Move over red, white, and blue, America is going green.
Green energy. Green technology. Green homes. Green cars. Green
jobs. Green commerce. Green living. Green government. We’ve
just elected our first green president, Barack Obama, as well
as numerous senators and local representatives who campaigned
on promises of leading America to greener pastures. You can
color our your future green.
The green vision goes something like this: we are going to
live in a “sustainable” manner and be kind to
the planet. We will shrink our carbon footprints, eventually
becoming carbon neutral.
Thinking globally and acting locally, we will stop climate
change and protect wildlife and the wilderness from man’s
destructive ways. We will end our addiction to oil by repowering
America with clean, renewable energy; nay, we will reinvent
energy. Our goal is a healthy and just planet where people
live in harmony with nature.
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But perhaps, unlike others in a mad rush to start bicycling,
recycling, and carbon de-cycling, you’ve been distracted
from the greening of America by the many other crises and
controversies our nation is facing: the global financial meltdown,
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamic terrorism, volatile
gasoline prices, spiraling health care costs, illegal immigration,
and so on. They are, indeed, a formidable lot. That said,
it’s time you recognize that a great green tsunami is
heading your way, threatening to wash away your standard of
living and many of your liberties.
Like many Americans, your sense of the green movement may
be that it simply advocates small lifestyle changes to benefit
the environment. But the green agenda, in fact, is much more
ambitious; it promotes countless new restrictions and regulations
designed to reorder society from top to bottom.
And so the greens bombard us with an endless list of “dos”
and “don’ts”: Take colder showers. Turn
the heat down. Use less air conditioning. Dry your clothes
on a clothesline. Drive small, fuel efficient vehicles or
stop driving altogether. Avoid imported or non-locally grown
food. Bring your own bags to the supermarket. Buy energy efficient
lightbulbs. Lose weight. (Fat people allegedly use more gasoline.)
Buy expensive “green” electricity. Shun bottled
water and drive-thru restaurants. Use cloth diapers. Clean
your house with “natural” products. Use a non-motorized
push lawnmower. Pay more for “fair trade” coffee.
Don’t use disposable cameras. Vacation closer to home.
All these admonitions have something in common — you
living on a smaller, more inconvenient, more uncomfortable,
more expensive, less enjoyable, and less hopeful scale. And
the greens’ moral hectoring is just the beginning. Green
ideologues are bursting with an impatient zeal to begin dictating,
through force of law, your mobility, diet, home energy usage,
the size of your house, how far you can travel, and even
how many children you can have.
You may be tempted to dismiss all this as a gross exaggeration.
Make no mistake: living green is really about someone else
microregulating you – downsizing your dreams and
plugging each one of us into a brand new social order for
which we never bargained. It’s about you living under
the green thumb and having the boundaries of your life drawn
by others.
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