I wrote an article on the “greening” phenomenon for a friend’s magazine, Pomp & Circumstance. The issue isn’t out yet, but here’s the article in its text only format. They’re going to be adding graphics to support some of the data that goes along with the content. I’ll post a link when it’s up.
It was on a recent trip to the local Frosty that I finally called its bluff. I wasn’t expecting to lose my respect for the Green Movement as I ordered a double dip soft serve, but there it was. As I stood in line my eye caught a compelling type face and familiar shade of green – a poster designed for the eco-conscious ice cream eater. “An Eco-Friendly Treat: no dish + no spoon = no trash.” Simple drawings explained this theory, displaying a tempting cone vs the ugly dished ice cream. It was completed with a big “X” slashed through a trash can. “Tasty Treats for the Environmentally Cone-scious!” “Wow,” I thought, “if eating ice cream cones could save the planet, why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?”
It crept up on me, the “greening” phenomenon. I composted food with worms when I was nine, and touted the importance of recycling to anyone who would listen. I even founded a Junior Conservation Commission, hawking cookies at town meetings in my small town in New Hampshire to buy acres of rainforest in Brazil. That was when they were going for fifty bucks a pop – quite a deal. But in the last ten years or so, the movement has picked up pace. It’s about time: the first warnings of global climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions only came out about twenty five years ago. And in the summer of 2008, when gas prices shot up, the terminology of “carbon cutting” and “food miles” entered mainstream vocabulary for good. Soon after, the movement grew to levels of unprecedented popularity, quickly becoming, as fads do, a bit ridiculous. All of the symptoms of a phenomenon.
The “Happy Valley,” otherwise known as the Pioneer Valley, my current home base in Western Massachusetts, now glows neon green. Forest green, kelly green, olive green, emerald green. Since the earliest whisperings of climate change and food security, this Valley has ramped up the greening issue to a full-blown obsession. The local alternative radio stations are chock full of ads to green up your grocery shopping, construction company choices, and dog food purchasing. There are tips about how to cut back on your carbon emissions and how to generate zero waste. Neighbors reduce their driving and trash can size with a competitive edge. And even though all of this is wonderful for the earth, I can’t help but roll my eyes.
To figure out why someone like me – someone who hand-painted T-shirts for my Conservation Commission twenty years ago – has been pushed so far as to mock the Green Movement, I looked to my family who still resides in the politically center and right-of-center state of New Hampshire.
When I burst in the door of my grandparents’ farmhouse from my idealistic valley, where composting is a social statement and buying produce from the store is frowned upon during farmer’s market season, I am met with common ground. I back up suspiciously. Here, too, composting is a way of life. Recycling is second nature. Eating from your own yard, or your neighbor’s garden patch, has been the way of life since my mom was crawling around the farm house. And yet they (gasp!) vote Republican and hold differing political views than the liberalistas in my town. How could it be?
Raised in the Depression, my grandparents waste nothing, and raised my mother and aunts that way. As a form of frugality, no one in the family breaks the cardinal rule of first reducing and reusing before recycling. Carpooling and buying local produce is just cheaper, not hipper. “No wonder I’ve rolled my eyes at the newly initiated environmentalists,” I think. “Most of America has been doing this for decades.” Around people like this, I can feel my eyes staying put in their sockets, not rolling upward. No one is inventing anything new here – it’s all just common sense. Here, I can see the possibility of moderate citizens taking the “green phenomenon” and adapting it to their own lifestyles. Real change could happen.
Unfortunately, the Left has hijacked the green phenomenon and carried it off to pedestals on each of the coasts where it’s revered as hip and morally the right thing to do. That is why, on my second stop in New Hampshire, I wasn’t surprised at my other family’s indifference to most tenets of the use less / save money philosophy. It seemed easier to shop at the grocery store than visit a farmer’s market where one may be bombarded by petitioners harassing them for their signatures. It just made sense to drive the few blocks to the corner store, since biking may mix them up with the college “hippies” in their small town. The movement is wrapped up with lifestyle choices that they don’t care for, issues that don’t need to go hand in hand with composting. As I drive home, I realize that that’s the real crime of the “green phenomenon” – it’s stolen these common sense activities away from the rest of the country. I wish I could put them back in their rightful place in the center – for everyone.
Since I can’t single-handedly strip the green movement of its holier-than-thou associations, I hope to just demystify it for anyone I talk to. To live by example, not by the fads. To forge conversations with friends and family that are less about politics and more about common sense and the economics of “greening” our habits – it just makes sense to buy local food, pay less for trash pickup, and bike around town. Basically, more doing and less flaunting.
As I left the ice cream counter with my “green” cone (I’ve always hated eating from a dish) I thought about this crazy phenomenon, and all the problems it’s causing for the issue that’s at the heart of the whole thing – trying to make less of an impact on the environment. But with all of this being said, I couldn’t help scowling a bit at those customers with ice cream in their dishes as I walked to my seat. Like everyone, I’m still trying.
Category: Essays, Human Interest, Published Work
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