August 23rd 2010 - Under The Guise of Green

I found the piece of paper in the photo as a piece of litter in the street. If you can't read it clearly, it says "I'M IN THE MARKET FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE TOMORROW." The irony of finding a piece of paper like this in the street brought me to the realization that a sustainable American society is still far from reality. It's really just lip service at this point. Not too many people are really serious about it.

Corporate America is rushing to push out products that Americans perceive as green, whether or not they really are. Hybrid cars are a great example. I just quickly Googled for statistics on the carbon emissions of hybrid cars, and I found this: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hybrid_sbs_cars.shtml Granted these statistics are for 2007 models, so maybe we're doing a bit better now, but the vehicles studied had average annual greenhouse gas emissions of anywhere from 3.4 TONS (Toyota Prius) to 8 TONS (Lexus GS 450h). Yes. You read it right. That's annual TONS for one, single vehicle. And those are the HYBRIDS!

What I really want to say is that only Nature is really green. Only when we truly understand that we must cooperate with Nature, rather than just extract everything we can take from Nature, make a packaged and/or disposable product out of it, and then throw the package or used product into a dump, will we achieve sustainability.

The meaning of sustainability has not even entered into most peoples' awareness, yet. Unsustainable means it can't be sustained without causing damage and/or death. Unsustainable means that if you continue to do things the same way, you are eventually going to have to take some measures to reverse the damage (measures which will probably be more expensive than if we just would have done it right in the first place), or, worse, you may reach a point of irreversible damage. Some scientists believe that we've already done irreversible damage to many ecosystems. That was BEFORE the Gulf spill.

Taking our own bags to the grocery store is a nice start, but it's a drop in the bucket, frankly. What are we filling those reusable bags with? What are we buying? Why are we buying it? What will the impact be? How many people are really even bringing reusable bags, anyway?

I know that many companies are making efforts to reduce packaging, using more energy-efficient manufacturing processes, etc. I don't know that they are the majority. The best we can do now is consume less, and be smart about what we consume. I'm not sure it will make much of a difference. Not unless just about everybody starts acting that way. It sure won't help the economy, but maybe what we really need is a new economy that runs in concert with Nature. Sounds a little touchy-feely? A bit tree-hugging liberal? May sound that way, but I'm fairly certain it's the only way to sustain life in the long-term.

Naturally Yours,

Alan