My Rant about Going Green

Okay, so to set this up you have to have an idea of how crunchy I am. At times in my life, I could have been a poster child for a granola girl. In college, I had cute, wire rimmed glasses, wore my hair long, almost to my waist and didn't get out of t-shirts, jeans, flannel shirts and my Birkenstocks (with wool socks in the winter. Oh, yeah. Major cuteness factor). One of my favorite outfits was oversized overalls and a big, wool cardigan sweater. (Like I said, cute). I've been a vegetarian (more by taste than morality, I have to admit) for about 15 years. I've lived by "If it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down," since the seven year drought in California during my childhood. When I moved to New York City, I didn't own a car, used public transportation, loved it, and hate (really, truly hate) the necessity of having to own a car. Back in 1992 when Al Gore published his first book, "Earth in the Balance," I was a big fan of his environmental policy. I used to think I could save the world, one recyclable item at a time. My garage is often half full of cardboard and hard to recycle items that I eventually take to Ecocycle and recycle, with Asher joining in because I want to teach him at a young age. Michael once bought me a "Give a hoot. Don't pollute." Woodsy Owl t-shirt because of the crap I gave him about littering, even small gum wrappers. Besides microwaves, I also heart recycling. Big time. My dream home is off the grid, made of sustainable materials, using solar power, collecting rainwater, reusing non-potable water, directing heat from the dryer into the house during the winter, low flow showers and toilets, etc. I would get rid of all the grass in my yard and plant only xeriscape plants if I had the chance. I've taken Asher to Arbor Day twice because I love trees. So you get the idea. There's a part of me that's a raging environmental liberal.

Why, then, am I just a little perturbed by all the green activity these days? It's so exciting - the development of "green collar" jobs in hubs like Seattle and in and around Boulder; Wal-mart offering organic and transitional products (our mega Mall-Wart here has a long aisle of green products from clothing to cleaning supplies and uses natural light, although they also run about 100 fans in the fan aisle all day long); big companies like Palmolive selling environmentally-friendly dish soap; car companies selling hybrids; presidential candidates promising renewable energy research and raising the MPG limits on vehicles; Conoco-Phillips opening a 400-acre office complex in Colorado to study renewable energy; more people recycling, buying local, thinking about their impact on the earth; news story after news story and business after business getting in on the movement; democrats and republicans, conservatives and liberals coming together to sit on couches and be in advertisements about how we can do this, we can reverse some of the damage. It's incredible! It's amazing! And it's about damn time.

Earth Day - both the US and UN's observances - were established in 1969 and first celebrated in 1970. That's 38 years ago. And not the first time people wanted to love on mother Earth. I remember driving through Palo Alto, CA with my mom, and her pointing out a gas station where she sat in line (in line, people) to get gas following the 1973 oil crisis. That was 25 years ago. We had another energy crisis in 1979. 19 years ago. Al Gore came out with his first book in 1992. 16 years ago. As much as I love all that is being done and the movement and the energy and everyone being on board and the big love ship of worldly green, I can't get over how long it's taken, all the reminders we've been given, all the time we could have spent doing what we are no doing and more. And some day, I hope to get an explanation as to why we can put a man on the moon, we study how a spider spins a web in space, and we can make a phone call from remote part so the planet, but the vast majority of our cars are still run on gasoline. This is an over 100 year old system! The Model T was introduced in 1908.

Okay. Phew. Deep breathes. Underlying all this is also a deep faith in the American people to step up and to create products and ways of life that have never before imagined or were imagined and can be reignited. Like the ad says, "we can solve it." This just might be one of the greatest wonders of the world that capitalism can create.