One week to go before the "green wash marketing" media blitz across our great nation...
I will try to emulate the how over-hyping and "selling green" as an environmental solution ultimately diverts focus, funding, education and sustainability from the public.
Making things worse, as public interest and education become "oversold" on environmental issues they become defensive and disinterested due to lack of "immediate" personal and government action on issues portrayed as "hopeless and bleak" by popular media. Not understanding that "reactive action" can be extremely harmful (i.e. ethanol food warns), and that measures to correct decades of neglect require a concise balance of government, community, international and corporate changes. Without, this balanced change we will continue to fail at every crossroad solar, wind, geo-thermal, elec. car, hydrogen and sustainable nuclear option that failed since the first "green movement" of the 60's.
Yep over 3 decades of activism and we are as dependant as ever on non U.S. sources. Hardly sustainable... 60's earth loving idealism eroded away by years of false promises and unsustainable actions.
At the end of my "Earthday" series I will give everyone in America a sustainable option to save our planet...
Part 1 (Green needs to make $ense or it fails to set example):
When it comes to all things "green", common sense seems to have been abandoned. Our failure to think clearly about such matters would be amusing if the potential consequences were not so serious. Consider the recent "lights out" campaign that supposedly should energies the world about the problems of climate change by urging citizens in 27 big cities to turn out their lights for an hour.
Nobody, it seemed, wanted to spoil the party by pointing that the event was immensely futile, that it highlighted a horrible metaphor, or that it caused much higher overall pollution.....
Ironically, the lights-out campaign also implies much greater energy inefficiency and dramatically higher levels of air pollution. When asked to extinguish electric lights, most people around the world would turn to candlelight instead. Candles are cozy and seem oh-so-natural. Yet, when measured by the light they generate, candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights.
Moreover, candles create massive amounts of highly damaging indoor particulate air pollution, which in the United States is estimated to kill more than a 100,000 people each year. Candles can easily create indoor air pollution that is 10-100 times the level of outdoor air pollution caused by cars, industry, and electricity production. Measured against the relative decrease in air pollution from the reduced fossil fuel energy production, candles increase health-damaging air pollution 1,000-10,000-fold....
Source guardian