It's Not Enough Being Green

Originally published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 8, 2011

BROOKLYN -- No one in their right mind would say that the environment is not one of the major issues of our time.

Major lakes and rivers in parts of this country are highly polluted (although some cleanup efforts, like that on the Gowanus Canal, have made progress). Air pollution contributes to respiratory diseases, many people have serious concerns about the safety of gas drilling in upstate New York, and the supply of fossil fuel is running out. We seriously need to develop renewable energy and to recycle our garbage more effectively.

However, there are some people who focus only on the environment as the big issue of our time. The environment, of course, is only one of several big issues – there’s education, the economy, foreign conflicts, labor conflicts, housing. And those are just a few.

The unfortunate truth is that the “powers that be,” for decades, have promoted environmentalism as a “safe” outlet for youthful idealism, for young people’s desire for social change. And many of these young people, and not-so-young people, are enraptured with environmentalism on the surface, but fail to make connections, to see the environment in context.

They fail to examine why so many American corporations and foreign governments like Russia and China have engaged in massive pollution, and without adequate controls may continue to do so in the future.

At its extreme, this sort of narrow vision has led to widespread acceptance of a situation where the mayor of New York City proposes to build bike lanes on every other street and all sorts of “green” traffic islands, but almost in the same breath threatens to cut the jobs of 6,000 teachers and to close almost 100 senior centers.

Most misled are those people who are under the delusion that they’re changing the world because they’re growing a garden on the roof or buying organic apples rather than “regular” apples. I, given the choice in a grocery or produce store, would probably buy the organic apples, but it’s mainly because, in the long run, this will contribute to my personal health. I have no illusions that I am impacting the wider society in a major way by doing so.

If every single person in the city started to buy organic apples and broccoli tomorrow, the stock market would still be in serious trouble, the good credit rating of the United States would still be in doubt, unemployment would still be high, and wars would still be going on in at least a dozen countries in the world. That’s something to think about.