Madison Avenue Activism
Since it's Earth Day and all, I thought I'd share a thought.
Green is a COLOR. That's it. Just a COLOR. Let's stop oversimplifying a host of very complex and very different problems into one word. We have allowed Madison Avenue to hijack the news media, and the result is "Green this" and "How to live more Green" and so on. The whole world has turned into one of those old Pepto Bismol commercials, where the diagram of a person's digestive system is a straight tube that terminates in a nice round circle.
"Green" lets us drive to the Quickie-Mart for bottled water and frozen burritos and still sleep at night. It's nothing more than a lullabye on a grand scale.
Madison Avenue's Green Campaign is bad for the environment, because it creates an unreality where all environmental problems are exactly the same. The earth is a huge and vastly complex system, and everything in the system has the capacity to affect everything else.
Here's an example: Biofuel. (Specifically, Ethanol.)
Sure, it doesn't use those nasty fossil fuels that we pull out of the Earth's crust. It's "Green!" It comes from Green Plants! That means it must be Natural and Good, and everyone should use them!
So everyone uses them, and instead of making things better for Earthlings, it drives up food prices, requires the use of more pesticides and fertilizers, when are then washed into the rivers and end up in one of the huge and growing Dead Zones along the coast.
Let's drop the Green moniker and talk about Environmental problems in real terms. Let's say Overfishing, Erosion, Habitat Loss,Species Diversity Loss. Let's talk about Deforestation. Let's address the gigantic island of plastic debris that's floating in the Pacific Ocean. Let's talk about the decimation of the Salmon population in the Pacific Northwest. Let's talk about overpopulation. Let's discuss the fragmentation of species because of roadways.
Of course, addressing these issues would require lots of active thought, debate and in many cases, inconvenience and sacrifice.
Madison Avenue doesn't do "inconvenience", and they tend to shy away from "Sacrifice" too. My Earth Day Wish: Let's throw away "Green".
Green is a COLOR. That's it. Just a COLOR. Let's stop oversimplifying a host of very complex and very different problems into one word. We have allowed Madison Avenue to hijack the news media, and the result is "Green this" and "How to live more Green" and so on. The whole world has turned into one of those old Pepto Bismol commercials, where the diagram of a person's digestive system is a straight tube that terminates in a nice round circle.
"Green" lets us drive to the Quickie-Mart for bottled water and frozen burritos and still sleep at night. It's nothing more than a lullabye on a grand scale.
Madison Avenue's Green Campaign is bad for the environment, because it creates an unreality where all environmental problems are exactly the same. The earth is a huge and vastly complex system, and everything in the system has the capacity to affect everything else.
Here's an example: Biofuel. (Specifically, Ethanol.)
Sure, it doesn't use those nasty fossil fuels that we pull out of the Earth's crust. It's "Green!" It comes from Green Plants! That means it must be Natural and Good, and everyone should use them!
So everyone uses them, and instead of making things better for Earthlings, it drives up food prices, requires the use of more pesticides and fertilizers, when are then washed into the rivers and end up in one of the huge and growing Dead Zones along the coast.
Let's drop the Green moniker and talk about Environmental problems in real terms. Let's say Overfishing, Erosion, Habitat Loss,Species Diversity Loss. Let's talk about Deforestation. Let's address the gigantic island of plastic debris that's floating in the Pacific Ocean. Let's talk about the decimation of the Salmon population in the Pacific Northwest. Let's talk about overpopulation. Let's discuss the fragmentation of species because of roadways.
Of course, addressing these issues would require lots of active thought, debate and in many cases, inconvenience and sacrifice.
Madison Avenue doesn't do "inconvenience", and they tend to shy away from "Sacrifice" too. My Earth Day Wish: Let's throw away "Green".