Cohen: Now it’s much easier being green
Facebook groups, hybrid cars offer new ways to be environmentally friendly.
By Ben Cohen
Monday, November 26th, 2007
A curious thing popped up on Facebook recently. A glut of new applications have sprung up over the last year, giving everyone the chance to show everybody else their favorite funny picture of two cats fighting, or tell people they like a certain friend slightly more than them. Among these many new applications, however, is something peculiar called Greenbook.
Apparently, when somebody adds this new application, they help curb carbon dioxide emissions. Surprisingly, it doesn’t work by taking embarrassing drunken pictures of well known polluters, as most things on Facebook basically do. Rather, it takes money from advertising, which increases whenever people join, and uses that money to pay for renewable energy credits, which are meant to offset pollutants. The idea may not be airtight, but the intentions are good. Almost 10,000 people have added the application thus far, meaning if it actually has any real potential, we’ll get to see it soon enough.
New additions to Facebook aside, the concept of “going green” finally seems to be catching on with a lot of people. Hybrid cars are not seen as telling signs of pompous liberals with too much money on their hands anymore. Similarly, compact fluorescent light-bulbs, which are more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but far more energy efficient, have become extremely popular. In general, it appears that it has finally, to reference Kermit the Frog, started to get easy to be green.
Energy Awareness Week, a recent event sponsored on campus by several student-run environmental organizations, also highlighted the emergence into the mainstream of the so-called green movement. People walking across Wescoe Beach were given information regarding the amount of energy used and/or wasted in America, and were given reusable shopping bags so that they would not have to use traditional plastic bags, which take a great deal of petroleum to produce, when out at the store.
Part of the success of the green movement is that the methods to take part are not all that difficult. Little changes in our day-to-day lives, like unplugging appliances that are not currently in use, have proven to be a notable factor in the increased willingness of people to take part in environmentally sound practices.
Beyond just looking for greener lifestyles, people have become more willing to speak out against environmentally hazardous practices. One only need look to the many people who openly protested the construction of two coal-fired power plants that Sunflower Electric proposed for western Kansas. Concern over issues related to pollution, such as toxic water supplies and the spread of greenhouse gases, which in turn contribute to global climate change, motivated even people who are not typically activists to object to the building of the plants. Public opinion eventually played a key role in the Kansas Department of Health and the Environment denying Sunflower’s request to build the plants.
In summation, people are going green in different ways. Some are going the activist route, protesting environmentally hazardous corporate efforts. Some are trying to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions via Facebook. Others are simply adopting seemingly minor, but effective lifestyle changes to reduce their contributions to energy consumption. No matter what, the reckless attitude that most people once held towards their effect on global climate change, and the environment in general, is fading away fast. People are taking notice of the world around them, and what they can do to help it. That is something that can never hurt.
Cohen is a Topeka junior in journalism and English.
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