Filed under: J840 Week 2, Waste + Recycling | Tags: being green, environment, green tips, media
While many people want to consider themselves green, after attending last weekend’s class and reviewing this week’s readings, I think it’s extremely difficult to define exactly what that means. In addition, being completely green in today’s world is very difficult and requires a concentrated effort.
A screen shot of the simplesteps.org link where visitors can sign a petition to make pet products safer.
I think someone who has the intent to make a conscious effort to help the environment, and takes action to built on that intent, can be considered green. Several readings and video/audio from this week mentioned that the environment is such a big issue that is seems overwhelming for people to try and fix. A google.com search of “green” produced more than 812 million results, and many of those sites contain information and tips for living a more environmentally-friendly life. While it’s great to have some much information at your fingertips, this can be overwhelming, as we discussed last week in class.
Another complication is media reports make it seem that if individuals or families don’t make huge life changes, they’re not really making an impact — for example, the man that appeared on The Colbert Report clip we viewed. That could turn people off and make them think there’s no point in even bothering. However, if individuals can do some simple things that work for their family — switching to all-natural cleaning products, changing light bulbs, using less plastic, etc., they will be making an impact. Even if it’s a small impact, they’re still taking some sort of action.
I really liked the simple, incremental steps presented on the Simple Steps site (which I accessed through the link in our reading from The New York Times). I signed up for their daily e-mail tips, so I’m interested to see how they’re presented in the coming days. I also liked the way this site was organized and the ease with which I could sign a petition about chemicals in pet products (I signed up right away).
Overall, I think that someone who has made a concerted effort on environmental issues can consider themselves green — as long as they recognize that they have to continue taking action and being aware in order to do so.
-Jennifer E.
Filed under: Energy + Climate, J840 Week 2 | Tags: biodiversity, climate change, green, Green Value, Rachel Carson, Sacrifice
New York Stock Exchange
Do you want to save your environment or do you want to save your money?
Depending on your answer to this question you will find the answer to your shade of green. Like many concepts in life we operate on a linear continuum of advocacy or disparagement. Intersecting at the middle of the “green continuum” you will find two competing points of influence—they are green and green value. Movement either direction from this fulcrum demonstrates the influence of money on your green identity. Beliefs, sacrifice, and the ability to stand alone are variables as well.
Green is a belief system not rooted in financial gain or loss. Our modern foundation for green was born in the early 1960’s with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Man’s coexistence with nature versus man’s disdains for the costly nuisances and need to control nature were at odds. Money mattered then.
Green is an ideal built on sacrifice. If being green was simultaneously undemanding, straightforward, and relevant more people would be inclined to engage themselves with green ideals. Ironically we are culturally adept at sacrifice. Failure to adopt green strategies has allowed climate change and loss of biodiversity to be sacrificed for future generations – they are the inconsequential pawns in a catatonic chess game with the planet. Money mattered then.
Green is lonely. Dialogue around environmental responsibility is analogous to a politician running an election campaign. Corporate leadership on the environment takes a profit first and beliefs later strategy. Environmentalist in the dell…the green stands alone. Money mattered then.
Green isn’t the color of money.
I am not green. I respect and admire the self discipline required to be green — over the last two weeks my perspective on green has changed and it is a title worth having and pursuing in its purest form.
Jason Merckling
Filed under: Energy + Climate, J840 Week 2, Nature + Travel, Society + Media, Waste + Recycling | Tags: environmentalism, going green, Rachel Carson, Slient Spring
As the term “Going Green” is thrown around, I find it increasingly difficult to seperate the environmentalist moniker from the color itself. With this in mind, I always think of the other ways that we label individuals with color and how these labels are all too often negative.
As children, we ask “What’s wrong? Are you yellow?” to coerce the neighborhood scaredy-cat into something everyone knows is dangerous. Later, we ask “Why so blue?” to a downtrodden friend. Even as adults, we gossip about our family’s “black sheep” after he loses his shirt on a wild night in Vegas and moves back in with mom.
Considering the other uses of color as a label, it is not at all surprising to hear Stephen Colbert mockingly use the term “Reduce, Reuse, Re-Psychos” to refer to individuals that I would consider “green.” When the color green is already being used to describe the envious and inexperienced, it only follows that going green would be seen as over-the-top, radical environmentalism.
However, I think the green movement is slowly breaking the green mold. If the views of Silent Spring author, Rachel Carson, can go from being seen as hysterical to revolutionary, I think it is only a matter of time before people who insist that guests in there home recycle the bottled water they just finished go from being “green nuts” to just positively “green.” The term greem in an environmental sense just means doing the right thing.
Whether Carson was correct or not in her assertion that nature is central to the survival of man rather than the inverse, I believe human beings should (whether out of gratitude or responsibility to nature) take the necessary steps to ensure its long-run survival. This to me is the essence of being green. Everything we do, no matter how slight, should be done in a way that keeps our surroundings intact.
*Trey Williams*
Filed under: J840 Week 2, Society + Media | Tags: consequences, Garmin, Kermit the Frog, leukemia, pesticide
When the handyman at my elementary school would spray pesticide in the classroom or on the playground, I stayed away. I had a note from my mom saying I was “allergic” and had to go to the library. Mom religiously warned me about leukemia and how “bug spray” harmed kids. While this did not make sense to me as a seven-year-old missing recess, I’ve come to understand and share her concern. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was embraced in my home. My mom read labels before it was trendy and went to health food stores when the clientele was mostly tie-dyed. My snack apple was always smaller than the other kids’ because it was organic. I didn’t think of her behavior as green, but as cautious and critical.
What does that make my definition of “green?” It’s an awareness of consequences. Green is a consideration of my actions and how they affect who I live with, in and on. How does dumping chemicals into my neighborhood drains affect the kids running around? How long will my discarded soda cans sit in the landfill? I’m responsible to others in my home, my community and the source of my resources, the planet.
Interestingly enough, the word green connotes many things: money, getting back to nature and a lack of experience and/or maturity.
Green as money is Garmin’s ecoRoute(TM) software. It’s a product that makes Garmin money, increases its reputation for social responsibility and ultimately saves consumers money.
Green as nature is the Kansas City Community Supported Agriculture Coalition. In a pre-packaged society, we disconnect from our resources and the process from ground to use. The KC CSA allows participants to become informed and vested their community and their food.
Green immaturity is the KC Fox 4 morning news (6/24/09) highlighting how nudist colonies are on the rise as an environmental movement. What!?
The one commonly shared truth for green — defining it, studying it, practicing it — is that, as my childhood buddy said, “it’s not easy.”
Courtesy of www.youtube.com
-Monica D.-
Filed under: Energy + Climate, J840 Week 2 | Tags: green, Marketing, patriotic, Thomas Friedman
The word green is often used as an adjective for environmentally-friendly or as shorthand for the environmental movement. It is possible that the word green has been widely adopted because it doesn’t have the radicalism associated with the environmental movement (especially in the 1970s but also with groups like Earth First and the Earth Liberation Party).
In the U.S., the term “green” has largely become a marketing term, in the sense that it is mostly used to sell products and ideas. However, this is not a necessarily a bad thing, especially in a consumerist culture like the U.S, where we express our personalities often through what we purchase. Therefore, defining products as green might be a pragmatic approach to some of our environmental problems, because, increasingly, many consumers self-identify as “green.” Marketers are also realizing that labeling things green helps move their products off the shelf. According to an article in Brandweek magazine, a national survey “found that a product’s ‘energy footprint’ influences 77 percent for consumers’ purchasing decisions, with 76 percent willing to pay more at the register for environmentally-friendly products.” Aaron Franklin, project director at study sponsor ORC Guideline , issued a statement saying, “The study’s findings seem to debunk a common perception that people will go green as long as it doesn’t cost them. In fact …people seem to be willing to put their money where their values are.” The danger in this is that the term “green” risks being co-opted and abused to near meaninglessness.
I agree with Thomas L. Friedman that being green means being patriotic. In an April 15, 2007 piece in The New York Times Magazine, Friedman wrote, “I want to rename ‘green.’ I want to rename it geo-strategic, geo-economic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing, and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature, and terrorism.” (As a side note, terrorism is also partially abetted by oil profits. This presents a much more immediate threat to some than global warming.)
Encouragingly, everyday there are signs of more and more convergence in terms of disparate interest groups, such as large corporations, environmental groups, and consumers, coming together to address environmental problems in practical, less radical, and even profitable ways. However, Americans tend to have short attention spans.
– Ian Nyquist
