Chris and I watched a documentary the other night which, I've gotta say, has inspired me immensely. It was called 'No Impact Man' and followed one New York family in their quest to live for one year making no impact on the earth. The couple and their baby girl went through various stages to their plan which included reducing (to almost none) their consumption and thereby their waste; eliminating non-human powered transportation, electricity and even toilet paper along the way.
Throughout the documentary, the filmmaker comes up against a surprising amount of negative criticism over his project, from environmentalists who accuse him of portraying a crazed hippy of some sort. Even the filmmakers wife received an alarmingly large amount of criticism from co-workers, concerned about her well being and the unsanitary conditions her family was living in!
The thing that was evident to me while watching the film, that perhaps wasn't quite so evident to critics as the year-long project was going on was that this was not a rule for life being portrayed, but simply a project. The filmmaker was just trying to take the idea to the extreme and see what happened. If anyone should understand this way of thinking, it's got to be me! Our family are no strangers to extreme thinking. I am married to a man who, for fun, runs 100+ miles, just because he can. Over the years of his addiction to ultra-marathoning, I've come to understand the idea that sometimes we can and should just push the envelope a little to go beyond comfort to see what is possible. My husband would never say that everyone can or should run 100 miles, but, if by running 100 miles, he can inspire someone who has never considered running to run 5 miles or even to simply walk more often, the experiment has been a success! Likewise, I don't think No Impact Man's intention was to have everyone give up electricity or toilet paper! It was simply an experiment in what IS possible that can serve as inspiration to the rest of us not-quite-so-extreme individuals.
So, I have indeed been inspired by No Impact Man and his family to continue trying to make a difference in this world, one tiny step at a time.
The end of the film shows No Impact Man at the end of the year long project, flicking on the power to his New York apartment and the resulting talks and visits to inspire young people and to talk about his experiment. The concept that struck me most was that this type of environmentalism has very little to do with global warming and the gloom and doom we hear about everyday and more to do with simply understanding that we are not alone in this world. The choices we make everyday affect more people than we can ever know and when we wake up to that fact and the switch is flicked in our minds, we realize that anything is possible when we stop being self-centred and start taking responsibility for our actions.
No Impact Man website.
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