I have a love/hate relationship with Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man. Used to hate him, now I love him. And his wife Michelle, too.
Not in a menage-a-trois-y kinda way, though. I just really like this smart, funny couple who attempted, for a year, to wean themselves and their toddler Isabella off the fossil-fueled conveniences we all take for granted. This meant, for starters:
- No driving, no flying, or even relying on mass transit. They got where they needed to go on foot, bike or scooter. No more elevators, either; they took the stairs to reach their 9th floor apartment (several exceptions to these rules were made; two train rides to visit upstate farms, and an occasional elevator ride when security measures or double-digit floors in a midtown hi-rise required it.)
- No buying new stuff, except for foods produced within 250 miles of Manhattan. So, no more take-out, out-of-seaon produce, or coffee (though Michelle fought for, and won, a concession on the coffee front). And no meat, because livestock production is such a fossil-fuel intensive process.
- No watching tv; the family eventually went off the grid entirely, playing cards by candlelight and otherwise amusing themselves without electricity.
- No washing machine or refrigerator. Abstaining from these two appliances proved especially challenging, as No Impact Man, the film documenting Colin's endeavor, memorably shows.
The No Impact Project, which Colin conceived--and foisted on an indulgent though leery Michelle and eternally cheery Isabella--was an arbitrary, utterly quixotic endeavor. Colin's intent was, ostensibly, to ask: "Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much stuff?"
Oh, and not incidentally, to make some money off a book and a film that would chronicle his attempt to answer that question.
And it's a question we really need to ask: though we make up just 5 percent of the world's population, we hog roughly 30 percent of the planet's resources, and generate one fourth of the world's greenhouse gases in the process.
But Colin cooked the whole thing up to clinch a book deal chronicling his family's eco-extreme exploits. An article in The New York Times famously branded the project The Year Without Toilet Paper, generating a bit of a media frenzy and leaving a lot of folks, myself included, with the impression that Colin was an opportunistic schmuck.
I dismissed Colin's endeavor as 'conspicuous unconsumption'. In true Holier-Than-Holden Caulfield style I called Colin a phony, a peddler of 'pseudo sustainable schlock'. I threw in a swipe at Michelle for splurging on two pairs of fancy new boots as a last hurrah before subjecting herself, head to Chloé-clad toes, to Colin's draconian carbon-footprint binding.
Now, with the release of Colin's film, and the book of the same name, it's deja "ew!" all over again. Folks in the media are wasting precious space fixating on how Colin and his family handled their waste--the forgoing of toilet paper, the adoption of a bin of red wiggler worms to compost their kitchen scraps.
This time, though, I won't be piling on to the bash-Colin bandwagon. I realized, after hearing him speak at Cooper Union's Great Hall, that I had been wrong to mock him. I came away from the Cooper Union lecture convinced that Colin's Jimmy Stewart-style earnestness was genuine. I became a fan, a friend, and a defender.
So when No Impact Man co-director Justin Schein asked if I'd be willing to go on the record and explain my change of heart, I said yes. Because, with all the controversy over the effectiveness of Colin's methods, as well as his motives, two things stand out to me:
First, he's infiltrated the mainstream media in his 350.org t-shirt, encouraging folks to eat less meat, take a breather from buying, volunteer with environmental organizations, and lobby their legislators to tackle climate change.
As Colin wrote in response to Elizabeth Kolbert's dismissive review of his book in the New Yorker:
To that end, Colin's launched a non-profit foundation, noimpactproject.org, whose mission is "to empower citizens to make choices that better their lives and lower their environmental impact through lifestyle change, community action, and participation in environmental politics."
We can argue about how many people Colin will ultimately inspire to make meaningful changes in their lives, but what, exactly, is so terrible about his desire to inspire "massive citizen participation," his stated goal?
Lastly, what's wrong with wanting to make a living speaking and writing about environmental issues? Colin's never claimed to be an expert, simply a layperson who wanted to enlighten himself and others about how our choices affect ourselves, our communities, and the planet.
Isn't there an infinite array of far more objectionable, and harmful, ways to support your family? And there are surely easier ways to achieve financial security than putting yourself in the public eye as a potential figure of ridicule and contempt.
Colin doesn't claim that he's going to change the world, only that he wants to be the kind of person who's game to try. If you are, too, No Impact Man will strike a chord with you.
Otherwise, it may strike a nerve. We've had the Kolbert retort. Stay tuned for the Colbert Report on Thursday, October 8th, when Colin will once again subject his No Impact project to the master of mock mockery. When the No Impact project began, Colbert described it as "like Gilligan's Island, only completely implausible." I'm hoping that this time around, America's favorite faux blowhard will transcend truthiness and reveal that Colin is the real deal.
Cross-posted from Alternet.