Friday 11 July 2008

It's not easy being green - that's why it's important

As Kermit the frog once said, 'it's not easy being green' and he was right. Well, in one sense he was. You'd think with high fuel prices and a credit in full swing there'd be more incentive for being nice to the planet. Sadly, Brown's trips to see our friends the Saudis together with massive profits from oil-related industries kills any good intentions good and proper.
Mother Nature's fighting back: floods (even in Australia), earthquakes (even in Birmingham), typhoons, fires, you name it, it's happened. I'm not interested in preaching about the 'green issue', I don't wear wooly sweaters or corduroy but it still remains that the environment is important. When it comes to doing anything meaningful about it, the British government merely looks the other way, imposes another few 'green taxes' before discussing a third runway at Heathrow. Very green then.
There's no shortage of information – Annie Leonard's site www.storyofstuff.com is a great example – but it's pointless if not many people read it. Like him or loathe him, Al Gore at least got people interested and passionate about being green but he's fighting a battle against corporates who need people to believe global warming is a myth.
Everybody knows the Earth is overpopulated and this is not a popular view particularly with sentimentalists, but these natural disasters are necessary. Instead of the innocent poor that do suffer, it should be those responsible for it – mass industry that makes a lot of stuff that we don't even need. In a strange way, the current global credit crunch and mass waste are linked; countless cheap electrical items toxically mass-produced to be thrown away within a year.
Unfortunately, for the planet, being environmentally minded isn't as easy as simply switching off lights when you're not using them, or having a shower instead of a bath. There's no ten-point plan, but the mantra seems to be to get involved and hassle those responsible – big companies, the government, the oil industry – until change does happen. Recently, in countries around the world, Earth Hour, a project started by WWF, proved that it is possible to live without using energy. It attracted criticism from some people saying that grand, attention-seeking ‘stunts’ such as that are merely empty gestures, not going far enough but it sure as hell captured people’s attention and their imaginations.
You don't have to go green, I'm not demanding you to, but do you want to live in a world that resembles a wasteland? Admittedly, until Governments start cracking down on corporates there may not be much incentive, but hey, in the long term going green could save you money.