Gordon Fleming is, by his own account, an environmentally sensitive guy.
He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.
Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.Remember that old saw re the folks one should make it a point to avoid--"Never eat at a place called Mom's; never play cards with a guy named Doc; and never go to bed with someone who has more problems than you do"? I'd add the line: "never dine out with a Green chick in her 'high priestess phase' who quizzes waiters about the sustainability of whatever's in your sushi." Or, in an even greater reductio of the absurdum, never dine out with a Green chick in her 'high priestess phase'.
Ms. Cobb chides him for running the water too long while he shaves or showers. And she finds it “depressing,” she tells him, that he continues to buy a steady stream of items online when her aim is for them to lead a less materialistic life.
Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly.
But he refuses to go out to eat sushi with her anymore, he said, because he cannot stand to hear her quiz the waiters.
“None of it is sustainable or local,” he said, “and I am not eating cod or rockfish.”
As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent to which they should change their lives to save the planet.
In households across the country, green lines are being drawn between those who insist on wild salmon and those who buy farmed, those who calculate their carbon footprint and those who remain indifferent to greenhouse gases...
Words to live by, my friends.
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