Living in a Green World
Wednesday, June 18 2008 | Comments (0)
You have to get brown to live green.
Mike took the time to accent his green episodes the week. Maybe that left a few people wondering what exactly green living was. The discussion of global warming and green living has been in the media more and more.
Green living is a philosophy. People who try to live green try to keep an eye on their "ecological footprints." Ecological footprints are a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems and natural resources. It compares human consumption of natural resources with Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate them. It is an estimate of the amount of biologically productive land and sea area that needs to be regenerated (if possible) to offset the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste, as far as moder technology and current understanding allows.
Environmental preservation, a trend pushed heavily in the U.S., is viewed as the strict setting aside of natural resources to prevent damage caused by contact with humans or by certain human activities, such as logging, mining, hunting, and fishing.
The difference between that and conservationism is that conservation allows for some degree of industrial development, albeit it within sustainable limits, but environmentalists push to replace industrial development with greener alternatives or get rid of them altogether.
Environmentalist action has recently led to the development of a new subculture. This group is generally 30+ years old, educated and from middle and upper income levels. The tend to exhibit sustainable consumption patterns, choosing local and organic products over the more conventional imported products that have been manufactured using chemicals such as pesticides and preservatives.
Contemporary environmentalists are often described as being split into three groups, 'Dark' 'Light' and 'Bright' Greens.
Light Greens see protecting the environment first and foremost as a personal responsibility. They fall in on the reformist end of the spectrum, but light Greens do not emphasize environmentalism as a distinct political ideology, or even seek fundamental political reform. Instead they often focus on environmentalism as a lifestyle choice.
In contrast, dark greens believe that environmental problems are an inherent part of industrialized capitalism, and seek radical political change. 'Dark greens' tend to believe that dominant political ideologies are corrupt and inevitably lead to consumerism, alienation from nature and resource depletion. Dark Greens claim that this is caused by the emphasis on growth that exists within all existing ideologies, a tendency referred to as 'growth mania'. The dark green brand of environmentalism is associated with ideas of Deep Ecology, Post-materialism, Holism, the Gaia Theory of James Lovelock and the work of Fritjof Capra.
Green Living is about conservation in order to preserve the planet.
More recently, a third group may be said to have emerged in the form of Bright Greens. This group believes that radical changes are needed in the economic and political operation of society in order to make it sustainable, but that better designs, new technologies and more widely distributed social innovations are the means to make those changes. Bright green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the "tools, models, and ideas" that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions.
The biggest goal is to replenish what society uses for survival in order to preserve the planet for the future. Mike said he didn’t intend for Dirty Jobs to be a ‘green show,’ but many of the dirtiest jobs out there are performed in the name of green. Green living requires less use of machines and vehicles, which means hard, dirty, manual labor and that gives Mike job security.
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