Introductions

As far back as my memory serves I’ve considered myself an environmentalist. My affinity for the natural world has influenced my coursework, several major life decisions, casual reading lists, weekend itineraries, and steered my career path. I’ve made no secret about it and nobody would be surprised to hear me say I’m an environmentalist.

Last week, however, I was asked to introduce myself and the word environmentalist lay dormant in my mouth. And I wondered if it's a shoe that still fits? I'll occasionally have these crises of conscience having decided to work in the electric utility industry rather than as an activist.

I considered whether environmentalism isn’t more of an ideology and whether I drink from its camp kool-aid. Certainly I ascribe to a creed of ecosystem protection, moderating more fervent consumption of the world’s resources, seeing a person’s rightful place in the world a rather small (hopefully) insignificant part of a much larger system.

Occasionally, though, I sink with the pulpy conversation surrounding environmental issues. The way political rhetoric and lofty ideals rarely sully themselves with the details. The inherent value of the goal can't simplify the mechanics of how to get from here to there.

My stumbling over the word environmentalist came as I sat in a group of environmental professionals. You know, the people tasked with carbon management, complying with clean water standards, or raw material and waste process balancing acts. Nobody quoted Edward Abbey or boasted about their habit of recycling both glass and plastic at home.

Instead this was a group that calculates the emission control factors. Defines drinking water pollutants by congener. We agonize over the complicated benchmarks and metrics. The variables we occasionally can neither explain nor more fully understand.

The table conversation might have lent well to cynicism, actually, or making sport of belittling other perspectives. And, yet, it never did.

It was there that I realized I could still consider myself an environmentalist. In realizing I hadn't grown tired nor cynical in the face of unsimple, often frustrating, environmental issues. In another setting I'd use the term to describe myself. Environmentalist. In this one, it was a given.