Published by Joe Gillach under Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Renewable Energy, Sustainability

This is a story about disappointment and, yes, envy.  About what happens when green idealism crashes into the limitations of a movement that is still groping its way forward, leaving many people like me perplexed and terrified in equal measure.

“Your home is not suitable for a solar energy system,” the email read, or something to the effect.  I was so shocked I didn’t even bother rereading it.  Our local community solar collective didn’t want my house and, by irrational extension, me.

After two years of steeling myself for the anticipated cost, I had finally taken the leap and contacted a much-vaunted solar provider, filling out their online template with my address and a request for a free solar assessment.

Naively, I expected a grateful phone call followed by a personal visit from a wizened solar veteran.  Instead I received a canned email telling me that a satellite image assessment of my home determined that the positioning of my roof made it a poor candidate for a solar energy system, offering me, as an alternative, a free weather-proofing assessment.

A reasonable person—and under most circumstances I count myself to be such a one—would have shrugged it off and gotten a second opinion.  Instead I brooded, cast envious glances at my neighbors’ solar panels, and wondered to myself, “now what?”

Our family recycles and composts, long ago installed energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances, lives with the challenges of low-flow toilets and showers, buys local, and eats organic. Our thermostat is set at 64 during the day, 54 at night, a deterrent for all but the most hearty of guests. We even bought a Prius, which I confess I would love even if it didn’t get 49 mpg.  But instead of feeling virtuous, I often feel fearful and impotent in the face of the endless stories about the intractable ecological peril that awaits our children.

In retrospect, I realized I had hoped that conquering my last two major personal green hurdles—solar panels and a gray-water system (stay tuned for next week’s blog)—would help me feel I had done all I could reasonably do as one person.  Now neither option appears to make sense, even sidestepping the substantial question of a reasonable economic payback.

In talking to friends about my frustrations, I have heard similar stories.  Most people I know have taken the obvious and easy steps toward environmental sustainability but are stymied about what to do next.  We admire how Barbara Kingsolver wrote in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about her family’s resolve to move to the country and eat nothing but what they grew or raised.

Yet most of us are tethered to our urban and suburban communities. We occasionally express the puritanical Frugalites’ commitment to buy nothing new for a year, but find such an all-or-nothing approach defeating.

What I realized is that many of us hunger for mainstream environmental leaders who are as practical as they are inspiring. I had hoped that one such leader was Al Gore, but I’m not sure where he has gone lately. I want to do more, but I need help determining what that should be.

So while I await emerging leaders, I find myself groping to make what difference I can, and, yes, at times coping with the odd feeling of green envy.

Post Script: Yesterday I decided to go ahead and get a second opinion on a solar-energy system for our home.  Wish me luck. And let me know if you have any ideas.