Writer Colin Beavon persuaded (bullied even?) his family into forsaking many of the conveniences of modern life in their small Manhattan apartment to minimize their use of carbon-based fuels. The experiment lasted a whole year, which seemed to start badly for Michelle Conlon his wife who appeared to reluctantly participate but did so purely as an act of loyalty to her husband. She committed to help him re-organize all their daily routines to have the best possible environmental impact whilst he was also working equally as hard to maximize the impact of this whole enterprise. It was very noticeably called ‘No Impact Man’ and not as it should have been ‘No Impact Family’.
As time progressed and they adapted their eating habits to encompass only locally grown products, and to dispense with basic commodities like toilet paper (always the point the Media picked up on) and electricity even, Beavon’s self-righteous attitude stretched both his wife’s patience and mine too. He patronizingly sulked when Michelle admitted to desperately craving a fix of coffee (totally forbidden) because he considered this a personal slight for his big plan, yet he indignantly refused to even participate in a conversation when his 40 year old wife bought up the subject of having a second child which was part of her dreams and expectations.
Towards the end of the year in the second part of the movie just as I was getting quite exasperated, the mood changed and Beavons became more conciliatory and generous and his wife seemed less irritated and even whole-hearted supporting the project. In reality I’m not sure what the whole thing achieved beyond a great deal of media attention and celebrity to Beavons, and I think the nagging aspect in my head was that I was constantly assessing was this actually the real reason for the movie, blog and book etc. etc. The latter was knowing titled “No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process”
Did he have any impact? I don’t think so. But he did no harm too, and I guess any attempt to push this subject on to all our agendas is good, whatever the motive.
★★★★★★
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