The Great, Green Hope

Interesting, isn’t it, the way we follow trends? Sometimes it seems like we’re mindless sheep, herded easily by advertisers and the media. Buy this, wear this, watch this, drink this, eat this, hear this, read this, say this, and be this. Is that what is happening to us now? Is the Green Movement just another trendy phase we’re going through?

Madison Avenue says,"Buy this, wear this, watch this..."

My first response, a couple of years ago, was a resounding, “Yes.” Don’t get me wrong; I have always been trying to save the planet. I was recycling before it was popular. My first real job 33 years ago was to divert equipment from the landfill for a large university. Now they call it, “landfill avoidance.” My mother had always called it, “Waste not, want not.”

So, about a year ago, when I started hearing the word green used in every other sentence on radio and TV, and in newspapers and magazines — “Green this, green that” — I was skeptical. I began to feel the old pressures of the herd mentality. My first reaction was to resist the temptation. I told myself, Give it a few months; it’ll pass.

At that time, I had just retired and was consulting with industries, helping them sell excess equipment and overstocked parts. I was showing them how to establish markets for their metal scrap, cardboard, and plastics; and teaching them ways to recycle paper in their offices and food in their kitchens. Gas prices were climbing like crazy. Factory management began asking me for information on alternative energy sources and ways to reduce utility expenditures. Industry was finally beginning to understand that saving the planet could also save money.

Then the economy crashed. Boy, that was a kick in the teeth. Wall Street became a roller coaster ride for the insane. Madison Avenue grew eerily quiet. Buying anything but necessities became an expendable luxury. The need to be fashionable became the need to survive. For many of us, getting any job replaced getting the right job. Feeding our faces was suddenly more important than feeding our egos.

Mother Earth is teaching us our colors. Photo: Joe Hennager

That was when I noticed something strange. Even though the economy was bleeding red, the green thing persisted. The word green wasn’t coming from the media any more; it was coming from the people. I wouldn’t have noticed it, but I was up to my neck in research; digging through scientific journals; studying the latest technologies in solar energy, wind power, waste heat recovery, and geothermal generators; listening to utility company CEOs; talking to inventors and physicists — people at the top and bottom of this huge, green hierarchy.

Google the word "green," and you'll find nearly one billion sites. Photo: Joe Hennager

I saw for the first time the depth and breadth of what this word has become. Want to see what I’m talking about? Google the word green. Yes, right now, type in those five letters. As of 8:00 A.M. (CST), November 24, 2008, were about 877,000,000 green sites to choose from. By 8:00 PM, there were about 892,000,000. That’s not a movement; that’s a phenomenon.

Most of the sites you’ll find are green businesses. Many are small start-ups, hopeful moms and pops who have an idea that maybe, just maybe, they can save the world a little bit at a time and make a buck for their effort. (Ain’t capitalism grand?)

The number of ecopreneurs is growing. In fact, according to The New York Times, the number of eco-businesses will double in the next two years. Green businesses have the potential to generate more than $1 trillion in world revenue in the next year alone.

For too long, we’ve seen the need for profit consume our planet, piece by piece. Industries hired Madison Avenue to convince us that it was okay to scar the surface of our planet, poison our soil, air and water, and make us sick with toxic chemicals. The industries paid us a salary so we could buy their mind-numbing products. And we did. Damn, we’re just as much to blame as they are.

Now, with the fall of the stock market, our precious dollars are dwindling fast. It’s possible that the only thing that will save us is the Great Green Hope (play the Superman theme) and the two million green collar jobs it will create.

Imagine that this whole green thing is not Madison Avenue hype. Imagine that we are not being driven like sheep into another financial rip-off. Maybe we are all connected by some deeply ingrained, genetic signal that has triggered certain cells inside our brains to click on. Maybe, for the first time we are able to hear some subsonic message coming from Earth herself. Or, if you find that too far to stretch your imagination, maybe we’re all just damn sick and tired of putting profits before planet.

The U.S. is a nation of 306 million people in a world of 6.7 billion — 5% of the population consuming 26% of the world’s energy. Right now, every one of us can live more sustainably. Eventually we can overcome our addiction to oil, coal, and nuclear energy. That is what Mother Earth is telling us.

Listen to your planet. Photo: Belinda Geiger

If we don’t do something as a species, we will go the way of the Western Black Rhinoceros, the Red Colobus Monkey, and the Blue Pike. These are colors we will never see again.

This is not a religious prophecy. This is not some political party platform. Green is no longer just a color. It is the connection between every living thing on this planet.

Picture a blue ball in space that is 25,000 miles in circumference. Visualize it spinning at 1,000 miles per hour and moving through space at 67,000 miles per hour. Now consider that it has been doing this for 4.5 billion years, and it has done so in relative silence, until now.

Open your ears. Listen to your planet. Open your eyes. Mother Earth is teaching us our colors, and today, the color is Life.

Joe Hennager

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