🍃 Bearly Surviving 🍃
I have this clear memory of reaching up to turn off the tap water in the kitchen of our apartment and my dad saying, “You’re such an environmentalist!”
“What’s that?” I asked. Once my dad explained what the word meant, I identified with it immediately. It was one of the first times I defined myself as part of a group. I was a girl. I was someone who loved Calvin and Hobbes. And I was an environmentalist.
I was six. And I was soon steeped in the tenets on early ‘90s kumbaya environmentalism: Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! That year, the creepy Ronald McDonald clown performed in our school cafetorium and got the entire first grade class to shout those words in unison while he performed a dance number about picking up litter. Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Then we ate free McDonalds french fries and hamburgers. It was absolutely a highlight of my life at the time. Being an environmentalist was fun and delicious!
Throughout elementary school, I saved up money adopt a wolf, then adopt a whole acre of rainforest. I proudly hung up the official “thank you” certificates on my bedroom wall. I wore almost exclusively oversize environmental awareness t-shirts sold by a nonprofit called Human-i-tees. I snipped every six-pack ring. I recycled with a religious zeal. I picked up litter at recess, which had the added benefit of letting me seem virtuous while letting me avoid social interaction. I was excited to be part of a generation that was changing the world. We would save the rainforest, the whales, the wolves, all of it! By reducing, reusing, and recycling!
In high school, my vision of saving the world became more complicated. Suddenly, it seemed, it wasn’t just the wolves or distant rainforest that were in danger. It was us. Humans. Humans were driving the world to extinction and we would wipe ourselves out. My can-do spirit turned to fuck-this spirit. I got angry at the older generations that were writing the laws and running the companies that put money first and the future of all existence last. I stopped eating meat. I boycotted McDonalds. I got mad at my parents for buying a car. Environmentalism felt very unfun and definitely not delicious.
As I’ve gotten older, my righteousness has gotten blurrier. I don’t want to judge other people’s food, cars, and purchases based on my own standards, especially when they come from different cultural and class backgrounds. And besides, we’re not going to save the world by all going around picking up litter. Because we’re not going to save the world. Humans will wipe ourselves out one way or another. Reading the geological record to predict the future of humanity is like playing a really downer game of Clue: Will the death be from oil companies with mass extinction in the ocean? Will it be coal power with hydrocarbons in the atmosphere? Will it be Trump with the nuclear launch codes in the oval office?
But here’s the really insane thing about this dead-end game: I’m still happy to be playing. I take my chances to appreciate the world wherever I can. I’m still excited about trees. Whales still blow my mind. In the geological-time-scale scheme of things, my actions don’t matter at all. Even in the modern-time-scale scheme of things, my individual actions are absolutely zilch compared to the impact that governments and companies have on the world. But they’re still my actions. I think the reasons I cut up my six-pack rings as a kid was because it made me feel powerful in some way. I could decide my actions. And therefore I could decide who I wanted to be in the world. These days, my environmentalism is much less a positive, practical activism than an existential moral question. My morality is determined by doing what I think is right despite the outcome. When the outcome is eventual human extinction, how do I act? Everyone draws their own moral line in a different place. Some people eat vegan, some people abstain from air travel, some people buy carbon offsets, some people buy Hummers. Me? I turn off the tap whenever I can. I want to leave a good world to my wolves.
THIS WEEK’S COMIC
STUFF I MADE
Stickers! I ordered 300 “Believe Women” stickers during the Kavanaugh hearings and they showed up this week. I’m selling them and donating the proceeds to RAINN. Here’s a link if you want to buy some to slap on bikes, cars, or politicians’ faces.
Comic - I rage-assigned this comic on female rage last week and artist Colleen Tighe really nailed it. I always feel weird talking about my work as an editor because I didn’t actually write or draw this comic. But, hey, I thought of the idea and got the comic to publication. Shoutout to the other editors out there who feel important-but-invisible.
30 Zines in 30 Days - I’m still keeping up my challenge to make a zine every day in October. I made the one above, but others are on scary movies and also cats. You can see them at the Instagram hashtag #30zinesin30days.
STUFF I LOVE:
Unisex button-up shirts - Guys, I broke down and bought two shirts from Wildfang. After resisting literally years of relentlessly targeted Instagram advertising and two whole seasons of flawless fashion advice from Tan France, I finally caved and bought two short-sleeve button-down shirts (which Wildfang calls button-up shirts because they’re **rebels**). The company is way too hip and make it seem like buying a shirt is a peak act of feminism, but also… the shirts look great, they feel great, I love them, I’m never wearing anything else now.
Slow Burn - I usually steer clear away from white-dude hosted podcasts that promise to really “get into the weeds” on a political issue because if I wanted to hear leftist men rant endlessly about their unoriginal political opinions, I would just attend my local DSA meeting. But a four-hour bus ride with no WIFI finally got me to listen to the episodes of Slate podcast Slow Burn I downloaded and now I’m hooked. The second season of the show explores the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal in really refreshing ways. I thought I knew all about this… turns out Bill Clinton was worse than I remember and Lewinsky got screwed over by her friends, bosses, and society more than I could believe.
Maggie Gyllenhaal - I guess I hadn’t thought about Maggie Gyllenhaal in a while? But then she was on an episode of Fresh Air and talked really directly about not joining the cast of show The Deuce unless she could be a producer and therefore have power over the story. She also discussed on the episode about how on the set of the show, they approached sex scenes with the same level of physical and emotional care that they approached stunts.
The Good Place - Roughly 700 friends recommended I watch comedy series The Good Place and I took your comments into consideration. I watched the first two episodes with my partner Ben, but then he fell asleep, which forced me to stay up until 3am watching the rest of the whole first season BY MYSELF. What I like about the show is hands-down the characters, who are so spot-on real-life people that I never knew I wanted to see on TV before.
SOMEONE TO KNOW:
Vivek Shraya
On his last day volunteering at Giovanni’s Room, Ben bought a fuschia copy of Vivek Shraya’s new book I’m Afraid of Men. I didn’t know anything about Shraya, who is a transgender Canadian musician, performer, writer, and all-around renaissance woman. I’m Afraid of Men is super short—it’s like a long essay, I read it in about 90 minutes when I was supposed to be packing—but it says everything it needs to and nothing more. After reading the book, I read this interesting interview with her in Bitch about vulnerability and desire. (Photo credit: Adam Coish)
SOMETHING TO DO
Calculate Your Carbon Footprint
As I said at the top, I don’t like to tell other people how to live their lives. But I do want people to have the tools they need to make the best decisions for themselves. This carbon footprint calculator lets you see how your behaviors and habits impact the environment. Give it a whirl.
I’ll write to you in a few weeks! In the meantime, keep in touch on Instagram and Twitter, okay? If this is your first time seeing this newsletter, you can subscribe here.