it ain't [sic] easy bein' green!

Kermit the Frog laments in song: "it ain't easy being green...but today corporate strategies all suggest they're in tune with the environment and most have done this quite simply by slapping the color green on their brands. A tacit assertion of earth friendliness, easily done. A sleight of hand or wave of a digital wand to reinvent themselves overnight. Automobile manufacturers too are emphasizing environmental friendliness with their ads. And when there is no redeeming environmental value...one is often implied by omission. Take Hummer's latest ad's featuring the H3. They show the H3 with the family on a low impact cruise over rocks and streams out communing with nature. Irony is that these ads are still irresponsible! Let's drive a vehicle with poor fuel economy and an ever expanding carbon footprint out into nature and kill a few more trees! I thought the whole point of communing with nature was to get away from vehicles and breath in fresh air; not force nature to breath it's last breaths! Hummers are some of the most egregious violations of corporate responsibility! The H2 has EPA fuel efficiency numbers of 10 city / 13 highway...and with those very generous allowances that's still 3.4 metric tons of carbon emissions in a year. Further, the 8500 lb weight of the vehicle would destroy most any vehicle and the occupants therein in a collision. If that's not enough...pouring salt into the wounds would be the fact that current federal tax laws reward you more for buying an H2 than if you were to buy an electric vehicle. Chrysler and Dodge with their 300 and Charger or Cadillac with their sexy adds asking "...does it return the favor?" also pander to the worst kinds of market activity. But are the manufacturers of these weapons of mass destruction solely to blame? It is like Kevin Costner's character in "Field of Dreams" that "If you build it...they will come!" But does that make it right!? Further does it make sense that the 300 million or so citizens of the US(roughly 5% of the world population(~6 billion)) (191 million licensed drivers in 2000) account for 25% of the world's fuel consumption? How long will this idiocy last? Where is environmental stewardship? Why haven't we ratified the Kyoto Protocol of the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change? Even India and China have ratified this protocol which intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. To countries like China these are necessary steps because their economy is completing it's transformation as we speak to a free market economy. Factor in the 1.2 billion citizens of China and imagine the impact the projected 300 million new drivers by 2020 demanding their share of the world's dwindling oil reserves. How much more will this exacerbate an already overwhelmed eco-system? Climate change? Let's call it what it is, 'cause the proof is in the numbers: This is unadulterated Global Warming. We can stick our heads in the sand, but this issue will not simply go away! Attempts to raise the issue of global warming are often summarily dismissed as the rantings of a lunatic fringe of society, but the reality is that a groundswell of opposition to mainstream party lines is gaining momentum. Global warming is REAL...first and foremost we must all come to grips with this reality! Secondly, we must begin to make changes in how we live our lives. Sacrificing how things used to be is what must be done. I look at my home in Baltimore and the many flat roofed homes not unlike it throughout the metropolitan areas of this country and I wonder: why doesn't the government institute programs which subsidize the installation of Solar panels onto the roofs of these homes? This would not only reduce demand from utility companies like Constellation Energy, conservative estimates say this would reduce the individual consumer's utility bill by 38% on average per year. There are lots of things that could be done as part of government reform in a free market economy that would benefit society as a whole, but that would be too much like right. It would also be difficult in the beginning! There are lots of things that are really easy, like going to war against a country on "trumped up charges" and manufactured evidence to bolster our control of the world's waning oil reserves. The tougher row to hoe would be implementing public policy which forces auto makers to deliver products which average 75 miles per gallon or better still that were exclusively hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Force this issue and subsidize the construction of hydrogen fuel cell station infrastructure which make the vehicles even more palatable. Many cities have announced "green initiatives" but are these really anything more than announcements? They throw a few trees in medians of busy traffic routes like Route 40/Baltimore National Pike as part of reforestation programs, but these saplings face low survival rates with auto emissions choking them during morning and evening rush hours. Why not make bicycle traffic to and from major business centers feasible with bike lanes during infrastructure maintenance programs? Milling roads has widened them in many instances...why not carve an eight foot path for two lanes of bicycle traffic to encourage this mode of transport?

I suppose I could go on and on, but until people make the connections...there won't be any sense of emergency and no impetus to act. Kermit lamented it wasn't easy being green but in the 80s and 90s about two-thirds of the 110 known harlequin frog species are believed to have vanished. The situation isn't much better for insects, what with publicly recognized disorders like Bee Colony Collapse being loosely attributed to climate change. Perhaps if we revisit our study of other empires...we might be able to find a fix for our own ills and this American Empire can continue on in perpetuity!