Photo courtesy of Emily Lodish

When my friend Nick gets off the subway, he looks toward the end of the platform and stops in his tracks. There are not one, but two ways out from beneath the streets of Boston and into the light of day: an escalator and a staircase. It is now up to him to decide what to do. Which one will he choose? It’s every man for himself these days.

Rather than basing this decision on things like whether he’s in a rush or whether he’s wearing the boy equivalent of heels, Nick thinks only of the environment. His thinking process, as he recently described it to me, goes a little something like this:

The escalator is using electricity. Nick tries not to use electricity unless it’s absolutely necessary, so he considers taking the stairs. But if he takes the stairs, he will burn more calories. He will then need to eat more food to replenish his body with fuel, which will in turn impact the environment based on how much food he eats and where it came from.

Besides, the escalator is already running. So whether or not Nick gets on the escalator will have no impact on how much electricity the escalator uses. Unless the escalator uses more electricity depending on how much weight it bears. And there is no way to find out whether this is the case without getting above ground in the first place.

Then there is the issue of how many calories your brain uses just thinking about it all, and soon Nick decides he has wasted enough time. He vows not to waver any longer. Just as he is about to stride confidently toward the stairs, telling himself it’s a lifestyle change, he sees out of the corner of his eye a pregnant lady with a baby carriage punching the button for the elevator, which is going up anyway and would mean burning almost zero calories…

My friend Nick is not insane. He may be a little overly zealous, but more than that he is simply committed to living as green a lifestyle as he can. Which to him means critically engaging with all the tiny decisions we commonly take for granted.

If this is what it means to be green, I’m not sure I have it in me. I’m not sure I’d get anything done. I just changed my clothes five times before settling on what to wear, and I wasn’t even planning to leave the apartment. I literally don’t think I can afford to paralyze my thought process any further.

Of course it makes me feel better to do something small to benefit the environment. But I would be lying if I said I organize my day around such decisions. I ride my bicycle to work nearly every day. But yesterday it was raining and I drove my car.

Another friend of mine, Zack, was just visiting and says he thinks the only hope is a complete overhaul of the way we live and the systems that govern our lives, like re-localizing food production and leaving fossil fuels in the ground. Anything short of that will have little to no impact. But Zack still carries around orange peels and crumpled up napkins in his bag all day long so he can compost them when he gets home.

We all do our own moral balancing act. I read about a study recently in which researchers found that people are more likely to cheat and steal after they purchase eco-friendly goods than they are after they purchase regular goods. The idea is that once people do something green, they get a “moral glow,” so to speak, that makes them then feel entitled to do something naughty. People who buy environmentally friendly light bulbs, for instance, are more likely to leave their lights on longer. They’ve already done their part; the rest is gravy.

A version of this may be what’s ailing my friend Dave, who is in his 40s and said he never thinks about being green. He doesn’t need to, he said, because he doesn’t have any kids.

“The fact that I have no children puts me so far ahead of the game that I figure I can coast. I am more green than the most Birkenstock-est commune-dwelling vegan, if that vegan has had one baby.”

“What if you had a baby and that baby grows up to solve climate change?” I asked.

“That’s unlikely to happen.”

“But it could.”

“And Jesus could do my laundry today,” he said. “But I'm not expecting it.”

I don’t know what I think. I don’t think Jesus will do Dave’s laundry. But then again there is a large cloud of volcanic ash settling over northern Europe. So maybe Jesus is busy.

ODDS FACT: The odds an adult describes him or herself as “green” are 1 in 7.69.

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