Green Manolo

Obligation. It’s a tough word to think about when the subject at hand is keeping the Earth healthy. How much responsibility does each of us have to protect our own environments and, with so much these days being interconnected, the environments of others? For example, a lot of people find it easy to compost their own food waste and use natural fertilizers in their own gardens, but difficult to take the health and welfare of workers and the soil halfway around the globe into consideration when buying something like coffee or bananas. And of course it’s easier – the results of composting are visible right in the trash bin, while the results of choosing responsibly grown and manufactured products isn’t. Not to mention the fact that sussing out the greenest options can be a lot of work!

So the question I want you to ponder today is whether we have a moral obligation to go green.

My view? It would be great if everyone everywhere lived super green lives, but I’m happy just to see people taking baby steps toward a more environmentally conscious existence. I have a difficult time saying outright that it’s our moral duty to save the Earth, if only because my moral code isn’t your moral code isn’t his or her moral code. That said, our world does have a fixed amount of natural resources that we all have to share, and I don’t like the notion of my choices and actions making other people’s lives worse. My guess is that you don’t like it much, either. But does that mean we’re morally obligated to go green? It’s pretty hard to say…