and minivans to hold our entire families at once and air-conditioned houses *just* big enough by American standards do not have the means to make these sweeping changes that would really, truly make an environmental difference.

What does any of this have to do with autism? I mentioned that where we live, a suburb of a large Texas city, there is no public transportation. You might say, "Then move somewhere where there is public transportation." And my response--and that, probably, of pretty much any parent out there in the world, goes something like this:

We live where we live for our kids. If it were just us, we'd be downtown, in a loft, riding buses or walking everywhere. But we're not two or five or seven years old. We do not require excellent schools with excellent services for our specific needs. We do not require a village, a neighborhood, a safe place to make friends and run and play. Our children do.

And they will never be two or five or seven again. There are no do-overs of childhood. And when it comes to a cost-benefit balance between what we feel is best for our children, here, now (going to parks, swimming, great school, special-needs services, very close to grandma and grandpa, on and on) vs. what might be better for the planet (and yes, our children) in the long term (chucking it all up and living off a nonexistent, vast savings on a sustainable farm in Vermont), we--probably like many many parents out there--come down on the side of "here, now." If TH could remember, at age seven, to look both ways when crossing the street, if any of our children showed a city-kid tendency to street smarts, if they loved the sound of traffic instead of collecting roly-poly bugs and wandering in the trees--then, we'd probably live downtown. But they don't. And the school district in the city is known for resisting services for special needs children.

So, I refuse green guilt, outright. I have mentally circled the wagons around our family and its needs. And I have decided that it is not my responsibility to lie awake at night, worrying about my carbon footprint or whether or not the city recycling program accepts #5 plastic or debating the benefits of cloth vs disposable diapers (depends on water resources where you live). My responsibility is to do the best for my children, here, now. I don't discount the long term, and that does include our continued tiny, nano-level efforts at environmental responsibility. But we can't single-handedly make seamless public transportation happen or build cars or other transport that use environmentally friendly or renewable fuel sources or even spend the money to put solar panels on our homes. I lay that responsibility squarely at the feet of those at the top of the provider-consumer food chain. The technology is there. They have the ability to make it happen. And we, green-guilty consumers that we are, anxiously await.