Every year, we watch in awe as our landscapes green up with spring. In time, the color peaks and then fades, stepping aside for winter.
Today, we are watching a greening of another kind. This one is in the way we produce and use energy. And while it certainly has a longer season than the greening of trees, we still wonder if our world is turning evergreen or if our society will shed this green after a time, just as the trees do.
It has happened before, of course. The petroleum crisis brought about a shift to compact cars with gas-sipping engines. But when the pressure eased, the fuel hog pickups and SUV’s of the 1990s flourished. The environmental movement ended up as just a flash in the pan.
So is it a fad? Or will the emphasis on environmental quality be sustained long-term? There are many factors that will determine the ultimate outcome.
Of course, a key question is how much the nation’s infrastructure evolves to accommodate green thinking. If cities, states, and companies invest fueling sites for alternative automobiles, green mass transit, or windmill farms and hydroelectric dams, it’s unlikely that we’ll reverse the substitutions that those steps represent.
And on the backside, if the infrastructure supporting coal and petroleum is idled and dismantled, it would be less financially advantageous to return to them later on. When big companies like ENMAX Energy have made major changes to their business model in order to go green (or at least, greener), that will be when the changes are more likely to be permanent.
But maybe that’s getting ahead of things. After all, despite government incentives and well-placed intentions of corporations, a large measure of becoming more eco-friendly is ultimately about the consumer.
Government won’t mandate or regulate if voters don’t concur. And firms won’t sell it if customers won’t buy it. So the durability of green thinking and green action all begins in the minds of consumers. They must maintain a desire to use less energy, become less pollutive, and think of the environment more actively than they have before.
When they do, they will vote for candidates who have green planks in their platforms. They will seek out greener products for their homes, for everything from cleaning to light bulbs. They will, at least in some number, seek out bigger-ticket green items like cars and appliances, and that startup demand will spur firms to expand production in order to reduce prices and draw in more buyers.
Not every iota of the green movement is driven by consumers, of course. Thousands of miles from here, the oil barons of the Middle East are weighing their options for production. Along the backbone of the Appalachian Mountains, coal companies are calculating the time they have left to mine a seam. And maybe in some flooded valley elsewhere in the US, a movement is forming that will push for a dam to manage rainfall and simultaneously generate energy.
The relative push and pull from different sides of the equation will ultimately determine how green we stay and for how long. But unlike the 1970s, today we seem to have a deeper desire and greater willingness to reduce fossil fuel usage and keep the leaves on indefinitely.
Photo Credit
Takato Dam – Wikipedia Creative Commons
Guest Author Bio
Sara StringerSara is freelance writer who enjoys exploring the issues in our society through her blogging. In her spare time, she enjoys maintaining a healthy lifestyle through swimming and practicing yoga.
I’d say we’d have to get “Green” to determine how long we can stay that way. Not my word, it’s a color people use to paint over their Environmental Privilege. And it’s not a state, “I’m green” begs the question “How green?” How in love are you? There’s no number for that, for we scarecely comprehend the equation.
We need to get Clean. Like an addict, we haven’t stopped shipping diesel to the pumps to pump Crude out to the refinery to distill out the diesel. It would be more efficient to drop off a still that I can fit in a pickup, and tap off the top fractions (Methane through Propane, approximately, there’d be some Ammonia, and Benzene in there too) then convert the engine that keeps that bird head pecking, to skip 2 trips for the Tanker Truck.
Or, we can paint the pump green, and plant some trees around it, because it’s an eyesore. That’s an example, 1 step in the chain leading from pump-to-pump, the oilfield to the gas-station before the mileage of your car is even a factor. But the problem is also green. The guy that drives the truck over to fill up the tank on your oil pump gets payed, as does every middleman in between, whereas you can only sell the pickup bed still once. But you only have to drop it off, once, and somebody has to design it. Every single link in that chain is run ultimately off that crude. The pipeline, the trucks that delivered the sections, and the power tools to set it up, the refinery, the tanker ships, and trailers, the gas pump at the station.
That’s how “Green” we are. And we can sustain it, as long as energy is cheaper than money. Unfortunately, Peak Oil will be too late to fix it, and we’re rushing to that point as quickly as we can burn diesel for oil, and profit. It’s not a fad, it’s a marketing ploy.