Green is Dead, and We Have Killed It
| 20 May 2010
It has been interesting to watch the great juggernaut known as Consumer Capitalism gobble up and commodify the terms that have been used to define the movement working to change our lifestyles to something more in line with the jarring reality of living in a closed system with finite resources (surprise!).
First it was “Green.” We all had to Go Green. A cute term, and sensible. Plants are green. Plants are good, right? Let’s be like plants. Plus, it had the added bonus of lending itself to include other things that happened to share the same hue. Kermit the Frog is green. Money is green. The old dichotomy between the health of our economy and the health of our planet and selves was instantly overcome. Green is good.
Well, Green was good. Unfortunately, we can’t live in 2006 forever. First green was derided for its singular focus; how did issues like social justice and health fit into green? Obviously, green was the last color you would associate with health, so the marketing gurus put their heads together and came up with the new color of the movement… wait for it… BLUE! Beautiful! Everyone loves blue! Water is blue. The sky is blue. 73.4% of grade schoolers list their favorite color as blue! But blue did not catch, probably for a lot of reasons not least of which because it’s impossible to define such a foundational, holistic, far-reaching transformation of worldview and action in such reductionistic terms as one freaking color. If they wanted to use color to define the movement, I don’t know why they didn’t just go with the rainbow… oh, right. Nevermind.
Read the rest of the article... Originally posted on The Wigg Party.
This following I wrote in response to a chain of comments about the quality of SF Water on the Permaculture SF email list.
