What’s Your Bullshit Lame Excuse?

How about not standing by watching the world burn and drown?

End the apathy now. End the complacency now. End the “let somebody else do it” now. Huge fires in the Western United States, devastating floods in Western Germany. Come on people. How about we all pitch in now, do something now. There are no exceptions. Everybody has to make a sacrifice. Everybody. It’s nice seeing communities come together after a catastrophe has hit. Touching, generous, humane. But here’s a wildly crazy thought: How about we all come together before all your existences are washed away or burnt down to the last baby picture of your mom from 1929? How about we come together before catastrophes strike?

10 things we must do right now to help save the world from either burning to a crisp or being flooded out of the galaxies.

1. Stop buying food packages in plastic: One example. Instead of fruit in a plastic bottle, buy a piece of fruit. It’s cheaper and healthier.

2. Get yourself a Brita Water Filter. Now you don’t have to cart plastic water bottles by the dozen home. You’re welcome.

(How is this going to help you ask? Consumer conduct drives production. It works both ways of course. But we as consumers are in the majority. So the more people change their habits, the quicker suppliers will have to react. Got it?)

3. Get your own reusable coffee cup FFS. This may be more widespread in the US but here in Austria, I’m the lady who always brings her own cup. A freak. A nice one. But probably the only one. I may have to resort to more drastic measures ie handing out flyers or contacting the marketing division of the bakery chain where I get my daily coffee; ask the chain to advertise BRING YOUR OWN CUP. Or something.

4. Soap instead of shower gel in a plastic bottle. Easy. There’s also shampoo and toothpaste available in alternative recyclable packaging. Refills. Not widespread enough but if you’ve got the option, use it.

4. Eat less meat. Eat locally farmed meat. Don’t buy the super cheap meat because you’d be supporting an industry that is a known criminal organization and commits atrocities against animals. Dairy farmers are just as guilty. Eating less meat is also healthier btw. That’s called win-win.

5. Attention Vegans: the milk alternatives issue. Here’s my post on the alternatives to dairy milk. Soy and Oat Milk are preferable to almond and coconut because they don’t suck up all the water.

6. Here’s a drastic notion: use public transport. Get a bike. Walk. Sell your car (yeah, I know — that’s me attacking the holy grail of perceived freedom. I also know most of you living in the United States have no other alternatives but to drive. I know. I grew up in LA. Maybe consider a hybrid or an eCar)

7. Buy less. Of everything. Especially cheap shit T-shirts and jeans and bikinis and dresses and jackets.

8. Water is one of the most precious resources we won’t have much longer in some areas if we don’t stop using so much of it. Talking to you constant sprinklers of lawns and car washers. And turn off the water while you are brushing your teeth or soaping your hands. How about showering 2–3 minutes instead of 10. Who the fuck needs a ten-minute shower?

9. Learn from Extreme Cheapskates. Some things are just extreme cheapskatey disgusting like the allegedly rich lady who serves her guests cat food instead of tuna because it’s 20 cents cheaper per can. Cheapskates are motivated by saving money. If the measures they take also help save the planet, reduce waste — bravo and copy.

10. Wipes don’t belong in the toilet. They clog up the whole filtering system and have to be removed by professional poop divers. Sure their official job title isn’t poop diver but essentially, that’s what they have to do: unclog all the crap in sewage plants.

I know that’s not a particularly flashy number 10, ending on a crap note (pun intended) but these ten things translate so easily into doable real-life easy action.

Attention Rich People (whose carbon footprint is like 1000 times bigger than those of the middle and lower-income classes)*

I’d wish you’d all suffer a Shitt$ Creek storm. Seriously. It’d all make you better people. Kinder, more compassionate, and aware. Voluntarily, most of you operate on the It’s good to be King entitlement buzz. You think you’re better than us poor people, you reckon you earned it because you’ve been assholes all your lives getting rich off the backs of minimum wage laborers. So you figure it’s totally okay to fly back and forth in your private jets to vacation in your various homes located in the most beautiful places in the world where the construction of your estates was most certainly secured by buying off local politicians, paying the workers minimum wage with no health insurance because you’re all, well, assholes.

If there happens to be the rare self-aware million/billionaire who wants to make a difference: I suggest spending a year living with a person who works four jobs to get by. Or with a single parent. Or a health care worker. Or work as a crop picker. Work as a volunteer in a refugee camp. Go spend at least one year with any of the above. Do some good. Hopefully, it will also stick and change you into a better person.

To everyone waiting for someone else to fix it

Nope. Doesn’t work that way. Sorry to disappoint you. You’re going to have to do shit yourself. Small things. Like the ones mentioned above. Consider contacting local businesses to get them involved in more sustainability. Hand out flyers with A LESS IS MORE message. Get some friends, form a club of local activists. Do your thing. Stop waiting, standing by, and watching the world alternatively burn (Western US) or whole towns get washed away before torrential rain (like in Germany).

It’s our home to save or lose. And I sure as hell ain’t giving up.

Look, I know what we’re up against. I do community management for a documentary channel that features investigative documentaries on the environment, sustainability, fast fashion, industrialized farming, and lately, alternatives to meat. It’s leave your brain at the door time when reading the comments some people spew.

If you base your opinion on the state or level of stupid on internet commentary— well, disheartening, is the most optimistic description I can come up with. Changing the minds of the ignoramuses have to come at a local level. It’s way more tedious and time-consuming but it’s the only way at this current space in time. All the anti-vaxxers, non-mask wearing, plastic bottle toting diehard morons driving pickups or SUVs need to be led by the hand, symbolically speaking. Start changing minds locally. Find a friend. Go for it. We can do this. I mean, it’s not easy. But we can. We invented Netflix. Surely, we can save the planet.