Inspired or Overwhelmed?

Lately I have been reading so many environmental blogs that I just can't keep up with what I should and shouldn't be doing. On the one hand, we've managed to reduce quite a lot of things around our house (water use, electricity use, natural gas consumption, household waste,) but we're really quite poor at other things, like using diesel and gas to get ourselves around. And there's a few things we are just starting to do, like using our own reusable bags for groceries, and things we've been doing for a fair while, like composting and recycling. But the more I read, the more I realize how far short we are of what is really sustainable.

For instance, the people at Causobon's Book and Simple Living point out the necessity of reducing our carbon emissions by 90% of that of an average North American. And they are doing as much as they can to meet that target. And here I am thinking, somewhat self-righteously, that Gord and I are doing so many good things for the environment when we are not even in-the-ballpark close!

Just now I threw away the detritus of my fast-food supper - a cardboard-box pasta entree and a juice box. I could bring the juice box home to recycle, but I didn't. I could make something else to bring for supper that doesn't come in throw-away packaging, but I didn't.

And then I read at the Little Blog in the Big Woods, that all the climate change info we're being told about now is a conservative, really conservative, estimate of how bad things are going to get and how quickly we're going to get there. How did it come to this for humanity? How have we screwed things up in such a huge way for so long that the luxury for so few comes at the price of slavery and oppression for so many? And how do I accept that I'm one of the privileged few and that it is my responsibility to stop consuming so rampantly, even though it's what I've been used to my whole life.

Time to read some more of the Tao Te Ching, I think.