Going Green

Earth Day is becoming a permanent event in America, for the mere thought of global warming has sent gullible civilians into a panic of eco-consciousness. Going “green” is budding into a national phenomenon, where clothing shops are bagging your organic t-shirts into biodegradable shopping bags. It’s where relaxing means lighting your soy wax candle and kicking back in your bamboo spa robe while drinking champagne out of your recycled glass flute. Al Gore’s dull documentary focuses on his crusade against global warming, spooking us with bar graphs and pie charts during the never-ending lecture that truly was “An Inconvenient Truth”. Maybe it was inconvenient for the polar bears, who already knew something was up, but it was not inconvenient to corporations with an insatiable appetite for money. They’re profiting off of the fear from American people, who frantically scurry around, searching for a purchasable solution to the problem they unknowingly created. Is global warming a marketing tactic or an actual life-threatening issue?



Before the first cries of climate change, people in America were living life peacefully, devoid of pesky thoughts that they were contributing to their own demise. Life was easy; gas was $1.50 a gallon and Three’s Company was still on television. All of a sudden in the early 2000s, new reports of global warming were accumulating and popping up on your local 5 o’clock news. “Artic ice melting at record rates” “Global warming killing endangered species” “Massive hurricanes linked to global warming”. Soon, respected news and trashy teen magazines alike, television advertising, shopping malls, and internet blogs worldwide were taking notice. A new wave of consumerism was created, feeding off guilt from earth’s residents who feel responsible for climate change. This new wave contains the over-used buzzword “green”. Green houseware, green electronics, green skin care, green blankets, green copying paper, and even green picture frames. All of which are made from glorious renewable resources. Stiff bamboo, fibrous hemp and dead wood.


Even the queen of television herself, Oprah Winfrey, is jumping on the green bandwagon. Winfrey conducted an entire show comprised of green lifestyle changes to commence the saving of our doomed planet Earth. Using the catch phrase “Simple Changes, Big Results”, she genially commands you to go out and acquire her list of Favorite Green Things. Simple proposals like not using toilet paper, abstaining from air conditioning, and walking to the market are actions that will evidently single-handedly revive the Earth.



Whether in the realization stage or still comfortably stuck in denial of the existence of global warming a.k.a climate change, soon all varieties of people will begin to flock more towards eco-friendly products. The popularity of such products may be a trendy phase, such as the Rubik’s Cube or lava lamps, but will it soon warp from being a charitable purchase, to fashionable conformance? Sadly, yes. But good ol’ Mother Nature isn’t complaining one bit.