{"id":776,"date":"2009-08-28T23:44:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T23:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/08\/no-impact-man.html"},"modified":"2009-08-28T23:44:16","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T23:44:16","slug":"no-impact-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/08\/no-impact-man.html","title":{"rendered":"No Impact Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month, I reviewed Colin Beavan’s book “No Impact Man: The Adventures Of A Guilty Liberal Who Attempts To Save The Planet And The Discoveries He Makes About Himself And His Way Of Life In The Process” for The Brooklyn Rail<\/a> (I can’t actually link to my review because it’s not yet published).  Mr. Beavan is certainly heading for his fifteen minutes of fame.  There is the book<\/a>, the documentary<\/a>, and the copious media attention.  He’s been written up in the New York Times<\/a>.  He’s been interviewed by Diane Sawyer and Stephen Colbert.<\/a>  He’s showed up in many blogs<\/a>.  And the book was reviewed this week in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert.<\/a>  <\/p>\n

Kolbert, a seasoned environmental reporter (her 2006 three-part series “The Climate of Man” was terrific), sharply criticizes Beavan’s project, calling it a “stunt” and “shtick.”  She compares Beavan’s book, along with Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon’s “Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet”<\/a> and Vanessa Farquharson’s “Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 266 Days,”<\/a> to Thoreau’s “Walden.”  She claims that all of these books, Thoreau’s included, are mere stunts.  Her thesis–that these stunts don’t much help–demands that she devalue Thoreau’s work, a claim I can’t quite buy.  I’ve taught “Walden” to high school kids for years, and I’ve watched how the book inspires kids to wrestle with the ideas of the importance of communion with nature, anti-materialism, self-reliance, and personal conscience.  Kolbert is not convincing me that Beavan’s project is unhelpful because of its resemblance to Thoreau’s famous ascetic experiment.  <\/p>\n

Moreover, Kolbert fails to acknowledge Beavan’s own response to her well-anticipated criticisms.  She criticizes Beavan for not paying attention to the truly important political aspects of the climate crisis.  At the end of her review, Kolbert urges Beavn to write a sequel (cleverly coined by Kolbert “Impact Man”) in which he lobby’s his state lawmakers for better mass transit and devotes his blog to pushing for a carbon tax.  But Beavan recognizes this problem, namely, the seeming disparity between individual lifestyle changes and collective political action.  Beavan struggles with the fact that his book will only make people feel guilty about eating a piece of pizza off a paper plate, while big business gets away with murder (i.e. carbon emissions) and the government does nothing.  Beavan nods to this problem while steadfastly working toward his goal of greater eco-awareness on the indivudual level.  Moreover, at the end of his story, Beavan gives in and he does<\/i> go visit his local Congressman.    <\/p>\n

So where’s the dharmic link?  <\/p>\n


\nWell, Beavan is clearly a practitioner.  In his book, he often quotes Zen
\nmasters and Pema Chodron while relentlessly employing the language of
\nmindfulness.  He is out to change our hearts and minds and behavioral
\npatterns.  His approach does seem to me like the Buddhist approach.  But is
\nthat just a facile and worthless categorization?  Or is there something
\nto the notion that Buddhism works well on the level of individual hearts and minds but
\nlacks a certain expertise with effecting change on larger, more
\npolitical structures?  <\/p>\n

Moreover, in non-dual Buddhist fashion, Beavan works hard trying to dissolve the
\napparent dichotomy between indivual conversion and political action. 
\nKolbert, on the other hand, intensifies this false dichotomy by
\ncritiquing Beavan and his fellow eco-stunters, emphasizing instead
\nthe necessity for concerted political activism.  In the end, Beavan writes
\n“Collective action is nothing more than the aggregation of individual
\nactions.”  He has faith in grassroots.<\/p>\n

It’s a question of what one can do.  It’s also the problem of false
\ndichotomies.  What would a Beavan blog devoted to a carbon tax even
\nlook like?  We already have Bill McKibbon’s 350.org<\/a>. 
\nIs 350 really all that matters at this point?  Or should we as
\nindividuals also forego plastic bags?  Where is the fine line here?  I
\nmyself have forsworn plastic bags, and now I’m also trying to cut out
\nall plastic water bottles (meaning, no more XXX pomegranate Vitamin
\nWater).  In a way, Kolbert’s perspective makes these personal efforts of mine
\nseem lame and “middle-class”, even shticky.  So I go sign up at 350.org.  But then what?  Does that mean I can just go back to plastic bags?  What’s a
\nguy like me who just wants to save the earth do?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month, I reviewed Colin Beavan’s book “No Impact Man: The Adventures Of A Guilty Liberal Who Attempts To Save The Planet And The Discoveries He Makes About Himself And His Way Of Life In The Process” for The Brooklyn Rail (I can’t actually link to my review because it’s not yet published).  Mr. Beavan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interdependent-activism-politics","category-right-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Impact Man - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/08\/no-impact-man.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Impact Man - 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He believes enlightenment is real.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/pgriffin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}