My mom used to say that you became an adult when you began to like the taste of seltzer water. It took me until well after college, but I still remember her pride when, on a visit home, I took it upon myself to put an unopened Polar in the fridge to chill. It wasn’t even the proactive kitchen maintenance that got her; it was her youngest child crossing her last tracked milestone into adulthood...
But as my obsession grows alongside the rest of America’s, I’ve started to experience some dismay at my habit...
Because that’s really what it is, isn’t it? ...
The point is, though, that somehow, over the years, seltzer’s delightful bubbles have completely scrambled my own personal ethical code. I am an environmental studies major who spent years not eating meat because it was better for the planet. I reflexively scoff at bottled water, probably because it was used in my classes to illustrate the importance of considering the entire life cycle of a product when calculating carbon footprint...
my seltzer habit... reaffirms my belief that the only way we are going to make real progress on the largest systemic environmental issue of our time—climate change—is through massive, systemic change
And yet, as soon as it’s carbonated and anointed with a slight hint of a citrus, all of that flies right out of my head. ...The more I think about it, the more an ugly truth makes its case. I suspect my love of seltzer goes beyond my physical desire to have carbonation bounce off my tongue. I think it is one part actual enjoyment, and one part something else... the complicated self-loathing I have come to feel about my seltzer habit has ended up serving another point of self-interest: It reaffirms my belief that the only way we are going to make real progress on the largest systemic environmental issue of our time—climate change—is through massive, systemic change, not individual choices. Is seltzer really so terrible that it’s going to spin us into a deeper climate doom than we already face? No, probably not. Which is exactly the problem.
