Green Trumps Gray — Always

As the green movement gains visibility in mass media, it's to be expected that articles will carry a certain skepticism. Mainstream media tend to support the status quo and be suspicious and questioning of newness and change; don't ask me to explain this essential contradiction (the news must not be too new or it threatens more than informs), but years of working in a newsroom taught me that it's there.

A great example comes from a recent article in The New York Times, headlined "Living Green, but Allowing for Shades of Gray." Even after reading the piece several times, it's unclear to me what exactly its point is. The subject is Wendy Gordon, who is "no fanatic." Right away the alert goes out: Greenies are fanatics! Beware the greenies! (I'm not sure even if greenies were fanatics what the caution might be. We're fanatical about saving the planet — is it wrong?)

Now it's true, "she believes deeply in living green." She thinks that plain soap does just as well as antibacterial soap. (And well it should, since soap is an antibacterial by definition, a point that seems to have eluded both Gordon and the story's author.) She avoids plastics and cleans her home with vinegar and lemon juice instead of household products.

And yet, she's gray about her green. She thinks canned tuna and salmon are "not any less healthy than fresh." Another curious bromide that goes unresearched. Most incredibly she drives an SUV because "despite numerous studies that have come to the opposite conclusion, she says it makes her feel safer." At last, a point the author of the story has researched.

Gordon is the subject of the piece, apparently, because she publishes something called the Green Guide and is executive director of the Green Guide Institute. She calls her effort "Consumer Reports for the eco-conscious" and wants to help people "make healthy decisions in a world of imperfect information."

No argument that we live in a world of imperfect information, but someone who drives an SUV on grounds that it's safer seems to me to be piling on the imperfection. Even if SUVs were safer, and anyone who has done cursory research knows they demonstrably are not, their gas mileage and disproportionate use of natural resources would be hugely contradictory of a "green" lifestyle. Sorry, there are some things that disqualify you as "green," and SUVs are right at the top.

I'm not casting stones here. None of us is "perfectly" green. What irks me, though, is blatant hypocrisy from someone who should know better. If I drove an SUV (for the record, I never have owned one) I would still try to live as "greenly" as possible (at the top of my list would be getting rid of the SUV, however). And I would explain that I am embarrassed to be driving a polluting gas hog that sends exactly the wrong message about who I am. I have a friend who put a sticker on his SUV (before he got rid of it) that said, "I am changing the earth's climate. Ask me how."

That's the attitude any greenie should have toward SUVs.

I don't disagree with everything Gordon says in the article. Her points about caveat emptor when it comes to organic labeling are well-taken.

In general, though, the article creates more gray than it clarifies green. "Green" is a holistic approach to living based on a philosophy of sustainability and health. "Organic" and "green" — while they share some goals and attract the same psychology — are not synonyms or even parallel ideologies.

And "green" always trumps "gray," in real life as in the color chart.

The real caveat emptor involves what you read about "green," starting with knowing in your heart, the one true oracle — what "green" really means.

— Paul Andrews, Green For Good