Clark Williams-Derry, Northwest Environment Watch

Clark Williams-Derry is research director at Northwest Environment Watch, a nonprofit research and communication center that promotes sustainability in the Pacific Northwest.

So, Dr. Reader, I confess: Most of the time I am a tangle of nerves. For as long as I can remember, I've been prone to anxieties, both social and ontological. As in, why do I exist? And, will anyone laugh at me if I don't know which one's the salad fork?

So this makes you human, right?

Um, I guess. I've never been anything else, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, after minutes of thought, I've managed to classify my various neuroses into three categories: guilt, obsessive worry, and misanthropy.

Which one troubles you most?

What troubles me most is that I'm alone in my room, pretending to have a conversation with a shrink.

But really now, are your neuroses all that bad?

Sort of. Take the guilt thing. If someone bumps into me on the street, I apologize. Not out of courtesy; I really mean it: I'm sorry I was standing in their way. And I hate it when a cashier hands me a receipt -- trees, no, entire forests are felled just so I can have a paper record of my overconsumption. And eating a hamburger, don't get me started, what with the water and the pesticides and the overgrazing and the erosion ... whoops, I got myself started.

Please go on.

And the obsessive worry -- wait, am I boring you?

[Awkward silence.]

Anyway, the things I worry about most are the really big, awful ones that I absolutely can't control, like, what happens if an asteroid hits the planet? Or what'll I do if global warming makes ocean temperatures rise just enough that frozen methane on the ocean floor starts melting, triggering a vicious, out-of-control cascade of greenhouse emissions? (Somebody once mentioned the possibility to me in a casual conversation, and years later I still go to bed thinking about methane hydrates.)

So I've happened upon a tactic that, while it doesn't cure my neuroses, at least makes them manageable: From my neurological lemons, I try to make environmental lemonade.

Hmmm.

Ok, I'll explain. Start with guilt. I decided about six years ago to become vegan. Now, I never have to feel bad about eating a hamburger: I just don't eat them. I'm, like, totally Nancy Reagan about it. I just say no.

And that decision has made everything else easier. The cashier hands me a receipt; I think nothing of it, because even though entire boreal ecosystems were ruined to make that receipt for me, hey, at least I don't eat meat.

So that's how you deal with guilt.

Right, I just made one wrenching, pro-Earth life change, and lots of lesser environmental worries receded into the background. It was like buying a papal dispensation for my sins.

Now, obsessive worry is another matter entirely. I haven't figured out how to make that go away. So instead, I chose a career where obsessive worry isn't just an advantage, it's more or less a necessity.

All day long, five days a week, I have to think about the loss of native forests, the incessant spread of sprawl across the landscape, the fragmentation of habitats, the decline of civic engagement. Invasive species? Last summer I got to read about that for three straight days. The seemingly inexorable division of America into haves and have-nots? Why, I've spent weeks reading the literature and crunching numbers about it.

Working at a think tank lets me wallow in my worry: I don't just get to ponder these things in the abstract, I get to quantify them, put precise numbers to my inchoate fears. Not that this makes me feel better. But if I'm going to worry anyway, I might as well do it right.

At the beginning of this, uh, session, you mentioned misanthropy.

That's right. I've found as I've gotten older that I have much less patience with people, and much more affection for ... well, for my computer. Computers are so predictable; spreadsheets will never make me feel guilty by bumping into me on the street or handing me a receipt.

And over the past several years I've become best friends with Excel, the spreadsheet program. It's an exciting relationship: I've been palling around with Excel for years, and I'm still learning new things about it. Just last week, I discovered that the F2 key lets you edit a spreadsheet formula without clicking your mouse. What an unexpected delight! It's sort of like my marriage: I'm always finding new and exciting things to love about Excel.

So, basically, by substituting relationships with computer programs for relationships with people, I get to do my job protecting the planet (or perhaps just chronicling its demise) without all that pesky, anxiety-inducing human interaction.

I think our time is up.

Why so soon? Was I that boring?

[Awkward silence.]