wall-e world

If you are like me and use up 38 percent of your brain space thinking about How To Be Good (not to be confused with using 38 percent or more of your time actually being good), then perhaps you will understand the dilemma I faced Sunday.

AK and I wanted to go to church at 11:15 a.m. We also wanted to volunteer for Equality for All at 4:30 p.m., at an event that would conveniently be taking place at our church in Pasadena. Rather than drive home in between and spew extra carbons into the atmosphere, we decided to see WALL-E and grab a late lunch at the mall a block from All Saints.

WALL-E is quite possibly one of the most perfect movies I’ve ever seen. It’s funny, emotional, cute-but-not-cutesy, political—and every detail of the other-worldly world it creates is drawn with care and ingenuity. It also happens to be about a time in the “future” when Earthlings have trashed the planet so badly that they must perpetually orbit it in a cruise spaceship while robots make tiny dents in the monumental task of cleaning the place up.

So while WALL-E diligently compresses garbage cubes and collects show tunes cassettes (how could I not love him?), humans zip around the ship in hover chairs, drinking all their meals from giant plastic cups, blabbing on their video phones and never wondering why they do what they do, or don’t do what they don’t do (including: question authority and walk). Importantly, these blobby characters aren’t unlikeable, just complacent and plagued by ennui, a word the robots that run the place have undoubtedly never taught them. A good day means visiting the lido deck for a free “cupcake in a cup!”

After the movie, AK and I got sandwiches at California Crisp, boxed up our leftovers in styrofoam and stopped by Starbucks for Frappuccinos, which I don’t need to tell you are pretty much cupcakes in cups. Then we threw our cups in the trash.

So what’s a Good Girl to do?

• We could have gone home in between and eaten slow food off our own plates, but that would have meant more spewage, more oil usage.
• We could have taken public transportation both ways, but that would have taken so much time we wouldn’t have been able to see the good movie about saving the Earth.
• We could have not volunteered, but that would have meant letting the Bad People (or, well, the People With Whom I Have A Strong Difference Of Opinion) do Bad Things to our civil rights.
• We could have packed picnic lunches in reusable containers and eaten them on the church lawn, but I said I use 38 percent of my brain trying to be Good, not 90 percent.

AK said she read recently that, according to some sort of expert on these things, the three most important things you can do to help the environment are:

• Write to your elected officials to persuade them to make environmentally-friendly policy decisions.
• Eat vegetarian.
• Insulate your house.

So while I’m happy that our culture is finally (belatedly, confusedly, sporadically) realizing that the planet itself is not disposable, I think that too much emphasis is put on parading around with your reusable Whole Foods shopping bag, and not enough is put on the tedious and unglamorous task of writing to your local representative.

I am going to try to allocate at least six percent of my 38 percent to getting my letter on, and I quite possibly will drink a Frappuccino while doing so.