Sloth is the New Black
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07.16.08
Images from Green Patriot Posters
It is now fashionable to have "staycations"- to reduce your carbon footprint by lolling about at home rather than travelling , or buy less; use it up, wear it out, make it do. All of which uses up a lot less personal energy as well as fossil fuels. Laziness, languor, sloth are all the new green.
Author Susan Slaight describes how her lazy family has a small carbon footprint: "That's because I'm way too lazy to renovate," I said.
"We are incredible slackers," my eldest agreed. "Wait," she added. "It's not that we're lazy, we're like the Marches, in 'Little Women.' We think this is OK, to not care. We think this is a good thing."
"I guess," I said, stirring. "I guess we're kind of transcendentalist." Our eldest daughter is right. We practice a sort of a weird Southern California transcendentalism that doesn't fit in at all with American upward mobility, increasing our equity or impressing our friends. ::LA Times via ::Green Daily
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Well, I'd say, THRIFT is the new black. But it's old hat for me and my family. Still, I wish I had a nickel for every person I've met with a closet full of fairly new clothes, and 'nothing to wear'.
Thanks for another good post, Lloyd!
I'd agree, Thrift, not sloth is the word you're looking to use here.
No. Sloth and thrift are both correct.
Thrift implies doing the same with less MONEY (i.e. driving instead of flying to a vacation). Sloth implies MINIMAL EFFORT (i.e. lying on the couch reading and napping for your vacation). Being thrifty is usually more effort than being free-spending.
I'm too lazy to look for the right word...
Can't we just use the word sabbatical instead of staycation? It sounds much less stupid.
I guess. This year I went on vacation by going to the beach 30 km away. By bike or public transit.
There's plenty of other local vacation ideas available if you just look. Just like you can have a 200 mile diet, you can have a 200 mile vacation too. Check out your local tourist beureau.
I really like bike vacations. I admit that for most people riding a bicycle for hundreds of kilometres isn't their idea of fun but you spend just enough time in each bit of scenery to really take it in and the sense of adventure is much greater than most of the other ways of getting where you want to go.
Most of my sabbaticals, however, I spend at home.
Sloth is laziness to an immoral degree. Not filling the atmosphere with poison so as to move ones slothful ass to another location is what being "green" is really about. Why do I have to write this on the Treehugger site anyway? It's common sense.
Man, I wish I could lay around and read for my vacation. I've been out of work for the past month and I've barely made it halfway through my honey-do list.