Why I Hate Becoming Green

Last weekend I visited Gordon College in Wenham Massachusetts for a debate tournament. Like many colleges and institutions these days, Gordon made the switch to a greener campus. The most visible change was the numerous containers for waste products. They had two kinds, the first read: "single-stream recycling bin, Gordon recycles!" And the second: "Non-recyclable waste, Gordon recycles!" I wish they simply called the latter what everybody else calls it—a trash can.
All that emphasis on environmental friendliness bothered me. The end goal of the Green movement is convince us to live in a manner which has little or no effect on the environment. The emphasis on using less energy, developing renewable energy and managing the resources we have in this world are all laudable. But there are more important things in life than the earth and the Green movement is getting in the way of those goals.
We sacrifice lives and progress when we give up for the environment. We don’t have any CFC’s in our lives because they were banned several years ago due to the widely believed fact that they depleted the ozone layer. CFC’s made firefighting more efficient, saving lives. Scientists have now discovered that the ozone depletion at the South Pole is naturally occurring and CFC’s were not an important factor in the depletion of the ozone. But they are still banned, making our lives difficult because we have to use less efficient alternatives to CFC’s.
Many Green projects can only be supported by the government, which increases the power of the state. Ethanol is mixed in our gasoline to make the mix more environmentally friendly. Currently the Government supports the Ethanol industry through subsidies. This is all fine and good except that this policy creates less efficient gasoline, a car which emits different, not fewer, toxins, and an industry dependant on the state for its existence. Currently, ethanol is not the bright, new energy future we are looking for, but if the Government were to discontinue the subsidies, the whole industry would collapse, destroying thousands of jobs. The ethanol program has made government bigger and created a need for government in a place where it should not be in.
Blind fervor is driving many green projects, not science or logic. We only have to look to global warming to see numerous examples of this. The loudest spokesman for climate-change is a politician who didn’t get an award in science, but a highly politicized Nobel Peace Prize. (The Nobel Peace Prize is now reduced to a joke) And the most recent fiasco of “Climate-gate” demonstrates how politics, not an unbiased approach to science, drives the Global Warming scare.
Environmentally friendly programs and acts are not all bad. If a green action makes sense and truly provides saved energy and more efficiency to people, it will be adopted. But we need to think before we act. Not all green programs are beneficial, not all environmental issues are urgent. Right now, I await the day when the true, level headed solution comes along to our environmental obstacles. The rest, I scornfully discard.