Double Bagging My Groceries

I ask to have my groceries put in paper bag when I checkout. I then request that paper bag nestled into a plastic bag – I like the handles, and don’t want my food ever touching the sidewalk as result of ripped bag. (I barely can stomach the fact that my shoes have to come in contact with NYC sidewalks.) And at this everyone in the checkout, the cashier included, glares at me like I asked for my purchases to be stuffed in baby-carcasses, or said some negative word about Paul Krugman.

But I demur. Robert Oppenheimer was convinced that “It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so.” It seems to me that almost every problem that plaques us today is the result of the technological miracles of yesteryear.

So, I’m going to keep on getting paper-in-plastic at the checkout. If this damns the world to a global-warming induced hell, so be it. I cannot picture a scenario where anyone’s bagging preference is going help one damn thing in the in grand scheme of it all. The only consequences I see are the fermentation of upper-class guilt and petty animosity amongst neighbors. Anyhow, I’m going to listen to the man that invented the atomic bomb before the glowering yuppie pushing the designer stroller behind me in line.

If you really want to help the environment, don’t have kids. The carbon foot print of adding another person to a Western country is far and away the largest single carbon act you will ever commit.

My advice for every green enthusiast out there: have your tubes tied/ get a vasectomy. Of course, what is the point of saving the world if there is no one left to inherit it? Which gets back to Oppenheimer – the only chance that humanity has at a future is to stop trying to prevent the world from going to hell. As George Orwell reconmended, we all “should crawl into the whale.”

– Jeff

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