To be totally honest, when I think of "GREEN", the first image that comes to mind is a skinny-looking alien with big black buggy eyes and frog legs. Now I know this sounds funny; you were probably expecting me to say the first image that comes to mind is a hybrid car, a wind turbine, or a reusable bag. You might have even expected me to say zero emissions (whatever they look like) carbon offsets, or any other possible type of product or innovation bearing the lofty and dizzying badge of being "GREEN".
After all, these are the things we are told we should think of. Because somewhere along the way, green became more than just a color. It became a SUPER color. Superseding black, pink, yellow-- and for that matter any other straightforward color-- "GREEN" became synonymous with a mighty big (albeit vague) promise. An implication that whatever the effect of the purchase or service, it would somehow contribute to a more sustainable planet and deliver us back to a harmonious balance with the natural world that hasn't been felt since Adam, Eve and that little apple incident.
Cheered on by eco-celebrities, politicians, and entrepreneurs, society has embraced this "greenness". The market is awash with feel-good, organic jeans, organic moisturizers, and low-carbon diets. Most of this is moderately beneficial--or at least relatively harmless. But as other colors, like blue are touted as the "GREEN" successor, and phrases like 'Green fatigue' and 'Green-wash' appear more frequently in conversation, it begs the question, is color-coding our planet's issues wise? Or are we looking at this all through the wrong lens?
As an experiment, I urge you to get in touch with your inner child and let your imagination run free. I want you to zoom out and take the "orbital view" (as our MYOOZE J. Carl Ganter puts it) of the planet. To do that, I want you to imagine that you're the alien visiting from planet SMART. While taking your new biometrically-grown UFO for a neighborhood spin, you find yourself stumbling across planet Earth. Intrigued by your discovery, you decide to take a closer look. Beneath, you glimpse a crosshatch of airplanes, a web of factories, and a humming network of highways. Look even closer and you see clusters of cities, sprawling tenements, and stripped forests.
IF GREEN IS THE COLOR TO BE, THEN THINKING "GREEN" MIGHT MEAN FORGETTING EVERYTHING WE'VE BEEN TAUGHT AND SEEING OUR PLANET WITH A VISITOR'S EYES.
The questions is, would you consider this planet you've stumbled upon an intelligently advanced super species that had designed a SMART planet like your own, overflowing with SMART ideas, systems, products and services that, like an olden-day traveler, you could triumphantly take back to improve your own planet? Or would you speed off, relieved that you didn't have to live amongst all the hot, polluted, dumb mess?
If green is the color to be, then thinking "GREEN" might mean forgetting everything we've been taught and seeing our planet with a visitor's eyes. What if we didn't speak the eco-language? If we could no longer rely on jargon like "Energy Security", "C02", melting icecaps", "compact fluros" or the self assigned GREEN savior, "Carbon Offsets" to describe the world we saw? Then perhaps the real innovations would become clear.
For all the enthusiasm, noise and momentum, the scientific, political, industrial, and consumer consensus, we have ended up with a lukewarm campaign that at best, feels like it could make it to the end of the year but maybe even only to the end of the week. A campaign that for the most part, still feels like a chore, and for all the postulating and passionate rhetoric, was always most clearly articulated by Kermit the frog when he noted, "It isn't easy being green".
The latest science has now given our planet, at most, one decade left to stop the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions and begin the transition to a sustainable global environmental economy. The outcome of this monumental task is ultimately going to depend on our ability to act now, and quickly. So the question has to be: WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? What's stopping us from acting on the information we already have?
Without trying to oversimplify the situation at hand, it's fair to say that GREEN has officially become a 'thing'. What was initially coined to prevent a global meltdown has become a means to trivialize the issue, i.e. "I have walked my dog, I have paid my taxes, and oh, I've done that GREEN thing'. It also comes with a myriad of confusing, abstract terminology and a flotilla of products that create just enough distraction from the truly important global issues to ultimately delay humanity from undertaking the enormous challenges that lie ahead.
WE CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO MINE THE PAST OR MORTGAGE THE FUTURE.
Tucked behind all the disaster headlines is a much larger list of solutions to current inefficiencies that already exist within our current systems! So as we continue to strive for better terminology, let's also engage in a little smart thinking.
As with Climate Change, change can be threatening. But it can also be a perpetual source of opportunity. Having a coherent language for the "GREEN" movement seems like a good thing, but it also hides the fact that no one movement has the answer. By labeling some things GREEN and some things not, we lose sight of the fact that we've never been separate from each other or from nature at all.
We can no longer afford to mine the past or mortgage the future. To get us back on to a sustainable path, we need to start living within our means. That also means living within the limits of our natural capital. Waste is no longer acceptable--industrialized society is gobbling up our natural capital at an increasing rate, presenting an urgent threat to humanity. Let's start taking responsibility for our impacts, let go of linear thinking and embrace the cyclical where our outputs simply become the inputs of another process. Let's continue to move to a de-materialized economy, based primarily on information and services, rather than products. The most resilient, adaptable, creative, and sustainable systems are decentralized and networked. Let's work together to create economic systems that go beyond the 'winner takes all' model and allow for humans everywhere to have a chance to aspire to more than just survival.
If there's just one thing I hope you saw during your brief trip to space looking down on our earth, its that on a basic level, there's no getting away from "being GREEN," since there is nowhere really "away" where we can throw our problems. Everything is interconnected and interdependent--businesses, economies, societies and ecologies, me and you. There are also no easy answers, no final destination, and no one-size-fits-all solutions. But the interconnectivity that currently threatens the planet is also our most promising hope for revitalizing it. And getting smarter now about the way we think, problem-solve and work together is the first and most vital step of that journey.