Galling shades of green
Of course one wants to lead a righteous life. If not for the sake of one's children, then for the sake of being lionized in newspapers and magazines.
Last Friday, the Chicago Tribune high-profiled a couple, David Mattern and Pam Wilder, who have more or less succeeded in renovating their kitchen with the right stuff -- sustainable materials, low-solvent paints, and wool carpets that don't use toxic glues. Just the day before, The New York Times lauded the ``trendsetting Manhattan department store" ABC Carpet and Home, which sells jewelry made by Ugandan women afflicted with AIDS, ``indigenous furniture," and gift certificates that help support Masai girls who refuse to undergo genital mutilation.
And you were thinking of shopping at
Imagine the stigma of discovering that your meticulously selected West African sapele floor tiles are on the Rainforest Action Network's ``do not buy" list! Or even walking on a rug that hasn't been certified child-labor-free by the Washington-based Rugmark Foundation. That would be like drinking ``un-fair" trade, non-shade-grown coffee! I never touch the stuff!
To deepen my self-loathing, I took Redefining Progress's brief Ecological Footprint Quiz at the website myfootprint.org. I learned that it takes 27 ``biologically productive" acres to sustain my immodest lifestyle, compared with the US average of 24 acres. ``If everyone lived like you," the website tells me, ``we would need 6.1 planets." Finally I understand the need for the space program.
Dwell magazine (``At Home in the Modern World") recently offered up some examples of ``Living Green" that we can doubtless all learn from. I was most taken by a gorgeous feature on the new home of Jordan and Julie Harris, who live outside of San Francisco. Mr. Harris is the entrepreneur who dreamed up the Green Car to the Red Carpet campaign, which seeks to guilt-trip famous actors into showing up at the Oscars in hybrid cars -- before they switch back to their Lincoln Navigators a few hundred yards down Sunset Boulevard, that is. ``That's a bit unfair," Harris said of my characterization.
The Harrises' home, an extensive renovation of a pre-existing structure, is Green Gone Wild. Ninety-five percent of the timber was either salvaged or sustainably harvested; the dining table was fashioned from a ``wind-fallen elm" (one imagines the mantra ``No saws or axes were used in the making of this home"); the builders used low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint, no-PVC blinds, photovoltaic cells, solar shades, etc., etc., etc.
My favorite touch: Old carpet found in the pre-existing boathouse was re purposed ``to line Bedouin-style tents at the 2004 Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert." My second-favorite touch: ``In the master bathroom, all boundaries between inside and outside and public and private are virtually eliminated."
So how much does all this cost? The magazine doesn't say. ``I never really calculated the premium for going green, because we didn't think of doing the house any other way," Harris said. ``We probably spent close to a million dollars."
I asked Dwell owner Lara Hedberg Deam, whose husband, Christopher, designed the Harris home, whether ``green" was synonymous with ``rich" in the world of architecture and design. (Harris uses the term ``green ghetto" to describe the insular world of those who can afford to live green.) ``Currently green technologies do cost more upfront but many of the solutions can save money over the long haul," she said in an e-mail. ``We hope that by showcasing green design, the solutions and products will gain demand and eventually drive the price down."
I was miffed that among Dwell's ``Being Green" recommendations, Ms. Deam had included ``Forgo the newspaper subscription and read your daily news online." Those subscriptions keep shoes on my kids' feet, Ms. Deam. And it's not like the glossy, beautiful Dwell isn't making money off of dead trees, is it? ``You have a point," she wrote, adding that Dwell will soon be archiving past issues online.
All this to prove that the line between righteous living and self-righteousness can sometimes be very narrow indeed.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
