being green is not easy

It's not easy being obsessively green | Environment | News.com.au

It's not easy being obsessively green

By Stephen Lunn

The Australian

October 27, 2008 12:00am

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o What are these?

* Do 4WDs make you pound your steering wheel
* Do plasma TVs make you break out in cold sweats?
* Maybe you are carborexic...?

YOU know them. Those who go to such enormous and inconvenient lengths to reduce their carbon footprint they make you feel like a global vandal just for eating a Bowen mango or a piece of snapper because it wasn't grown or caught within a 30km radius of your home.

Or drive rather than take your city's crappy public transport, no matter how far the journey.

Could it be the problem lies with them, not you? That your embarrassment about feeling like a human Hummer might instead be their obsession?

US (where else?) psychologists warn that some people may have taken their greenness to a such an extreme it raises serious concern about their mental health. Americans, or at least some smarty-pants at The New York Times, have dubbed the problem "carborexia", The Australian reported.

A carborexic is someone who has become irrationally compulsive in their efforts to reduce their impact on the planet, and who becomes stressed when dealing with those whose sensibilities are not so finely attuned.
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Your Say

What a stupid article. If you're not labelled a hippy for trying to be environmentally friendly it seems that people will make up words to justify their own selfish behaviour an...

(Read More)
shane of bris
Enlarge Interactive: Our snapshot of the state of the planet

Are you a carborexic? Let us know using the form below.

Walking into a friend's house, they may start to sweat on seeing the 4WD in the garage and the plasma TV on the wall.

They will bite their fingernails on noticing appliances not switched off when not in use. And they will finally crack when they hear someone flushing the toilet unnecessarily. Yes -- apparently there are such occasions.

Quickly muttering their goodbyes, they walk 5km home carrying in a mesh carrybag the pockmarked organic vegetables they had planned to eat raw at your house.

In the US, one Seattle family told The New York Times they scrub out and reuse the plastic bags in which their children take their school lunches, and the used nappy bag their toddler brings home from childcare. (How much water is required for this is not mentioned.)

This all seemed fine in people's own homes, but if it started to affect how they interacted with others then there was a problem, said Elizabeth Carll, a New York psychologist who specialises in obsessive compulsive behaviour.

"If you can't have something in your house that isn't green or organic, if you can't eat at a relative's house because they don't serve organic food, if you're criticising friends because they're not living up to your standards of green, that's a problem," she said.

Read more at The Australian.