Don’t get me wrong, I love ‘clean & green’ living, but sometimes it amuses me that we feel so proprietary about it. I started thinking about this today, because on my agenda is watching the 144th Yale Harvard race down the Thames River. As it has been done for each of the previous 143 years of the competition, only muscle power will get them down that four mile stretch of river today.
Green isn’t a new concept, it’s just something we have renamed and reinvented post industrial revolution. Over two centuries ago, there was no other way of life. So our trick now is to have our cake and eat it, too. We want all of the frills of modern life, but make them green, please.
Most of us would be lost without our day to day luxuries (which we consider necessities); things which had yet to be dreamt into existence during the last ‘green movement’, like computers the size of an iPhone. So our intolerance of what makes others happy – their desired gadget, gizmo, or thing that goes ‘vrrrooom’ – makes us, well, a bit hypocritical.
My suggestion is stop complaining and find a way to green it up, no matter how large, luxurious or ostentatious. Green Hummer … now there is a concept. And a pretty simple one. Heard of bio-diesel?
Revolutions take a bit of time (and this is just a movement). We didn’t trash the earth overnight in one big industrial party, so have patience. It may take us awhile to turn everyone’s luxuries green, but we’ll get there.
And come to think of it maybe we should be calling this the “Neo Green” movement. It’s not as if we are the ones who invented it.
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