NY Times: Green eating/lifestyle disputes increase

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Excerpt from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/science/earth/18family.html

January 18, 2010

Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

" As the focus on climate increases in the public's mind, it can't help but be a

part of people's planning about the future, " said Thomas Joseph Doherty, a

clinical psychologist in Portland, Ore., who has a practice that focuses on

environmental issues. " It touches every part of how they live: what they eat,

whether they want to fly, what kind of vacation they want. "

While no study has documented how frequent these clashes have become, therapists

agree that the green issue can quickly become poisonous because it is so morally

charged. Friends or family members who are not devoted to the environmental

cause can become irritated by life choices they view as ostentatiously

self-denying or politically correct.

Those with a heightened focus on environmental issues, on the other hand, can

find it hard to refrain from commenting on things that they view as harmful to

Earth — driving an oversize S.U.V., for example.

 

Cherl Petso, an editor of an online magazine who lives in Seattle, says trips to

visit her parents in Idaho can be " tense at times, " in part because she and her

mother interpret each other's choices as judgmental.

If Ms. Petso prepares a vegan meal for the family, her parents prepare hot dogs

to go alongside. Her parents serve on throwaway Styrofoam plates; she grabs a

plate that can be cleaned and reused. Her mother, who says she prefers the way

food tastes when it is served on Styrofoam, notes that washing dishes has its

own environmental costs.

Linda Buzzell, a family and marriage therapist for 30 years who lives in Santa

Barbara and is a co-editor of " Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, "

cautions that the repercussions of environmental differences can be especially

severe for couples.

" The danger arises when one partner undergoes an environmental `waking up'

process way before the other, leaving a new values gap between them, " Ms.

Buzzell said.

Changing the family diet because of environmental concerns can be particularly

loaded, Ms. Buzzell added. She warns wives and mothers not to move a family

toward vegetarianism before everyone is ready.

" Food is such an emotional issue, " she said.

 

Ms. Buzzell suggests that couples can overcome such differences if they treat

each other gently. She advises partners who have a newfound passion for the

issue to change only a few things at a time and provide lots of explanation.

" It is like exercise, " Ms. Buzzell said. " Take it slowly. "

Still, Robert Brulle, a professor of environment and sociology at Drexel

University in Philadelphia, said he had seen divorces among couples who realized

that their values were putting them on very different long-term trajectories.

" One still wants to live the American dream with all that means, and the other

wants to give up on big materialistic consumption, " Dr. Brulle said. " Those may

not be compatible. "