Getting to Know Green

A friend recently remarked to me that some collagues at her work asked, "So what exactly is green?" and I thought to myself, that's a good question. Then my friend said, "I mean, come on -- don't we pretty much know that by now?"



The fact is that we pretty much do know what "green" means, in concept. It isn't always so obvious in detail, however, and you can bet that the darker side of capitalism will yield plenty of greenwashing that further confuses the issue. It doesn't help that the details of green are mostly very technical details, and making many of the intelligent trade-off decisions requires knowledge about energy, economics, and politics.

So, the idea of green is easy but its time to get past easy.

First of all, being green address two main issues: energy use and pollution. Going green with regard to energy use means using less energy (that is, being more efficient) and by using increasingly more renewable energy. Going green with regard to pollution means reducing and ultimately eliminating the damaging discharge of chemicals and nutrients through waste into the land, air and water. Obviously, in a lot of activities, energy use and pollution are closely tied because so much of our energy generation is based on fossil fuels and is therefore inherently polluting.

We can break it down further by organizing different types economic behavior into transportation, the use of buildings, producing and eating food, and producing and using other consumer products & services.

For most of us, being green is largely an issue of our consumer behavior. For individuals and families, going green means drastically reducing how much we drive and your fuel efficiency as we do so, reducing our energy usage at home, eating more local and organic food and less meat, and choosing other consumer products and services at least partly according to how much and what kind of energy they use and the pollution they create.

As society transitions progressively green, continuing to be green will mean purchasing increasing amounts of renewable energy, making increasingly sustainable consumption choices and demanding that your political candidates make sense and act accordingly on these topics.

Businesses and government are also consumers -- big consumers -- of energy and of buildings, and so being green means a lot of the same things to them. Of course, the idea of being green is larger than simple consumption, but that is the first and most important place to look.