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A few weeks ago, my husband Michael forwarded me the NY Times article, "Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes"
As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent to which they should change their lives to save the planet.
In households across the country, green lines are being drawn between those who insist on wild salmon and those who buy farmed, those who calculate their carbon footprint and those who remain indifferent to greenhouse gases.
Wondering if Michael was trying to tell me something by forwarding that article, I cornered him one Sunday afternoon while he was minding his own business and quizzed him on his feelings about my plastic-free ways and whether or not he felt I judged him. Here are just a few snippets of our half-hour conversation.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhmzgpYCV9w
[This video uses YouTube's new Closed Captioning feature.]
Michael’s an awesome guy. And it turns out, we really don’t have many disputes in the green arena, just different areas of concern and opinions on how to tackle green issues. But I wondered about other couples. So I questioned a few green blogger friends and even a few of their partners. But first, I wanted to follow up with one of the interviewees in the actual Times article because, as it turns out, she lives not far from me in Marin County.
Chrise de Tournay is the founder of the EcoMom Alliance and was more than happy to add to her comments published in the NY Times. She said that while her husband is out in the world working to make big changes to address pollution from the maritime industry, he feels that the small changes she is making in their home, like insisting that containers be recycled properly or setting up a gray water system, are unimportant on a large scale and that he really doesn’t want to bother.
But for Chrise, these changes do make a difference. As a full-time mom, there are a few things she can do on a public level: support environmental legislation, write letters to the editor, vote with her purse. But it’s in the home where she has the most influence, and she’d like her husband to back her up on green measures that affect their family. Chrise says,
If I weren’t running a home, I might be out doing huge environmental policy work, but we have to start where we are. These small changes add up. I’m a mom. And I want my home to be a teaching home for our children….
What he sees as little, I see as doable. I like to feel I have some power.
She also wonders if asking her family to recycle or to turn off lights and faucets is any different from asking them to pick up their shoes and socks. In a home, there will be power struggles whenever one partner asks the other partner to change.
From my experience, making green changes myself doesn’t lead to arguments. It’s when I ask someone else to change that power struggles ensue. This seems to be the case in other homes as well. When I put out the question on Facebook, I got a terrific reply from my Facebook friend Jesse, who told me that to get her partner to adopt new practices, she tries to make them fun, and he “gets swept away” by her enthusiasm. Jesse decided to interview her partner and emailed me his responses.
He says she makes it easy to want to make green changes because she “wasn’t a downer.”
She wasn't like: "Oh I used 4 kilowatts of energy today! I'm such a bad person! It's the 11th hour!” She made it fun, like "Guess what! I found a used table at the thrift store, so we don't have to buy a new one! And I want to try tilapia, I hear it is better for the environment." It's nice. When she says it like that I am happy to try tilapia.
He also says that Jesse’s learning about environmental issues has been gradual, and he’s been involved in the process all the way. And he goes on to say:
I do the green living stuff because it is important to her, because I want to make her happy. But even when I am away from her I try to be more green because it is
