Our current decade will go down in history for many things including 911, Iraq war part deux, the world financial meltdown, and most of all the decade of "green". One of the only bright spots in the last 9ish years has been the paradigm shift in the way we view our earth. Maybe this is directly related to Al Gore's film the Inconvenient truth, or the internet that he invented, but it seems suddenly we are all informed environmentalists. Over night our collective conscious has gone from skeptical hippie haters to hardened treehuggers. Think about it, we now have, carbon footprints we drive hybrid cars, we drink organic Milk and eat sustainable free range chicken. We even have a new friend named the Environment.
This is obviously a good thing, maybe not for the free range chicken, but for the Earth it's been a good step in the right direction.
That said, I have a hormon free beef with the whole green movement. It's the abuse of that little word that once was reserved for describing things like grass and sick people. The word we use to describe everything and anything associated with not fucking up our planet.
yes GREEN!
It's everywhere!
No one can escape it these days, green cars, green soap, green wine, green diapers, and so on... It's been the most abused word since "Lite" or "Clear". It's been abused by Politicians who have Green initiatives, like greening the Streets with new sustainable stormwater drains". Corporations slap it on every new product, falsely labeling them as if they are better for the Earth. A plastic container of windex can end up in the same landfill as a plastic container of simple green and they will equally take 700 years to decompose.
Hunters are even jumping on the Greenwagon, they now have the option of killing animals with environmetally friendly "Green" bullets that are lead free.
My point is that using "Green" as a descriptor for anything that is remotely perceived to be good for our Earth needs to stop. "Green" is diluted and misleading, It not only gives a false sense of doing something positive but it has no definitive boundaries when describing something. A company can call a product "green" when it truly isn't and there won't be any repercussions. At least with "organic" which is equally tossed around these days there are guidelines that must be followed. I'm not saying we should regulate the label, mostly because that would be next to impossible. What I am saying is we need to start using new terms for "real" environmental progress and products. I believe that the people battling to save our planet from the same fate as Mars with real progressive thinking and real policies need to coin these new terms. The new terms need to be powerful enough that they can't be easily lifted by marketing executives trying to get a bonuses or politicians trying to get elected.
So on this Earth day I propose we toss out the term "Green" and create new "Earth friendly" terms to.... "Earth Friendly"? Hmm, I think I'm on to something..
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