The color green has come to represent many things over the course of time: envy, money, greed, and now the environment. It is a peaceful color full of many tones and hues. Why must it be subjected to a movement in which the status quo wishes to apply it toward a cause that is easily summed up in environmentalism?
The answer to this question is that environmentalism is too long of a word; it confuses those who wish to be an environmentalist without having to attach themselves to such a long word.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hate the term “green.” I hate the movement and I hate the commercials that say, “going green is easy.” If by that they mean the Hulk will burst forth from my body and smash you-then yes, going “green” is easy.
Whatever happened to the days when environmentalists had some kind of integrity? When they actually did stuff without having to have CNN peek over their shoulder? How about when a celebrity has to convey his or her thin and hollow opinions on a subject they just received from their personal assistant? When the term environmentalism was replaced with “green,” it opened the floodgates of having everyone become environmentally conscious. Who thought that was a good idea?
Everyone from the trophy wife sipping back a latte at Starbucks to the hotdog vender on the corner of 4th street has an opinion about what we should do to save the planet. It’s aggravating for me to hear brain-dead people suddenly spout off some fact that they read off of the back of a caffeinated drink.
The other day, I was walking at Chapman and was told by a member of Greenpeace that, “over 500,000 were murdered by global warming.” How do you know that 500,000 people were murdered by global warming? How did Mother Nature murder these people? Does she reach forth with a log and club them to death? Or does she forcefully egg people to the edge of a cliff and push them off? Who even came up with that statistic?
It’s this kind of empty fact that kills me when I overhear them around campus, at the movies and even at work. To hear people spout out, “Oh, I am a green person” makes me die that much quicker inside. To pick up a magazine and have it say, “How to make your *insert annoying idea here* green” just pushes this whole thing to a new level of absurdity.
I have an idea about how to make things green: do something. When green was introduced into the public psyche, it started off all right; people started recycling and planting natural foliage that was indigenous to their state’s climate. Like all things that are made popular, it starts all well and good, but then it mutates into trying to solve the rest of the world’s problems.
I figure that if I now buy a T-shirt saying “Save Darfur” and wear it with my super cute jeans, I am helping the starving, massacred people of Darfur. Here’s my favorite: let’s blog about it. Here’s the thing: instead of trying to make me aware by constantly bombarding my life with your awareness, try actually leaving your computer and doing something. Go to Darfur if you want to help them, and to the projects actually trying to help these people, just ask for donations. Please don’t give these people T-shirts anymore.
Green, I hope by the time you’ve read my piece here you feel a bit of disdain fly down your spine. There is nothing wrong with people trying to help the planet out; it’s probably one of the noblest efforts one can do in his life. I just ask that if you do want to help stop the extinction of the dodo, then just do it and do not advertise it. Do not let me know what you are doing. I do not want to know and if I do, I’ll ask. In the end, we’re all here to help the planet; hell, we live on it. Just suggest things to us and we’ll figure out the rest. Human beings aren’t that dumb, they’re just a little green every now and again.
