I'm not buying your concern over being green after your death.
If you were sincere then you would simply walk yourself out to the middle of a forest somewhere and eat a bullet or drink some poison.
You want someone else to do the work.
For me just set my remains out with the weekly garbage.
Decomposing in a landfill is the best way all around.
I honor your intelligence for calling my bluff on this.
Yet, i may be deeper than the surface fluffiness.
Your options would actually end up being the most carbon-spewing of all other options. Suppose the dying codger managed to fall out of a boat at sea...
There would be a search. there would be an investigation.
There would be expense and hassle and emotional distress left behind...clean as it may seem at first thought.
Even self-euthanasia, which I believe is fundamentally different than suicide, is a journey into post-mortem hassles; expenses; and ultimately, more carbon spewage.
My oldest brother went that route, thinking it would be the most elegant way to exit. Even though he had discussed it with everyone that mattered to him, and he was doomed to a hellish end-game, the act itself turned the matter into a criminal investigation, with endless hassles. The T.B.I. insisted on doing an autopsy, even though the cause of death couldn't have been more obvious. This made the option of a relatively green disposal very difficult.
I should tell this whole tale in Community. Its got an "Alice's Restaurant" type of hilarity.
Back on topic, suppose it was your desire to dispose of your corpse in a way that taxed the world the least; that left the smallest bill for your kid; that required the minimal hassles and CO2 emissions...
(Ignore the question if this simply isn't a goal in your life. That's fine. I'm addressing the possibility that this last gesture is significant; a gesture of love; atheism; ecological concern; symbolic intent; spirituality, even, within a generally hostile woo-bent cultural imperative)
Wandering off and being eaten by a grizzly bear would be swell, biologically.
But there would be ramifications; expensive ones.
dealing with all this is a bit morbid, I suppose. yet, if one does care about it, it requires a pre-emptive, pro-active effort...and its not easy to cut through the guff.
Imagine that you simply dropped dead in your cubicle, today, in the middle of a game of solitaire...
A conveyor belt of crazy activity and ca-chings would follow.
What a hassle you caused, by innocently dropping dead, playing solitaire, when you should have been processing invoices.
Being eaten by a shark would be even worse, as per the costs of the actions that would follow. Its not as easy as one would think; to dispose of one's corpse in the most responsible way, on all levels.
As per accommodating the wishes of the survivors, and their emotional well being: That is relevant and sweet. yet, it falls into that touchy category of a critical thinker's responsibility to his or hers woo connected relationships.
There is something wildly parasitic about this machinery of corpse disposal.
Families that can't afford insurance get conned into buying a casket that costs more than their annual salary. Head stones in a cemetery?
Not cheap. And there is such a heavy status-related oppressiveness; you don't want Grandpa's head-stone to be the cheapest one in the grave yard.
There is much obscenity in all of this, although one might argue that there are overall economic advantages in keeping the process as insane as possible.
I'd like the discussion to be beyond economics, which is why I'm inclined to focus on ecology.
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