Greening Up

I’m feeling green. And that’s not just because St. Patrick’s Day is soon; or that spring is suddenly in the air after a few weeks of a long-delayed winter. That’s using “green” in the traditional sense – green as in the color of grass or the face of the Wicked Witch of the West. Green from the Old English word, “grene,” which is akin to the ancient Indo-European word for “grow,” in the sense of “the color of living things.”

The green I’m also feeling – the one that has officially gone Hollywood, and therefore mainstream -- is a newer meaning of “green” -- that of being environmentally sound or earth-friendly. (Dictionary.com gives 16 other definitions for this adjective;) If you saw last week’s Oscar Awards, then you know that the event producers tried to be as “carbon-neutral” as possible; and that Al Gore won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” A few weeks earlier, Prince Charles and Camilla flew to New York on a commercial jet instead of a private one, in order to reduce their “carbon footprint;” and a recent picture of our Pro-Oil President George W. Bush smiling (albeit, uneasily) while – finally! -- holding up a vial of corn-grown ethanol (even though he held it as though it were urine).

Almost every day, I see something or read an article about our new “greenness”: on a recent trip to Boston, for example, I saw what looked like an oversized pine- colored garbage can that called itself a “solar-powered trash compactor.” And in my hotel room was “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices” put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists – the first hotel literature I’ve ever seen to directly challenge the Gideon Bible for bedside table space. Personally, I find all this very heartening and long overdue.

Since the first Earth Day (April 22, 1972), anyone overtly environmentally conscious has been dubbed a “treehugger” or “a granola.” Though those terms still exist, they may start to fade, as concern for the environment becomes a part of everyday life and no longer a political statement. With that, I already hear a new vocabulary sprouting – with familiar words in new combinations or with new meanings to aid and abet our awakened awareness.

For instance, an environmental firm’s website uses “green” as a verb, describing how to: Green Your Home; Green Your Business; Green Your Event; Green Your Travel; and Green Your Building. I’m fine with making “green” a verb. The only thing I’ll add is that people will probably start to attach “up” to the verb because to green UP one’s home sounds more natural than to simply “green” one’s home.

In any case, the name of this green-as-verb company is the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and it is from the BEF that the Academy of Motion Pictures purchased “renewable energy credits” to offset the 250,000-pound “carbon footprint” that it took to produce the Oscar Award telecast and the week’s related pre-show events. This footprint was measured by a “carbon calculator” that took into account the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the air from (I suppose) the gas and electricity used to bring people to the event; to produce and roll out the red carpet; spotlight the celebrities; beam the show into living rooms around the world; and afterward, to keep the stars’ champagne glasses both clean and filled.

A 250,000-pound carbon footprint, the BEF said, is like driving a car around the earth ten times – which is why the Academy purchased “carbon credits,” or “carbon offsets,” which go toward investing in renewable resources like wind, solar, biomass, and low-impact hydropower. (Wow: “Low-impact hydropower” – have you ever said that before? See what I mean about this new vocab?!)

In time, as “greening” becomes ever more integral to our lives, we may start hearing remarks that sound utterly pretentious now, but may lose that tone in the future. Remarks like:


“We considered buying a classic 90’s McMansion, but between the central air, tile floors*, and the cathedral ceilings, the green-up would have cost a fortune.” (*The newest thing in earth-conscious homes is to have hard-packed, dirt floors. See New York Times, Feb. 8, 2007, “Down and Dirty.”)

Or another: “Their wedding was totally green, but the carbon offset to honeymoon in Bali almost broke their budget.”

Savvy green consumers might start to see ads, say, from a garden store: “It’s our Happy Earth Day Sale-a-bration! Buy a solar-powered, all-natural diesel-enhanced lawn mower! 30% percent off and includes $100 in carbon credits.”

Restaurants might also get in on the act. Just as some restaurants now tout “heart-healthy” meals, we might start seeing numbers beside each dish detailing the number of “food miles” used to convey the food to your table. Or patrons might ask the waiter, “Could you tell me the carbon footprint of the house special cheeseburger?”

Packaging, from canned soup to staples, may have to carry carbon footprint details so that consumers can make more earth-conscious choices: locally distributed brands vs. national brands made in Sri Lanka, flown to California, and trucked to Des Moines, Chicago, or New York. Will “carbon footprint miles” become CFM, or “footprintage”? Keep watching.

Clothing stores may also one day reflect this new consciousness, since it takes 1800 gallons of water to produce the cotton in a pair of jeans, and 400 to make the cotton for a shirt (See ct.water.usgs.gov/EDUCATION/waterfacts.htm). Though I can hardly imagine any current stores, from the Gap to Ralph Lauren to Burberry saying this, perhaps stores of the future may brag, “These shirts are made from organically shade-grown hemp and produced with low-impact hydropower.” We laugh now – but didn’t we all laugh at Steve Martin in “L.A. Story” (1991) when he asked the waitress at a restaurant for a “half double decaffeinated half-caf with a twist of lemon.” Though his order sounded hilarious at the time, at this point, it sounds pretty reasonable.

Pretty much all of us can rattle off our cell phone numbers, email addresses, and/or cholesterol. So before too long, we’ll be calculating carbons as naturally as we count carbohydrates. And should your carbon footprint count be lower than mine, well … I’ll be “green” with envy.

Addendum:

After writing this posting, I discovered that this week’s Time magazine’s cover story is titled, “Forget Organic: Eat Local.” I know some of you word-watchers will want to know if “eat local” is grammatically correct, because it sounds at first like it should be “eat LOCALLY.” Normally, an adverb should describe a verb, and in a sentence like, “We rarely eat out and when we do, we eat locally,” locally is used correctly, as an adverb describing where they eat. But in Time’s case, “Eat Local” really means, “Eat Local (Produce),” with “produce” being the understood object; so “local” is an adjective describing the understood noun “produce,” which is fine. Phew! As Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog once sang, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green” – or grammatically correct.