What do you think Green is?
Posted: Sunday, February 24th, 2008
I would like to know how all of you define “green” as. There seem to be many opinions and ideas about the matter, but I would like to know what you think about it. I would appreciate your thoughts and words on the topic, and it would help me a out a bit with a school project too. Thanks.
I think the buzzword “green” is open to some interpretation. While to many people it has some vague general meaning like recycling waste or reducing consumption. To others it embraces a broader meaning that pertains to an entire shift in lifestyle and interaction with internal and external environments.
To many “going green” often means swapping a few incandescent lightbulbs out for some CFL’s, recycling some appropriate materials and possibly integrating some organic foods into a diet.
These are all great steps and indeed will put you on a path towards becoming more green. And we all have to start somewhere right? However, I think that those of us who have already taken these initial steps and have knocked over a good number more dominoes in the chain think of “being green” as a larger, more comprehensive lifestyle switch.
“Green” goes beyond simply changing the way you do a few things in life. It begins to question EVERYTHING you do in life. Every little aspect of every little event and interaction that goes on on a daily basis.
There are different levels, and to an extent money can be a determining factor but does not necessarily have to be a preventative factor. Partly it depends on what you are willing to sacrifice or believe should be sacrificed in order to truly become “green”.
If you’ve got half a million you could afford to buy some land, become grid independent, and totally self sufficient by growing all your own food and other things. You could have an elaborate solar powered system and satellite connection so you can still have power lighting and be connected to the outside world through common modes like phone, TV, and internet.
On the flip side maybe you don’t have half a million, but you can still move out to the country and change your life! You can find a community farm that has live in arrangements and work and live and do whatever else you want to do. Or maybe you live in a place that is so remote you can still squat on some land and not have anyone bother you.
In many ways I think the concept of “going green” will ultimately lead people to simpler ways of life. To a way of life that used to be where we wake up with the sun and go to bed when it goes down. Hitting the pillow hard after laboring all day in the fields plowing and tilling by hand. and not reliant on any complex machinery powered by fossil fuels.
I think this new buzzword of “going green” is interesting because it’s a sign that people everywhere are beginning to see that our way of life in the western world has become wasteful, unnecessary and undesirable. Not to mention unsustainable. It simply can’t keep going along the path it has for the last 100 years. The planet cannot support it and hopefully we will not allow it to go any further.
So regardless of who you are, what your religious or political affiliation is or how much money you have it’s time to Go Green!
March 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am