Pardon me while I engage in a lengthy post-Earth Day rant.
Yesterday, while placing the finishing touches on an article on “green messaging” for my favorite off-road trade publication, a writer friend sent me this Earth Day “obituary.”
The premise of my article is that despite stereotypes, from manufacturing to packaging, to cause-related marketing, companies in the off-road aftermarket are showing more environmental initiative than people realize. It’s just that in a world where every other industry seems to be advertising their green friendliness, off-roaders are woefully behind in getting the word out. My friend, however, thought it deliciously ironic that just when I was trying to tell a segment of Corporate America they need to talk more about the environment, the Washington Post is now saying too much talk is killing Earth Day…
Being a child of the 1970s, I’m unfortunately old enough to have participated in some of the first Earth Day celebrations in grammar school. I recall one in particular when our whole school assembled on the field for a game of Earth Ball, in which a massive burlap ball, tempra-painted to resemble the globe, was dragged before us. At first we were left to assume it was a ball game like any other, with two opposing teams struggling in vain to push the gigantic globe toward their respective goal posts.
When that proved impossible, our teachers smiled and confessed that the real point was to join together in “saving the planet” by holding the ball aloft in the center of the field. The true “winner” would be the planet.
That game, of course, went over like a lead balloon. And it’s exactly ridiculous “teachable moments” like that which set the stage for Earth Day’s implosion from its very inception.
No, Earth Day wasn’t killed by too much hype. Rather, it was killed the sort of hype from fanatics that leaves the rest of us rolling our eyes.
Earth Day was killed by changing standards of “being green” that are impossible to keep up with, driven by self-proclaimed trendsetters who really don’t have a clue themselves about what the rules should be.
In the late 1970s their groovy climatologists told us we faced doom from Global Cooling and another Ice Age. By the late 1990s that theory had morphed into Global Warming (with the former inconvenient “truth” conveniently forgotten). Now evidence is surfacing again that our planet may actually be in a cooling trend. (Notice lately how the term “Global Warming” is subtly being replaced by the vaguer term “Climate Change?” Apparently, when it comes to declaring an environmental crisis, it’s good to keep your options open.)
It’s sort of like the “paper or plastic” debate at the grocery checkout a few years ago. First we were told plastic would save trees. Then we were scolded for switching to it and clogging landfills. Now we have state legislators trying to regulate us into using canvas totes.
My question is what happens when we discover all those totes take more energy to produce than paper and plastic put together? Or that they’re sewn together by exploited children in some Third World sweat shop? You just know something like that is coming down the pike.
Meanwhile, I hear carbon neutralizers hotly debating whether it’s more earth-friendly to take home a non-renewable doggie bag from your favorite tofu eatery, or risk contributing to methane buildups in landfills by leaving the scraps for the waiter to discard. (Maybe we should all just commit to eating everything on our plates like mother used to tell us.)
It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to the idea of saving the planet. Like most average Americans, I’m willing to do my part.
As I point out in my upcoming article for the off-road community, a 2008 study by Cone LLC and the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship found that roughly four in 10 Americans buy products they perceive as “green-friendly.”
Count me among them. I buy and gleefully use compact fluorescents. I’m an avid supporter of L.A.’s recycling program, even though “private collectors” usually scavenge my blue bins long before the city’s trash trucks arrive. (Thereby contributing to the city’s revenue shortfalls.) Hey, I’ll even go out of my way to take an MTA bus ride now and then to save fossil fuels and do my share for a greener L.A. In fact, like most people, I’ll do whatever I reasonably can. But “reasonably” is the operative word.
And therein lies the challenge for environmental fanatics. In the end, if the “true believers” really want the rest of us “mainstreamers” to help them save the planet, they’ll first save us the loony hype.
