I’ve come to hesitate at the word green.
It seems all you have to do these days is buy a jar of organic pasta sauce and you’ll be labeled green. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great colour, but I’m tired of hearing that word overused, frustrated when it’s stuck on any product that doesn’t have poison in it, bothered when it’s stapled to people who wear bamboo pants.
Being “green” implies that there is an option, an alternative way of being. That one can be green one day and not the next, that it’s a trend, just like being a hipster or wearing denim. This is the first mistake. There is no option.
If you’re reading these words then you are a human and you know that our survival is dependent on food and water and air and sunlight. That health and family and community and a sense of purpose are what give us happiness, and that today, as you read this blog, we are living in an incredibly globalized world.
So we must generate options only after we establish what our constraints are; this will allow us to work within the limits of a finite world. We cannot pretend that there is any option other than green.
Here in Canada it’s easy to forget that our every day choices, through the million of acts done by millions of Canadians every day, affect our health and the health of others.
Today I ask you to think. What makes most sense? I mean, here we are, 2008, and something is labeled “green” because it won’t cause cancer. Or because it doesn’t take advantage of a farmer. Or because it won’t end up killing hundreds of fish in the sea. This does not seem like a choice that should be given to an individual. It shouldn’t be a perk- it should be our baseline! What if these one million acts of green became standard.
What if green became normal.
But is this possible?
My dad and I went to Europe (Denmark, Germany, France, Spain) this summer to film a Nature of Things episode on renewable energy. You know, finding solutions to our global problems. Right. This was going to be no small task. To be honest, I was skeptical when we left. After all, I’d grown up in Canada my whole life (not what would be deemed a “green” country, despite the irony) plus I’d heard the warning calls of environmentalists throughout my childhood- you could say I was a little jaded.
I shouldn’t have been.
Why is it that we don’t hear about Europe and its leaps and bounds towards a sustainable energy future? Why don’t we hear about how it’s sweeping the area, about their breaking technologies, about how they are gaining huge benefits from their changes, about their economic profits? And why are we told here in Canada that it can’t be done, that it’s impossible?
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
There are countless uplifting examples I could draw on from that trip, from vast solar complexes to incredibly efficient train lines to pesticide-free wineries to windmills that pay themselves off in five years to fully recyclable furniture to pig guts generating enough energy to power a huge farm. It absolutely blew me away.*
But you know what? You know what affected me more than all these things put together? It was the attitude of the Danes. It was the attitude that we lack, here in Canada. It was the lack of the word “green”. In Denmark, “green” is simply what you do, because (get this): it just makes sense. Nobody called themselves green. Rather, I think they’d just call themselves smart.
Of course, back in the ‘70s, the Danes were in a predicament similar to the one we are facing here in North America. They were completely dependent on fossil fuel. But when they were cut off from foreign oil, they had to make the switch. They HAD to- there was no other option! They had to change how they thought about things, or they were toast; they had to change their minds. And they did it. And now it’s so much better: more healthy, more sustainable. Now it’s the norm.
Someone had to make the change somewhere down the line. Somebody had to change how they thought about things. So today I ask you to change your mind and go beyond green- be the new normal.
*Suzuki Diaries premieres on The Nature of Things on Sunday, November 16th at 8pm on CBC.