basilbias.com

I started writing this months ago but after getting my cavities[1] filled, my interest in finishing it diminished considerably. Even with a hyper-attentive and -concerned dentist wielding the drill, I was still kinda traumatized. But I’m over it by now, so here it is: my take on going to the green dentist.

I didn’t have particularly crooked teeth as an adolescent, but I had a particularly authoritarian orthodontist.[2] And yet, for all the time he spent barking out instructions to his many assistants[3] (who did all of the actual orthodontic work) he never took even a second to explain anything to me, the person whose mouth was most affected.[4] And so I became accustomed to dissociating from whatever unidentified discomfort was deemed necessary during each visit, and instead eavesdropped intently on the technical exchange going on above my head, trying to parse it for clues.

BARTing my way to the green dentist this morning, I was reading this:

“What Gately can get from what she says to Dr. Pressburger is that there’d been concern that Gately might have got a fragment of whatever projectile he got invaded with in, through, or near his lower-something Trachea, since there’d been trauma to his Something-with-six-syllables-that-started-with-Sterno, she said the radiology results were indefinite but suspicious, and somebody called Pendleton had wanted a 16 mm. siphuncular nebulizer dispensing 4 ml. of 20% Mucomyst q. 2 h. on the off-chance of hemorrage or mucoidal flux, like just in case. The parts of this Gately can follow he doesn’t care for one bit. He doesn’t want to know his body even fucking has something with six syllables in it.” (Infinite Jest p.921)[5]

Gately has been lying in the hospital with a terribly painful, infected gunshot wound for a long but unknown (to him and the reader) period of time by now, and only pieced together a few pages ago that the reason he couldn’t talk was that there was a tube down his throat. This fact was so obvious to his doctors, nurses, and even his visitors, that no one thought to mention it to him.

Despite the fact that my own experience with medical and dental professionals has been (thankfully) incredibly limited in comparison to Don Gately’s, I could totally relate. Whether or not you have an actual, physical tube down your throat[6] preventing you from talking, it always seems to feel like it in a medical setting. It’s not even that questions are discouraged- it’s simply taken for granted that you don’t need or want to know. Anything. It’s like your understanding is superfluous.

This inaccessibility that characterizes most doctor and dentist offices was why I was caught so off-guard when I walked in to the green dentist’s office this morning and was greeted by the dentist herself. She heard me come in and ran out from somewhere in the back especially to introduce herself and lead me to a tiny conference room to ‘get to know me.’ The tiny room’s diagonal feng shui chair arrangement and obligatory ’soothing’ fountain[7] and the direct, searching gaze the (gorgeous) dentist leveled at me as I tried to explain ‘who I was’ made it all a little awkward, but I appreciated the gesture anyway. Because even if she wasn’t as concerned and open as she purported to be, even if it was just a ploy to get more clients, I appreciated the effort. As David Foster Wallace might have said, even pretending that it was important to pretend to care made the experience less soul crushing than it might otherwise have been.

Next, the dentist introduced me to one of her coordinating, modishly-clad assistants[8] who embarked on a tour of the office’s green features. I was not getting special treatment for having mentioned I was interested in the environment. Nope, it was standard procedure to show each new patient around. Pretty much everything she showed me I had already read about on the website (water filtration system, recycled denim insulation, paperless office, high-efficiency autoclave, etc.) except the couch in the waiting room, which was actually from the dentist’s old living room, but, again, it was a nice gesture.

The second half of the visit felt more like a normal dentist, save for the constant[9] checking to see if I was comfortable, and the dreaded warm shoulder wrap, which only made me hot. I got to see the digital X-rays they took on the computer screen, but maybe all with-it dentists do that now (I hadn’t been to see one in three years.)[10] Oh, and they did offer me some sort of high tech goggles to watch a movie while they cleaned, or at least headphones to listen to what the dentist temptingly called “meditation music.” I think I disappointed them by refusing both.[11] Clearly, I am not quite their demographic.

So why am I not focusing on the green innovations I encountered at the only eco-friendly dentist in San Francisco?[12] Because, for the most part, they seemed so obvious. Cloth bibs, reusable tools, eco-friendly toothpaste, typing directly into the computer rather than filling out paper forms. Who wouldn’t think those were good ideas? Filter the ecosystem-destroying mercury from old fillings out of the water before it leaves the building? That’s crazy talk!

No, as great as all that was, what really struck me about the green dentist was that it wasn’t merely a dentist office with eco-friendly features. It was a re-envisioning of dentistry as we know it.

Just as feminism began as a quest for a single equal right for (white) women and came to embody a critique of entire societies and came up with whole new ways of doing everything, the green movement shouldn’t limit itself to carbon footprint size. Nor can it. To be truly effective, I think, we can’t just substitute green products for the toxic and wasteful ones we were using before and be done with it. There has to be a fundamental shift in the way we understand the world.

In Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, he discusses large-scale industrial organic farming. It turns out that, when you merely substitute organic inputs for chemical, it’s in some respects actually worse for the soil, because more disruptive tilling is needed for weed-control. Trying to farm with the existing industrial model to organic specifications is possible,[13] but not nearly as effective as adopting a true, all-encompassing organic outlook would be.

In the same way, a dentist’s office that regards its patients as human beings rather than so many sets of teeth and takes a holistic view of health is so much greener than an office that simply employs all the latest in green technology. Becoming green should and must entail a reevaluation of the way we do everything, not just a by-the numbers reduction of emissions and pollution, as vital as that may be. Because to keep the old industrial, reductionist view of how the world works entirely misses the point.

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[1] Which, I just discovered in Clive Ponting’s Green History of the World, were virtually unheard of until the 16^th century when sugar plantations were developed. Seriously, medieval peasants, the ancient Greeks, even hunter-gatherers (who it seems actually had a pretty cushy life) didn’t get cavities. No toothbrushes, no flossing, no dental professionals, no fluoridated water necessary.  It’s enough to make you want to cut out sugar altogether.

[2] But maybe that is the nature of people attracted to teeth-straightening as a profession.

[3] All of whom were female, incidentally, and all of whom wore such hideously patterned smocks that they just had to have been designed to go with the office’s blandly offensive decor.

[4] The one time I saw the inside of his conference room, he likened the spacers he was about to insert between my molars to having a piece of meat stuck in your teeth. This metaphor was, of course, entirely lost on me, and my mother and I glanced at each other and burst out laughing. Which, you could tell, totally flustered my sad, straight-laced ortho. Maybe that’s why he never took us into his conference room again…

[5] In retrospect, probably not the best choice of reading material to take my mind off of my appointment. But it sure beat the hell out of my statistics textbook.

[6] or plastic thing holding your mouth open, as my orthodontist was particularly fond of.

[7]At least I’m pretty sure there was a fountain. My imagination could be supplying extraneous details, but you get the idea…

[8] Did those chic black-and-white numbers of which each assistant wore a variation come from the same dental hygienist apparel universe from which my orthodontist’s poor assistants ordered their smocks?

[9] And by constant, I mean every couple of minutes. It bordered on annoying, but better to err on the side of overly-attentive than negligent.

[10] Hence the cavities. I do brush and floss, I swear!

[11] I was a little curious to check out their movie selection though. I could only imagine: Escape to Nature Vol. II: Underwater Peace? The World’s Most Beautiful Places? Power of Flowers: Dreaming Orchids?

[12] There is another one in Berkeley, but it seemed even more new age-y than this one. The website’s description of a complimentary foot massage during your cleaning combined with the vague threat that I was going to be forced to meditate at some point, made the extra effort of getting on BART seem well worth it.

[13] At least with the current, less-than-exacting USDA certification standards.

Canvas (and that weird material supposedly made out of recycled plastic bottles) is slowly taking over the check-out line. I haven’t seen anyone carrying an Evian bottle in ages. Handkerchiefs sticking out of hipster pockets aren’t (usually) just a fashion statement. But what hasn’t caught on yet is making do. Green accessories are great when they save resources. But, being more durable and thus generally more energy-intensive to produce than disposables, they only really save resources if you use them over and over. Like, for years.

Because if the landfills fill up with reusables, we’ve really screwed ourselves over.

Take for instance tote bags. As an article in the Utne Reader[1] pointed out, you can’t attend a conference, donate to a nonprofit or shop at Trader Joe’s without free ones being forced on you.[2] Of course, the ones you’d actually want to be seen with in public you have to pay for, with their ironic slogans and clever graphics, so you acquire those too. And then stuff all but the newest one in the back of the coat closet or the bag to take to Goodwill.[3]

I couldn’t find exact figures, but according to the tote bag article, if cost is any indicator, a canvas tote bag takes about 400 times more resources to produce than a plastic bag (100 billion of which are given away ‘for free’ every year in America.) That means you’d need to use your tote in place of a plastic bag more than 400 times to make up for the environmental cost of producing it.[4]

The same goes for metal water bottles. Even taking into account the energy used for shipping disposable plastic water bottles, a reusable metal bottle must be used for years before its resource-intense production has been effectively paid off.[5]

Making do, in our world of cheap, plentiful goods, seems pretty silly. It’s not as if we’re homesteaders and have no choice. If H&M is twenty minutes away, and new jeans are only $40, it seems dumb to spend the better part of a day revamping an old pair instead.

But price tags don’t reflect the true cost of the product they’re affixed to. [6] In his book A Green History of the World, Clive Ponting discusses the fundamental oversight of classical economics, the theory upon which much of our economy is based.

“The crucial defect [of the theory of a self-regulating market] is that the earth’s resources are treated as capital- a set of assets to be turned into a source of profit. Trees, wildlife, minerals, water and soil are treated as commodities to be sold or developed. More important, their price is simply the cost of extracting them and turning them into marketable commodities [...]Yet this view overlooks the basic truth that the resources of the earth are not just scarce, they are finite.” (155-6)

So while we’re all clamoring to buy more and more green products, let’s not lose sight of the reason they exist in the first place. Although it may be tempting to buy a new KleenKanteen when the first one gets dented, or to buy a sleeker-looking tote, resist the urge. Because I’m willing to bet the ones you have’ll do just fine.

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[1] Which I just now found published in its full version (with pictures of trendy totes) here.

[2] A giveaway is never free, for anyone involved. Not for the giver, certainly, or the environment, of course (though you don’t generally stop to think about it,) but not for the recipient either. Whether or not there are strings attached, the fact remains that you now possess this object that you didn’t really need. And now you have to use it, store it (perhaps in some of the 2.3 billion square feet of self storage facilities now available in the U.S.) or find a way to get rid of it with a clear conscience.

[3] For proof that corporate tote bag branding is an environmental issue, check out the bag bin at Goodwill. It is almost always overwhelmingly logo-bearing (former) freebies.

[4] Of course, the disposal of plastic bags is arguably even more of an environmental issue than their production…

[5] I saw a great little diagram showing the resource use of metal vs. plastic water bottles somewhere, and now I can’t find it for the life of me. I’ve wanted to cite it about ten times since I read it, and each time I try to search for it again, but with no luck…

[6] See The Story of Stuff for more on this.

The Bay area is famously bike-friendly. But a few ‘bicycle boulevards’ don’t change the reality of city biking.

It’s true, drivers around here can be very nice. If you wait to cross a busy street long enough, someone will usually stop and let you go, even though they are not legally required to. At stop signs, more often than not, drivers will wave you though even if they got there first.

But try taking up your rightful full lane[1] for a millisecond, and if the honking of the cars behind you[2] doesn’t knock you off your bike, the jerks crossing the double yellow line to whiz past you will.

Regardless of the number of bike-friendly features, cycling in a world built for cars is a power struggle. Just as, in a sexist society, men will hold the door for a lady,[3] drivers who stop to let a cyclist cross are, in a way, asserting their dominance. They have the power to stop traffic for you if they choose, just as they have the power to make you wait indefinitely (or run you over.)

If you think I’m reading too much into things, consider this: Last summer while I was biking home one day, a man in a red Miata almost hit me. It was clearly his fault. I was biking on the right side of the middle lane of the street, because the right lane was about to become a right-turn-only lane and I wanted to go straight. He was coming from the opposite direction, making a U-turn[4] around the median, and didn’t see me. He barely missed me. As he sped away, he shouted “Streets are for cars!”

And, although he was in the wrong, he had a point. Our roadways were not designed with bikes in mind. Where they even exist, bike lanes are an afterthought, sandwiched between parked cars and shared with buses[5] and turning vehicles. Cyclists literally have no place to call their own, while the modern American city’s very layout was dictated by the needs of the automobile. Add to this the machismo that is inherent in revving an engine, and it’s pretty inevitable that bicyclists are going to be treated as second-class citizens.

Which is why I don’t let assholes like the guy in the red sports car get to me anymore. In fact, cyclists should expect as much from all drivers, and bike accordingly. As Robert Hurst points out in his excellent book, The Art of Urban Cycling, road rage is a natural product of the anonymity the modern automobile provides. We have no reason to expect drivers to be civil, but there’s no need to take it personally. When they harass bicyclists, motorists are merely expressing misdirected rage at their own social isolation. More importantly, however, anyone who has ever observed city traffic knows that bad driving is the rule rather than the exception. So, instead of getting huffy after some distracted driver pulls out in front of them, a skilled cyclist anticipates irresponsible driving, and easily adjusts to accommodate it.

Urban biking is an exercise in humility. Dorky helmets and copious amounts of reflector tape aside, a nuanced view of the power dynamics inherent in biking on car-clogged streets is essential. Our status as underdogs may force us to be constantly on guard, but in many situations, it doubles as an advantage. Our small size which makes us so invisible also lets us squeeze through traffic jams unencumbered. The fact that bikes pose less of a threat than cars do (and that many traffic lights do not detect our presence) allows us to go through red lights in some circumstances.[6] And it’s becoming generally acceptable for bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs in order to conserve momentum.

In general, vehicles afford protection for their occupants in proportion to the danger they pose to everyone else. By nature of our vehicle choice, cyclists must take more responsibility for preserving our own skin than anyone else on the road has to. In an imperfect world, relying on regulations and everyone else’s good judgment can be problematic, if not downright dangerous. Especially if you are not the one in charge.

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[1] Contrary to popular belief, although bicycles are legally classified as vehicles, they are not equal to cars in all respects in the eyes of the law. Cyclists only have the right to take up a full lane when it is necessary for their own safety. Otherwise, they are supposed to ride to the right to allow faster traffic to pass them.

[2] Note to drivers: Car horns are designed to be heard from inside a car, through the glass and over the noise of the engine. Unless you are about to hit someone, there is absolutely no need to use this device within close range of a pedestrian or cyclist, particularly if they are following the law.

[3] I have debated this one with everyone from well-intentioned males to chivalrous butch lesbians to straight women who think it’s sweet, but I remain convinced: going out of one’s way to hold the door open for someone is not simply a nice gesture. I’m not saying door-holding should be banned, I’m just pointing out that it has implications, no matter what.

[4] Which, inexplicably, is perfectly legal in California by the way (making a U-turn that is, not failing to yield to a bike.)

[5] If you’ve ever shared a lane with bus, you understand why this is an awkward arrangement. In downtown districts, where there are a lot of stops, bikes and buses tend to cover about the same distance in the same period of time. This does not mean that they go the same speed though: while cyclists usually go a pretty constant speed, often even passing cars that are stuck in traffic, buses’ progress is stilted at best. Not only do they pull over at every bus stop, but they often have to wait to merge back into traffic. Then they speed up and stop short at the next stop. Thus, the bike and the bus are constantly maneuvering around each other, making for a very aggravating ride for everyone involved.

[6] After coming to a complete stop, and triple checking that there are no cars (or cops) anywhere, of course!

“It is not a lack of energy consumption that makes [us] unhappy.”

-Arne Naess

To ask an American to give something up is a delicate proposition. Our sense of entitlement runs deep, rooted as it is in our conception of freedom, and is constantly force-fed by commercial interests to whom unchecked economic expansion is the only viable existence. To be forced to consume less seems a violation of our individual rights; to choose to consume less, contrary to our de facto value system.

Obviously, there is a great divide between the (overt) values we are taught as children and the goals we grow up to embody. [1] We fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve already taken clichéd lessons like ‘love is more important than money’ to heart, but at the back of our minds the thought that we’d be happy if only we could afford that trip to Europe taunts us. Our materialistic goals survive because no one but the most crudely out of touch (like the former Enron execs) has the audacity to articulate them.

I once read about a study[2] that found that no matter their income level, Americans always seem to think that they could be happy with about twenty percent more money than they have. What does that say about our national character? Not only are we under the illusion that money buys happiness, but even when we do eventually move into a higher income bracket and find ourselves as unhappy as ever, our thinking doesn’t change: we still believe that just a little bit more would do the trick. We are an upwardly delusional nation.

It’s no wonder then that Americans generally ignore pleas to reign in spending and reduce carbon emissions. [3] Not only is the observable disconnect between our ideals and our actions encouraged by our consumerist culture, the pursuit of happiness (however misguided or superficial) is a fundamental right in this country, after all.

But I’m going to come out with a harsh moral statement anyway: we do not have the right to take anywhere near as much as we do. Our over-consumption is destroying the planet, and endangering all of the life forms (present and future, us included) that inhabit it. And our insatiable resource depletion is not even making us happy.

All of the focus recently on the energy crisis, and on the various technological innovations that will supposedly get us out of it, entirely misses the point. As Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, says “We can see that instead of an energy crisis, we have a crisis of consumption- we have more than enough energy. In countries like the United States, the crisis is rather one of lifestyle, of our traditions of thoughtlessness and confusion, of our inability to see what is and is not worthwhile in life.”

Really think for a minute about what makes you happy. I doubt any of the daily conveniences that we refer to as our “lifestyle” because we are so afraid to give them up (as if automobiles and clothes dryers could constitute a life) appears on your list. If they do, go get an oil change or clean out your lint filter or something. Because it’s high time we recognize that many aspects of our so-called lifestyle are not only harmful to our environment, but also to our own well-being and happiness. For instance, think how much more habitable and community-oriented (not to mention healthy) a town could be if it were designed not for cars, but for people. Although the prospect of living without the luxuries we’re accustomed to is scary at first, have we really thought this all the way through?

I really believe that if we dig a little bit deeper, beneath all our materialistic fantasies and preoccupations, we’ll find the wisdom and the desire to change.

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[1] Obviously, fairy tales and Disney movies are incredibly problematic and much more reflective of our culture than they purport to be. For instance, during the course of the story, they usually require the hero(ine) to learn that one must follow one’s heart, even if it means rebelling and/or risking poverty. However, in the end, that lesson is undermined by the fact that the hero(ine)’s heart-following almost invariably leads to great riches, which pleases the authority figures the hero(ine) was rebelling against in the first place.

[2] I can’t find the original article, but here’s one my mom found supporting my point. It states

Over the life cyle [...] as income increases and levels off, happiness remains unchanged, contradicting the inference that income and well-being go together [...] Material aspirations increase commensurately with income, and, as a result, one gets no nearer to or farther away from the attainment of one’s material goals, and well-being is unchanged.

Thanks Mom!

[3]Americans are the greatest consumers of energy per capita in the world, but inhabitants of other industrialized nations also consume way more than their fair share.

Here it is, my proposal for post-guilt environmental rhetoric: the hard-line inspirational environmental challenge. The script would go something like this:

We are the dominant species on the planet. We are so powerful that we are altering our planet’s chemical composition without even trying. In just fifty years, we went from being excited about the invention of white out[1] to being unimpressed by the ability to publish novels instantaneously from our cell phones. Our behavior evolves more rapidly than that of any other life form on Earth. Our intelligence can be shortsighted because it is so quick that we often make major decisions before all the data is in. But now that the data on climate change is indisputable, it is ridiculous to think that we are not capable of engineering a way out.

So take your apathy and shove it, because this is no time for playing the victim card. There have been doomsayers in every generation, but we are still here. Yes, Al Gore’s graph is scary.[2] But it just goes to show the sheer speed with which humans can change. Let’s get off our asses and postpone the apocalypse one more time!

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[1] Some related but useless trivia: the inventor’s son was a member of the Monkees.

[2] Here is the only image of the graph I could find, oddly enough. (I thought it was a pretty dramatic moment in the movie, but I guess no one else was impressed enough to put it online.) Ignore the scientific-sounding critique of Gore’s interpretation of the graph that accompanies it. Instead, see ‘Climate Myths, Half-truths and Misconceptions’ in The Hot Topic by Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King for a clear explanation of the correlation of CO2 levels in ice-core samples and global temperature.

In the introduction to his book, Heat, George Monbiot jokes that if his book doesn’t serve its intended purpose of energizing people to fight global warming, then at the very least he hopes “that [he] might make people so depressed about the state of the planet that they stay in bed all day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, not bothering to get out of bed often seems like the logical conclusion of the guilt-tripping that is presented to us as environmental education. Implicit in messages such as ‘conserve water,’ ’save energy,’ ’stop driving,’ and ‘buy nothing,’ is ’stop living: you’re wasting precious resources.’ Progress is not being made by harping on the idea that we should confess and repent our every carbon-releasing action.

As Catholics well know (or should have figured out by now), guilt doesn’t work so well in preventing sin. You don’t feel guilty before you do something. You may feel a little twinge as you contemplate doing it, or when you realize, yeah, you are gonna go through with it anyway. You may feel a pang or two in the pit of your stomach as you’re doing it if you’re sensitive (and if whatever you’re doing isn’t as enjoyable as you thought it would be.) The full-on confrontation with your guilty conscience, however, doesn’t occur until after it’s much too late to do anything but confess your sins (if you believe god is the ultimate judge) or deal with the consequences (if you live in the real world.)

I would liken the effectiveness of guilt to the effectiveness of a newt’s poison. A newt has no teeth, and no claws. It is completely defenseless, except for the fact that it is poisonous when ingested. But causing its predator stomach pains[1] after it’s been eaten doesn’t do much for the poor newt. If its predator learns its lesson and never eats a newt again, other newts will have been spared. But the one who was eaten is still dead. Likewise, the experience of guilt after you’ve done something you knew was wrong can be instrumental in modifying your future behavior. The only problem with employing guilt in environmental rhetoric then, is that, in the case of global warming, we have only one newt. By the time the full weight of remorse settles on the collective shoulders of the human race, by the time we’re actually feeling the consequences, the planet will be too far gone for any behavior modification to do much good at all.

Emphasizing our culpability in raising the global temperature served its purpose when we were still neck-to-neck with nut jobs claiming it was due to natural causes. But no one at all credible is denying that humans are responsible for climate change now. So we’ve got to stop twisting the knife, and move on to the next tactic.[2] No more comparing American babies’ resource consumption to that of any other nationality of baby. No more referring to the projected increase in global population in any time period as another China or India, or putting the size of another fallen arctic ice shelf in terms of the size of any US state.[3] We are (mostly) all painfully aware of these statistics; they’ve lost their shock value. Now they’re just depressing, and they’re driving us to bed.

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[1] Actually, at least one type of newt produces enough toxins to kill an adult human if swallowed, but for the sake of the metaphor, let’s just say the predator doesn’t die.

[2] My ideas on the next tactic coming soon! I promise to always follow up any ranting or criticizing with constructive ideas for solutions (unless I was talking about Dick Cheney.)

[3] Though, I have to admit I kinda love the awful jolt of reading statistics like this for the first time. Figures, in their conciseness, pack a uniquely powerful punch, even when you’re certain there’s more to it than they let on (and of course there always is…)